Immoral Code

by Lillian Clark

  “Keagan,” Santiago said. “Bad. Idea.”

  Keag turned toward him, and we were off. Fuse less lit than skipped. Straight to the flash and bang. “I’m sorry. Did you say this is a bad idea? This? The game?”

  San looked up at Keagan from his seat straddling the bedside table. Shoulders relaxed. Hands loosely clasped. Long legs dangling on either side of the little table. Defusing, deferential. “You know what I mean, Keag. This. Now. It’s not the right—”

  “It’s exactly the right time. Actually, no. It’s way fucking late.”

  “Keagan,” I hissed. “Keep your voice down.”

  He turned to me. “Why? Reese the adventurer. Reese the freaking enabler.” I felt a flush of angry heat. Up my spine. Across my forehead. Settling in my cheeks. “You worried someone’ll call the front desk to complain and, what? They’ll come up and bust us for being underage? Figure out we’ve got more people staying here than we paid for? Or should I be more specific and start shouting about THE FELONY YOU ALL APPARENTLY CAN’T WAIT TO COMMIT?”

  San and I were a chorus, both of us whisper-shouting for him to shut the fuck up. Bells was silent, pale. Nari’s jaw clenched.

  He started in on “Right, tell me to shut up. Tell me to get over it. Tell me I’m ridiculous. That I don’t get it. That—”

  “You don’t.”

  The four of us turned to Bellamy.

  “What?” Keagan asked.

  She frowned at him. “You don’t get it.”

  Keag’s jaw worked. “What don’t I ‘get’?”

  I knew that tone. My mom and dad had both used it a thousand times in a thousand fights. It was smug expectation. Not a rhetorical question, exactly, but one they assumed they knew the answer to. An answer they already knew was bullshit.

  But then Bells said, “My mom doesn’t sleep. She doesn’t have days off. We’ve never been on a vacation. And she’s worked the last four Christmases in a row. Every month, we’re on the brink. There’s never any extra. If the car breaks down, we either have no car or pay to fix it, then have no way to pay rent.

  “It’s a cycle. One she’s been in her entire adult life. For me. Because of me.” Her expression broke my heart. I mean it. It was the deepest wine color. Less angry than the red-black of blood, less solid. A windowpane the hue of merlot. The rich color of sadness and emptiness and hurt. “She dropped out of high school and got her GED, because of me. Didn’t go to college and works low-paying jobs, because of me. And because of him.

  “Because Robert Foster abandoned us and never looked back.”

  She coughed a devastated sort of laugh. “He has five houses, Keag. Five fucking houses, while my mom and I can barely pay rent. And you know me well enough to know I don’t feel like I’m owed much of anything, that it’s about earning, not being entitled. But dammit, he owes me this. And not just because of the financial aid. For everything. My whole life. He owes me.”

  We were quiet.

  Traffic droned down on the street. A car honked. Someone yelled. Someone else yelled back. A group of people started laughing.

  Nari stood up. “Well,” she said to Keagan, furious, “is that enough yet?”

  “Nari,” Santiago snapped, glaring. “Let it freaking go!”

  But it was like he hadn’t spoken, like Bells, San, and I weren’t even in the room.

  “Come on, Keagan! Tell me! Does that finally pass your test?”

  Keag crossed his arms and stared at the floor. “Life isn’t fair.”

  “Life isn’t fair,” Nari repeated. Incredulous. “What do you even mean? ‘Life isn’t fair.’ So, what, we do nothing?” Her expression, her tone, grew mocking. “Well, damn, life gave me a shit sandwich. Guess I’ll just eat it anyway? What a fucking cop-out.”

  Keag looked up. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Then what did you mean? Or are you still not getting it? That big goals sometimes take big risks.”

  His expression said hurt. In his twisted brow and open mouth. H-U-R-T.

  Nari breathed a livid laugh and shook her head. “You know what, then why are you here?”

  It coated us like grease. The malice of it. When my parents fought, I always thought of grease. A thin, transparent sheen covering the walls, furniture, appliances, picture frames. A slick on everything you touched.

