“More like biting the hand that poisons you!” I said.
“But NECorp says their plant produces less mercury than any other in the world.”
“They’re lying. I saw a confidential memo. They’re trying to hide it.”
The reporter got all excited. “You saw a memo? Do you have a copy?”
“No…”
I was about to explain why when two strong hands appeared on my shoulders. In seconds, I was dragged off. At first I didn’t know by whom, then I saw it was Tony, getting me away from the crowd, just like he had at school, only now, against my will. Nancy was beside him.
“Jaiden, don’t fight him! We’re taking you inside!”
“I don’t want to go inside!”
“Are you abusing that boy?” Eric Tate shouted, but a guard shoved him.
Tony pushed me into the lobby. Through the windows I saw security fighting with the protestors. The police rushed up, no longer thinking this was no big deal.
With the doors shut, the sound of the screaming was muffled, but the TV in the lobby was tuned to the station covering the protest, so I could see everyone fighting, and, more importantly, Jenny’s dad trying to shield her from the worst of it.
I wanted to rush out and help, but Tony held my arms behind my back. Nancy jammed the call button on the elevator over and over.
It was around then that I realized Ben wasn’t going to get his job back, and I was going to wind up in Idaho.
14
MOVING AND SHAKING CAN BE A SEIZURE, TOO
Nancy had been angry about the memo, but this was worse.
“What were you trying to accomplish? Did you want to get kicked out of school? Get me fired? Did you really think you could do any good? How could you be so stupid?”
I sat on my bed as she screamed, but thanks to the magic of video, I was also on the TV screen, saying, “More like biting the hand that poisons you!”
I thought I didn’t sound half bad, but hell, I looked awful. My skin was pasty and a few shades whiter than everyone else’s.
Tony stood sentry at the door, arms crossed, like a storm trooper. Nancy kept pacing, her face red, her thin, sharp arms gesticulating. She moved those arms so wildly, I was afraid one would just come flying off and her nails would lodge in my face like little daggers and she’d have to use her other arm to yank the first one out.
“Do you even think about the consequences of what you do at all? Ever?”
I knew she wasn’t really asking, but I answered, “Yeah, I do. Especially this time. Ted Bungrin already told me if I opened my mouth he’d have me shipped to a foster family.” I nodded toward the screen. “I think this counts.”
That took some wind out of Nancy’s sails. She stretched her back and grabbed her forehead. She looked at the screen and then at me.
“That’s crazy. He couldn’t have. He wasn’t serious, he was…”
I widened my eyes. “Oh, he was serious. I wasn’t his idea, I was Mr. Hammond’s. He said something about antidepressant medication, too.”
I wondered about the side effects of that stuff. It’s bad enough feeling like a total geek sometimes. I’d hate to turn into a total zombie-geek.
Nancy tried to talk again, but couldn’t quite get a sentence out. “But, then why did you …Why …?”
I did a by now world-famous shrug. It’s a great gesture of surrender.
“I went back to the runoff behind the mall where Ben found me. I saw the junk LiteSpring was pouring into the water.”
She got some steam up after that. “And you thought you knew what you were looking at? Scientists and doctors earn a lot of money analyzing things like that and they still disagree. You can’t possibly tell if water is dangerous by looking at it!”
“Well, there’s this, too.”
I pulled back my sleeve to show the bandage on my arm. It was dirty from my night in the woods, but you could still see the wet brown spot in the middle of the cloth.
Both sides of Nancy’s lips raised, showing her teeth, not like she was going to bite me or anything, more like she was really worried. The subject suddenly changed.
“Take the bandage off,” Nancy said.
With a wince, I peeled the old cotton away. The wound around the stitches was still open. There wasn’t blood coming out so much as yellow and green pus. The edge was jagged, and the skin around it looked bruised—brown, blue, and yellow.
It was quite colorful.
“Oh my god,” Nancy said. She headed for the door. “You stay there.”
I nodded. “Sure. I don’t think I could take down Tony anyway in my current weakened condition.”
