by Nancy Kress
Amy had hoped that Myra would say “Prove it,” which might have been at least a half-assed admission of guilt. But Myra was too wily for that. She’d declined the gambit. Amy brought out her next attack.
“I can’t prove anything about the squirrel, no. But here is something I can prove. The night of the hotel fire, I called 911 and they told me to try to get to Room 654, which was the safest place in the hotel. But you called Violet and told her to call me and lie that the cops in Room 654 were already gone.”
Violet tensed. Myra looked even more shocked and began to protest her innocence. Rafe took Mark’s miniature tape recorder from the drawer of his bedside table and played the tape.
“Violet!” Myra’s voice said. “Call Amy now. Ask where she is. She’ll say in a stairwell. If she asks about Room 654 being safe, tell her that it’s not anymore. Tell her the militants took the room and there was a firefight that killed someone and nobody is there now.”
Violet’s voice: “Did protestors take the room?”
“Just do it!”
“No. Not if you’re just sending Amy into more danger for your fucking show!”
“I’m not, I promise you. She has a clear, safe passage out. Just do as you’re told—”
Amy clicked off the machine before the part where Myra revealed that she had some kind of hold over Violet. Amy said, “But Violet didn’t listen to you. She tried to call my cell, and then Rafe’s, to tell us we should go to Room 654. Only mine had slid off the cart that Waverly and I were maneuvering down the stairwell, and I never got the message. Neither did Rafe, because he was hurt and unconscious. But we found Violet’s message later, after everything was over, on his cell. She tried to get us to safety despite what you told her.”
Myra looked directly into Amy’s eyes. Amy had never seen a gaze that steady, that hard, that unrelentingly cold. “No,” Myra said, “that can’t be right. If you never got this horrible message that you said I told Violet to convey—and that’s not true, Amy dear, I just don’t know why you’re saying this!—if you never got that message from Violet, you would have gone to Room 654. But you didn’t. You didn’t even try to get to the sixth floor. I’m afraid you’re contradicting yourself, my dear. You’re confused.”
“No. I’m not confused. We didn’t try to go to the sixth floor because you called me then and said that everyone in Room 654 was dead.”
“I did not! You’re lying!”
“There are cell phone records of the call.”
Watching Myra’s face, Amy saw the moment that the older woman realized. Myra had called Amy’s cell during the hotel fire, just as she’d called everyone’s cell, with her fake checks on whether they had gotten out all right. But although the cell-phone records at Verizon would show that Myra’s call to Amy had taken place, it would not show the content. If Amy said that Myra was doing her best to send Amy and Waverly into deeper danger, Myra had no way to disprove that. And her earlier call to Violet lent it plausibility.
That Amy was lying did not bother her at all. This woman was evil.
For just a second Myra’s eyes flared with hatred. Then she had control of herself again. She was good, Amy had to give her that. Amy had hoped to provoke her into an admission of guilt, but instead Myra said gently, “I’m afraid you are confused, Amy dear. Of course I called your cell, I called all of you. Alex and Mr. Taunton and I were so worried! Until we knew that you six, and Kaylie too, of course, were safe outside the hotel, we were just beside ourselves with anxiety. Of course I called your cell. And Cai’s and Waverly’s and Tommy’s and Violet’s and Rafe’s.”
Rafe spoke for the first time. “But we still have that recording of your call to Violet. That looks pretty incriminating, Myra.”
“Does it? I don’t think so. I think you faked that recording, pieced it together from other speeches you somehow recorded of mine that—”
“You mean, the way you did for ‘dialogue’ of Amy and Waverly during the hotel fire re-creation in the tunnel? You can’t get around that call to Violet. You made it. You sent two young girls and a sick old lady away from safety and into danger just to make your show more exciting, and you put infected animals on Holtz Island for the same reason.”
“Oh, Rafe, I think the infection is still addling your brain. Perhaps it’s a good thing that all your contracts with TLN are over.” Myra swept from the hospital room, looking sad, concerned, and not at all guilty.
Amy dropped into a plastic chair and sagged with disappointment. “She didn’t admit anything. I thought that if we pushed her enough—Kaylie, you can stop filming. We don’t have anything that could take on TLN’s lawyers, anything that would really hold up in court.”