  Nari took a half step toward him. “If doing something like this, wrong as you think it is, to help Bellamy do something great, isn’t enough. If her whole life still isn’t enough. Then why. Are. You. Here.”

  A gut shot. I could see it on Keag’s face. She knew exactly where to slip the knife. His expression dropped into one so vulnerable, I almost looked away.

  “Because of you,” he said, quiet. Then, louder, “You know this isn’t the only way. You know this is a shit idea. You know this is dangerous and illegal.” Louder still, “You knew I’d do it anyway! For you! And you act like that’s some sort of strength. Like being arrogant and manipulative makes you powerful! Like not caring about consequences and taking your precious ‘risks’ all because you have some big selfish dream makes you better than me. Smarter. Stronger. When really, you’re just self-righteous. And self-important. And more than willing to take all of us down with you.”

  This was…

  Horrible.

  Yep, horrible. But I couldn’t move. None of us did. Though the room had shrunk to a pinpoint. No colors, just a scribbly mess. I sat, still like furniture.

  Nari’s jaw clenched. “That’s not fair.”

  “Not fair?” Keagan scoffed and shook his head. “Now it’s okay to talk about what’s fair?”

  “Yeah, Keagan. It is. Because that’s not fucking fair. You have spent weeks saying yes. We’ve all said yes! Over and over and over. But you’re going to put that on me? I’m not responsible for your decisions, Keagan. You are. You didn’t want to do this? You think I’m freaking ‘arrogant’ and ‘self-righteous’? Then say no. Freaking speak up! I don’t need a goddamned babysitter.”

  Nari’s eyes were wet. So were Keagan’s. Bellamy looked like she’d evaporate if she were able. The muscles in Santiago’s jaw flexed, clenching and unclenching as he looked from Bells to his knotted hands.

  Nari took a heavy breath. Her shoulders slackened. “I refuse to be terrified of possibility,” she said quietly. “And I refuse to look the other way. Looking the other way is easy. Ignoring injustice is easy. Staring it straight in the face and doing something is what’s hard.”

  “Is that what you think?” Keagan’s bottom lip trembled. He squeezed his eyes shut for a beat before looking at her again. “That I’m a coward?”

  Silence.

  And more silence.

  He whispered, “I’m not a coward. And just because Bells’s dad is wrong doesn’t mean what we’re doing is right.” And left the room.

  KEAGAN

  Aftermath

  That was awful. I was awful.

  I’d say I didn’t recognize myself or wasn’t acting like myself or whatever myself. But that was me. That was all me. Like a can of soda I’d been shaking periodically for the past however many weeks, culminating in an evening of throwing that same can at the wall a few times before choosing to just crack it open. And let it explode. All over me and my friends and the room, the carpet and walls and furniture; onto the ceilings and floorboards, into the crevices and corners; coating the place in a cloud of sticky emotive mess.

  I went down to the street and sat on the curb. There was a metaphor in that. Trash. Curb. Taking it out.

  I didn’t know what time it was. Dark, not too late. The street and sidewalk were still busy with people going places and doing things that probably didn’t involve planning multiple felonies. Though, who knew, right? Different strokes for different folks. Ha. I’m guessing that phrase isn’t meant to sound dirty. I just mean that everyone ha
s their own stuff. The million things, big and small, that make them them, the web of their life. Job, family, friends. Wants, needs, opinions, goals.

  Goals.

  I dropped my head into my hands and stared at the gutter.

  Back when he was mostly painting, before the pottery thing he does now, my dad did a series of paintings of crowds. Not crowds like at a concert or event or something, but like this. Maybe “crowds” isn’t the right word. More like street scenes, park scenes, stuff like people going in and out of a grocery store. All strangers. All minding their own business. He’d focus on one still figure in the middle of it with the rest of the painting’s occupants and goings-on slightly blurred. In the muddle, that figure would be stark emotion. In their body language, their face, they’d embody grief or fear or anxiety or desire or elation. As a nine- or ten-year-old, I found that even the happy ones made me feel inexplicably sad. Inexplicably because I was nine or ten and couldn’t name the terrible, muggy loneliness those scenes made me feel.

