Pushing Perfect(37)

“But Alex just said—”

“It’s complicated,” I said. “I don’t need a prescription for myself, but I do need one. I remembered you said you got prescription pads from your parents, so I thought it might be easiest to just get one of theirs, if they were just lying around.” No need to tell him this was Alex’s idea; he was clearly furious, and his fury might as well be directed at me. They’d been friends longer, after all.

“Let me see if I understand.” His voice was quiet, but in a scary way. “You needed a prescription but not for yourself, so you thought it would be easier to steal from my parents?” Getting louder now. “Rather than just asking me?”

“I had my reasons,” I said. True, they didn’t feel like great reasons now that I’d been caught, but still.

“You want to tell me what they are?” He looked over at Alex. “How about you? I’ll take an explanation from either one of you.”

“It’s complicated,” she said.

“Yeah, I think Kara covered that already,” he said.

I didn’t know what to do. He seemed genuinely angry, which indicated that he really didn’t know why I was doing this; if he was Blocked Sender, or was working with him, he’d know why I needed the prescription. Maybe telling him was the right thing to do; then we’d find out whether he was in the same boat we were.

But what if I was wrong? What if he was a better actor than I thought, or there was something else we hadn’t considered? I stayed quiet.

“So this whole movie night was just a cover,” he said, finally. “This was the plan all along.”

I looked at Alex, helpless. She didn’t know what to say either. I felt awful. How could we ever have thought this was the right move? “I’m really sorry,” I said. “We’ll go.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” he said.

I grabbed Alex’s arm and practically dragged her out of the house. “That was a disaster,” I said.

“I know, I’m sorry,” she said as we got in the car. “I thought it would be easier. And I thought I’d be able to keep him from going after you. But he was so worried when you were gone so long. It was kind of sweet, really. I almost forgot that there was a possibility he was behind all of this. I kept alternating between wanting to tell him and wanting to kill him.”

I wanted to get out of there, but I felt too shaky to drive, so we sat in the car for a minute. “Do you really think he’s part of this?” I asked. “I mean, now? He didn’t seem to know what was going on.”

“I know,” she said. “I kind of feel like the worst person ever for even thinking such bad stuff about him.”

“What do we do now? Should we go back and talk to him?”

“We should give him some time to cool off,” she said. “Give him the weekend. He’ll calm down, and we can explain everything.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do in the meantime. I have to get that prescription, and I have no other way.” If we weren’t going back in, then we needed to leave. I pressed the button to turn the car on and the stereo started screaming at us. We’d been in such a good mood on the way over, listening to music and singing as loudly as we could, windows down in the cool Northern California evening air. I turned the radio off and the silence was eerie. The Prius was in electric mode, so even the car wasn’t making any noise.

“We’ll think of something,” Alex said. “After we’ve talked to him.”

“I don’t think he’s going to want to talk to us. What we did wasn’t very cool.”

“Trust me, I’ve known him longer than you have.”

“Not that long,” I said. He’d only been here a year, after all.

“Yeah, but we kind of bonded early. He showed up at a rough time for me.”

I glanced over at her, but she was looking down. We’d never really talked about what our lives had been like before we started hanging out. I wasn’t about to get into all the drama with Becca and Isabel, and I’d assumed Alex was exactly what she seemed to be: a fun party girl with lots of guy friends but no one she was really close to. “What was going on?”

“It’s not worth getting into right now. But he was a good friend to me. He’s got a really big heart, for all his flirty goofy stuff.”

“And we tried to take advantage of it,” I said.

“We had reasons. And if we’re right that he isn’t Blocked Sender, then there’s a pretty good chance he’s in the same position we are. Which means he’ll definitely understand.”

“I hope so,” I said.

“I’m sure of it. Besides, we still haven’t finished the movie.”

I looked over at her again. She was smiling now. “We’re never going to get to finish it,” I said. “Maybe you just need to tell me how it ends.”

“It’s the person you least expect,” she said. “It always is.”

Raj glared at Alex and me as we walked into the cafeteria on Monday. “I don’t think the weekend was long enough,” I said.

“You may be right,” she said. “But I don’t think we should wait too long. Let me go over there and see if he’ll meet us after school. You lie low for a bit.”