Kaylie said, “So now you’re a lawyer, too, on top of everything else? You don’t know that!”
Rafe chewed his lower lip, which all but disappeared between his teeth. Finally he said, “Amy’s right. I’m not a lawyer either, but that one recording of Mark’s—it isn’t enough. They could twist it every which way. They could say, for instance, that Myra genuinely did believe Room 654 had been taken by militants. I’ll bet Myra could even bribe witnesses to say that they were with her when somebody else told her that. Then Myra would look like she was trying to save Amy and Waverly, not kill them.”
Amy said, “So we’re screwed. It’s over. There’s nothing we can do.”
Rafe leaned forward in his bed. His brown eyes gleamed brightly. “Not necessarily.”
Kaylie demanded, “What do you mean?”
Rafe said, “Myra holds all the artillery of her generation: lawyers, courts, television. But we have our own generation’s artillery.”
Violet said, “Speak English!”
Rafe said, “I am. Who–You was all about electronic voting. And the show shaped public opinion—including opinion of us—on the Internet. That’s where things happen now.”
Amy got up from her chair. With great deliberation, she walked toward Rafe. Saliva or no saliva, she intended to kiss him.
A piercing scream in the corridor stopped her. Then another, even more horrible. Shouts, and a phantom leaped into Amy’s brain: a huge golden lion, wounded and bleeding, trying to bite a rearing snake.
All four of them tore into the hall.
Tommy stood over Myra, who crouched on the floor with her hands over her head. Tommy held an IV pole grabbed from a patient in a wheelchair. The patient cowered in his chair. Tommy raised the IV pole and brought it down on Myra, shouting, “You did it! You made the squirrel bite Rafe! And I’m not going back to Sam like you said, I’m not getting locked in that insitution again, I’m not I’m not I’m not! You told Sam he would get money for letting you use me but I hate the show and hate it and hate it! And Cai said you made the squirrel bite Rafe! You’re a bad person a bad person a bad person—”
Myra screamed at the blow from the metal IV. It landed on her shoulder, not her head, but with enough force to send her sprawling across the floor. An orderly rushed toward Tommy, who continued to yell. The orderly tried to grab Tommy, but he was nowhere near Tommy’s size and Tommy threw him off. “I won’t go back to Sam and the insitution I won’t—” He raised the IV pole again.
Myra pulled a gun from her purse and fired.
Tommy screamed and went down.
Then the orderly grabbed Myra, joined by two more men who rushed from nearby rooms. Amy darted toward Tommy but was immediately blocked from getting to him. The men jumped on him, pinning him to the floor. A nurse was shouting into a phone. Patients yelled in nearby rooms, and people caught in the corridor either stayed flattened to the wall or tried to flee.
The orderly had Myra’s gun. Blood gushed from Tommy’s arm but it seemed to Amy that he wasn’t dangerously hurt. He wasn’t fighting the men pinning him, and he wasn’t shouting anymore. In fact, his broad face had smoothed out, looking almost peaceful. The men looked at each other, then cautiously eased off. Tommy sat up, cradling his arm, and looked down the corridor. “Hey, Amy,” he said. “Ra
fe, I see your ass!”
Hastily Rafe clutched his hospital gown, open down the back, around himself.
Violet laughed. Kaylie touched first Amy’s arm, and then her camera lens in its nest of chains. “Got it. All of it.”
“Where’d you get those chains, anyway?” Violet asked.
“Tore them off the tampon dispenser in the ladies’ room. They were holding it to the wall.”
Violet made a noise that could have meant anything. Cops burst into the corridor. Myra struggled to stand, but the orderly wouldn’t let her. A doctor bent over Tommy’s arm. Amy, light-headed, suddenly had to sit down. She turned to go into Rafe’s room, saw Rafe standing there clutching his ridiculous hospital gown, and walked straight into his arms. His lips felt full and soft.
Behind her she heard Violet say softly, “Thank you, One Two Three.” But it didn’t matter. At this moment, at least, only Rafe mattered. At this glorious moment.
