Tam finally looked up. You took the paper she’d been holding and pretended to read it, blessedly oblivious to what it actually said. She was too stunned, too confused, to even try to get it back from you.
“Wally, what’s going on?” she asked. Her voice was so quiet and sad. He looked wounded by the sound of it. “Were all of these . . . were they all you?”
“We’re not criminals,” Wally said.
“Really?” I cried. “Then what do you call it? You’re just doing it for fun?”
“No,” Francis insisted, aghast, but I was too angry to stop.
“Or to make yourself feel tough? Or for money? Or—”
“I owe it to Wally, okay?” he finally shouted. “It’s only a favor!”
“A favor? What kind of a favor could he possibly have done for you that would be worth you committing crimes?” I shouted.
“I’m trying to protect the town,” Wally stammered. “Our project depends on it staying a secret until we finish. I thought if I gathered as many as I could find—”
“Gathered?” I repeated mockingly. “You call this ‘gathering’？ I don’t think that’s what your victims would call it!”
“No one even cares about these maps,” he tried to argue, but I cut him off, still yelling.
“You’re breaking in to people’s businesses and homes, Wally!”
“But we’re not taking their valuables! We leave everything else!”
“Are you kidding me right now? You could go to jail. And now you’ve drawn Francis into it!”
“It was his choice!” he cried, his voice cracking slightly at such volume. Wally had seen the rest of us argue plenty, especially toward the end of any major project, but he was always a bystander, always waiting on the sideline for our tempers to die down before he offered up any of his suggestions. He wasn’t used to the anger being aimed directly at him.
I knew I could make him crumble.
“If he owes you, it doesn’t sound like his choice!” I snapped back. “It sounds like you coerced him into this! Are you trying to blackmail him, Wally?”
“No,” Wally pleaded, shaking his head. “It wasn’t like that!”
“What was it like, then? What do you think you have on him that would be worth this?”
“Romi, please,” Francis said, his voice tense, desperate. “Just leave it.”
“I’m not leaving it. I want to know what the hell is going on!”
Wally was cowering before me, miserable, terrified. I had grabbed his arm, clutching so tight his skin was turning white under my fingers, so he couldn’t get away from me. “Please. Francis doesn’t have to come anymore,” he tried to promise me, but I shouted over him.
“It’s too late! You already dragged him into this. I want to know why!”
“I just . . . I saw something I shouldn’t have!”
“Romi, stop!” Francis yelled, looking panicked.
I slapped Wally in the face. “What did you see, Wally?”
“Romi, stop!” Tam shouted, horrified.
But I did it again. “What did you see?” I slapped him a third time, so hard the others cried out. “What could be so horrible that he would agree to—”
“He cheated on you,” Wally moaned, his eyes wild. He looked like he was going to faint. The words lingered as he repeated them, like a horrible, unconscious chant. “He cheated on you.”