And Then Everything Unraveled (14 page)

If I’d thought things were awkward in the ladies’ room, that was nothing compared to the awkwardness after the play. Not immediately, but when we were saying good-bye.

“Can I put you in a cab?” Quinn asked outside the theater.

“Oh, no. I’ll take the subway. I like the subway.” I was getting proud of my subway mastery. Besides, Charley said cabs were for tourists.

“Really?” said Quinn. “I didn’t think Prescott girls were allowed to take public transportation.”

“I’ve had all my shots,” I told him.

“Then I’ll walk you to the station.”

“You don’t have to,” I said.

“I want to. This isn’t the safest neighborhood. My mother once got mugged not far from here.”

It was still light out, and while it might not have been the Upper East Side, it looked pretty safe to me, but I wasn’t about to turn him down. And this was the first time I’d ever heard him talk about his mother. “Was she hurt?” I asked as we walked down the block.

“No, more just shaken up. It was a long time ago, before my parents split up, but I remember it because she was so freaked out. She was sort of”—he chose his words carefully—“emotionally delicate to start with, so it didn’t take much to upset her.”

“Oh,” I said, not sure what else to say.

And that’s when the awkwardness started.

“Yeah, well, here we are,” Quinn said abruptly. We’d reached the subway entrance, and a train must have just arrived, because people started streaming out and we were suddenly in the middle of a crowd.

“Thank you,” I said, as a group of tourists in matching I
NY sweatshirts threatened to sweep us along toward Times Square. “This was really perfect.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” said Quinn. “And I think we’re ready.”

“What? Oh. I hope so.” With all the hand-holding and then the thing about his mother and now wondering how we were going to part ways—would there be kissing?—I’d almost forgotten that we were doing our scene in class the next day.

“So, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

“Yes. Tomorrow.”

“Okay, then.”

“Okay,” I echoed. “Bye.”

“Bye,” he said.

And that was it. I waited one more awkward moment, but nothing happened, and definitely not kissing. I just went down the stairs to the subway and caught an express train to Canal Street.

Charley beat me out of the loft on Monday morning. Gertrude had found a graphic designer that she insisted was the only possible choice for the film credits, but Charley didn’t trust her judgment. “Let’s just say that Helga’s aesthetic sense leaves a lot to be desired,” she said. Which meant that Charley had set up a full day of meetings with other designers, and she rushed off before I was even dressed.

Meanwhile, I hadn’t heard anything from Rafe, and nobody had e-mailed me back from Navitaco, but Quinn grabbed me on my way into my first-period class.

“Hey,” he said, so casually that I wondered if he felt any of the awkwardness I’d felt the previous day. Maybe someone like Quinn was immune to that sort of thing. “I had an idea after I got home last night. Why don’t you talk to my dad? His fund invests in different types of energy businesses—he probably knows all about the companies you’re interested in and what they’re up to. And that way you don’t have to worry about the entire spider-and-fly situation.”

“Excuse me?”

“You know. ‘Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.’ And then the spider eats the fly.”

“Am I the spider or the fly in this scenario?” I asked.

“You’re the fly, obviously. And these oil company execs are the spiders. So, I’d rather you talk to Hunter than get caught in their web.”

“That almost makes sense,” I said.

“Then I’ll set it up,” he said.

“Wait, Quinn,” I said. “Don’t tell your dad the whole thing, okay? Could you do what I did when I sent out the e-mail to the guy at Navitaco and just tell him I’m working on a project? And could you use my middle name, and not my last name?”

He smiled. “What, are you worried about Hunter?”

“No, of course not. But if he knows all these companies and everything, it just seems like it would be best.”

He shrugged. “Okay. I’m on it. See you later, Juliet.” And then he was gone.

Natalie had been out on Friday, on a three-day weekend of college visits with her parents, but she was eager to catch up during lunch. And after I heard more than I’d ever wanted to know about the undergraduate science programs at MIT, Harvard, and Cornell, I brought her up-to-date on everything that had been going on with me.

Of course, being Natalie, she was only mildly curious about Quinn. She was much more interested in what Rafe had to say and his trip to Chile.

“Does this mean that you trust Rafe now?” I asked. “Was it the giraffes that changed your mind?”

“No, I’m still not sure if I trust him and even if I did, it wouldn’t be because of the giraffes,” she said, like I’d insulted her by suggesting it. “That would be like trusting him based on his favorite flavor of Pop-Tart or whether he can ice-skate his astrological sign or something ridiculous like that.”

“Do you think signs are ridiculous?”

She looked at me like I should have known the answer to that without asking.

