I couldn’t help but look up.
For a second, I was staring at this chiseled face with bright blue eyes and perfectly trimmed black hair. The hair must have been fake or dyed, because the skin was a bit on the old side. Ted Bungrin. Had to be. Partly, because I didn’t recognize him, and partly because he just looked like someone who moved and shook.
He nodded at me, not friendly or angry, just sort of in robot-acknowledgment. I kind of half-nodded back and slumped the rest of the way to my seat where I stared sullenly at the tabletop until Nancy said, “good morning,” very loudly.
She looked unhappy. I expected that. But she also looked nervous, I guess because of all the big brass around. As everyone took their ceramic mugs to their seats, she kept talking. “Thank you for coming in so early. As you know, we had a very eventful weekend.”
I looked around the table. All of Team Jaiden looked very guilty and sheepish, particularly Jack and Bob, except for Nancy. Her face was too brittle to look sheepish. I said she looked nervous, but really she just acted nervous, moving her head back and forth a few times too many. Her face looked mostly rigid and pissed, really pissed.
I hadn’t noticed it before but there was also something on the table in front of her, next to her laptop, and it wasn’t a ceramic mug. When I realized what it was I had, as they say, a cow.
It was a plastic bag, which is no big deal in and of itself, but inside the bag, all covered with dirt smudges and barbed-wire tears, was my hoodie, the one I’d cleverly used to get over the fence and then not-so-cleverly left behind.
I closed my eyes and rubbed my head. Oh crap. Was I going to be arrested? I knew whatever NECorp would do to punish me would be a pain—more restrictions, less screen time, the usual—but if there was a police case and the press got wind of it, the whole fricking world would know who I was and what happened last night. Including everyone at Deever.
Including Nate and Jenny.
I felt nauseous, I really did. Ben was right. What made me think I could ever survive outside this place?
Nancy clicked open her laptop.
“I’d like to begin…,” she said, but then there was another surprise.
Bungrin cut her off, just by clearing his throat.
Having seen how much being cut off annoyed her, I expected her face to register something, but she just clammed up.
“What’s the situation with the police?” he said. Nothing else, just like that. Even Super-Creep Veeps usually said “Excuse me.”
Nancy opened her mouth to answer, but she was cut off (again!) when Banks from Legal spoke up. Jeremy Banks is an older guy who plays things laid back, like he’d been through so much that nothing could ever rattle him again. Despite his calm, cheery exterior, everyone at NECorp was terrified of him, even the other Creeps. I half-expected Banks to give Bungrin a lecture on manners, or at least let him know how we did things here at HQ, but he didn’t.
Instead, he glanced pleasantly through his reading glasses at his Palm Pilot screen and said, with a chuckle, “Petty crime isn’t my forte, Ted, but I think we have a handle on things. Restitution was made to the owner of the Herbert’s Burgers in the amount of $112,365 dollars and no charges will be pressed. As a result of the excellent relations we’ve maintained with the local police, they’ve been very cooperative, mostly concerned about the safety of the boy.”
I was too busy exhaling to care much about who was interrupting who anymore. No jail time sounded good. But six figures for that statue? The thing exploded when you dropped it, for pity’s sake. Still, you’ve got to figure some of that is “personal damages,” meaning hush money.
“Jeremy, was he identified? Do the police realize who he is?” Kracik asked. I don’t think he really gave a damn, he just wanted people to know he was paying attention. “That could be a problem.”
Nancy looked like she wanted to answer, but couldn’t.
“No, Carl,” Banks answered. “As far as they know, the boy’s my nephew. Of course, I neglected to mention that I don’t have any brothers or sisters, but Jaiden here feels like family to me,” he said, again with a chuckle.
Everyone in the room laughed lightly, because they had to.
But Bungrin even cut off the laughter. He was a cutter, it seemed. Maybe that’s how he moved and shook. Cutting, after all, makes you more efficient. “Okay. Good,” he said. “Then we don’t have to bother Desmond with any of this. That leaves us with the school issue. It might be wiser to switch him back to tutors for the time being. Limiting his exposure limits ours.”
