"Seriously, Kross. There's no joke there. It's a fine idea, but-"

"Joey."

Fam. From the back seat. She's been so quiet this whole time that I almost forgot she was even there. Flip must have actually forgotten, because he jerks like someone just cattle-prodded him.

"What?"

"Joey, listen to Ke-to Kross. This is what the Council exists for, right? To mess with people's heads. To show them that the world they see isn't what they think they see."

He leans back in his seat and drums his fingers on his steering wheel.

"You have a point, Fool Kross. Your idea has merit." He says it like he just knighted me. Never mind that I'm not the one who said it-Fam did. I glance in the back seat and she grins at me and gives me a thumbs-up.

"So you'll do it?" I ask Flip.

"Indeed. But you have to help me with my plan. We'll push it back. Yours will take some time and planning. We'll do it on Friday instead of mine, then do mine next week."

"Fine. Sure. Great!"

I rush into the house before I realize that I never asked Flip what his idea is.

That can't be good.

Chapter 27.

I Get my Party on

By the time Friday night rolls around, I'm totally ready for another weekend. I could use a month of weekends at this point.

Before I can relax, though, I have the party to go to. I have to go to it now. I have no choice. The Council is prepared to pull my prank tonight ("All systems are a-go-go," Flip told me) and I have to be far away when it happens because everyone will a.s.sume I did it.

I get dressed and I'm digging under the sofa bed for a videotape without even really realizing it. What's going through Leah's mind, I wonder. What is she thinking? Why does she keep flirting with John Riordon but then tell me that she admires what I'm doing?

Speaking of which: What am I doing?

Am I trying to change people's minds? Am I trying to keep people from being stupid? Am I really going to accomplish anything by pointing out some of the stupidities and hypocrisies of the world?

I'm not even sure, tell the truth. I don't even know why it matters so much to me. Except that...

Except that everyone called me a hero. Everyone looked up to me. And I know the truth-that I'm not a hero, never was.

I put the tape in and watch it. I hate myself for it, but I can't help myself. I'm going to be seeing Leah in less than an hour. I'll be in her house. Around her things. And yet here I am.

I bought into the hype, even just a little bit. For a little while there, I thought I was a hero. But I'm not. The fact that I'm sitting here, watching this tape, proves that I'm not.

It's not the Burger Joint tape. It's another one. A different one.

I'm no hero. I'm sc.u.m.

I shouldn't go to the party. I shouldn't be around decent people.

But who am I kidding? I'm going. I can't help myself.

The mayor has my wheels, but there's still Dad's car.

"You're on your provisional license, so I want you back before midnight," he reminds me as he hands over the keys.

I tell him that's not a problem and then I throw a towel and my bathing suit into my backpack.

I know the way to Leah's house. It's a gigantic rancher out in one of the exclusive developments in Breed's Grove-owning the Narc must pay well for Mr. Muldoon.

I can't help it-coming out here makes me think about Susan Ann Marchetti. Killed by a kid from Breed's Grove and she gets a park named after her and a nice statue. Is dying heroic?

The last time I was out here, there were two big trucks out front-a makeup truck and a satellite rig so that Justice! could broadcast live. Now there's half a dozen cars parked in the big circular driveway. I park Dad's heap where it will be tough to box me in-when it's time for me to go, I don't want to have go begging people to move.

I sit out in the car for a minute for one final pep talk with myself. I ask myself for the billionth time: Why am I doing this? Why am I going to the house of the girl I'm, y'know, interested in, when all of her friends will be there? Friends who don't know me but know enough not to like me.

Well, in this case, I have no choice, so I take a deep breath and go ring the doorbell.

Mrs. Muldoon answers the door. Her face lights up when she sees me, which is one of the best things to happen to me in a long time. Then again, I did save her daughter's life and I guess that buys me some affection despite the whole hating-America thing.

"Hi, Mrs. Muldoon."

She gives me one of those one-armed hugs and a little kiss on my cheek, then ushers me into the house. It looks pretty much the same as it did before: The living room (where Justice! shot its episode) is bigger than my entire apartment.

I didn't really look around much when I was here last time. There were so many people running all over the place and big lights and TV equipment set up that it looked more like a sound stage than someone's house. But now that I can actually see it, I gotta admit: I feel like an idiot for ever thinking I had a chance with Leah. She lives in a palace. I live in a bas.e.m.e.nt.