Thirty-eight
WEDNESDAY
THEY RAN THE VIDEOS on a laptop Violet bought with her credit card; she was the only one who had one. Amy refused to let Kaylie steal anything else. They also bought a cell, putting it in Rafe’s name. “We’ll never get back the ones taken by the copter,” Rafe said regretfully. “They’ll all just conveniently be misplaced.”
Rafe had been released from the hospital that afternoon, after police officers had taken all their statements as witnesses. Amy warned everyone to tell the cops only that Myra had come to check on Rafe’s progress. Otherwise they might have been stuck giving depositions forever. Tommy stayed in the hospital while his arm was being treated; he didn’t seem to mind. “I got her,” he told Amy. “But I didn’t kill her.”
“No,” Amy agreed, fervently glad that he had not. She wasn’t sure whether Tommy was under arrest for assault. A bored-looking cop guarded his door. Well, the Lab Rats would deal with that when they had to.
Rafe, Violet, Amy, and Kaylie did minimum editing on the two videos, the one of Myra in the hospital room and the one of Tommy going berserk in the corridor. All they did was cut out Amy’s disappointed statement about Myra (“She didn’t admit anything”), plus Amy’s questioning Myra about the infected squirrel (“I don’t know for sure,” Rafe said, “but that might open Amy up to charges of libel”). He added, “I don’t know if they can tell whether we tampered with the video, but just in case, let’s not. I’m going to make six DVD copies and we need to put them in six different safe places. OK, Amy, you’re on.”
Amy stood self-consciously in front of a blank white wall in the hotel room they’d rented, again on Violet’s credit card. Kaylie recorded on her stolen microcamera. “My name is Amy Kent. You may have seen me on the TV show Who Knows People, Baby—You? If you didn’t, the show has six kids—wait, there were seven in the beginning, right? We had Lynn and—”
“Cut,” Violet said. “Amy, you’re no actor. Just say the speech the way we wrote it. Start over again.”
Amy grimaced and began over. “My name is Amy Kent. You may have seen me on the TV show Who Knows People, Baby—You? If you didn’t, the show has six kids thrust into various scenarios, and then viewers vote on how they think each will react. The show is produced by Taunton Life Network. But TLN didn’t just create harmless scenarios for us six. They used terrifying, real-life events like the Fairwood Hotel fire during the city riots. That might be objectionable, but it’s legal. What is not legal is to deliberately send some of us into real danger—and that’s what Myra Townsend, the executive producer, did. I and another participant, Waverly, were told by Myra to take my dying grandmother”—Amy faltered, but caught herself and went on—“directly into the path of a fire and of people shooting automatic weapons. What you are about to see is some of us confronting Myra about that, and our evidence. Then you’ll see Tommy, a mentally challenged show participant, make his own accusations against Myra—and her violent response. You might have seen something about the hospital shooting in the news, but here is the real story.”
“Good,” Kaylie said. “You look pathetic.”
“I don’t want to look pathetic.”
“Well, you do.”
They put Amy’s introduction at the head of the video, titled the whole thing “The Truth About Hospital Violence: Why Tommy Shot TLN Producer,” and added Rafe’s new cell number. “OK,” Rafe said, “here goes.” They uploaded to YouTube.
They each produced tweets on their newly opened Twitter accounts.
They took turns on the laptop e-mailing everyone they could think of to look at the YouTube video. “The problem,” Rafe said an hour later, when their hit rate was still low, “is that there are millions of things on YouTube, most of them junk. We have to get people to look at ours. If we could just reach somebody really influential!”
Kaylie’s stomach rumbled. She said, “How about we go out for—” when the communal cell rang. Rafe answered. “Yes?”
A deep voice said, “Amy Kent, please,” and Rafe passed the cell to Amy, who put it on speakerphone.
“This is Amy.”
“This is Harrison Tollers.”
Amy, Rafe, Violet, and Kaylie looked at one another and shrugged; nobody knew the name.
“I’m Waverly Balter-Wells’s father. My daughter just showed me your YouTube video. I would ordinarily discount this sort of hole-in-the-wall slander—James Taunton is a business acquaintance of mine—but Waverly assures me that you are not the sort to make things up or play stupid hoaxes. Is it true that this Townsend woman actually put my daughter in great danger in the hotel fire? Greater than occurred by chance?”
