“But you have a theory.”
“I might have half a theory.”
Suddenly Mikey starts yanking hard on the handcuffs, so hard I’m worried he’s going to pull his arm out of its socket. “Get me out of here! I feel like I’m in a cell!”
“Just chill, dude,” Thomas says.
But I can see the panic in Mikey’s eyes. “Thomas, I don’t think he’s messing around. Maybe something’s coming back to him. Some traumatic memory.”
Mikey is now going berserk. He kicks the back doors of the van and manages to get the latch on the door open with his foot. One more kick and the doors are going to fly open.
“Let me out!” Mikey shouts. “Let me out right now! I have to get out of this van!”
I abruptly pull over onto the narrow shoulder. Thomas runs around and opens both back doors just in time for Mikey to lean out and throw up onto the bumper.
I get out and stand with Thomas, looking down at Mikey as his body convulses repeatedly. I’m trying to get near him to unlock the handcuffs but he keeps shaking his head back and forth like a wet dog.
After another minute, he starts to calm down, and I’m able to get the cuffs off him. He climbs out of the van and puts his hands on the highway guardrail, taking deep breaths.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
He turns and watches the cars rushing past and then, with no warning, bolts out into the oncoming traffic.
Cars honk and swerve wildly to avoid him. He just stands in the middle of the road, staring straight at the headlights bearing down on him.
Thomas swears loudly. “What’s his deal?”
“I have no idea! I’ve known him for all of three hours!”
Mikey wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He’s still standing, oblivious to the danger he’s in.
As soon as there’s an opening for me, I run into the road and yank him by the arm back to the car. “Are you trying to kill yourself?”
“Kill myself?” he repeats.
I can’t tell if he finds the idea frightening or attractive. His closes his eyes and rubs a spot behind his ear.
“I’m okay,” he says. “Just need to clear my head a little, you know? I get these headaches when I remember stuff. I get this pain right here.”
He again massages behind his left ear. Then he starts scratching so hard, I’m worried he’s going to draw blood. I take his hand away from his head. “What did you remember a minute ago?”
He glances into the back of the van. His face looks like he’s suddenly slammed into a brick wall.
“I remembered being in the backseat of a van once before. Kind of freaked me out for a second. It was like I was back there again, but part of me knew I couldn’t be, because I’m here with you guys. It was like I was having a nightmare and trying to wake up but I couldn’t.”
“When you say you felt like you were ‘back there’ . . . back where, exactly?” I ask as gently as I can.
“I don’t know,” he says, now looking at the underside of the nearby bridge. He watches the water flowing around the support beams that disappear into the deep currents below it. After a moment he turns his face toward the bay. “But I feel like we’re headed in the right direction.”
I glance at Thomas, then back at Mikey. “Can I just look at something on your scalp for a second?”
Mikey tips his head forward. I touch the place behind his ear where he was just pointing and he winces. Underneath his hair, I feel a hard bump. I take out the small flashlight attached to my belt and look more closely. There’s something round, about the size of a dime, underneath the skin. I hand the flashlight to Thomas so I can run my fingers around the crown of Mikey’s head. Thomas knows exactly what I’m looking for and holds the flashlight up for me. In a moment, I count up five small lumps. There’s a stitch still poking up through one of them. When I touch it, Mikey jumps.
I motion for Thomas to shine the flashlight toward Mikey’s face. Mikey’s pupils instantly contract to pinpoints as the light shines in his eyes. I push his hair back away from his forehead and see two incision scars similar to my own, where the halo inserts once were. I hadn’t noticed them among the other cuts on Mikey’s face.
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Mikey says in whisper.
Thomas helps Mikey into the front seat, returns his stolen police hat to him, and claps him on the shoulder. “Let’s hope it’s nothing a little bowling won’t cure.”
Chapter 10
We arrive in Coney Island twenty minutes later, and we know we’ve found the right place because the twenty-foot-tall sign in the shape of two bowling pins salsa dancing is visible from three blocks away.
