by Greg Keyes
Jake put in his voucher for Casse, the STEP school in Nevada, and got his confirmation a few weeks later. He gave his notice at Frank’s Auto Repair and put the finishing touches on the Mustang. He thought about the drive to Nevada, about arriving at the school under his own power in a car he’d half-rebuilt himself.
Arriving in style.
Yet the closer his departure day grew, the more he felt something was wrong.
About a week before he was due in Nevada a kid named Taylor came running up to say that Charlie was in trouble. Taylor was out of breath and freaking out a little, so Jake ran. What he found was Charlie backed onto a retaining wall that ran above the top of “the canyon”—an old drainage canal. It was a drop of about thirty feet. Charlie was balanced on the narrow wall, his back to the fall. Josh was advancing on him with a pocket knife. He had accomplices, Ryan and Li, and six or so kids who were just watching to see what would happen.
Josh wasn’t like Doug, ice cold and hollow inside, afraid of nothing. He was more like a volcano ready to erupt at any moment.
Charlie saw Jake, but Josh’s back was to him.
He didn’t think about what he did next at all. He picked up a piece of concrete rubble, walked up behind Josh. Josh must have heard him coming, because he turned around, but the expression on his face was puzzled, not comprehending even as Jake smacked him in the ear with the heavy chunk.
He didn’t make a sound at first. He just fell, dropping the knife and clutching at his ear. Jake bent over and got the knife, then went to the wall to help Charlie down.
About that time, Josh sucked in enough breath to start screaming.
Jake glared at Josh’s accomplices and the spectators.
“You guys are all assholes,” he said. “You were just going to watch him force Charlie to fall?”
None of them said anything, but they all got out of his way when he led Charlie past them. Nearby, Josh was sobbing like a baby.
* * *
For the next few days, Jake wouldn’t let Charlie go anywhere alone, and if he stayed in the room, it was with the lock and chain on. Charlie was uncharacteristically obedient. A punch in the face was one thing, but falling into the canyon might have been fatal—and Josh knew it.
Josh, who now had a cauliflower ear.
Jake hadn’t expected to get in trouble with the headmaster, and he didn’t. Very likely no one had even reported the incident.
A day before he had originally planned to leave, he went into the room. Charlie was reading something or other, with his feet propped up on the wall, next to an aging poster of F-18s flying at a city destroyer.
Jake tossed a used suitcase on the bed next to him.
“Pack up,” he said.
“What?” Charlie asked. “Why?”
“You can’t stay in the STEP dorms because you aren’t enrolled in the school,” Jake said. “I called, but you can’t. So I found a group home that has room for both of us, not too far from campus. It’s not free, but I think I have enough money to cover the first six months. After that we’ll figure it out.”
Charlie blinked.
“You’re taking me with you?”
“Are you not following me?” Jake said. “Keep up.”
Tears welled in Charlie’s eyes.
“Okay,” Jake said. “Don’t start that again.” But Charlie couldn’t stop, and after a moment, Jake went and put an arm around him.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he said.
“I don’t wanna hold you back, Jake,” he said. “I’ll be okay here. Really.”
“I’m sure,” Jake said, “but you’re all I have, Charlie. You’re my only family, and anyway, how am I gonna pass without you explaining my homework? I’m not leaving without you. Look, I’ve already got these.”
Charlie took the proffered piece of card stock.
“Bus tickets?” he said, sniffling. “What about your car?”
Jake shrugged. “Cars are overrated,” he said. “The bus is how all the cool kids travel.”
14
MARCH
2006
David watered the plants on his patio, and then inspected his rock garden. He had never had much use for lawns, and in the rain-starved desert Southwest it seemed almost criminal to attempt one, but he liked plants and taking care of them. He had become a fan of cacti, which came in all sorts of crazy forms, and in the past few years he had also taken up bonsai, using as stock the hardy species native to the region—pinyon, mountain mahogany, and so forth.
After a bit of watering and pruning, he went inside and made himself a drink. Almost as if on cue, Connie drove up. He poured her Scotch and met her at the door. She was carrying something.
“Hey, what’s this?” he asked.
“Just a little something I picked up for you,” she said. She held it toward him, a very nice, very traditional bonsai tray—rectangular, flat, jade green.
“Is it my birthday?” he asked. “Did you do something—you know—naughty?”
“No,” she said. “Just celebrating the both of us being home at the same time. That doesn’t happen a whole lot. And for a whole month!”
“Um,” he said, and gave her a kiss and then took the tray. “And this, uh, planted in it?”
“Well, I know you like local species,” she said.
“Sure, sure,” he said, “but this is sagebrush.” He looked at her questioningly.
She laughed. “Yeah. I uprooted it on the way home. It’s just a joke.”
“No,” he said, wagging his thinking finger. “No, it’s not a joke—it’s a challenge.”
“Seriously,” she said. “I didn’t want to pick out a plant for you so I just got… that. I thought it would be funny.”
“It deserves a chance,” he said, eyeing the scraggly plant. “I see potential.” He set the planter and the weed on the table and reached for his drink.
