Either way, I’m clearly not part of their world.

“Mr. and Mrs. Rush,” Andrea says, “this is Will Shea. Will’s here from a tiny little island in the South Pacific. His parents were missionaries, right, Will?”

“Oh?” Victoria Rush gives me a tight smile. “How interesting.” After an appropriate amount of silence, she goes back to ignoring me. “My goodness, isn’t anyone going to dance?”

As if on cue, the music starts playing, some old song from the ’50s, and I watch as Brandt leads Andrea to the center of the dance floor. It’s pageantry, pure and simple—slow and easy and elegant. Brandt lifts Andrea’s arm and whirls her around, the look on his face never changing from the blank, phoned-in expression of a rich kid doing a job, playing a role, knowing that it’s all part of inheriting a fortune so great that even he can’t count it all. In the middle of everything, Andrea catches my eye and winks. I keep looking around for Gatsby, wondering where she is, if she’s coming, if something happened, as the weight in my stomach gets heavier and heavier.

When the song ends, Andrea makes her way to the punch bowl and then back over to me. “Well, that was fun.” She lifts her gaze to meet mine, and she looks again at the roses that I’m still carrying around, along with the gift-wrapped book and the corsage. “Still alone?” She checks her watch. “It’s getting late, isn’t it?”

“Thanks for your concern.”

“Poor Will.” She touches my arm. “Rejection doesn’t suit you.”

I turn and walk through the ballroom again, but I still can’t find Gatsby anywhere. I check my phone. No messages. When I call her, it goes straight to voice mail. After the beep, I start talking.

“Hey, Gatsby, it’s Will. I’m here at the dance. Just making sure everything’s—”

A fist thumps me on the shoulder. It’s Brandt, right behind me. “Yo, Willpower. We still on for tonight?”

Clicking off the phone, I turn around and look him in the eye.

“Sure.”

“Good.” He looks more alive now than he has all night. “Meet me out front by the statue in twenty minutes. Don’t be late.”

After he walks away, I make one more circle through the room, but now I know she’s not coming, and I can feel people starting to stare at me, hear them talking behind my back. I leave the dance and make my way across the almost empty campus to Gatsby’s dorm. There’s a light in her third-floor window. For a moment I just stand there, holding the roses and the corsage and the book, watching a shadow move across her curtains.

I call again.

Voice mail.

I stuff the book back under my coat. The roses and corsage go into the trash outside her dorm, and I head out to find Brandt.

I’ve got work to do.

Twenty-One

THE PLAN IS SIMPLE. I’M SUPPOSED TO MEET BRANDT IN front of the statue of Lancelot Connaughton, where Uncle Roy will pick us up and drive us down to Lowell. With any luck, tonight’s trial run will pay off. By next week, Brandt will want to double his money, then go for the big payout with plenty of time before our deadline.

Like I said. Simple.

Except . . .

I can’t stop thinking about Gatsby. Right now I’ve got two thousand dollars of Uncle Roy’s cash in my back pocket, and the entire success or failure of the con depends on how I play things tonight. But my thoughts keep circling back to Gatsby. What she was thinking. Why she didn’t call. Why she stood me up.

This is obviously not the frame of mind that I need to be in right now.

I stand outside in my tuxedo, watching the breath steam out of my mouth in clouds, looking at the puritanical face of Lancelot Connaughton. If he has any insight into my situation, he’s not sharing it.

A hand lands on my shoulder.

“Yo, bro, you ready to rock?”

I turn around. Brandt is standing there with Carl beside him, silent and stoic. Like Brandt and me, Carl is still wearing a tux. Unlike Brandt and hopefully me, he still looks like a caveman on Oscar night. “Hey.” I look Carl up and down. “You forgot your lacrosse stick.”

“He doesn’t need it,” Brandt says.

“You were supposed to come alone.”

“Change of plans,” Brandt says. “That’s not a problem, is it, Will?”

I shake my head. The last-minute switch gets my adrenaline going and puts my head back in the game. I’m actually glad for it.

“Good,” Brandt says. “You bring the filthy lucre?”

I reach into my pocket and take out the roll, twenty one-hundred-dollar bills. “When we get to Mr. McDonald’s office, he’s going to show you the different online poker games and ask you how much you want to bet. Start small and let him convince you to go the full two grand.”

Brandt looks scornfully at the cash. “Thanks, but I think I can handle myself.”

“Just be careful with this,” I say, handing over the money. “It’s all I could get my hands on for now.”

“Just tell me how I’m gonna win.”

“My partner will be texting you messages throughout the hand,” I say, “telling you how much to bet. Just do exactly what the messages say. You’ll win.”

“You must be pretty sure of your system.”

“It’s foolproof.”

“It better be.”

That’s as far as he gets as a pair of headlights come streaming up the long drive heading toward the statue. At first I think it’s Uncle Roy, and then I realize I’m wrong. The lights belong to one of the campus-security vehicles taking a slow cruise around the service road, and it pulls up in front of us, stopping on the other side of the statue. I hear the door open, and I see George the Kant-reading security guard step out.

Brandt glances up at him breezily. “Hey, Georgie-boy. Nice night, huh?”

The guard walks over to us. “What are you doing out here? Why aren’t you at the dance?”

Nobody says anything, and I realize he’s talking to Carl—which isn’t a huge surprise when I suddenly realize how much the two of them look alike. George is basically an older version of Carl. The resemblance is uncanny.

“He’s hanging out with me, George,” Brandt says. “Thought I’d do him a favor.”

George doesn’t say anything.

“I mean, hey,” Brandt says, “maybe he’d be better off at public school. Finishing his senior year with a bunch of middlebrow losers. What do you think?”

George keeps quiet and just looks at Carl, who glares back at his father, nothing but eighteen inches of flash-frozen silence suspended between them. Face-to-face, their chiseled profiles look like one of those optical illusions where you start to see the outline of some mysterious third shape appearing between them.

“Are you going somewhere?” George asks.

Carl squares his shoulders. “Why do you care?”

“It’s a closed campus. There are rules.”

“Like you’ve ever cared about them,” Carl says, in a voice that’s half snarl, half whisper.

“Listen, son . . .” George draws in a breath. He looks like he wants to say something but has no idea where to begin.

“Better move along, George,” Brandt says. “Wouldn’t want to be late on your nightly routine. A guy in your position can’t afford too many more strikes against him, am I right?”

George sighs but gets back into his truck and drives away, leaving the three of us alone in the moonlight.

“Your guy is late,” Brandt says.

Before I can answer, I see a pair of headlights coming toward us.

“Here he is now,” I say.

Twenty-Two

WHEN UNCLE ROY’S CADILLAC PULLS UP, I OPEN THE back door and slide inside. Roy’s behind the wheel, but he doesn’t turn around or say anything until Carl starts to climb in next to Brandt.

“Hold on,” Roy growls, looking back over his shoulder. “Who’s the gorilla?”

“Carl’s with me,” Brandt says.

Roy shakes his head. “No deal.” He points to me with an index finger the size of a gun barrel. “Mr. McDonald said just your friend. Nobody else.” He turns to Carl. “Take a hike, Gargantua.”