“I can’t contact him,” I told her. “My dad’s still tracking what I do online. Trust me. He’ll be cool.”
She kept walking. “Do you know him?” she asked.
“Sort of. We used to be contacts, four years ago.”
She looked at me quizzically. “Why are you suddenly interested in him now?” she asked.
“I’m interested in his connections. You’ll see,” I said. “Come on, the worst he can do is say no.”
She raised her eyebrows and reluctantly followed me down the street. The road ended in a cul-de-sac, and we stopped in front of the last house on the street, a small, shabby yellow cottage. The siding was dotted with algae, and green moss grew in furry patches on the roof.
The trees and grass in the front yard were faded to a light green, in need of fresh spray paint. Weeds poked through cracks in the turf lawn. I marched up to the front door and confidently pushed the glowing orange bell. Clare hung back closer to the street. A few seconds later a female voice came over the speaker. She sounded older, and her voice was sharp.
“What do you want?”
“Hey, I’m here to talk to Jax?” I said in my best I swear I’m not a dangerous stalker voice.
A few seconds went by. “He doesn’t live here. Get lost,” she said. The speaker turned off with a clap.
I looked over at Clare, standing with her hands tucked into her jeans pockets. She was trying not to smile. She walked up next to me and I rang the bell again.
“You touch that bell one more time, and I’m calling the cops,” the voice barked. “Now, get off my property. Both of you.”
“We’re friends of his,” Clare insisted.
“I don’t know where the hell Jax is. Send him a message, you freak,” she said.
The speaker switched off again. Clare gave me one of those what did you honestly expect shrugs and started to turn around when the front door clicked open.
Large brown eyes underneath delicate lashes peered through the opening. Her eyes locked on my hair, and the guard in her face started to dissolve. She opened the door the rest of the way. Her brown hair was cut short, above her ears. She was wearing blue cotton sweatpants and a matching sweatshirt. Even her socks were blue. She looked older than us, in her late twenties.
“Who the hell are you?” she asked. “What kind of person randomly drops by? Are you mentally challenged?”
“Possibly,” Clare said, looking at me. “Your hair dye might have seeped through your skull and caused brain damage.”
“I thought you were the cops,” the girl said to us.
“Does Jax live here?” I asked.
“Does he know you’re looking for him?” she asked, avoiding my question.
I sighed and shook my head. “I can’t contact him digitally. My computer and phone lines are tapped.”
She groaned at the ceiling. “Oh, give me a break. Are you being censored too? Can’t my cousin have a single normal friend?” Clare and I looked at each other and back at the girl. At least we aren’t wearing our pajamas in the middle of the day, I wanted to point out.
The door creaked all the way open, as if it were stretching muscles it hadn’t used in years. She moved aside, her way of saying we could come in. I walked into the living room and felt like I’d walked into a video game. The ceilings, floor, and walls were all digital screens, all littered with talking heads and moving advertisements. A few couches and chairs were scattered around the space, but the seats weren’t facing one another. They were all facing screens.
There was so much commotion, I had to close my eyes because it felt like the ground was moving. A dozen different shows were on at once, and they all competed for our attention. My brain couldn’t separate all the things I was hearing, not to mention the lights flashing around me. I couldn’t even focus on what I wanted to say. Every time I opened my mouth, a video or advertisement would start playing.
The hug machine is on sale now! It’s a must-have for your family. This cuddly robot’s electronic textiles can sense touch. It can give hugs, hold, even read to your children! Too busy? Sore back? Let your hug machine take over. It will give your children hours of one-on-one, affectionate care! It even comes in adult sizes . . .
A Vacuumspot wheeled around the corner and started vacuuming the carpeting around us. It was the size of a flipscreen. My mom owned the same one; you just turn it on and a sensor directs its location. In about two hours it could vacuum our entire house. Baley loved chasing after it. It was the only friend she had. We got her a robot play dog when she was a puppy, but she preferred chasing the Vacuumspot.
