by Spencer Baum
Sunny drove me home from that first Brigade meeting. On the way to my house she asked me what I thought of Seth. I told her he seemed like a nice guy, which she correctly interpreted as me saying I wasn’t interested. She spent the next two months trying to convince me I should be interested.
To be clear, for posterity, I never had any romantic interest in Seth. This thing where the media has decided to make him my boyfriend? Absolutely, unequivocally NO, even though Sunny wanted him to be. In the months between that first Brigade meeting and Rudy’s return in December, Sunny was in full-on matchmaker mode. I remember this time I went to her apartment, and she convinced me to get high with her on these pills she had. I was in a full-on floating-through-outer-space trip when I swear Sunny literally tried to hypnotize me. She tried to program interest in Seth into my brain. It was fucking weird.
“Seth is beautiful, don’t you think?” she said to me.
And when I hemmed and hawed she said, “He’s beautiful inside and out, just like you, Jenna. You two are meant to be together.”
And I told her I didn’t want a relationship right now and she said, “You think you’re still hung up on your boyfriend who moved to El Paso, but that’s just an excuse because you’re scared to try something new. It’s time to be brave. It’s time to become who you really are.”
Here’s the funny thing. Sunny’s drug-induced hypnosis almost worked.
The weekend after she and I got high at her apartment, Sunny took me to a party at Torin’s house. It was a small party—Brigaders mostly. A cooler full of beers. Bowls of chips and salsa. Music playing in one room. A movie playing in another. The movie was Apocalypse Now, a strange choice for a party, I know, but what I can say? I’d never seen it before and I got into it.
Seth came and sat next to me while I watched. For a long time it was just the two of us in the TV room, together on the couch, watching this dark, disturbing war movie.
Honestly, it’s hard to imagine a less romantic movie to watch. But Seth gave it his best shot anyway. A good ninety minutes into the movie, he edged a little closer to me on the couch. And when I didn’t move away from him, he put his arm around my shoulders.
Just thinking about that moment now, just writing about it, makes me want to scream. Seth Daron may have been handsome and smart, but I knew, even then I knew, that he wasn’t for me at all.
Still, I let him put his arm around me. I leaned into him. I gave him all the signs a guy could ask for. And I swear to God, looking back, I can’t imagine why I was being so friendly to him and I think Sunny’s attempt at mind programming me kind of worked. I think of that night, the two of us cuddling on the couch while, on the television, Martin Sheen rides a riverboat into the mouth of madness, and the only explanation I can give for why I stayed so long is that Sunny’s hypnosis routine got to me.
Strange, I know, and if you think I’m exaggerating, so be it. I’m just telling you—that girl had a way about her. Master manipulator and genuine evil.
Had Seth tried to kiss me that night I would have let him. But he didn’t. He’d spent all the courage he could muster getting his arm over my shoulder. For all his bluster about changing the world, Seth Daron was a chickenshit, and the growing stench of his cowardice (seriously, I gave him every sign a guy could hope for) was enough of a turnoff to break whatever spell Sunny had cast on me.
The movie ended. I got up from the couch. I avoided Seth for the rest of the party.
Seth and I coasted out the remainder of fall semester. We were in the same circle of friends, a circle that seemed to be shrinking with both of us still in it, so I had to maintain the friendship. But I made my position clear in the way I treated him. Friendly hellos and goodbyes. Never too much attention paid to him. Never a hug for him more friendly than I would give to anyone else in the Brigade.
When winter break arrived, and Rudy came back, my relationship status went from available to taken, and I thought any questions about me and Seth were put to rest.
I was wrong.
CHAPTER 17
They flew Jenna back to Southwest Nevada, landed in New Rome, drove her to the complex, and her training continued. For Jenna, the memory of that weird moment when she was floating in the water pit, unable to move, was more than enough motivation to finish in the Top 12 in every training session for the rest of the week.
The night before the Semifinal race, all the contestants had to report to the medical ward for a mandatory exam. They arrived in bunches, the remaining dregs from the individual cellblocks, three men from A, four from B, two from C, down the alphabet to the three women from G.
No one told the prisoners to stand in a single file, but they did. Thirty-six convicted murderers spontaneously took up an orderly formation. Such were the habits of prison. In twenty-four hours, they all would be locked inside an arena where most of them would die. But today, outside the hospital wing, they stood in place, docile and subdued.
One of the nurses came out. “Solomon Moss!” she called.
A black man, handsome, youthful, who to this point had been known to Jenna only as Solomon, stepped out of line and followed the nurse into the ward.
Lee Patton was called in next.
Wendell Wilcox after him.
It was interesting to hear their last names. Her competitors knew so much about Jenna and she knew so little about them.
“Gary Horner!” the nurse called.
Gary Horner had been on TV a few times during Jenna’s stay in Metro Prison. He was found guilty of kidnapping fifteen hitchhikers over the course of half a year, locking them all in his basement, allowing them to grow weak from starvation, then setting them loose on his property so he could hunt them down with his rifle.
“Victoria James!”
There was no order to the way they were being called back, at least, none that Jenna could discern. The nurse appeared, shouted a random name, and one more from the line walked away.
