“Hey, Mr. Organic,” he said polishing his front teeth with the tie he’d put on. “Did you know that the Goths were actually a tribe that invaded Rome around A.D. five hundred?”
“I may have, you know, read that somewhere?” I said, not bothering to mention I’d read it in Vandals vs. Danes vs. Huns #12, The Berserker Wars.
Herb frowned. “Did you know that A.D. does not stand for After Death?”
I poked Lake’s arm, but she just stared out the window.
“It stands for anno Domini,” I said.
“Correct,” Herb said. “And what does anno Domini mean?”
“Year of the Donut?”
“Smart guy,” Herb said. “Just like your father.”
“Not really,” I said.
The van careened across three lanes of traffic, down a curling exit ramp, across an intersection, and along the waterfront. Herb shifted into low, punching it over a set of railroad tracks, and pulled sideways into the parking lot of White, Fade, Templeton, and Sour.
“Honey, we’re home!” he said.
“What are we doing?”
“Time to jack in.”
“Time to what?”
Herb shook his head sadly. “You could fill a computer with everything you don’t know.” He unstrapped Lake, lowered her chair on the lift, then waved, slamming the door shut.
“Um, hello? Wait?”
Herb opened the lab door without looking back, wheeling Lake in. I pulled at the tethers that held my legs, which only made them tighter and hurt more. I stared around the van. There were at least three hundred random things strewn around, none of them looking particularly sharp. So I banged my head against the wheel-well for a while. It was hollow and made a nice thumping sound. Did it hurt? Yeah, sorta.
I considered my options: None.
What would Manny Solo, boy mentor, do?
CHAPTER FIVE
SOPHIE BLUE
I’D LAUGH IF SOMEONE HAD BOTHERED TO PROGRAM ME A MOUTH
I was back in the white lab, dripping wet. It was empty except for the equipment.
“Hello?”
The hard drive still sat on the table, humming. I tried to lift it so I could smash it on the floor, but it wouldn’t budge.
Pull the cord.
I reached for the extension that linked the hard drive to a bank of computers against the wall. As I did, the people in the pool began to make noise, a low, steady moan. They all seemed to hit the same note, which got progressively louder and more forlorn. I didn’t want to hurt them, but I couldn’t let this place, this program, or my father exist for even one more second. I curled another loop of the extension around my fist. The moaning from the pool exploded, a wanton throb that echoed off the walls.
“Hold on there, partner,” a young Rose Fade said, skipping over to her desk. She was coltish, beautiful, vibrant. She casually picked up the other end of the cord. “How’s it feel to be plugged straight in?”
I looked down at my elbow. There was nothing there, but I could feel it, pulsing. “I’m thirsty,” I said. “And hungry.”
“Not surprising,” Rose said. “You’ve been standing there for hours.”
“Hours?”
“Acclimating. Playing footsie with your father. It takes a while for the euphoria to wear off.”
I remembered the enormous rush when the jack first went in, my back arching, the explosion of code entering me. There were starbursts, amoebic slides, long multicolored trails. I didn’t want to admit that I’d enjoyed it so much.
“It gets better every time,” Rose whispered, gently pulling up the cord’s slack. I stepped toward the hard drive as the plug began to inch from the computer.
“Okay, okay!” she said, giving up ground. It was gratifying to see her nervous. She’d said I was special before. Maybe it wasn’t a bunch of shit. Maybe in here I really could do things other people couldn’t. Bring back physical items. Resist my lunatic father. If I could turn the Conduit on, maybe I could turn things off, too.
Pull the cord.
Rose pointed behind me. It was too stupid to be a trick. “Someone’s here to see you.”
A tall blond girl walked from the back of the warehouse, sashaying like a model. She was wearing an expensive dress and high heels. She stood next to Rose. They held hands.
“Hi.”
The girl’s eyes were amazingly green. She was tall, almost regal in her posture. She smiled at me without an ounce of friendliness.
“Lake?” I said. “But—”
“I can walk in here, that’s why, genius.”
I blinked and rubbed my eyes. “How long have you…?”
“Since all along.” Lake pulled up her sleeve, showing me her jack. “Like, you’re so special?”
I couldn’t swallow. It was too much.
“This whole time? This whole time you…?”
“Boo-hoo,” Lake said.
