“Where’s your phone?”

“What?”

“I want to make sure you’re not recording this. Get in the car and take your phone out where I can see it.”

I wanted to punch him.

Troy pushed me off him, opened his door, and slid back into the car. I was at a loss about what to do.

“You deaf?” Troy asked. “Get in.”

I walked back around and got into the front passenger seat of his red sports car.

“Now show me your phone.”

I took it out and put it on the console. He checked it to make sure that I wasn’t taping the conversation. I wasn’t. I should have been, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I had let my anger take over. I needed to calm down.

“Is Randy even a drug dealer?” I asked.

“Oh, that part was true,” Troy said. “Where do you think I got the steroids?”

So there it was. He’d done them. And I had helped him get away with it—me, the dope who claimed that people could change. Ema had said that they couldn’t. Normally I enjoyed irony. Not today.

“I’m going to tell the coaches,” I said.

“And what exactly are you going to tell them, Mickey?”

“That we broke into that shed. That I thought . . .”

Troy just kept smiling at me. “Think it through a minute.”

I said nothing.

“First off,” Troy continued, “you know that the circle has several new security cameras, right?”

“So?”

“So the break-in occurred, according to the police report, at nine fifteen P.M. When they look through the security footage, are they going to see me leaving the circle heading toward the lab?” He flashed the grin. “Or you—by yourself?”

I remembered now that he had been waiting across the street—on the side of the Y. I had wondered why he had done that, but I never . . .

“Second, if they were to check on my alibi, they’d see that I checked into the YMCA for weightlifting at nine o’clock and checked out again a little after ten. You swipe your card to go in and out. It’s all computerized. Oh, they won’t know that I turned off the emergency exit alarm, snuck out a side exit, and met you. They’ll only be able to confirm that I was at the Y the whole time.”

I just looked at him, dumbstruck.

“And, third, there’s this cute little video I made with my camera phone. Don’t worry. I have copies. If need be, I can send it anonymously to the police or even the media.”

It was a short video, just a few seconds—me inside the shed. I remembered now when he came into the room and hit me with the flashlight. I hadn’t realized at the time that his video camera was on.

I sat there, feeling numb.

Troy started up the car and pulled out. Danny Brown and a couple of the other guys walked by. Troy waved at them. I didn’t.

“It will be your word against mine,” Troy said, “and all the physical evidence will back me up. I bet you left fingerprints at the scene, didn’t you? I made sure not to touch anything. I stayed hidden when you ran. The police followed you. They know the suspect was tall. I’m not.”

I tried to strike back. “But I have no motive.”

“Sure you do, Mickey.”

“What?”

“You wanted to be the big hero,” Troy said. “You wanted to get me back on the team. You’re a troubled new kid with no friends and figured this was your way to ingratiate yourself with the popular crowd.”

I shook my head. How could I have not seen this coming? But I knew the answer. Troy, in his own horrible way, had nailed it on the head. I had wanted to fit in. Hadn’t Ema warned me about that? But I wouldn’t listen. I had wanted to be liked. I wanted to be part of the team. I had wanted Troy to be innocent because it would serve my purposes. More than that, I had wanted to be the one to prove him innocent—to be the big hero.

And in the end, Troy was guilty. He had lied and cheated, and now he sat across from me with a big smile on his face.

“So, sure, Mickey, you can tell on me. But think it through. Even if somehow they did believe you—even if they ignored all the physical evidence I have and believed every word you say—well, then what? At best, we both get thrown off the team. You still broke into that storage shed. You can’t escape from that fact.”

“Wow,” I said.

“What?”

“You thought of everything, Troy.”

The grin was back. “I don’t want to brag but, yeah, I did.”

I was trapped. I was searching for an escape route. There was none.

“But it’s not all bad,” Troy said.

I said nothing. He made a right turn.

“We’re teammates now. You saw today how good we can be. We’re going to win the states, and now that you have my blessing, the entire team loves you. We are going to win a lot of games together. We are going to celebrate and go far, and then next year, I’ll be gone to a top-echelon college and you’ll be the new team leader.”

Troy stopped the car in front of Uncle Myron’s house. He leaned across me and opened the door.

“Cheer up, Mickey. It’s all going to be fine. Just be smart about it. See you tomorrow at practice, okay?”

Chapter 45

I texted Ema. No reply. I called her. No answer.

I sat at the kitchen table and stewed. Forget her. Hadn’t she said that she’d be there when I got hurt from this? She’d known, hadn’t she? She tried to make me see what Troy was, but I wouldn’t open my eyes. She knew that I’d have to make a big mistake like this and that it would hurt. How had she put it?

I want to protect you from that pain. But I can’t. I can only tell you that when it hurts, I’ll be there for you.

And then she added, Always.

“So where are you now?” I said out loud.

An hour later, Uncle Myron came home. He saw the expression on my face and said, “What happened?”

I wasn’t allowed to tell him about Abeona. That was part of the rules. Both Lizzie Sobek and Dylan Shaykes had made that crystal clear to me. But I could tell him about Troy. I could tell him about how my wanting to belong to a team had ruined everything.

Uncle Myron listened with great patience and even understanding. When I finished, he asked one simple question: “Do you know what you’re going to do?”

I gave a simple answer: “No.”

“Good,” he said. “You should sleep on it. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say, you should toss and turn on it.”