“I think that’s for the best,” Carl said, nodding like he was deeply impressed by the way Bungrin thought.
“No!” I shouted.
I said it like a little kid, loud and annoyed, and I grimaced right after. As for why I said it, it suddenly dawned on me that even though facing Jenny again would be awful, school was the only time I ever left this place. I’d go nuts if I couldn’t go to Deever.
Everyone turned to look at me. Bungrin looked like he was confused by the fact that I knew how to talk. “You ran away. You vandalized a fast-food restaurant.”
His sharp blue eyes were hypnotic, like a vampire lord’s. I looked down at the table, real fast, before he could sap all of my will. I had to say something, no matter how lame, no matter how much it made me sound like some helpless, whining kid.
“I didn’t vandalize anything. Some other kids, disgruntled employees, dumped the statue in my hands and ran off. Just let me go back to school. Please. I won’t run away again.”
I thought at least he might be tickled by my use of the phrase “disgruntled employees,” but I didn’t hear any pity in his voice. “You’re right. You won’t run away again because…”
“Ted, is this necessary?”
I looked up, shocked. Everyone did. It was Nancy, cutting Bungrin off. “He ran away because Legal screwed up his first date. Take him out of school, cut off his outlets, and you’ll only be giving him more reasons to run away, or worse, become a candidate for medication.”
Bungrin stared at Nancy. For about seven seconds, you could hear a pin drop, which is a really long time for a silence in the middle of a conversation. Everyone was holding their breath trying to guess what Bungrin would do. I was thinking laser beams from his eyes that would reduce poor Nancy to a pile of dust.
Instead he smacked his lips and shook his finger at her, which was just as good in a way. “Nancy, right?” but he wasn’t asking, and he didn’t wait for an answer. “We’ll do it your way.”
Whoa. No one expected that.
And with that, the Creep session was over. Bungrin looked at his watch and turned to his fellow alien masters. “Working breakfast, gentlemen?”
Kracik and Banks rose and followed Bungrin.
Everyone in the room, even me, exhaled all at once.
Bob headed over to the coffee carafe. “I bet Banks did have brothers and sisters. I bet he ate them,” he said. Everyone laughed, really laughed, not like the pretend chuckling over Banks’s crappy joke.
Jack Minger was beside himself. “Nancy! Going up against the Bungrin-meister! I didn’t think you had the guts.”
“Right,” she said. “I’ll send you my contact info at my new job.”
I was feeling so good about her myself that I just said, “Nancy, thanks so much. That was great.”
I’d hoped it was a moment for a reconciliation, but she just glared at me. Her mouth was the only part of her body that moved when she spoke. “You know, Jaiden, you’re not the only one who gets hurt when you pull a stunt like this. Ted Bungrin wants to make some cuts, and he let me have my way just now, but if anything else goes wrong with you, it’s entirely my fault. We could, seriously, all get fired.”
Everyone at the table looked up, surprised, their expressions saying, “Really?” Then they all looked at me, pissed.
Nancy crossed her arms. “You are going to go back to school this morning, but Anthony’s going with you.”
I bolt
ed to my feet. “On the bus?”
She shook her head. “No. No more bus. He’ll drive you.”
My voice jumped an octave. “And what then? Is he going to be handcuffed to me? Do I tell people he’s my new Siamese twin?”
“I made the calls this morning. He’s a volunteer at Deever’s library. He’ll be assisting in some of your classes, and keeping an eye on you. No one has to know why he’s really there.”
“No way!”
“Yes. No complaints, Jaiden, not one, or it’s back to the tutors,” Nancy said. She slammed down her hands on the table in this first-time-ever show of emotion. It was like she was taking out all her frustration with Bungrin on me. Between yesterday and today I’d had enough.
I started shouting at her. “Don’t give me that. You screw up and you know what happens? You get replaced, but I’m still here.” I stood up. I knew everyone was watching me, but I just kept staring at Nancy. “You know why you’re letting me go back to school? It’s got nothing to do with what’s good for me. It’s like you said. You just know if you don’t, I’ll run away again, or I’ll go to the press and tell everyone what a freaking prison this place is!”
