Immoral Code

by Lillian Clark

  I keep my light off and drapes closed as the sun sets, and in the dim of my room I stare my new uncertainty straight on.

  Facts are my comfort zone. I like certainty, or, the pursuit of certainty. The possibility of certainty. I like things that seem new and strange and incredible only because science is finally figuring out how to understand them, solving the strings of unknowns that lead to new knowns. Everything has an equation. Every equation has a solution. But this feels like staring at an equation I can’t begin to know how to solve.

  I’ll take sole responsibility, but that won’t erase Reese from the lobby’s security cameras or San from the private camera feed in my father’s office, or Keagan’s license plates from the traffic cams if they trace Reese or Santiago or me back that far. And what about Nari? Not only d0l0s but Nari herself? She sat in that office, talked with Robert Foster the day before the program kicked on. And those variables aside, what about my mom? What about everyone else’s parents? Even if I take all the blame, will everyone else let me?

  My door opens. “Dinner,” my mom says curtly, and turns back down the hall.

  She’s made lasagna. Real lasagna, not frozen. Which means she soaked the noodles, browned the meat, and grated the cheese. There’s even garlic bread on the table, a loaf we’ve had frozen in the back of the freezer for I don’t know how long.

  “Sit,” she says, opening a bag of salad. She dumps the lettuce into a bowl and picks through it, pulling out the bits that have started to go bad, then tears open the pouch of dressing that came with it and squeezes it over the top. She drops the bowl of dressed salad onto the table, a few leaves of lettuce spilling out, and gestures to the meal with her wineglass. “Eat.”

  She sits, and I serve myself a portion of lasagna, a pile of salad, a piece of garlic bread. My bite of lasagna is too hot and burns my mouth. I hold it on my tongue and blow air out of my mouth around it, trying to cool it down before I swallow. With my mom’s work schedule, home-cooked meals like this are a rarity. If I were Reese, I’d say something like “What’s the occasion?” But I’m me, so I eat quietly while my mom drinks her wine and frowns at me from across the table. Thinking of Reese makes me think about everyone, and I wonder what their evenings are like. Later, I’ll find out. About Reese’s shouting match with her dad, her dad, not her mom, including his threats to pull her Etsy storefront and cancel her plans for the fall. About Nari’s tear-filled evening that ends with her computer, the one she lovingly built and rebuilt, in the trash. About Keagan’s night filled with discussions of everything from peer pressure to the practicalities of life as an ex-con. And Santiago’s, filled with silence.

  Then my mom says, “I’m sitting here, looking at you, my child, who came from me, who’s part of me, and I feel like I don’t even know you.”

  I set my fork down and stare at my plate.

  “Did Narioka make you do it?”

  “No.” I hate that she thinks that. I know why she does, but I still hate it.

  “Then?”

  I risk a look at her before focusing back on my plate. Her expression is livid.

  “Answer me, Bellamy. And don’t dare say that you don’t know. You committed a felony. This is beyond serious. If your father decides to report you, which I can’t imagine he won’t, you’ll—”

  “I know.”

  “Of course you do.” She takes a sip of wine. “You’re you. You know it all. You knew it all. Risks and consequences and you did it anyway.”

  I take a deep breath, hold it, exhale. She waits. Finally, I nod. “Yes. I knew the risks and I did it anyway.”

  Her shoulders fall. I know I can’t literally feel it. The molecules of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide, and other trace gases including whatever chemical compounds waft off the cooling lasagna and garlic bread that make up the smells in the air aren’t affected by my mom’s emotions. But it’s as though the space between us goes slack.

  She sets her wineglass down and her expression sinks. An actual sinking. The tilt of her head, her eyebrows, the aim of her eyes, the corners of her mouth, all shift down. She shakes her head. “How could you—you, Bellamy—be so incredibly stupid?”

  And I ask myself, Was I? Was it?