Nancy shook her head and said something I’ll never forget: “If you weren’t still here, Jaiden, I’d quit right now.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d already gotten her fired.
About half an hour later I was taken to the infirmary. I didn’t realize how woozy I was until we started walking there. Eyeballs practically had to prop me up the last fifty yards.
There we met poor, beleaguered Dr. Gespot, who’d once again been summoned from his comfortable home. When we walked in, he was all about getting his examining tools together and complaining, but when he saw my arm, he shut up. He prodded the wound with his cold fingers even though he hadn’t put on gloves yet.
“Why didn’t you call me sooner?”
“We just looked under the bandage tonight,” Nancy said. “Is it serious?”
“I don’t know. Let’s find out.”
First he covered the whole area with a bunch of creamy yellow gunk, then wiped it away. It cleared off all the pus and some of the scab, and didn’t hurt much. I guess it was some kind of industrial-strength wound cleaner.
Then he stuck in a few hypodermics. That hurt. Like crazy. I yelled, but he just told me to be quiet. Made me miss the old days when they gave you a lollipop. Anyway, he injected some stuff in there, sucked some other stuff out, and had it rushed off to a lab.
While we waited for the results, he dressed the wound again. We waited around an hour or so before he got a phone call with the lab results. He grunted, asked some questions I couldn’t make out, then snapped his phone shut and turned to us.
“Mostly,” he said, “We’re dealing with an infection, which some stronger antibiotics should take of. You do have small levels of mercury in your blood, though. The muscle aches and joint pain indicate minor poisoning, but you’re not showing any major signs of nerve damage or psychological disturbance. Even so, we’ll prescribe some dimercaptosuccinic acid, a chelating agent, and get you on that right away.”
“What’ll that do?” I asked.
“It bonds with any mercury in your system and you’ll pass it in your urine.”
“Where does it go after that?”
He gave me a look. “Into a soft-drink factory. What do you care as long as it’s not in your bloodstream? Just don’t swim in any more factory runoffs, eat local fish, or chew on any old thermometers and you should be fine.”
He handed me some pills and put on his coat.
“That’s it?” I asked. I was a little disappointed.
“That’s it. I’ll run some more blood tests in a day or so.”
“Is it always this easy? Mercury poisoning?”
He shook his head. “Hell no. Mercury can drive you crazy, then kill you.”
Did I mention that Emperor Chin went insane and died from drinking this stuff his doctors gave him in an effort to make him immortal? One of the ingredients was mercury.
“You’re ridiculously lucky, Jaiden,” Dr. Gespot said. Then he left.
I didn’t feel lucky. I was glad I wasn’t dying, but, really, my life was still over.
Nancy looked relieved, which meant she seemed less tense. She didn’t say much more, other than that she’d ask Bungrin how serious he was about what he was going to do to me. She and Tony escorted me back to my room. I was getting escorted a lot these days. It was really late, and we were all exha
usted. Nancy left. Tony plopped himself into a chair he’d dragged from a waiting room to a spot outside my door. I crawled into bed.
When morning came, my arm wasn’t hurting much, so I got dressed and tried to get some breakfast, but Tony wouldn’t let me out. I mean, he blocked the door.
“What about school?” I said.
“No school for you today.”
“Nancy around?”
“She’s in meetings.”
“How long?”
“All day.”
That didn’t sound good.
“This room is it for you today, so settle in. Maybe, if you behave, you can go to the gym later, but that’s all and that’s my call.”
It was nice, I guess, that Tony had some flexibility in his position.
“I’m hungry.”
“Tell me what you want. I’ll have it brought up.”
“That’s okay. I’ll call myself.”
“You can’t. No outgoing calls. No email. They blocked all your accounts. Canceled your cell, too.”
“Nancy know about this?”
There was a pause. “Yeah.”
“Oh.”
I closed the door on him. Hope he didn’t take it personally. Wouldn’t want to offend the only person in the world with whom I was allowed any contact.
