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no, but I really wanted to play some soccer. It helped me de-stress. We scrimmaged guys all the time at practice. “Can I back out when I get there if I need to?”
    “I don’t see why not.” She glanced behind her and changed lanes.
    “Okay. I’ll give it a try.” A thought occurred to me. “Do I get to wear a sports bra?” The padded bra set-up wasn’t too bad, but it would be good to get back to normal.
    “Yes.” She chuckled. “Let’s grab a bite to eat. I think they start up at six-thirty or seven.”
    Maybe my stomach would settle by then. I really wished I had my driver’s license.
     
    Christie ordered from a deli when we got back to the condo. From the sounds of it, she did that pretty often.
    “Okay, chickie,” she said, putting down the cordless and looking over where I lounged on the couch. “Unload your bra. I need to take a look at some of the pictures.”
    “Somehow that just sounds wrong,” I said.
    Christie laughed. “Oh my God. Was that a joke? And here I thought you were so traumatized you’d lost your sense of humor.”
    “Not lost, just temporarily deactivated, I guess.” I stood and headed to my purple-palooza bedroom to change clothes.
    Christie had laid out my soccer stuff. I grabbed a sports bra from my bag. “Aaah. Something normal in my freaky life.”
    The shinguards were shiny and new. The ones I had at home were pretty pathetic. She’d bought some Adidas cleats that I’d been wanting for a while. How could she have known that? And I was a little worried she’d bought pink or purple soccer socks, but she’d selected a nice, boring navy blue. The cleats had been pre-dirtied so I just put on my own T-shirt and shorts, and the shinguards and socks.
    I carried the shoes into the living room and set them on the dining room table, since anything else would show dirt and be harder to clean. “Thanks for the cleats, Christie. I’ve been wanting some of those.”
    “Really?” Christie said, avoiding my gaze. “I broke them in for you, so you’d blend in.” She sat with the laptop on the coffee table, her favorite position. I handed her the component from my bra.
    She plugged it into the laptop.
    I looked at the television for the images.
    “Okay,” she said. “I’ll just type in a search for Will, and…”
    Dozens of square pictures of Will appeared on the screen. Will in homeroom. Will in algebra. Will in art. Will looking at me. Will smiling. Will looking away. Will. Will. Will.
    “Well,” Christie said. “I see you managed to spend a lot of time looking at him.”
    I, of course, had no response, so I wrinkled up my nose and stuck out my tongue. “Na-na-na.” I reclaimed my spot on the couch.
    “You’d better not be complaining. Here.” She hit a few keys. “This is what I spent my day looking at.”
    “Aaah!” I jumped when the image of a middle-aged man with a comb-over and sadly abundant nose hair flashed on the screen.
    “Sometimes, ugly on the inside does translate into ugly on the outside,” Christie said. “This guy’s a real piece of work. He’s a brilliant chemist, but he has a history of trying to take shortcuts. He’s the main suspect in the case Nic and I are working on. We think a hacker got lucky and accessed an old truth serum formula that was never supposed to see the light of day. The thief, who we can’t seem to find, hooked up with a greedy chemist, and Dr. Ivan is our most likely suspect.”
    “Is that actually hair curling out of his ears?” I cringed.
    “Yep. Unfortunately, I can verify that.” She settled back on the couch to talk to me more easily.
    “So, what are you doing with this guy? Watching him?” My poor aunt.
    “Worse. We don’t know enough yet to be certain it’s him. We know something is planned for the Symposium. The thief has offered the formula up for sale. He erred in mentioning the date and something about a professional conference. That’s how we knew to come here.”
    She laughed. “Dr. Ivan’s