Immoral Code Read online

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Lillian Clark

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Clark, Lillian, author.

  Title: Immoral code / Lillian Clark.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2019. | Summary: Told from five viewpoints, high school friends Bellamy, Nari, Reese, Keagan, and Santiago team up to hack into Bellamy’s absentee billionaire father’s business accounts to skim enough money for her MIT tuition.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017058212 (print) | LCCN 2018004322 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-525-58046-1 (trade) | ISBN 978-0-525-58048-5 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Friendship—Fiction. | Stealing—Fiction. | Fathers and daughters—Fiction. | Hackers—Fiction. | High schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Family life—Oregon—Fiction. | Oregon—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.C59413 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.C59413 Imm 2019 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9780525580485

  Cover art used under license from Shutterstock.com

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part 1

  Nari

  Reese

  Santiago

  Keagan

  Bellamy

  Part 2

  Bellamy

  Nari

  Santiago

  Reese

  Keagan

  Part 3

  Nari

  Santiago

  Bellamy

  Keagan

  Reese

  Santiago

  Nari

  Bellamy

  Reese

  Santiago

  Nari

  Keagan

  Bellamy

  Santiago

  Reese

  Keagan

  Nari

  Reese

  Bellamy

  Keagan

  Nari

  Santiago

  Part 4

  Keagan

  Santiago

  Reese

  Santiago

  Reese

  Santiago

  Bellamy

  Santiago

  Reese

  Santiago

  Reese

  Santiago

  Nari

  Part 5

  Keagan

  Reese

  Santiago

  Nari

  Bellamy

  Epilogue

  Nari

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For Erik and Owen.

  It’s all for you.

  NARI

  Saturday, February 16, 11:32 a.m.

  Reese and I sat on the top bleacher against the back wall to watch the season’s last home swim meet. The announcer called the first heat of the first event, and the medley relay teams began to assemble. Keagan waved to me from his towel-and-snack nest on the far side of the pool deck. I stood to give him a proper Swim Fast Salute (elbow up and arm bent; fingers kissed, then flung wide). He pulled on his swim cap and wandered over to the rest of his heat-three relay team. The butterflyer helicoptered his arms. The freestyler held his above his head, stretching onto his toes, elongating his body. Keag tucked stray pieces of his straw-blond hair under the edges of his cap.

  The first-heat backstrokers jumped into the water, fixed goggles one last time, adjusted hands on block pegs, foot stances on the wall. The buzzer chirped once and they readied, pulling up tight, waiting for the start. Twice, and they dove. Arms flung, backs arched, legs pushing away from the wall.

  I sat down. “It’s kind of pretty, you know?”

  Reese, hunched over her work—i.e., a blank white Adidas sneaker she was carefully making less blank for her Etsy store—made a sound in her throat. “Teenage-boy junk crammed into tiny Speedos?”

  “No. That’s less ‘pretty’ and more…what do you call a perpetual almost-wince?”

  Reese pushed her hair (half shaved and electric blue with dyed-black roots) over one shoulder, then blew on the fresh lines of ink on the less-blank sneaker. “Pre-wince?”

  “Permacringe?”

  “Dear all that is holy, don’t let that thin patch of spandex slip?”

  “Yeah, that one.” The swimmers completed their first length, one after another except for the two slowest ones in the outside lanes, and flip-turned on the opposite wall. The breaststrokers mounted the blocks at the other end. “But also no. I meant the way they all take off like that at once. Synchronized.”

  “Except for the ones that back flop.”

  “Truth.”

  Shouts echoed off the water, the concrete walls, the tile floor, as the backstrokers touched the wall and the breaststrokers dove into the water.

  “Butterfly is pretty,” Reese said. She stared down at the pool, half-finished sneaker in her hand. This one was covered in a collage of tiny cartoon characters, all a little ugly-cute. Ugly-cute being Reese’s specialty.

  “Or looks like drowning,” I said.

  “Right. No middle ground with that one.”

  Santiago joined Keagan on the deck, where they alternated cheering on their teammates and laughing about something with the other accumulated relay team members. San, being the team’s fastest butterflyer, wouldn’t swim till the last heat half an eternity from now, but he stood with Keag and the other guys anyway. “Santiago looks pretty doing fly,” I said.

  “Yes, well, San looks pretty doing everything. He is a pretty human.”

