She titled it “The Fairest.”
It made her feel a little better. But still something was squirming inside of her. Some missing link was calling her, and she needed to find it.
As she started to close her journal, a phone number stood out among the scribblings—Crow’s. With a burst of inspiration, she remembered JD telling her when they were freshmen about a brilliant slacker in his computer science class. It was Crow.
Em stared at the number for a few seconds, pondering his rebelliousness and hatching a plan even as she dialed his number.
“Hello?” He answered the phone like she was waking him up from a deep sleep.
“Hey, Crow, this is Em.” Nothing. “Emily? Winters? Drea’s friend?”
He made a sound of recognition. “Your Highness! How may I serve you?” He chuckled softly at his own hilarity.
She pursed her lips and pressed on, ignoring him. “I have a favor to ask you,” she said. “It has to do with . . . information gathering.”
“Will you pay me?” Crow asked.
The question took Em by surprise. “Um, I guess,” she said, wondering how much she could borrow from her parents without raising suspicion.
“I take multiple forms of currency,” he said, his voice dripping with innuendo.
“That’s charming, really,” Em snapped. “How about the currency of my respect, which you are currently not earning?”
Crow whistled. “Hoo-ee. We’ve got a live one! Okay, okay. What do you need?”
Em took a breath. What did she have to lose? “I need you to hack the USM library computers and retrieve one single piece of information. I need to know who was in the antiquities library on November fifteenth. There’s a book missing and I need to know who took it.”
“School assignments sure have changed since I, ah, removed myself from the system,” he said thoughtfully. “What book?”
“Does that mean you’ll do it?” Em sat down with relief, realizing as she did so that she’d been pacing her bedroom for the whole conversation.
“What book?” Crow asked again, insistently.
Exasperated, Em told him.
He was silent again. And then, “All right, I’ll do it.” She could have embraced him, right then and there. “But I need one thing from you in return.”
“What?” she asked warily.
“If I get caught, you don’t tell anyone I was doing it for you. Your Highness.”
She shook her head and hung up.
Thrilled to have put at least one plan in motion, she felt a sense of purpose that had been missing in her life for weeks. Her eyes went to the window again.
Knowing that JD was home made her ache with agitation. Was that a shadow in his window? Her legs shook, and she squeezed her hands together, trying to tamp down her energy.
In an attempt to create some order, she started organizing the papers on the desk. She shuffled them into piles: literary examples, local clippings, her personal run-ins with the Furies. As she did so a small scrap of paper floated to the floor. She bent down to pick it up. It was the note he’d left her in the wake of their fight a few months ago. I just want to make you happy. Always. JD. She remembered how she’d felt when she first read those words. Filled with desire and longing. She should have gone over and jumped into his arms right then and there.
Always. The word inspired a sudden flash of hope. If JD had felt so strongly, those feelings couldn’t have just disappeared, right? She had to try again. She had to prove herself to him, make him realize that this was real, and that their connection wasn’t going to fade. It couldn’t fade. She could practically see him from her window. It would be pathetic not to try again, not to make him forgive her for the horrible things he seemed to think she had done. Somewhere, deep down, he must still know that they were meant to be together. She just had to uncover that buried feeling and bring it back to the surface.
His toolbox. He’d left it outside, and an icy mix of snow and rain was still falling from the sky. She knew he wouldn’t want it to rust—maybe she would just bring it to his door. A gesture of goodwill.
She peeled off her leggings and the robe and threw on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. She ran downstairs and rummaged through the pantry, pulling out some Dr Pepper, and taking a pint of vanilla ice cream from the freezer—his favorite combo. Just in case JD wanted to talk. And in case the talk went well, she grabbed Best in Show, his preferred cringe-humor movie. She threw it all in a tote bag. Then she was out the door and running from her yard to his, stopping to pick up the toolbox.
Just as she was about to knock on the Founts’ front door, she heard a big, hearty girl’s laugh from inside. She froze.