“Stop right here,” Thomas says suddenly.
I pull over and Thomas hops out and runs up the block. He stops in front of a guy with a sidewalk cart who’s closing up shop for the night. Five minutes later, Thomas returns with two huge hoodies that say CONEY ISLAND in sequined letters across the front. He gets back into the van and hands one to me and one to Mikey.
“I’m sorry, but you two would look more like cops if you weren’t actually dressed as cops. That’s how unconvincing you are in those uniforms.”
“I’m not changing,” Mikey says, tossing the hoodie back into the front seat.
“Fine,” Thomas says, throwing the hoodie back at him and hitting him in the face with it. “Then you’ll stay in the van when we go into the bowling alley.”
“I don’t have to listen to you.”
“You do if you want our—Angel’s—help.”
Mikey looks at me hopefully, and I say, “I’m with Thomas on this one, Mikey.”
I pull the hoodie on over my stolen uniform shirt and ditch my hat. A quick look in the rearview mirror has me appreciating the staying power of the waterproof mascara the stylist at Blake & Mikels used on me.
The bowling alley is just a few blocks farther up, across the street from Luna Park, home of the oldest roller coaster in New York—the Cyclone—which it seems very proud about. As if age is a big selling point for amusement park rides.
As we roll past the bowling alley entrance, we notice a man sitting on a bar stool near the front door. His muscled arms are crossed over an even more muscled chest, and he’s got a scowl that would scare off a pack of wild dogs.
“How are we going to get past him?” I ask.
“We’ll figure something out,” Thomas says.
I look over at Mikey. His face is relaxed and hopeful as he looks at the lights from all the signs in and around Luna Park. We hear people laughing and whooping as the Cyclone starts climbing up and then, all at once, shrieking as it plunges down the track.
“You recognize this place, Mikey?” I say.
“Maybe. I don’t know. It feels like . . . yeah, I think I’ve been here before. Like a long time ago. When I was little. I went on that one.” Mikey points toward a tall tower called the Banshee. It must have shut down for the night because its lights are turned off. It looks like one of those free-fall rides where they strap you into the seat and then drop you a couple stories before putting the brakes on. As someone who’s actually fallen from great heights, I don’t get the appeal.
“Forget the Cyclone,” he goes on. “The Banshee was the scariest. We went on it five times in a row.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” I ask.
“That part I’m not sure about. Might have been a friend. Or a cousin. I think I’d remember if it was a brother. I don’t think I had a brother.”
Thomas’s eyebrows go up at this comment, but I’m not sure why. He starts typing on the laptop again.
“I could go for some food,” Mikey adds. “I’m starving.”
I suddenly wonder how Mikey has been getting along the last few weeks. How he’s been eating, where he’s been sleeping.
“You sure you should eat?” Thomas says. “You puked barely half an hour ago.”
“Exactly. My stomach is now empty, which is why I’m hungry.”
“Yeah, well, first we
have to find the locker that goes with this key,” Thomas says.
By now I’m several blocks away from the bowling alley. I circle back around and pull over to the side of the road next to an alley blocked off with a post and chain.
“So are we going in or what?” I ask.
“I’ve got a better idea,” Thomas says. He spins around and shoots Mikey a get lost sort of look. “Why doesn’t Mikey see if there’s a back door or delivery entrance or something? Some way for us to slip inside unnoticed.”
“Ah, gotcha, dude,” says Mikey, slapping Thomas on the shoulder. “Three’s a crowd. You two enjoy some alone time. I got this.”
“Put the hoodie on first,” Thomas says. “Judging by the clientele going in and out of this place, the shadier you look, the more you’ll fit in.”
“But if they think I’m a cop, maybe—”
I cut him off. “The idea is not to draw attention to ourselves, Mikey.” He sighs, takes off his hat, and puts the hoodie on.
I get out and open the side door to let Mikey out. As he heads up the street, I lean against the van, watching him. Thomas gets out and joins me. He lets out a long breath, clearly relieved to be rid of Mikey’s company.
