What Happens After Midnight, page 23
“Maybe you two should leave,” Zoe suggested when I blushed. “Go get it on downstairs or something?”
The house lights blinked a couple minutes later, and Dean DeLuca walked across the stage toward the steadfast mahogany podium. He congratulated us on reaching the homestretch, but no one was really paying attention. It felt like all the air was being sucked out of the auditorium as Anthony’s father reviewed this week’s schedule. Daniel was due to speak next, and everyone was anticipating what he had to say about the missing yearbooks.
It’d been three days, after all. No prank had ever lasted three days.
“Happy Monday, Ames,” President Rivera said once the Dean of Students had passed the baton off to him, then paused to collect himself. He didn’t look so hot this morning; everything about him looked wrinkled. His blazer, his khakis, his dark hair. “I want to take this opportunity to talk about the Almanacs.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, they have not yet been recovered…”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tag carefully fish his phone out of his pants pocket and dim its brightness after unlocking it. “What are you doing?” I whispered.
“Preparing to pull the trigger,” he replied, opening his Gmail.
Daniel cleared his throat. “I am directly addressing you, Jester.” His eyes scanned the auditorium’s middle rows and predictably landed on Alex. He didn’t flinch. “While your thievery was funny at first, I now implore you to return the Almanacs. They ensure every year ends on a high note; you don’t want to be responsible for souring this one, do you?” His voice croaked. “Please return them.”
In response, Tag tapped his screen.
“Nobody is ever on their phone during meetings,” I muttered.
“One person is,” he muttered back.
“Oh my god!” Blair Greenberg exclaimed after three seconds, waving her iPhone in the air. “The Jester!”
Tag flashed me a smirk before handing over his phone.
To: Group_All_Students@ames.edu
From: TheJesterXXIII@gmail.com
Subject: School Meeting
President Rivera,
You beseech me to “return” the Almanacs?
If so, I must politely decline. Simply returning them was never in the cards. Per my last communiqué, I said I would help solve the mystery. Not solve it myself.
Ames, what say you? Is it high time I offer my assistance?
Yours in merriment,
The Jester
“Yes!” resounded through the auditorium in varying tones. Some shrieked and shouted, while others were overcome with laughter. Tag’s thumbs flew across his screen, dashing off another message.
As you wish, it read.
And then I watched him delete the Jester’s email account.
Ames was abuzz the rest of the day, no longer entirely fixated on who the Jester was but wondering what kind of help they would soon provide. “Maybe a map of some sort?” Pravika posed when she, Zoe, and I went to Provisions for lunch. Somehow Zoe kept a straight face, but I almost choked on my sandwich; she was so close to the truth.
Tag, when are you hiding the first clue? Maya texted our chat later. After class?
Nah, he texted back. I’m swimming, then back under house arrest.
None of his fools responded.
Don’t worry, he assured us. I have a plan.
Which involves…? I wrote but didn’t receive an answer until Tag and I lingered by Bunker’s house after Latin. Daniel had rushed out of the solarium as soon as class had concluded.
“Which involves you dispatching the clue,” Tag said. “Okay?”
“Me!” My spine straightened. “You want me to hide it? Why me?”
“Because it needs to be you, and you’re the only one of you.” His mouth twitched in amusement as he pulled something out of his blazer’s breast pocket: a familiar black envelope with in random magazine letters. I noticed the oversize O resembled Vogue’s iconic all-caps typeface. My mom had picked up the latest issue on her errands yesterday.
“Here and there,” I remembered Tag saying when I’d asked where he’d gotten magazines to create the scavenger hunt’s clues.
“I thought Alex would do it,” I said, stomach stirring even though all this mission involved was slipping the envelope into Daniel’s mailbox. He routinely checked it on his way to the library after dinner. It was supposed to be easy, but when I looked up at the gray sky, I reconsidered. The weather was going to turn, which meant instead of hanging out in the Circle tonight, everyone would take refuge in the student center.
Tag nodded when I said as much. “That’s why Alex isn’t in charge of the clue,” he said. “He’s quarterbacking the diversion that’ll ensure no one will see you disguised as USPS.”