Jenna was ready for her name to be called. Every second she spent standing with the group was a second her mind could toy with images of these people trying to kill her on the Semifinals course. They were bigger than her. Meaner than her. She liked to think of herself as battle-hardened from her years in prison, and she was, but hardened enough to survive a night in the Funhouse of Death with these people?
Still in line with her was a guy named Jordan, a giant who couldn’t stand still and was always talking to himself. Next to Jordan was a man named Shawn, whose muscles and scars suggested years spent training for and surviving fights in the prison yard.
“Evan Novak!”
Jenna had once overheard Evan bragging about his exploits as a hitman for a gang in Philadelphia.
“Harold Lory!”
Harold was famous as well. A former butcher who had been using his cleavers to help the mafia make people talk, or make them shut up.
Nathan Cavanaugh was next.
“See you guys tomorrow,” Nathan said as he stepped out of line.
As Jenna watched Nathan go into the ward, Bertram Hess, who spoke in the double bass you’d expect from a man who was six-foot-five, said, “That mother fucker’s crazy.”
The door opened again. The nurse stepped out.
“Jenna Duvall!”
She followed the nurse down the hall and into an exam room. She found a middle-aged man with a military haircut and dark-rimmed glasses waiting in the room for her. He wore a lab coat with a name badge that identified him as Walt Hoyer, MD.
“Hello,” Dr. Hoyer said. “I’ll be doing a quick exam to make sure you’re ready for primetime. Strip down to your underwear and step on the scale.”
The doctor measured Jenna’s height, weight, blood pressure, and body temperature. Sit up here, stick out your tongue, look to your left, now to your right, deep breath in, and now exhale…
He shone a light in her eyes, tested her reflexes, listened to her heartbeat, looked in her ears, her nose, her throat. The exam took all of five minutes, and when it was
done, the doctor pulled a white plastic paddle from his jacket pocket and waved it over the back of her neck.
“Just getting a reading from your TAC implant,” he said.
The paddle beeped and buzzed like a toy.
“Hmm,” the doctor said.
“Everything alright?” said Jenna.
The doctor went to a computer desk in the corner of the room and shook the mouse to wake the machine. “You tell me,” he said. “Is everything alright?”
There was something about the man’s tone of voice, like he was fishing for a response.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” Jenna said.
A data entry record appeared on the computer screen. Jenna’s name was at the top. Prisoner 53461G Jenna Mary Duvall.
“Your health seems fine,” Dr. Hoyer said.
His back to Jenna, he began to type.
“It seems fine? Or it is fine?”
“Just a moment please.” His fingers clattered on the keys, like he was typing something urgent. Jenna strained for a view of the screen, but the doctor’s head was in the way. Aware she was taking a risk, she hopped down from the exam table so she could get a better look.
“Unless you want to get clicked, I suggest you get back on the table.”
Jenna did as he ordered, but not before she got a half-second’s view of the computer screen.
Dr. Hoyer was typing a note in the Comments field of her record. The note said something about Entry log shows activation code GMS2800.
“Was that on Monday afternoon?” Jenna asked.
Dr. Hoyer ignored her and continued typing.
“Did something happen with my implant on Monday afternoon?” Jenna repeated. “Because I had this…incident. I fell in the water on the training course, and--”
“No more talking, please. I’m almost done.”
He finished typing, made a few mouse clicks, and the screen went black. Then he turned his chair to Jenna. “Now, what were you saying?”
“On Monday afternoon, at training,” said Jenna. “I fell in the water, and had this weird experience for a few seconds. I couldn’t move. I was worried there for a bit that I’d broken my neck. But then it ended, and I’ve been fine ever since.”
He rolled his chair closer to Jenna.
“Here’s what you need to know,” he said. “You’re in good health and your TAC is performing perfectly.”
“But what was that you wrote in my record? Something about an activation code?”
“What I wrote isn’t your business. I suggest you forget whatever it is you saw.”
“It was my implant, wasn’t it? My movement came back when Margo clicked me.”
Dr. Hoyer let out an exaggerated sigh, as if Jenna’s questions were a nuisance at the end of a long day.
“You seem like a nice girl and I know you’ve been through a lot,” he said. “I’m going to repeat myself for you, and I want you to listen carefully. You are in good health and your TAC is functioning perfectly. Stay out of trouble between now and tomorrow’s race. Don’t give the trainers or anyone else reason to be angry at you. And when you get on the live course, move with everything you’ve got. I’m going to dismiss you to your cellblock now. If you’re lucky, I’ll see you again before the Finale.”
Jenna wanted to press him for more, but the stern look on his face, combined with the clicker that hung round his neck, made her bite her tongue.
“On your way,” the doctor said, then, to the nurse in the hall, “Call back the next one!”
CHAPTER 18
Before he died, I gave something important to Kyle. It’s a stack of pages I wrote in prison. An unfinished memoir. I need for you to go into his apartment and get it. Kyle was supposed to finish the memoir and publish it for me. Since he can’t do that now, I need for you to find the pages and publish them.
