My parents were still at work when I got home, no surprise there, but I was glad—I wanted to be alone. I needed to think. I needed to treat this like a logic problem and reason it out. I went up to my desk and got out a notebook and pen—I didn’t want anything on the computer, where someone could find it.
The first thing I did whenever I started a new logic problem was to make separate lists for all the categories. I arranged the clues by category, and then I started to unpack them. A clue might seem to be about one thing, but it could unlock the secret to something else.
First list: Who knew about me and Raj and the Novalert? That was easy: me, Raj, Alex, and whoever took the pictures. Unless that was Alex, but she would have had to ditch Bryan. Or else Bryan would have to have been with her. That was all too convoluted, not to mention that Alex just didn’t make sense as an option. Which meant the person who took the pictures was someone at the party.
Second list: Who was at the party? That one was harder. There were a ton of kids there, and I didn’t know all of them—some of them didn’t seem to be from my school, and some of them I just hadn’t met. So I made a list of everyone I knew: Raj, Alex, Justin, Bryan, Isabel, and some other kids I recognized.
Third list: Who would want to blackmail me? I stared at the page for a while. I had no idea. But maybe I’d phrased the issue wrong. Who would want to hurt me? I knew I was kind of naive, but I still couldn’t imagine who’d fall in that category. I had to try again.
Who had I hurt?
This list, unfortunately, was a little easier to start. I’d hurt Becca and Isabel. Sure, they’d hurt me too, but they’d hurt me through honesty, and I’d hurt them by lying. That was worse.
The doorbell rang before I could make myself even more miserable. I checked my phone—no one had called, and it was already after eight and dark outside. Who would come over at this hour? Could it be Blocked Sender?
I ran downstairs and looked out the windows that ran along each side of the door. Pacing on my doorstep was Raj, wearing the same suit he’d worn to the last fancy party and holding a big paper bag. I opened the door.
“Surprise!” he said.
“No kidding. What are you doing here?” I tried to sound more curious than rude, but he’d kind of scared me. Or I’d scared myself, thinking Blocked Sender would just come here.
Unless Raj was Blocked Sender.
It was possible, if he’d had someone else take the pictures. But he was just as implicated as I was, if not more—he’d have to really trust the person he was working with. I couldn’t imagine him taking that kind of risk; he wasn’t stupid, after all. Still, I’d have to be careful, just in case.
“Alex told me she hadn’t managed to convince you to come to the party. I’d been counting on seeing you.”
“Oh, come on,” I said.
“Did I hear you say ‘Come in’? I’d be happy to.” He walked past me into the living room. “Lovely place you’ve got here. Very . . . beige.”
That was accurate. The living room was basically all beige, with gold accents on the coffee table and throw pillows and gold frames on the pictures hanging on the walls. “It’s just this room,” I said, not sure whether he was being judgmental. And not sure what to think about him basically barging into my house. Though it was nice to have been interrupted from making that list.
“Tasteful,” he said. “You should see my house—colors everywhere. It’s dizzying, really. Can I sit? I need to empty this out.” He gestured to the bag.
“Um, sure.” I sat in an armchair and left him the couch. No need to encourage the flirting by sitting too close.
He reached into the bag; I heard a clinking noise, and then he pulled out two bottles of soda. “Ginger ale. Reed’s extra spicy.” Fancy soda—no Quik-Stop cans here. “You were drinking ginger ale at the party, weren’t you?”
“You remember that?”
“I’ve been paying attention,” he said, and dipped his hand back into the bag, emerging with a handful of candy bars I’d never seen before. “I trust you like chocolate?”
“You are correct. But what are those?”
“I’m here to introduce you to the wonders of British chocolate. Cadbury, in particular.”
“We have Cadbury here.”
“Not anymore, you don’t. Hershey has banned it. You have but a poor imitation in a Cadbury wrapper. Trust me when I tell you it’s not remotely the same.”
I looked at the candy bars. They all had names like Flake and Wispa. “What’s the difference between all of these?”
“Mostly texture,” he said. “Flake is kind of hard to describe—it’s like they took one long super-thin layer of chocolate and then kind of rolled it up and smooshed it together. Wispa is airier, like someone took a regular chocolate bar and then hollowed some of it out. The texture is almost like a malt ball in the middle, but it still tastes like chocolate. And Wispa Gold is the same thing but with caramel too.”
They all sounded weird but also mostly wonderful. “What’s your favorite?”