“So what did you want to talk to me about?” I ask him.
“First off, you know that ride that Mikey mentioned going on?”
I glance at the tower in the back corner of the park, near the boardwalk. “Yeah. The Banshee. What about it?”
“I looked it up on the cops’ computer just now. The Banshee is only six months old. He couldn’t have ridden that as a kid. He’s lying.”
I suddenly feel as if I’ve dropped a few floors on the Banshee myself. “Maybe he just got mixed up.”
“Or maybe he doesn’t realize he’s lying.”
“Meaning what?”
“Well, what if he’s not recovering real memories?”
“What’s he remembering then?” I say. “Someone else’s life?”
My whole body tenses at the thought.
“It’s possible.”
“No, it’s not. When Dr. Wilson’s team operated on me, they might have subtracted memories from my mind but they didn’t substitute new ones.”
“Maybe Mikey’s treatment was different. I really don’t think it’s a good idea to keep him around, Angel. We just don’t know what’s been done to him.”
“But if he isn’t even aware of what’s been done to him, how does it matter? He’s still blindly flailing around, trying to figure himself out. I remember that feeling all too well.”
I rub my eyes, not sure how and when I made myself Mikey’s keeper.
“I get it,” says Thomas. “You want to help him. But you should understand that you might not be able to do anything for him. Somebody might have stuffed his head so full of lies it’s possible he’s got no memories left to recover.”
I take the handcuffs off my belt and start playing with them, pushing the metal bands around and around and making the ratchet click so fast it sounds like it’s buzzing. “Speaking of lying without intending to lie . . .”
“I knew we were gonna come back to that.”
“Be straight with me,” I say. “Is there even a small chance that 8-Bit kept any information about Velocius?”
Thomas exhales slowly. I can tell from the weight of the sigh that he’s been thinking about this for a long time, a lot longer than I have—probably ever since the Feds started interrogating him.
He kicks the back tire of the van as he looks up into the sky. “If 8-Bit had something, I have no idea how, and that’s saying something, seeing as I knew all the ins and outs of the family hacking business. They literally blew up the hospital mainframe with all of Larry’s backup files. Anyway, none of that matters right now. I told you, these guys who kidnapped me are after something else.”
“So you told me.”
Mikey suddenly reappears, peeling off his hoodie and holding it at his side as he heads up the sidewalk. Before he reaches us, though, he veers into the middle of the nearby intersection.
“He’s not gonna try to roadkill himself again, is he?” groans Thomas. “I’m not invested enough in his survival to keep saving his life.”
“No, I think . . .” This time Mikey doesn’t seem distressed. Instead he cheerfully starts directing traffic going past the amusement park.
“For cripes sake, who gave him a whistle?” Thomas says.
I pull one out of a small leather pouch attached to my belt. “Seems to be standard issue along with the handcuffs.” I smile slightly at the way Mikey is directing traffic. It’s like he’s dancing out there in the middle of the intersection. “He definitely seems to enjoy being a fake cop.”
“Yeah, it’s real charming.”
As the light changes, Mikey approaches a random guy who’s pursuing two women across the street. I didn’t catch what the guy was saying to the ladies, but it must’ve rubbed Mikey the wrong way. “You think that’s a nice way to talk to a woman? Do you, jerkwad?” Mikey shouts, giving the guy a little shove. “Why don’t you show a little respect?”
The guy’s clearly not sure what to do. If Mikey wasn’t dressed as a cop, he probably would’ve thrown a punch already. The next thing we know, Mikey grabs the front of the guy’s shirt and is screaming into his face. Something about learning to be a gentleman. The guy puts his hands up and says, “All right, all right. Sorry, officer.”
Mikey lets go and the guy walks quickly back the way he came. One of the women turns back, teetering in her high heels, and blows him a kiss. “Thank you, officer!”
Mikey salutes. “My pleasure, ladies. You have a safe night.”