Amy drew a deep breath. “Yes, sir. She did.”
“And that tape you played of the phone call to . . . Waverly, what was the name of . . . oh, yes, to Violet—that tape is legitimate?”
“Yes, sir. It is. We have it.”
“Where did you get it?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Then why should I believe it’s legitimate?”
“It is. Waverly told you that I don’t lie.” A ridiculous statement—how many lies had Amy told in the last twenty-four hours? But she plunged ahead. “Besides, sir, would I take a risk like this if the tape weren’t legitimate? I think I might be opening myself up to libel charges.”
“You most certainly are. But if what you say happened really happened and my daughter’s life was deliberately endangered, you will have all the legal help you need, as well as a countersuit. I’m sending a car for you immediately. Where are you?”
Amy gave the name of the hotel. She added, “But the others involved in making the tape are coming, too. My sister Kayla Kent, Rafael Torres, and Violet Sanderson. Waverly knows them all.”
“Very well. Be out front in half an hour, Ms. Kent.” He hung up.
“Waverly,” Violet said. “Who would have thought.”
Kaylie said, “Does he have a TV station, too? Are there roles available on his shows, do you think?”
“He doesn’t have a TV station,” Rafe said. “He has a bank. And a brokerage house.”
“Oh.”
Amy turned to the others. “Listen, we stick together on this. Kaylie, you say nothing against Violet, do you hear me? I mean it.”
“Saint Amy,” Kaylie said sourly. She was disappointed that Waverly’s father had no TV station. “Do I have to be nice to Waverly, too?”
“Yes!”
Violet had ducked her head. When she raised it, her eyes were watery. She tried to smile at Amy.
“Come on,” Amy said. “Let’s pack up.”
Rafe said, “I’m just going to check YouTube one more time before I shut down the—oh my God!”
“What?” Kaylie bounded forward.
“Half a million hits. And it’s going up.”
Amy closed her eyes. The room had suddenly quivered a bit. No phantom came to her mind, but a thought did, clear and shining even if it made no sense:
Thank you, Gran. Thank you.
Forty
> TLN EXECUTIVE ARRESTED ON CHARGES OF INTENT TO ENDANGER SHOW PARTICIPANTS
ASSAULT CHARGES DISMISSED AGAINST TOMMY WIMMER, “HOSPITAL BERSERKER”
Extenuating Circumstances Cited
MYRA TOWNSEND FIRED FROM TLN
TOWNSEND TRIAL TO BEGIN TODAY
TOWNSEND COUNTERSUIT AGAINST TV “LAB RATS” QUIETLY DROPPED
Says plaintiff lawyer caught off the record: “You can’t win against that much public opinion, no matter what the law says. That’s not the way the system works.”
CANCELED TV SHOW BECOMES CULT FAVORITE ON INTERNET
Notorious “Who Knows People, Baby—You?” Spawned Scandal, Court Cases, Largest Viral YouTube Video Ever
MYRA TOWNSEND CONVICTED OF RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT IN FIRST DEGREE
Could Get Five Years in Jail
Epilogue
ANOTHER SPRING
“HEY, AREN’T YOU Amy Kent?” the gardener asked, straightening up from the flowerbed on the university quad. He’d been weeding azaleas in full purple bloom.
“No,” Amy said, hurrying past.
This had been easier in the winter. Hoods, scarves, people rushing to class with their heads lowered against the fierce New England wind. She had scarcely ever been recognized, except in class or in the dorm. Either her classmates, after a few curious stares and some tentative questions not too difficult to evade, had dropped the subject of the TV show, or else she had dropped them. The circle of friends that she and Rafe had built up regarded them as who they were on campus, not before.
Anyway, most people were more interested in their own lives than in others’. Gran had always said that.
But not everybody, and here it was spring with its light, revealing clothing, and the kind of people interested in defunct TV shows and public scandal and court cases were going to recognize her again. Ah, well. In the most pragmatic terms possible: The money was worth it. Amy’s final two bonuses from TLN had gotten her through the bridge course and to college, and the settlement won from them by Waverly’s father’s lawyer would keep her here until she earned her degree.