by Lubar, David
Then I noticed something else. There was blood on the steps below me.
“Footprints,” I said. “I’ll bet Bowdler brought Lucky here, then took off when he saw the bodies. We probably just missed them.”
“Let’s go,” Cheater said.
“Wait,” Martin said. “We need that video.”
I looked at him. He looked back at me. I knew neither of us wanted to reach into a dead man’s pocket.
“I’ll do it.” Flinch went down the steps, skirting around the blood, and slipped two fingers into Thurston’s shirt pocket. He pulled out the memory card, shuddered, and came back up the stairs.
“You okay?” I asked.
He nodded, then shuddered again. “Must have just happened. He’s still warm.”
I stared at Thurston for another moment, then turned and went outside. The fresh air scrubbed my lungs, but the rest of me felt smeared with the stink of death.
some dim place
I STOOD OUTSIDE the building and kicked the ashes from the door off my sneakers. “I’m sorry.” My words felt hollow. How could anything make up for dragging the guys into this mess?
“Don’t apologize,” Martin said. “You didn’t know this would happen.”
“Hey, we’ve been in trouble before,” Cheater said.
“Not like this.” My voice sounded flat to me. So did theirs. I think we were numbed by what we’d seen.
Martin shrugged. “Trouble is trouble. We’ll be okay.”
“It could be worse,” Torchie said.
“We don’t even have a place to go.”
I realized the hotel was out. That’s where Bowdler had found us. I hated to leave my stuff behind, but there was nothing I could do about that. We couldn’t go to anyone’s house. Somehow, they’d connected Lucky to me. Probably through Edgeview. So they knew about all of us. “What’s your hotel like?” I asked Torchie.
He wrinkled his nose. “It’s not great. I think the guy who was there before me had a dog. And the room’s really small. But I guess we could go there.”
“We’ve got a better place,” Cheater said. “My uncle owns a business in Chinatown. That’s only about twelve blocks from here. There are apartments above it. He keeps a couple of them available for family members. I stay there all the time.”
“Awesome,” Flinch said. “I love Chinese food.”
Cheater spun toward Flinch. “Did I say anything about food? What makes you think it’s a Chinese restaurant?”
Flinch shrugged. “I just figured …”
“What? He’s Chinese so he must own a Chinese restaurant? Man, that is so racist. If Lucky’s uncle had a business, would you assume it was a pizzeria? What about you? If your uncle had a restaurant, would it be a rib joint?” Cheater spat out the last words, then grabbed his face and groaned.
“Hey, sorry,” Flinch said.
I looked around, worried that someone would hear the shouting, but there was nobody in sight. That was good. I didn’t want anyone to know where we were going.
Cheater led us over to Chinatown, and then down a crowded, narrow street to a two-story whitewashed brick building. I could see red paper lanterns through the window, and all sorts of strips of paper on the walls with Chinese writing. The familiar aroma of egg rolls in hot oil mingled with other tantalizing scents. As we went inside, Flinch said, “Hey, is this your uncle’s place?”
Cheater nodded. “Uncle Ray. He’s great. He’s not my real uncle. He’s my father’s best friend. I’ve known him as long as I can remember.”
Flinch pointed to the rows of small tables, covered with platters of steaming food. “But you said it wasn’t a restaurant.”
“Nope. I said it was racist for you to assume it was a restaurant.”
Before they could argue any further, we were interrupted by an old guy in a tan shirt and gray suit who rushed over from the register.
“Dennis,” the man said. “Are you hurt? What happened to your face?”
“I’m okay, Uncle Ray,” Cheater said. He pointed at us. “These are my friends. I was hoping we could stay here for a day or two.”
“Are you trying to get away from your brother?”
Cheater nodded. “You know how he is. With the folks on their trip, he thinks of me as his personal servant. So, can we hang out here?”
“Of course. You’re welcome anytime. The spare apartment is empty.” He pulled a key ring from his pocket, slipped off one of the keys, and handed it to Cheater.
