AS THE DAYS PASSED, I saw less and less of Alf and Clark. We still biked to school every morning, but I’d stopped joining them in the cafeteria for lunch; instead I hid in the library and used the extra time to work on The Impossible Fortress. The contest deadline was coming up fast; I couldn’t waste a single minute. I’d even started bringing stacks of printouts with me into the bathroom.
Friday afternoon I was sitting in the school library, converting binary strings into decimal numbers and tripping all over the math. A binary string looked like a random sequence of zeros and ones—00100100—but each digit in the sequence represented a different value: 128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, or 1. So 00010010 had a value of 18 (0+0+0+16+0+0+2+0) and 10000001 had a value of 129 (128+0+0+0+0+0+0+1). Mary was a wiz at binary numbers. She could look at a string like 00111111 and immediately say “sixty-three,” but I still had to do all the arithmetic by hand, tallying sums the old-fashioned way.
Someone sat down across from me and placed a wrinkled ten-dollar bill on the table. I looked up and saw Chadwick Melon, captain of the basketball team, treasurer of the student council, and a solid bet for prom king. He was arguably the most celebrated athlete in Wetbridge High School history, and the recipient of eleven different scholarship offers. I’d never actually spoken to him in person, but I’d applauded him in countless assemblies and awards ceremonies.
“You know Alf?” he asked. “Alfred Boyle?”
“Yeah?”
“Tell him Chad Melon wants ten photos. A full set.”
I pushed the money back across the table. I don’t know where I found the courage to challenge him; I guess I was just annoyed by the interruption. “Just buy it yourself,” I told him. “The magazine’s only four dollars.”
Chad’s smile vanished, and I realized I was probably the first person in Wetbridge school history to question his direct orders. He stuffed the money inside my shirt pocket, pushing down hard. “Make sure Alf knows it’s from me.”
I stopped by the cafeteria on the way to my next class, and our usual lunch table was empty. I found Alf and Clark in the student smoking section, a small outdoor patio littered with butts, just downwind from the teachers’ smoking section. Alf was dressed in another one of his Miami Vice getups, but Clark just wore a plain white undershirt and denim cutoffs. They were sitting on a bench, taking drags off the skinniest cigarettes I’d ever seen.
“What are you smoking?” I asked.
“Capri 120s,” Clark said. “They’re new.”
Alf flipped me the hard pack, inviting me to try one. “We found ’em by the bus stop. Someone must have dropped them.”
None of us were habitual smokers, but when the universe offered us free anything, we were quick to accept.
“These are lady cigarettes,” I told them.
“Huh?” Alf said.
“That’s why they’re so skinny. They’re shaped for female hands.”
Clark flung away his cigarette like it was a live wasp. “No wonder I’m queasy!” he said.
Alf took another drag off his cigarette, mulling over the flavor, then exhaled. “Tastes fine to me.”
“They spray hormones on the wrapping papers,” Clark warned him. “To help women lose weight. You’re filling your lungs with estrogen.”
I gave the ten dollars to Alf and told him about Chadwick Melon. He didn’t think the request was strange at all. “I’ve sold to five different seniors this week,” he explained. “I don’t care how old you get. No one wants to walk into 7-Eleven and ask for a Playboy. It’s like saying, ‘I’m here to masturbate.’?”
I watched as Alf removed a small ledger from his pocket and added Chadwick Melon’s name to a list. Then he took out his enormous bankroll and wrapped the ten-dollar bill around its surface. Over the past few days, the wad of money had swollen to the size of a grapefruit.
“Holy crap,” I said. “How much is that?”
“Three hundred and eighty-six dollars,” he said proudly. “But don’t you worry, Billy. I fully intend to share the wealth. We’re all in this together, you know?”
“Sure, sure,” I said.
“We could end up clearing five hundred bucks.”
“That’d be amazing,” I said.
Alf took a long drag off his lady cigarette, exhaled the smoke, and then stared at me, like he was waiting for me to say something else. “So now, what about the alarm code?” he finally asked.
The end-of-lunch bell rang but not soon enough to help me. “I’m working on it,” I said.
All around us, the other student smokers were stubbing out their butts and popping Tic Tacs.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Clark said. “It’s May twenty-second. That gives us seven, eight days tops.”
I slung my backpack over my shoulder. I was eager to get back to the library, back to working on the game. “Don’t worry,” I told them. “I’m getting really close.”
1500 REM *** BOOST SCORE ***
1510 IF LIVES=3 THEN SCORE=SCORE+50
1520 IF LIVES=2 THEN SCORE=SCORE+75
1530 IF LIVES=1 THEN SCORE=SCORE+100
1540 PRINT"{HOME}{CSR DWN}SCORE:",SCORE
1550 DG=DG+DX*.15
1560 IF DG>DX THEN DG=DX
1570 IF DG>50 THEN GOSUB 7000
1580 IF DG>100 THEN GOSUB 7500
1590 RETURN
ZELINSKY NEVER SAID HELLO, never attempted small talk, never even looked at me—except at seven o’clock, when he stomped back to the showroom and told me to get out. And those were usually his exact words: “Get out” or “Go on, now,” he’d say, like he was shooing a dog off his lawn.
“Your dad hates me,” I told Mary.
“It’s just an act,” she insisted. “He actually likes you. He’s impressed by your work ethic.”
“He said that?”
“Well, not in those exact words.”
“In any words?”
“He’s impressed,” she said. “Trust me.”
I tried to get on his good side. I never left cans of soda on the computer desk (even though Mary did so all the time). I kept my voice down, I said “please” and “thank you” and generally tried to stay out of his way. But every time I arrived at the store, Zelinsky looked disappointed.
That Friday, I was working in the showroom while Mary assisted a customer with a typewriter. Once again I was the only person in the back of the store, when out of nowhere this kid wandered past me. He was maybe ten or eleven, dressed in gray denim from head to toe, and carrying a Big Gulp soda. He ducked behind a rack of Energizer batteries, disappearing from view, and I knew right away he was a thief.
He returned a moment later, still holding the Big Gulp and sucking on the straw. Nice detail, kid.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’m good.”
I stood up and followed him to the front of the store. I’ll give him credit: he was smart enough to stop at the register and buy something—a pack of Bubbalicious chewing gum.
Zelinsky almost didn’t even notice him. He was busy repairing a typewriter for a collector in Princeton. “Just the gum? That’ll be two bits.”
The kid stared back.
“You don’t know that expression? Two bits?” Disappointment fell over his face; it was a look I knew all too well. “It means twenty-five cents.”
The kid pushed a wrinkled dollar across the counter.
“Where’d you get the Big Gulp?” I asked.