The Bad Kid by Sarah Lariviere

Author:Sarah Lariviere
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

PHIL

When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

—Sherlock Holmes, detective from a book

I jogged to the subway. On the stairs a smiley lady shoved a flyer at me—I don’t think I need to mention whose face was on it, rhyming the day away. I stopped. “Where did you get this?” I asked. The lady’s voice sounded like electronic chimes. “I’m a collector,” she said. “Would you like another?” She pulled a fistful of flyers out of a plump plastic bag. A quick glance told me they were all on different topics—going back to college, learning to speak Arabic—and that she’d been ripping them off doors and poles for quite some time. “No thanks, lady,” I said. She chimed, “Happy ­travels!” I handed the Alma flyer to the half-naked guy who dances on the platform and jumped on the train. As the doors closed, I heard him yell, “Hoo-hoo! Let’s make it ten million . . .”

The whole ride I listened to this standing-up couple have an argument about which one of them was getting cheated on by the other one. The girl had spiked hair and the guy had round glasses, and they were both carrying large cups of coffee.

“Every time I turn around, you’re texting somebody.”

“Why are you so paranoid?”

“You aren’t the same person you used to be.”

“What’s going on with you these days?”

This conversation kept up all the way to Manhattan. I got madder and madder. How could people who were supposed to be tight still have no clue what each other was doing? I wondered if spiked hair and round glasses were both cheating, or if neither of them was. I wondered if they even liked each other.

When I got off the N train, the arguing couple did too. I jogged through the dark tunnel and took the stairs to the street two at a time to try to get away from them. At street level the light broke. As I got closer to Guillaume’s, I noticed I was starving. I hadn’t eaten breakfast. And . . .

Phil wasn’t gonna be at the restaurant. Nobody was.

It was Sunday morning.

As I stood on Broadway, with the crowd flowing around me, my head felt blurry. My whole head. I pulled out my phone and made a call.

“Can’t talk,” said Money as he hung up on me.

The sun had cranked up the volume to full blast. The reflections from the skyscrapers were too loud, too harsh. I crossed the street to get in the shade. Five seconds later I got a text.

MONEYMAN: yo sorry claude lala sittin here

ME: so?

MONEYMAN: lala doesn’t know girl not real

ME: so?

MONEYMAN: don’t want 2 hurt feelings

ME: why hurt feelings?

MONEYMAN: too sad

ME: ?

There was a long pause.

MONEYMAN: lala writes alma long emails

ME: what?

MONEYMAN: daily

MONEYMAN: loooooong emails

MONEYMAN: personal stuff

I stared at my phone.

ME: does alma write back?

MONEYMAN: yeah, but she keeps it vague

I wanted to grab a stranger by the collar and yell, “Do you have any idea how insane this

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