“Whiner,” Rose said, and they giggled, leaning over and whispering to each other. It was like being in the caf. Me, at my own table, as usual.
“But why?” I said. It was too depressing to ask, but I had to know.
Lake swung her long hair around, combing it with two fingers. “Why else? So I can be like I was.”
“How’s that supposed to happen?”
“Some experiment,” Lake said. “They’re injecting something in my spine. Bio-Rite or whatever.”
“But Bio-Rite doesn’t work.”
Lake pulled lipstick from her waist pocket and put on a new coat. Then she lit an unfiltered cigarette, clenching it in her teeth. “Okay, so I’ll stay in here.”
“Stay?”
Lake did a back handspring. She did three cartwheels and then the splits, raising two imaginary pom-poms and giving them a spirit-filled shake. “Whoo, Go Toros!”
“It’s not real.”
“You?” she laughed. “You’re the person who decides what’s real?”
“But you said—”
“I said what I had to say!” she almost yelled. “What, like I’m just going to accept it? I didn’t fall. They dropped me! So I get to spend the rest of my life doing physical therapy? The monkey bars and gymnastics mats and saying I just can’t do it, until I find the Eye of the Tiger and heal myself through positivity and pure will? Screw that. Especially when Chad and Tinky offered to pay for a shortcut.”
“What shortcut?”
“The clinic, moron. They’re all, like, but ‘Part of the deal is you have to go babysit this mopey depressive.’ I swear, I’d rather have had Daddy pay another hundred grand.”
“They sent you to my house?”
Lake laughed. “Do you think I would hang out with you on purpose?”
I wasn’t going to cry. I was definitely not going to cry.
“Honeypot!” Herb said, walking in from the back of the room. I was about to run over and throw my arms around his neck and beg him to carry me out of here. Then he sat at Rose’s desk, put his feet up, and started cleaning his nails with a letter opener.
“You, too? Really, Herb?”
“Well, you know what they say,” Lake said. “Sometimes paranoia is just having all the facts.”
Rose slapped her five.
I coiled the cord, about to yank it, hard. Rose yanked back. Lake rushed over and grabbed Rose’s end. I leaned as far away from them as I could, grunting. The cord began to cut into my hands. My arm was going numb. They pulled and swore, beads of sweat rolling down their foreheads, but they were losing. I was stronger. I was actually stronger.
The plug began to quiver at the outlet. One prong got loose.
“Don’t!” Rose said.
“Don’t!” Lake said.
Another prong came loose.
“Kenny will be deleted, too!” Rose hissed, letting go. The cord went slack and I fell back against the wall, slamming my head and sliding down onto my butt. Lake came over and knelt next to me. “She’s right, you know. So go ahead and pull. One less lard-ass in the world, what differ
ence does it make?”
Herb grinned. “Hey, now, what if it’s a trick? What if unplugging it is what she really wants you to do? Maybe you’re going to make everything worse! Oh, boy, what a dilemma!”
I closed my eyes. They were playing games with me because they knew I had the power to stop them. It wasn’t a trick. I really was special. They’d been maneuvering me for a year, getting me to this spot for a reason. For everything good you could bring out, there would be something just as bad. And I was it. I was the bad thing. For her.
“On the other hand,” Herb said, “there’s the question of your brother, and how this may affect him. Or even kill him. Decisions, decisions.”
I could almost sense that Kenny was close. The jack in my elbow twitched like a dowser, as if it could feel him, too. And if he was close, whatever happened to me would probably happen to him as well. We were linked, just as we always had been. If Kenny was going to be deleted, then so would I. At least we’d do it together. Actually, it would probably be the best thing that ever happened to either of us.
“I saw a poster once,” Herb said. “It was a picture of a dark-haired girl standing in front of two identical doors. One had a comedy mask painted on it. The other had a tragedy mask. Underneath it said Go Ahead and Pick, Loser Chick.”
The moaning got louder. The people in the pool were kicking their legs in tandem. The water began to froth.
“Don’t do it,” Rose said. “Think of your father.”
I tightened my grip.
“Your brother,” Lake said. “Think of your brother.”
I was thinking of my brother. Always. So I pulled.
0010100101010101001010101010100001010111010110.
There was a blink. Everything went black and then white, and then faded to blue.
