When

11-10-2014

   I FOUND STUBBY AT HIS locker on Monday morning with a fresh set of bruises to his right cheek and his hand in a cast. "Dude!" I said when I saw him. "What happened?"

   "It looks worse than it is," he told me.

   I took hold of his casted hand. "Yeah, this doesn't look bad at all. It's only a fresh wound, right?"

   Stubby humored me with a grin. "It's a hairline fracture. I only have to wear the cast for a couple of weeks."

   "The half pipe?" I asked.

   Stubby shuffled his books into the crook of his arm and used his elbow to shut his locker. "I was trying a new trick."

   I took his books and helped load then into his backpack. "Yeah? Well, try harder next time."

   He shrugged. "It was worth it. Sorry I didn't make it to the diner, but I was at the ER until late."

   I immediately felt guilty about thinking he'd snubbed me the night before. We started down the hall together. "I wish I'd known. I would've picked up a slice of pie and brought it to you."

   Stubs grinned, and I knew we were okay again. "Next time I'll send you the deets." And then he changed the subject. "Did you come up with a way to warn Payton?"

   I sighed. My idea wasn't great, but it was all I could think of given Donny's warning and how Faraday and Wallace were watching nearly my every move. "Its super tricky. The feds have pretty much camped out in front of my house, and they're watching me like a hawk."

   "Do you think they're tapping your phones?" Stubs asked.

   My eyes widened. I hadn't thought of that. "Don't know. But if they are, they might also try and tap into my e-mail and texts. We can't talk about any of this on the phone." I was suddenly very grateful that Stubs hadn't tried to call or text me about it over the weekend.

   "What if I sent her an e-mail or an anonymous text?" Stubby asked. I started to shake my head, but he held up his hand and said, "Wait, before you say no, there're a ton of apps that let you send an anonymous email or text, and the sender's info disappears in, like a minute. They're untraceable."

   I sighed. "That could work, but how do we get Payton's e-mail address or her cell number?"

   Stubby's face fell. "That, I haven't figured out yet."

   And then I offered up my idea-the one that'd formed after looking at the last birthday card I'd received from my Dad, which I had tacked to my bulletin board at home. "I think we should send her a card for her birthday."

   "A birthday card?"

   I nodded vigorously. "Yeah, Stubs, she'd totally open a birthday card, even if it didn't have a return address, just to see if there was a check inside or to find out who it was from. I'll bet if you dig around on the Web, you could come up with her parents' home address, right?"

   "Her last name is Wyly, and she lives in Jupiter. Yeah, I could find it. What would we say in the card?" Looking at him I knew he was intrigued by the idea.

   "I don't know, but we'd have to be careful about it. We'd have to say something like, 'We heard you're getting a new car for your birthday, and you need to be really careful driving it.' Maybe we could throw in something like, 'Don't text and drive!' and back it up with a statistic or something."

   Stubby eyes me like I was nuts. "She's not going to believe something like that, Mads. Plus, we don't know for sure if that's the way she's going to die."