Chapter 9: 09 - Till death do us part


    It was a miracle no one else had figured out Masked Idiot’s identity. Whatever it was. If he really didn’t


    want me to know he was rich then he should haveid off thebelled sneakers and the expensive


    watches that could pay my tuition. And that was saying a lot because ire Anne High was one of the


    most expensive private schools in the state.


    He ran off all of two minutes after denying my usations in the most unconvincing manner. To be


    honest, he didn’t feel much like a criminal. He was so bad at it. He just felt like an everyday stupid boy


    to me. Maybe if he was a little older or smarter, it would’ve helped. Unfortunately, he looked early


    twenties at best and was clearly not half as bright. He was way too young for me to take him seriously,


    especially given how idiotic he seemed. I wouldn’t be surprised if I found out that he was cognitively


    impaired.


    “Idiot,” I muttered, shaking my head in disapproval as I rolled over.


    After he left, I turned off the lights and got in bed. It was barely ten o’clock on a Friday night and I was


    already tucked in. How boring. I couldn’t help thinking about the party I had chosen not to attend so I


    could get back on my mom’s good side. If her reaction to my ‘flying cockroach’ was any indication, it


    hadn’t worked. I should’ve just gone to the party. For all their faults, my parents weren’t against parties.


    They weren’t strict in the normal way. They were strict in the you-know-your-duties-do-it way. Provided


    Olly and I did what we were supposed to do -which included having boring after-school jobs that would


    look good on college applications and getting perfect grades-, they didn’t interfere. Provided we stayed


    out of trouble, we got free reins till eleven p.m. Well, nine-thirty for Olly. She was only a freshman after


    all. Eleven on weekends. I didn’t have an official curfew on weekends.


    I sighed heavily, rolling onto my other side.


    Life wasn’t going my way a lot these days. For the life of me, I still couldn’t understand why Masked


    Idiot felt the need to stalk me. I couldn’t be more normal. More upstanding. More uninclined to break


    thew. For heaven’s sake, my mom was awyer and my dad was a cop. Not just any cop, the sheriff.


    I lived in a house that could’vee straight out of a magazine. As a matter of fact, the house had


    been featured in Aunt Diane’s magazine. It was that house. The one people saw and automatically


    knew a sessful high-achieving family lived in. The house where people would ask the wife how she


    kept the rug and sofa so white. A healthy dose of responsibility mixed with an unhealthy dose of fear.


    That’s the big secret to the ever white rug, Mrs. Brown. It was that house with an intimidating disy of


    awards and trophies honouring each family member. The house where music was never yed too


    loud, if ever. The house where the kids were always perfectly behaved and cultured. The house that all


    other houses gotpared to. Literally everything about me screamed that I wasn’t interested in


    Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    Masked Idiot’s little illegal business. I was the poster child for good kids all over the world.


    “I’m perfectly harmless,” I grumbled aloud, tossing and turning to the other side as I waited impatiently


    for sleep toe.


    If anything I was the one who was meant to be suspicious, not the other way around. His story was not


    at all adding up. I knew I was right about him being rich. There was no doubt about that. The problem


    was, that alone blew his story out of the water. No matter how I looked at it, it didn’t fit with the I’m-so-


    broke-I-need-tomit-crimes-for-money vibe most criminals had going on. No rich kid would go to an


    underground arena to fight for money he already had. But what other motive could he have? A need to


    work out aggression? If he was a rich as he seemed to be, he could very well employ a personal


    sparring partner. Or enroll at a proper boxing gym. More so, it couldn’t be aggression since not once in


    our time together had he lost his calm and I hadn’t exactly been nice to him. The situation was far too


    secrets I didn’t want to get tangled in lying behind it. Things like this were best left alone. The less I


    knew about it, the better but how, for the love of chocte and ice cream, could I get him away from


    me? Think, Avy. Think.


    I could hear my mom’s voice in my head telling me to approach the problem calmly, methodically. To


    look over the facts. The only problem was there were no facts. I didn’t trust him. He didn’t trust me. And


    both us wanted nothing to do with each other. His biggest problem was that I would spill his secret,


    except I didn’t know his secret. Not really anyway. I could pick him out in a crowd but I didn’t know his


    name or address or anything concrete so it wasn’t like I could send the cops after him. Granted, I could


    work with a sketch artist but as I had tried to convey to him, I couldn’t do that without ratting myself out.


    Unfortunately, I couldn’t explicitly exin that to him without giving away that he had all the cards and


    the one card I had, I couldn’t y. That would be giving him all the power and as the kid of an attorney,


    I knew better than to negotiate from a ce of weakness. If my opponent was blissfully unaware of the


    power he possessed, far be it for me to turn my nose up at such a gift. His other quite ridiculous worry


    was that I was some sort of spy. Me, spy? On him?


