The Doubt Factory

  “You worried about the Calc test?” Cynthia asked.

  “Actually, I was wondering how much rat poop they’re going to have to clean up. That was a hell of a lot of rats.”

  “What do you think the ‘2.0’ means?” Cynthia wondered.

  Alix shrugged, pretending nonchalance. “Who knows? My dad says it’s just some guy who likes to vandalize things.”

  “I don’t know,” Cynthia said doubtfully. “That’s an awful lot of trouble to go to just to paint some windows.”

  “And to set up all that equipment,” Derek added. “That guy had to be in there half the night aiming all those water guns and then filling them with paint and then setting up some kind of system to make them shoot like that.”

  “And don’t forget the rats,” Cynthia said. “That’s a hell of a lot of work to go to if it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I don’t care what it means,” Sophie said. “I’m just glad to have a free day. I’m not ready for the Calc test.”

  “Free days, all around,” Cynthia declared. “At least we can thank 2.0 for that.”

  “Says the one person who doesn’t actually need an extra day to prep,” Derek said.

  “Don’t blame me for being efficient. Every time I see you ‘studying,’ you’re napping in the back of the library.”

  “That was only once, and it was because I stayed up all night trying to beat your curve,” Derek said.

  Cynthia smirked. “You sound frustrated.”

  “He’s not used to being second math nerd,” Alix said.

  “He probably shouldn’t sleep so much, then.”

  “It was one time!” Derek protested. “And I wasn’t asleep for more than ten minutes.”

  “But you were snoring,” Sophie said. “I’ve got a recording.”

  “It was one time.”

  “It was kind of sweet,” Cynthia said. “I didn’t know someone could harmonize his own snoring like that.”

  Derek gave up. “You know what? I’m just saying it would have been nice to see you flounder for a semester or two before you started kicking my butt.”

  Everyone laughed at that. When Cynthia had come to Seitz at the beginning of the year, she’d entered into the college-prep environment with an aplomb that had left Alix writhing with envy. It would have been easy to hate the new girl for her brilliance—except that Cynthia had also turned out to be almost ridiculously considerate. The girl liked helping her fellow students in a way that was rare in Seitz’s übercompetitive-but-pretending-not-to-be environment, and she’d become Alix’s secret study weapon on more than one occasion. But still, most new students did at least have the common decency to flounder for a semester or two before they settled into the Seitz curriculum.

  They continued trudging across town, headed for the leafy neighborhoods on the far side of town where property lots got larger and houses stepped farther and farther back from the road.

  The sun was hot. Alix could feel herself starting to sweat. They all peeled off their blazers, but it didn’t help much. Derek was dripping by the time he separated for his own home, and everyone else wasn’t in much better shape. Annoyingly, Cynthia was barely sheened.

  “See? You’re unnatural,” Derek complained as he departed up the cobblestone drive to his house. “You don’t even sweat.”

  Cynthia laughed. “I don’t sweat Calc, that’s for sure.”

  “He likes you,” Sophie said when he was gone. “You shouldn’t rub it in so much.”

  “He needs it,” Cynthia said. “If he spent half as much time studying as he does talking about studying, he’d be kicking my ass.”

  The girls continued to Alix’s house, where she was surprised to find Dad working, talking on his cell.

  “—tell Owens that we’ve already been down that road. Widening the test population is a dead end—”

  He turned and waved at Alix, and smiled at Cynthia and Sophie, then cupped his hand over the phone. “What are you girls doing home?”

  “Long story,” Alix said as she tossed her blazer over the back of a kitchen stool.

  She was about to tell him more, but he was already back to his phone conversation and absently waving her off. “That’s what George is trying to tell you! The Kimball-Geier numbers don’t add up.…” He headed back into his office.

  “Voice-mail children,” Sophie said. “Leave a message and description of your crisis, and we’ll get back to you as soon as we’re done ruling the universe.”