The girl bent down and switched it off, after it hit her feet.
I squeezed my forehead in between my fingers.
“Would you mind turning some of these screens off for a second?” I asked.
She mumbled a few commands; the shows didn’t turn off, but a few of them paused and the volume was muted. I took a breath of relief. Finally, I could think.
“So, can I talk to Jax?” I asked her, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was distracted by something on a screen.
“Wait here,” she said. She padded down the hall and disappeared around the corner.
“Who is this guy?” Clare asked.
“He’s a DS Dropout,” I said.
Clare looked up at the ceiling, which depicted a giant advertisement for a virtual beach vacation.
“Are you sure?” she asked, looking around. “And he lives here?”
The girl sauntered back down the hall and pointed across the living room to two glass doors covered in digital curtains. “Through that door. Take the path through the backyard. Next time, use his entrance.” She said a few more commands, speaking some kind of robot language, and the volume snapped back on.
She dragged her feet down the hall without saying goodbye. Clare and I walked to the back door and opened it, careful not to displace the digital curtains. When we walked outside, we both stalled on the back porch. Tall pine trees stretched across the entire yard. It looked like a forest my parents used to show me in pictures, before cities switched to synthetic trees. The trees were young, their trunks not very wide yet, but they were real. The new growth of needles made the branches look like someone had dipped the ends of them in neon green paint. I touched the baby needles, and they were as soft as feathers. They made the air smell crisp.
I looked past the trees and saw two murals painted on the fence next to a small studio. I smiled because I recognized the prints; I had seen them online four years earlier. The murals depicted outdoor scenes. One was of the Three Sisters, a famous triplet set of mountain peaks that cut through central Oregon. Another mural showed Marys Peak, a hill outside of Corvallis, the tallest point of the Coast Range. The scenes were set as a high, panoramic view. Around the murals were benches made from logs that had been split down the middle with the flat side facing up. It reminded me of a small-scale Eden.
A mosaic path cut across the yard to the studio. It was carved out with blue and green beach glass, rocks, a scattering of red bricks, even crushed shells. I almost didn’t want to walk on it. I just wanted to stare at it. I loved that someone took the time to make even the ground look like artwork.
Clare suddenly grabbed my arm and her eyes widened. I looked to where she was staring. A guy was standing at the door of the studio. He was tall and wore a white T-shirt and dark green shorts. He had dark hair and eyes and olive-toned skin. I had never met Jax in person.
“You always make house calls?” he asked.
“We like to make people extremely uncomfortable,” I said, grinning.
He walked down the steps in front of his studio toward us. “Madeline Freeman,” he said. “At last we meet.”
“Hi, Jax,” I said. I introduced him to Clare, and she took the opportunity to reach out and shake his hand. She slipped on some of the beach glass and ended up falling forward, into his chest. I tried not to laugh as Jax steadied her, his hands on her shoulders. Clare didn’t seem to mind the contact, a gushi
ng smile lighting up her face.
I felt my hands lock behind my back.
“Sorry for the surprise visit. It’s how we roll,” I said.
He shrugged. “I’m not going to turn away two hot girls,” he said.
I ignored the compliment, but he wasn’t hard to look at either. He had all the Italian looks that his last name, Viviani, would imply. Eyes so dark you could barely see the pupils, and brownish black hair that was short on the sides but longer on top.
I pointed at the yellow house behind us.
“What did we just walk through?” I asked him.
“Oh, the digital gates of hell? That’s my cousin’s house.” He nodded toward the studio. “I moved in back here after I was intercepted. She acts as a cover for me.”
“You’re still hiding out?” I asked.
“After I turned eighteen, I decided to stick around,” he said. “It’s a safe house now. I’m the lone renter.”
“How do you two know each other?” Clare asked.
His eyes stayed on mine. “I met Madeline four years ago. She was my first date.”
