He walks out and down the hill to Barron’s idling car. Lila walks into the room and puts her hand on my shoulder. I shrug it off.

  “We have to get out of here,” she says.

  I turn to agree, but she’s already pulling out gloves and a coat from the closet.

  14

  LATE AFTERNOON SUNLIGHT streams through the window, and I wake up with my head pillowed against blond curls and warm skin. At first I’m so disoriented that I can’t understand who could be next to me and why she doesn’t have many clothes on.

  Sam’s closing the door to the room. “Hey, dude,” he says in a whisper.

  Lila makes a small gesture of complaint and rolls against the wall, her body sliding against mine, her shirt rucking up. She mashes the pillow over her head.

  I dimly recall walking to the convenience store three blocks from my house, calling a cab, and then sitting on the sidewalk to wait, Lila leaning against me. I figured my dorm room was going to be empty for a couple of hours. There was no other place I could think of to go.

  “Don’t worry,” Sam says. “I haven’t seen Valerio. But next time put a sock on the door.”

  “A sock?”

  “My brother says that’s the universal signal for getting some—the nice way to alert your roommate so that he can make other plans for the evening. As opposed to letting your roommate walk in on you.”

  “Uh, yeah,” I say, yawning. “Sorry. Sock. I’ll remember.”

  “Who is she?” he whispers, indicating her with his chin. “Does she even go to school here?” He drops his voice even lower. “And are you crazy?”

  Lila rolls over again and smiles sleepily at Sam. “The uniform’s cute,” she says in her new, rough voice.

  Sam flushes.

  “I’m Lila, and yes, he’s crazy. But you must have noticed that before now. He was crazy back when I knew him, and he’s obviously gotten crazier over time.” Her gloved fingers tousle my hair.

  I grimace. “She’s an old friend. A family friend.”

  “Everyone’s coming back,” Sam says, raising his eyebrows. “You and your buddy better get out.”

  Lila pushes herself up on her elbow. “You feeling better?” It doesn’t seem to bother her to be half dressed with one leg pressed against me. Maybe she got used to being naked when she was a cat, but I am completely unused to it.

  “Yeah,” I say. My ribs are sore, but the pain is duller.

  She yawns and stretches up her arms, canting her body to one side and making her spine crack audibly.

  It feels like the whole world has turned upside down. There aren’t any more rules.

  “Hey,” I say to Sam, because if the world’s gone crazy, then I guess I can do whatever I want. “Guess what? I’m a worker.”

  He stares at me, openmouthed. Lila jerks to her feet.

  “You can’t tell him that,” she says.

  “Why not?” I ask, then turn to him. “I didn’t have any idea until yesterday. Wacky, right?”

  “What kind?” he manages to squeak out.

  “If you tell him that,” Lila says, “I’m going to kill you, but first I’m going to kill him.”

  “Consider the question retracted,” Sam says, holding his hands out in a peace offering.

  Some of my clothes are still in the drawers and in the closet. I grab what I need, then head for the library to take out a loan from my business.

  * * *

  We walk down to the corner store where all the Wallingford students go to shoplift gum. Lila picks out a bottle of shampoo, some soap, an enormous cup of coffee, and three bars of chocolate. I pay.

  The owner, Mr. Gazonas, smiles at me. “He’s a good kid,” he tells Lila. “Polite. No stealing. Not like the other kids who come in here. Hang on to this one.”

  That makes me laugh.

  I lean against the wall outside. “Do you want to call your mom?”

  Lila shakes her head. “With all the gossip down in Carney? No way. I don’t want anyone but my father to know I’m back.”

  I nod slowly. “So we call him, then.”

  “I need to take a shower first,” Lila says, winding the plastic handle of the bag around her wrist. She has rolled up a pair of my dress slacks and looks homeless in them, the baggy shirt, and some lace-up boots she found in the back of my closet.

  I dial the same cab company that gave us a lift over here. “We don’t have any place to clean up,” I say.

