Coin Heist by Elisa Ludwig Page B

had to be fifty years old—she’d been working at HF since the beginning of time.
    He pulled away from the rail just as I was sliding my tray along, so that we nearly collided. “Hey, Al,” he said.
    It always took me aback when he used that nickname. Only my dad had ever called me that.
    â€œHey,” I said back, and we fell into step. I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly we were seeing each other every day. Talking, not just in Design class, but between classes. Even in the coffee bar during break—in full view of some of his exes. Which, to be fair, included most of the girls in our grade. Social math: In set theory there’s an axiom of pairing, which basically means that if A and B are sets then there’s a set out there that contains both A and B . By virtue of existing, they belong together somewhere. The same could be said of Jason and the list of girls he’d hooked up with.
    It was strange. He’d started to appear in my brain even when I wasn’t with him. I thought about him as I showered and got dressed. And at night, when I finished my homework, I pictured him in his house, wondering what he might be doing. Which was completely crazy.
    And when we talked, it wasn’t just about the Mint stuff anymore. He told me all about his band and his plans to dominate iTunes someday, and I couldn’t help but get caught up. I knew things about his family—his dad was still in jail, and his mom was making him go visit every week. I told him the latest about my parents, how my dad was even sneaking away on weekends now.
    Now he was next to me and I felt my breath quicken. “So what was that about?” I asked, not wanting to be too nosy.
    He sighed. “Dianne was just given a pink slip. Technically there’s a union of service employees, and technically they shouldn’t be able to just do that. But this is an extreme situation. It’s so messed up.”
    â€œAnd you’re going to help her?”
    He nodded. “I’m going to get some information from my dad’s office. See if there’s any way I can help.”
    I’d never really seen this side of him before. “That’s actually pretty thoughtful.”
    â€œYou sound surprised,” he said.
    Because you act like a bimbo sometimes? “So get this. My dad called Sheryl on the way to school today. He put her on speakerphone. They were using all of these euphemisms, like ‘low-hanging fruit’ and ‘looping each other in’, but it was so obvious and disgusting. He acts like I’m five years old.”
    â€œWhy don’t you just talk to him?” he asked me.
    â€œUm. Why don’t you talk to your dad?” I asked back.
    â€œBecause it won’t change anything.”
    â€œBingo,” I said.
    When we talked like this, all the other stuff, all of his usual whatever-dude stuff fell away.
    We sat down at the table and waited for Benny, for our official Mint job meeting to begin.
    What started as a fantasy game, like D&D, had begun to seem more plausible. We were planning the smallest details, right down to our alibis and how we’d get rid of our prints. I didn’t know what Benny thought, but the way Jason talked about it, it didn’t seem like we were playing around anymore. It was like he needed to do this—to get back at his dad, or maybe to fix his dad’s mistakes.
    And me? Well, for starters, the idea that I could make something this big happen was intoxicating. I was in it for the thrill, for the idea that I could actually pull off a hack this size and prove that I wasn’t some stupid kid. I’d show my dad and anyone else who doubted me.
    There was only one problem: I still couldn’t figure out how the heck we were going to manufacture as many coins as we needed without anyone noticing all the missing raw material after the job was done. I’d been poking at the holes in our plan for a few days