Page 88 of For Your Own Good

Hell, if it were anyone else, he’d believe it.

“No deal,” he says to Ezekiel. “I’m not talking to anyone.”

54

WHILE EZEKIEL GOESout to talk to his parents, Zach slips out the side door and leaves the house. He turns off the GPS in his car, takes the chip out of his new phone, and drives straight to Target to pick up a cheap tablet. For cash. He won’t keep it in his room, either, just in case the police search it, so he’ll put it in the pool house. No one’s using it this time of year anyway.

Half an hour later, he’s at Starbucks to do some research that can’t be connected back to him.

As he waits for his triple-shot Venti Americano, Zach realizes that no one knows where he is and no one can find him. It might be the first time in his life that’s happened. Strange. No one peering over his shoulder. No one watching him. No one checking to see what he’s up to.

He likes it. For the first time, he feels free.

That reminds him of another Ward-ism, something he always thought was stupid. It was the kind of saying that belonged on a poster.

Money isn’t the point. Freedom is the point.

His dad was right about so many things. If only Zach had believed him from the start, he wouldn’t be stuck between a felony and a betrayal. Thinking about that doesn’t make him feel very free anymore.

When his coffee is ready, he sits down and goes to work on the internet search:

Poisonous plants that cause instant or near-instant death

A SECOND PERSON.

Teddy can’t believe this is happening. He especially can’t believe everyone is saying the second person is Zach Ward.

Has to be, they say.

He was just arrested the other day, they say.

Who else would it be, they say.

Teddy is sitting out on his back porch, in the freezing cold. Although he’s wearing a jacket, hat, and gloves, he can still feel it.

He takes a deep breath of frigid air and can see it as he exhales. Again. Again. He watches his cold breath, and it’s almost comfortable. As a kid, he used to do the same thing, when he stood out in the cold, waiting for the bus. One winter, when he was nine, the furnace in the house broke and there was no money to fix it. He could see his breath inside. Sometimes, he’d pretended to hold a cigarette like he was smoking.

He can hear his mom, telling him being cold is just a state of mind. She used to wrap him up in blankets and tell him to pretend he was on a beach, basking in the sun. Sometimes, he was so cold, it hurt.

Now that he’s an adult and all bundled up, the cold no longer hurts. It feels good. And hopefully, it will kill the worms rumbling in his stomach.

That’s how sick he is about this. How awful he feels. All he wanted to do was help Courtney get out, and nowtwostudents are implicated in the murders.

How can an entire police department screw up so badly?

More importantly, why does Teddy have to fixeverything?

Unbelievable.

There’s a way out of this, because there’s always a way. He just has to figure out what it is. It would help if he were surrounded by people who were a little more intelligent. Since they aren’t, he’s going to have to be very clear about what he does and how he does it.

Kindergarten clear, as teachers like to say.

It’s going to take some work. Good thing Teddy’s not afraid of that, not like some people. Fallon, for example. If she put more work into herself, she might not be so angry at him.

Her time will come, though. For the moment, the Fallon problem has to come second. Right now, he’s got to save his current students.

But it won’t be easy with all those new cameras at the school.