Delivery to the recipient failed permanently: [email protected]. Reason: This user does not have a gotmail account.
No, no, no. I must have typed in his address wrong. Except I didn’t type in his address, I just tapped on the Reply button. I try it again, replying to an older message of his. Just in case it’s a glitch in Gotmail. I get the same error message. I try typing in the address manually, but my hands are shaking too hard, and I end up dropping my phone.
“No,” I whisper hoarsely, choking back my tears. SiliconBrains has deleted his account. He’s gone, and I still have nothing on Mr. Werner.
***
I find Danny at the quad, throwing a Frisbee around with Aiden R. and Aiden B., and for a moment, I just stand there, watching. They’re all wearing woolen sweater vests, and they’re all broad-shouldered and tall, and the entire scene looks like a catalog page from J. Crew. Danny, with his openmouthed laugh and that hair flopping across his forehead, looks so wholesome. I’m the wicked witch, come to destroy this all-American scene. Maybe I should just go.
But then Aiden B. spots me and gestures to Danny. He looks over and his eyes light up. My heart does this weird skip-hop. I smile weakly as he jogs over to me.
“Hey, you,” he says. I always think I know how he looks, and then I see him close-up and realize I’ve totally underplayed how amazing he looks in real life. He’s literally breathtaking. I mean, I’m actually finding it hard to breathe, though that probably also has to do with what I’m about to ask him to do.
“Hey. Can we go somewhere and talk?” The two Aidens are within hearing distance, and Aiden B. goes, “bow chicka bow wow.” I flip him off, but my heart’s not in it.
“Sure.” Danny takes my hand, and we walk off the quad. This time of day, with the sun dipping low and painting the sky with pink streaks, everyone’s out enjoying themselves. Every bench is taken, and every tree has a picnicking group under it.
“Narnia hole?” I say.
“Narnia hole.”
I feel über-conspicuous as I crouch down and crawl through the hole. Any time now, some teacher is going to see us and yell, “WTH are you kids doing?” And then I’m gonna end up getting the Narnia hole closed up and—
We make it through the hole. No one yells at us, no alarms are raised. I’m half-relieved, half-disappointed. Because now I actually have to do the Thing. Okay, just say it. Swallow the Band-Aid. Rip off the frog.
“Your uncle is running a cheating ring!”
I clap a hand over my mouth. Okay, that could have been said with a lot more tact and lot less volume.
Danny blinks, a confused smile on his face. “My uncle’s what now?”
“Running a cheating ring.”
“A cheating ring? Like, men who cheat on their wives?”
I groan. “No.” It takes some time getting him up to speed, and by the end of my rambling, Danny’s no longer smiling. Very definitely not smiling. Then he snorts.
“Okay, you got me. That was a good one. Kind of bizarre, but very creative.”
An ugly knot forms in my stomach. “I’m not kidding. Mr. Werner really is selling grades to students.”
He lets go of me then, leaving a cold emptiness on my arm where his hand was. “Do you have any proof?”
“I’ve got the emails from SiliconBrains, and Sophie’s writing on the wall in my room—” I wish my voice didn’t come out so shrill. But desperation has me in its claws, and I can’t back down. Not right now.
“You know how crazy this sounds?”
I can’t lose him too. I think of something else. “Your parents.”
Danny smiles, but it’s not a nice smile. It reminds me of Mr. Werner’s smile, no heart in it whatsoever, and the knot in my stomach turns to ice. “You gonna tell me they’re involved in this cheating ring too?”
“No. But—” An idea strikes me, and I grab it. “Remember the phone call you got from your mom? Telling you to break up with me?”
And, against all odds, Danny’s face goes slack as realization dawns. The knot in my gut loosens, just a little, and I dive in.
“Mr. Werner is selling grades, which makes it hard for me to pass his class, but even if I manage to pass some other way, he’s still going to fail me, because he needs to have me kicked out of school. Because your parents called him and told him to get rid of me.” I pause then add, “Okay, I know how that sounds, but if you think about it within the context of a Chinese-Indo family, it’s actually not that unrealistic.”
Danny’s rubbing his forehead like he’s got a giant headache. “No,” he says, after a while. “It doesn’t sound totally nuts. Not for my parents.”
“Yeah! I mean, not about your parents specifically, but just thinking of my dad’s family and the shit they pull. Anyway, so maybe Mr. Werner was, you know, pushed into doing it…” Except he wasn’t, but if getting Danny on my side means I have to paint Mr. Werner out to be some tortured saint, then so be it.
“I need to talk to him.”
“No!” I cry. “What’s he gonna say? ‘Yes, Danny, I’m being threatened by your parents to get your girlfriend kicked out of school’?”
Danny sighs, all his earlier anger melting from his features. “I don’t know. This all sounds so. I don’t know. Uncle James is the best person ever. And my aunt Joanna—man, you don’t even want to know. She’s my mom’s younger sister. And she’s pretty insistent on their kids living with her in Indo, so she’s vying real hard for custody. I just can’t see Uncle James doing anything that could potentially lose him custody, you know?”
My frustration threatens to boil over. I mean, seriously. The best person ever? If things weren’t so fucked, I would’ve cackled at that. How could Danny be so ignorant to the truth? Somehow, I manage to keep my voice calm. “Maybe that’s what your parents are using to make him do this.”
He sighs again. A long, defeated one. “God. You know what the worst part is? The worst part about all of this is that part of me isn’t surprised. Because part of me felt that something was off. Nothing like what you’re saying,” he says quickly, when I straighten up like a meerkat. “More like, I don’t know—he’s been drinking a lot more, and he’s a lot quieter. And a couple weeks back, he left this brown leather ledger on the back seat of his car, so I picked it up to hand it to him, and he like screamed at me and grabbed the ledger really quickly. An actual scream. He was so panicked and angry. I thought maybe it was legal documents for his custody case, but who knows?” He meets my eye. “I’ll look into it.”
I can’t believe it. “Really?”
“You don’t have to look so excited about me trying to find out if my uncle’s guilty.”
“Sorry,” I say hurriedly. “It’s just—my entire future’s kind of riding on this, so.”
“I know. Don’t get your hopes up, though, okay? I have no idea where that ledger is—I haven’t seen it since.”
Don’t get my hopes up. Kind of hard when just moments ago, they were way beyond rock bottom.
***