Con Academy (14 page)

“It hasn't escaped my attention,” she says.

“Are you going?”

“That's tomorrow.” She narrows her eyes. “Are you seriously asking me to Homecoming?”

“It starts at seven.”

“Will—”

“Just say yes,” I tell her. “Before you have time to talk yourself out of it.”

Gatsby looks at me for a moment in silence.

“You'll need a tuxedo,” she says.

“I'll rent one in town.”

“Can you afford that?”

“I'll figure it out.” I wait. “So is that a yes?”

She smiles. “Seven o'clock. I'll meet you there,” she says.

And that's how she leaves me, with a fake Gutenberg on my bed and the promise of something better, as she climbs back out the window and into the night.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
I'
M OFF TO BREAKFAST WITH MY
senses on high alert. I don't know what I'm expecting—blaring headlines in the school paper, room-to-room searches, security guards doing random bag checks—but there's no word about the missing Gutenberg Bible. It's like nothing's even happened. Everybody's just going about his or her regular routine. Halfway to the dining hall it occurs to me that if Dr. Melville knows his Bible is a fake, then the last thing he'd want to do is draw attention to its disappearance. Maybe Gatsby's actually done him a favor.

Meanwhile, the Bible itself is safely tucked up under my bed, stuffed inside a hole that I've cut in my box spring and then duct-taped shut. I have no idea how safe it really is there, or how stupid it is that I'm potentially jeopardizing the con by keeping the Bible in my room when I could've easily just refused the assignment. My motives don't make sense, even to me. I'm a city kid from New Jersey. Why do I want to join the Sigils anyway?

We're outsiders, Will. Like you.

The thought gives me chills. I keep thinking about how her hair tickled my neck when we were leaning over the glass case in the rare books collection. The tiny, almost imperceptible smile on her face when I asked her to Homecoming. Standing in line with my tray, I can remember exactly how she smells, the sound of her voice, her chalky little laugh, and I realize that my heart's beating way too hard.

I shut my eyes and open them again slowly.

I can't afford to feel this way about her.

I'm not going to be here that long.

Outside the dining hall, horns are honking and people are calling out to one another with big fake cheerful hellos. Homecoming Weekend at Connaughton is like a combination of summer in the Hamptons and a royal wedding. The campus parking lot is packed with Mercedes and Rolls-Royces, high-end BMWs and the occasional Lamborghini, as parents, alumni, and families arrive. At least two private helicopters have already touched down, and I spot bodyguards with earpieces and mirrored sunglasses hovering outside the dining hall.

Later that morning I get “my” Hawthorne paper back with a big red A written across the top.
Excellent work,
Mr. Bodkins's spiky handwriting enthuses.
Very insightful writing. I look forward to reading more from you.
Standing there with the essay in my hands, I feel a throb of guilt go through my chest followed by the sudden, self-destructive urge to go to him and confess that I didn't write a word of it.

That afternoon I take the bus to town to rent a tuxedo. There's a florist on Main Street, where I pick out a corsage and a dozen long-stemmed red roses. On the way back to the bus stop, I walk past an antique shop on the corner, and something in the window grabs my attention. Looking more closely I see that it's an early printing of the first volume of Hawthorne's
Twice-Told Tales.

I go inside and ask the woman behind the counter about the book.

“You've got excellent taste,” she says, lifting it from the window display and handing it to me. “That's a rare edition.”

“How much?”

“Three hundred.”

“Will you take a credit card?”

I hold my breath while she swipes the AmEx that Lupo Reilly gave me, but the authorization goes through without a problem. After signing the sales slip, I slide the book under my coat and head out the door. It's getting colder, but I don't even feel it.

By the time I get to the bus stop, I'm whistling.

Back at Connaughton, I realize that I don't have any wrapping paper. My eyes settle on my tattered old map of the Pacific, the one with Ebeye on it. I wrap the map around the Hawthorne book and it fits perfectly. I don't even have to trim the edges.

