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  The school secretary returned to the main desk, picked up the letter, then moved toward the principal’s office.

  James smiled. One task down.

  CHAPTER 4

  By third period study hall, James could barely sit still. He had to find out if it had worked. He asked his study hall teacher if he could go to the library, and she wrote out a pass, no questions asked. She didn’t even look at him as he took it from her.

  He practically sprinted to the library. When he got there, he snagged a computer and looked around to make sure the librarian wasn't watching him. He typed in the URL for the contest and then his login and password.

  The words he wanted popped up on the screen.

  TASK 1 COMPLETE

  James sat back and sighed. It was worth it. It had to be worth it. He just needed to ignore the uneasy, awful feeling poking at him. They would find out that this girl didn’t actually cheat and everything would be OK. It wasn’t that big of a deal.

  The screen went blank, and then another timer appeared.

  72:00:00.

  He sat up closer to the computer. He had three days to do the next task. The writing appeared letter by letter:

  Check back at 3:45 for your next task.

  James slid back on his chair and gave a sigh of relief. The first task was done. Not so hard. And he had three whole days for the next one. Hope swelled through his chest. Maybe, just maybe, he could do this.

  A laugh near him caught his attention. A girl and a boy sat together at a table, snickering into their hands. When James heard the name Maiv, he sat up.

  “Did you hear? She was caught cheating. She can’t get the scholarship now.”

  The boy laughed. “Thank God. She gets everything. Little miss freaking perfect. And it turns out she was cheating this whole time!”

  The girl shook her head. “Can you imagine her cheating? I can’t believe she did.”

  The boy shrugged. “I’m just glad she finally got knocked down a peg.”

  The bell rang, but James sat frozen, watching the two walk out of the library.

  Whoever this Maiv was, she suddenly had become real to him. And so had his actions. Whether or not she cheated—things probably weren’t just going to be OK for her.

  James swallowed the bile in his throat.

  *****

  At home, James sat in his room, running his hand over his head. He couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d done. And those students in the library . . . they’d been so pleased. He’d never been that guy. He had never wished bad things on people. Much less done anything to hurt anyone on purpose. Even when someone was being stupid or racist or just cruel to him, which happened more than he’d like to think about. It just wasn’t worth it. And like his grandpa always said, “You never know what someone is going through.” With his parents gone, James completely understood that.

  A fresh wave of shame washed over him when he thought about what his grandpa would think. But he shook it off. James was doing this for him. He was saving his life.

  As if he’d made it happen, his phone alarm went off for 3:45.

  James jumped into the chair and logged in to the website. Like before, words began to appear on the screen as if someone were typing them out right then.

  TASK 2

  Go to Kenwood High School within the next three days. Go to the gym and wait until exactly 3:40. Then go into the girls’ locker room. (It will be empty.) Find locker 37. The padlock combination is 23-45-05. Open the locker, take the backpack inside, and hide it at home. Make sure no one sees you. Take the backpack to your apartment and keep it there. Do not look in it. We will know if you do.

  James sat back in his chair like a strong wind had hit him. This one seemed a little sketchier than just dropping off a note. This was actual stealing.

  He stood up and paced around the very small space of his room.

  Could he actually steal something?

  Something ticked on the computer. He saw that one of his competitors had moved to task 3. He would have to do this next task way before the three-day limit if he wanted to stay in the game. If he wanted to save his grandfather’s life.

  He could steal something. For his grandpa. And anyway, it wasn’t like he was stealing $10 million. He was just stealing a backpack and earning $10 million.

  James almost laughed. Finally he had a job! Just not the kind of job he’d been hoping for. This one was a little more . . . complicated.

  His ringtone made him jerk so hard that he knocked an old soda bottle off his desk. He pulled out his phone and answered the call. It was his aunt.

  “James?” Her voice sounded crackly and far away. “How is he doing?”

  “Not good, Aunt Beth. They say maybe six weeks.” There was quiet on the other end of the line. He suspected his aunt was crying.

  “James, I’m trying my hardest to come home, but I’m stuck in Kenya right now. I’ll call the doctor and see if we can’t at least make him more comfortable.”

  James was proud of his aunt. She’d put herself through school to become a doctor, and now she was in Kenya helping people who needed her. James wanted to follow in her footsteps. But this was the trade-off. She hadn’t been able to take care of James after his parents died. And she was stuck in the middle of a different country when something bad happened. When he needed her. At that moment James would’ve given anything to have someone else around who knew what was going on, what he was going through.

  “James?” Beth’s voice started breaking up.

  “Yeah? I’m still here.”

  “Listen, I can’t hear you, but if you can hear me, I’m going to make it home in the next couple of days here. I have to get my visa sorted and find a pilot who can take me to Nairobi. Sit tight, James. I’ll be there soon.”

  The phone went silent. James thought for a second. Maybe his aunt could come up with some way to get the treatment. Maybe she had doctor friends who could help. Maybe he wouldn’t have to do this contest. If she could make it back in a few days . . .

  Suddenly the phone chimed, telling him he had an email. James turned back to the computer screen and pulled up his email account. Another message from the Benefactor.