    I scoffed.


    That made absolutely no sense no matter which way I looked at it. There was nothing in it for me. No


    incentive. Nothing to gain. Just a waste of my time and effort.


    I sighed heavily.


    At the end of the day, all our problems boiled down to both of us not trusting the other to keep the


    secret of our unfortunate first meeting. Unlike him however, I had every right to be distrustful. He was a


    criminal. A real one. Probably with a criminal gang backing him and now that I figured out that he


    wasn’t your run-off-the-mill kid from the wrong side of the tracks, I was even more distrustful. Whatever


    reason he had for doing what he did was far more sinister than survival and ack of better options. I


    shuddered to think what it might be. What we both needed was assurance that neither would rat the


    other out but--


    “Oh my God!” I gasped, flinging the covers off me.


    I got to my feet and I hurried to my study table. I booted up myptop and opened a word document.


    This was it. How I hadn’t seen it before was beyond me. It could actually work. It was exactly what we


    needed.


    “Oh God, please let it work,” I whispered in the dark room as I hammered out a non-disclosure


    agreement tailored for us.


    This was what we needed. A contract. A promise that we would both keep our goddamm mouths shut.


    A contract that would protect me from every eventuality. It wasn’t fool proof. Masked Idiot could slip


    identally but if nothing else, the contract would allow me sleep better at night because it would


    render any such slips inadmissible as evidence. Ohhh, the beauty of an irond NDA. I found myself


    grinning as I typed, tweaking and rereading well into the early hours of the morning. I went to bed only


    after I waspletely sure that no matter how things yed out, provided the contract was signed,


    even if things blew up, I’de out rtively unscathed. Fingers crossed.


    ? ? ?


    I printed it out at the first seemingly mundane and untraceable chance I got. I would’ve done it at home


    but 3:47 a.m. was decidedly an odd time to indulge a sudden urge to print a document. It would’ve had


    my mom sniffing at my heels. I wouldn’t have been able to lie that it was ast-minute assignment


    since she very well knew I was the embodiment of organized and I wouldn’t have left an assignment till


    thest minute. That and it was Saturday morning. No school. I didn’t get a chance during the day


    either. I was due to put in a few hours at herw firm and I just didn’t feel safe printing it in the same


    building she was in. Any little mishap could spell trouble. So I waited throughout the weekend, smiling


    and pushing papers at her firm like the perfect little daughter she wanted her partners to see. I wasn’t


    willing to risk printing it at school on Monday either. With my luck, a mishap that would leave a half-


    printed page jammed in the printer wasn’t so far-fetched. There weren’t enough people who could write


    a proper contract, much less one as detail oriented as this. If it got stuck and someone happened upon


    it, they’d instantly guess it was mine. I was the first one people thought of when the seemingly


    impossible became possible in school. So I waited. And waited. And waited. The knowledge of what I


    had on my phone made me excessively self-aware and jumpy but still, I waited some more.


    The perfect opportunity finally presented itself after school, at the library. My co-worker was far away


    enough, busy with the books that needed to be re-shelved. I had the printer all to myself. The library


    was the perfect ce. All sorts of people came and went here. No one would find it any more than a


    little intriguing if they found such a document jammed in the printer nor would they even bother trying to


    find who it belonged to. Heck, it’d rank lower than the kids I caught making out behind the history


    shelves, dirty talking in some made-upnguage that, from what I could tell, was partly Japanese.


    So I printed the contract oh so casually and stashed it in my bag. I kept my gaze trained on the door,


    hoping to catch Masked Idiot’s entrance. He didn’t show up the entire weekend so I figured he would


    show up today. I needed him to show up today. I needed his signature. Yesterday.


    For the first time in two weeks, God answered my prayer. Masked Idiot showed up. I must have jumped


    in my seat because my co-worker shed me a questioning frown. I pretended not to notice.


    “Can you hold things down here? I’ll be back in ten?”


    She scowled.


    “You know what, I’ll finish with the reshelving,” I offered, to butter up the deal, swinging my bag over my


    shoulder as I rose to my feet.


    April raised an eyebrow at the bag but didn’t question it. It wasn’t like me to ditch and she knew it.


    “Have at it,” she agreed with a flick of her wrist, losing interest instantly.


    She hated anything that meant she had to get up. It was a peculiar kind ofzy but I was used to her


    quirks by now. I nodded at Masked Idiot, indicating that he should follow me as I headed to to where


    April left off with the books.


    “This is weird,” he dered when we finally came to a stop upstairs, cocooned between shelves with


    books on economics.


    I arched a brow, wordlessly asking what was weird.


    “You seem almost happy to see me,” he answered.


