Lucky Caller(51)

“Which one is he?” Jamie asked.

Sasha pointed to the one who was grinning. “He’s the hot one.”

Joydeep looked offended. “Are we looking at the same picture?” He jabbed at the smoldering face. “That guy’s the hot one.”

Sasha screwed up her face. “Kai?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t know you were a fan,” I said.

“I’m not,” Joydeep replied. “I just have eyes.”

“How could this have happened?” Jamie asked.

“I don’t know. But it’s a thing, apparently. People think he’s the mystery guest.”

“How do you know?”

“Alexis told me, Apparently some girl on the dance team told her.”

Joydeep gasped.

“What? What is it?”

His eyes were wide. “Sabotage!”





47.


WE ALL WAITED IN THE hall before radio class on Friday, and eventually Sammy showed up, walking hand in hand with Colby. Colby slapped palms with Joydeep and they exchanged “Bro!”s.

“Hey, could we talk to you real quick?” Jamie asked Sammy.

She looked a little annoyed. “It’s almost time for class.”

“We just need a minute,” Jamie said.

Sammy squeezed Colby’s hand and then let it go. “Be right in, babe.”

Colby gave us all an odd look but headed in.

Sammy looked at us expectantly. “What do you guys want?”

“Saboteur!” Joydeep cried.

“We heard you’ve been spreading rumors about our show,” Sasha said, more calmly. “About our mystery guest.”

Sammy just blinked.

Sasha had never seemed taller than in this moment. “Why would you do that?”

There was no doubt she’d been made, and Sammy knew it, so she huffed a breath, folded her arms, rolled her eyes. “Um, let me see. ‘Dear Cat Chat, I think I’m a tree. I jizz sap everywhere. Blah blah blah.’”

“Uh, the letter writer didn’t think they were a tree. Their boyfriend thought they were a tree,” Joydeep said.

“Either way, it was completely despicable of you to tamper with our show like that—”

“Hey, check your ratings, sister, I fucking made your show—”

“How did you even find out what Joydeep did?” I interrupted.

“Funny story,” Sammy said. “Our producer Lily was driving home from track practice one night and heard the craziest thing on the radio. Four idiots who didn’t realize that they hadn’t pressed the right button, sitting around talking about how super funny their prank was.”

“Okay, that was one idiot who hadn’t pressed the right button, and a separate idiot who did the pranking, thank you very much,” I replied. “Leave the others out of it.”

Sammy made a face. “Either way, it was messed up, so obviously I had to do something. And honestly, you guys made it easy when you were basically giving out Lucas facts about your stupid secret guest anyway. No one really believed me at first, but then you started selling tickets and that totally clinched it, so thanks for that.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “Those facts are about my dad.”

Sammy let out of breath of laughter. “Are you serious?” Her eyes widened with realization, and her grin grew. “Are you for real? Is your dad Lucas from TION?”

“Uh, not to my knowledge.”

She looked between us. “You really didn’t know?”

“Know what?”

She shook her head, still grinning. “Good luck, is all I can say.”





48.


“WHAT THE FUCK WAS SAMMY even talking about?” Joydeep said. We met back in the gallery after school for another emergency meeting—though admittedly emergency had lost some of its urgency since all of our meetings these days seemed to be emergency meetings. Mr. Tucker had sent out an excited email that morning:

Ticket sales have reached four hundred! This is so amazing! Congrats Sounds of the Nineties team, cannot WAIT for the big event!



“Apparently, there have been some other … coincidences,” Sasha said, looking my way. “In the facts we compiled about your dad.”

“What? How? Genuinely, tell me how my dad could also be mistaken for Lucas from This Is Our Now?”

“I did some looking during class,” Sasha said carefully. “And apparently, a lot of stuff just … happens to be similar. He’s actually lived in Indiana. He’s been heard on the radio for years. His favorite TION member is Josh—there’s this whole thing with him and Josh, this bromance. The color yellow—”

“How could yellow possibly factor in this time?” I asked.

“Apparently he sings a line in one of their most popular songs: My heart burns yellow sun/Your soul answers midnight blue.”

“Bleh.” Joydeep looked disgusted.

“I don’t hate it,” Jamie said. “Lyrically.”

“Anyway,” Sasha continued. “It’s a thing, apparently. They have like, yellow sun shirts and stuff. I guess people thought we were referring to that.”