Chapter 8: Chapter 3: Fate’s Second Punch Part 1

“We can’t meet with him.” Zavier said flatly. At this point he felt like an idiot not going to the police.

“He’s literally the fucking IT guy at the other high school. He’s not going to hurt us.” May responded slowly, eyeing Zavier’s reaction as she spoke. It was really more of a question than a statement. 

“One. He might. We, or at least I, don’t know this guy at all. Second,” Zavier said in a muted but clear tone, “we saw him get shot. Whoever this is, they took his phone. That person is very, very dangerous.”

“We don’t know if he got shot, I didn’t hear a gunshot.” May looked at Zavier as she spoke and then looked back down at her phone as if she was trying to glean more information from the text message as to the user's identity. 

Zavier was done playing amateur detective. He really wanted to avoid trouble but he had already messed up letting things go this long without telling his parents, May’s parents, or the police. He turned towards the stairs and began to walk up.

May grabbed his arm. He turned around and locked eyes with her. After a long second May spoke. “Please wait before you tell anyone. Let me try something.” She then let go of his arm and began texting. Zavier felt his blood start to pump and heat rise to his face. She’s texting him! How could this girl be so stupid? He had reached the end of his patience with the situation. He needed to walk upstairs and talk to May’s parents. He then needed to get on the phone and talk to his own parents. After that, he needed to call the police. But Zavier didn’t go up. He had already waited at the bottom of the stairs for too long. May had his implicit approval when he stopped his ascent. He just wasn’t comfortable continuing until he gave her a chance to try something else. That would cause unpleasant issues.

May cycled between typing frantically, hitting the backspace several times, and pausing briefly. After about a minute of this she stopped and turned her phone to Zavier to show her work. Send a picture so I know your ok! She had already hit send before she showed Zavier. Zavier walked over to May’s basement couch and fell backwards into the cushions. He was going to wait for a response from the spider despite his better judgment. He really should have just kept walking up the stairs.

Zavier had barely fully sunk into the old couch when May announced, “He responded.” Zavier motioned for May to come to him. If Zavier spoke he would have almost certainly tipped off to May exactly how he was feeling about the endeavor. May walked over and sat down next to Zavier. She flipped her phone toward Zavier’s face, watching intently for his response. The Spider had sent back a picture of himself. He was in the driver seat of his car wearing a blue polo. His expression was plain and it was clear there was no staging done to take this picture. Speed was the only goal.

Zavier sighed and looked at May. She very clearly saw this response from the Spider as a reason to keep trying to solve the situation themselves. He needed to convince her otherwise. “It could still be an old picture saved on the phone. We can’t meet with this guy at any private place and we can’t bring him to us and give away where we live. We don’t have a choice. We can’t trust him.” 

“What about the mall?”

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“What?” Zavier said in an exasperated tone.

“The mall. It’s way away from our homes and our school and it's super public and crowded. We could tell him to meet us and watch from far away to make sure he’s the guy. Then one of us goes to talk while the other stays hidden.” May could see Zavier was not being convinced as she spoke. “Please, we can fix this without any problems. If he’s fine then some dude just hit him or something and that’s his problem. We don’t need to admit we were getting drugs last night to anyone else.”

May did not want to get caught. That much was clear. Her risk tolerance was much different than Zavier for these reasons and most likely personality reasons as well. Zavier now had the same choice as he did earlier.

“Let’s set it up for lunch hour and get there early.” Zavier had unintentionally filled the moments prior with drama and anticipation as he took his time to speak. May was relieved he had continued to go along. He had the opposite feeling about his choice.

They spent the next three hours setting up the meeting. It was going to be at the mall food court on the lowest level of the building. There were several stories above the main food court in an atrium arrangement. This gave the person who did not go to talk to the spider a plethora of vantage points and walkways to observe the meeting while blending into the crowd. Zavier agreed to be the one to meet face to face with the Spider. He was not happy about playing the role of the sacrificial lamb but he also had no faith in May not saying something stupid to the guy. In his opinion, she was way too naïve about the ways this could go bad.

At 11:00, they left her house and made their way to the mall. They got there in just under twenty minutes and parked. The full parking lot meant they had to park near the back. This relieved Zavier as it signaled a crowded mall. They walked into the mall through the grocery store and up to the top floor from there. Then they went up to the railing and looked down. The food court was about seventy percent full. Perfect!

Zavier turned to May, “We’ll split up here, stay on the top two floors. I’ll be on the main floor right above the food court. For now, hang out in one of these outlet stores. I’ll text you when I confirm that it's him and go to meet him. After that watch us from the railings. Keep moving in a loop so you look like a normal shopper. Do not stop until I leave and then text you. If anything goes wrong and I’m taken or whatever, call the police. I’m not kidding. Call them immediately.”

Zavier tried his best to punctuate his words with a seriousness that would scare May into high alertness. She gave him a nod that looked like he had accomplished his goal. Hopefully he did. May was a smart girl and could just be doing what she thought it took to get Zavier to do this. He had to trust either way that she was ready to execute on this. With that Zavier went to the stairs and made his way to the main floor and began walking in a loop around the railings overlooking the food court, trying to be as anonymous as possible. He checked the time. 11:55. He was expecting a message as soon as he and May swapped phones on the way to the mall. Fuck! That girl’s probably going through my phone right now! He was lucky that the embarrassment was the lack of anything over anything specific on his phone. Zavier was not an archive of high school intrigue and his phone reflected that.

Here. May’s phone lit up with a text. The sender was now saved under Octo. Eight legs or eight arms, it was a way to label without having the name of The Spider, a well-known dealer in the area, saved on May’s phone. Zavier tilted his head toward the food court as inconspicuous as he could, taking care to not break his stride. After a couple seconds of surveying, he picked out the man known as the spider. He was dressed in tan khakis in a polo that did not fit well. The man was clearly in day job mode. Zavier did a quick broader scan of the food court. There were a lot of families with small kids. It would be a very difficult place to stage any sort of ambush. Zavier shrugged and walked down the escalator to the basement floor.

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