He jumps all over that. “You’re a regular here? Your family comes every summer?”
“Since I was six. Even longer than Grace.”
He whistles. “Your folks must be serious Nimbus fans.”
I sigh. “You’ll never know how big.”
He comes up behind me and the next thing I know, he’s taken over the wheel. To my questioning look, he replies, “Why don’t you let me drive for a while. You can watch the kites. Maybe you’ll see Grace win another trophy.”
“Oh, there aren’t any trophies,” I tell him. “Magnus doesn’t believe in trinkets. He’s all about participating, not winning and losing. You can’t be whole if you’re showing off.”
“Vlad would never go for that,” Jett comments. “He refuses to waste his time on anything he can’t rule the world at.”
He doesn’t sound bitter, exactly. But I get the impression that growing up with someone famous like Vladimir Baranov isn’t the easiest thing in the world. I can relate.
The ride takes about the same twenty minutes as last time—this is the slower direction, since we’re working against the current. I keep my eyes on the kites mostly, which are lower in the sky as we move farther away. But I can’t help noticing that Jett seems to be enjoying himself at the wheel, making spaceship sounds under his breath, along with explosions as he pumps his thumbs at imaginary weapons. Magnus definitely wouldn’t approve of the war play, but to me, this is the most appealing side of Jett I’ve seen so far. He normally acts older and jaded, but now he’s almost like a little kid—lost in his imagination, having fun.
Once in Hedge Apple, we tie up the launch and head out onto the main drag.
I start toward the small grocery mart. “Candy shopping, right?”
“I’ll take care of that,” he decides. “You’re going to the hardware store.”
“Why?” I ask. “To pick up a screwdriver in case your Dance Dance Revolution machine needs fixing?”
He smiles appreciatively at my joke. “See in the window where it says Keys Duplicated? Copy the boat key.” I must look stricken, because he adds, “You know, in case the real one falls off the wall and bounces under the counter again.”
Ouch. If there was ever any doubt that Jett doesn’t trust me, that’s gone. Still, maybe it’s for the best that we each have our own copy. That way I can stop explaining why I can always find it and the others can’t.
I’m a little nervous that the hardware store lady will ask me a lot of nosy questions about the key, but she takes it—along with five bucks plus tax—and screeches out a copy on the machine. When I say, “It’s for my mom,” she looks as if she couldn’t care less if it was for Jack the Ripper.
I step back out on the street just as Jett emerges from the market, carrying a pretty big bag.
“It’s not all candy bars,” he explains. “I picked up some more ground beef for Needles. It’s his favorite.”
I can’t help smiling. When Jett talks about Needles, he lights up. That might be because he’s focusing on others, not just himself. Okay, in this case, “others” means a lizard. But it’s a start.
“Any chance Brandon can spare a couple of those Three Musketeers for you and me?” I ask him.
“I like the way you think,” he approves. “But I wouldn’t want to spoil your appetite.” I guess I look disappointed, because he goes on, “Not for Oasis food. I wouldn’t slop the hogs with that stuff. But there’s that barbecue place and I’m dying for something unhealthy. You in?”
Last time I felt a little bit guilty because Grace was there, which is almost like being with Magnus himself. This time I don’t even hesitate. It’s brisket or bust. I’m done with my sandwich before Jett gets much more than halfway through his burnt ends and turkey combo.
He’s impressed. “Nice. Have another one—my treat.”
“I’m good,” I say contentedly, stifling an unladylike burp. “It’s little binges like this that get me through another summer at the Oasis.”
“A whole summer—that’s rough. I’m only doing a month and a half for disrupting takeoffs and landings at SFO. What crime do you have to commit to get sentenced to every summer since you were six?”
Needing to change the subject, I make a quick count of the candy in the grocery bag at our feet. “Twenty-seven bars won’t last all month.”
“I thought of that,” Jett admits. “I don’t want to pack our fridge with chocolate. Matt looks the other way, but he has his limits. Anyway, we’ll come back to Hedge Apple. We need meat for Needles. Besides, I’m kind of curious about that.”
