Chapter Five: What Priya Knows

# LENA

Two days after the hospital Priya shows up at my door with tea and a look that means the waiting period is over.

"Talk," she says.

"Leo is recovering. He is home. He is already complaining about the food which means he is fine."

"I know about Leo. Talk about the other thing."

I let her in. She sits on my bed. I sit at my desk. Outside the dorms are loud with the particular energy of a Friday night that does not apply to me.

"He came to the hospital," I say.

Priya is quiet.

"During the surgery. He sat there for four hours. He brought coffee for my mother. He did not make it into anything. When the surgeon came out and I cried he put his hand over mine."

"Lena."

"I know."

"That is not fake relationship behavior."

"I know that too."

"So either he is very good at this or."

"Priya." I look at her. "I cannot tell yet if it is real or if he is someone who is genuinely kind in private and I am reading into it because I am tired and it is easier than staying suspicious."

"What does your gut say."

"My gut is not reliable right now. My gut also thought signing a contract with the school quarterback was a workable plan."

She wraps both hands around her mug. "What do you actually know about him. Not the Westbrook version. The real one."

"His mother is sick. His father controls his life through money and arrangements. There is more going on underneath than what this school sees."

"And the girl. Cassidy Hale."

I look at her. "How do you know about Cassidy Hale."

"Because she cornered me outside the science building yesterday and told me to pass along a message." Priya's voice stays completely even. "She said this arrangement is not going to last and when it falls apart she wants it known she was never worried."

I sit with that for a moment.

"She knows," I say.

"She knows enough. Her father told her what Landon is doing and why."

"Did she say anything else."

Priya hesitates.

"Priya."

"She said you should enjoy the fifteen thousand because it is the most you will ever get out of anyone at this school."

The room goes quiet.

"Okay," I say.

"Okay? That is it?"

"She is not wrong that I am here on a scholarship. She is not wrong that I am getting paid. She is wrong about everything else." I stand up. "She also told me two things without meaning to."

"Which are."

"She is rattled. If she was not rattled she would not be passing messages through my roommate. And she knows exactly what this arrangement is, which means her father told her, which means Landon's father told his father, which means it is already working."

Priya stares at me. "You are frightening sometimes."

"I grew up counting things. It makes you practical."

That night Landon texts me.

Cassidy talked to your friend.

I type back. I know. She told me herself through Priya.

A pause. Then: I should have warned you sooner. I am sorry.

I look at that for a moment. People who are performing kindness do not apologize for the gaps in their own planning. They smooth over them and move on.

It is fine. It actually helped.

How.

I told you before. For this to work it needs to cost something. Cassidy being rattled means it is costing something.

A longer pause this time.

You think about this differently than I expected.

I set the phone down and pick up my bow. I play for an hour straight and when I stop and check my messages there is one more from him, sent forty minutes ago while I was playing.

My father called again. He is threatening to move up the merger timeline. We may need to escalate faster than planned.

I read it twice. Then I type: Define escalate.

His response comes back in thirty seconds.

He wants to meet you.

I set the phone on the desk.

Landon's father. The man who controls his son's life through money and arrangements and phone calls that tighten something in Landon's jaw every time one comes through. The man this entire plan was built to create distance from. The reason the contract exists at all.

He wants to meet me.

I look at the ceiling for a long time. I think about the terms I negotiated in the library, the amendments I wrote in careful lines while Landon watched. I covered early termination. I covered contact with my family. I covered Cassidy and the payment schedule and Sunday afternoons with Leo.

I did not cover this.

I pick the phone back up.

What does that mean exactly. Dinner? An introduction?

His reply takes longer this time.

Dinner. At the house. He wants to assess you. That is the word he used. Assess.

I read the word twice. Assess. Like I am a variable in a calculation. Like the question is whether I am useful or inconvenient.

I type: When.

Two weeks. You do not have to say yes. I want to be clear about that. But if you do it moves things faster.

I put the phone down again and look across the room at my cello in the corner. The duct tape case. The worn velvet. The instrument that got me into Westbrook and into the parking garage showcase and eventually into a music room where a boy with a contract and a plan I still do not fully understand asked me to trust a situation I could not see the end of.

I think about Leo at home complaining about the food. I think about my mother's hand in mine in the waiting room. I think about what faster means and what it costs and what it covers.

Then I pick up the phone.

I will do the dinner.

I set it face down on the desk and I do not wait to see how long it takes him to respond.

I already said yes. What comes next is just the details.