Red Glove (16 page)

I think of her trapped in that horrible wire cage by Barron for months at a time. During one of my bleaker moments the past summer, I looked up the effects of solitary confinement on prisoners. Depression, despair, crippling anxiety, hallucinations.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to be in a cage again.

“Never been out of the country,” I say. Who am I kidding? I’ve never even been on an airplane.

“You could come,” she says.

“If you still want me with you after we graduate, I’m yours,” I say, trying to make my vow sound a little more casual. “So that’s it? You’re just going to lie around on a beach.”

“Until Dad needs me,” she says. Her breaths are more even now, her eyes less wide and wild. “I’ve always known what I was going to be when I grew up.”

“The family business,” I say. “You ever think of doing something else?”

“No,” she says, but there’s something in her voice that makes me wonder. “It’s all I’m good at. Besides, I’m a Zacharov.”

I think about the things I’m good at. And I think about Ms. Vanderveer, my guidance counselor. The future’s going to be here sooner than you think.

We’re in the cells for what I estimate to be another hour before a cop walks in, one we haven’t seen before. He’s got a clipboard.

Everyone starts shouting at once. Demands to see lawyers. Protestations of innocence. Threats of lawsuits.

The policeman waits for the furor to die down, then speaks. “I need the following people to come to the front of your cell and press your hands together in front of you with your fingers laced. Samuel Yu, Daneca Wasserman, and Lila Zacharov.”

The cells again erupt in shouts. Daneca gets up off the bench. Sam follows her to the front of the cell, turning back toward me and widening his eyes in an expression of bafflement. After a few moments, the shouting dies down.

I wait for him to call me next, but there appear to be no more names on the clipboard.

Lila steps forward, then hesitates.

“Go,” I tell her.

“We have a friend with us,” Lila tells the officer, looking back in my direction.

“Cassel Sharpe,” Sam supplies. “That’s his name. Maybe you missed it?”

“This is all my fault—,” Daneca starts.

“Be quiet, look straight ahead, hands clasped in front,” the cop yells. “Everyone else take three steps away from the door. Now!”

They’re cuffed and marched away, all of them turning their heads back toward me as I try to come up with explanations for why they’re gone and I’m not. Maybe their parents were called and mine couldn’t be reached. Maybe it was just random groups of three that were being taken for fingerprinting. I’m still trying to convince myself when Agent Jones saunters up to the cell door.

“Oh,” I say.

“Cassel Sharpe.” A small smile lifts a corner of his mouth. “Please step to the front of the cell, hands clasped together in front of you.”

I do.

Jones leads me grimly into another hallway, one he has to swipe a card to enter. One without cells, just white walls and windowless doors. “We put an alert on your name, Cassel. Imagine my surprise when it turned up that you were in custody in Newark.”

I swallow nervously. My throat feels dry.

“You got that information for me yet?” His breath smells like sour coffee and cigarettes.

“Not quite yet,” I say.

“Have a good march?” he asks. “Get lots of exercise running from the law? Growing boy has got to get his exercise.”

“Ha, ha,” I say.

He grins like we really did just share a joke. “Let me tell you how this is going to go. I’m going to give you two choices, and you’re going to make the right one.”

I nod my head to show I’m listening, although I’m sure I’m not going to like what comes next.

“A couple doors down I’ve got Lila Zacharov and the other two you were brought in with. You and I can go there, and I’ll explain that any friend of Cassel’s is free to go. Then I’ll let them out. Maybe I’ll even apologize.”

My shoulders tense. “They’ll think I’m working for you.”

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Definitely.”

“If Lila thinks I’m working for the Feds and tells her father, I’m not going to be able to find out anything for you. I’ll be useless.” I’m talking too fast. He can tell he’s getting to me. If the rumor gets around that I’m working for the Feds, my own mother won’t want to be seen with me.

“Maybe I don’t consider you all that useful anymore.” Jones shrugs. “Maybe if we’re all the friends you’ve got, you’ll see things a little differently.”

I take a deep breath. “What’s my second choice?”

“Tell me that by the end of next week you’ll have that lead for me. You’re going to find out something on this mysterious assassin. Something I can use. No more excuses.”

I nod. “I will.”

He claps my shoulder heavily with his gloved hand. “I told you you’d make the right choice.”

Then he lets me into the room with the others.

