“Sounds a little like a threat,” Raj said.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said, as my phone buzzed. There was no question who it would be.
Leave pills behind the copies of The Mystery of Edwin Drood in the library by end of school Monday. Tell no one.
All eyes turned toward me.
I put my phone in the middle of the table, and they took turns reading it. “That’s the spot,” Raj said. He glanced at Justin. “Or it was, before.”
Alex and I nodded. “Before what?” Justin asked.
“Nope,” Alex said. “No info from you, no info from us. You want in, you have to pay up.”
Justin frowned. “Fine. I’ll stay out of it, then. You guys do what you have to, as long as you don’t get me involved.”
“You’re already involved,” Raj said.
“I’m happy to be a bit player in this little drama. I’ll see you guys at school.” He got up so fast he almost knocked over his chair, and then left without looking back.
“That went well,” I said.
Alex was fuming. “God! Why was he being so unhelpful?”
“Because he doesn’t trust us,” I said.
“Yeah, I get that,” she said, with more bitterness than sarcasm.
“Maybe his stuff is just worse than ours,” I said. “Our secrets are all things we want to keep from our parents, but Justin seems more concerned about keeping things from us. Different category.”
“That could be true,” Raj said.
“Easy for you to say when we don’t know what Blocked Sender has on you,” Alex said.
“You don’t have to tell us that,” I said. I wanted to know, but not just because Alex was mad. Alex and I had shared our secrets voluntarily; making someone spill his who didn’t want to made us almost like Blocked Sender.
“No, you’re right,” he said. “I’ve avoided telling you guys because it doesn’t make me look so good. But I’m in the same position you are. What Blocked Sender had on me was something I didn’t want my parents to know. We moved here because I did terribly badly on some exams that I needed to move on to the next level at school, and instead of moving on, I flunked out.”
“Like the SATs?” I asked.
“Kind of. Similar enough, anyway. My parents were humiliated and convinced that I had no future in England, so they panicked and decided to move here so I could start over. My sister was furious—she’d been doing great in school and had lots of friends, and she hates it here. I don’t think she’ll ever forgive me.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Your parents already know you flunked out.”
“That’s not the problem. Blocked Sender somehow found out that I’d tried to cheat on those exams. I hadn’t studied at all. Instead, I’d arranged to buy a copy of the test, but it turned out to be a hoax and I’d memorized all the wrong answers. I was totally unprepared for the actual test, which is why it went so poorly. One of my teachers told me the school knew what I’d done but were helping my parents save face by just throwing me out for failing instead of for cheating. I can’t ever let them find out what really happened. My parents moved to another country to help salvage my future—they’d be devastated if they realized why.” He looked back and forth at Alex and me. “So, have you both lost what little respect for me you might have had? Do you see why I didn’t want to tell you?”
Alex had leaned forward while Raj was talking, the angry expression slowly leaving her face. “We’re hardly in a position to judge you, Raj.”
“But what I did was so much worse than anything either of you have done.”
“Your family obviously loves you a lot, to make this kind of sacrifice,” I said. “I understand why you don’t want them to find out, but they’d forgive you.”
“Maybe my parents will. Especially now that I’ve discovered I share their love of science. But my sister never will. Anyway, I think Kara’s right that our secrets are all in the same family, pardon the pun, and it seems clear that Justin’s are not. That changes things. I don’t think he’s our Blocked Sender, though.”
I wasn’t so sure. Not yet, anyway.
“I don’t think so either,” Alex said. “I don’t know about the boyfriend, though. This has to be about him in some way. We’ve been teasing him about it all year and he’s never slipped. Not once.”
“Do you think the boyfriend might be Blocked Sender?” I asked.
“There’s only one way to find out,” she said. “We’ve got to catch Blocked Sender in the act.”
“How are we supposed to do that? I’m not about to stick around in the library after I drop off the pills. Blocked Sender’s not stupid.”
“I could do it,” Raj said.
“That won’t work. Blocked Sender knows that you and I know each other. Remember the pictures? But we don’t know how much he knows about us as a group.”
“We should assume he knows everything,” Alex said. “It’s safer that way.”