  Your aunt can’t help. Only we can help. You have three days for the next task. Do not fail.

  Sweat trickled down James’s spine. He looked at his phone. Could it possibly be bugged? How did they know all these things? He didn’t even know how to check for bugs. How would anyone know if he looked in the bag he was supposed to take? How did they know about Aunt Beth?

  CHAPTER 5

  James shifted from foot to foot. He knew he looked like he was up to something.

  He was up to something.

  He remembered his grandpa’s words, all through his childhood. “Son, being a man means making the right choices. You do that for yourself. At the end of the day, you have to go to sleep knowing who you are. But you are also a young black man, so you have mountains to climb. People expect you to fail. So wouldn’t it be nice to go to sleep knowing you are the man you want to be and you proved them all wrong?”

  James swallowed down the meaning of his grandpa’s words. I’m saving his life, I’m saving his life, I’m saving his life.

  Finally, the bell rang. James checked his watch. 3:25. He took a quick peek in the windows on the building’s lower level, where the gym sat. He couldn’t believe how rich this school was. If he’d known, he would have worn a different pair of jeans. When he saw movement in the halls, he headed to the front doors and walked in.

  He shouldn’t have worried. His clothes looked just like everyone else’s. He’d forgotten that rich people liked to thrift shop for fun.

  He blended in with the other students, following one group after the next. If he was remembering the map from the school’s website, the gym would be just around the corner where he stood. Sure enough, when he turned the corner the gym was right there.

  And so was a girl. He smacked right into her. She reeled backward, l
anding hard on the floor. Her backpack slipped off her shoulder. She dropped her phone, and it skidded away.

  James started to apologize, reaching out to help her up. But the girl didn’t even seem to notice him. She lunged toward the phone. As she snatched it up, James caught a glimpse of the name monogrammed across the phone cover: Ana. She turned around, still on the floor, clutching the phone to her chest. Three other girls walked by and snickered at her. She didn’t even notice.

  James said, “Are you OK?” He got a good look at her now. She had long, dark brown hair and deep dark brown eyes. Her skin was only a few shades lighter than his. He couldn’t help but notice how beautiful she was. His heart skipped a beat.

  “Yeah. Fine.” She stood up fast. James saw her backpack still sitting on the floor behind her. He reached for it, but she snapped it up before he could get there.

  “I got it,” she said, her voice curt and short. Then her face softened, and she managed a weak smile. “Sorry. Have a good day.”

  James watched her walk away down the hall, in the opposite way she had been going.

  An orange-and-green patch on her backpack stood out against the bag’s black cloth. James couldn’t read the whole thing: “Something-Industries.” Clearly a bag from a business. James thought that was strange in this rich school full of designer labels.

  A mystery. Ana. Maybe someday he’d run into her again—less literally.

  James refocused on his mission. It was already 3:30. He had to find the lockers. The girls’ lockers. He sighed. Why’d it have to be the girls’ locker room? Not only would he be a thief, but if someone caught him, he’d be branded a pervert too.

  The map on the website didn’t get too specific, so finding the actual locker rooms turned out to be harder than he thought. He’d just assumed they would be right by the gym. That would make sense, right? Except he took three laps around the seemingly endless hallway surrounding the gym and couldn’t find anything.

  He checked his phone again. 3:36.

  James huffed out in frustration. Just then, he overheard some girls talking as they walked quickly by him.

  “. . . Ms. Albert will be so mad if we’re late. We have to change fast.”

  Trying to make it as smooth as possible, he turned around and followed them up a flight of stairs.

  There sat the girls’ locker room. The gym was so big it had two floors.

  James watched as the girls rushed in. He looked left and right and then bent down to tie his shoe. His whole body shook. He knew he wouldn’t be able to talk his way out of this if he was caught. He never was a very good liar.

  He checked his watch again. 3:40.

  He pushed open the door, listening for voices, rustling, the slam of lockers. All he heard was a drip from a faucet somewhere. The girls must have made it to their practice on time. He tiptoed in, cushioning the door so it wouldn’t make any sound.

  Still shaking, he read the number of the locker in the first row: 110. He had to get to 37, and of course it was on the other side of the locker room. He ducked down, though he wasn’t sure what good that would do. Then he ran to the end of the room, grateful for the nice carpet on the floor. Completely different from his school. At Cleveland, everything was dingy, cold tile.

  Finally, he found the locker. He stood in front of it and took a big breath. He thought of his grandpa lying in the hospital right at this moment. He thought about being alone in the apartment, no parents, no grandpa. And the sadness hit him full force.

  He had to get that money. He had to.

  James was no longer shaking. He twirled the combination and whipped open the door, careful to catch it before it smacked against the other lockers.

  His heart leapt as he saw the backpack: black with the green-and-orange logo, which he could now fully read. Huffmann Industries.

  This was Ana’s backpack.

  CHAPTER 6

  James paced in the hospital corridor, desperate to get to his grandpa. After he’d sneaked out of school with the backpack, he had gotten a call from the hospital. His grandpa had been improving, but he’d fainted as soon as he stood up. Now, his grandpa’s regular oncologist came out to talk to James.