    “That’s fair,” I conceded. Given my history of aggressively confrontational wees where he was


    concerned, I could see why he would find my current reaction weird. “I am though. Happy to see you.”


    Surprise coloured his features making it clear that even though he said it, he didn’t actually believe I


    could be happy to see him.


    “Did you hit your head?”


    “I just need your signature then we can go back to dreading each other’s presence like the gue and


    hopefully never seeing each other again. Till death do us part.”


    His expression could only be described as; fair enough.


    “So what’s this thing that’s supposed to do that?” he inquired.


    I held up a finger, indicating that he wait while I fished out the contract from my bag. My fingers closed


    around it and I brandished it with flourish, holding it just a little reverently.


    “Here.”


    “What is it?” He collected the stapled document, leafing through it with a confused frown on his face.


    “A contract.” I breathed.


    “A contract?” He sounded unimpressed.


    “The contract,” I amended.


    He arched a skeptical brow.


    “So your big solution is... words? Ink on a paper.”


    I nodded eagerly despite the skepticism coating his tone.


    “Well, look who’s been watching too much bad TV now.”


    I rolled my eyes, shaking my head at the jab.


    “Not just words, dummy. A contract. A legal and binding document that ensures that neither of us can


    disclose anything about the other person without facing serious consequences.”


    “Right. Fancy words on a paper.”


    My expression warned him to tread carefully.


    “Fine.” He nodded. “I guess I’m supposed to trust you to uphold your end of the deal?” His tone wasn’t


    just skeptical, it was patronizingly insulting.


    It was all I could do not to p him up the back of his head.


    “No, idiot. That’s the whole point of a contract,” I bit out. “We don’t need trust. The consequences are


    written there and they are consequences neither of us can afford.”


    If my parents ever got wind of this and asked about it, I could shut them down saying I was


    contractually bound to keep my mouth zipped and if they never knew the details, then maybe they


    wouldn’t know just how much I had messed up. My mom was awyer after all. She knew what


    breaking a contract could lead to so I was really hoping this would work. It was my holy grail.


    “Just read it,” I said impatiently. “Read it and you’ll see.”


    “Fine.” He rolled up the brilliantly worded contract I had stayed up all night working on and tucked it


    under his arm. Seriously?


    “What?” he asked, taking note of my irritated frown.


    I snatched the contract, smoothened it out and presented it back to him.


    “I said read, not roll up and put away.”


    “You meant now?” His tone made it clear he hadn’t even considered that as a possibility.


    “Here?”


    I raised my eyes heaven-ward, pinching the bridge of my nose as I sent up a quick prayer for patience.


    “You’re in a library, where people go to read. I think here is a good ce as any to read it.”


    “But... now?”


    “What difference does it make whether you read it now orter?” I hissed. “I want it signed before end


    of day so yes, now.”


    “I can’t. Mywyer has to look over anything I...” he trailed off, eyes widening as he realized he had


    said too much.


    “You have awyer,” I echoed, tucking that piece of information away. It fit with the rich kid image, a


    familywyer to clean up any messes he got himself into. The petty criminal image, not so much. “What


    firm?”


    “Like I’d tell you,” he bit back angrily.


    I pressed my lips to a thin line to keep from smiling. I hadn’t even set him up for that one. He fell into it


    on his own. He was within his rights to be pissed at himself but I couldn’t afford to give away how much


    the slip-up meant to me. Hopefully, he would interpret mypressed lips as displeasure at not having


    my follow-up question answered. Oh, Masked Idiot. Stupid Masked Idiot. When are you going to realize


    you are no match for me? Sure, I didn’t know the firm hiswyer was with but thanks to his reply, I now


    knew hiswyer worked at a firm. No small time one-room-with-a-tiny-windowwyer for Masked Idiot.


    Whoever hiswyer was, he was part of a firm somewhere. Again, it fit with the rich boy image but just


    how that all fit with the criminal image was still eluding me. If he was as rich as he appeared to be, why,


    for heaven’s sake, was he fighting at a cheap grimy arena that reeked almost as bad as a clogged up


    public toilet?


    “Fine.” I heaved a sigh, shaking my head to dispel the thoughts. “Take it to yourwyer but here’s what


    he’ll tell you, ‘it’s a good deal, sign it’.”


    I met his gaze squarely, wondering just who he was under everything.


    “I expect the contract back by tomorrow.”


    “You’re awfully confident,” he countered. “There could be mistakes, you know?”


    “There won’t be. I wrote it myself.”


    He rolled his eyes.


    “I think there will be because you wrote it yourself. You’re just a high school kid.”


    And yet I’m smarter than you’ll ever be.


    “Well, I guess we’ll let yourwyer be the judge of that.”