  Dark, huh?

  But I felt dark. I felt, I didn’t even know. It was the overlap. Those scenes so much like the one I was sitting in now, with me the solitary focused figure. My isolation. My, I don’t know, left-out-ness. The Totally Illegal Shit’s Cool as Long as It’s in Pursuit of Some Kick-Ass Goal That Keagan Doesn’t Have Club, population four. And me.

  And, apparently, not having some huge goal made me incapable of understanding what that drive felt like. And not understanding that drive made me incapable of understanding why anyone would take risks for it. Which made me a coward.

  I shook my head.

  Coward, coward, coward.

  Jesus, and Bellamy’s face. He’d abandoned her. I knew that. I’d always known that. In theory. But I’d somehow never really thought about what it meant. How do you do that? Know someone as well as I thought I knew Bellamy yet still feel like you know nothing. Or at least not enough. It was like taking for granted that summer turns into fall turns into winter. Or no, more like that Christmas means Santa Claus. And not just the idea of Santa Claus, but him as a fat white guy with the big white beard and red suit. It was normal. The shape of things. Until you made yourself remember that that version of Santa became the idea of Santa thanks in part to Coke ads starting in the 1930s and that he’s not the idea of Santa to everyone.

  I exhaled a thick, barrel-chested sigh. Robert Foster had abandoned her. And abandoning her had shaped her and her mom’s entire life. Which was so far from being fair.

  But was that enough? I just…I didn’t know.

  My brain was still sloshy; echoes of coward and abandoned me and enough repeated in a round in my head. Plus the gutter between my feet had started to spin. So I called it and went inside, where everyone was either asleep or pretending to be, and lay on the grimy floor. In my clothes. Not even taking my shoes off. As punishment, I guess. It seemed appropriate to be uncomfortable. Because while I felt guilty for exploding, while I felt horrible for Bells, I also felt relieved. And then guilty for that relief. Because, sure, the way I’d said it all was wrong. So very wrong. But what I’d said? That was still right.

  I woke up the next morning to the sound of the shower in the bathroom. Someone else rolled over on Superbed, making the springs and frame squeak. I was on my back on the floor at the foot of the side closer to the door. The carpet smelled. Or I smelled. Probably both. I sat up.

  The mattress beside me creaked and feet swung over the end at my back. “Hey,” Bells whispered.

  “Hey,” I whispered back.

  She trod over to the food pile and grabbed a half-empty box of powdered donuts before opening the door and gesturing for me to follow her into the hall. I did, glancing back to see Reese and Santiago still sprawled out asleep. The shower turned off.

  Bells leaned against the wall beside our door and slid down to sit, the box of donuts in her lap. “So, last night,” she said, and took a bite of one.

  I joined her and she handed me another. It was both dry and greasy. A paradox. Or just stale.

  I chewed the sad, old donut. “Yeah, last night.”

  “You were an asshole.”

  I chewed, and chewed, and chewed my bite of donut into a paste until I finally managed to swallow. Gross. I dropped the rest of it back into the box, wiped the powdered sugar from my fingers onto my jeans, and pressed my palms over my eyes. They hurt. My eyes. My eyeballs. The strings holding them in my skull. A hangover? Sure. That’s probably what this was. “I’m sorry,” I said, eyes still covered.

  She sort of grunted. “Yeah, me too. But not like how you’re sorry.”

  I got that. Sorry for the situation. Sorry for realities within and beyond her control, even if they didn’t need apologizing for. I pushed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. It felt…less bad. “But you still think we should do this.”

  Bellamy chewed quietly. I could hear her jaw and teeth and mouth muscles moving. Finally, I heard her swallow and she said, “Yes.”

  I kept mashing until dots of light pinpricked the dark inside my eyelids. At least her answer was definitive? Though that made me feel better, like definitively knowing my sore throat was actually strep made me feel better.

  “And you obviously still don’t,” Nari said.