Daneca scrambles up from where she’s sitting on the floor and hugs me. She smells like patchouli. Her eyes look bloodshot.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “You must be so mad at me. But we’re not going to do it. Don’t worry. We would never—”

“Nobody’s mad,” I say, then look over at Sam and Lila to see if they can explain the rest of what she was saying.

“They told us we could walk out of here,” Sam starts, then pauses, “if we volunteered to be tested.”

“Tested?” I want to kill Jones right then. Of course he’s got some stupid extra angle going.

“The hyperbathygammic test,” Lila says quietly. She looks tired.

I punch the concrete wall. It just hurts my hand.

“We’re not going to take the test, Cassel,” Daneca says.

“No,” I say. “No. You should. Both of you. Then you can call someone for Lila and me when you get out.”

I have no doubt that Zacharov’s lawyers will have Lila out of jail within moments. Me? Well, it’ll take Grandad a little longer, but if the Feds want me to hunt for their lead, they’re going to have to help out.

“But they’re going to know that you’re both—,” Sam starts.

“That’s the beauty of the test,” Lila says. “The only people afraid to take it are people with something to hide.”

“It’s not legal to force us,” Daneca says, shaking her head. “We’re being held unlawfully. We weren’t properly booked or Mirandized. We didn’t commit any crime. This is a clear case of the government exploiting its power for its own anti-worker agenda.”

“You think?” I sit down next to Lila on the floor. But despite my flippant answer, it’s impossible not to be impressed with Daneca. She’s never been in trouble before, and even in jail, she cares about what’s right.

“You’re shaking,” Lila says softly, putting her gloved hand on my arm.

I’m surprised. I look down at my hands like I no longer remember to whom they belong. The knuckles of my left glove are scuffed from throwing that punch. Scuffed and trembling.

“Sam,” I say, trying to steady myself. “You, at least, don’t have to stay.”

Sam looks at me and turns to Daneca. “I know you want to do the right thing, but if we don’t agree to get tested, what happens next?” He lowers his voice. “What if they stop asking?”

“What if they don’t let us out, even after they test us?” Daneca says. “I’m not doing it. It’s against absolutely everything I believe in.”

“You think I don’t know it’s wrong?” Sam snaps. “You don’t think I get that this is unfair? That it sucks?”

I don’t want them to fight. Not over this.

“Forget it,” I say loudly, trying to sound like I know what I’m talking about. “Let’s just wait. They’re going to let us out soon. They’ve got to. Like Daneca said, they didn’t really book us. We’re going to be fine.”

We lapse into an uneasy silence.

An hour later, just as panic begins to gnaw my gut, just when I’m ready to admit that I’m wrong and they’re going to let us rot in here, just as I’m about to bang on the door and beg to see Agent Jones, a cop comes in and tells us we’re free to go. No explanation. We’re just shown the door.

The car’s as we left it, except for the driver-side mirror, which is cracked.

We get back to Wallingford by ten. As we cross the quad, I have the strange feeling that we’ve been gone for days instead of just a couple of hours. We’re too late for study hall, but in time for in-room check.

“I heard Ramirez let you boys go to that protest,” Mr. Pascoli says, giving me a suspicious look. “How was it?”

“We decided to drive down to the beach instead,” says Sam. “Good thing too. I hear the march got really out of control.” His cheeks color a little as he speaks, like he’s ashamed of lying.

He doesn’t say anything else about it.

By lights-out it’s as if the whole thing never happened.

Friday afternoon I’m sitting in the back of physics class, staring at the quiz in front of me. I am concentrating on the problem of a girl increasing the amplitude of a swing’s oscillations by moving her legs along with the motion. I am not sure if this is an example of resonance, wave transmission, or something else that I’ve forgotten. The only thing that I am sure of is that I am going to fail this quiz.

I’m filling in one of those multiple-choice bubbles, my pencil going around and around in a circle, when Megan Tilman screams. My pencil streaks across the paper, making a line of graphite.

“Ms. Tilman,” Dr. Jonahdab says, looking up from her desk. “What is the matter?”

Megan is clutching her chest and staring at Daneca, who’s one desk over from her. “My luck amulet broke. It snapped in half.”

Gasps run through the class.

“You worked me, didn’t you?” Megan says.

“Me?” Daneca asks, blinking at her like she’s gone crazy.

