“Tatum won’t be at school tomorrow, so I need the two of you to keep your eyes out. Who asks about her? Who leaves early? We...” He gets quiet for a minute, the line covered. “Avoid the monitor,” he says after a moment.
Nathan looks ready to argue, but I think Realm is right. There’s no sense in all of us going to meet him. Besides, I want to know who the other handlers are too. I need to know who to watch out for.
“You should know that Marie is looking for you,” I warn Realm.
“No doubt,” he replies. “I’d hoped to avoid her, but it seems inevitable now.”
“Why?” I ask, furrowing my brow.
“Another conversation,” he says, and pauses. And then his mouth is close to the receiver when he murmurs, “I’m sorry this is happening to you, Tatum. I truly did try to fix it.”
His words are suddenly intimate, and I lean into the table, exposed by Realm’s tone. The tenderness back in my heart.
“We really were friends,” I say, like it’s just us in the room. “We were good friends, weren’t we?”
“Yeah, sweetness,” he replies, sounding relieved. “We really were.”
I fall quiet and dart a look at Wes. He shrugs one shoulder and rolls his gaze away.
“And I won’t let them hurt you anymore,” Realm adds. “Do you believe that?”
“I believe you’ll try,” I say honestly. Knowing that he doesn’t have that power. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Be careful,” he replies.
And then Michael Realm hangs up, and I click off my phone.
The four of us sit silently for a moment in Wes’s basement, staring at the phone in the middle of the table. It’s Foster who talks first.
“So he’s full of shit, yeah?” he asks, waiting for consensus.
“Definitely,” Wes says immediately.
“Pretty much,” Nathan agrees with a nod.
When I look around at them, Foster smiles at me first. “So I guess I’m stuck doing our lab report tomorrow?” he says.
“We’re going to school?” Nathan asks him seriously.
“We have to,” Foster replies. “I have an idea of who the handlers might be. I’ve actually been paying attention. I want them exposed, and you need to keep an eye on the monitor. Field any questions about Tatum.”
“You just want to keep an eye on your boyfriend,” Nathan says under his breath.
“That too,” Foster says, and grins.
Wes’s phone buzzes, and he glances at it before smiling. “Pizza’s here,” he says, going to grab his wallet. He starts for his bedroom but then stops dramatically to look back at us.
“I meant to tell you,” Wes tells us. “I ended up getting pineapple.”
Nathan stares at him and then shakes his head. “This is why I fucking hated you.”
And after a long pause, we all laugh.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WES WAS ONLY KIDDING. THEpizza had pepperoni on one half, sausage on the other. We all eat together, and I watch them quietly as they continue to joke around. Trying to keep this all manageable by not falling completely into it. It’s a coping strategy we learned during The Program. Sometimes it was the only way to survive. But I don’t want to play this way anymore. I just want to fucking win.
A buzz snaps throughout the room, and the electricity flickers. Wes looks around, and then stands up and goes over to the high windows, getting on his toes to check outside.
