“This is ridiculous,” Bobby complained.
“Everything fine?”
“I’m not allowed my own e-mail for a while. Just in case.” Bobby made mock air quotes then shrugged. “Whatever. It basically means I do less work.”
“All because they found something?”
“Yeah. It was weird. I thought it was junk mail, but I clicked on it, and followed it to a page and now, alas, I am not allowed to have an e-mail.”
“What did it say? What made you click on it?”
“Oh, it was bizarre. It was about a bird called hope and had a bunch of pictures. It seemed like a chain letter and those things freak me out, so I tried to forward it, but apparently I got a virus instead.”
Jason’s spine tingled with recognition. “What did you say?”
“A bird called hope. Or maybe it was luck? One of the pictures was this really intricate drawing which was supposed to signal something in Native culture. Maybe? Like I said, it seemed like a chain letter but it was only there to fuck with me. Not a big deal anymore.”
“Wait, no,” Jason said. “What was the image? Can you draw it?”
Bobby gave Jason a skeptical glance. He must have read the desperation in Jason’s eyes because he picked up his Post-it notes and started to sketch. It took him several tries and several Post-it notes before he rendered it properly enough to give to Jason.
“There. That’s kind of what they both looked like. One was the sign off for the e-mail and the other image was the header. I’m no Picasso, but you get the gist.”
Jason’s heart fell. Both images were exactly like Pete’s tattoo; the bird called hope was clearly the same one etched out on his arm.
“Shit.”
“You know it?”
“No,” Jason lied. “But I think I may know someone who does.”
Bobby shrugged. “Well, don’t beat yourself up over it, man. I think I like being on modified duty. Like I said, means less work for me. And when it’s going to be lunch in another ten minutes, it’s even better.”
Bobby carried on with his work, clicking away and acting like his near dismissal was no big deal. Jason was fuming. As soon as the lunch period began, he was in the elevators again.
For once, he didn’t skip through the parking lot.
Chapter Eleven
“WHAT ABOUT adding some black?” Pete suggested.
The ten-year-old kid named Timmy scrunched up his nose. “But I don’t like that color. It’s too bland.”
“Not if you use it to highlight what you’ve done in red. And so much of the art you looked at today was in black, red, and blue. Stark, bold colors. What about trying some black here then getting out the blue?” Pete pointed to a stray corner in the boy’s page. The local fifth grade class had come into the museum for a field trip. Their first stop had been in the interactive lecture area where Pete had dressed up as one of the Arctic’s most famous artists and carved a turtle out of soapstone (really, Keith had swapped the soapstone sculptures out with a quick sleight of hand). From there, Pete and Keith explained the origin myth, among other popular stories, and how the turtle played a large part in it. The slide show ended with a brief summary of the other major figures in modern Inuit art, like Jessie Oonark, who Kirsten had dressed up as, and Pudlo Pudlat, who Keith represented. After lunch, Mrs. Lion’s class was painting what they had learned from the lecture.
Timmy still scrunched up his nose. “I don’t know….”
“Remember what Keith and I did in the last skit?” Pete asked. When Timmy was silent, Pete went on. “I was the darkness coming in and chasing the light after the darkest day. I had to have big footprints and big dance steps in order to bring it back. Like so.”
Pete mimicked the dance he had done earlier. Some of the kids from neighboring tables giggled behind their work. Even Keith, who was still mixing paint, stopped to watch. Without Pete’s costume or props, it seemed a little silly. But he liked it. He wouldn’t trade the art portion of the museum and his new job for the world. He was beyond relieved that Nadine had gotten the grant to join forces with the Whitehorse Gallery so that now he could use some of the old tricks his father had taught him as a kid.
Timmy looked at his painting again. He dabbed his brush in the black and added it to the corner. He did so with his tongue sticking out of his mouth in immense concentration.
“Okay,” he said. “I like it.”
“Good. Now. Is there anyone else who needs help?”