We’re at a small booth in the barbecue place, by a window that looks out through a break in the trees for a pretty good view of the Hedge Apple mega mansion—although that might not be the right name for it. Hedge Apple is barely a whistle stop, and the big house is at least half a mile away. No way it’s inside the town limits of such a limited town.
The waitress comes over with our bill and catches us staring. “Some house, huh? They say it has seventeen bathrooms. What does one guy do with seventeen bathrooms?”
“One guy?” Jett seizes on that. “You know who lives there?”
“You mean Snapper? That’s what everyone calls him, but I doubt it’s his real name.”
“Snapper,” I repeat. “What does he look like? Old? Young?”
She shrugs. “I’ve only seen him from a distance. He flashes by in this really cool car, but he’s usually going too fast for anyone to get a good look at him. Big guy. Always wears sunglasses.”
Jett’s brow furrows. “I thought everybody knows everybody in a small place.”
“He must live somewhere else too. He never comes to town except to drive through it.”
I whistle. “Can you imagine building a house like that and then leaving it empty?”
“I can,” Jett volunteers. “Vlad has more houses than he can remember. Seriously, he forgot about the villa in Tuscany until someone sent a bill for the roof repair.”
“Oh, this place is never empty,” the waitress informs him. “Snapper’s guys are always there.”
“Guys?” I echo. “You mean maintenance people and housekeepers?”
“Maybe.” She sounds dubious. “But I can’t picture them folding towels and dusting. They look more like professional wrestlers to me.”
“Bodyguards?” Jett wonders.
“For a guy who’s never there?” I challenge.
“I know,” the waitress agrees. “It’s a real mystery.” And then she yawns, like it isn’t really a mystery at all, because who cares?
I suppose it makes sense. The locals are used to this strange neighbor. He and his fancy car were big news for a while. But eventually even a mega mansion in the middle of nowhere becomes just another part of the scenery, like the weathered fishing shacks by the dock and the twists and turns of the Saline River.
After we eat, as we’re heading back toward the launch, I ask Jett, “You don’t think this Snapper guy is some kind of gangster, do you?”
“I doubt it,” he replies. “No self-respecting gangster would be caught dead in a backwater like Hedge Apple.”
“Maybe that makes it a good place to hide out,” I suggest.
“Maybe.”
But I can tell he’s not convinced. He wants to get to the bottom of this. And I have a sneaking suspicion that “Vlad” isn’t the only relentless person in the Baranov family.
We start the boat with the new key. It works perfectly. Jett drives all the way home. I keep my eyes on the sky, where there are still a couple of kites in the air. That’s a good sign. It means the competition hasn’t ended yet, so we haven’t been gone long enough to be missed.
Back at the hidden dock, we tie up the launch. As we start along the path to the Oasis, Jett stuffs the new key in the front pocket of his shorts.
I stop. “Hey, that’s not yours.”
“You’ve got your own key,” he retorts.
“This one belongs to the pathfinders,” I reason. “The new one should
be all of ours—Grace and Tyrell’s too.”
He snorts a laugh. “I kind of doubt Grace is ever going back to Hedge Apple again. It almost killed her the first time. And Tyrell got seasick on a two-mile boat ride. He isn’t exactly an old sea salt.”
I dig in my heels. “You never know when any one of us might have to make an emergency trip to buy food for Needles. Or even candy bars so Brandon won’t blab to the pathfinders.”
I honestly don’t expect him to give in. He does, though, and we end up hiding the key in a knothole under a loose board in the dock.
I pay a price for that minor victory. In Hedge Apple, I thought we were starting to hit it off. But as we head back to the center, he’s looking at me with suspicion again.
And that’s not good news when you’ve got a secret.
13
Jett Baranov
When Vlad was nineteen he dropped out of college and opened a little shop in San Francisco where he fixed people’s computers. He developed this chip he could add to the motherboard to make a machine five times as powerful as it was before. One day, these local tough guys came to the store and told him he had to pay them “protection money” every month to keep them from busting up his shop.