I expected to get slammed, punished, or at least yelled at, but I didn’t. It was a weird moment that got weirder when Jack said, softly, “You wouldn’t really go to the press, Jaiden. Would you?”
I stared at him, open-mouthed. It occurred to me for the first time in my life that they were afraid of what I might do to them. That I had the power to get them fired.
Nancy just glared. I could see her thinking, strategizing, unable to come up with anything in response. “It’s late,” she said. “Go to school, Jaiden.”
“Fine,” I said.
I stormed out. On the way I grabbed the plastic bag with my hoodie.
Tony had already eaten, so he went back to my room to get my books, while I got on line for a quick breakfast.
“So it goes,” Ben said when he saw me.
“So it goes,” I repeated. It was from a book I read for that science fiction thing in Mr. Banyon’s class, and one of Ben’s favorites, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. It was something we said when things were pretty bad.
“Arm okay?” he said as he cracked my eggs.
I nodded.
“They letting you stay in school?”
I nodded again.
He smiled a little. “Good. Good. So, the SVPs aren’t always so stupid.”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t them. It was Nancy.”
As he flipped the eggs, Ben raised his eyes, impressed. “Good for her.”
I made a face and twisted my head. “Yeah, well, I yelled at her anyway.”
He scooped the eggs onto a plate with the home fries and set it on the counter. Before I could take them, he pointed at me with his spatula. It was long and flat and had bits of potato and onion clinging to it. “That was stupid. You need to know who’s on your side here, Jaiden, and you need to be good to them. Not everyone is, you know.”
I shook my head. “What’s that supposed to mean? They all have to be nice to me, don’t they? It’s their job.”
Before I could say anything else, Ted Bungrin, the “cutter,” walked right to the front of the line, passing me and the six people standing behind me.
And then he took my plate.
“I’m in a big hurry,” he said sort of to himself. “Mind if I grab these?”
I could tell Ben was annoyed, but Bungrin just looked at him, that bemused smile on his face.
“All yours, Ted,” I said, pushing the plate toward him.
Bungrin stared at Ben another second, then took off with the plate.
“Son of a bitch,” Ben said to his back.
“Hey, it’s okay. Tony’s driving me to school. I don’t have to catch the bus,” I said, but Ben just kept glaring as Bungrin took the plate to his table.
“Hey,” I said a little louder. “I’ve got to be good to the people who’re watching out for me, right?”
Ben looked at me. The right side of his lips crinkled into a smile, but his brow was angry. When he went back to glaring at Bungrin, even the smile vanished.
I had to ask him twice to cook me some more eggs.
8
WINNING PEOPLE AND INFLUENCING FRIENDS
A few years ago this cutthroat corporate strategy guide came out called Bob’s Big Book of Business, or—the 4Bs. At first it was published by, you guessed it, a guy named Bob, who was in his thirties but unemployed and living with his parents. The book hit number one on Amazon and Bob got totally rich and famous. Mr. Hammond liked it so much that everyone at NECorp, from Ben to the Creep Veeps, got a free copy.
That was before Enron, a big scandal I never understood and don’t particularly want to. After that, everyone hated the 4Bs, calling it a symptom of the worst side of corporate greed. I don’t know whether that meant everyone at NECorp had to give their free copy back or whether they just kept it out of sight, like the dirty pictures I know some of them watch online, but I do know I was unlucky enough to have “Smiling” Al Jensen make me read the whole awful thing when I was twelve.
Anyway, the 4Bs had all this mumbo jumbo about kill-or-be-killed strategies. The book was written in short sentences with a beautiful layout, for folks with short attention spans (or “little free reading time” like it says on the cover) so it should have been easy, but man, it just hurt. Reading that book was more boring than sitting and watching grass grow.