Cheater led us back outside, and then in again through a narrow door next to the restaurant that opened right to a flight of stairs. There were four apartments on the second floor. Cheater unlocked the first door on the right and we followed him in. The place had three bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. There were two couches, a dinner table, and a couple easy chairs in the living room. We all collapsed into the cushions.
If I didn’t have to move again for the rest of my life, I’d be happy. I just wanted to sink down so deep nobody could find me. Everyone looked totally exhausted. I waited for someone to talk, but nobody else said a word. Finally, I broke the silence. “I never saw a dead person before.”
“Me either,” Martin said.
“I saw my grandfather at his funeral,” Flinch said. “No blood …”
“It’s like a candle,” Cheater said. He blew a hard puff of air. “Poof. Gone.”
There was another silence. I could tell that nobody wanted to talk about it. That was okay. There’d be time later.
After a while, Cheater dashed into the kitchen and came back with a deck of cards. “Anyone want to play?”
“With you?” I shook my head. “We might as well leave the cards face up.”
“How about slap jack?” Flinch said.
“Only if you play with your eyes closed.” I slid the deck out of Cheater’s hands, one card at a time, and piled it back up on the table. Then I formed pairs into supports and started building a house of cards. Somehow, it seemed appropriate.
“This is great,” Torchie said. “We’re together again. I wish I could play some music.” He picked up his accordion and gave it a squeeze. It let out a sigh and a puff of air. I watched the cards topple over. He put down the accordion, then pulled the FME thing out of his pocket and pushed a button. It whirred. “At least I’ve still got this.”
“Could you do that someplace else,” Martin asked. “The sound is giving me a headache.”
“Sure.” Torchie went off to the kitchen. Mingled with the whirs and chirps of the device, his voice drifted out to the living room. “This is really great.”
“Yeah, it’s great and all,” I said. “But the one guy who can help us is dead, our friend has been kidnapped by a psycho, and we don’t have a clue what to do.”
“Not yet,” Martin said. “But when has being clueless ever stopped us?”
I walked over to the window and looked out at Chinatown. I didn’t know if it was good or bad that we put people into categories like this, but right now I was glad I had a place to be, even if I wasn’t really a part of that place. Cheater came and stood next to me.
“I love this whole area. I’ve been coming here since I was little.” He pointed across the street to a store on the corner. “I used to get candy over there. And the place next to it had the best comic books.”
“Hey, candy and comic books. Sounds like the perfect world,” I said.
“Pretty much.” He pointed to the building directly across the street, and leaned toward me. “I’ll tell you a secret. The guy who owns that place—he’s got a ton of fireworks stashed in there. It’s illegal, but everyone around here knows about it.”
“Fireworks? We’d better keep Torchie away from there,” I said, glancing toward the kitchen.
“That’s for sure.” Cheater told me about five or six of his other favorite places on the block. When he finished the tour, he said, “Being here is just like being at home.”
“That’s something we need to talk about.�
�� I went back to the couch and called everyone over. “I don’t think any of you can go home until this is settled. It’s too dangerous. Bowdler probably has all our names and addresses.”
“I’m not meeting my cousin until Sunday night,” Flinch said. “If we need to stay together longer, I can think up something.”
“I’m okay for almost two weeks,” Torchie said. “I can miss a couple days of camp. And it’s not like I can play my accordion right now.”
“I’m okay forever,” Martin said. “Or maybe even longer.”
“I have time,” Cheater said. “My brother isn’t going to tell my parents he doesn’t know where I am.”
“All right,” Martin said. “What do we do?”
“We rescue Lucky and destroy Bowdler,” Flinch said.
“Great plan,” I said. “But we have no idea where they are.”
“So what do we have?” Martin asked.
I turned to Martin. “He got in your face back at the cell. What did you pick up?”