  “Hotel room,” she tells me.

  There’s a hotel not too far a walk from where we’re standing, a nice basic place that parents stay at sometimes, but it’s not going to work. “Believe me, they are not going to let the two of us get a room. Kids try all the time.”

  She shrugs.

  I hang up on the dispatcher. “Fine,” I say. I’m thinking of how when the rooms get cleaned, the doors are open. We’re never going to be able to get a room, but we might be able to steal one for a shower if we get lucky.

  As we start across the parking lot, I see Audrey with two of her friends, Stacey and Jenna. Stacey gives me the finger. Jenna nudges Audrey with her elbow. I know I should look away, but I don’t. Audrey lifts her head. Her eyes are shadowed.

  “Do you know her?” Lila asks.

  “Yeah,” I say, and finally turn toward the hotel.

  “She’s pretty,” says Lila.

  “Yeah,” I say again, and jam my hands in my pockets, deep—gloved fingers against the crease.

  Lila keeps looking back. “I bet she’s got a shower.”

  * * *

  Here’s another thing Mom told me over and over about scams. The first thing you have to get is the mark’s confidence, but it’s always more convincing when someone other than you suggests the score to the mark. That’s why most confidence schemes demand a partner.

  * * *

  “Cassel told me all about you,” Lila tells Audrey. Her smile changes her from homeless vagabond to regular girl, even with her matted hair.

  Audrey looks from me to Lila and then back at me, as if she’s trying to decide whether this is part of some game.

  “What did he say?” asks Jenna, taking a long swig of her Diet Coke.

  “My cousin just got back from India,” I say, and nod in Lila’s direction. “Her parents were living in some ashram. I was telling her about Wallingford.”

  Audrey’s hands go to her hips. “She’s your cousin?”

  Lila scrunches her eyebrows for a moment, then a wide grin splits her face. “Oh! Because I’m so pale, right?”

  Stacey flinches. Audrey looks at me like she’s trying to see if I’m offended. Wallingford’s idea of political correctness is never to mention anything about race. Ever. Brown skin, especially ambiguously light brown skin like mine, is supposed to be as invisible as red hair or blond hair or skin so white it’s marbled with blue veins.

  “No, it’s all good,” says Lila. “We’re stepcousins. My mother married his mother’s brother.”

  My mother doesn’t even have a brother.

  I don’t lift an eyebrow.

  I don’t smile.

  I don’t admit to myself that scamming the girl I might still be in love with is making my pulse race.

  “Audrey,” I say, because I know this script pretty well, “can we talk for a minute?”

  “Cassel,” says Lila. “I have to cut my hair. I have to take a shower. Come on.” She grins at Audrey and grabs my arm. “It was nice meeting you.”

  I keep my gaze on Audrey, waiting for her to answer.

  “I guess you can talk when you get back to school,” says Jenna.

  “She could use the shower at the dorm,” Audrey says hesitantly.

  I am a very bad person.

  “So we can talk?” I ask her. “That would be great.”

  “Sure,” she says, not looking at me.

  As we all walk back to Wallingford, Lila flashes me a grin. “Smooth,” she mouths.

  * * *

  Audrey and I sit on the cement steps in front of the arts building. Her neck is blotchy, the way it gets when she’s nervous. She keeps pushing her red hair out of her face, hooking it over one ear, but it tumbles loose with every breeze.

  “I’m sorry about what happened at the party,” I say. I want to touch her hair, smooth it back, but I don’t.

  “I’m an independent woman. I make my own decisions,” she says. Her gloved hands pull at the weave of her gray tights.

  “I just meant that I—”

  “I know what you mean,” she says. “I was drunk, and you shouldn’t kiss drunk girls, certainly not in front of their boyfriends. It’s not chivalrous.”

  “Greg’s your boyfriend?” That certainly explains his reaction.

  She bites her lower lip and shrugs.