I grab an early dinner, take an extra-long scalding hot shower, and begin to get ready for the night. The tux looks great but my hair's all wrong. It's already too long, and it sticks out to the side like a crow's broken wing in a way that no amount of gel is going to make better. In the end I just abandon it, gather up the flowers and Hawthorne book, and step outside.

The night is clear and cold, and the grounds are strung with lights for the evening. Far off in the distance, I can hear music and laughter coming from the Manse, which, for all intents and purposes, is the center of the universe tonight.

Besides being the single oldest building on campus, the Manse is also the home for all of Connaughton's formal dances and assemblies, a combination of nineteenth-century ballroom and private castle. According to tradition, it's the place where families gather before the Homecoming game each year, a chance for millionaire alumni to compare notes while their ungrateful kids ignore them entirely. It's a little weird that parents are invited to the dance, but it also makes sense in a creepy, ultrarich, incestuous kind of way that probably dates back to Medieval Europe. As I step inside, I see designer dresses, hear the laughter and chatter floating out.

Gatsby's nowhere to be seen.

“Hey, Will.”

Looking around, I see Andrea standing close by, smiling at me. For a second I almost don't even recognize her. Her hair is pinned up in shimmering braids to expose her long slender throat, and she is wearing what might be charitably described as a black spider web connected by silver rings. It's made out of some kind of expensive shimmery material that I think is officially known as “trying way too hard.” Still, she looks great, and she knows it. Even Brandt seems to be paying attention.

“Nice tux.” She reaches out to touch my lapel, then looks down at the roses and the book that I'm holding. “Where's your date?”

“She's on her way.”

“Of course she is,” Andrea says, turning. “By the way, have you met Brandt's parents?”

I look behind her at the two people standing there in formalwear, and right away I feel the difference between them and everyone else in the room.

There's rich, and then there's
rich
—and then there's Herbert and Victoria Rush.

The most disturbing thing about extremely wealthy white people is how they all look vaguely related, as if they were grown in the same lab, somewhere in the Connecticut suburbs.

For a moment the Rushes don't speak, at least not to me. Standing there side by side like a pair of binary stars, they seem to exude their own private atmosphere, a weirdly selective gravitational field that sucks in the lucky few while flinging all the rest of us indiscriminately into the dreary void of middle-class hopelessness. Even this close, I get the strange feeling that they aren't seeing me at all. I can't help but wonder what I must look like through Rush vision—am I just some Vaseline-smeared blur, a black-and-white pixelation, like the faces of passersby whose identities are protected on reality TV? Or do I look like some visual annoyance, like one of those floaty things that just hover in the corner of your eye and won't go away?

Either way, I'm clearly not part of their world.

“Mr. and Mrs. Rush,” Andrea says, “this is Will Shea. Will's here from a tiny little island in the South Pacific. His parents were missionaries, right, Will?”

“Oh?” Victoria Rush gives me a tight smile. “How interesting.” After an appropriate amount of silence, she goes back to ignoring me. “My goodness, isn't
anyone
going to dance?”

As if on cue, the music starts playing, some old song from the '50s, and I watch as Brandt leads Andrea to the center of the dance floor. It's pageantry, pure and simple—slow and easy and elegant. Brandt lifts Andrea's arm and whirls her around, the look on his face never changing from the blank, phoned-in expression of a rich kid doing a job, playing a role, knowing that it's all part of inheriting a fortune so great that even he can't count it all. In the middle of everything, Andrea catches my eye and winks. I keep looking around for Gatsby, wondering where she is, if she's coming, if something happened, as the weight in my stomach gets heavier and heavier.

When the song ends, Andrea makes her way to the punch bowl and then back over to me. “Well, that was fun.” She lifts her gaze to meet mine, and she looks again at the roses that I'm still carrying around, along with the gift-wrapped book and the corsage. “Still alone?” She checks her watch. “It's getting late, isn't it?”

“Thanks for your concern.”

“Poor Will.” She touches my arm. “Rejection doesn't suit you.”