“It was not a date,” I said to him. “We met on a museum tour,” I explained to Clare as we sat down on one of the wood benches. “We were with a class of art students,” I clarified.
“But you ate lunch with me,” he pointed out.
“We didn’t eat anything,” I said, laughing. “The whole thing was digital,” I told Clare. I was surprised how well I remembered it. “We made fun of the virtual café.”
He smiled. “Then you hacked into the system and drew graffiti all over a Monet. You’ve never seen art until you’ve seen unicorns jumping across a Monet.”
I laughed again. “The guide didn’t appreciate it. He kicked me out of the tour,” I said.
Jax’s eyes fell to my shoulder, and I realized he was looking at my hair. “Nice color,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“Is that your rebellion flare?” he asked.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed again. “It’s rated number two for ‘how to scare your dad’ products, online.”
“Right under piercings,” he said.
“Actually, I think pregnancy tests are number one,” I said, and he laughed.
“And we can’t forget tattoos,” Jax offered.
“I’ve got that one covered.” I raised my wrist with a smile. I had been waiting for this moment for a long time.
His eyes widened when he recognized the bird on my wrist, the same bird that he’d drawn for me four years earlier. He sat down next to me and grabbed my arm. I studied his profile. I had talked to Jax online, but I never knew what his voice sounded like, that it was raspy. I never knew that he talked fast. I never knew his eyes were nearly black beneath his thick lashes. I never knew his lips were light brown, not red like Justin’s, that there was a crease in the middle of his bottom lip, that he had a dusting of freckles on his nose.
I glanced at Clare and she watched us curiously, with a small smile creeping over her face.
“Wow,” he said, admiring the tattoo.
“It was fitting,” I admitted.
His eyes met mine. “How did you find me?” he asked. He was still holding my wrist in his hand.
“You started showing your work online again,” I said.
“I don’t use my real name anymore,” he pointed out.
I slid my wrist out from his fingers. “No one else paints like you,” I said. “You always paint images like you’re thousands of feet up in the sky. As if you’re flying. I’ve never seen anything else like it. After you were intercepted, your gallery site closed down. But a few weeks ago your work started popping up again and I recognized it. It was under a new name, but I knew it was you. I traced the name to this address.”
“Impressive,” he said. He smiled and it made me feel relaxed. Too relaxed. I noticed he smiled with his entire face, his eyes curled up and his cheeks lifting, not just his mouth. It made him look young, even though I knew he was older than I was. I cleared my throat.
“We’re here on official business,” I said, changing the subject.
He stretched his legs out and casually crossed his feet. “That sounds boring,” he said.
I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees. “I’m interested in what you were doing that led to your arrest. I did some research. You managed to get the names of all the kids who served time in detention centers.”
He nodded. “I had a few friends spend time in DCs. I was just trying to organize support groups. It’s almost impossible to find those kids after they’re released. They all have aliases.”
I slowly recapped what happened at the DC in Los Angeles. I told him what happened to me, what happened to all of the kids, how we were emotionally brainwashed and mentally tortured.
“We freed one of the centers, about two months ago,” I said. “The rest are on lockdown.”
He looked down at his fingers, stretched over his knees. “I heard about what happened,” he said. “I know they’re brainwashing people. I’ve worked with some of the kids. But the list doesn’t exist anymore,” he said. “I haven’t worked on it since I got busted.”
“Yeah, but other people probably picked up where you left off. I bet you could track it down.”
“Why don’t you make your own list?” he said. “Besides, most of those kids don’t even want to be contacted. They wouldn’t communicate with me when I tried.”
“Exactly,” Clare cut in. “Since no one who comes out of a DC wants anything to do with us anymore, they usually block us. We’re understaffed as it is, so we stopped keeping track of people. Now with all the DCs on lockdown, all of those names are confidential. And most kids who get out of DCs are sent to halfway homes, or relocated.”