A girl named Abby put up her hand. Pete was delighted when she seemed to know exactly what painting she wanted to replicate and it was one of Pete’s favorites: The Enchanted Owl by Kenojuak Ashevak. He helped her draw some of the more complicated lines of the owl’s feathers and pulled up the image from a pamphlet the kids had received when they came inside.
“You see my tattoo?” Pete asked, lifting his shirt back a little.
Abby’s eyes went wide and she nodded. “It’s like the painting.”
“Yes, but not quite. My father is an artist and he helped get my design off the ground, so I could carry my own enchanted owl with me wherever I went.” Pete rolled his sleeve down again and gestured to Abby’s page. “Show me how you want your owl to look. It doesn’t have to look exactly like the original, since this one is yours to carry around with you.”
With some direction, Abby seemed a lot more at ease. She picked up the red and black paint from the center of her table and started to dab them into the intricate lines Pete had helped her draw.
“There you go! Just like that.”
When Pete rose from her table, he spotted Jason outside the art door, talking in a clipped tone to Keith. He wore a tie and a jacket under his undone winter coat. His cheeks were red as if he’d run the entire way from the office.
“Isn’t that your guy?” Kirsten asked. “Is everything okay?”
“I think so. Gimme five, though?”
Pete walked over to Jason without waiting for a response. Keith assessed Jason with a keen eye, then nodded and let Jason and Pete be alone.
“What’s up?” Pete asked. “I didn’t expect to see you here today. Did you get the afternoon off with Micah?”
“Explain this symbol to me.” Jason extended a Post-it note with a really crude drawing of a medicine wheel, in addition to a crudely rendered version of the same owl he’d been working with moments ago.
“Oh. Um. Well, that one is a medicine wheel and the other is an owl, which appears a lot in Native art. As you can tell.” Pete gestured to the room full of kids who were drawing their own versions of it. “Why?”
“Do they have anything to do with the Environmental Nation?”
“It’s The Environmental Crew, and why?” Pete crossed his arms over his chest, angling his body toward the hallway away from the kids. “I thought we agreed not to talk about this.”
“We did. But that symbol—or both of them—was in an e-mail to my company that had a Trojan horse virus, which then hacked our system and leaked our info.”
“Oh. Leaked to where?”
“How the hell do I know? I’m not good with hacking stuff. It’s over my head. But this symbol is tattooed on you. On your arm and your stomach. I know I saw it when we, you know….” Jason’s voice was pained; Pete didn’t have the heart to tell him that the symbol on his stomach wasn’t a medicine wheel, but something similar. Even the owl was common—and since his father had based it on another painter’s work, Pete could hardly see how it was only connected to him.
“We agreed not to talk about our jobs,” Jason went on, “but I thought that pertained to actions too.”
“Wait. You think I hacked the computers?”
“You know these symbols. You have them on your body.”
“But they’re part of indigenous culture. If you came to any of these lectures I’ve been doing, you’d know. If you listened to me instead of accusing me, you’d know.”
“Then why has my company been hacked? It’s not a coincidence that
your group was there and now this happens.”
“You don’t even know where the documents leaked to, so you can’t start randomly accusing without understanding the motive. And I hate to break it to you, but your company kind of sucks. It hurts a lot of people. Not just me. Not just The Environmental Crew. Any number of them could have fu—screwed with your systems.”
“I can’t have this. I can’t….” Jason huffed, his cheeks turning even redder. He seemed to want to tear his hair out from the way he clutched his chest. “I can’t do this. My company could have caught me. They could have linked us together and if my company knew I was associated with you… I’d be fired.”
“What happened to your boss not caring?”
“That was before this hack. Before all of this. If I don’t have a job, I’m fucked. We’re fucked.”
“But I didn’t do this. My group didn’t do this, either. We are not the ones to blame.”
Jason knitted his brows. “How do I know for sure?”