I turn and walk through the ballroom again, but I still can't find Gatsby anywhere. I check my phone. No messages. When I call her, it goes straight to voice mail. After the beep, I start talking.

“Hey, Gatsby, it's Will. I'm here at the dance. Just making sure everything's—”

A fist thumps me on the shoulder. It's Brandt, right behind me. “Yo, Willpower. We still on for tonight?”

Clicking off the phone, I turn around and look him in the eye.

“Sure.”

“Good.” He looks more alive now than he has all night. “Meet me out front by the statue in twenty minutes. Don't be late.”

After he walks away, I make one more circle through the room, but now I know she's not coming, and I can feel people starting to stare at me, hear them talking behind my back. I leave the dance and make my way across the almost empty campus to Gatsby's dorm. There's a light in her third-floor window. For a moment I just stand there, holding the roses and the corsage and the book, watching a shadow move across her curtains.

I call again.

Voice mail.

I stuff the book back under my coat. The roses and corsage go into the trash outside her dorm, and I head out to find Brandt.

I've got work to do.

T
HE PLAN IS SIMPLE.
I'
M SUPPOSED TO MEET
B
RANDT IN
front of the statue of Lancelot Connaughton, where Uncle Roy will pick us up and drive us down to Lowell. With any luck, tonight's trial run will pay off. By next week, Brandt will want to double his money, then go for the big payout with plenty of time before our deadline.

Like I said. Simple.

Except . . .

I can't stop thinking about Gatsby. Right now I've got two thousand dollars of Uncle Roy's cash in my back pocket, and the entire success or failure of the con depends on how I play things tonight. But my thoughts keep circling back to Gatsby. What she was thinking. Why she didn't call. Why she stood me up.

This is obviously not the frame of mind that I need to be in right now.

I stand outside in my tuxedo, watching the breath steam out of my mouth in clouds, looking at the puritanical face of Lancelot Connaughton. If he has any insight into my situation, he's not sharing it.

A hand lands on my shoulder.

“Yo, bro, you ready to rock?”

I turn around. Brandt is standing there with Carl beside him, silent and stoic. Like Brandt and me, Carl is still wearing a tux. Unlike Brandt and hopefully me, he still looks like a caveman on Oscar night. “Hey.” I look Carl up and down. “You forgot your lacrosse stick.”

“He doesn't need it,” Brandt says.

“You were supposed to come alone.”

“Change of plans,” Brandt says. “That's not a problem, is it, Will?”

I shake my head. The last-minute switch gets my adrenaline going and puts my head back in the game. I'm actually glad for it.

“Good,” Brandt says. “You bring the filthy lucre?”

I reach into my pocket and take out the roll, twenty one-hundred-dollar bills. “When we get to Mr. McDonald's office, he's going to show you the different online poker games and ask you how much you want to bet. Start small and let him convince you to go the full two grand.”

Brandt looks scornfully at the cash. “Thanks, but I think I can handle myself.”

“Just be careful with this,” I say, handing over the money. “It's all I could get my hands on for now.”

“Just tell me how I'm gonna win.”

“My partner will be texting you messages throughout the hand,” I say, “telling you how much to bet. Just do exactly what the messages say. You'll win.”

“You must be pretty sure of your system.”

“It's foolproof.”

“It better be.”

That's as far as he gets as a pair of headlights come streaming up the long drive heading toward the statue. At first I think it's Uncle Roy, and then I realize I'm wrong. The lights belong to one of the campus-security vehicles taking a slow cruise around the service road, and it pulls up in front of us, stopping on the other side of the statue. I hear the door open, and I see George the Kant-reading security guard step out.

Brandt glances up at him breezily. “Hey, Georgie-boy. Nice night, huh?”

The guard walks over to us. “What are you doing out here? Why aren't you at the dance?”

Nobody says anything, and I realize he's talking to Carl—which isn't a huge surprise when I suddenly realize how much the two of them look alike. George is basically an older version of Carl. The resemblance is uncanny.