EMILY: I’m not sure why you keep expecting me to help you with this, when you can’t even book your own friend as a guest.
ZACK, not looking up: Have you met Mateo?
EMILY, turning to Ishaan: What about Cal? Aren’t you guys buddies now?
ISHAAN: Yeah, but Cal has a complicated relationship with the show.
EMILY: Is that because it only recently acknowledged his existence?
ZACK: Maybe we could try getting hold of Charlie again. （Gives up on his cuffs and pushes his sleeves up.） That boot camp school has to let him use a phone eventually.
ISHAAN: I don’t know, man. The place is hard-core.
EMILY: Or—and I know this is a radical idea, but hear me out—you could talk about something that’s not related to the Coach Kendall case.
ISHAAN, blinking: Why would we do that?
EMILY: Maybe because there’s a whole other world out there? And what’s even left to talk about? It’s been six weeks since he was arrested. Everything is settling down, and people are moving on. I know Ivy is.
ZACK: There’s still a trial to get through. Plus, coming on the show could be cathartic for Ivy. She has a lot of support from our viewers.
ISHAAN: Totally. It would be a lovefest, but not, you know, in a creepy way. In a very boundary-respecting, appropriate way.
EMILY: You’re not selling it. At all.
ISHAAN: Look, here’s the bottom line: don’t give me that “moving on” crap. With a case this strange, people should be worried when things get quiet.
EMILY, arching her brows: And why is that?
ISHAAN: Because it’s the calm before the storm.
IVY
“In conclusion, if such egregiously predatory behavior isn’t punished to the fullest extent possible, then no student in Massachusetts can ever feel safe.”
I lean against Mateo, who’s been sitting beside me on his bed while I read from the letter to the Board of Education that I just wrote on his laptop. “What do you think?” I ask.
He twirls a strand of my hair around his finger. “I think egregiously is kind of a distracting word,” he says. “But otherwise, it sounds great.”
“Really? I thought it was powerful.” I frown at my screen. “How about shockingly?”
“How about you take a break?” Mateo asks. He kisses my temple, then my cheek, and then trails his lips down to my neck. “You’ve been working on that since you got here.”
I resist the urge to melt against him. “I want to get it right,” I say.
“I know,” Mateo murmurs, still kissing my neck. “But you’re not single-handedly responsible for taking Ms. Jamison down, you know. That’s someone else’s job.”
“Sure, except they’re not doing it,” I say, frustrated. It’s the bane of my existence that the woman who tried to kill me two months ago hasn’t even lost her teaching license. “Maybe I should get Aunt Helen involved.”
That’s enough to give Mateo pause. He stops kissing me, making me instantly regret my big mouth. “Aunt Helen? The romance author? Why?”
“She’s friends with the Under Secretary of Education,” I say, closing the laptop and placing it on the end table beside Mateo’s bed.
He blinks. “What, of Massachusetts?”
“No, of the United States. Aunt Helen went to Harvard. She’s connected.” I flop onto my back and stare at his ceiling. “I’m trying to be better about letting go of stuff I can’t control, but it drives me crazy that Lara gets away with everything.”
Mateo stretches out next to me. “Karma will get her eventually,” he says.
“Not soon enough. She probably has drug money stashed all over town while she waits for things to die down.” I roll over on one elbow and raise my eyebrows at Mateo. “And some clueless guy trailing after her like a puppy, doing her dirty work without even realizing it. I bet if you, Cal, and I followed her around for half a day, we’d find out all kinds of stuff.”
Alarm flashes in Mateo’s eyes. “No,” he says instantly.
“Why not? We’re good at that kind of thing!”
“We’re terrible at that kind of thing. If it was up to us, the cops would’ve arrested Dominick Payne.”
“All right, that’s a fair point,” I concede. Turns out that after all our suspicions, Dominick Payne was just a run-of-the-mill struggling artist with poor judgment in business, real estate, and friends. “But we’ve learned a lot since then.”
“Yeah, we’ve learned to mind our own business.” Mateo pulls me closer until our faces are only inches apart. “Ivy, listen. Do not go scorched earth on Ms. Jamison,” he whispers, his dark eyes serious. “She’s not worth it. Okay?”