Chapter 1
Good Cop Bad Cop
This story takes place before Wham Line.
“What do you mean you need money for lunch?” My outrage was slightly hampered by my struggle to sit up—I’d fallen asleep on a particularly squishy part of the chesterfield.
It was also hampered by the fact that I was squinting and shielding my eyes, a la a creature of the night.
Mornings, I was discovering, were bright. “Again?”
But by then, Keme was already searching through my wallet, which—I now realized—I had left unattended.
“But I made you lunch,” I said. “It’s a special lunch. It’s full of love.”
“It’s tuna on white bread,” he said. “And I need money in case someone steals it out of my locker again.”
“You love tuna on white bread! Plus it’s my world-famous Dash’s special tuna on white bread.
And I put some of Indira’s cookies in there.
And I put those fruit snacks we’re not supposed to have because Indira said we eat too many hoof-based products.
” Then the rest of his explanation caught up with me.
“And why does someone keep stealing your lunch?”
He flashed a twenty at me, tucked the bill into his pocket, and headed for the door.
“Wait, isn’t twenty bucks a lot for—”
The front door shut.
“—lunch?”
I collapsed back onto the chesterfield. I tried to return to my eternal slumber. I closed my eyes and willed it.
Nothing.
It’s like the sun is on all. day.
Here’s the thing: we had agreed—we had all agreed—that we would work together to make sure Keme graduated.
And I was on board with that plan. I fully supported that plan.
I endorsed that plan. I just didn’t love the bit about taking turns making sure he actually got to school on time.
Especially when it was my turn to get up at the crack of dawn.
Voices and the clatter of dishes floated in from the kitchen, followed by the whir of the coffee grinder and the smell of freshly ground beans. I also thought I detected a whiff of cinnamon, and honestly, you never know what Indira might be baking.
I groaned.
I flopped.
I told myself I was doing this for Keme.
Somehow, I managed to get myself off the chesterfield and into a mostly, er, vertical position. Wrapping a blanket around my shoulders, I went in search of something to make the pre-noon hours slightly more bearable.
In the kitchen, Indira was arranging cinnamon rolls in a pan.
Her dark hair was pulled back, and she wore a lovely brown sweater, sensible dark trousers, and an apron dusted with flour.
Sitting at the counter, Fox held the crust of what surely had been a delicious, crunchy buttery slice of toast. They were dressed today as a kind of Newsies-era newsboy (newsperson?) with a dash of Elizabethan fop—newsboy cap, sleeve garters, vest, and then, from the waist down, it was a hop-skip-and-a-jump backward in time to the era of breeches and stockings.
(I’ve just been reliably informed that fops are a Jacobean phenomenon, not Elizabethan, but I refuse to change it; it’s a matter of principle.)
“I’m worried about Keme,” I said.
Or tried to say.
What came out was a zombie-like groan.
“Coffee’s in the pot, dear,” Indira said.
I slopped some into a mug (not really, because I was too scared of Indira to slop anything in her kitchen). Then I grabbed a stool at the counter next to Fox.
“Rough night?” they said.
I detected the arsenic-flavoring of faux sympathy, but I responded, “Bobby had to work an overnight, and I had a bad dream.”
Fox made an appropriately consoling noise. Then they said, “You have a line on your face from the cushions.”
Glaring at them, I took a few sips of my coffee. Slowly, the caffeine began to work its magic. When I felt more human, I said, “I’m worried about Keme.”
“What happened?” Indira asked.
“Did he hurt himself?” Fox asked.
“No,” I said. “He didn’t—”
“Was it one of your dumb games?”
“Okay, well, in the first place, snake attack isn’t a dumb game, and in the second place—”
“Is he sick?”
“No, he’s not—”
“Probably from you coughing on him.”
“When did I cough on him? What is happening right now? How did this turn into an episode of ‘get Dash’?”
Fox grinned. “Just staying in practice.”
Because discretion is the better part of valor, I chose not to engage with that. “Apparently someone’s been stealing his lunches.”
It took a second for Fox to process that. “What?”
“What do you mean?” Indira asked. “Did he get robbed?”
“No,” I said. “I mean, yes, but it wasn’t like a dark alley, stick-em-up, total helplessness while a river of humanity pours by you, only a few feet away, cold and uninterested and totally unwilling to help.”
“You were a virgin when Bobby met you, right?” Fox asked.
I tried to kick them, but they were surprisingly nimble in their velvet shoes.
“I mean,” I said, “someone’s been taking his lunch out of his locker.”
Indira slid the pan of cinnamon rolls into the oven. As she shut the oven door and straightened, she said, “That’s strange.”
“How did they get into his locker?” Fox asked between munching the last bites of toast.
“I don’t know. All I know is that it’s costing me twenty dollars a day.”
“But why would they steal his lunch?” Indira asked. “Surely there are other people with more valuable things they might steal.”
“I’ve been making him this amazing tuna salad—”
“He’s being bullied,” Fox said over me. “I knew this was going to happen. That stupid school is never going to change.”
“I don’t think it’s bullying,” I said. And then, with a little more coffee trickling through me, my brain lit up. “It’s a mystery! Oh my God, that’s perfect. I’m ready to help!”
“No,” Fox said, “it’s not a mystery. It’s bullying. And it’s probably that charming little girl, Victoria.”
(They did not say that charming little girl.)
“Well,” I said, “even if it is bullying, that’s still a problem I can help with—hold on, Keme’s bully is a girl? Why didn’t anyone tell me this? Why have you been keeping it a secret?”
“Since fifth grade,” Indira said. She had her hands on her hips, and she was looking at her best knives like she had a mind to go out and debone a chicken. “But I thought that was all over. I thought Tori had grown up.”
“Bullies never grow up,” Fox said darkly.
“Seriously?” I asked. “Nobody thought they should tell me about the fact that Keme has been systematically bullied by a girl since fifth grade? The other day, he pinned me down and gave me a pink belly!”
“You liked it,” Fox said absently. Then, to Indira: “I’m going down to the school to take care of it.”
“I didn’t like it!”
Already taking off her apron, Indira said, “I’m coming with you.”
“Well, I should probably go too,” I said. “Because I’m Keme’s friend, and if it is a mystery—”
“No,” Fox said. “We don’t need you.”
Indira handed me the apron as she strode toward the door. “We’ll be fine, dear. Work on your story. Besides, we don’t need another episode like your last visit with Mr. Dunkle.”
“He’s a math teacher,” I called after them. “They’re all sadists.”
Nothing.
“If God had wanted me to do math,” I called a little more loudly, “I would have been born a calculator.”
But it was too late; they were gone.