“I don’t understand. I wasn’t—”
“Shut up,” he says softly.
I close my mouth, grinding my teeth. I don’t want to let him talk to me that way, but what choice do I have?
Get out, my mind screams. I slide one hand to the buckle of my seatbelt and the other to the door handle.
“You do that, and I will punish you for days.”
My gaze jerks to his profile. He’s breathtakingly good-looking, which is tragic since he’s so rotten on the inside.
Moving my hands away from the door handle and the seatbelt, I settle in the seat. I don’t know what Trick has in mind for me, but I know better than to make things worse by flagrantly challenging him. The FBI should be following us. I will be all right.
“Wrong direction for me. I don’t live in Coynston.”
“You live where I say you live until I’m done with you.”
My heart sinks, and my stomach clenches. He’s never directed his anger at me before, but I’ve seen flashes of it.
In high school and around the neighborhood, Trick had seemed like the least menacing of the three of them. But they all went to work for Frank Palermo’s crime syndicate as teenagers. A hard-eyed stare from Connor McCann terrified even the teachers. And Anvil Stroviak, at around six and half feet tall and bodybuilder muscular, looked like an escaped Terminator. Trick, though, was almost always turning on the charm, joking and quick to smile. It had always been hard to believe he was involved in the darker side of the Palermo business. I’d thought maybe he was just a bookkeeper or something because he was gifted at math. He didn’t bother to do homework, so he wasn’t first in his class, but he could have been. Everyone understood that. He fell asleep in calculus all the time because it was first period, but when our teacher woke him and handed him the chalk, Trick would mumble an apology for falling asleep and go to the board. He’d stare at the problem for a second and then his hand would move wickedly fast, solving anything that was put before him.
“That was a tough one,” he would say. At first I thought he meant it, but later I realized it was his way of deflecting focus from his genius. He liked our math teacher and always treated him with respect.
He mostly was that way with teachers and administrators, unless someone in authority pushed him in a way he didn’t like. I remember the day Mr. Benedict tried to belittle Trick. He’d been in a bad mood and taking it out on the class all hour. Trick leaned back in his desk and made a couple of jokes, trying to lighten the mood. Mr. Benedict wasn’t having it. He yelled at Trick to sit up straight, calling him lazy and useless. He said Trick was so stupid he could never even remember to bring a notebook.
Trick didn’t sit up straight. Instead he leaned back farther and put his hands behind his head. “Useless is being a history teacher who gets the dates of the Emancipation Proclamation wrong when we’re covering the Civil War.”
“What? What did you say?” Benedict shouted, stalking forward. “You don’t know a thing about—”
And then Trick rattled off facts and dates Mr. Benedict got wrong, citing the date of the class he’d made the mistakes.
“You’re saying random—”
“No. I’m not,” Trick said before continuing.
People’s fingers flew to look things up and then to quietly defend Trick as right. It probably only lasted a couple of minutes but it seemed like hours.
Finally Mr. Benedict screamed for Trick to get out of his class.
“You sure? Maybe you should leave and I should teach,” Trick said casually.
The room went silent. Benedict looked like he was ready to have a seizure. Then Trick got up.
“I didn’t forget to bring a notebook. I just don’t bother.”
Mr. Benedict grabbed him by the front of his shirt.
Trick broke his grasp easily, murmuring, “Be serious.” Then he walked out.
Trick was suspended and received a failing grade in history, but still maintained a C average because in classes without homework, he got As.
I stare out the window now as the trees on the side of the interstate whiz by.
“Scott?”
“No.”
“Trick,” I continue without missing a beat. “You shouldn’t do this. You should pull off the expressway and let me out.”