CHAPTER FOUR
KENNY BLUE
ARE YOU TALKING TO ME? ARE YOU TALKING TO ME?
Hoo, boy, do my wrists ache? You bet. They’re actually tore up pretty good. I look like I tried to kill myself with a butter knife. Twice. But it’s nothing compared to my gums. I mean, it took forever to bite my way out of the tethers. They tasted a little like grilled chicken. At least that’s what I tried to tell myself, swallowing strand after strand of oily yellow plastic.
The front door was open, and the second door, too.
“Hello?”
The lab seemed deserted. My voice echoed among the trash and glass and broken computers. I poked around for a while, as quietly as I could, not wanting to run into Herb. Pretty much ever again.
“Lake?” I whispered, but there was no answer.
On the floor was a long piece of lead pipe. I picked it up, hefting it. With the proper angle and torque, would it split skull? Definitely. I walked from office to office, slapping it in my palm, feeling a mix of tough-cool and utterly ridiculous.
“Sophie?”
There was nothing. No elevator, no stairs, no scientists, no Herb, no Lake. Just a bunch of broken junk and wet carpet and wires strung from wall to wall. I sat down on a rusty desk and considered my options: none. My elbow itched, like the worst poison ivy. My nails needed to be trimmed. I scratched away anyhow, really letting them dig in. The pipe fell onto the carpet with a dull noise, rolling away from me. It rolled to the far wall and then disappeared into the shadows in the corner, clanging down what sounded like metal steps. A lot of metal steps.
CHAPTER THREE
SOPHIE, LAKE, TRISH, KENNY, HERB
AND MICHAEL AND JANET AND LATOYA AND JERMAINE
Sophie Blue yawned and stretched. Miss Last had chalk on her face and collar and shirt, like she usually did. Sophie realized she’d been asked a question and the class was waiting. There was a long silence.
“Null set?”
“Correct,” Miss Last said, turning back to the board and outlining another problem. Eventually the bell rang, and everyone streamed out into the hallway. In front of the girls’ bathroom, Bryce Ballar was hassling some freshman. Sophie caught his eye, and he nodded blandly, without recognition. In the mirror in the girls’ bathroom, Sophie stared at her own face. Clean and clear. She wasn’t a boy. She was definitely not the star of the basketball team. She was just herself, unremarkable. Gothika.
“You can stop looking at yourself,” said Dayna Daynes as she kicked open a stall with her high heel. “There’s not much to see.”
“I know, isn’t it great?”
Dayna snorted. “Um, that was an insult?”
Sophie turned and looked at Dayna in the mirror. “You have a birthmark on your hip. Shaped like a half-moon. And you do this dumb backward swirl with your tongue when you French kiss, and you make funny squirrel noises when you’re excited. And you’re a really, really, really boring date.”
Dayna Daynes’s jaw hung open, but she said nothing. A fly circled and landed on her lip. Sophie walked into the hall, drying her hands on her tiny black skirt.
Screaming kids pushed and shoved their way onto the bus. All of them had handheld games and Walkmans and Eye-pods and headphones and new jackets and new jeans and shiny sneakers. Some of them were wearing multiple headphones. Some of the kids threw their stuff at each other and out the window. Brand-new cell phones and mini hard drives were smashed along the roadway. Sophie had her own seat, as usual, alone. There was a long, loud, annoying ride across town. It was beautiful. Who owned a Jeep? Or a red convertible? No one. The bus drove slowly and carefully, past strip mall after strip mall, the stores overflowing with products. Each one was having a huge sale, or item blowout, or price slash frenzy. All the houses seemed to have two or three cars in the driveway. There were old televisions in every garbage can, toys on the lawns, shiny new bikes and skateboards and scooters collecting in piles everywhere. There were unopened boxes in garages and long slings of wrapping paper and plastic that wafted across the streets like tumbleweeds.
At home, Trish was in the kitchen, making dinner in a new dress. Her hair was combed and she was wearing makeup. She actually looked pretty. Herb McLean sat at the table reading the Wall Street Journal. He was in a three-piece suit and had a fresh martini on the table in front of him. His legs were crossed, showing argyle socks.
“Soph!” he said. “How was school?”
