Héctor cleared his throat again. “Well, we were looking for you.” He cast a quick glance at Sal, who had lost all the color in their face. Okay, no help there, he thought.

“You mentioned that. For what?”

“So,” Héctor continued, “we wanted to . . . to ask you for something.”

“Well, here I am,” Mr. Mbalia said. “You gonna get to asking or just stand there all slack-jawed?”

Now Héctor looked to Juliana. She had pretty much the same expression on her face as Sal did on theirs.

“Well, I was wondering if . . . you would lend us the key . . . to the storage container out back?”

Héctor flinched. Not his best work.

Mr. Mbalia didn’t really react. His eyebrow was still raised, and the frown seemed to be permanently stuck on his face. “You want the key.”

“Yes.”

“To the storage unit.”

“Yep.”

“The one with all the library books in it.”

“That would be the one.”

“Do you possibly have a reason for such a request?”

Héctor breathed out. “Yes, I do.”

Mr. Mbalia crossed his arms over the front of his blue cardigan. “Are you going to share that reason with me?”

Unfortunately for Héctor, he had done virtually no prep work for this role. His confidence was fading.

So he was shocked when Sal spoke up and saved him:

“It’s for an extra credit project.”

Mr. Mbalia’s eyes went wide. “Extra credit?”

“Yes!” said Héctor, probably a little too quickly. “An extra credit project.”

“And who assigned an extra credit project that would require you to get into a locked storage container at”—Mr. Mbalia looked at his watch—“nine fifty-five in the morning?”

This was now a complete disaster.

Thankfully, Sal was quick with another answer. “Oh, that would be Ms. Pérez, my English teacher.”

“Perfect.” And for the first time, Mr. Mbalia smiled. He pulled out a massive set of keys from his back pocket. “Thank you for telling me that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go into my office and give Ms. Pérez a call to verify what you’ve all told me.”

Oh, Héctor did not like Mr. Mbalia’s smile. It sent a chill down his spine, and the first words that popped in his brain came right out of his mouth.

“No, you can’t!”

Mr. Mbalia turned. His smile was even wider.

“Oh, I can’t, can I? Do you mean that I, the head of security at this fine establishment, am not able to call Ms. Pérez, or that you don’t want me to?”

More words manifested in Héctor’s brain, and just as before, out they came.

“We don’t want you to because it’s a surprise.”

The smile disappeared. Genuine confusion replaced it, and Héctor felt Juliana gently slap the back of his arm, as if to say, You’ve gone too far, bruh!

“A surprise.”