  “And then I hit him!” I say quickly, to make her laugh. “You must be so disappointed in me. Chivalry is truly dead.”

  She grins, clearly relieved I’m not going to interrogate her. “I am disappointed.”

  “I’m funnier than Greg,” I say. It’s easy to talk to her today, knowing I didn’t kill the last girl I was in love with. I had no idea how heavy a burden that was until I set it down.

  “But he likes me better than you ever did,” she says.

  “He must like you a whole lot, then.” I look into her eyes as I say it, and am rewarded by the blotchy blush spreading across her cheeks.

  She punches me in the arm. “Oooh. You are funny.”

  “Does that mean you’re not quite over me?”

  She leans back and stretches. “I’m not sure. Are you coming back to school?”

  I nod. “I’ll be back.”

  “Tick tock,” she says. “I might forget all about you.”

  I grin. “Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones.”

  “You’ve got a good memory,” she says, but her gaze is focused somewhere behind me.

  “Did I mention that I was smarter than Greg too?” When she doesn’t react, I turn to see what she’s staring at.

  Lila is heading across the quad toward us in a long skirt and a sweater that she obviously talked someone out of. She cut off so much of her hair that it’s shorter than mine: a pale silvery cap on her head. She’s still wearing my boots, and her lips are shining with pink gloss. For a moment I don’t breathe.

  “Big difference,” Audrey says.

  Lila’s smile widens. She walks up and links her arm with mine. “Thank you so much for letting me use the shower.”

  “No problem,” says Audrey. She’s watching us, like she suddenly thinks that there’s something off about what occurred. Maybe it’s just how different Lila looks.

  “We have to catch a train, Cassel,” says Lila.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’ll call you.”

  Audrey nods her head, still looking bewildered.

  Lila and I head toward the sidewalk, and I know what this is. The blow-off and the getaway. High stakes or low stakes, the steps are the same.

  Turns out I’m not like my dad at all. I really am just like my mother.

  * * *

  The train station is practically empty without the weekday commuter traffic. A guy about my age sits on one of the painted wooden benches, arguing with a girl whose eyes look red and puffy. An old woman leans over a pull cart of groceries. Standing in the far corner two girls with slender mohawks dyed a deep pink giggle together over a Game Boy.

  “We should call your dad.” I fish my cell phone out of my pocket. “Make sure he’s going to be in his office when we get there.”

  Lila stares into the glass of a vending machine, her expression unreadable. Her reflection wavers a little, like maybe she’s trembling. “We’re not going to New York. We have to get him to meet me somewhere else.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want anyone but him to know I’m back. Anyone. We have no idea who’s working with Anton.”

  “Okay,” I say, nodding. After all she’s been through, a little paranoia is probably not misplaced.

  “I overheard a lot,” she says. “I know their plan.”

  “Okay,” I say again. I never thought she didn’t.

  “Promise me you won’t tell him what happened to me,” she says and lowers her voice. “I don’t want him to know I was a cat.”

  “Okay,” I say again. “I’m not going to say anything you don’t want, but he’s going to expect me to say something.” I’m ashamed at my own relief. I wasn’t sure what would happen next. As angry as I am at Barron and Philip, as much as I hate them right now, if Zacharov knew what they did, he’d kill them. I’m not sure I want them dead.

  Lila reaches out her hand for my phone. “You won’t be there. I’ll go by myself.”

  I open my mouth, and she gives me a warning look that lets me know I better think carefully before I talk. “Look, just let me come with you on the train. I’ll take off once you’re wherever. Safe.”

  “I can take care of myself,” she says, and there is a burr in her voice that sounds like a growl.

  “I know that.” I hand her the phone.

  “Good,” she says, flipping it open.

  I frown as she punches in the numbers. Not telling Zacharov, even if it delays my need to make decisions, isn’t a solution. His life is in danger. We need a strategy. “You can’t think your dad is going to blame you? That’s crazy.”

  “I think my father is going to feel sorry for me,” she says. I can hear the ringing on the other end.

