Double Helix Read Free Page A

head. I could never understand how it was that Viv could genuinely believe all would be for the best in the end. It wasn’t like she was the kind of fool who went around thinking everything was always wonderful. I’d known that about her ever since that one day back in fifth grade, when we were both eleven.
    I’d entered the boys’ room ten minutes before Scott Eisenstadt, Jake Fitzhugh, and Mike Wynne were due—the news was all over school—to drag Asa Barnes in so they could beat the crap out of him and hold his head in the toilet and . . . well, who knows. I was big and strong even then, and I had - every intention of stopping this nastiness toward Asa for good. But there would be an unholy mess of denials and counter-accusations and lies and suspensions and parental interference ahead, and I was not looking forward to it. I just didn’t see another way.
    Viv did, though. I found she had occupied the boys’ room ahead of me. She was standing on a toilet, artfully hidden by the stall’s carefully ajar door, with a scared but grim look on her face and a video camera in her hands.
    We each knew instantly what the other was doing. It was the first time I saw how beautiful Vivian Fadiman is when she smiles directly at you.
    She lifted her camera slightly, her brows quirking in a question.
    I said, “New plan. I’ll go back out, and after they get here, I’ll give you exactly a minute and a half to get some good footage. Make sure you get sound, too. Then I’ll interrupt. And if you need me here earlier, scream and I’ll come.”
    She nodded. The rescue mission—our rescue mission—proceeded exactly as if we were undercover agents who’d worked together forever. And even though we didn’t become friends then, there was always my knowledge that Viv was . . . well, was the girl who’d figured out how to save Asa Barnes from hell, and then did it.
    Maybe, I thought now, that long-ago incident was one reason why Viv believed things always ended well. Maybe, for her, the universe had always proved trustworthy.
    If that was the case, then I hoped she would never know the truth.
    I crossed Memorial Drive, heading away from the river, now only a few blocks from home. I decided that as soon as I got my first paycheck, I would take Viv to the most elegant restaurant in Boston. And I would buy flowers for my mother’s room at the nursing home. She loved—had loved—irises, yellow roses, and some other flowers I didn’t know the names of but might recognize at the florist’s. I would order a new arrangement to be delivered every week.
    I could afford it. They were going to pay me $18 an hour. That turned into about $2,000 a month, after taxes and deductions.
    When I compared it with my current after-school minimum-wage job running backups for a local computer company, it seemed a dizzying fortune. I could help out with the bills—I’d force my father to let me help. And maybe there’d be money left over. Maybe—
    I indulged in fantasies about renting an apartment of my own. I never had and never would bring Viv to the apartment I shared with my father. And while Viv’s mother was great—never knocked or came into Viv’s room when we were in there with the door closed—well, it would be better to have a private place of our own. Obviously.
    On the corner of my street, I stopped in a neighborhood grocerette, bought ramen noodles, apples, cereal, eggs, milk, barbecued corn nuts, and the local paper, and scanned the newspaper’s rental listings right there in the grocery. That put a firm end to the apartment fantasy. I’d known before, anyway, because of what my father paid each month for our tiny two-bedroom. Even a studio apartment would eat up more than half my salary . . . and there were more important things to spend the money on, and ways to arrange it myself, too, if my father was a stiff-necked