  It was selfish. It was reckless. It was illegal. But I don’t think it was stupid. Except for the oversight that led us here, it was smart and bold. And I realize in this moment that I don’t regret it. That I can know I made excuses and mistakes, but that I don’t feel guilty about doing it. If my father comes tomorrow with police in tow, I will spend the rest of my life mourning my dreams and regretting the consequences suffered by me and my friends. But I won’t regret feeling like I’ve earned more than being screwed over by circumstances beyond my control.

  Maybe that makes me a bad person. It certainly makes me an unrepentant criminal. But for the first time in memory, I don’t think through every logistical avenue of this fallout. I don’t second-guess myself, looking metaphorically to my left and right for co-conspirators to take both the lead and the blame.

  Instead, I look at my mom, with my spine straight and shoulders squared. “It wasn’t stupid,” I say. “It worked.” She meets my eye. “And no matter what happens tomorrow, you deserve to know it isn’t you who failed me. And I deserve better than abandonment.”

  He comes anyway, of course. My bravado at dinner doesn’t change that. After dinner my mom shuts herself in her room and I wash the dishes, the House Hunters marathon switching over to a Property Brothers one that drones on beneath my racket. I catch the buzzwords “waterfall countertop,” “bold fixtures,” “quartz,” and “open concept” on a steady rotation, and think, Who are these people? Who spends tens of thousands of dollars on cabinets and countertops, backsplashes and smudge-proof stainless steel appliances? They’re useless thoughts, a pointless stream of consciousness to accompany the movement of my arm as I scrub baked cheese off the edges of the lasagna pan. But they’re better than the cliché mess that fills my head after I finish and go to bed.

  Will he recognize me? Will he see himself in the shape of my eyes and detached earlobes? If we hadn’t done this, if I hadn’t given us up, would he have ever wanted to meet me?

  Does he think of me?

  Does he hate me?

  Will he report us and send my friends and me to jail?

  I fall asleep at some point, because I wake up later and there’s sunshine in my window. I hear the downstairs neighbors’ TV playing cartoons. Through the wall behind my bed, Mr. Danson is opening and closing cabinets in his kitchen. I can even hear the condiments shift in the door of his refrigerator as he shuts it too hard. I used to think luxury was thick walls. Now I think, morosely, being accustomed to the noise will be a boon once I get to prison.

  A few minutes later my mom opens my bedroom door. She’s already dressed, wearing some of her nicest clothes, with her hair and makeup done, too. “He’ll be here in half an hour,” she says. I nod and she leaves.

  I take a slow, deep breath. Half an hour.

  I reach for my phone by instinct to text everyone, but my mom still has it, so instead I get up, take a quick shower, and get dressed, forcing myself to not care about which T-shirt I pull on because I don’t care about it any other day, and I refuse to let today feel different. It doesn’t need to matter that I’m meeting my father for the first time. It doesn’t need to matter that my mom radiates nervous energy. It doesn’t matter that I know that that feeling of “radiation” is caused by mirror neurons in the premotor cortex, that emotional contagion is the psychological phenomenon of one person’s emotional behaviors, such as my mom scrubbing the sink that will never look clean or fluffing couch cushions that will never be fluffy, triggering a sympathetic response in another. And it can’t matter that the way she feels right now is my fault, because my other faults are so much larger and need all the focus I have to give.

  At 8
:47 a.m. there’s a knock on the door. My mom answers it and Robert “Bobby” Foster, CEO of a multibillion-dollar, internationally lauded venture capital firm, steps into our dingy apartment.

  I stand.

  And stare at him while he stares at me.

  On an awkwardness scale of one to ten, this is debilitating. An integer raised to an infinite exponent. He’s too real. Too corporeal. Too present. The air his mass displaces and the tightness in my chest make it hard to breathe.

  I break my rule and wish. I wish for Nari’s calm, her composure, her costume as she sat across from him in his office pretending to be someone else. I wish for Keagan’s humor and Reese’s confidence. I wish for Santiago’s fingers woven with mine.

  “Well,” my mom finally says, and the stillness cracks. “I don’t suppose traditional introductions are appropriate. But, Bobby—”

  “Robert,” he interrupts. “Please.”

  The muscles in my mom’s jaw twitch. “Right.” She waves a hand between us. “Robert, meet Bellamy.”

