Which involves…?I wrote but didn’t receive an answer until Tag and I lingered by Bunker’s house after Latin. Daniel had rushed out of the solarium as soon as class had concluded.
“Which involves you dispatching the clue,” Tag said. “Okay?”
“Me!” My spine straightened. “You wantmeto hide it? Why me?”
“Because it needs to be you, and you’re the only one of you.” His mouth twitched in amusement as he pulled something out of his blazer’s breast pocket: a familiar black envelope with in random magazine letters. I noticed the oversize O resembledVogue’s iconic all-caps typeface. My mom had picked up the latest issue on her errands yesterday.
“Here and there,” I remembered Tag saying when I’d asked where he’d gotten magazines to create the scavenger hunt’s clues.
“I thought Alex would do it,” I said, stomach stirring even though all this mission involved was slipping the envelope into Daniel’s mailbox. He routinely checked it on his way to the library after dinner. It was supposed to be easy, but when I looked up at the gray sky, I reconsidered. The weather was going to turn, which meant instead of hanging out in the Circle tonight, everyone would take refuge in the student center.
Tag nodded when I said as much. “That’s why Alex isn’t in charge of the clue,” he said. “He’s quarterbacking the diversion that’ll ensure no one will see you disguised as USPS.”
My brows knitted together. “What’s the diversion?”
“He’s asking Anthony to prom.”
“Stop it!” I gasped. “He’s promposing?”
“Yes, and apparently it involves striking up the jazz band.”
I groaned. Anthony loved jazz. “But I don’t want to miss that…”
I tried to maintain my confidence during the last couple classes and as I unfolded my umbrella after the final bell. It looked like the entire student body was migrating toward Hubbard Hall. My stomach lurched when I saw Daniel, but thankfully Maya was all but dragging him into the Hub. “Let’s get milkshakes!” I heard her say. “Because you need tochill, Dan.”
There were students in the mail room, so I anxiously awaited their departure in a nearby alcove. Pravika was among them, slowly sifting through her mail by a trash can. I watched her scan a graded assignment, then crumple it up and toss it into the garbage.
Let’s go, I thought.Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!
Eventually the sound of a saxophone turned people’s heads. Mine also wanted to turn, but I couldn’t let myself get distracted. Even when the band’s trumpet, double bass, and drums joined in, I stayed focused on making my move. The mail room mass exodus finally happened when someone shouted, “Look, Alex Nguyen’s on top of the piano!”
Then I heard him start singing.
Because of course Alex could sing.
Pulse now racing, I ran to Daniel’s mailbox. My hands shook a little as I unzipped my backpack and pulled out the hilariously mysterious first clue. But before sliding it into the wrought iron mailbox, I found myself studying the envelope again. The “E” looked like one ofPeople’s block letters. The colors were blackand blue, back from Ryan Reynolds’s Sexiest Man Alive issue. My mom and I loved Ryan Reynolds.
Is this ours?I wondered, head now spinning.Is this our copy?
Tucked in my skirt’s waistline, my phone suddenly vibrated. It sent my heart rate so high up in the sky that I swore and slipped the clue through the mailbox’s slot before sprinting through the standing ovation Alex and Anthony were now getting toward the restrooms.
“Mom, hey,” I answered once the stall door slammed behind me. “What’s up?”
She ignored my question to instead ask her own. “Are you still on campus?”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “I’m in the student center. Alex just—”
“Would you mind coming by my classroom?” she asked. “We need to talk.”
Talk?I thought. What did we need to talk about? I hadn’t done anything wrong. Well, I mean, anything wrong besides getting involved in the prank, but she knew that already. Her tone didn’t make things easier to read either. She didn’t sound upset, but “calm” wasn’t an accurate adjective either.
My mom sighed. “What we need to talk about, dearest daughter, is what Tag has done with our entire archive of magazines.”
TWENTY-SIX
My footsteps echoed against the English building’s parquet floor, and I climbed the stairs as slowly as possible, thinking about our magazines. I remembered the impromptu dinner party my mom had hosted last week. I’d noticed the lack of “reading material” on our coffee table but had been so thrown by the Jester’s bid that I hadn’t thought too hard about their disappearance.
Tag asked her, I realized.He asked her if he could have them.