You can collect whatever money a publisher is willing to pay for the memoir. You can assume ownership of the whole thing, use this letter as proof of my consent, so long as you promise to publish everything in those pages. This is the final wish of a dying woman. This memoir is my legacy, and my legacy is all I have left.
The first time Gabe read the letter, standing alone in the parking lot after Jenna’s limo was gone, a surprise gust of wind caught the paper and ripped it from his hands. Gabe had to run across the parking lot to catch it.
For a few seconds, as he chased the paper that was tumbling across the pavement, Gabe thought it was all over before it began, and wasn’t that just so typical for him?
But he did catch it. He put it in his pocket. He took it to the law offices of Barnes, Caidan, and Hearse.
“I thought you were taking the afternoon off,” was how the receptionist greeted him.
“I’m here to see Myka,” Gabe said.
Myka, the recently married gay thirty-one-year-old personal injury lawyer and serial rescuer of stray dogs who played the roles of best friend, legal counselor, and life coach for Gabe.
Like always, she was happy to see him. She was eating a piece of cold quiche out of a Tupperware when he stepped into her office. She offered him a bite. He declined.
“How’d it go at the church?” she asked.
He gave her the letter. He explained what happened. He asked for her opinion.
“It’s an interesting legal question,” she said.
“What do you mean?” said Gabe.
“Jenna is giving you ownership of an item that used to be hers, but isn’t hers any longer.”
“Not hers? It’s her memoir.”
“The letter says she gave the memoir to her brother.”
“Yes, and her brother’s dead.”
“Which says to me the memoir now belongs to his heirs.”
“But Jenna gave me this letter,” said Gabe. “It’s her memoir.”
“Yes, like I said. It’s interesting.”
They brought Dan Martel, the estate specialist at the firm, into the office. He agreed that actual ownership of Jenna’s memoir in light of this letter was, “interesting.”
“If Kyle has a will the memoir should go to whoever gets his possessions in the will,” Dan said, “except, in this case, when we’re talking about the intellectual property of someone who is still alive…”
“But is she still alive?” said Myka. “I thought Tetradome contestants got that fuzzy legal status, you know, from that case in the 80s.”
“That’s right,” said Dan. “Functionally dead, they call it.”
“This is all very interesting, as you guys like to say, but I just want to know if I get to have the memoir or not,” said Gabe.
“You might,” said Dan.
“Or you might not,” said Myka.
“He should file to become custodian of the property,” said Dan.
“Oh, that’s a good idea,” said Myka.
“What the hell does custodian mean?” said Gabe.
“In the absence of a will the court can assign someone to be custodian of the property in question until the courts figure it out,” said Dan.
“And if I’m custodian?”
“Then you get to keep the memoir until a court says otherwise,” said Myka. “You get to report on what it says, and even if the courts eventually decide it belongs to someone else, you get whatever benefits come to you from writing about it.”
“Okay, so how do I do this?” said Gabe.
“We have to post public notice of declaration of custodial intent,” said Dan.
“What does that mean?” said Gabe.
“We have to buy a classified ad in the newspaper that absolutely no one will read but counts as public notice anyway,” said Myka. “We have to announce to the world that you wish to be the custodian for Kyle Duvall’s estate until it is settled.”
“How long do I have to wait before I get the memoir?” said Gabe.
“If we place the ad today, it runs next week,” said Myka.
“And then you have to wait 30 days to see if anyone objects,” sa
id Dan.
“Thirty days? Jenna might be dead in thirty days! The story is hot right now! Is there nothing I can do with this right now?”
“I don’t know what else to tell you, Hon,” said Myka. “The memoir might not have been Jenna’s to give so it might not be yours to take, at least not yet.”
“But if I had it in my hands today, I could report on it, right? I could publish its pages as news.”
“Technically, yes, but how are you going to get your hands on it?”
“I know where it is. I might be the only person who knows where it is.”
“You know where it was, not where it is. For all you know, that memoir might be in the closet of some uncle or aunt who cleaned out Kyle’s apartment. Or it might be in the dumpster behind the building.”
That last sentence led a wide-eyed Gabe to slap the top of Myka’s desk, thank Myka and Dan both, and leave the office.
He sped across town to the Corners Apartments on East Copper Boulevard. He walked up to the apartment where, 10 days prior, Kyle Duvall had been found dead.
Like an idiot, he tried to open the front door. It was locked, of course.
He went around the side. He checked all the dumpsters. Two of them had been emptied recently. The third had a collection of white garbage bags inside. Telling himself it was worth it, reminding himself that this was his scoop to lose, he climbed inside and dumped out every bag. He found a nasty assortment of kitchen and bathroom trash. He didn’t find a memoir.
Unsure what to do next, but not ready to give up, Gabe went from the dumpster to the courtyard, and lurked. He paced around the courtyard, giving himself a little pep talk about how reporters report. He interviewed Kyle’s neighbors as they emerged, told them he was doing a piece for the Journal, asked them leading questions that might tell him if anyone had cleaned out the apartment already.
When did the police tape come down? Has anyone talked to the manager? Did anyone load up a moving van? A pickup truck? Was there any furniture in the dumpster?