GREY

As soon as we were seated at Dash's dining room table, Brayden set the shining pot of minestrone on a trivet and passed out a quintet of white bowls. He ladled out the soup with the precision of a true artiste, spooning up his own serving last before taking a seat.

TaKylar could tell we were all waiting, but no one was going to press. As much as it felt like second nature to me, I forced myself to keep from staring at her. I knew she'd start talking eventually, when she was ready.

"...It really is a pretty long story," she said just above a whisper. "You've gotta understand...things at Browning Heights are a lot different than they are here. And up until last semester, Jacquarious and I weren't best friends."

What?

"I mean, our families knew each other, but it's like that for everyone in Browning. Him and DeWayne, though—they were inseparable. I ain't never seen two guys as thick as thieves as they was." Her breath hitched. "Sorry, I meant...they were um...really close. But then..." She rocked her head softly, thumbing at her eyelids. "Then Zaja happened."

"Zaja?" Brayden asked.

"Zaja Loughlin." TaKylar nodded. "She started dating DeWayne last fall."

"I'm guessing she didn't get along with Jacquarious," Cody said.

"Just the opposite, actually," TaKylar mused. "She loved him. Maybe a little too much. She even tried kissing him at her birthday party."

Yikes.

"But then, DeWayne found out about her...extracurriculars." TaKylar's eyes flicked toward me.

I grimaced. "The drugs."

"And even that was just the tip of the iceberg." TaKylar twirled her braids. "The night of the basketball team's semi-finals, the power went out. They thought it was just a problem with the school—old building, old circuits. But DeWayne...he had a nosebleed. Had to swap out for another guy named Montrelle. Except Montrelle had a nosebleed too."

"That's...really weird," Cody propped his head on his hands. "Two nosebleeds in a single night?"

"Yeah. And it was even worse that talent scouts were there that night. Not like it mattered for long." She shuddered in her seat. "The lights went out again, and somebody shot Montrelle in the head. All the guys ran; the audience lost it; and Jacquarious...he tried to hide."

"Hide?" Brayden asked. "Where?"

"A supply closet," TaKylar winced. "But he wasn't the only one. One of the sports analysts was a guy from the paper—the one Jacquarious works for now. But the guy wasn't himself. He'd been shooting up before, and he was absolutely toasted. He came across Montrelle's body and thought he just needed somebody wake him up. By the time he figured it out, blood was all over him. And by the time he found Jacquarious, he was completely cooked. He crawled all over him and held him there until the cops finally found the two of them." She shook her head. "I guess they didn't recognize the last name Whelan, 'cause they threatened to give Jacquarious the death penalty if he didn't 'confess' to what he did."

"They really thought he killed his own teammate?" Grey asked.

She thrummed her polished fingernails on the tabletop. "I don't know. But they sure grilled him like they did. And that was just about the worst thing they could've done." Her eyes snapped closed. "Turns out, they were looking for one of Zaja's bricks. But they didn't think it was her—no way could some girl thin as a wire be running drugs through Browning. It had to be Jacquarious...or some other guy he knew."

That's crazy. I gulped hard.

"They didn't count on Mrs. Afryka, though. She tricked the cops into following Jacquarious, then recorded them trying to question him without her present. She sued the entire department, almost forced them to close down. And Zaja was still running drugs the whole time." TaKylar tinkled a silver spoon against her bowl of minestrone. "Jacquarious pieced it all together; he figured out how Zaja was moving the bricks so fast. But DeWayne didn't want him to say anything, especially since the cops were dropping their case. And...that's where I came in. I could tell they were starting to tear our community apart. I tried to convince Zaja to stop, but she wouldn't—and DeWayne started helping her."

I blinked. "Wait, what?"

"You weren't kidding," Brayden said. "This really is a long story."

"Complicated for sure," Cody added. "But what I don't get is why DeWayne would write a poem like that about Jacquarious. Even if they disagreed about the drugs, why throw him under the bus like that?"

TaKylar hesitated. "Because of Mrs. Afryka—she found out what was going on, and she went ballistic on DeWayne's dad, Mr. Devon. The way she saw it, Montrelle getting shot at that game was Zaja's fault for running drugs through Browning. Zaja kept saying there was more to it, way more going on behind the scenes. But she did admit to selling that night...to Montrelle and to the sports guy from the paper."

"So Montrelle's nosebleed..." I mused. "It was—"

"No one knew for sure," TaKylar said. "But everyone who knows about Zaja thinks the drugs might've had something to do with it. And they definitely made that sports reporter lose his mind and crawl all over Jacquarious."

"I'm...starting to get why his mom's so protective," Cody mumbled. "He didn't do anything, and some druggie and her boyfriend kept pressuring him to keep quiet. Not to mention those idiot cops."