  This was true. Apart from his generally pleasing aesthetic, Santiago’s one of those people who are good at basically everything physical. Like swimming the fly and running cross-country and playing basketball, if he were to, in fact, play basketball. Even walking. He’s a very good walker, smooth, graceful, which is totally not a talent worth remarking upon, but hey. It’s the diving thing. While San swims the fly beautifully and fast, as in he’s top three in the state, he’s also a diver. First and foremost a diver. As in, top three not just in the state but in the country. As in, fosters Olympic dreams that are not in the least bit pipe-like despite what his parents think.

  I fidgeted on the metal bleacher. Fleece-lined leggings were proving a poor choice for swim-meet attire. In retrospect, obviousl
y. Even if it was mid-February. The butterflyers mounted their blocks. “You should tell Bellamy that.”

  “I’m pretty sure Bells is aware.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.”

  Reese looked up. “Yes, you do. Like how you know that…” She stared me down, waiting for me to finish her prompt.

  I rolled my eyes. “That it’s none of my business.” Someday Reese’s steely gaze shall be a thing of legends. Legends! “Even though they would be so freaking cute together and Santiago already—”

  “Nari.”

  “Okay! Fine.” I fluttered my hands into the balmy chlorine air. “Farewell, brilliant intentions! You’re fate’s problem now.”

  “Good.” Reese bent her head back to her work in progress, adding a pair of googly, unmatched eyes to a tiny, roundish something-or-other with a yawning mouth and single tooth.

  The freestylers followed the butterflyers, the faster teams nearly lapping the slowest. One of the doors to the lobby opened and I turned, looking for Bellamy, but instead of my favorite aspiring astronaut it was a herd of freshman girls followed by Keagan’s mom wearing a T-shirt with the quote “If I only have one day left to live, I hope to spend it at a high school swim meet, because those things last FOREVER,” printed over a watermark of our school logo. Preach, Autumn Lotus Breeze (not her real name, but you get the idea). I waved at her, smiling my biggest I-love-your-son-like-mad smile. She waved back, then got waylaid by another swim parent in the third row. No sign of Brent, Keagan’s dad. Which meant he was probably in his pottery studio or off selling his wares, leaving Paisley Star (yes, that’s her real name) to represent.

  I watched the second heat of the relay and the concurrent filling up of Reese’s white sneaker to the beat of the pool drains gurgling, the water splashing, the crowd cheering, until Bellamy clomped up the bleachers and sat beside me.

  Yes, clomped. Like a Clydesdale? you say. Isn’t that a bit, you know, rude, Narioka? This is our first impression of dear Bellamy Bishop! Your oldest and bestest friend! Don’t you want her portrayed in a more, dare we say, attractive light? To which I reply, Pish-posh. And balderdash! Bellamy is beautiful and she clomps. Just as Reese is beautiful and she wisps. And I am beautiful (and terrifying, like a Siren, luring the unsuspecting to their demise) and I pirouette or flit or even storm.

  So!

  Bellamy clomped up the bleachers in her heavy-soled shoes and sat beside me in her jeans and too-big Goodwill T-shirt, today’s being adorned with a faded picture of the Backstreet Boys worn without intent and utterly unironically. (“Clothes are for warmth and adherence to social constructs concerning the inappropriateness of nakedness, Nari.” Actual Bellamy quote, btw.) Her brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail.

  Bells and I met in the second grade after I moved to Oregon from Minnesota. My dad got a job at the university, and the whole lot of us (Mother, Father, Older Brothers One and Two, and seven-and-a-half-year-old me) packed up and migrated away from the Midwest. I was devastated. Truly. As only a slightly melodramatic seven-and-a-half-year-old can be. At least until I learned I was swapping epic winters for epic coastlines. Plus my new room was awesome. And then there was Bellamy, who, seated next to me in our second-grade class, replied to my glee over our matching Darth Vader folders with a lecture about the way sound travels (or, better, doesn’t) in space.

  The rest is history and context, but it should be entered into the official record that Bellamy is brilliant. Mensa brilliant. Talked about the physics of space at age seven brilliant. IQ of 165 brilliant. Has been riding the high of getting into MIT, early action, since before Christmas brilliant.

  She sat down beside me on the bleacher as the third heat of the relay stepped up to the blocks. Keagan and the other backstrokers jumped into the water, and I heard Paisley shout, “Let’s go, Keag!” from her seat down below. I stood at the first buzzer and cheered along with everyone else as Keagan swam his leg of the relay. Reese joined me, shoe and pen in hand, as he passed below the flags fifteen feet from the end, half a body length ahead of the next-fastest swimmer. He took his final stroke and touched the wall, and the breaststroker dove over him off the block.