My brows knitted together. “What’s the diversion?”
“He’s asking Anthony to prom.”
“Stop it!” I gasped. “He’s promposing?”
“Yes, and apparently it involves striking up the jazz band.”
I groaned. Anthony loved jazz. “But I don’t want to miss that…”
I tried to maintain my confidence during the last couple classes and as I unfolded my umbrella after the final bell. It looked like the entire student body was migrating toward Hubbard Hall. My stomach lurched when I saw Daniel, but thankfully Maya was all but dragging him into the Hub. “Let’s get milkshakes!” I heard her say. “Because you need to chill, Dan.”
There were students in the mail room, so I anxiously awaited their departure in a nearby alcove. Pravika was among them, slowly sifting through her mail by a trash can. I watched her scan a graded assignment, then crumple it up and toss it into the garbage.
Let’s go, I thought. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!
Eventually the sound of a saxophone turned people’s heads. Mine also wanted to turn, but I couldn’t let myself get distracted. Even when the band’s trumpet, double bass, and drums joined in, I stayed focused on making my move. The mail room mass exodus finally happened when someone shouted, “Look, Alex Nguyen’s on top of the piano!”
Then I heard him start singing.
Because of course Alex could sing.
Pulse now racing, I ran to Daniel’s mailbox. My hands shook a little as I unzipped my backpack and pulled out the hilariously mysterious first clue. But before sliding it into the wrought iron mailbox, I found myself studying the envelope again. The “E” looked like one of People’s block letters. The colors were black and blue, back from Ryan Reynolds’s Sexiest Man Alive issue. My mom and I loved Ryan Reynolds.
Is this ours? I wondered, head now spinning. Is this our copy?
Tucked in my skirt’s waistline, my phone suddenly vibrated. It sent my heart rate so high up in the sky that I swore and slipped the clue through the mailbox’s slot before sprinting through the standing ovation Alex and Anthony were now getting toward the restrooms.
“Mom, hey,” I answered once the stall door slammed behind me. “What’s up?”
She ignored my question to instead ask her own. “Are you still on campus?”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “I’m in the student center. Alex just—”
“Would you mind coming by my classroom?” she asked. “We need to talk.”
Talk? I thought. What did we need to talk about? I hadn’t done anything wrong. Well, I mean, anything wrong besides getting involved in the prank, but she knew that already. Her tone didn’t make things easier to read either. She didn’t sound upset, but “calm” wasn’t an accurate adjective either.
My mom sighed. “What we need to talk about, dearest daughter, is what Tag has done with our entire archive of magazines.”
TWENTY-SIX
My footsteps echoed against the English building’s parquet floor, and I climbed the stairs as slowly as possible, thinking about our magazines. I remembered the impromptu dinner party my mom had hosted last week. I’d noticed the lack of “reading material” on our coffee table but had been so thrown by the Jester’s bid that I hadn’t thought too hard about their disappearance.
Tag asked her, I realized. He asked her if he could have them.
But had she known he was the Jester at the time?
I didn’t think so.
I wiped my feet on her classroom’s doormat—HI, WELCOME TO CHILI’S! it read—before turning the knob and pushing into the room. My mom sat at her corner desk with her laptop, review packets already distributed around the big oak table. “Hi,” I said, gingerly taking a seat as if I were a student on the first day of class. “I’m here.”
She closed her laptop and joined me at the table. “I only have forty-five minutes before my pre-dinner sophomore study session,” she said. “Let’s cut the bullshit.”
“I’m sorry.” I knotted my fingers together. “It’s my fault there’s bullshit between us.”
My mom laughed. “Oh no, Lil, stop,” she said. “I’ve just always wanted to use that line.” She took my hand so she could untangle my nervous fingers. “Relax. We’re touching base.”
I nodded and then watched her stretch across the table to grab something from her pile of study materials. My pulse quickened. It was our newest Vogue. Taylor Swift was giving off Gatsby vibes with her 1920s flapper look.
