“Leave the phone too.”
I scowled at him, imitating my expression in the family photo. But I did as he commanded. It was only one more day of this unnecessary captivity. One more day until I’d be able to take action.
When I reached the door, he stopped me with a hand on my arm. Now it was his turn to hesitate, but then he said, “I did what you told me to, read all those comments . . . Look, I get the point. Maybe the job isn’t all bad. I hope you get things straightened out. All we want is for you to be happy, Lois.”
I hadn’t expected him to take me up on the suggestion, or say anything remotely like that. I owed him an honest response.
“I don’t know if happy is what I want. I may want more.”
He nodded, fatherly, and I remembered that he wasn’t all tyrant. And even when he was, he was still my dad. He sighed and said, “Honey, that’s what we’re afraid of.”
I returned to my room, and my sentence. Sure, I could do my dad the favor of thinking about what I wanted my life to be like for one more day. But I didn’t need to.
I was beginning to think I’d figured out exactly what I wanted to do with it.
CHAPTER 19
On Monday morning, Maddy caught up with me at my locker, practically bouncing with excitement. “You ready?” I asked her.
“Are you kidding? I couldn’t think about anything else all weekend,” she said, sweeping a hand down to indicate her leather jacket. “I tried to dress the part.”
“Excellent.” I extended my hand to her with the pen-shaped bug across my palm. “You’re on planting detail.”
She put out her hand and accepted the bug. She stared at it, like she was memorizing every detail.
“Just don’t let her see you with it, okay?” I said.
Maddy frowned. “But how do I . . . ”
I bent and untied the left one of her heavy-soled, swirly-colored shoes. “You’ll notice your shoe’s untied, and while you’re fixing it, you’ll stash the pen wherever is handiest. Her backpack would be best, in an outer pocket. Somewhere she’s less likely to notice it.”
“Oh, okay,” Maddy nodded. “What will you be doing?”
“Me? I’m the distraction.” I shut my locker. “Let’s go.”
“But what if . . . ” Maddy was worrying.
I couldn’t blame her. I’d spent a fair amount of the weekend doing the same. “You’re going to pull this off with no problem. We are. Girl power, right?”
“Girl power,” Maddy agreed. “Though it sounds really dorky when you say it like that.”
We went up the hall together, slowing when we got close to Anavi, like we were approaching a strange dog that might attack us.
Anavi might. Or if not her, then the Warheads around her, lounging against nearby lockers with no concern for whether they were blocking access. Anavi hadn’t seen us yet, busy putting books into her locker almost mechanically. Her backpack was slumped on the floor beside her feet, unzipped and open.
That was a lucky break. Maddy’s eyes widened as she noted the fact too.
The restrained quality to Anavi’s movements as she swapped out books was disturbing to witness. Not that she had been magically self-assured and the smoothest of smooth before the Warheads stole her soul, but she’d been . . . herself.
“Steady,” I said to Maddy.
Who rolled her eyes. Under the leather jacket, she wore yet another band T-shirt—King Wrong. My curiosity about it flared. About all of her shirts. Everything on Maddy’s playlist had been great, but none of the thirty bands on it were ones I’d seen advertised on her T-shirts, and that seemed odd. I’d ask her about it later.
Right now, Maddy was doing her best to be casual and would convince anyone except me with the act. She had her right hand in the pocket of her jeans, probably gripping the pen so hard her knuckles were straining.
“Anavi,” I said, clearing a path through a couple of Warheads by ignoring and ducking around them. Maddy stuck with me.
Anavi turned from her locker so that she was facing me, and the rest of the Warheads subtly shifted so they were too.
I muscled my way closer without touching any of them, so that Maddy could get into position right beside the lockers. And the backpack. But I didn’t check to make sure Maddy was where she should be. That might give us away.
“I wanted to apologize to you, to all of you,” I said, and I felt like a pretty good spy not to choke on the words. They practically flowed off my tongue, a necessary lie coated in warm honey.
“Really?” said a Warhead.
And the chorus chimed in: “That doesn’t . . .”
“. . . seem like you.”
Anavi’s head tilted to one side, her eyes narrowing a bit behind her glasses.
“No, it doesn’t seem like you,” she said.
I glanced around to confirm that the others had mirrored her posture. Could they be any creepier?