by Derek Milman
I sit back. “What? What do you mean? Why?”
“Because my fucking sister” (she always whispers any curse words while simultaneously overenunciating them) “left the hospital. Left Nevada!”
Oh, shit. We’re not going. I’m not going.
“She’s in Atlantic City,” says my mom, seething. “At another goddamn casino, all bandaged up like an Egyptian mummy, gambling. More gambling!”
“I still don’t understand why she would have left Nevada if she knew we were coming,” says Nicks.
“Well, she didn’t know. It was supposed to be a surprise!”
“Jesus, Mom,” says Nicks, finishing her drink. “You were going to just surprise her? Some planning might help if flying is involved, especially with the kids.”
“I spoke to the airline. We’ll get a partial refund.”
“Okay, great,” says Nicks, rolling her eyes. “Just no surprises next time. Hopefully a sinkhole won’t open up under this other casino, given Aunt Meredith’s luck.”
“We tried to call you,” my mom tells me.
“You knew about all this?” I ask Nicks. She nods through the swirling fog of her fatigue. “So how come you’re here, then?”
“To see you, goofball. We already had the restaurant reservation. So… why not?” She shrugs. “I needed to get out of Beacon.”
Nicks and Rick live in the Hudson Valley, about an hour and a half north of New York City. Nicks runs some celebrity-stalking blog called Peek-A-Boo that’s always in danger of collapsing under an endless array of lawsuits, and Rick owns a string of restaurants (“farm-to-table bullshit,” says my dad) around their town of Beacon. He used to live in North Brooklyn, so he’s trying to bring Brooklyn artisanal dining even farther north. All his restaurants are named like: Corn & Compass, Crab & Freckle, Tripe & Tempest.
“We already checked you back into the hotel,” says my mom. “The Mandarin. We got you another room. So after dinner, just go back. Your sister can drive you back uptown so you don’t have to drag your suitcases all around the city.”
“We have the car seats,” says Nicks, looking worried.
“We can manage,” Rick tells her, reassuring.
“They have these things called cabs!” my dad announces.
My mom guzzles some wine. “Your father and I are going to Atlantic City on our own to visit Meredith, see if she needs anything, talk her into getting help. Clearly she has an addiction! She shouldn’t have left the hospital. The woman has burns on forty percent of her body! I don’t want to inconvenience you kids. You both deserve a break. We’ll be gone two days. We’ll pick you up from the hotel on our way back. Enjoy the city. For God’s sake, see the Klimts!”
“What is your obsession with Gustav fucking Klimt!”
“Aidan, calm down,” says my dad. “Jesus.”
“He’s an amazing Austrian artist!” my mother yells back. “The Woman in Gold. My God. Aren’t you interested as a human being living on this planet?”
“I dragged all my luggage down here!”
“Well, try answering your phone, then! We pay enough for that plan!” She suddenly pushes her chair back, loudly. “And what’s this now?” she says, rooting around in her purse, which is hanging off the back of her chair. “Someone’s calling me.”
“What’s going on?” says my dad.
“Someone’s calling me!” she repeats, louder. “I hear it vibrating! Don’t you hear that?”
“I don’t hear it,” says my dad. “We need to order.” He motions to a waiter.
She pulls out her phone and frowns at the screen. “It’s you!” she screams at me.
I’m currently biting my nails to bits. “What?”
“You’re calling me!”
She turns the phone around to face me. I see my name and a dorky pic of myself—why the hell did she pick that photo?—playing a cartoonish-looking Seymour in an eighth-grade production of Little Shop of Horrors.
Rick laughs. “Uh-oh. Butt dial!”
And my hands do go to my pockets, instinctually, before I remember—I don’t have my phone on me. It’s at Swan Headquarters.
The Swans are calling my mother.
I grab the phone out of her hands and decline the call.
“Where’s your phone?” says Nicks.
I shoot her a sharp look; she shoots me a look back like “What?” but it’s too late.
