The Twelfth Card

the highly unstable, clear liquid nitroglycerine, even a drop of which could blow off a hand.
    Sachs tested the sample. Had the substance been explosive, its color would have turned pink. There was no change. She hit the same sample with Spray No. 3, just to be sure—this would show the presence of any nitrates, the key element in most explosives, not just nitroglycerine.
    “Negative, Rhyme.” She collected a second dot of the liquid and transferred the sample to a glass tube, then sealed it.
    “Think that’s about it, Rhyme.”
    “Bring it all back, Sachs. We need to get a jump on this guy. If he can get away from an ESU team that easily, it means he can get close to Geneva just as fast.”

Chapter Fifteen
    She’d aced it.
    Cold.
    Twenty-four multiple choices—all correct, Geneva Settle knew. And she’d written a seven-page answer to an essay question that called for only four.
    Phat . . .
    She was chatting with Detective Bell about how she’d done and he was nodding—which told her he wasn’t listening, just checking out the halls——but at least he kept a smile on his face and so she pretended he was. And it was wack, she felt good rambling like this. Just telling him about the curveball the teacher’d thrown them in the essay, the way Lynette Tompkins had whispered, “Jesus, save me,” when she realized she’d studied for the wrong subject. Nobody else except Keesh’d be interested in listening to her go on and on like this.
    Now, she had the math test to tackle. She didn’t enjoy calc much but she knew the material, she’d studied, she had the equations nailed cold.
    “Girlfriend!” Lakeesha fell into step beside her. “Damn, you still here?” Her eyes were wide. “You nearly got your own ass killed this morning and you don’t stress it none. That some mad shit, girl.”
    “Gum. You sound like you’re cracking a whip.”
    Keesh kept right on snapping, which Geneva knew she would.
    “You got a A already. Why you need to take them tests?”
    “If I don’t take those tests, it won’t be an A.”
    The big girl glanced at Detective Bell with a frown. “You ask me, you oughta be out looking for that prick done attack my girlfriend here.”
    “We’ve got plenty of people doing that.”
    “How many? And where they be?”
    “Keesh!” Geneva whispered.
    But Mr. Bell gave a faint smile. “Plenty of ’em.”
    Snap, snap.
    Geneva asked her friend, “So, how’d the WC test go?”
    “The world ain’t civilized. The world fucked up.”
    “But you didn’t skip?”
    “Told you I’d go. Was def, girl. I was all on it. Pretty sure I got myself an C. Least that. Maybe even an B.”
    “Funny.”
    They came to an intersection of hallways and Lakeesha turned to the left. “Later, girl. Call me in the p.m.”
    “You got it.”
    Geneva laughed to herself as she watched her friend steam through the halls. Keesh seemed like any other fine, hooked-up, off-the-rack homegirl, with her flashy skintight outfits, scary nails, taut braids, cheap bling. Dancing like a freak to L.L. Cool J, Twista and Beyoncé. Ready to jump into fights—even going right in the face of gangsta girls (she sometimes carried a box cutter or a flick knife). She was an occasional DJ who called herself Def Mistress K when she spun vinyl at school dances—and at clubs too, where the bouncers chose to let her pass for twenty-one.
    But the girl wasn’t quite as ghetto as she fronted. She’d wear the image the way she’d put on her crazy nails and three-dollar extensions. The clues were obviousto Gen: If you listened closely you could tell that standard English was her first language. She was like those black stand-up comics who sound like homies in their act but they get the patter wrong. The girl might say, “I be at Sammy’s last night.” But somebody really talking ebonics—the new politically correct phrase was “African-American vernacular English”—wouldn’t say that; they’d say “I was at Sammy’s.” “Be” was only used for ongoing or future activity, like “I be working at Blockbuster every weekend.” Or: “I be going to Houston with my aunt next month.”
    Or Keesh would say, “I the first one to sign up.” But that wasn’t AAVE, where you never dropped the verb “to be” in the first person, only the second or third: “He the first one to sign up” was right. But to the casual listener, the girl sounded bred in the hood.
    Other things too: A lot of project girls bragged about