  “He’s probably been on his phone all morning,” Alix said, trying not to feel annoyed and neglected as Dad pushed his office door halfway shut. She caught a glimpse of George Saamsi, her father’s business partner, through the doorway gap. His feet were kicked up on the desk as he typed away on a little Sony laptop. He smiled at Alix and waved.

  Alix had known George for most of her life, an extrafamilial uncle who attended birthdays and holidays with steady reliability. George had what he termed a “robust” belly, and his head was almost completely bald, but he made up for the lack of hair with a thick salt-and-pepper beard that made him look a little like Santa Claus. The addition of gold-rimmed spectacles didn’t do much to dispel the illusion.

  Alix went over to the office and closed the door the rest of way, then went and got Diet Cokes out of the fridge while Cynthia found glasses and filled them with ice from the icemaker. Alix poured, watching the foam rise and froth. She pressed the cold glass to her cheek.

  “So who’s Santa Claus?” Cynthia asked as she took a sip.

  Alix and Sophie cracked up. Alix tried to shush her. “It’s just George. He works with my dad.”

  “I want to stick a corncob pipe in his mouth,” Cynthia said.

  “That’s what I thought, too, the first time I saw him,” Sophie said.

  “Sophie had a crush on him when we were in eighth grade,” Alix explained.

  “Ew! I did not!” Sophie punched her arm, but she was laughing as she protested.

  Cynthia was laughing, too. “He’s, um, furry.” Which sent them into more suppressed fits of laughter.

  Alix made frantic shushing sounds. “Let’s go outside,” she said. “I don’t want to bother them.”

  She led her friends out back by the pool. They dragged their aching feet out of school uniform–approved shoes and peeled off kneesocks.

  “We should have brought swimsuits,” Cynthia commented as she rubbed her calves where the kneesocks had dug in. She was staring longingly at the cool waters of the pool.

  “We could go out to the beach this weekend,” Sophie suggested. “It’s hot enough.”

  “We could go now if the cops didn’t have our cars impounded,” Alix said.

  “They better not mess up the paint on mine—” Sophie broke off as her phone rang. She checked the caller. “Shit. It’s my mom. I bet she finally heard about the school.”

  “Voice-mail her,” Alix suggested. “Strike a blow for our generation.”

  Sophie grinned, but she answered anyway. Sure enough, as soon as she took the call, Alix could hear Sophie’s mom start haranguing her. Sophie made a face as she hung up.

  “Jeez,” she said. “It’s like she thinks this is Sandy Hook all over again.” She frowned thoughtfully at the phone. “I probably shouldn’t have ignored her first three calls.”

  Alix and Cynthia cracked up. With a smirk, Sophie headed out, leaving just the two of them. “I’ll bet everyone’s parents are freaking by tonight,” Cynthia observed as she lay back on a lounge chair.

  “Yours won’t be?”

  “Are you kidding?” she said with her eyes closed. “They’re going to kill me for not coming straight home.” She made a face. “This 2.0 thing is going to make my life miserable. Next thing I know, they’re going to want to ship me to Finland.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Best schools in the world, my dad keeps saying. Free, too. And no school shootings.”

  “This wasn’t a shooting,” Alix protested. She was surpr
ised to find that she felt oddly defensive about the way Cynthia characterized the morning.

  Cynthia glanced over. “So what was it, smart girl?”

  “A prank?”

  “A prank that destroyed the science building.”

  “It didn’t blow it up.”

  “No.” Cynthia turned serious. “But I’d say it was a little more than a prank.”

  Alix was about to answer, but she was interrupted by her father’s voice rising from his office. He didn’t normally sound angry, but now his voice rose and fell in sharp bursts.

  “Wow,” Cynthia said. “He sounds ticked off.”

  “Work,” Alix said. “I guess it’s intense.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever talked to him,” Cynthia said.

  “I’ll introduce you—” Her father’s rising voice interrupted, and Alix grimaced. “Some other time.”

  “Yeah.” Cynthia made a face. “Definitely.”

  Alix felt a little embarrassed. She’d had Cynthia over to the house only a few times since they’d become friends, and here Dad was, going berserk.