I’m caught somewhere between dismay and laughter, but mostly I’m just wondering who the heck he thinks he is.
“Will you get Officer Mikey’s attention so we can get on with our evening—and before he causes a riot?” Thomas says.
I wave at Mikey. He half-waves, half-salutes back. I motion him over, and he finally seems to get the message. As he jogs back across the street toward us, I say to Thomas, “Well, whatever sort of messed up he might be, he seems to have an urge to help people.”
“Maybe there’s some part of his mind that’s trying to make up for whatever he did to land him in that hospital to begin with,” Thomas says.
“Or maybe he was like me. Maybe he didn’t do anything wrong at all.”
“Doubt that.”
I shoot him a scathing look, which he refuses to be scathed by.
“Look, I know you empathize with him. But Mikey and you? Not the same. If you’re in doubt, watch and learn.”
The moment Mikey reaches the van, Thomas demands, “Did you find a back entrance?”
“Uh, no. There’s a door, but it’s locked up tight.”
“You know, Angel, I think it might be a better idea if I go into the bowling alley by myself,” Thomas says to me, though his eyes remain locked on Mikey’s face. He then reaches over and sticks his hand in the front breast pocket of Mikey’s uniform. “Which means I’ll be needing this back.”
Thomas holds up the locker key in front of Mikey’s face before shoving it into his own pocket. Mikey looks down into his empty shirt pocket, looking genuinely surprised, like Thomas has just magically pulled the locker key from his ear.
“Heh,” Mikey says. “Forgot I had that on me.”
“I don’t recall giving it to you in the first place.”
“I just took it in case I was able to get in through the back—figured I might be able to find the locker and save you some time. Just trying to help is all.”
“That was sweet of you.”
Mikey’s face turns thoughtful. “Hey, smart guy. Have you ever heard of a group called the Radical Pacifists?”
“No.”
“Me neither,” Mikey says.
“Then why are you bringing it up?” Thomas demands.
“I don’t know. Just a name that popped into my head. I don’t know how I heard about them or what they
do, but I thought I should mention it.”
“Sounds like the name of a band,” says Thomas, clearly unimpressed.
Mikey turns to me. “Seriously, though. Maybe you should look into this group. I mean, it might be a lead about where I came from. And I just have a feeling . . . that you should know about them.”
“We’ll see what we can figure out,” I say noncommittally. “But we need to find this locker first.”
Thomas takes out his wallet and hands Mikey a fifty dollar bill. “Officer, why don’t you run along and get yourself an ice cream while I go inside, okay?”
“You’re thinking you’re going in there by yourself?” I say. “That’s cute, Thomas. I’m coming, too.”
“Angel, I can handle it on my own. You wait here with the car. I’ll be right back.”
I’ll be right back.
Everything’s going to be okay.
Small reassurances that can easily become last words.
And yet even though I’m worried about what might happen to him, I’m also worried for a completely different reason. I feel like he wants to get away from me, and I wish I knew why.
I start walking toward the front door of the bowling alley.
“I can handle this alone, Angel.”
“I’m sure you can. But you shouldn’t. Let’s go.”
Chapter 11
It turns out the bouncer very much enjoys cash, and a hundred bucks hastily stuffed into his hand turns his scowl into a warm, welcoming smile.
He even says, “You have a lovely evening, folks,” as he lifts the rope and lets us in.
The inside of the bowling alley is just about as dark and icky as I expected it to be, given the half burned-out sign and large, cracked front window kept together with duct tape. The whole place smells like the inside of a rental shoe. It’s also really loud. And a lot bigger than it looks from the outside. There must be fifteen lanes on each side of the room and nearly all of them are in deafening use. At the far end of the room, two lanes are partitioned off from the rest with floor-to-ceiling lattice screens. In the doorway to reach these lanes, there’s a velvet rope—an honest-to-goodness velvet rope. Evidently those two lanes, plus an adjacent lounge and private bar, are the VIP section. It’s almost laughable in its seediness.
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