“Tag stopped by several weeks ago,” my mom said casually, “asking if he could have our magazines for a project.” She gave me a look. “Please tell me he won’t be needing more.”
I shook my head. “What you gave him was sufficient.”
“Okay, thank god.” She gave me a relieved smile but soon let it slip away so she could arch an inquisitive eyebrow. “Would you care to elaborate on said project?”
“You want to hear about the prank?” I asked, sitting up straighter in my seat. Because ever since she’d said she was too disappointed in me to want details, I had been waiting for her to change her mind.
“Yes,” she answered. “I know you helped our Jester steal the Almanacs—”
“Along with Alex, Zoe, Maya, and Manik. They were also tapped.”
My mom blinked. “Yet you and Tag were the only ones caught,” she commented, then announced that she needed a drink. She got up to grab a Red Bull from the mini fridge hidden under her desk. I highly suspected she wished it were whiskey. “Okay, so the six of you pull this absurdly hilarious heist,” she resumed. “But there’s obviously a second act happening now, so how do the magazines come into play?” She kept eye contact with me. “Clue me in, Lil.”
I couldn’t help it; I burst into laughter. Clue me in.
She couldn’t have teed this up any better.
“What?” my mom asked. “What’s so funny?”
“You,” I said through giggles. “You’re funny. Because the magazines—Mom, Tag used the magazines to create clues. Scavenger hunt clues! We stole the Almanacs and then scattered all these clues across campus. Tag crafted them using individual letters he cut out of the magazines. They look like—”
“Creepy ransom notes,” my mom concluded. There was a hint of a smile as she shook her head. “I will never cease to be charmed by his cleverness.”
“Each clue is a riddle,” I added. “There are seven total, and the last one leads to the Almanacs. They took a while to hide, and there were, um, complications. The biggest one being…” I trailed off because she already knew.
The biggest one being Tag’s hypoglycemic attack.
My mom sipped her Red Bull. “Did you memorize the clues?”
I stuck my tongue out at her. Naturally I knew the clues by heart; I was an actress. Memorization was one of my sharpest skills.
“Alright, well, take me through the night,” she said.
So I did. I told her about sneaking out to meet the Jester and the other fools at midnight, full of excitement. But by the time I’d reached our depleted numbers and Tag downplaying his symptoms, my voice began to waver. “The final clue is in Admissions,” I said. “It was just Tag, Alex, and me by then. We tried to run when we saw Mr. Harvey’s headlights, but Tag couldn’t move.” I swallowed. “I forced Alex to hide, Mom. I know he was as guilty as Tag and me, but I didn’t want him to get caught. He put up a fight, not wanting to leave Tag, but I made him.” I grimaced. “And that’s it. Mr. Harvey busted us.”
My mom had stayed incredibly stoic during my story, but now she exhaled so deeply it was like she’d been holding her breath the whole time. “Christ, I have so much to say,” she said. “So much to say, but it won’t be in chronological order.”
“It’s a lot,” I offered.
She touched my cheek. “I spoke with Tag after his disciplinary hearing, but I need you to know that having a good time never trumps safety. He never should’ve ignored his signs, and when they came to light, you should’ve stopped and called me. I think I’d probably passed out to a podcast by the time you snuck back home, but for the life of me, I don’t understand why you didn’t come upstairs for help.” She shook her head. “It’s not like either of you.”
A lump formed in my throat. “I know,” I said. “It’s not us, Mom—and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I just think we both felt a shit-ton of pressure to pull off this prank and were so anxious about it that both our judgments failed spectacularly.”
She rose from her chair. “Spectacularly, huh?”
I stood too. “Yes.”
My mom opened her arms and I fell into them, vision blurring as she held me tightly. Her hugs sometimes made me wish I’d never grow up. I loved her warmth and the ever-familiar scent of her rosewater perfume and eucalyptus soap. I loved the way her curls tickled my face. I loved everything about her. “You paid a high price,” she whispered, “but damn am I in awe of you.”
“Thank you,” I whispered back, and when she pulled away, she smiled and tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear before clapping her hands together.
“Now, when does Daniel get his first clue?”