“Don’t forget,” Connie said. “You’re picking up your father at the airport in an hour.”
“Forget?” he said. “Of course I didn’t—that’s today?”
“Yep.”
He sighed and set his drink on a coaster.
“Rough day at work?” she asked.
“The usual,” he said. “Things are getting pushed through too fast. I thought things would get better once Bell was out, but this guy President Jacobs brought in—Tanner—he’s a piece of work. There was this…” He stopped.
“You know what?” he said. “Never mind. Are you going to go with me to get my father, Senator?”
“On your bike? Or did you learn to drive in the last few weeks?”
“Don’t you have, like, a driver? He’ll have luggage.”
“Well, but I gave Jeeves the evening off,” she said. “Along with my butler and the kitchen staff. But I guess I could drive you.”
* * *
“This is nice,” Julius Levinson said, looking around the living room. “You’ve been here, what, five years?”
David felt slightly trapped as he watched Connie beat a retreat to “freshen up” before dinner.
“About that, Pops,” he agreed.
“So this is the first time I’ve seen the place. Very nice. It reminds me of your Aunt Rachel’s house on Long Island. Manhattan gets blown up, and Long Island is spared. Who could know?” He peered down the hall. “You could have got something bigger,” he said. “Who knows? It’s just the two of you now, but—”
“What? Are you planning on moving in with us?” David said.
Julius frowned. “You know what I’m talking about, I think. You two aren’t getting any younger.”
“How about a drink, Pops?” David said.
“Again he ducks the question.”
“I didn’t hear a question,” David said.
“Just some water,” Julius said. “Don’t go to any trouble.”
“It’s no trouble,” David assured him. “There’s this little knob you turn. It’s like magic.”
A few minutes later, they were on the patio at a small
café table. Julius looked around at all of the bonsai.
“These pots are too small,” he said. “You’ll stunt their growth.”
“That’s sort of the point, Pops,” David said.
“Look at this one,” Julius said, gesturing at the sagebrush. “Some sort of weed, I think.”
“Yeah,” David acknowledged. “So what was this big news you mentioned over the phone?”
Julius paused and rubbed his hands together. “I’m very excited,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I’m a humble man by nature. I don’t make too much of myself, but after all of these years I think, why not? The world deserves to know.”
“Know what, Pops? What are you up to?”
“I’m writing a book,” he said.
“Book? What kind of book?”
“I’m not sure about the title yet. I have some ideas. I’m thinking of calling it How I Saved the World.”
David regarded his father for another moment.
“You know what?” he said, finally. “I think I’ll go freshen my drink.”
15
AUGUST
Ms. Park, the chemistry teacher, reminded Jake of a crane. Long-limbed and graceful on the one hand, but with dark cold eyes that seemed to contain very little emotion or empathy on the other. In this she stood in stark contrast to the coding teacher whose room Jake had just come from, where the jovial Mr. Lenhoff seemed prepared to offer a hug at the least sign of stress.
“You will now choose lab partners,” she said, after some twenty minutes of dry, soulless lecture. By the time Jake had turned his head to look, more than half of the class had partnered up—many of them had been here for a year already, or were locals and so knew one other.
Jake did notice a girl looking his way. She wasn’t smiling, but she seemed to sort of have a question mark over her head. And she was pretty, with brown hair cut in bangs and a little spray of freckles around her nose. He was about to signal her when someone tapped him on the shoulder.
He glanced up to see a boy about his own age. His frizzy hair was shaved very short.
“So,” the fellow said. “I’m new here and from the looks of it, you are too. Want to partner up?”
Jake glanced back at the girl, but she wasn’t looking at him anymore.
“Sure,” he said, wondering why this guy didn’t seem to know the rule that you were supposed to pick a girl for your partner, preferably someone hopelessly out of your league, so some sort of screwball romance could evolve. So the movies told him anyway.
“My name is Dylan,” the boy said.
“I’m Jake,” he replied.
“Where are you from, Jake?”
“I was born in L.A.”
The boy grinned. “No kidding? Me too.” His face quickly sobered. “Were you there, when…?”
“I was at summer camp,” Jake said. “My parents dropped me off a couple of days before.”
“Did they make it out?” Dylan asked.
Jake realized he had been asked that question more times in the past few days than for most of the balance of his life. Living in an orphanage, it was more or less a given that your parents didn’t “make it out.” Out here it was a valid question, albeit one he didn’t enjoy answering.
“No,” he said. “Or if they did, they never managed to find me.”
“I’m sorry, man,” Dylan said. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”
Jake shrugged. “To be honest, I barely remember them,” he said. “I was six.” He pointed with his nose. “We’d better set up our station. Ms. Park is giving us the stink-eye.”
They moved into the lab and found an unoccupied spot. Jake noticed the girl still didn’t have a partner, but Ms. Park was pointing a guy in her direction.
“So how about you?” Jake said.
Dylan smiled. “We lived on a hillside, so I actually saw the ship arrive. I was pretending to shoot at it with my toy laser gun. I had no idea.”
