“I double-dog dare you.”
“Fine,” I grumbled, overcome with the urge to punch him in the stomach. “But that means you still have to pay the cost of defeat.”
“And what might that be?”
Something that would get me inside his dad’s office. What would get me inside his dad’s office?
“I’ll let you know.”
For the sake of my own dignity, I will not go into any of the details of what came to pass in the next few minutes. Along with taking things in and out of my bra, photocopying my butt in a stealthy manner was not a skill I possessed in any abundance. It figured—tonight was the one time I wasn’t wearing a skirt.
Eventually, however, I managed it. Jack, being the gentleman that he was, turned around completely.
As I walked over to hand him the finished product, all I could think was The things I do for my country.
“So what’s the price of defeat?” Jack asked, the corners of his lips twitching madly.
My mind whirled. I needed to think of something that would (a) get me into his dad’s office, and (b) make him pay for my loss of dignity.
The answer came to me then, and my own mouth pulled up in a smile that was nothing short of evil. “You got a scanner?”
Five minutes later, we were in his dad’s office, and Jack was composing an email.
“Who am I sending this to again?” he asked.
“You know who,” I said. “And you know what to say.”
“Claiming this is a picture of Prince William’s butt hasgotto be illegal.” Jack stalled for time.
“Yeah. Butt forgery. I’m sure it’s a felony.” I was implacable, and Jack groaned as he typed in the names of his admirers from earlier that night.
“Do I have to sign it?” he asked.
I took pity on him. After all, I was inside his father’s office. I could afford to have some mercy. “No,” I said. “It’ll be coming from your email account. I think that will suffice.”
He attached the scanned copy of his butt and hit send.
“Remind me never to lose to you again,” he said.
“My heart bleeds for you,” I said. “Really.”
While he’d been typing, I’d been messing with my gel bra. I now had the bug in my hand. It was small, nearly invisible, and equipped to cling to any surface. All I had to do was find one. As this thought raced through my head, the phone in the office began to ring, and I visibly jumped.
“Do I make you nervous?” Jack asked.
“No,” I said, torn between being scornful and coming up with an excuse for my jumpiness, lest I tip him off to the fact that I had ulterior motives for what had, in all truth, been one of the best nights I’d had since my family had moved to Bayport. “I have phone fear.”
“Phone fear.” Jack repeated my words, no tone whatsoever in his voice, but his lips curled up. Reflexively, my lips mimicked the motion, and even though he didn’t move, it suddenly felt like the two of us were standing really close together.
The phone rang again and again, and with each ring, Jack’s eyes bored deeper and deeper into mine. I silently begged thephone to stop ringing. If it didn’t, something might happen here. Something big.
Something unexpected.
Something new.
Heeding my wishes, the phone stopped ringing. For a split second, there was silence, and then the answering machine picked up. “John. It’s Alan. I need to talk to you. It’s about Jack.”
At first, I was disturbed by the fact that someone was calling the evil law firm to talk about Jack. The two of us were standing mere feet apart, my entire body felt flushed, and Jack had never averted his gaze.