“Alex says Anthony found our golf cart,” Tag said on FaceTime that night. “After doing a neighborhood loop, he ran along the beach and spotted it in the dunes. Since we’d left the keys in the cupholder, he drove it back to B and G and left it outside the garage. I guess the guys didn’t think anything of it.”
“Wow.” I let out a slow whistle. “Thank god for Anthony.”
“Seriously,” Tag agreed. “Dear Saint Anthony.”
We laughed. I’d told him about my talk with my mom, and he shared his too. “It was right after my hearing,” he said. “She took my sleeve, dragged me into Penny’s little library, and before I could even blink, she’d kicked off her heels and was pacing the room and whisper-scolding me…”
“Do you think Daniel has the clue?” I asked a couple minutes later.
“My gut tells me he does,” Tag answered. “Especially since so many teachers are returning our final assignments this week. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s checking his mail multiple times a day.” His pragmatism shifted to sarcasm. “But alas, if only we knew someone who could find out for sure. Who do we know that has experience in the reconnaissance field?”
I snorted. “No experts.”
“Did I say expert?” He smirked. “I don’t believe I specified a skill level.”
I smirked back. “Well, in that case, I know just the person for the job!”
He’s still awake, Manik reported at 11:00. He’s watching Curb, and I’m stuck listening to it because the door between our rooms is open, and he lost his headphones.
What’s Curb? Zoe asked as everyone else disliked Manik’s message.
“Bleh, I didn’t like Curb Your Enthusiasm,” my mom commented. We were nestled in her bed with peppermint tea; I’d convinced her to forgo burning the midnight oil in favor of watching Pride & Prejudice. Although we’d seen it so many times that we could mouth Lizzy’s lines while my mom also played Wordscapes and I texted the team.
“Okay, but you love Seinfeld,” I pointed out. “Isn’t Larry David behind both?”
“Yes, but nothing can beat Seinfeld,” she replied. “I mean, come on, Elaine’s dancing—”
I sprang out of bed so I could imitate Elaine’s famous cringe-inducing dance. “Like a full-body dry heave set to music,” George Costanza would say.
My mom laughed and started tickling me once I’d flung myself back on her mattress. It was only when Mr. Darcy helped Lizzy into her carriage that we froze. “The hand flex!” we squealed.
He’s going to sleep, Manik texted. I repeat: He’s going to sleep!
Which means you should be “going to sleep,” Tag responded.
Manik sent a thumbs-up emoji. After that, the chat was silent. I could picture Tag and Alex playing pool in their room to pass the time. Even after a cup of tea and a trip downstairs to stress eat some chocolate pudding, my muscles remained tense. It’s pouring outside, I messaged Tag at 11:45 when we still hadn’t heard from Manik. Maybe he’ll try tomorrow?
Because Daniel should’ve embarked on his quest by now. Clue One told him to collect Clue Two at midnight, and the observatory was at least a fifteen-minute walk from his dorm. Plus, he was now the one who had to handle Ames’s streetlamps, nocturnal dorm activity, and the formidable Campo squad.
Tag quickly buzzed in with a reply, but before I could read it, a new group chat message popped up from Manik. He’s gone! it read. He closed our door, but I heard him sneak out the window and down the fire escape (sounded like he slipped).
OMFG, Zoe said at the same time as Maya wrote, LMAO!!!
King of my heart, Alex said.
And Tag: Let the games begin.
I couldn’t decide whether to stay up and wait for Daniel. My mom’s bedroom windows overlooked the front lawn, but there was no barometer for when he’d arrive for Clue Six. Tag and I hadn’t gotten to my house until 4:00 a.m., and there’d been innumerable obstacles along the way. What troubles would Daniel encounter? The rain certainly wouldn’t help the cause. “I hope he has an umbrella!” was the last thing my mom said before switching off her bedside lamp and snuggling into her pillow.
Did I pull an all-nighter?
Tag and I texted for a while, joking about Daniel’s current location—Still trying to hop the telescope balcony’s gate!—but Alex confiscated his phone around 1:30. Taggart has run out of screen time, the last text read. Good night.
