White Cat by Holly Black

building on campus, constructed with a musician’s donated funds in the eighties, when apparently people thought that a round building tilted at a weird angle was just the thing to update all the grand old brick edifices surrounding it. But as ugly as it is on the outside, the inside is couch-filled and comfortable. Bookshelves fan out from a central parlor with lots of seating and a massive globe that seniors try to steal year after year (a popular bet).
    The librarian waves from behind her big oak desk. She’s just out of library school and has cat’s-eye glasses in every color of the rainbow. Several losers put down money on hooking up with her themselves. I felt bad when I told them the odds I’d assigned.
    “Good to have you back, Cassel,” she says.
    “Good to be back, Ms. Fiske.” Once spotted, I figure the best I can manage is not being conspicuous. Hopefully by the time she figures out I’m not back for real, I will be.
    My working money—a total of three thousand dollars—is hidden between the pages of a big leather-bound onomasticon. I’ve kept it there for the last two years without incident. No one ever touches it but me. My only fear is that the book will be culled, since no one ever uses an onomasticon, but I think Wallingford keeps it because it looks expensive and obscure enough to reassure visiting parents that their kids are learning genius-type stuff.
    I open the book and slide out six hundred dollars, poke around for a couple of minutes acting like I’m considering reading some Renaissance poetry, and then slink back to the dorm, where Sam’s supposed to meet me. As I step off the stairs and into the hall, Valerio walks out of his room. I dodge to the side, into the bathroom, and then close myself in a stall. Leaning against the wall while waiting for my heart to start beating normally, I try to remind myself that so long as no one sees you doing something embarrassing, there’s no reason to be humiliated. Valerio doesn’t follow. I text Sam.
    He walks into the bathroom moments later, laughing. “What a clandestine spot for a meeting.”
    I push open the stall door. “Laugh it up.” There’s no rancor in my voice, though. Just relief.
    “The coast is clear,” he says. “The eagle has flown the coop. The cow stands alone.”
    I can’t help smiling as I dig out the money from my pocket. “You are a master of deception.”
    “Hey,” he says. “Can you teach me to calculate odds? Like, if there was something I wanted to take bets on? And what’s the deal with the point spreads on the games? How do you figure those? You aren’t doing it the way they say online.”
    “It’s complicated,” I say, stalling. What I mean is: It’s fixed.
    He leans against the sink. “We Asians are all math geniuses.”
    “Okay, genius. Maybe another time, though?”
    “Sure,” he says, and I wonder if he’s already planning tocut me loose from my own business. I figure I can probably screw him somehow if he does, but the thought of having to plan it just makes me tired.
    Sam counts the money carefully. I watch him in the mirror. “You know what I wish?” he asks when he’s done.
    “What?”
    “That someone would convert my bed into a robot that would fight other bed robots to the death for me.”
    That startles a laugh out of me. “That would be pretty awesome.”
    A slow, shy smile spreads across his mouth. “And we could take bets on them. And be filthy rich.”
    I lean my head against the frame of the stall, looking at the tile wall and the pattern of yellowed cracks there, and grin. “I take back anything I might have implied to the contrary. Sam, you are a genius.”
    I’m not good at having friends. I mean, I can make myself useful to people. I can fit in. I get invited to parties and I can sit at any table I want in the cafeteria.
    But actually trusting someone when they have nothing to gain from me just doesn’t make sense.
    All friendships are negotiations of power.
    Like,