Even at nineteen, my dad was not a big fan of being pushed around. He hacked into their boss’s computer and infected it with a virus so sophisticated that any attempt to fix it or even wipe it clean would instantly email all its data to the FBI. In the end, the boss offered to pay protection money to Vlad just to get his life back.
You know the rest of the story. Vlad went on to build that one small shop into a multibillion-dollar tech empire called Fuego.
Obviously, I’m not my father. If I was, I wouldn’t be paying off Brandon Bucholz to keep him from exposing Needles to the pathfinders. It’s the same as Vlad’s dilemma, except that instead of protection money, I’m giving Brandon protection chocolate. I don’t have any way to get back at him, like hacking into his computer, since we’re both at the Oasis, which means we’re both totally unplugged. But even if I could do that, it wouldn’t change the fact that Brandon holds all the cards. First of all, he’s almost as big as his father. And second, even a hundred computer viruses won’t change the fact that if Needles gets tossed out of the shed, he has about a zero percent chance of surviving in the wild.
If that happens, Grace will lose what’s left of her mind and blame it on me. I don’t care about that. As we’ve already established, she’s number one on the list of people at the Oasis who hate my guts, so it’s no skin off my butt if she has a nervous breakdown over a dead lizard.
But here’s the thing: I don’t want Needles to be a dead lizard. He has no looks, no charm, he doesn’t play; he doesn’t even make eye contact. The only thing he does is eat—and only inconvenient food that you have to go all the way to Hedge Apple to buy. He’s got nothing. He just hangs there in the paint tray, submerged up to his nose.
And yet I really, really like him. I must be crazier than Grace. I’m not even a pet person. You think Vlad would ever allow a dog or cat on his imported Lebanese floors or his Chinese silk rugs, shedding airborne dander into his precious computers and devices? Not with Mom away straightening teeth in the developing world nine months out of every year.
Maybe that’s just it. I may be the richest kid in the richest town in the richest country, but I never had the normal experience of a pet waiting at the door for me when I come home from school. I used to be okay with that—what’s some hairball measured against a billionaire’s lifestyle? At least I thought I was okay. Now I know I wasn’t. Because now I’ve got Needles, who isn’t cuddly, or loving, or fun—when he isn’t eating, it’s barely possible to tell if he’s even alive. And I’m totally hooked. Go figure.
That explains why I’m heading out into the woods beyond the zip line. Brandon is waiting there for me to make the drop-off. The loot is in my pocket: two Snickers and a Mounds.
There’s a lot of action at the zip line—mostly kids, but a handful of adults too. I guess even the parents eventually realize it’s the only non-boring thing to do around here.
“Hey—Jett!”
It’s Armando, scrambling down the ladder from the first platform. I’m a little on my guard, since he’s kind of friends with Brandon. But I’ve learned that no one is actually true friends with Brandon. The guy’s too rotten.
“What’s up, Armando?”
He walks toward me like he’s in a trance, not saying a word. At first I think he’s trying to see behind me. Then I realize it’s much worse than that. His eyes are riveted on the candy bars sticking out of the back pocket of my Oasis “Be Whole” shorts.
“Where’d you get those Snickers?” he asks.
I shrug. “I have my sources.”
“Yeah, but here? You can’t get anything here!” The kid is practically drooling.
I say, “Nothing is impossible if you really want to make it happen.”
His next words catch me off guard. “How much do you want for them?”
I start to reply, “They’re not for sale—” when the Vlad in me rises to the surface. Okay, I wasn’t planning on selling, but why shouldn’t I? To be honest, I’m a little disappointed in myself that I didn’t think of it sooner. This is an entire wellness center full of starving kids, deprived of any snacks beyond carrot sticks, kale shakes, and Greek yogurt. And I’ve got a pipeline to the grocery store in Hedge Apple.
“Five bucks,” I tell him.
“For all three?”
“Uh-uh. For one.”
Armando’s face flames. “Those are eighty-five-cent candy bars!”
“That’s the price outside the Oasis,” I explain reasonably. “Here it’s five bucks.”
