Secret of the Red Arrow (3 page)

I avoided Neanderthal’s eyes as I wiped my mouth, tossed my napkin on my tray, and stood up. “Let’s go, Joe.”

“Awww, don’t be embarrassed,” Neanderthal chided,
chuckling. “I’m sure I would have been real scared if the same thing had happened to me. I mean, not as scared as you look, but scared.”

Joe was still working on his special of the day. “Really?” he asked. “We’re done with lunch?”

I nodded. “Really.”

Joe looked disappointed, but he grabbed his tray and followed me away from our table. “What’s up?”

I was looking around the cafeteria. “We need to find Seth Diller.”

Joe looked around too. “Why?”

“Because he took that video.”

I wasn’t seeing Seth anywhere around the cafeteria. Then I remembered that some of the AV Club kids ate in the AV room. And Seth, as you might imagine, was big into the AV Club. Like president-three-years-running big.

Joe looked confused. “Wait, he shot that?” he asked. “Seriously? How would he have known to do that?”

I shook my head. “Not sure. He shot it with the video camera in his phone.”

Joe furrowed his brows. “But . . . that makes it seem like Seth was involved. . . .”

“And he staged it all,” I finished. “Like one of his stupid monster videos. Come on.” I grabbed Joe’s arm and led him up the back staircase toward the AV room. I don’t usually have much of a temper—I’m a thinker, not a fighter—but I have to admit, the closer I got to Seth Diller, the more I wanted
to punch him in the face. Had he really staged an entire bank robbery for the sake of some dumb movie project? Hadn’t he ever heard of actors? Hadn’t he ever heard of scripts?

Sometimes I think reality television is ruining our culture.

“Hey,” I said, plowing through the door to the AV room. Seth sat with his AV cronies on a set of stairs near the back, surrounded by a maze of DVD players and old-school televisions on carts.

He looked surprised to see us. “Hey, Frank,” he said, looking a little nervous. I understood his wariness. I mean, Seth and I had probably exchanged five words, total, in the entire year before the bank robbery. Now I was hunting him down on his “turf.”

“My brother and I need to talk to you,” I said. “Privately.”

After a few seconds, Seth nodded. “Ah—okay.”

He got up and walked over to us, and I held the door open for him to pass through. Then I walked over to a quiet corner of the hallway, by a window, and gestured for Seth to follow.

“What’s this about?” he asked quickly, looking uncomfortable.

“It’s about the video you shot on Saturday,” I replied, crossing my arms. “Of the robbery. Remember?”

Seth looked at me blankly. I don’t think the expression in his pale-blue eyes changed at all. “What do you mean?”

I sighed. So we were going to do it this way. “I’m talking about the video you took on your phone,” I said, and then
paused to wait for the recognition to spark in his eyes. But none came. “Come on, Seth. I saw it.”

Seth gulped. It was nearly unnoticeable but for the lump traveling down his throat. “I didn’t shoot anything. Is that all? Because we were kind of in the middle . . .”

Joe gestured at Seth’s pocket, where the outline of his smartphone was clearly visible. “Then you won’t mind if I borrow it for a sec?” he asked.

Seth frowned. “What?”

“Your phone.” Joe gestured at Seth’s pocket again. The top of the phone was peeking out. “I have just remembered that I need to call our aunt Trudy and remind her to buy some zucchini for dinner tonight, because I’m having a craving. Okay?”

Seth looked unsure how to react. Yes, this was a ridiculous request, but his phone was in plain sight. He was caught. “I really don’t have time. . . .”

“It’ll only take a second.” Joe held out his hand.

Seth looked from Joe to me and back again. He didn’t lose his composure, but very deliberately reached into his pocket and pulled out the phone. He looked at the screen for just a moment before Joe pulled it out of his grasp.

Joe moved closer to me and held out the phone so I could see it. The background was a particularly gory scene from one of Seth’s most popular flicks. Joe didn’t even bother pretending to make a call. He went straight to the “Videos” folder and clicked on it. A list popped up:

Roadkill cat.mov

Cool sunset.mov

Bankheistraw.mov

“That’s it,” I said, pointing.

Joe clicked on the video, and after a few seconds of buffering, it came up. The same video of me at the bank that Neanderthal had shown us just moments before.

Seth swallowed again, then looked down at the floor.

“Check his sent e-mails,” I suggested on a whim. Joe pulled them up, then chuckled.

