Page 85 of All's Fair in Love and Blackmail

And a snort of laughter escapes my lips as I shake my head.Commitment-phobe, playboy.She didn’t hold back. And maybe it’s my arrogance talking—maybe it’s just a self-centered thought from the mind of aplayboy—but I kind of, sort of,maybethink this article is referring to me.

Right? I check the date and then line up everything I’ve heard her say—and it fits. Didn’t she say she studied communications because I loved it so much, because I made it seem exciting and fun?

She did. She definitely did. My grin widens.

That little?—

“Felix?” The voice pulls me out of my spinning thoughts.

“Huh?” I say vaguely. Then, in full defiance of all rules, I fold India’s article up and tuck it into my back pocket.

“Uh, I think we’re meeting up to go over a few things,” a very nervous Donnie says.

“Be there in a second,” I say. I massage my lower back and then replace the lids on the cardboard boxes I’ve been digging through—unsuccessfully, except for finding India’s article.

I hear Donnie scurry out of the room again, and I follow. Everyone is gathered around the table in the meeting room, and Herb is gesticulating with great enthusiasm. There’s a projector set up, I see, the kind we used in school when I was a kid, and I approach with interest. I sit down, squeezed between Veronda and a forever-employee named Merle. “Merle,” I say, nodding to him. He grunts a greeting back to me.

My interest turns to lead in my stomach, though, when Veronda looks right at me, her eyes shining with excitement.

“I found the footage,” she says. She taps the projector on her other side, and I notice for the first time that there’s an old digital camera propped on top, with an ancient-looking wire plugged in to one side.

“The footage,” I repeat dumbly as I pray fervently that she’s not talking about what I think she’s talking about.

“From the Bicentennial!” she says, swatting my arm playfully.

“The Bicentennial,” Bob says from the other end of the table. His voice is musing. “That poor kid in the pageant dance, right?”

A murmur goes around the table, and Veronda nods.

“That’s the one,” she says. “And I honestly have you to thank,” she says to me. “Until I heard that conversation of yours, I wouldn’t have thought of it. But this is probably footage you took,” she says, nodding at the digital camera. “Do you remember?”

“I was an intern,” I say as prickling discomfort crawls over my skin. “It was a long time ago. I didn’t film the whole thing, and I wasn’t the only person there. So I really don’t know.”

Except I do know. I know in my gut, the way I know Cyrus will punch me if he finds out India likes me—the way I know he’ll punch me twice if he finds out how I feel about her. I know that footage is the footage I took of the Peter and the Wolf performance, and I know everyone is about to see India Marigold lose her clothing.

The sound in my ears isn’t normal. It’s a low-grade buzzing, something I’ve never experienced before, and the volume seems to be directly proportional to how close Herb’s hand is to thePlaybutton of that camera.

“Boy, do we have a treat for you,” he says loudly, adjusting his suspenders and guffawing like he can’t believe his good luck. “I’d given up hope of finding this puppy, but here she is—in the bottom of the storeroom filing cabinet, if you can believe it.” He shakes his head, still happy as a clam. “This is footage from our Bicentennial celebration, some…gosh. Seven or eight years ago.”

The buzzing sound is louder now, a hovering wasp gorging itself on my anxiety. I watch as Herb’s pudgy finger approaches the camera, closer and closer and closer. He presses thePlaybutton and turns toward the screen.

And there it is—the infamous performance, the one that went down as the worst case of public, accidental, partial nudity Lucky has ever seen. I recognize the grainy quality, the faint strains of music, the leaping dancers dressed as different forest animals, until?—

There she is. The dancer I know to be a high-school India, dressed in a full-body fox costume. She twirls with the doe in front of her and the rabbit behind her, twirls and twirls, and then—rrriiipppppp.

The sound isn’t audible, but somehow I hear it all the same as the rabbit steps on India’s fox tail—why was the tail so long?—and the entire back side of the costume rips away, revealing a black leotard, pale legs, and—I grimace—an unmistakable wedgie.

One of my colleagues gives a snort of good-natured laughter, but my heart sinks as precious India freezes, reaches around her backside, finds her costume missing, and then darts frantically off stage.

How mortified must she have been? It was a jerk move, even pretending I might tell people that was her.

Veronda stops the video and turns to look at me; I see it out of the corner of my eye, but my attention is still focused on the screen, where India has just disappeared from view.

“Now look, Felix,” Veronda says, her voice hedging. “I hate to put you on the spot. But I think you know who this was.” She points at the video. “And we were wondering”—she shares an excited glance with Herb, who nods enthusiastically—“we were wondering if you think this person would be willing to do an interview. We could even block her identity,” she goes on quickly. “So that no one knows who it was. But we’d love to get her thoughts and feelings now, after the fact, on one of Lucky’s most infamous moments.”

My mind is racing. So is my heart. And my brain clearly isn’t working properly. But all I can think about, for some reason, is the memory of India, sobbing at my kitchen table—tenderhearted India who was so traumatized by the brief fear that she’d accidentally killed someone.

And something rises in my chest then, something steely and protective, something that has me gritting my teeth against my sudden irritation.

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