See you in several hours.
Best wishes, warmest regards,
The Jester
Good things come in threes? Well, it felt like I’d just been slapped in the face three times. If I hadn’t figured out Tag was the Jester yesterday, this would’ve been the ultimate giveaway.Best wishes, warmest regards.Leave it to him to slip in aSchitt’s Creekreference.
Midnight.Okay. I gritted my teeth. I could pull a Cinderellarunning away from the royal ball. Had I worked out the particulars ofhowI was going to sneak out of my house? No, but I would. And I had plenty of dark clothes. That was a non-issue.
But bringing along my mom’s keys—stealingmy mom’s keys. My heart rate heightened. It suddenly made crystal clear sense why Tag had recruited me: This year’s senior prank required the Jester and his fools to sneak into campus buildings. Before now, all the hijinks had taken place outside, but here Tag was, wanting to kick it up a notch.
And he needed me to make it happen.
Again, curiosity made my mind spin.
But curiosity also killed the cat, I reminded myself.
I tried to ignore the thought.
Every student had an Ames School ID card that let us swipe into academic buildings, but we lost access once the sun went down. Besides the dorms, Ames was locked up tight at night. Only faculty IDs worked twenty-four hours a day.
Tag had been over to our house a million times. He knew my mom always tossed her Red Sox lanyard in the kitchen’s catchall when she got home, and he knew that in addition to her ID, she’d charmed physical metal keys out of various departments. “Why do you need a key to the Buildings and Grounds facility?” I’d once asked, to which she airily replied, “I’m not sure yet.”
I wanted to scream. Tag expected me to steal my mother’s keys?!
TELL ME WHAT WE’RE DOING RIGHT NOW, I replied to his email.
No need to yell, Ms. All-Caps, he wrote back.It’ll be easy.
Easy?I typed.You think swiping my mom’s keys will be easy? When she probably won’t even be asleep yet?
YES, I DO, he said.YOU’VE GOT THIS!
I rolled my eyes when “the Jester” went offline. Hopefully to go brainstorm a contingency plan if I showed up tonight without my mom’s loaded lanyard.
Guilt squirmed in my stomach when I shut my laptop and looked over at my mother. “Mom…” I whispered but astonishingly went silent before I could add,I have something to tell you.
I told my mom everything, absolutelyeverything. From good grades to bad grades to student gossip to my first kiss with Tag. God, I’d even told her about our first time sophomore year. “Mom, Tag and I slept together!” I’d blurted after coming home and finding her in the family room. I hadn’t even bothered to take off my heavy winter coat or brush the snowflakes out of my hair. “And it was fine!” I barreled on before she could respond. “Totally fine! We were safe, so you have nothing to worry about! Again, totally fine!”
Then I nearly collapsed, breathless.
“Well, okay.” My mom nodded, a look of both bemusement and concern on her face. “I’m glad it wastotally fine.” Her lips twitched up in a smile. “But now how about you take off your coat and stay a while…” She patted the couch cushion next toher. “Because I take it there’s a more romantic version of this event?”
Yes, there was, and I told her that too. Not every little detail, but most of them. That year’s winter musical had beenThe Sound of Music, and I’d somehow been cast as Liesl von Trapp. What had Mrs. DeLuca, the head of the theater department, been thinking?
Tag always picked me up after rehearsal, but one day he’d been late because his swim meet had run long. Everyone had left the auditorium’s basement lounge by the time he’d finally arrived. “How old are you,junge Dame?” he asked cheekily, finding me on the couch still wearing my floaty pink dress with my script. The show opened next week, but I kept butchering some lines. “Sixteen, perchance?”
I glared at him. “Nice try, Herr Swell.”
Tag laughed and climbed onto the arm of the couch. This was when he was still all arms and legs, after his first growth spurt but before he started hitting the gym. “Bambi,” Alex and I liked to call him back then. I watched as he spread out his arms for balance and began humming “Sixteen Going on Seventeen.”
“Okay, stop.” I stood up, my skirt swirling. “Seriously.”
“Why?” He was now precariously perched on the back of the couch. “This is a pretty good makeshift gazebo bench.”
I sighed. “We rehearsed this scene a lot today.”
“But not with me.”