“You don’t. You trust me. You have to trust me.” Pete was surprised when his voice quaked near the end. He stepped into the hallway more, angling away from the kids. The last thing he needed was for his dirty laundry to be aired. Or to cry in front of Keith and Kirsten, explaining to them why he desperately wanted to keep his boyfriend who clearly thought he’d stolen his office files like some common punk. “Do you trust me?”
Jason seemed torn. He bit his lip but didn’t nod or shake his head.
“Fuck,” Pete murmured. He wanted to yell louder. To push and scream. But if he was in Jason’s position, he knew he’d be thinking the same thing. His tattoo was common, but not that common. And though it had nothing to do with The Environmental Crew, it had everything to do with caring for the earth. No amount of explaining that would make Jason calm down. No amount of explaining it would make Pete feel better, either.
“I’m a man of my word, Jason. I told you that when I first met you.”
“And you have different convictions than I do.”
“That’s not entirely true. I love my family. I love my job. I love the earth. And I love….” Pete stopped, not daring to divulge that last bit. He drew in a steady breath. “I keep my word. I did not do this. I would not risk doing anything like this. But if you keep thinking I’m a punk, then this isn’t going to happen.”
Jason’s dark eyes seemed to go out like lights; there was no gold in them anymore. Pete wondered if there ever had been.
“I’m sorry, then,” Jason finally said. “I’ve got to go. My lunch break is almost over.”
Pete wanted to rush out and grab Jason’s arm. Anything to keep him from walking out the museum doorway to the other end of the foyer like he was already doing. But Pete was as still as stones. He watched Jason leave the building. From there, he’d get into his car and drive back to work at the oil company. Everything that once kept them together suddenly seemed to drive them apart.
Pete was furious. Not only at Jason, but at Cameron and everyone else. His tattoo flamed as if his loyalties had been burned.
“Hey, man,” Keith said, coming up behind Pete. “You okay? It’s rare we get a soap opera from your life. You’re always so collected.”
“I know. But do you think I can cut out? I have to find some things out for sure.”
Keith pursed his lips, asking a silent question for more information. When it was clear that Pete wasn’t going to share, he nodded. “Yeah, man, sure. The hard part of the show is over now, anyway, so it’s just about making sure a group of fifth graders don’t spill too much paint.”
“Thank you.”
“Not at all. Good luck.”
As Pete grabbed his jacket and headed to his bike, he touched his tattoos under his shirt. All the luck in the world couldn’t change what he’d already pledged to himself and his community. He only hoped that he could stop whatever damage had already been done.
Chapter Twelve
AFTER CHECKING the abandoned train station, a bar downtown, and a coffee house, Pete finally went to Cameron’s building. He slipped past the security locks and climbed the stairs to the third-floor apartment. He knocked on the door several times before Cameron finally answered.
“Hey, man.” Cameron scratched his beard, sleep in his eyes. “What’s up?”
“How dare you ruin the one good thing I have going for me.” Pete pushed past Cameron and flopped down on his couch. The springs dug into Pete’s back and he hissed at the pain. Cameron’s windows let in no light through the cheap blinds. Part of that was because Cameron hadn’t cleaned the windowpanes in years (all chemical cleaners were bogus and caused damage) and because light outside was fading faster than Pete thought possible.
“What the fuck, man?” Cameron sat down on the end chair that had a worn groove in the fabric from Cameron sitting there so much. He picked up a metal water bottle from the coffee table and took a long drink. “You gonna explain to me why you came in here like a bat out of hell? What’s going on, man?”
“You’ve ruined the one good thing I have in my life.”
“The one thing? I’m offended. I am a delight, Peter Odjick.”
“Shut the fuck up for a second.” Pete took in a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves. After riding his bike around half of fucking Whitehorse, he’d gone over every single bad turn of events from all possible angles. Jason was probably packing up Micah right now to move back to Toronto. Or he was filing a restraining order, or even worse, he was phoning the museum and reporting Pete for misconduct. What kind of misconduct specifically, Pete wasn’t sure, but he figured Nadine Lennox would be less than pleased to find out that Pete was part of an eco-terrorist ring. Even if The Environmental Crew wasn’t that bad, something else would surely come along and fuck up his one good job. Bad things always did.