So then I told her about Carolina and the Sagittarius warning. “I mean, Carolina’s been so right about everything that it’s hard to ignore her advice, but I don’t know what to make of this one. But if you don’t believe in Carolina and you don’t believe in astrology, then you probably don’t think it’s important.”

“I’m a Sagittarius. Maybe you should be watching out for me,” she said dryly. “And centaurs, too. There aren’t a lot of them at Prescott, but you never know when one might decide to canter into precalc.”

“Why centaurs?”

“That’s the symbol of Sagittarius—half man, half horse, with a bow and arrow. And their element is fire and their birthstone is topaz, so you should probably also watch out for any fire-breathing, topaz-wearing archery enthusiasts. Could I
borrow your notes from physics on Friday, by the way? Or did you not take any?”

It didn’t even hit me until I was on my way to drama, and then it wasn’t the fire or the topaz. I realized that I hadn’t seen centaurs recently but I had seen horses—at least, I’d seen the dancing ponies on Rafe’s tie.

Did that mean I should actually be suspicious of Rafe, just like Natalie was? And did ponies even count as full-fledged horses? Rafe had been wearing that tie days before Carolina’s Sagittarius warning—but maybe it was grandfathered in somehow?

Either way, that’s what I was thinking when I got to drama, which was probably a good thing, because otherwise I’d have been completely freaking out about getting up on stage and doing the scene with Quinn, instead of just partially freaking out. And when Quinn sat down next to me and said, “Game on,” I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Which game?”

“My dad will see you right after school. At his office.”

“Seriously? Just like that?”

“Well, not quite. I had to agree to an extra session of SAT prep with Marcus, so I won’t be able to go with you. Is that okay? Will you be all right on your own?”

I doubted that Charley would be terribly happy about my
going off to meet Hunter Riley unaccompanied, but I wasn’t going to tell Quinn that, and I also didn’t see what harm it could do. “I’ll be fine,” I said as Mr. Dudley called us to order.

He made us all sit in a circle and do the usual set of breathing exercises, which gave me an opportunity to do the full-on freaking out that I hadn’t done earlier. By the time the exercises were over and everyone but Quinn and me had been shooed off the stage and into the first few rows of seats, I was more nervous and self-conscious than I’d realized was possible. And the modest high school auditorium seemed enormous, like I couldn’t possibly make my voice fill the vast space.

“Whenever you’re ready, people,” said Mr. Dudley from the front row.

“Ready?” Quinn asked me.

I didn’t feel like I’d ever be ready, but I nodded and turned to face him.

And that’s when it happened.

I put my palm against his, and he began to speak his first line, and suddenly it was like I wasn’t there.

I was Juliet and Quinn was Romeo, and the lines weren’t dead black-and-white words on a page but somehow alive, as natural and real as the argument we’d had about the spider and the fly. The rows of empty seats were gone, and we were in a candlelit ballroom, wrapped in our own cocoon of words. But
the playful banter of our words couldn’t mask what we both knew—that after this, nothing would be the same.

And then we got to the kissing part, which we’d only read through together and had never really rehearsed. But it didn’t matter, because I was still Juliet and Quinn was still Romeo, his gray-green eyes fixed on mine. And when he bent to kiss me, it was Romeo’s lips on Juliet’s.

Even so, Juliet was just as stunned as I would’ve been. When I said my last line, I was speaking for both of us.
You kiss by the book.

I was so caught up in the whole thing that it took me a second to realize we’d finished. The auditorium was completely silent.

Then, after an interminable moment, a girl in the second row began to clap, and then another, and then everyone was clapping—even Mr. Dudley.

And the clapping was almost as good as the kissing.

Actually, that wasn’t even close to true. The kissing was much, much better.

I took the bus down Fifth Avenue from school to Quinn’s father’s office in Midtown. I should have spent the ride thinking about what I wanted to ask him, but mostly I was still stuck on the kissing. I mean, did it count as kissing if it occurred in the context of a play? If so, then I’d just had my first real kiss. But I wasn’t sure it counted.

Hunter Riley’s office was in a shiny glass tower on the edge of Bryant Park, opposite the New York Public Library. There was a reception desk in the lobby, and the man there found my name on a list of expected visitors after I showed him my school
ID. “Take the express elevator up to forty,” he said, handing me a pass and pointing out which elevator bank to use.

A woman was waiting when the elevator doors slid open on the fortieth floor. She wore a pale blue suit and clunky gold jewelry, with the same carefully styled hair and perfect lipstick that newscasters have on TV. “You must be Delia!” she said, with far more enthusiasm than really seemed necessary. “I’m Kimberly, Mr. Riley’s assistant. He’s looking forward to seeing you.”