“That’s a rip-off!”
“Then don’t buy. That’s your privilege. Plenty of sweet stuff in the dining hall—dates, figs, apricots.” I add, “I’ll wait if you have to run back to your cottage for the money.” Not all the kids carry cash around, since there’s so little to spend it on. How many BE WHOLE T-shirts can a guy own? The only other things to buy here are postcards—the old-fashioned snail-mail kind your great-grandmother used to send. “Of course, I can’t guarantee I won’t sell out before you get back. . . .”
“No!” He reaches into his own shorts and pulls out a crumpled five. I hold out the Mounds, but he shakes his head and plucks a Snickers from my pocket. “I don’t do coconut.”
“The customer is always right,” I agree pleasantly. “Enjoy—and tell the other kids I’m open for business. But no adults and no Brandon.”
He frowns. “Why can’t I tell Brandon?”
“That’s the number one rule,” I insist. “And if anybody breaks it, I’ll know.”
He promises and then disappears into the trees to enjoy his Snickers away from prying eyes.
I’m feeling pretty good about myself. Vlad cut off my credit card after the hovercraft thing and my cash isn’t going to last forever. But now it looks like I’m going to have a steady stream of income to last me through my time here. I don’t need it for myself so much, but Needles’s food bill keeps going up as the little carnivore gulps down larger and larger servings of hamburger.
Now I just have to survive my meeting with Brandon.
“You’re late,” he growls as I step into the clearing. And when he notices I’ve only got two candy bars for him, he goes ballistic. “What are you trying to pull, rich boy?”
“Speak up, Brandon,” I say mildly. “There are still a couple of pathfinders who haven’t heard you yet.”
He quiets down, but he’s still steamed. “Our deal is three bars, not two!”
“I messed up,” I confess. “Come back to our cottage and I’ll get you the third.”
“No way! You’ll get your bodyguard to beat me up!”
“Matt?” I have to laugh at the thought of computer geek Matt as hired muscle to push my enemies around. “All right, I’ll get it. But you’re going to be cooling your heels here for, lik
e, twenty minutes.”
“Not if you run,” he snarls.
I take my time. Bad enough I’m letting this cement-head blackmail me; I don’t have to do it on his schedule. Plus, let’s give Armando extra time to scare me up some more business, for example, when the other kids ask him why he looks so happy and well fed.
Back at the cottage, I’m at the fridge, where I’ve hidden my candy stash. It’s in a big blue Tupperware that I’ve marked CUCUMBER SOUP, another one of the healthy dishes that the Oasis is supposedly famous for. I pull out four—one for Brandon and the rest for prospective customers.
Suddenly, Matt is at my elbow. “You know, the cucumber soup really is pretty good here. You should give it a try.”
I curse myself. Stupid to be so careless. My candy operation could be over before it even gets started.
“Are you going to tell the pathfinders?” I ask.
“Maybe I should—” he begins.
“You shouldn’t,” I counter quickly. “You work for Fuego, and Fuego is Vlad. That means you should be on my side.”
“I am on your side,” he assures me. “The question is, are you?”
“What are you talking about?” I demand.
“Did it ever occur to you that when you’re gaming the system, the person you’re really cheating is yourself? I know you think wellness is something Magnus dreamed up just to torture you. But people come from all over the world to live a healthy lifestyle where the mind and body become whole. Since you’re here anyway, don’t you owe it to yourself to give it a try?”
I stare at him. Up until this point, Matt’s been telling me things like “We’re both stuck here,” and “There’s nothing to do but tough it out,” and “Close your eyes and eventually it’ll be over.” Since when does he care whether or not I give the wellness thing a try? His job is to keep me out of trouble, not to turn me into Nimbus Junior.
“Mention cucumber soup again,” I promise, “and I’ll tell Vlad you attacked me with a cattle prod.”
He grins appreciatively. At least he still has a sense of humor. “You’re a smart kid,” he persists. “You have to see that you’re starting to enjoy yourself. You’re spending more time outside. You’re making friends—”
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