  “He’s going to think you were brave.”

  “Maybe,” she says, “but he’s not going to think I can take care of myself.”

  I hear a woman’s voice, and Lila puts the phone to her ear. “I’d like to talk with Mr. Ivan Zacharov.”

  There is a long pause. Her lips press together into a thin line. “No, this is not a joke. He’ll want to talk to me.”

  She kicks the wall with one too large boot. “Put him on the line!”

  I raise my eyebrows. She covers the receiver with her hand. “They’re getting him,” she mouths.

  “Hello, Daddy,” she says, closing her eyes.

  A few moments later she says, “No, I can’t prove I’m me. How could I prove that?” I can hear his voice like a distant buzz, growing louder.

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember,” she says tightly. “Don’t call me a liar. I am Lillian!”

  She bites her lip and, after a few more moments, thrusts the phone in my direction. “Talk to him.”

  “What do you want me to say?” I keep my voice low, but the prospect of talking to Mr. Zacharov makes my palms sweat.

  She reaches over to a tray of brochures and shoves one at me. “Tell him to meet us there.”

  I look down at it.

  “He’s got a room at the Taj Mahal,” Lila hisses.

  I take the phone. “Um, hello, sir,” I say into the receiver, but he’s still yelling. Finally it seems to register that she’s no longer on the line.

  His voice is that of someone used to his commands being obeyed. “Where is she? Where are you now? Just tell me that.”

  “She wants us to meet you in Atlantic City. She says you have a place there. At the Taj Mahal.”

  The phone goes so silent that for a moment I think he hung up on me.

  “What kind of setup am I walking into?” he says finally, slowly.

  “She just wants you to meet her. Alone. Be there at nine tonight. And don’t tell anyone.” I don’t know how else to keep him from arguing, so I close the phone.

  I look at Lila. “Can we actually get there by nine?”

  She spreads open the schedule. “Yeah, plenty of time. That was perfect.”

  “See? I came in useful. Maybe I’ll come in useful again.”

  She sighs. Nods.

  I carefully feed a twenty into the machine out by the steps and punch in our destination. The change comes in coins, silver dollars ringing against the tray like bells.

  * * *

  You can’t take a train from the middle of Jersey directly to Atlantic City. You have to ride all the way to Philadelphia and change trains at Thirtieth Street Station for the Atlantic City line. As soon as we settle into our seats, Lila rips open the bag and eats the three convenience store chocolate bars in quick greedy bites. Then she wipes her face with a fist, knuckles down over her cheek to her nose. It isn’t a human gesture, or at least it isn’t how humans make the same gesture.

  Uncomfortable, I look out the cracked grimy glass at the sea of houses blurring past. Each one, full of secrets.

  “Tell me what happened that night,” I say. “The rest of it. When I changed you.”

  “Okay,” she says. “But first I need you to understand why my father can’t know what happened to me. I’m his only child and I’m a girl. Families like mine—they’re really traditional. Women might be powerful workers, but they’re seldom leaders. Get it?”

  I nod my head.

  “If Dad found out what happened, he’d bring down vengeance on Anton and your brothers—maybe even on you. But afterward I’d be the daughter who needed to be protected. I could never be the head of the family.

  “I’m going to get my own vengeance and I’m going to save my father from Anton. Then he’s going to see that I deserve to be his heir.” She crosses her legs, propping her feet next to me. My boots are huge on her, and one of the laces has come undone.

  It’s hard to picture her as the head of the Zacharov family.

  I nod again. I think of Barron kicking me in the ribs. I think of Philip looking down at me as I writhed. Anger rises up in me, white hot and dangerous. “You’re going to need me to do that.”

  Her eyes narrow. “Is that a problem?”

  I loathe them, but they’re my family. “I want you to leave my brothers out of your plans.”

  I can see her jaw clench as she brings her teeth together abruptly. “I deserve revenge,” she says.