I imagine all kids get grounded sooner or later because they broke some rules, but this was different. Like Ben and Jenny said, these guys were not my parents.
I decided to see if Tony was telling the truth, and it turned out that all of a sudden, out of nowhere, IT decided to get competent. I tried sending an email, but it just sat there in the out-box. I tried using my cell. No signal.
At least the TV still worked. Local news was usually stuck covering store openings and cats in trees, now they were falling all over themselves. It was kind of cute, really. You could see how nervous and excited all the reporters were.
Apparently Jenny’s dad assaulted a security guard. He’d been arrested and NECorp was pressing charges. Instead of interviewing someone who was actually there, they had on someone from NECorp, what they call a flak. In this case, Peggy, a woman I knew from Marketing & PR who used to give me all sorts of swag. I remembered her telling me how much she wanted to be on camera, how she was taking a course on how to be poised.
Well, someone’s dreams were coming true, because there was Peggy explaining how troubled I’d been ever since they let me attend public school, how I’d fallen in with the wrong crowd, how when NECorp tried to help, I’d run away and been arrested.
When they asked if what I’d said about the memo was true, she explained I was ticked off because NECorp felt it inappropriate to let me watch R-rated movies.
That class paid off. The interviewer tried to catch her off guard, but Peggy stayed on message. I almost believed it myself. I mean, teenagers, what can you do? I tell you, that woman had a great future at NECorp.
Not me. Not so much. Ted had proven true to his word so far (except for that whole mercury poisoning thing). I wondered how long he’d keep me here. Sooner or later I’d get to tell someone my side, how I was being sent to Idaho, just because I tried to tell the truth. Honestly, I have no idea if Idaho is a bad place. I just knew it wasn’t here, and Bun-grin certainly made it sound bad.
I wish I could tell you that I spent my time in captivity strategizing my escape, or planning how to turn things around, but I didn’t do any of that. After I got sick of the news, I turned on my gaming system and spent some time blowing up monsters and aliens. What can I say? It was the only real satisfaction I’d had in ages. Even so, mostly I felt totally defeated.
Around three-thirty, a half hour after school let out, the sky outside my window got that winter-dark tinge, where the edges of the clouds get dimmer and even the air feels kind of heavy. I’d blown a whole day, and wondered how many more just like it were coming.
I was debating whether I should ask Tony to walk me to the gym, when I noticed the Webcam message indicator on my laptop flashing.
“Nate?” I said out loud.
Surprisingly, he answered: “Jaiden! Where the hell you been at, corporate boy?”
The Webcam and mike Nate had helped set up still worked. I clicked open the viewer and found myself staring at his wonderfully chubby cheeks.
“I thought I was shut down! How’d you get past the firewall?”
His face went all smug. “NECorp security is an oxymoron. I can even change the dinner menu. Why weren’t you in school? Everyone was talking about you. Mrs. Shapiro spent the first half of class on civil disobedience. You coming in tomorrow?”
“No. I don’t think I am.”
“They can’t keep you out of school, man. That’s like, illegal.”
“No, but it looks like they can put me up for adoption in another state.”
Nate shook his head, which made him look blurry and pixilated on the screen. “That’s cold. Just because you spoke up? That’s got to be illegal, too.”
“Don’t think so. I’m screwed, Nate. Screwed like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Well, I’ve got something that will make you feel a little better.”
I laughed. “Like what? Did you kidnap Jenny Tate for me or something?”
He waved his hands in front of the camera. “Uh …the signal’s breaking up.”
“What are you talking about? I can see and hear you fine.”
“Look, shut up. There’s someone here who wants to talk to you,” Nate said, then he swiveled his computer and I realized he was trying to spare me some shame. But I couldn’t care less, I was so happy. Her face had a bruise on it, but it still looked beautiful.
“Jenny!”
“Hi, Jaiden.”
“Where are you guys?”
“Look out your window, toward the woods.”
