Her disappointment was evident. I appreciated it. If I was bailing on RoJu that night, there was no hope of my salvaging the role. She’d have to act opposite Steve, the guy she just humiliated in front of the entire school. For a moment I wondered if she might walk away from the whole deal. But then her expression sharpened. That’s the kind of girl she was—she’d decided to relish acting opposite Steve. It was a challenge, and if she delivered her lines just right, maybe she could show him who was boss more than once.

“All righty,” she said. “Six o’clock. Sturges household. What do you say?”

The simple question was riddled with risk. Nobody but Tub had ever visited the steel-plated, camera-protected stronghold of my home. An eight-eyed creature was hiding in my bedroom closet. My dad was on the precipice of total breakdown upon the arrival of a supposedly dead older brother who’d not aged a single day. And once it was dark enough, a band of sword-wielding weirdoes would come together in my living room to track down the infamous villain who’d taken at least a dozen kids in the past week, who knew my name and wanted me as well.

There were a million reasons to say no to Claire except one:

I’d been waiting all my life to say yes.

32.

Claire Fontaine knocked at my door twenty minutes late, rosy-cheeked and complaining about all the “festival rubbish” that was making the whole town look like a little kid’s birthday party. I went “heh-heh-heh,” a laugh so forced that I creeped myself out. Thankfully, she came inside anyway. I closed the door behind her and reached for the first of the ten locks, ready to whip through the repertoire of click, rattle, zing, rattle, clack-clack-clack, thunk, crunch, whisk, rattle-rattle, thud before stopping myself. Not with her watching I wouldn’t. I was braver than that now.

I left the door unlocked.

Claire missed nothing. Within seconds, she’d zeroed in on the metal shutters, the three security consoles, and the dangling wires of the kitchen ceiling fan, which still hadn’t been replaced. She asked after Dad and I had to plead ignorance. He was gone and this was not normal. Dad spent no more time at San Bernardino Electronics than was required. Again I offered my “heh-heh-heh” and again she overlooked it. She bounded through the kitchen and flung her pink backpack upon the dining room table, and moments later we were pulling out textbooks and strategically arranging pencils and paper.