  “Any news on your aunt coming in?”

  James chewed a fingernail and shifted from foot to foot. “She’s trying to make it. She’s stuck in Kenya right now.”

  Dr. Margolies nodded. “Yes. We talked on the phone the other day. We were both hoping to get your grandfather home so we could make him comfortable. But with this new fainting episode . . . well, I just don’t think I can okay it.”

  Once again, James felt fear shoot through him. “Why did he faint?”

  “I suspect low blood pressure.” She added softly, “His body is failing, James. That’s all there is to it. Our job now is to make him as comfortable as possible.”

  James began shifting from foot to foot again. He needed to do something. “But what about that treatment?”

  Dr. Margolies shook her head. “Even if that was . . . on the table for your family . . .” If we could afford it, James translated in his head. “The odds aren’t promising. James, I think you should prepare—”

  James didn’t wait to hear the rest. He walked away from her, took a deep breath, and entered his grandpa’s room. It just couldn’t happen. He would fix this.

  The nurses looked up. His grandpa’s eyes searched the room. “Beth, Jack, you guys need to clean up now.” James started at the sound of his dad’s name. He had never seen his grandpa like this. Clearly, he wasn’t living in the present.

  James turned and left the room almost as fast as he’d walked in. He took the stairs two at a time, his stolen backpack bumping against him.

  He got to the hospital Internet room and slid into a chair. He had to find his next task. He would get through all the tasks faster. Before anyone else. Before anything else could happen to his grandfather. He had to win this contest.

  The computer seemed to take forever to load, but finally, the contest page came up. Panic flooded through him when the counters came up. One of the contestants had gone to Task 4. His own column glowed red on Task 3. A timer came up. 48:00.

  He had two days for the next one. The familiar typing began.

  TASK 3

  Go to Alexus Olsen High School. Spray-paint the following words in red on the low wall that leads to the front entrance. “CB, we know about your brother. His time is running out.”

  James closed the browser and logged off the computer. The time for thinking things through was over. He couldn’t afford to be sorry for stealing Ana’s backpack. He couldn’t afford to worry about some girl who may or may not have cheated. And he couldn’t care less about this CB person’s brother.

  His grandpa was all that mattered. James would graffiti the school tonight.

  *****

  James heard the clink of the spray-paint cans in his backpack. It reminded him of an Edgar Allen Poe story he once read for English class, “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Every clink of the can reminded him that this was the second time in one day he’d be doing something illegal. And, well . . . if he was honest, just wrong.

  He pedaled faster. Riding his bike from East St. Paul all the way over to North Minneapolis was no small trip. And not totally safe either at 1:30 in the morning. Not safe from people in the neighborhoods and not safe from cops.

  After what seemed like hours, he finally arrived at Olson High School. The outside looked a lot like Cleveland High—a little crumbly, definitely old, but not too bad. Nothing like Kenwood, but that was private, so of course it was on another level.

  He parked his bike in the bushes across the street and ducked down. He could see security cameras near the school entrance. He’d expected that. He reached into his backpack and took out the plastic bag that held the spray-paint cans. Then he tucked his backpack under the bush and tried to cover up his bike as well as he could.

  As he sprinted to the wall, the clinking of the cans barely registered over the roaring in
his ears. He didn’t see anyone around, so he dropped the cans with a loud clink and grabbed one. He’d brought two in case one failed.

  Trying to hold the can steady, he wrote in huge letters: CB, we know about your brother. Time is running out.

  The red paint dripped down, making the message creepy. James paused for a second and really looked at the words. What had he just written? Did he just threaten someone’s life?

  Before he could think more about it, he heard movement across the street. James whipped around and saw that someone was standing by his bike. Someone tall and muscular, probably a guy. That was all James could see at this distance. Other than the fact that this person had James’s backpack slung over his shoulder.

  “Hey!” James yelled, sprinting across the street. But before he could get there in time, the guy rode off on James’s bike. James ran faster, but the guy was going downhill. There was no way for James to catch him. James ran all the way to the bottom of the hill. Then he put his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath.

  He looked back at the school. He’d left the paint cans there . . .

  Something caught his attention near the spray-painted words. Some movement or rustling. He felt exposed. Leave the cans—time to get out of here. After all, he was going to have a long walk home.

  James crossed the street and didn’t look back again till he’d put an entire block between him and the awful words he’d just written.

  CHAPTER 7

  James woke up and groaned. His feet had blisters and his legs ached. The three-hour walk home had just about done him in. Last night he’d been too tired to even check the contest website.

  James forced himself to sit up, shut off his alarm clock, then swung out of bed. He’d gotten exactly two hours of sleep. He limped to his computer, pulled up the website, and waited for the next task to appear. Instead the clock said 34:38.

  What? He refreshed the computer.

  34:24.

  He sat back in disbelief. He’d completed the task. He’d done what they’d asked. There couldn’t be anything wrong with the website because the clock was still running. Still, he shut off his computer and rebooted it, waiting for the ancient machine to stop whirring and come back alive.