TaKylar nodded. "After Mrs. Afryka threatened Mr. Devon, DeWayne stopped talking to Jacquarious. A few weeks later, we wrote poems for our composition class. Jacquarious's was this sweet little page of...two-liners? Sorry, I don't know the term—"

"Couplets," Cody said. "Wow, I guess he really was trying to offer an olive branch. Couplets tend to be really concise and stripped back. Sounds like he just wanted to reconcile."

"Well, DeWayne didn't," TaKylar continued. "His poem was so harsh that our teacher ordered him to rewrite it. She scrubbed it from the submission page, but lots of kids from our school used their student IDs to keep viewing older versions of the page. I even heard some guy in drama class printed out copies and hid it all around the school."

"All that over a poem?" Brayden asked.

"It got...really dark," TaKylar said.

"Well, are any copies of it still around?" I scooted my seat closer to her. "Maybe if we could take a look—"

"Not possible," she cut in. "They canceled our school's subscription to the web portal two weeks after DeWayne's submission, and they cleared out all the data. The whole thing died down after a while. If it hadn't been for US & The World, I honestly wouldn't even be able to tell you what the poem said. But the way it felt...the rage...that's something you never forget."

"So what happened to Zaja in all of this?" Dash asked. "Did she have anything to say about DeWayne and Jacquarious's little fallout?"

"That's...where things get weird. She broke up with DeWayne the day after he wrote the poem. When I tried to find out why, she told me to stay away—that things were getting 'dangerous.' And then, at his funeral...that guy showed up and tried to kill her." TaKylar shivered.

"Well, whatever's going on, Zaja's right about one thing," I mused. "There's way more than just running drugs going on behind the scenes. Not like knowing'll do us any good if she won't even talk—"

The zing of TaKylar's phone cut me off mid-sentence. I gasped at the name flashing across the screen:

GAVIN LONGCHAMP

"Gavin?" TaKylar tapped on the speakerphone. "What's going on? Did something happen at the station?"

"Are you still with Grey and the others?"

"Yeah, why—?"

Turn on the news," he ordered. "Now."

Dash stood from the table and grabbed the remote from a wireframe etagere hanging off the wall. "Which channel?"

Officer Longchamp's voice grew grave. "Any of them. There's only one story running."

Dash pressed the remote, the living room's plasma screen monitor glowing to life in high definition, then flipped the channels until a red-and-white banner split the screen.

"—what US & The World have now confirmed is another message from the killer, stating that he's, quote, 'finished fishing and tired of trying.' This coming alongside a packet of blood confirmed to have belonged to the deceased Tyler Berkin that was left in the mail room at US & The World this morning. The final line of the killer's message issued an ultimatum to the paper—release the identity of pseudonymous editorialist or face the deaths of more of its own journalists. A chilling threat that Goldengate police chief Damon Mercer has reportedly responded to by commissioning a task force to—"

Dash pressed mute, turning back to all of us.

"Gavin," TaKylar mused through the phone. "Does Jacquarious know?"

"I tried calling, but his mom won't answer. And I can't exactly tell the chief about...you know."

"This doesn't make any sense. Whoever the killer was must've seen Jacquarious there last night, right?"

"He's covering his bets," I mused.

TaKylar twisted to me. "What?"

"Think about it. If he knows the paper well, he knows how much those reporters keep their secrets close to the vest. And if he doesn't, then at the very least, either Jacquarious or August could be Whiteface. If he guesses wrong or they somehow manage to trap him, he's finished. But by making threats like this, he basically turns the entire paper on Whiteface; he makes them do the work for him."

"Right on the money," Officer Longchamp's voice rode a static wave. "And that's why I need you. All of you."

"Huh?" Brayden asked. "What do you mean, Officer?"

"Jacquarious is still locked away inside his house recovering. And I'm guessing August isn't doing too great either. That means the killer won't be expecting another Whiteface article."

"Yeah, true." I scratched the side of my head. "Probably not, but..."

"That's where you guys come in," Officer Longchamp said. "I need you to write for him. Write another article. Write two. Maybe even three. We need to make the killer think Whiteface wasn't even at the paper last night—that he's alive and well, and not the least bit flustered by all this. I've already cleared it with Regina, and she agrees; we can't let anyone figure out it's Jacquarious."

"Okay, but...we're not writers," TaKylar sighed.

"Well, most of us aren't," I added, nudging Cody. "Jacquarious may be Whiteface, but we've still got the next T.S. Eliot on our side."

"Yeah," Brayden said. "This guy can write with the best of 'em."

"T.S. Eliot?" Officer Longchamp asked.

Cody chuckled. "It's a long story. Just tell us how many words you need. Bottom line—we'll make it work."