  He shifts his arms uncomfortably, like he might reach to shake my hand, then slips his hands into the pockets of his khakis. Reese would’ve had something perfectly snarky to say about his button-down shirt, ironed khakis, and brown leather docksiders, but all I can think is that he looks like someone’s dad. Someone who specifically isn’t me.

  “Bellamy,” he says, “it’s…”

  A pleasure?

  His stumble gives me confidence. “Complicated?”

  He frowns. “To say the least.”

  If the contagiousness of emotions had an off switch, I would flick it. Because this is unbearable. Literally. I cannot bear it: the way he looks at me with his mouth tight and brow creased; my mom’s furious expression; my rapid pulse pushing heightened levels of cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine throughout my body.

  “Fine,” my mom says, and I take a breath. She gestures for us to sit. “I’ll start.”

  I sit back on the couch. My mom pulls a chair over from the kitchen rather than sit beside me. Robert sits in the lumpy old chair to my right. I feel light-headed, sick to my stomach, and, sunk low on the couch cushion beneath their attention, so very small.

  Robert sits with his elbows propped on his knees. His gaze flicks around our apartment, lighting on the many framed pictures of my mom and me on the walls, on our clean but worn furniture, our clean but cheap kitchen cabinets, clean but old appliances, clean but dingy carpet and linoleum kitchen floor. My mom watches him, brow tight, and I feel a jolt of defensiveness. I don’t want him judging our life. He has no right.

  “So,” my mom says, addressing my father. “The way I see it, we have two issues. First is Bellamy managing to steal an incredible amount of money from you. Second is the issue of you being her father. But seeing how if the first hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t be here to address the second, maybe we start there?” Her tone is cutting.

  Robert’s focus settles on her. He laces his fingers together, and all I see is his wealth and power and largeness. The way wealth and power seem to make normal-sized people large. If he was ever a teenager with unstyled hair and an easy smile, I can’t picture it. He arches an eyebrow and opens his mouth, but I interrupt.

  “Is she wrong?”

  His arched eyebrow falls as he looks at me. I swallow. Though I brushed my teeth less than an hour ago, my mouth tastes acrid.

  I make myself hold his eye. I wonder if he can sense it, that phone call, the shared memory lingering between us. Even the financial aid paperwork, that reminder of my existence, his opportunity to claim me. “You’ve never shown any interest in the fact that I’m your daughter. And if it weren’t for what I did, I doubt you ever would. So it doesn’t seem like she’s wrong.”

  “I don’t think you’re in a position to make accusations.”

  “I didn’t make an accusation,” I say, “only stated a fact.”

  My mom shifts forward, impatient. “Have you reported them?”

  He clears his throat. “Not yet.”

  She exhales and leans back in her chair.

  I ask, “Why?”

  Robert unlaces and relaces his fingers. “I wanted to hear why you did it first.”

  First.

  I look at my mom. She’s closed her eyes and is rubbing her temples with both hands. “You didn’t—”

  “Nope,” she says. “That’s your job, Bluebell.”

  I glance back at Robert. He purses his lips. The searching way he watches me is unnerving.

  “Okay.” I want to pop my knuckles, pull my hair out, leap through the window. “I got into MIT. Early decision,” I start. “But maybe you know that.”

  His brow creases and he tips his head. I wait.

  “Financial aid paperwork,” I say, and something clicks. His eyebrows and the muscles narrowing his eyes relax.

  “My lawyer,” he says. “He mentioned something in passing. Then sent it to my accountant.” His gaze flicks around the apartment again. “I’m assuming you can’t afford to go.”

  “No. I could have,” I say. And I’m so angry. It surprises me, this anger, so intense I have to ball up my hands to stop their shaking. “MIT is need-blind with full-need financial aid. But there’s…you. And they must’ve thought you’d help pay.”

  Which is why I called you, I think. But I don’t say it. Let him say it. Let him say that I called and he hung up on me.