“He’s real proud of his theories about brainwashing,” Martin said. “And he thinks he’s smarter than anyone else. But he’s bummed that he never got to be a general.”
“That explains the stars on his buttons. All grown, and he’s still playing dress-up. But it doesn’t tell us anything that will help us find him.” I turned to Cheater. “What about you?”
He shook his head. “I just picked up the stuff he was thinking about at the time. Did you see anything when you searched the lab?”
“Nope. Not while I was there.” I pulled the MP3 player from my pocket. “But I’ve got their computer files.”
“I’ll go borrow Uncle Ray’s laptop.” Cheater hopped up from the couch and dashed out the door.
“He moves good for a kid who’s been stomped flat,” Martin said.
“He’ll heal faster running around than staying in some hospital bed,” I said.
As Cheater came back with the laptop, the rest of us nearly snapped our necks. The most gorgeous girl I’d ever seen walked past the open door. She had long, black hair that swayed with every step she took, and a body that justified the existence of blue jeans. I felt a tingle of electricity shoot through my tired nerves. She glanced inside the room and smiled at us. Then she must have caught sight of Cheater, because she said, “Oh, no! Dennis, what happened to you?”
“I fell.”
“Repeatedly?” she asked. “Or in with the wrong crowd?”
“The latter.”
“Bad move. But you’re ok?”
Cheater nodded.
“You look good without your glasses.”
“Thanks.”
The girl turned and headed down the hall.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“Oh, that’s just Livy,” Cheater said. “She’s staying here while she goes to this summer program at the college. She’s a second cousin on my mom’s side.”
“No way.” I walked toward the door so my eyes could follow her down the hall. “You two can’t possible share any DNA.”
“Humans and bananas have ninety-nine percent of the same genes,” Cheater said.
“And you’re ninety-nine percent bananas.” Flinch crowded next to me at the door.
Martin joined us. I heard him gulp. Then he squeezed past us and jogged after her.
“That is so unfair,” Flinch said. “He’s going to suck up to her with his talent.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
Before Flinch could ask me what I meant, there was a thud in the hall as Martin tripped over his own feet—with a little help from my talent. By the time he got up, Cheater’s cousin had disappeared behind the door at the end of the hallway.
Martin slunk back. I expected him to be angry, but he just sighed. “You probably saved me from making a fool of myself. How old is she?”
“Sixteen,” Cheater said. “But she’s pretty mature.”
“No kidding. I think she’s out of our league,” I said.
“If that’s how you feel, I’ll take the next turn at bat,” Flinch said. “Girls love guys who make them laugh.”
“I think girls love music,” Torchie said. “Heck, everybody likes music.” He pulled the FME device from his pocket again.
“Go in the kitchen,” we all shouted.
While Martin, Flinch, and I were talking about Livy, and revealing how little we knew about girls, Cheater sat down at the dinner table and plugged my MP3 player into the USB port. “Let’s see what we have.”
Martin and Flinch crammed in on either side of him. I leaned over his shoulder and watched. Cheater opened the first file. The screen filled with a jumble of letters.
“It’s garbage,” Martin said.
“Try another.”
Cheater opened the next file, and got another screen full of junk.
“Are you sure your memory didn’t get messed up?” Flinch asked.
“I pulled it from the computer without ejecting it. And I’ve been running all over the place,” I said. “It could have gotten damaged. Try some more.”
With each file that Cheater opened, my hopes grew dimmer. “So we’ve got nothing.” As I slumped back down on the couch, the phone rang. Cheater picked it up, listened for a moment, then said, “It’s Uncle Ray. You guys want to go downstairs and get some dinner?”
I was starving, but I was also exhausted. I’d been gassed, kidnapped, operated on—twice—and dragged all over Philadelphia. I couldn’t stand the thought of sitting at a table making pleasant conversation and pretending my life was normal. I looked around at the guys. They seemed pretty fried, too.
