He reached into his pocket and produced a handful of flash drives.
“Behold,” he said. “The keys to the kingdom.”
“What’s on those?” Janelle said.
“No idea. But these drives were in the safe in the floor under our dining room table, the one he thinks no one knows about.”
“You broke into his safe?” Stevie asked.
“What I have on these drives is information regarding my father’s campaign activities. I need help reading it all. Which is why I came to you,” he said to Janelle.
“First of all,” Janelle said. She was the only one who seemed willing and able to steer this conversation. “Whatever you have there has got to be illegal.”
“Illegal how? Is it even stealing if I took it from my house?”
“Yes,” Janelle said. “That’s campaign information. People go to jail for things like that. It’s not a box of cereal or a TV.”
“What, are you a lawyer?” he countered. “And how did you know about the cereal?”
Janelle seemed to rise from the floor a bit.
“Kidding. You think my dad could afford those cereal carbs? That guy lives on hard-boiled eggs and human misery. The legalities of it aside . . . the risk incurred is my own. All I’m asking is for help looking at it. Looking at something is not a crime.”
“Yes, it probably is,” Janelle said. “I’m going—”
“Nell,” Vi said. “Wait.”
“Vi,” Janelle said. “No. We can’t.”
“I just want to hear,” Vi said. “If we have to tell the police, the more information we have, the better.”
“Vi is correct,” David said, waving his hand graciously. “When you narc on me, be in possession of all the facts! Hear me out.”
“You’re suggesting we stick one of those radioactive things in our computer and . . .”
“I would never,” he said, putting his hand to his heart. “What kind of monster do you think I am? I have with me . . .”
He opened the massive backpack, pulled out some rolled, soiled clothes, including some checkered boxers, which Stevie tried not to look at. (God, it was so hard to look away from someone’s underwear when it was stuck unexpectedly in your field of vision. Especially this underwear. Why, brain, why?) He pulled out a small stack of banged-up laptops and two tablets, plus some kind of router or base station.
“All freegan or fifty bucks at most. I’ve disabled their network connectivity. You couldn’t get online with these pieces of junk if you tried. I will put the content onto these devices, and I will set them down roughly in the range of your vision. I’ll even scroll the pages if you want. All you have to do is read, which all of you can do, very fast. I’ll wipe these things down and dump them in Lake Champlain when we’re done. I’ll strip them to parts. They never existed.”
“One problem,” Nate said. “We’re leaving in, like, an hour.”
“Which is why I showed up when I did to present my radical plan. Don’t. Go. When they come to get you, be somewhere else. Shut off your phones. Wait. Eventually, the storm will start and the coaches will go.”
The idea was so simple, Stevie almost laughed. Just don’t go. Stay.
“Imagine it,” he said. “All of us, together for the best snowed-in weekend in a mountain hideout. There’s plenty of food, blankets . . . syrup. If nothing else, don’t you want to leave Ellingham in style? What are they going to do? Kick you out for not leaving when the school shuts down? How is it your fault if you were in another building saying good-bye and lost track of the time? Not yours. There is nothing they can do to you.”
“My parents would kill me,” Nate said. “There’s that.”
“Mine too,” Janelle said, but her tone had shifted very slightly.
“Again,” David said, “we, us, right here, right now, have the ability to stop a bad, bad person from becoming president. Think about what you could be stopping—someone who uses racist policies to hurt or kill people. Someone who could do untold damage to the environment. Someone who could start an illegal war to distract from his political problems. You know, Vi, that he’s capable of that.”
Vi inclined their head slightly.
“Stevie,” he said, looking directly at her at last, “your parents help with his campaign. You could undo all they’ve done and more. And I will happily go down in a column of flame for it, except I won’t because I’m his son and I’m a rich, white asshole, so I’ll get a slap on the wrist or sent to school in God knows where, but it will be worth it. Because believe it or not, this is the right thing to do. It’s not easy. But it’s right. So what’s the bigger deal? What’s worth it?”
“How do you even know he’s doing something illegal?” Janelle asked. “Something that would stop him? Because people have tried to block him before.”
“Because he is my dad,” David said. “I know how he lives. And like I said, he likes a quick-and-dirty solution.”
The group was silent for a moment.
“Well, I’m convinced,” Hunter said.
“Can we trust this guy?” David asked.
“Too late on that front,” Hunter replied. “But I hate the dude, and I’m not going anywhere anyway.”
“I’m staying,” Vi said.
“Vi . . .” Janelle went over to her partner.
“David’s right. This is worth it, if he really has something. This is about the greater good. And me. This is the kind of person I am. I want to stay and do this, because it’s right. Stay with me.”
The wind whistled and snapped at the windows.
Janelle let out a long exhale through her nose and looked at Stevie.
“Stevie?” she said, her voice pleading.
Stevie’s body had gone numb from overload. She looked to David, at his peaked brows, the swing of his coat, the curl of his hair. Larry’s words echoed hollowly through her mind—he’s not right; he was in town; be careful . . .
“I . . . yeah. I’ll stay.”
David’s mouth twisted into a smile.
“Nate?” he asked.
Nate waved a dismissive hand. “I got nowhere to be. Might as well. I’m sure it’s only sort of illegal. What’s a few years in federal prison?”
All eyes were on Janelle now. She shifted from foot to foot and rolled her shoulders back, struggling with herself.
“God help me,” she said. “Fine. Okay. Fine. Let’s do this. Because someone with some sense should be here.”
“Right.” David rubbed his hands together and smiled. “Time to go underground.”
11
“OKAY, CAMPERS,” DAVID SAID, PUTTING EVERYTHING BACK IN HIS BAG. “Pix is going to be back any minute, so we need to go. Time to hide.”
“Where?” Vi asked.
“The gym,” he said. “Already scoped it out. It has the least security and it’s probably going to be the first building they lock up and the last place they’d look for anyone. We’ll go around the back way, through the woods. We’ll stay there until everyone’s gone. Let’s go.”