“Great!” Sophie said, and slapped him five. Trish laughed and then squeezed Herb’s shoulder. Next to him were a bunch of unopened printer boxes. There were also stacks of gameboyz, calculators, and ink cartridges.
“You want to buy one?” Herb said. “I got all the models.”
“No, thanks,” Sophie said.
Herb pulled mp3 players from his pocket. “You want one of these? They got music. They got games. I got more in the basement if you—”
“I’m broke,” Sophie said, and went down to Kenny’s room, where he was listening to music and lifting weights. Lake sat next to him, giving him tips on form and reps.
Kenny winked at Sophie, while Lake corrected his form. “You’re doing great!”
Kenny put the barbell back on its supports. One of her CDs, Lightly Seasoned Orphans, blared out of his little radio, “Oh don’t stay under,” the singer warbled, “don’t stay under too too long…. ”
“What’re you doing, O.S.?” Sophie asked.
“Kenneth’s trying out for the team,” Lake said, wheeling away from the door.
“Kenneth?”
“Football,” Kenny said. “I think maybe I have the size for it. It’s going to be pretty great.”
Lake smiled. She picked up a magazine and started leafing through the pages. Sophie realized Lake was wearing a dress as well, a lot like Trish’s. She also had on makeup and had shaved her legs. Behind her, on the wall, was a poster. It was a picture of a cow standing on two legs in the middle of a muddy field. Underneath it said It’s All So Udderly Perfect.
“Hey,” Sophie asked, “you guys want to come upstairs and hang out?”
Kenny raised one eyebrow. Sophie blinked, and it seemed for a second like her brother had mouthed something to her, turni
ng away from Lake. Take my hand. Sophie blinked, and then it was gone. He was smiling again.
“Um, I can’t?” Kenny said with a big grin. “I have some great stuff to do.”
“Stuff?” Sophie said.
“We have stuff,” Lake said, wheeling back over. “To do.”
Sophie looked around Kenny’s basement room. It was nice and clean now, with new shades, even though there was no window, and a new light fixture that hung from the ceiling. There were stacks of unopened video games and components and computer parts still in boxes. There were shrink-wrapped shoes and wires and pin-striped suits. She could hear Trish talking to the TV upstairs and her quiet laugh. It was an overwhelming sensation, Sophie thought, knowing she was just a girl. Small and untalented and without special powers or knowledge. Maybe it was time to get a job. Like, at one of the new stores. The thought filled her with satisfaction.
“I think I really like things this way, you know?” she finally said. “All of us one big family? Everything just seems really great now.”
“I hope so.” Kenny grinned. He made a muscle for her. “How else could it be?”
Sophie went into the hallway and dialed Information. Then she dialed the number the computer gave her. A woman answered.
“Hello? Is Aaron there?”
After a while a voice came on the line. “Hello?”
“Hi. This is Sophie Blue.”
“Um… yeah?”
“Hey, Aaron, you want to go to the prom with me?”
There was a long pause. Finally, Aaron cleared his throat.
“No.”
It was Sophie’s turn to clear her throat. “Okay. Sorry if I bothered you.”
“You know what I hate?” Aaron said. “People who apologize all the time. Also, I hate getting dressed. In some dumb rental tuxedo. How about we just buy some sodas. And climb the hillside above town. And drink them lying in the grass. While we make out.”
Sophie laughed. “Great!”
“Great,” he said. “I’ll see you. In an hour.”
Sophie went upstairs and looked in her mom’s closet for just the right dress, trying a few on. Maybe she’d been acting out all along, you know? I mean, who wore Catholic skirts? And by the way, wasn’t that an excellent name for a band. CathoLICKskirt? Like, with umlauts over the K? No, actually it wasn’t. It was a really dumb idea. Where did that thought come from? There was definitely no reason to write it down or draw it. And, to tell you the truth, maybe it was time to wipe off all the eyeliner. Sophie looked at herself in the mirror, a pink dress draped in front of her, turning this way and that. It was nice, the way the material felt. It was pretty. And soft, like how you could touch it, and the way it felt in your hand. Sophie unzipped the back and put it on. Perfect. It was totally weird, but she was suddenly positive that from here on out, everything was going to be really, really great. Maybe this weekend she could get the whole gang together for a super-fun trip to the pool.
Fade to Blue Page 14