“Aidan, where is your phone?” says my mom, hands clasped in front of her face.
I think about a volcano about to erupt. Mount Vesuvius. People buried under ash. “I lost it, okay? It’s lost!”
A brief, almost fragile hiss of oxygen, like an airlock about to open in a jettisoning spacecraft. And then:
“WHAT????!!!”
Everyone yelling at once:
“YOUR WALLET AND YOUR PHONE!” my mom screeches, arms raised.
“I AM NOT PAYING FOR ANOTHER TWELVE-HUNDRED-DOLLAR PHONE!” my father explicitly informs a frightened passing busboy.
“They’re not twelve hundred dollars!” I yell back. He always inflates things.
“So who is calling me?” demands my mom.
“Um.”
“Are you dealing drugs?”
“Yes, I’m dealing drugs, Mom. I’m the Scarface of Witloff Academy.”
“Everyone, relax,” my sister says.
“Give the kid a break,” adds Rick.
This was a bad idea. But escaping to Nevada with my family seemed like such a shiny, wonderful option about an hour ago.
“What is happening with you?” says my mom. Then, leaning forward and lowering her voice to emphasize the point that she no longer knows who I am: “What is happening with you?”
My father smacks the table. “Enough! We’ll deal with this later.”
But my mom isn’t done. “I just don’t understand what’s…” she trails off.
It’s chilling how everyone gets so quiet all of a sudden.
“Aidan?” says my mom, her voice strained, hushed. But her eyes aren’t on me; they’re somewhere behind and above me. So I turn around.
On the TV over the restaurant bar, my face is on the screen.
My face is on CNN.
“Aidan?” my mom says again.
PERSON OF INTEREST SOUGHT IN CYBER-TERROR ATTACKS
That’s what it says under my photo. That photo of me looks familiar. Then I remember where I saw it: it’s an enlarged shot of me… one of the pics I saw on Benoît’s phone. I turn back to my mother, pressing my fingers into my temples. “You need to be calm right now so I can think.”
Tears are in her eyes as she reaches for me. “Honey. Did you join ISIS?”
Her phone on my lap starts vibrating again. It’s me. I’m calling her.
“Aidan!” she cries. “Are you radicalized?”
I grab my backpack and my mom’s phone and run out of the restaurant, nearly crashing into a young couple chasing after their little kid. “Sorry!” I shout at them. I answer the phone, moving away from the restaurant, down the street, crouching behind a parked car so none of my family can come after me. “Who is this?” I hiss.
“I want to play a song for you,” says a very familiar voice.
“What?”
And then he plays it, as if holding the phone up to a stereo speaker.
I know the song because I love Motown. Martha and the Vandellas: “Nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide…”
“Great,” I say, as the music fades. “Do you have any OutKast?”
“Also appropriate.”
“You hacked into my phone? The FBI can’t even do that.”
“I’ll wind your watch, boy. You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
“I’m beginning to get an idea.” I remember how fast they found my phone number. They started texting me only hours after I left Benoît’s phone in the hotel room.
“I figured dialing Mom might get me a direct line to you.”
“Where is this all leading, man?”
“You took two from me,” he says.
“I took one. And that was because he tried to kill me. I have the bruises to prove it.”
There’s a pause. “And if I told you I didn’t authorize that?”
“I wouldn’t believe you.”
“It’s true. I didn’t. You can never trust a bellhop these days.”
“You’re hilarious.”
“On the one hand, I did warn you: my priority is to our cause, and you’ve become a liability. On the other hand, I’m not entirely cold-blooded. Nor am I irrational. What we do unfortunately attracts some unstable people.”
“Maybe you should consider another line of work, then. I just walked by a Sabon store that’s hiring. I bet you’d be good with soap.”
He hums at me lightly, a bee before a sting. “You know what they say…”
“I don’t.”
“The best assassins, spies, terrorists, mercenaries, whatever… are the ones who love nothing but their mission. They have no loved ones.”