  As he climbed out of the water, pulling off his goggles and cap, I wolf whistled. Chest heaving, water dripping off him, he looked up at me in the bleachers, bowed, then turned to cheer for the rest of his relay team. Reese and I sat down.

  Bellamy hadn’t moved. She stared at the water with a vacant expression, brow tight.

  “Solving differentials in your head for funsies?” Reese asked before pulling the cap back off her pen with her teeth.

  Bells shook her head. “No. Deadline for the MIT financial aid paperwork was yesterday.”

  “Didn’t you and your mom turn that in weeks ago?” I asked.

  “In January, yeah.”

  “Then…?”

  “My dad had to fill out some forms, too.”

  Reese tipped her azure head to one side. “You think he’d miss the due date?”

  Bellamy shrugged, but I knew her worry was less of the Missed Deadline variety and more of the Ragingly Wealthy Estranged Parent sort. I looped my arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Worry not, dearest Bellamy. You deserve this. The money will work out.”

  REESE

  Friday, February 22, 11:15 p.m.

  It was hot. Airless. Scarlet, cardinal, crimson.

  Eyes closed, muscles moving, bass thrumming up through the ground into my feet, I danced.

  I danced till my skin was slick with sweat. Till I lost autonomy, lost full sense, feeling liquid, elastic, stretched, dissipated. The music was me and I was the crowd. No outlines. No beginnings. No ends. Only a beat, stronger than the one set by my heart, filling my chest and my joints and my head. Just the pulse of lights, the push of bodies, and—

  My phone, vibrating in my pocket.

  Again.

  I should’ve left it in the car. Screw ’em. You get your crisis, I get my catharsis.

  I stopped and the dancers were a writhing mass around me, red-hot and vibrant. It felt like waking up. Or stepping back on land after a few hours on a boat. You know you’re standing still but your insides sway to the rhythm of the waves. I wove through the crowd, avoiding elbows, skirting couples, heading for the doors.

  Outside, the night air was frigid. Damp shirt, damp skin, no coat, plus Portland air in late February? Yeah. I freed my phone from the side pocket of my pants, hunched my shoulders, wrapped my arms around my chest like that did anything, and walked a few paces down the sidewalk away from the club’s door. Other people milled about smoking, laughing, checking phones, watching the icy clouds of their breath. I unlocked my phone: Six texts, four missed calls, two voicemails.

  Rad.

  The first voicemail was from my dad: Concern and a touch of understanding. The second was from my mom: *Delete*

  The texts, in chronological order, were as follows:

  (1) Dad: Please check in getting late

  (2) Nari: Where are yooouuuuuu???? Answer your phooooonnnne. Please and thank you.

  (3) Mom: Your dad called to ask if I’d heard from you, which of course I haven’t. Reese, you have to stop doing this to him. I know you’re angry, but acting irration— And…*Delete*

  Really, I deserved a medal for reading even half of it. And no, I didn’t feel sorry for being rude. She’d earned rude. Therefore, I would not regret it. Also, regrets are a waste of time. For real. Even about the bad shit—not intentional rudeness but the stuff that makes you go, Damn, I really shouldn’t’ve done that. Regret is pointless. I’m not saying, Here’s a free pass to be a complete asshole and do stuff you know is shitty before you even do it. I mean regret: feeling sad or sorry about something you did or did not do. Key word: did. As in, already happened, in the past. And since all you can do is fix the fallout or learn from your mistakes so you don’t
repeat them in the future, why waste your energy and time on regret?

  I’m totally still pro consequences, though. Particularly the well-earned kind, since regretting a thing only because your consequences suck is shitty. Also because some consequences, like the deep teal of my resentment in response to the electric turquoise of my mom’s fuckup, are kind of poetic.

  (4) Nari: Majestic Friend of the Newly Aquamarine Hair, CALL ME. Remember how Bells was a walking ball of sulk all afternoon? Well, I finally got the Why out of her. And it’s B-A-D.

  (5) Dad: Answer your phone.

  “What’s so interesting?”

  I looked back. He was standing too close, peering over my shoulder, smiling like his attention was a gift he’d chosen to bestow especially upon me. I took a step away, turning to face him. Ecru. Him and every other guy like him. Bland, unoriginal, the paint people throw up on a wall because they’re dead inside and/or just that boring. The color of hospital hallways, schools, and the patriarchy. “Oh, just some hard-core porn,” I said. “The usual.”

  His lip twitched. Then he smiled. “Funny. I like a girl with a sense of humor.”

  “Yeah?” I grinned and tipped my head to the side. “I like a guy who minds his own business.”

  He glared. “Fucking bitch.”