She led me through a maze of cubicles filled with serious-looking men and women, all peering intently at their computer screens. Hunter Riley was at the far end of the floor, in a large glassed-in office with a view over the city skyline.

He was pacing and talking into a headset, but he waved me in with a big smile, indicating a chair across from his desk and gesturing that he’d be off the phone soon. “That’s it,” he was saying. “Five thousand October puts at the three-fifty strike price…set up a synthetic hedge to offset the position…got it?”

I’d just noticed the silver-framed photos of Quinn and Bea and Oliver on a credenza when he ended his call. “Delia, welcome,” he said with another big smile. “Now, what can I do for you? Quinn said you had a project you wanted my advice about?”

“It’s an independent study,” I said, which was sort of true. “About variables affecting global oil supply and demand.”

“Well, you’ve come to the right place. That’s what I do—essentially, I make bets on what’s going to happen to the prices of different commodities, and oil’s my specialty.”

What followed was a half-hour lesson about the different stocks and bonds and other types of securities you can use to buy and sell oil. I pretended to understand, and I even took notes, but he might as well have been speaking Mandarin. He was also so genuinely thrilled that somebody was taking an interest in his job that it seemed wrong to interrupt him.

When he eventually paused, I tried to steer him back toward the questions I actually wanted answered. “What would happen if somebody suddenly found a big new oil supply? Prices would go down, right?”

“Exactly,” he said. “When supply goes up, prices go down, and vice versa. The tricky part is that prices already reflect what people know about future oil supply—it’s well-documented where the oil is and who’s pumping it. So if you want to make money, you need to have better information, so you can have a different opinion than everyone else and be right about it.”

“How do you get better information?”

“Oh,” he said vaguely. “Research. You know, talking to people in the business.”

“Like the oil companies?” I asked.

“Sure. There are rules about what they can tell you, but you can learn a lot if you drill—I mean, dig.”

“What if they’re doing something they’re not supposed to?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like secretly drilling in a place that’s off-limits.”

He shifted in his seat. “That’s pretty complicated. And I’m afraid I have to jump on another call in a moment. But maybe we can discuss it some other time.”

Kimberly buzzed through to let him know his 5:30 call was holding for him, and before I knew it, Hunter was escorting me out of his office. “It was good to see you again, Delia. I wish Quinn was as interested in what I do as you are. Kimberly, will you see Miss Truesdale out?”

I barely even had a chance to thank him. He already had his headset back on. “Right,” he was saying. “Right, right. The October puts. Got it, Trip.”

Kimberly waited with me until a down elevator arrived. “Bye now!” she said, with just as much enthusiasm as she’d used to greet me.

I pushed
L
for the lobby, and the elevator began its descent, but this time I wasn’t taking the express. On thirty-nine, a bike messenger got on, still wearing his hat and with his iPod cranked so loud I could identify what was playing (Jay-Z). On thirty-five, we picked up a guy in a pinstripe suit. He smelled
like smoke, and he had a cigarette and lighter in his hand, like he didn’t want to waste a second once he got outside. Then, on thirty-three, the doors slid open and a woman in a trench coat walked in.

I was busy thinking about what I’d learned from Quinn’s dad, and the doors slid shut before the company name on the reception desk could fully register. And fortunately, the woman was occupied with her BlackBerry—her head was down, and her thumbs were busy on the tiny keypad, so I didn’t think she noticed me at all. I slipped behind the guy in the pinstripe suit, just in case, and I made sure to let the woman walk well ahead of me on the way out. This was easy, since my knees were shaking. I actually felt faint, and it wasn’t a delayed reaction to kissing Quinn.

It’s possible I was overreacting, and that it was all a coincidence, but I didn’t think so.

Because the company on the thirty-third floor was Navitaco. And the woman in the trench coat was the same woman I’d seen walking past Prescott, and in Central Park, and, I realized belatedly, in the ladies’ room at
Romeo and Juliet.
Today she was wearing her hair loose again, which was what made me put it together.

Meanwhile, Quinn had assured me he’d told his dad I was Delia Navare, but Hunter had distinctly referred to me as “Miss Truesdale.” And no matter how I tried to tell myself it wasn’t possible, I just couldn’t shake the conviction that Hunter’s 5:30
call had been with Leslie “Trip” Young, the Navitaco CEO and EAROFO director.

But the biggest part of the coincidence didn’t even occur to me until the elevator doors opened on the ground floor. When Carolina had been warning me about a Sagittarius, had she actually been warning me about an archer? Because with his bow and arrow, an archer was a type of hunter.

And the only hunter I knew was Hunter Riley.