“The overwhelming majority of bank robbers are white males. That takes you and me off a lot of suspect lists.”
Loyalty Nasser stared at Cam Davis. Over the anarchic sounds of the cafeteria, his words hit her like punchline. She thought she could smell Cam through the damp odor of high school cafeteria food, but wasn’t able to place it. Something woodsy.
Cam Davis raised his hands in clarification. “I mean, we’d be disguised, of course.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Just think about it. We might consider an armored car, instead, actually. They have a lot more money.”
Loyalty crossed her arms. Might as well play along. “How much money?”
“Hundreds of thousands if you time it right. Banks are only maybe thirty grand at best.”
“Oh, really. And how do you know that?”
“Internet.”
“You want me to help you rob a bank—”
“Or armored car.”
“—based on something you read on Wikipedia?”
“Oh, please. I go deeper than that.” He looked wounded as he added: “Like, Reddit.”
Loyalty thought it might be joke, but then again it might not, so she kept back a laugh.
“Why me? We have never talked. We have, what, two classes together?”
“Three. So you’ve noticed me, though?”
She did not want to respond. Yeah; she’d noticed. It was hard not to notice Cam. His smile could slay from a mile away.
And she already knew they shared three classes. Admitting to know about two sounded less pathetic than admitting to knowing about three.
“Okay, three. Why me?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Cam said. “But I do know that you’ve been asked to be a part of every club on campus and turned every one down. Kindly, but still a hard ‘no.’ I know you eat lunch by yourself every day in this cafeteria, because I watch you. Everyone watches you. And wonders.”
“Wonders what?”
“What your deal is,” Cam said, as if it was a silly question. But he didn’t come off like a jerk when he said it. “So here’s what I figure. You must get decent grades because the teachers seem to like you. They don’t call on you a lot, but they do smile at you. So you’re smart. But something’s clearly going on in your life, something off campus, that requires your full attention. No one’s ever seen you cry, and in fact you look pretty happy most days, so whatever it is isn’t ruining your life. But maybe it’s something you could use a little money for. And we all know you’re not a big talker, so even if you say no, I don’t think you’ll blow the whistle on me.”
He smiled again, charming her.
“Also I heard you were trying to get into Harvard,” Cam said. “Rumor has it, they charge slightly more than a community college.”
“Slightly, yeah,” Loyalty muttered. She didn’t have the time needed to properly apply for the school, let alone the necessary scholarships. Taking care of Mom was too much work. “Where’d you hear I wanted to go Ivy League?”
“Mrs. Kirk. I asked her about you.”
“Did you!” That was flattering.
“The chances for an incoming freshman to get into Harvard with no legacy behind her are about twenty-nine percent,” Cam said. “The chances of successfully pulling off an armored car robbery are forty percent.”
Loyalty was struck mute. Holy cow, he was serious. He’d done his homework.
“An armored car carries anywhere from two hundred thousand dollars to two million, depending on the route,” Cam added. “I’m just saying. These odds aren’t like the calculus we’re doing in Mrs. Kirk’s room every day. Go ahead. Do the math. Twenty-nine versus forty.”
Loyalty sat back in her molded plastic chair, gazing blearily at the other students, each focused on their own dramas and traumas. Being in such a public place ironically afforded them a sense of privacy.
Two hundred thousand dollars. Two million dollars.
That bought a lot of medical care.
Cam, who’d brought no food to the table when he first sat down, toyed with one of her clean, folded, untouched napkins. “Why do you want to go to Harvard?”
“Because it’s hard,” she said.
“Hard to get into, or hard to do well once you get there?”
“Both.”
“So . . . hold up. You’re trying to get into Harvard for no other real reason than for the challenge?”
“More or less.” It was not the only reason, but Loyalty didn’t feel like getting into the weeds about it.
“But—what do you want to do once you get there? What are you going to study?”
Cam said it like it was a forgone conclusion. He didn’t say If you get there. The realization made her skin tingle.