Cheater told his uncle, “Maybe I’ll just grab some food and bring it up.”
“That sounds perfect,” Martin said. “I’m not moving another step tonight.”
Cheater hung up the phone. Ten seconds later, there was a tap on the door and Livy poked her head in. “Hey, I’m going down for dinner. You guys coming?”
“Yeah!” Flinch said, leaping to his feet ahead of the rest of us.
“Great idea!” Martin said.
I pushed myself to my feet. Sure, I was tired. But it would be rude to turn down an invitation. I went to the kitchen to get Torchie, who was playing with a radio on the counter. “It doesn’t work,” he said.
“You didn’t burn it, did you?”
“No.” He sniffed the air. “I didn’t burn anything in here. Not yet.”
“Forget about it,” I said. “We’re going to get some food.”
We followed Livy down to the restaurant. Uncle Ray was sitting at a big round table in the back, near the kitchen. There were a half dozen platters of food in front of him, along with heaping bowls of steamed rice.
“Come on, boys,” he said, “get it while it’s hot.”
Livy sat next to him. As Martin grabbed the seat next to her, Cheater made the introductions.
“So, what are you studying?” Martin asked Livy.
“I’m taking math courses right now,” she said. “But my special interest is video-game programming.”
I could see Martin’s jaw drop. Mine felt pretty loose, too. Not only was she smart and beautiful—she loved games. That sort of combination could make any guy momentarily speechless.
Torchie broke the gaping silence by telling Livy, “I play the accordion. But mine broke.”
Livy didn’t seem impressed.
Flinch told a joke.
Livy smiled politely.
“Math’s my favorite subject,” Martin said. “In school,” he added, as if there could possibly be some other place where math was a subject. “Numbers are awesome.”
Livy’s cheek twitched. I couldn’t tell whether she was holding back a yawn or a smile.
I dug through my life for anything that would make me seem irresistibly attractive to a brilliant, beautiful, videogame-playing older girl. I definitely didn’t want to earn a yawn. I doubted she’d be impressed by my ability to draw zombies and skeletons. Other than that, I came up blank. So I gr
abbed a fork and turned my attention to the food, but watched the premier episode of the Martin and Livy show out of the corner of my eye.
When she poured herself some tea, he poured himself some tea. When she picked up her chopsticks, he picked his up. When she ate a piece of chicken, he started to eat one. But just before it got to his mouth, it somehow slipped from the sticks, hit his chest, and rolled down the front of his shirt, landing in his lap.
Martin glared at me. I grinned back at him and tried to act innocent, then turned toward Livy to say something clever. There had to be a great line that involved math or falling food. While I was trying to think of something, Livy laughed and said, “Oops, they are pretty slippery.” She reached down with her chopsticks, plucked the piece of chicken from Martin’s lap, and held it up to his mouth. “Here you go.”
Martin took a bite, then flashed a smirk at me.
Dropsticks! Shoot. I thought of it way too late. I gave up and went back to eating.
As we finished the meal, Torchie looked around the table and asked, “Do you have any fortune cookies?”
“Those are for tourists,” Cheater said. “This food’s authentic.”
“Well, I’m a tourist,” Torchie said. “Besides, I like the way they taste.”
“Then you should have a fortune cookie,” Livy said. She got up and brought back cookies for all of us.
Torchie broke open his cookie, stared at the fortune for a moment, then said, “I don’t get it. NEVER FEEL TROUBLE OR IT WILL FOLLOW YOU. What’s that mean? Is it like, don’t worry?”
“Let me see.” Cheater snatched the fortune from Torchie’s hand. “It doesn’t say ‘feel.’ It says, ‘flee.’ ”
“Never flee trouble.” Torchie nodded. “Yeah. That makes more sense.”
The rest of us checked our fortunes. As Martin tried to snap his cookie open, it shattered into a dozen pieces. He shot me another glare, but Livy just laughed again and helped him brush the crumbs off his shirt.