“There it is,” he said, showing me the screen again. Sure enough, it was the same e-mail containing the link to the Panic Project trailer.

I looked up at Seth, whose eyes looked slightly buggier than usual. Other than that, he gave no outward indication of fear.

“Maybe we should go somewhere more comfortable,” I suggested. “I think you have a lot of explaining to do.”

W
HAT I DON’T UNDERSTAND,” PRINCIPAL
Gorse was saying as he crossed his good leg over his bad one, “is why you couldn’t tell people what was going on. We’ve all seen movies, Seth. They have actors, scripts. If you know the ship on-screen isn’t really sinking, does that make
Titanic
any less sad?”

Seth took in a quick breath. He looked like he was struggling to keep his composure. “Principal Gorse, I mean . . . come on.”

The principal looked to the rest of us—me, Frank, and Officer Olaf, who had been sent in when the Bayport PD heard that we’d learned something about the bank robbery—for support.

“I think what he’s trying to say,” I jumped in, “is that real emotions are always more interesting to watch than fake ones. That’s part of the appeal—that there is no script. Anything could happen.”

Seth looked at me and smiled. “Exactly. I was performing a cinematic experiment. How would people react when they were put in these crazy, seemingly dangerous situations? What would happen?”

“And what happened in this case,” Officer Olaf said, moving from his spot leaning against the front of Principal Gorse’s desk, “was awfully lucky for you, Seth. Nobody got hurt. Nobody panicked and had a heart attack.” He paused, standing right in front of Seth and looking down at him with serious brown eyes, running his fingers over his droopy mustache. “But you realize that was just luck, don’t you?”

Seth looked up at Officer Olaf, defiant. I could tell he wasn’t going to back down. “I didn’t hurt anybody, Officer Olaf. It was never my intention to hurt anybody. It was just a harmless prank.”

Frank, who was sitting next to me on a bench against the wall, huffed. “But you did kind of rob a bank,” he pointed out.

Seth glared at him, surprised. “I did not,” he insisted. “I staged a bank robbery, but we gave everything back.”

“But in that moment,” Frank said, getting to his feet, “I, and everybody else in that bank, really believed we might die. Make the wrong move, and you could have shot us full
of holes. I’m sure lots of people were wondering whether they would make it out of the bank alive.”

Seth frowned. He looked down at the floor for a second, then back into Frank’s eyes. “I told them afterward that it was just a joke.”

“But what if something had gone wrong?” Principal Gorse asked. He leaned across his desk. “Seth, you don’t seem to get it here. Bank robberies are serious business. People panic. They act violently if they think it will save their lives. They feel terror that doesn’t go away just because you leave a note saying it was only a joke.”

Seth shifted uncomfortably, but his expression didn’t change. “I take risks for my art,” he said simply.

Officer Olaf sighed and turned to Principal Gorse. “Do you want to tell him what his punishment from you is? Because I’m about ready to take this kid down to the station house and straighten him out there.”

Seth frowned again. Now he was looking a little nervous. “I’m being charged with a crime?” he asked.

Principal Gorse took a deep breath and said, “Seth, I’m afraid I have no choice but to suspend you for three days for cyberbullying your fellow students.”

Seth jumped to his feet. “Cyberbullying?” he cried. “What?”

Principal Gorse gestured to Frank and me. “These two gentlemen were in your video.”

Seth glared at me. “But they weren’t even—”

“I’m afraid it’s school policy.”

Seth bit his lip, still glaring. He looked from me to Frank to Principal Gorse. “This is—”

But Officer Olaf didn’t let him finish. “Now you have to come with me, Seth,” he said, standing up. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say . . .”

Officer Olaf continued to read Seth his Miranda rights as Seth looked from him to Principal Gorse, stammering. “But—but—I didn’t—”

“Criminal mischief,” Officer Olaf said, moving close enough to Seth to wave a pair of handcuffs in his face. “You created a major disruption this weekend, Seth—diverting the police force and panicking citizens. I get that you didn’t really rob a bank. But it turns out, pretending to rob a bank is pretty bad too.” He jingled the cuffs again. “I’d rather not use these. Think you can walk out with me like a big boy—no trouble?”

Seth was still glaring at Officer Olaf, but his lower lip was starting to wobble. He took one last look around the room, and when he spotted me, his face flushed with anger. “Darn it, Joe! I thought you liked my videos! I thought you were cool!”

