Carswell winked. “But if they end up not needing me, you’ll be the first to know.”
She squinched her shoulders up from the flattery. “But do you want to work together today?”
“Ah, I’d love to, Blakely, but I did ask Kate already … er, Kate?”
Kate had her head down, her hair falling over her face so that he could only see the tip of her nose. Her body had taken on a new tenseness, her knuckles whitening as she gripped the stylus.
“It’s all right,” she said, without looking up at him. “I’m sure the teacher will let me work on my own. You can work with your girlfriend.”
“Oh—she’s not—we’re not—”
Blakely grabbed his arm. “See, Kate doesn’t mind. You said that you chose Joel Kimbrough?”
Clearing his throat, Carswell looked first at Blakely, then back up at Kate, now hidden behind an invisible wall.
“Um, fine.” He leaned toward Kate again. “But are we still on for lunch? So I can, you know, check out that homework assignment?”
Kate tucked her hair behind her ear and leveled a look at him that was both annoyed and intelligent. It told him that she knew exactly what he was doing, or trying to do. To her. To Blakely. To every girl he’d ever asked a favor from. Carswell was surprised to feel a tingle of shame down his spine.
Her jaw twitched. “I don’t think so. And we probably shouldn’t study together after all.”
Turning away, she fitted a pair of speaker-plugs into her ears, and the conversation was over. In its wake was a feeling of disappointment that Carswell couldn’t quite place, but he didn’t think had very much to do with math.
*
“Seven card royals,” said Carswell, dealing another hand of cards. “Aces are wild. Triplets beat the house.”
“Why don’t we ever play that doubles beat the house?” asked Anthony, picking up his cards and rearranging them in his hands.
Carswell shrugged. “We can play that way if you want. But it means the pots will be smaller. Not as much risk, not as big a payout.”
“Triplets are fine,” said Carina, needling Anthony in the side with her elbow. “Anthony’s just afraid he’s going to lose again.”
Anthony scowled. “It just seems like the odds are a little biased toward Carswell, that’s all.”
“What do you mean?” Carswell waved his hand over the pot. “I’ve lost the last three hands in a row. You guys are bleeding me dry over here.”
Carina raised her eyebrows at Anthony as if to say, See? Do the math. Anthony duly fell quiet and tossed his ante into the pot. They were playing with markers scavenged from the school’s lunch bar—olives were micro-univs, potato crisps were singles, and jalape?o slices made for fivers. The trick was to keep Chien—who was seated on Carswell’s left and had the appetite of a whale—from eating them in between games.
At the end of every school day, Carswell—as “the house”—would divvy up the wins and losses between the players’ real savings accounts. He’d based his system on the same odds that the casinos in the valley used, allowing him to win about 60 percent of the time. It was just enough to turn a consistent profit but also give players frequent enough wins that they kept coming back. It had turned out to be one of his more profitable ventures to date.
Carina took the next hand without much competition, but that was followed by a round in which no one could beat the house’s required triplets-or-better, ending Carswell’s losing streak. He kept the grin from his face as he raked the pot of food scraps into his dwindling pile.
He quickly did the math in his head. He was up from where he’d started the lunch period, nearly eleven univs. Just seven more would put him at his goal for the day and push him into the next bracket of his savings account.
Seven univs. Such a small thing to just about anyone in this school, just about anyone in the entire city of Los Angeles. But to him, they equaled sixteen weeks of freedom. Sixteen weeks of being away from his parents. Sixteen weeks of total independence.
He brushed his thumb over his Rampion tie tack for good luck and dealt another hand.
As the betting began, he glanced up and caught sight of Kate Fallow sitting on the low stone wall that surrounded the courtyard, the pleated skirt of her uniform pulled snugly around her knees. She was reading from her portscreen—no surprise there—but it was odd to see her out here at all. Carswell had no idea where she normally spent her lunch hour, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t in this courtyard, where he could always be found.
The betting ended and Carswell began to dole out replacement cards, but now he was distracted. His gaze kept flicking back to Kate. Watching how she smiled at something on the screen. Mindlessly tugged at her earlobe and tapped her heels against the wall. Seemed to sigh with a hint of longing.