“You designed a program that intercepts those names,” I said. “We’d have to start from scratch, and it would take us months. With your connections, you could probably do it in a few days. You’d be a hero in our crowd.”
He laughed. “I’m not in your crowd anymore,” he said. “Sorry, I can’t do anything.”
“You can’t or you won’t?” I said, pressing.
He stood up, and his casual smile slipped into a frown. “The list is gone. It’s been destroyed. Tell your little gang to stop bugging me about it.” He held out his hands. “I’m out.”
I stood up as well. “I didn’t take you for somebody who would give up. I remember the day we met; you told me to start speaking my mind. You told me we were living in a lie. That’s why you started painting. You wanted to show people what was real.” I stopped and took a breath. “That was so inspiring,” I said. “You were the first person who ever inspired me.”
He kept his eyes locked on mine.
“So, do you want to help us, or do you want to play it safe? You want to hide inside all these walls? That sounds really boring.” I was yelling now. I threw my hands up in defeat. Humility took over. “I need help, Jax. Please help me.”
His eyes narrowed and he took a step closer, so I had to look up at him. I could feel the energy pushing off his chest. I thought he was going to scream back at me and lose it, like I had, but he just watched me carefully, like he was examining me. He reached out and I winced, but he only gently brushed a piece of hair out of my eyes. Something in his face told me to calm down. Slow down. I was letting my personality become a rapids, crashing downstream.
“You got intense,” he said.
I sighed. “Yeah.”
“I always thought you were laid-back,” he told me.
I narrowed my eyes. “I was fourteen. You barely knew me.”
“Who wound you up like this? Did the DC do this to you?”
“Nothing did this to me.”
I glanced away because his eyes were looking for loopholes, for ways inside. I backed up and reached into my purse and pulled out my red leather journal. I asked Clare for her phone number and wrote it down, then tore it off the page.
“If you change your min
d, give us a call,” I said, and slapped the paper in his hand.
I turned away without looking back at him, without saying goodbye. I stalked through the yard and down the path along the side of the yellow house. I opened a metal latch on the fence, and Clare shut it behind us.
We walked down the street in silence for a few minutes. The air was balmy and humid, like rain was coming. A row of low gray clouds pressed over the western horizon, blocking out the Coast Range.
Guilt hovered over my heart and started to push down.
“I was too hard on him, wasn’t I?”
Clare grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Your inspirational speeches could be a little more gentle.”
“I know,” I said, and slapped my hand over my forehead. “I wish I had your patience. I get so mad.”
She thought about this. “You take things personally,” she said. “And that’s not a bad thing, but you have to realize Jax isn’t against you.”
“Gentle prodding doesn’t get you very far in life.”
She nodded. “You’re more like a hard kick in the ass.”
Clare’s phone beeped and she looked down and checked it. She showed me the screen.
“I guess you got away with corporal punishment,” she said, and I looked at the message, from Jax.
Okay, Madeline. I’ll help you. On one condition. Meet me tomorrow. Alone.
Chapter Ten
The next day I waited outside, down the street from my house, where Jax told me to meet him. A ZipShuttle turned the corner and slowed down next to the curb.
I opened the door and Jax scooted over to make room for me next to him, but I sat across from him on the opposite side of the car. The inside was small, similar to a car interior, and Jax’s long legs took up most of the floor space. He pulled earpods out of his ears and turned them off. He told me he was listening to a podcast and started rambling about some sci-fi television series. I was annoyed he was making small talk at a time like this.
Something about Jax’s presence bothered me in general. He was too bright—the yellow rain jacket he wore and his blue tennis shoes with orange laces screamed for attention. I listened to him talk, noted his easy demeanor, as if we rode a ZipShuttle together every day. He didn’t have Justin’s intense eyes, the stare that’s always observing, calculating every detail around him and storing it away. Jax just noticed the things right in front of him. He fixed his eyes on that. At this moment, on me.
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