“I saw it too,” Jake said. “When the Knights took their first run at it.”
“When they lost,” Dylan said.
“Yeah.”
Now Jake felt obligated. “So your parents?”
“They’re fine,” Dylan said. “We lived in D.C. for a while, and then my dad got a job here a couple of years ago. Mom wanted me to stay in the D.C. school, but when I got in here, we moved.”
“Cool,” Jake said. “I guess we have a few things in common, then.”
“I guess we do,” Dylan said. “Oh, man, she’s looking at us again.”
They turned their attention to the experiment.
* * *
It was no accident there was a tech school in the town of 51. The community had grown up outside of the military boundaries of the Center for Alien Technology, which employed thousands of scientists, engineers, and technicians. People like that demanded good schools for their kids, and here they had gotten one. It stood just off the border with military housing, and although it had dorms, a lot of these kids—military or not—lived with their families. The group home Jake had found was about a kilometer from campus.
Walking back after school, Jake noticed the girl from class, sitting on a bench at the bus stop, reading a book. Her eyes flicked his way for a second, then back to her book.
Great, he thought. Should he just walk past without saying anything? Play it cool? That would be his strategy.
“Hey,” he said involuntarily, and he flinched.
She looked up. “Hey,” she said.
“So, you’re waiting for the bus?”
What am I doing, he wondered. Could he have asked anything dumber?
“No,” she said. “This is how I amuse myself. I watch people get on and off the bus while I pretend to read.”
“Okay,” Jake said. “I know it was a dumb question. So.”
He started to walk on.
“I wasn’t being sarcastic,” the girl called after him. “That’s actually what I’m doing. There’s not a whole lot interesting going on around here, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Looking back, Jake tried to get a read as to whether she was still making fun of him, and decided it didn’t matter.
“Anyway,” he said, and he started off again.
“How is it,” she asked. “Consorting with royalty?”
That turned him around. He took a few steps toward her.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“You’re going to tell me you didn’t know?” she said.
“I’m going to tell you I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jake replied.
“Your lab partner,” she said.
“Dylan?” he said. “What about him?”
“Dylan Hiller,” she said. “Son of Steve Hiller.”
He struggled with that for a second.
“The Steve Hiller,” he said.
“Yes. You really didn’t know?”
“No. I had no idea, and he didn’t say anything.”
“Didn’t watch a lot of TV growing up, did you?” she said.
“We only had one in the orphanage, and there was always a fight over what we were going to watch—so, no.”
“Orphanage,” she said. “Okay. Well I guess that makes me feel a little better.”
“How so?” he said.
“Well, you were giving me the eye,” she said. “The ‘I’m desperate here, I guess she will do’ eye. Or maybe that doesn’t make me feel better. I thought you skipped over me to go with the famous kid, but if you didn’t know who he was—”
“Dylan asked me first,” he said. “That’s all that was going on there.”
“You could have lied and told him you already had a partner,” she said.
“But—” Jake found he was becoming very confused, very quickly.
“Now I’m stuck with David Bustard,” she said, “who is—put nicely—a lump. His parents must have paid someone off to even get him in here.”
“You’re making my head hurt,”
Jake said. “What’s your name?”
“I have that effect on people,” she said. “My name is Emily.”
“I’m Jake.”
“Well, Jake, nice to meet you,” she said, “and nice being your last choice for lab partner.”
That seemed like it should be the end of the conversation, but he found his feet wouldn’t move. After a minute he figured out it was because he had something to say.
“For the record, that ‘look’ you saw wasn’t a look of desperation,” he informed her. “It was more of a ‘she’s really cute’ look. I was actually disappointed when Dylan asked me.”
She frowned a little bit, and for the first time since the conversation began, she suddenly didn’t seem to be in control of it anymore. Which felt kind of good.
“Well,” she finally said. “I guess that’s different, then.”
He saw a bus coming in the distance.
“Sit down,” she said. “Quick. Don’t blow my cover.”
“What?”
“Just do it!” Emily said.
He took a seat, as requested, acutely aware of her presence only a foot away. The bus pulled up, three people got off, and then it drove away. The former passengers walked off in different directions.
“What do you think?” she asked, once they were gone.
“Of what?” he asked.
She sighed. “Okay—the guy in the suit? Corporate spy. And did you notice there’s a pale area around his wedding band? He has two families in two different states, and they don’t know about each other. His wedding rings are two different sizes. He was wearing the smaller of the two just now.”
“Oooo-kay,” Jake said.
“The lady in the plum-colored dress?” she said. “Dominatrix.”
“She’s, like, sixty,” he protested.
“She’s wearing a corset under the dress. Did you notice the one weak eye? In private she wears a monocle.”
“I don’t even want to know about the guy in the Hawaiian shirt,” he said.
She looked a little horrified. “No, you don’t,” she said. “We shall not speak of him.”
He continued to sit there for a moment.
“Is this literally the only thing to do around here?” he asked.
She seemed to think about that for a while.