I sighed. I mean, I did feel bad for the kid. In his warped way, he was pretty talented. “Listen, Seth, if putting me in cuffs and making me hitchhike back from miles out of town—not to mention the whole issue of having to rob my brother—if that’s how you treat a fan, I’d hate to see what
you do to your enemies.” I paused and tried to smile, but Seth wasn’t having it. I gave up. “Seriously, dude. You went too far.”

Seth pulled his lips tight, then turned and allowed Officer Olaf to lead him out of the office. The officer nodded at Principal Gorse on the way out. “Thanks, Hank,” he said, glancing briefly at me and my brother. “Boys.”

Then he turned his head and walked out the door, and he and Seth were gone.

Principal Gorse sighed. “Sometimes, boys,” he said, “I think the world is changing too fast for me. Can either of you explain the appeal of that movie to me? Watching people get scared out of their minds for no real purpose?” He shook his head and shrugged.

“I think it’s about shock, sir,” I said. “In this day and age we’ve been desensitized to trauma, crime, horrific happenings. It takes more and more to shock your audience. Look at movies like
Saw
or
Hostel
—they go much further than the classic Hitchcockian horror of the past.”

Principal Gorse nodded, looking bemused.

“So the natural next step,” I went on, “the final frontier, if you will, is real emotion. Instead of trying to shock his audience, Seth is allowing them to share in the real shock of his unknowing participants.”

Principal Gorse blinked. He was a nice guy, really; dressed like he always was, in a slouchy cardigan sweater, along with his usual corduroy pants and brown shoes. He had a kindly
face with sort of messy brown hair and glasses. He looked like—well, like a kind of hippieish high school principal. A youngish man, maybe only forty years old, except that he also walked with a fancy hand-carved cane, which was the result of a bad skiing accident five years earlier.

You would probably have been able to pick out Mr. Gorse’s car in the teachers’ parking lot just by looking at him: It was an orange 1970s Karmann Ghia. Pure beatnik. Even its engine—it made a singular
put-put-put
sound—reminded you of him, so that wherever you were in Bayport, if he was passing anywhere within earshot, you were aware of him through that unique
put-put-put
.
There goes Mr. Gorse
, you would say to yourself.

We considered Mr. Gorse a friend—he’d been my band teacher in middle school. I knew he liked us. He’d been really nice to Frank and me when the Deal was being negotiated. Now he tilted his head, giving us both a concerned look.

“How are things going, Hardy Boys?” he asked. “I understand the legal problems you boys have had this past year. As a matter of fact, I received a note from the state board of education about you both.”

Joe and I shifted uncomfortably in our chairs.

Mr. Gorse opened the letter and started reading. “Apparently, I’m to understand that—as part of a plea agreement with the state attorney general—you are both subject to ‘instant recourse.’ ” He looked up at us. “I guess that’s a little bit like probation.” He continued reading. “Which, if
you are found to engage in any kind of ‘independent amateur law-enforcement-type activities,’ will result in the pair of you being sent to”—here he brought the letter close to his eyes—“the J’Adoube School for Behavior Modification Therapy on Rock Island.”

He wasn’t telling us anything we didn’t know. But it was not pleasant to hear it spoken out loud. “Are you meeting regularly with your legal adviser?” he asked.

Joe and I nodded. Our lawyer was Uncle Ben—Ben Hardy, our dad’s brother—a Hartford tax attorney who had been given the thankless job of dealing with all the legal problems we’d accrued in the past year.

“Good. Well, what I wanted to say to you was that all this stuff . . .” He waved at the letter. “It doesn’t change anything as far as I’m concerned. The world needs fighters, boys. People with the courage to stand up for what’s right. But you can’t accomplish your goals if you’re locked up in juvenile hall or if your transcripts show half a dozen suspensions. Am I right?”

We nodded.

“Just remember, I’m in your corner. And my door is open, day and night.”

Just then, his door actually opened.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” a woman said. It was Yukiko Collins, one of the school’s art teachers.

Mr. Gorse brightened. It was rumored that he and Ms. Collins were dating. Nobody wanted to pry, on account of
Mr. Gorse being a widower. (His wife had died in the skiing accident that had broken his leg.) But Joe and I liked the idea of Mr. G and Ms. C being an item, because they were our two favorite people at Bayport High.