Page 77 of How To Plot a Payback

She makes me want to rip my hair out.

“Are you serious?” I hiss at last. “The world is run by maniacs and the maniacs win. There are plenty of stories where the maniacs win. Have you never read a paper in your life?”

But Lavender just shakes her head and taps my chest in a way that sends sparks shooting off. “You know what’s wrong with you, Finn? You’ve spent too much time writing for that dark show.”

She doesn’t sound angry at all. I, however, am getting just a bit wound up.

“No,” I reply shortly. “You are the one who’s clearly spent too much time living in a sitcom. You would do well to start acting in anything where the good girl doesn’t get it all.”

Her lips press together.

I see something shift in her eyes.

For a moment I’m conflicted. Part of me feels I have been too honest, and in my honesty I overstepped, and now I must protect my job. Another part of me, however, feels relief at having spent some pent-up truth. I’m not sure which way this is going to go. But then one corner of her mouth tweaks upward.

She slides her arm around the crook of my elbow like we’re school chums.

Or even work chums.

Or just anything besides what we are—which is not chums.

“Come on, Finn. Rule one in this dangerous world we live in: never gather a crowd.”

I look around and realize I have, in fact, been drawing attention. Cameras are out. People are peeking their heads out from doors and windows. We keep walking.

For one long block she holds on to my arm, and for one long block I bristle at the reflection I see in a shop window. She and I together, walking arm in arm with our dogs ahead of us. For once, as though to spite me, her dog trots along obediently beside Miles, and we look quite the pair.

I can’t believe my thoughts have uttered those words.

I’m choking on them.

I’m going to suffocate.

I blink away from the window. But it’s too late. The view is seared in my memory now, and I’ll never experience the gift of unseeing it.

She prattles on about some inane topic—a heart-shaped rock she found? some person she accidentally pushed down a manhole?—but I can’t focus, because I’m too focused on how she’s successfully Saran-wrapped me to herself. I can’t quite figure out how she’s done it. My thoughts are muddled by this new situation.

Her hair is crinkly in all the wrong places and swirly and yellow in the breeze, and it smells like an almond pie my grandmother used to bake around the holidays. Her arm rests on mine as she holds to the dog on the leash, and she has this annoying habit of swinging her hand left and right and dragging me along with it as she points every which way while she talks.

I am stranded here, held captive in a haze of almonds as I’m yanked around by this woman, who in one sense has very much ruined large segments of my life, but in another holds the fate of my career in her hands. Pulling away would be rude, but also (oddly) I don’t entirely loathe the moment.

That is to say, there are worse torments. Which is really the torment itself, actually, because now she’s playing with my mind and even turning it against me.

She’s a maniac.

That’s what she is. A maniac with nice-smelling hair and a little arm wrapped around mine talking about—what is it now?—rubbish pickup days! While having the power to crush me under her thumb.

It’s disgusting really, what she’s doing.

“I think that’s actually a wonderful idea, you know,” she says, adjusting the leash on her wrist.

Bernie, I notice, is acting as though Miles is his only friend in the whole wide world. For the moment, Bernie actually looks like a decent animal as he trots along beside him.

I give up. The woman is going to follow me all the way home.

I just know it.

I resign myself to it.