“When did you feel your amulet break?” Dr. Jonahdab asks. “Are you sure that it broke right at this moment?”

Megan shakes her head. “I don’t know. I just—I grabbed for it and there was only half still on the chain. Then when I moved, the other piece fell onto my desk. It must have been stuck in my blouse.”

Yes, she really says “blouse,” like she’s someone’s grandmother.

“Sometimes stones just break,” says Dr. Jonahdab. “They’re fragile. No one touched you, Megan. Everyone here is wearing gloves.”

“She’s on the video at that worker meeting,” Megan says, pointing to Daneca. “She sits right next to me. It must have been her.”

I expect Daneca to lecture her. I really do. I figure Daneca’s been waiting all the time I’ve known her for a chance to really let some idiot have it, especially after yesterday. Instead she sinks down in her chair, her face going bright red. Tears glisten in her eyes. “I’m not a worker,” she says quietly.

“Then why do you go to those meetings?” one of the other girls asks.

“Heebeegeebies.” Someone fake coughs.

I stare at Daneca, willing her to speak. To tell Megan that a decent person cares about people other than herself. To explain about the plight of workers and put everyone in their place. All the righteous stuff she says to me and Sam. All the stuff she said, even in jail. I open my mouth, but even in my mind the lecture gets garbled. I can’t remember the slogans. I don’t know how to talk about worker rights.

Besides, for some reason, that seems like the last thing Daneca wants me to do.

I turn to Dr. Jonahdab, but she’s glancing between Daneca and Megan, like somehow she’s going to be able to sense the truth if she just watches them a little longer. Something’s got to wake her up. Leaning toward the guy at the desk next to mine—Harvey Silverman—I say, “Hey, what did you get for problem three?” I say it loud enough that my voice carries even to the front of the class.

Daneca turns toward me. She shakes her head narrowly in warning.

Harvey looks down at his paper, and Dr. Jonahdab finally seems to snap out of her trance. “All right, everyone, that is enough talking! We are in the middle of a quiz. Megan, you may bring up your paper and take the rest of the test at my desk. After that we will go to the office together.”

“I can’t concentrate,” Megan says, standing up. “Not while she’s here.”

“Then you can go down to the office now.” Dr. Jonahdab writes something on a piece of paper and rips it off a legal pad. Megan takes her bag and the paper, leaving all her books behind as she walks out.

As soon as the bell rings, Daneca races toward the door, but Dr. Jonahdab calls her back. “Ms. Wasserman, I know they’ll want to talk to you.”

Daneca reaches into her bag. “I’m calling my mother. I’m not—”

“Look, we know that you didn’t do anything wrong—” She cuts herself off when she notices me loitering by the door. “Can I help you, Mr. Sharpe?”

“No,” I say. “I was just—no.”

Daneca gives me a tremulous smile as I go.

On my way to French class, I walk by one of the announcement boards. It’s plastered with a bunch of those public service posters you see in magazines—the kind that say I’D RATHER GO NAKED THAN BE WITHOUT MY GLOVES. Or JUST BECAUSE EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT, DOESN’T MAKE IT OKAY. HIRING CURSE WORKERS IS A CRIME. Or simply NO GLOVE, NO LOVE—except that the faces of models have been replaced with grainy stills of students from the video. Photos that the school secretary is frantically trying to rip down.

By the time I get to my French class, the news of what happened to Megan is all over the school.

“Daneca cursed her with bad luck, so she’d fail the test,” someone says as I pass. “That’s how she keeps up her GPA. She’s probably been doing it to all of us for years.”

“And Ramirez knew about it. That’s why she’s leaving.”

I spin around. “What?”

It turns out the speaker is Courtney Ramos. Her eyes go wide. She was in the middle of applying lip gloss, and the wand hovers in the air, like she’s frozen.

“What did you say?” I shout. People in the hallway turn toward us.

“Ms. Ramirez resigned,” Courtney says. “I heard it when I was in the office waiting for my guidance counselor.”

Ramirez, who let us go to the protest. Who was the only one willing to sponsor HEX, so Daneca could organize the club on campus two years ago. Who doesn’t deserve to get taken down for us. Mr. Knight flashes his class, but he stays. Ramirez goes.

I grab Courtney’s shoulder. “That can’t be true. Why would that be true?”