My jaw clenches. “I’m not enjoying these threats to my family.”
“Are you going to warn them, Aidan?”
“Do I need to?”
“I know you’d do anything to spare them the added strife.”
You know what? Fuck this guy and his highfalutin language. His cause. His mission. Give me a goddamn break. And he is both cold-blooded AND irrational, which makes him a little bit of a liar, too.
I hate liars.
“If you know enough about me to find my family, you must know I’m not the black-hat hacker assassin you think I am,” I say.
“Can’t be certain of anything. There’s too much white noise now.”
“What does that mean?”
“Maybe you are who you say you are. Maybe not. Maybe you’re the best black hat we managed to unearth. Maybe you’re just a pitiful kid with bad luck—”
“It’s the second thing, and I also have a bad heart—”
“How did you kill him? In the pool?”
“Paper clip I found in your office.”
“You’re going to tell me you haven’t had any training?”
“I haven’t. I was fighting for my life.” But shit, I know how this looks.
“Here’s my offer. You ready?”
“Ready steady.”
“You get us that source code, and if you can’t—if you don’t have it, if you’re just a sad little heartsick schoolboy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time—then you come join our cause. Sorry, my friend. Fate is fate. Those are your two options.”
“There’s no third option?”
“No third option. I saw something in your eyes, Aidan, and I’m never wrong.”
I want to ask him what he saw, but I know he’s going to tell me anyway.
“You’d fit in so well with us,” he adds. “You’re perfect.”
I think of all those boys by the pool.
Why did they all look like me?
This isn’t just about a selfless cause that any empathetic soldier can join. This guy is a terrorist and he has followers. The Swans are a cult. And I’d be the newest member.
“I can get it for you,” I say.
“Oh, what’s that?” he says, his voice louder, clearer, closer to the phone now.
“I can get you the… item.” I lower my voice. “The source code.”
“I’m so pleased to hear it.”
“But then I’m out. We’re done. Deal?”
Mr. Preston, whoever he is, had better come through with the flash drive. Even though I have a bad, desperate feeling about this whole plan.
Probably because it’s bad and desperate.
“Deal,” he says. “We have more in common than you know.”
“Are you actually saying these things, or are you reading off the closed captioning for The Dark Knight?”
“I, too, loved someone who took their own life.”
I freeze. I hate, hate when someone uses that term, like life is something that can simply be snatched back, as if it were stolen all along.
“You need to start forgiving yourself,” he says. The hint of kindness in his voice throws me, a jar of acid spiked with honey.
My nostrils flare. “I will get you the item.”
“What a treat. We’ll find you, then, when the time is right.”
He hangs up.
I stand up, shivering, even though it’s warm out, so warm. My world has become an impossible whirlwind—nothing stable, nothing nailed down.
I see my sister approaching at a steady, rapid gait down the street. She’s puffing on a cigarette. When she sees me, she waves her arms, speeds up, hobbling in her high heels, then grabs my arms, and pulls me back down behind the car. “They’re looking for you,” she says.
“Yeah. I saw.”
“I mean: Mom, Dad, everyone. Also, we ordered appetizers. Hysterically.”
“Hysterical appetizers.”
“Is there any other kind?”
“You smoke?”
“I started again,” she says, peering over the car, then ducks back down.
“I didn’t know you ever smoked.”
“It’s a stressful time. Rick and I are having some problems. He thinks I’m sleeping with Colby, my spin instructor.” She throws her dark hair over her shoulder.
My lips slide together unevenly like two logs passing each other on a white-water rapid. “Are you?”
She takes a long drag. “Things didn’t get that far,” she says.
I don’t really know my sister. I don’t know her life. But then again, who knows what she’s thinking about me right now? “Nicks. You, the kids, Mom and Dad—everyone might be in danger. And I have no idea what to tell you to do.”
I feel so fucking helpless and responsible.
She takes this in. “Okay. I’ll deal with it.”