"Everyone's out back by the pool," Mrs. Muldoon says, gesturing down a hallway that's wider than Dad's bedroom. I look down at my shoes. It's like they're not worthy to walk on the hardwood.

"Oh, of course," Mrs. Muldoon says, mistaking my hesitation for something sensible. "You need to change. Go ahead and use Leah's bathroom. Down the hall, your first right, then left. It's right across the hall from Leah's room."

I spend the minute or two it takes to get there thinking how bizarre it is that Leah has her own bathroom, much less that I'm about to go into it.

On the way, I see the backyard through a big picture window. There's something like twenty kids out there, running around the pool, doing cannonb.a.l.l.s off the diving board. They're all having a good time. All of the guys are shirtless and the girls ... Lord, the girls are unbelievably hot, whether in bikinis or one-pieces. Jedi was right-it's wall-to-wall hotties.

I hustle down the side corridor. The bathroom's to my left. It's incredibly clean and almost as big as Dad's bedroom.

Her bedroom is to my right.

I tell myself, "No." I even mouth it, my lips moving silently.

But my feet have different ideas. I go to the right.

SELF-LOATHING #5.

I stand there, quiet. I'm in Leah's bedroom.

The first thing I think is this: I wish my camera wasn't broken.

That summer two years ago, when I first taped her. When it all began. I tried so long to figure out what it was about that tape. Why it drew me in so much. Why I obsessed over it.

Leah was my safety valve for a while. She helped me not think so much about Mom and Jesse leaving. And then ... Then, somehow, my safety valve became dangerous. Somehow, thinking about Leah became as bad and as painful as thinking about Mom and Jesse-only I couldn't stop.

It took breaking the camera and the end of my taping to make me realize it. It took standing here right now in Leah's room, looking at her things, at her private things. The bed she sleeps in, piled high with pillows of different shapes and sizes. The full-length mirror where she sees herself every day, looking at her clothes. Sometimes naked, here, in private, where no one else is supposed to be.

My knees go weak. I make myself walk across the plush, lavender carpet until I stand before the mirror. She has photographs taped all around it-a collage frame of her life and her friends. The mirror reflects ... not me. Not to my mind's eye. No, to my mind's eye, I see Leah. In her solitude. In her privacy.

Here's what it was about the camera.

It was being able to watch. Without having to worry.

The rest of that summer, I kept the camera on all the time, even though it killed the batteries and wasted lots of tape. I loved the idea of letting fate or whatever determine what I would see.

But I kept coming back to that first time. To Leah.

She never came into the Burger Joint again. At least, not that summer. But when high school started a few weeks later, guess who was in my English cla.s.s? And my science cla.s.s? And my history cla.s.s? And guess who had the same lunch period as me?

It was like the universe was trying to tell me something. I had to decide if I was going to listen to it.

And I did. I listened to it. For two years. until that day.

I wasn't studying. At the library. That day. The day. I didn't go there to go to the library at all.

I was...

I was following her.

Leah.

Following her, and- G.o.d.

G.o.d, I'm a terrible person. I'm such a...

The mirror shows me the worst person in the world.

I was stalking her, OK? I used to do it all the time. I'm quick and quiet and no one notices me and I would follow her around and... would videotape her. Everywhere she went. Through a hole in my backpack.

And then watch the tape later. A stupid, jerky, out-of-focus- It wasn't just the one time. It wasn't just the one tape.

It was almost two years. Two years of following her everywhere. Memorizing her cla.s.s schedule. Memorizing everything I could, taping everything I could.

Piles of tapes. Leah's high school life, doc.u.mented in shaky-cam.

Leah going to gym.

Leah coming back from gym, her hair still slightly damp from the shower.

Leah at lunch with her friends, laughing, yelling, eating.

Leah with the Dance Club in her tights.

Rehearsing with the Drama Club-The Crucible. She played Goody Proctor and it was the one time I was able to videotape her without having to hide it. I convinced the school paper to let me tape the show with a tripod.

My pride, my shame: an up-skirt shot from the Home-coming pep rally last year.

A day when I ran into her at the Narc, in the cereal aisle, and followed her to the deli counter and then to frozen foods before she disappeared through swinging doors labeled "Employees Only."

All those and more. More and more and more.

OK? There. OK? You know now.

The only difference between me and Michael Alan Naylor is that he got caught.

Chapter 28.

No Point in Trying to be Good