Despite that, and I hate to admit this, when I’m faced with tough situations, its boldfaced, large-print sayings sometimes pop into my head. Not because I find them a useful guide to life—more because they’re a surefire way of knowing what not to do. For instance, there’s this section about maintaining balance and dignity in the face of loss, which I think in psychiatry they call denial. The 4Bs says there’s nothing wrong with pretending that whatever went bad was either somebody else’s fault, or it never really happened, or that it really happened in a way that makes you look good.
I never bought into that. Me, I figure the only way to deal with losing is to throw yourself on the mercy of your enemies. Which is just what I did when I went to talk to Nancy about Tony, before I left for school that morning. You should have seen me, it was pathetic. I was writhing like a slug covered in salt. I begged, I pleaded, I whined, and I swore up, down, and sideways I wouldn’t try anything. I wouldn’t breathe, I wouldn’t think, I would love her like Big Brother if she just cut me a little slack and didn’t make my return to school any worse than what it already had to be—the worst day of my life.
It worked, I guess. We reached a compromise, which the 4Bs defines as something from which no one walks away happy, but everyone can live with. In this case it may have been right.
So, even though I wasn’t allowed on the bus, after parking his car a few blocks away, “Eyeballs” Tony hung back twenty paces as I walked toward Deever High. That way, I could pretend I was on my own.
Which, I guess, was just another lie anyway.
With Eyeballs behind me, I walked up and put my hand on the overpainted door’s cold silver handle, and just stood there a moment, staring at the bumpy patterns that thick, butt-ugly paint made, like it was a painting by Vincent Van Gogh.
It wasn’t a big spiritual moment, I was just scared. In my heart of hearts, I just knew Jenny had spread the word all over school about what happened back at my “house.” The second I walked in, I expected everyone to stare at me in awe and disgust like I was the Boy in the Bubble or the Two-Headed Armless Wonder or some other lame freak.
Tony waited, letting me have my door moment, like it was even obvious to him what a wreck I was. Nice guy. I figured if I was right and everyone did stare at me, I’d handle it for about five seconds, then ask him to shoot me.
“Hey, man, really, it’s okay,” I could tell him. “I love Big Brother.”
But before I went in, a few kids walked past me and didn’t even stop to stare. I thought for
a second they might be the only ones who hadn’t heard, but what were the odds? So, I pulled open the door and let the warm weird smells of Deever wash over my face while my eyes adjusted to the slightly green tint of the fluorescent lights.
There, in front of me, was the hall, the school, the kids, the teachers, all just doing what they usually did, standing, chatting, you know, what they call “milling.” No one gave me a second glance. I even waved hello to a couple of people who ignored me.
Just didn’t see me, I figured.
It was kind of disappointing.
I guess I’m all about the drama. The only reaction I got was from Nate. He, at least, came chugging up to me like an express train, wearing these baggy black jeans he thought were cool but just looked like they didn’t fit. Grinning, he slapped me on the back like I was his dead brother returning from the grave.
“Jai-den! My man! You never called! How was the big date? Tell, tell, tell!”
Big date?
That stopped me short. I felt like I’d entered a time warp. I guess I had, in a way. Nate didn’t have a clue about the whole end of the world thing that happened over the weekend. As far as he was concerned, my life was still in Friday afternoon, poised on the edge of greatness. To this man, to this friend, I had not yet fallen from grace.
And how did I repay his concern, his camaraderie, his caring? I said, and I quote, “It was … umm … tell you later, okay?”
Like that would work.
“No, dude, now!” he demanded.
I shook my head. He grabbed me by the shoulders and started shouting. Now people were staring. “You bastard! You’re like the first man to walk on Mars and you’re refusing to talk?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Eyeballs bristling at Nate’s enthusiasm, so I gave my man a little shake of the head, to indicate he was not a real threat and there would be no need to put a cap in his ass.
“Lunch,” I said, but I said it kind of neutral, like maybe it meant I’d tell him everything at lunch, since we had lunch the same period on Monday, or maybe out of the blue I just sort of felt like saying the word, lunch. That way, later, he couldn’t exactly call me a liar.
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