  He nods, a vague gesture of understanding. Not sympathy or indignation, but basic understanding, as though this was the missing part of the equation he hadn’t been quite sure how to solve. “How’d you do it?”

  My mom lowers her hands and opens her eyes, focusing on me.

  “You don’t know?” I ask him.

  He shakes his head.

  “Would you have found out if I hadn’t told?”

  “Eventually.”

  I nod because I don’t know how else to react. A quarter of a million dollars. In less than a week. And he hadn’t even noticed.

  “Malware,” I say. “Code written to siphon a fraction of a percentage off of each of FI’s financial transactions. Laundered through Bitcoin into an account in my name.”

  His eyebrows rise. “That’s some sophisticated code.”

  “Yep.”

  “How’d you get past the firewalls?”

  Again, he doesn’t know. Incredible.

  He doesn’t know that we didn’t get past all the firewalls. He doesn’t know that we were in his building. Meaning he hasn’t thought about security tapes. Meaning he hasn’t added Violet Murakami plus the teenage activist in a black wig and fake blood plus the looped video plus a glimpse of San in a suit stepping out of his private bathroom before the feed paused and come up with grand larceny. Meaning…? I meet my mom’s eye, but the look she returns makes it clear I have to tell him.

  “We didn’t,” I say. “We installed it physically on your desktop’s hard drive.”

  His eyes widen, and I wonder if the pieces are starting to fit together. “We?”

  Eventually I’ll tell him everything. Eventually he’ll even meet everyone. Eventually he’ll laugh at Reese’s enthusiastic performance. He’ll grill Nari on the code she wrote and shake his head thinking of her tenacious alter ego. But right now, as he waits for me to answer, all I say is “I’m sorry.”

  And I am. Not for the trouble I’ve caused him. Not even for doing what we did, really. Though if I could go back and do it all again? I don’t know. Maybe I’d make different decisions. Rework the equation, change the variables. But right now, I’m sorry for something larger. Something indistinct. I’m sorry in a way I don’t know how to articulate yet. In a way that has little to do with remorse or regret. Or at least, not my remorse or regret. Maybe I’ll figure it out someday, but for now I just say, “I was desperate and angry. And I’m sorr
y.”

  He opens his mouth, then closes it. Twice. Finally, he says, “When you called…” He shrugs. “I panicked.”

  I blink hard. Tears of sadness have a different chemical composition than other types of tears. Prolactin, Leu-enkephalin, and adrenocorticotropic hormone all appear in markedly greater quantities in tears caused by unhappiness than in tears produced for lubrication only. Some theories suggest that apart from the social aspect of crying, such as eliciting sympathy, tears caused by sadness serve biochemical purposes, such as releasing certain toxins from the body and relieving stress.

  But I don’t cry. Not yet. I swallow hard. My throat feels thick. “Why didn’t you call me? Why haven’t you ever called me?”

  It isn’t the same. I know that. But he answers anyway, telling me about being overwhelmed and scared and shortsighted. He describes leaving for college before I was born and how each week, each month, each year away, charging forward through his life, made it easier to forget about me. Not entirely, he swears. But I became an abstract concept. So intangible that when he did stop to think of me, I felt less like reality and more like some memory that might’ve gotten confused with a dream. “And I let you,” he says. “I let you become a sort of figment.” Because a figment, he tells me, a negligible child-support debit from one of his old and seldom-used bank accounts, a few forms passed from a lawyer to an accountant, was neater, simpler, than considering me as a reality. A person. His daughter. “As a toddler with my laugh.” He looks up, meets my eye after having stared at the carpet between his feet for the past five minutes. His smile is small and tight, his eyes a little red and serious with that searching look again. “As a teenager with my nose and nearsightedness.”

  He almost called me after the birth of his first son, he says. But he realized that he hadn’t had that feeling with me. That moment of instant “nearly debilitating love.” And “Instead of trying to undo seven years of packaging you in that neat box of unreality, I gave in to my guilt and looked away again.”

  He just—looked away. Which might’ve sounded callous. Which was undoubtedly cowardice. But it’s also something we had in common. Had. Because whatever else happens, we’re both done looking away.