I lifted my laptop and ran to the window. It was getting dark, but behind some trees, I saw Jenny and Nate, waving.
“I didn’t know you guys knew each other.”
“We didn’t until today. I wanted to know how you were doing, so I asked him, but he didn’t know, so we thought we’d try to visit. They turned us away. Should have figured that, huh? Then Nate remembered his laptop. Jaiden, I wanted you to know I think what you did yesterday was terribly brave.”
“Really stupid, you mean, for all the good it did.”
“Yeah, probably that, too, but it was still great.”
I noticed the bruise again. “What happened to your face? Was it security?”
“No.” An embarrassed smile formed on her face. “My dad. He accidentally clonked me while he was trying to protect me. He’s a little overzealous.”
“Oh. Ow. Is he out of jail? Does he still hate me?”
“Out on bail and no, not at all. He’s completely sorry he forbade me to talk to you. He even spoke to his lawyer about getting you out so you could talk to the press.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Really? What did the lawyer say?”
Her face dropped. “He said he didn’t think there was anything he could do. You’re like … NECorp’s child. They’re entitled to ground you if they feel it’s in your best interest. Right now, he’s focused on my dad’s case, which isn’t going well, either.”
“So your dad can’t do anything about the mercury?”
She shook her head. “He’s sure if he did more testing he could prove the levels were out of whack even for the federal guidelines, but now he doesn’t have a company. And after the run-in with the police, it’s hard to get people together for another protest…”
We just looked at each other a minute and she said, out of nowhere, “I miss you.”
I was about to say I missed her, too, when the screen filled with Nate’s goofy face.
“Jaiden, Jaiden!”
“Hey! I was talking to…”
“No, no, listen. If the pollution levels really are that high, NECorp knows it. So what if there are files somewhere that prove it? Where would they keep something like that?”<
br />
I shrugged. Nate was sounding all spy movie with the secret file thing. Still, Nancy did pass me that memo, so there was some kind of paper trail. “Bungrin probably keeps all the juicy stuff on his laptop.”
“Can you get to it?”
“You mean like steal it? No way. Last I saw it, it was on his desk, about ten feet from him. Besides, he must have half a ton of encryption on that thing. Even if I could get my hands on it, I probably couldn’t boot it, let alone open a file.”
“I bet I could.”
“Yeah, but even if I knocked out Bungrin with my magic sleeping gas and got the laptop, by the time you told me the first line of code, a week would go by.”
“Could you sneak us in?”
I heard Jenny’s voice chime in. “Yeah! You got me in!”
“Guys, guys! This is a little different. I’m stuck in my room with a guard outside the door and Bungrin never leaves his laptop alone and…”
Nate raised his eyebrow. “Really. Just one guard?”
15
BREAKING IN ON THE GROUND FLOOR
I admit it. I went through a phase a while ago where I watched tons of old TV shows like Andy Griffith and I Love Lucy. They’re classics for a reason. If you know Lucy, then you know she always comes up with a harebrained scheme to get what she wants and usually drags her poor pal Ethel along for the ride, but not before Ethel puts up a halfhearted effort to get her to listen to reason. Something like, “Lucy, don’t you realize what would happen if we got caught?”
Nate was Lucy and I was Ethel. I’m not sure who Jenny was, maybe Fred, who was Ethel’s husband, but that doesn’t quite work, since she was mostly on Nate’s side.
I kept saying it was stupid to try and break in. Security would catch us or Bungrin would make things even worse. Nate was all, “Look, maybe it won’t work, but if it does, it’ll be completely amazing, and if it doesn’t, really, so what? It’s not like they’ll shoot us. And they’ve already done as much as they can to you!”
It still felt like some kind of kids’ game, like kicking the elevator doors in, or running up and down the halls screaming, but in the end, I couldn’t see the downside, except maybe for some breaking and entering charges. Jenny was willing to risk that for the sake of her dad and the world, and Nate was willing to risk it because, well, apparently, my best friend is nuts.
Teen, Inc. Page 14