  “He’s not normally like this.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You should see my dad when work’s going badly for him. He mopes around the house and snaps at everyone, and then we all have to act like he’s still the little emperor that he was back when he was a kid in Shanghai. That’s the problem with only kids from China. They’ve got all these relatives, and there’s only one kid for them to focus on. Makes them totally spoiled.”

  “But you’re an only child,” Alix pointed out.

  Cynthia made a face of mock horror. “But I’m a girl! I could never be a little emperor.”

  Once again, Alix’s father’s voice interrupted them. Alix sighed. Cynthia rolled her eyes. “Seriously. Don’t worry about it.”

  Alix was reminded again of why she liked Cynthia. Most of the other girls at school would have listened to her father and then turned it into some kind of gossip, but Cynthia wasn’t interested in those games at all.

  Alix’s mother called Cynthia “wonderfully mature,” which sounded suspiciously like “good role model” to Alix. She would have never invited Cynthia over again just for that, except Cynthia had heard the same note of approval in Mom’s voice and turned it into a joke. Then she invited Alix out for a “Wonderfully Mature” evening of getting drunk in a bar with a couple of fake IDs that she’d scammed off someone.

  Alix’s father’s voice got louder, then launched into a tirade that was impossible to ignore.

  Cynthia glanced again toward the office window. “What’s he do, anyway?”

  “He’s a product consultant.”

  Cynthia looked confused. Alix explained. “It’s sort of a fancy name for a PR flack. Public relations. Press releases. That kind of thing.”

  “Oh. Sure,” Cynthia said. “Like for Coke or something?”

  “For lots of companies. He’s not allowed to say who.”

  “Is that, like, company policy?”

  “Well,” Alix said with a laugh, “since it’s his company, it’s his policy. He started out working for Hill and Knowlton, but now he’s got his own company. Banks Strategy Partners. BSP.” Alix couldn’t help but feel a little proud of him. “When he started, it was just him and George. Now they’ve got offices in New York and DC, and he’s got more than a hundred people working for him.”

  “Yeah. I guessed it was pretty successful,” Cynthia said, eyeing Alix’s house and pool and the grounds beyond.

  Alix flushed, suddenly embarrassed at the mention of money.

  “Well,” she said, “he works hard.”

  She shut up, not sure what else she wanted to say or why she suddenly felt embarrassed. It wasn’t like they were the richest people in Haverport. They weren’t rolling in it. It wasn’t like they were some hedge fund family or anything like that. Sure, they weren’t poor—Mom and Dad reminded her and Jonah of that whenever they tried to pull a poor-me-I’m-so-deprived complaint. This was normally followed by a reminder to Alix that although they’d pay for her college, they didn’t believe in people who didn’t build their own lives. Which was really code to say that they weren’t going to let Alix turn into one of those Seitz alums who went off to “find herself” in the Med and wound up drinking absinthe and doing lines of coke on the back of a yacht off the coast of Barcelona.… Alix’s family had money, sure, but it felt a little lame for Cynthia to bring it up.

  “I mean, I guess it’s a lot, but he works a ton. I mean, he’s hardly here most of the week.…” She trailed off, trying not to show how uncomfortable she felt.

  Cynthia read her loud and clear, and immediately backtracked. “I didn’t say he—” Cynthia broke off. “Sorry. I guess I’m still getting used to this place. Seitz is…”

  “Prison?” Alix cracked, trying to change the subject.

  “Weird. About money. And status. I don’t know. Before I moved here…” She trailed off. “It was different, that’s all. My dad was the richest person in town. People noticed.” She shrugged. “And you couldn’t really hide it, I guess. Anyway, we just talk about money in my family. It’s a Chinese thing. I didn’t mean to…” She threw up her hands and grinned helplessly. “Never mind. Whatever.”

  “Your dad does something in tech, right?”

  “Yeah. It’s this dot-com thing. I don’t get most of it. I guess Google uses whatever he does. Some kind of data mining.”