I squint. “How?”
“I don’t know,” she says, staring at a woman walking by, clearly admiring her Lululemon attire.
I snap my fingers. “Focus.”
She whips her head toward me. “I am.”
“I have to go,” I tell her. “Now.”
“Aidan. There’s a manhunt for you. They’re linking you to a murder at the Mandarin Oriental. That’s what they’re saying on the news.”
I cover my face with one shaky hand. So they are looking for me. But I was just at that stupid hotel. No one was looking for me an hour ago. There was no manhunt. Nothing makes sense right now.
“They haven’t said your name. No one’s released your name. But your face is everywhere. That sweet face!” She fights off a flood of emotion. “What’s going on?”
“Wrong place, wrong time, and then it just got worse. Spun out of control. I made a few bad decisions early on, but I didn’t deserve where they all led.”
“Jesus,” she says, “it’s just like the Great British Baking Show.”
I close and open my eyes. “Right. JUST LIKE THAT.”
She takes another puff, then throws the smoldering remainder of her cig over her shoulder. “We’ll get you a lawyer.”
“It’s bigger than that now.”
She peers up at me. “What happened to your throat?”
I fix my collar. “Strangled.”
She claps her hand to her chest. “Where do you think you’re going to go?”
“To fix this.”
She starts to cry. “I’m sorry we were never there for you…”
“Oh, God, Nicks, not now. Please.”
She puts her hand on my shoulder. “No, I mean it. I was older. Neil died. You were on your own. That wasn’t right. And yet still… we’re all apart! Scattered!”
I put my hand on her shoulder, too. “Thank you. But I’m not some drug addict who just knocked over a liquor store. I literally just stumbled into something—”
“I don’t ask about your life. Do you… have you found… a partner?”
I laugh, snotty and garbled, into the crook of my elbow. My sister ha
s chosen this moment, of all the moments of our lifetimes, to try to get closer to me. I love it.
“I want you to know the kids better!” she cries. “My babies!”
“Nicks. I need cash. I need your credit cards, too.”
She pulls herself together, sniffs, digs through her wallet, hands me a bunch of twenties and an American Express Gold card. “If you use the card, they’ll trace it,” she tells me.
“Yeah. But. Just in case.”
“Oh, my God, Aidan, are you really on the run from—”
“Do you have, um…” My fingers make shapes in the air. “Like, a hat? Sunglasses?”
“I don’t have a hat. I have these…” She pulls a pair of large round sunglasses from her purse and hands them to me. I put them on.
“How do I look wearing these?”
“Like Jackie O went blind.”
I hand them back. I hear my name being called down the street. “Shit.”
“Aidan. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Obviously, I’m not. But I need you to trust me that I’m not a terrorist.”
“I do.” Her face looks so pained. “I’ve just been reflecting on everything lately, everything that happened before tonight, and I just…”
“What?”
“I took the kids to the planetarium, Whoopi Goldberg was narrating this thing about the solar system, and I realized how small we all are—”
“Oh, God, okay.”
“And do you think I need Botox?”
“… Fucking WHAT?”
“Just… the light in the restaurant… I saw my reflection… around my mouth…”
She makes a claw-like shape with her hand around her mouth where the Botox would go.
I kiss her on the cheek. “You look beautiful. Really. It was great to see you and the kids.”
“I mean, I’m not twenty-two anymore…”
I juggle my mom’s phone. “Should I give this back to Mom?”
She pops a mint to cover the smell of the cigarette. “Keep it. You may need it.”
“Can they track me down easier if I have it? The signals or something?”
Neither of us knows the answer to that.
I give the phone back to Nicks. I’m not thinking clearly, but all my mom will do is endlessly call that phone trying to reach me, leaving blustery forty-five-second voice mails (talk about terrorism!). Also, I don’t remember anyone’s numbers anyway, so it’s not like I can call or text anyone using my mom’s stupid phone that she barely even knows how to use herself.