  I lifted my head. The light was weird. Too bright or lacking contrast or something, thanks to my eye smashing. Nari stood in the doorway to the room, already dressed, looking gorgeous and prepared to take no shit. Even from me. Especially from me. My gut dropped into my ankles, an unpleasant trip since I was pretzeled up on the hallway floor.

  “Can we talk?” she asked me.

  I nodded and moved to stand, but Bellamy got up instead, giving Nari a tight smile before ducking back into the room and closing the door behind her.

  Nari sat cross-legged in the spot Bellamy’d just left.

  “Sorry,” I said, because I was, that slice of relief regardless. Or because of it. Because I still felt guilty for feeling relieved, which felt a little like shame, which made me feel a little angry, which made me want a glass of water and a long hot shower because now I was hungover and confused. “I’m just…sorry.”

  She didn’t look at me. The space between us, an oh-so-intentional couple of inches, felt gelatinous. “But you meant it. All that stuff you said.”

  “Maybe. Partially.”

  “So you think I’m arrogant and self-righteous.”

  I swallowed. God, my mouth tasted horrible. The donut hadn’t helped. “I think this plan is arrogant. And I think calling it ‘justice’ is a good way to let yourself off the hook.” Not gonna lie, I was proud of myself for that line. It came out so calm and solid! And I hadn’t even practiced it in my head all morning first. “And you think I’m a coward.”

  Staring at the opposite side of the hallway, dimly lit with yellowing floral wallpaper, Nari chewed the inside of her cheek. She hated that habit. And it always got worse when she was thinking hard.

  This wasn’t like us. We didn’t fight. We didn’t even bicker. We were…easy.

  “You’re going to take me out.”

  Those were the first words she ever spoke to me, two minutes into our shared biology class the first day of fall semester sophomore year. She made the girl sitting next to me swap seats, then plopped down, said, “You’re going to take me out,” and held out her hand for my phone. She put her name and number into my contacts, then texted How about Friday? to herself. When her phone dinged two seconds later, she pulled it out, smiled widely, and proclaimed, “Friday sounds great!”

  When I finally recovered enough to breathe, I laughed; then she laughed and blushed, like, super beautifully; then our teacher told us to shut up please and the rest of the class laughed, too.

  And that’s how it’d been for the more than two and a half years since. Nari leading, me following. Which maybe sounds emasculating but o
nly if your masculinity is painfully fragile. Plus that’s who Nari is. A leader. While I’m less a follower and more undecided. Not about Nari—just about, I don’t know, me? Life? Nari’s like an arrow. A freaking laser beam of focus on her Bright Future, while I could sit in this hallway meditating about life goals and passions for a year and still not know.

  Before this, I’d always been okay with that, with all of that. My place. My uncertainty. My being the one who follows. Nari’s the one with grand plans, and I was happy to figure my stuff out along the way.

  Was.

  Because this was different. This wasn’t easy. It was premeditated disaster, a trash fire waiting to be lit.

  “You’re not a coward,” Nari finally said, still staring away from me. “But just because you’re scared of the consequences of doing something big doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take a chance.”

  I ran a hand over my hair. It was still short enough that it felt super soft, like those velour-ish blankets that get all staticky. “Okay,” I said. “But just because you can take a chance, even on something big, doesn’t mean you get to act like the consequences don’t matter.”

  NARI

  Irl

  The day was mild. The sun was bright. The birds were singing, the bicyclists cycling, the Starbucks customers customering, and five bright-eyed teens assumed their positions around the Foster Innovations building to commence the day’s agenda: case the joint.

  In person, I mean. Up close and person-all. (Puns, I know. But I was a teensy bit stressed out. Just a tad. Like blowing a giant bubble with your gum till it got all transparent and windowpane thin. I was that bubble. Two seconds before it popped and permanently adhered itself to your hair.) We were hitting the pavement, doing some good old recon. The plan was to quadruple-check everything we’d already triple-checked during the last two days of staring at the security feeds. Plus, I know I’m all d0l0s the Deliverer of Digital Destruction Muwahahaha, but we needed to experience this for real. Or at least for real by proxy, since San and Reese needed to keep their beautiful mugs anonymous for tomorrow.