  Cynthia was fairly private about what her family life was like. She’d said her mom and dad were real first-generation Chinese, fresh off the boat, and their English wasn’t that good, so it would be pointless and weird for Alix to meet them. But it did make Alix curious.

  Alix’s dad’s voice rose again. It was odd to have him in the house in the middle of the day. Normally, he worked in the city, or down in DC and came home on weekends. Everything felt surreal today. Alix could still remember the stranger pulling her close, whispering in her ear.…

  “What am I supposed to ask Dad?” Alix muttered.

  Cynthia glanced over, surprised. “What did you just say?”

  Alix flinched, not realizing she’d spoken out loud. Part of her still wanted to keep what had happened between her and the stranger to herself.

  He’d pulled her close and spoken to her. Said the whole prank was for her. And then the smoke had enveloped them, and he’d disappeared.

  When she thought about it, it was kind of romantic, in a hot stalker kind of way.

  You are one fucked-up bitch, Alix thought.

  “What are you talking about?” Cynthia pressed, curious now.

  Alix shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

  Cynthia was too smart to be fooled. “Riiiight.”

  “Okay.” Alix leaned closer and lowered her voice. “But you can’t tell anyone.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Swear it.”

  Cynthia looked exasperated. “I pinkie-swear it. Come on, Alix. Give.”

  “I still don’t…” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m still not sure what I should do. I want to think about it, still.”

  “About…?” Cynthia was clearly dying for the details.

  “You remember the guy who slugged Mr. Mulroy yesterday?”

  “Yeah.”

  Alix took a breath. “He talked to me.”

  Cynthia gave a funny squeak of shock. “Talked to you? When? How?”

  “Right when he splattered Widener Hall. He was in the crowd with us.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. I would have seen him.”

  “He wasn’t dressed like before. He looked more like a cop. He was right behind me. He was whispering in my ear. He had me by the shoulders and he was whispering in my ear.”

  “He touched you?”

  “What?” Alix laughed nervously. “No! Not like that. He was just holding my shoulders.” Holding them so hard that I can still feel his fingers. “It wasn’t creepy,” Alix said, not sure whom she was trying to convince.

>   “You weren’t scared?”

  “No.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  But it was true. In the moment, she really hadn’t been scared. She’d been mad at the guy for screwing with her head. But when he walked away, she’d followed him. If she’d been afraid, she definitely wouldn’t have done that.

  So why weren’t you afraid?

  Looking at it from the outside, of course it was scary. Some stranger coming up and grabbing her. The way he’d materialized behind her and then come in so close. His breath warm as he spoke in her ear.

  Confident.

  In control.

  Watch this. This is for you.

  Telling her to watch, to see what he had in store. He’d been closer to her than anyone except Toby Welles when she’d had him up in her room and her mother had left for another Pilates class.

  Except this guy had been a total stranger.

  So why hadn’t she tried to get away? Or push him off? Why hadn’t she done any of the things she’d learned in the self-defense classes that Dad had made her take in eighth grade? Even later, when they’d fought in the smoke, she realized she could have fought harder. She could have screamed for help.

  But she hadn’t.

  “He wasn’t creeping on me,” Alix said slowly. “It wasn’t like when Alan tries to get a peek up your skirt, or gives you the eye at lunch. It didn’t feel like he was creeping on me. He was just talking.”

  And looking at me. And holding me.

  Alix was suddenly afraid that she was blushing and that Cynthia might read her thoughts.

  “He knew my name,” Alix said.

  “What?” Cynthia looked even more horrified. “How would he know that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Cynthia threw up her hands in exasperation. “I’m sorry, girl. That’s some weird shit. You’re deep in stalker territory.”

  “I know, I know.” Alix shook her head. “But the weird thing was that he wasn’t acting stalker-y. He just told me to watch the prank.” She deliberately left out the part where she’d chased after him and he’d grabbed her and she’d bitten him. That just complicated the whole story.

  “He told you to watch it? You mean, while he felt you up?”