“I don’t know for sure,” Loyalty said. “Business. Economics. Something like that. Something that will show me how the world works, why it works that way, and what I can do to change it.”
“You’re a philanthropist.”
Loyalty shrugged. What she wanted was a cure for Parkinson’s, but she lacked the scientific brain for that kind of study. So instead: find out why exactly the richest nation in history couldn’t afford to help her mom.
“Crusader, maybe,” she said softly.
Cam laughed, filling the space between them with a rich baritone. “Nice. Now: one last question before we make our big heist plan.”
“Okay . . .”
“The bell’s about to ring. Did you have a good time?”
Loyalty blinked at her partner in crime. “Did I . . . what?”
“Did you have fun hanging out with me this hour? Did you have a good time?”
“I don’t . . . I mean . . . yes. Yes, I had a good time, but—”
Cam smiled. “Cool. So, then, we should do it again. But not lunch. What about Friday night? Dinner and movie or something? My treat, of course. I don’t know if that sort of thing goes without saying these days or not.”
Loyalty shook her head to make her jigsaw thoughts tumble into place. “Are you asking me out on a date?”
“Second date, actually.”
“We haven’t been on a first.”
“What do you think this was?”
Loyalty gaped. “I thought it was about robbing an armored car.”
“We can still do that if you want,” Cam said. “Although I think we’ll both end up dead or in prison. Dinner and a movie is a lot safer.”
Loyalty stared at her empty tray. She’d eaten every crumb of her free lunch. From her periphery, she could see Cam’s face slowly transition from calm, cool, and confident . . . to hopeful . . . to uncertain . . . to defeated. The entire transformation took at least three minutes, during which they both sat silent and virtually immobile.
The bell rang. Hundreds of students stood in tandem.
Loyalty and Cam did not.
“This whole thing,” Loyalty said at last, “was one big joke?”
“No, no!” Cam said quickly. “Not a joke. That makes it sound like I was deceiving you. Which . . . okay, I see now that maybe you could see it that way, but it’s not what I meant. At all.”
“What did you meant? I mean, mean. Or—you know.”
“I didn’t think you’d talk to me any other way. I needed an in.”
“You were . . . scared to ask me on a date?”
“Well. Yes. Hence the asking whether or not you had a good time.”
“You are totally deranged,” Loyalty said.
“Not totally,” Cam said. “Partially, maybe. Hey, you have to admit, it’s probably the most unique date you’ve ever been on. Uh—I hope.”
She couldn’t argue with that.
“You know,” Loyalty said carefully, “there was a moment there I almost said yes. To the robbery. I was really close. You believe that?”
“Let’s see how Harvard goes. We can always revisit.”
“I don’t think I want to do dinner and a movie, Cam.”
He grimaced. “Ah. Okay. Well . . .”
“But we could discuss how to steal the Mona Lisa.”
Cam’s face blossomed. “Or the Hope diamond?”
“The Constitution.”
“The statue of David.”
By then they were laughing. She hadn’t laughed in a long time.
“Just out of curiosity, if I said I really wanted to go through with the armored car, would you go with me?”
Cam stopped smiling; but not, Loyalty could see, because he was surprised or scared. It was as sincere an expression as she’d ever seen on another human being as Cam looked into her eyes.
“There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you.” He paused, coughed, and continued. “I’ve wanted to ask you out for like a year. You just seemed . . .”
“Like someone who could rob a bank.”
“I needed an ice breaker.”
“Ice broken.”
Cam stood. “Cool. So, I’ll see you in Mrs. Kirk’s class.”
“Yeah. Math and whatnot.”
“Exactly. See ya!” With a smile, Cam ambled easily out of the cafeteria with one parting wave.
Loyalty waved back, sorting through the myriad emotions swirling through her head and heart like stolen dollar bills in the wind.
She couldn’t wait to tell her mom everything.
Or for Friday night.