Nobody knew. They just assumed she would get in. She hadn’t told anyone. It was her secret shame. Vanhi read her essay for the twentieth time. She felt like a fraud. All this work, and it was pointless. The grade was a deal killer.
She fixed a couple commas, then knocked the mouse away.
She picked up her bass and let her fingers stretch over the frets, feeling the tension.
She could hear her mom in her head:
Whoever heard of an Indian bass player anyway?
Um, Mohini Dey, Ma?
She let her fingers run the bass line to “Another One Bites the Dust.”
In honor of her Harvard application.
Screw it.
She put the bass away.
It was time for the Vindicators.
* * *
Charlie was waiting for Peter by the stairs when someone entirely unexpected approached.
“Hi, Charlie.”
And there was Mary Clark, a vision from his past, floating above it all, looking stunning. She was a cheerleader, a student-body rep, founded their Students Against Destructive Decisions chapter. And, a genuinely nice person, unlike the circle of monsters she surrounded herself with.
He remembered their friendship, freshman year on student council. They would talk and laugh as they worked together on anti-graffiti initiatives or dress-code reform. But there was an invisible boundary. Outside student council, they kept to different worlds.
So the idea of her walking up now, in broad daylight, without even the thread of student council connecting them anymore, was a shock.
“Hi,” Charlie said back, waiting for her to reveal her purpose.
“Are you going to the Grove tonight?”
He wasn’t. The Grove was where students went, deep in the woods, to drink and hang out, under the pagan lights of bonfires and idling cars. Charlie hadn’t ventured there ever, much less been invited there. But something made him lie now.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Could you give me a ride?”
He thought he heard wrong, but he decided to pretend he hadn’t. “Sure. I can get my dad’s car.”
He wanted to say something suave, or clever, or anything. But he was so confused he didn’t know where to start. Mary Clark was not short on rides. And more perplexing was why Tim wasn’t taking her, if any guy was. And what would Tim do to Charlie when he found out?
“Thanks” was all she said, as if this were all the most natural thing in the world.
She was walking off when Peter appeared at Charlie’s shoulder and said jovially, “What the fuck?”
“I don’t know.”
“I thought you quit student council?”
“I did.”
“Maybe she needs help with her next campaign for better toilet paper.”
Charlie ignored him.
“Come on,” Peter said. “We’re gonna be late for the Vindicators.”
* * *
While Charlie and Peter went to the basement of the school, Edward Burklander was in the office of the principal, Elaine Morrissey. A forty-eight-year-old, married mother of three, including one son at the high school, she had summoned Mr. Burklander to her office. She asked him to close the door. She had a serious look on her face. As they got close, the door closed, the electricity between them became too much to bear, and they fell into each other, again, knocking papers and a plastic bin of pencils off her desk. He slid her skirt up and ran his hand along the soft inner line of her thigh. She arched her back up and he pulled off his belt. As he slipped into her, she cried out, just a little, and tried to knock over a picture of her husband and children on her desk so that they wouldn’t be staring at her. But the photo was just out of reach, and soon she forgot about it entirely.
In the corner of the room, her computer hummed.
6 THE SIGN
“And why would we do this?” Vanhi asked. She sat cross-legged on the table, looking skeptical. As always, her sarcasm was spiky and electric, dominating the room, and Charlie would’ve married her in a heartbeat if she were interested in boys. As it was, he’d spent the first half of freshman year pining for her anyway. She’d told him, “I’ll be your best friend, but you’d have better luck flirting with a tree.”
Now she was asking them why they would take on this particular stunt. Just as she had before the phallic pumpkin patch. Just as she had before the skeleton incident, or the aptly named Hack Against Douchebags. But they knew Vanhi always came around. She had a special place as the only girl in the Vindicators. Which meant she had a slightly better frontal lobe, but deep down, she still liked to ride the edge like the rest of them.
“Well, it’s an election year,” Peter answered. “And our senior year.”
“Go class of 2017,” Vanhi said. “So … why again?”
“A special year deserves a special prank,” Charlie said.
They had decided not to mention the chatbot, or the instructions from the pearly gates.
“What level crime is this?” Kenny asked nervously. His parents’ words were echoing in his head: No false steps; second chances don’t exist. It didn’t help that his brother had dropped out of medical school to be a “writer” in LA. Kenny was now the good son.
“Class A misdemeanor,” Alex said.
“Not so bad.” Kenny felt a little queasy. Every fiber of his body said leave, but these were his best friends, smart and talented if a little mischievous, and he wasn’t going to leave them in a foxhole. Nor did he want to be labeled a chicken later.
“I’ve done worse,” Peter added, to no one in particular.
“Still…,” Kenny said.
“You don’t have to come,” Alex taunted him.
Kenny looked away, shamed.
Vanhi said, “We should do it.”
“Really?” Charlie asked, surprised.
“The guy is an asshole. Flirting with white supremacists and neo-Nazis. And the Vindicators have a strict no-asshole policy.”
“That’s true,” Kenny said, psyching himself up.
“That is true,” Charlie admitted, a little worried at how easily his friends had agreed to do this. Throwing his own life away seemed fine. But he didn’t want to take them down with him. College applications were coming due, after all. But it was just a misdemeanor.…
“We’ll need a bolt cutter,” Peter said.
“I have one,” Alex offered, surprising no one.
“Put ’em in,” Kenny said, putting his hand in the middle of their group. Everybody laid hands on top. “Our senior year. Our final prank. ‘No assholes’ on three?”
It was agreed.
“One…”
“Two…”
“Three…”
“No assholes!”
On the way to the parking lot, Charlie tugged on Vanhi’s sleeve. “You really don’t have to come,” he whispered, saying it so only she could hear. Unlike Alex, Charlie said it genuinely, not as a dare. “Maybe you shouldn’t. It’s not exactly a great time to get arrested.”
“That goes for you, too,” Vanhi shot back.
Neither of them blinked, so they found themselves with Peter, Alex, and Kenny in Kenny’s Honda Civic on the way to the highway. They had agreed Peter’s BMW was way too conspicuous for this mission.