“Go slowly,” Cameron said. “What’s got you all upset?”
“My tattoo. You know the one on my stomach? And my arm?”
“Right. The ones your father drew for you ages ago. What about them?”
“Someone is using the owl and another symbol that looks an awful lot like the one on my stomach in environmental newsletters now. The oil company was hacked and—”
“Good,” Cameron cut in. “I mean—sorry, go on.”
“The company was hacked through an e-mail that was disguising itself using an art piece with an owl on it. There was a Trojan horse file in an e-mail, which probably used a keystroke viewer to access the information. I don’t know much else, but it seems pretty sophisticated to get through an e-mail and into sensitive files.”
“And you think I did it?”
“No,” Pete said easily, trying not to sound accusatory. “But I’m worried the crew went through a new rebranding and have now started to send e-mails to inside the enemy’s system so they can take it down from the inside out. Pamphlets and protests just weren’t working. So why not do this? It’s actually pretty ingenious.”
“It is. But it’s also ruining the one good thing in your life too?” Cameron’s gaze was harsh; Pete felt it like a wound. He knew he should have come clean about the relationship with Jason. But coming clean implied he did something wrong. And there was nothing wrong with loving Jason, even if he worked for the oil company.
Pete reeled at the sudden word choice. Love Jason. I fucking love Jason. He shook his head, trying to get rid of Cameron’s insistent stare.
“Okay, so I’ve been seeing someone at the company. That’s how I found this out.”
“That guy you talked to, right? The day of the protest?”
Pete nodded.
“Ugh.”
“Don’t ugh me. If you did this to ruin his job—just because I’m finally happy—then you’re more petty than I thought. I know I’ve been missing meetings, but I swear, I’m not giving up on the group. Or on him.”
“First of all, stop accusing me,” Cameron said, holding up a hand. “I’m not that petty and I didn’t do any of this. You know I suck with computers. I c
ouldn’t have done this.”
“Other people know computers. Joe and Marla—”
“No. You know computers. You’re our IT specialist and zine layout man and everything else we’ve ever done on a PC or Mac has been your duty. Even you don’t know how to do anything this sophisticated.”
Pete shrugged. He didn’t want to argue and say he could probably figure it out if he had all the information. When he and Cameron first started hanging out, and Cameron found out about Pete’s computer degree, Pete was worried that he would have to become the group’s hacker and thereby make Jason’s accusation have more weight. But no one, not even Joe who studied legal loopholes, had encouraged him to become a “hacktivist.” For that, Pete was relieved.
“The company’s cyber-security is awful,” Pete said after a while. “I went on their website earlier this year after Jason told me where he worked. I had to be sure they weren’t this evil company.”
“They are.”
“No, they’re not. They’re just… a company. No company is actually evil. Their CEOs make bad choices about the environment because of the profit it gets them. They don’t know what the economy really needs and rely on junk science to ease their minds at night about global warming. The company had an entire section on their website devoted to the garbage science. They’re misinformed in the worst ways, but not evil.”
“So? They’re still responsible.”
“And leaking documents doesn’t do a damn thing to help the situation.” Pete sighed and lay back on the couch. “Are you sure no one in the group did this? Or did you guys hire anyone to do this?”
“No, man. You haven’t been coming to meetings but I assure you, all we talk about is how to make more pamphlets. Finding more locations to protest, especially now that the fracking is real. They started a while ago.”
“I know.” Pete closed his eyes. He had driven by one of the plants on his bike. He could smell the chemicals from even a few kilometers back and he swore he felt the earth thunder beneath him in a miniquake. He hated every last bit of it because it felt like the Yukon was falling from his hands.
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