The Silence of Six

by E. C. Myers

  Why would they be talking about me?

  Nervous now, Max pulled out his new phone and connected to the restaurant’s free network. To his relief, his absence hadn’t made the news yet, but he had missed a significant update during the night: All the media sites were buzzing that STOP had been identified as Evan Baxter.

  Even though he’d known this was coming, it was still a shock. With this break in the story, more pieces would fall into place quickly. Max would have to keep moving, and he would have to keep looking over his shoulder.

  “Good morning,” a woman said. Max slapped his phone facedown on the kids’ maze printed on his placemat. He looked up. The brown-haired waitress smiled at him—Jessica, according to her nametag.

  “I’m Jess, and I’ll be your server today.” She handed him a wide plastic menu. “Can I get you started with a drink?”

  “Coffee, as much as you can spare.” Max returned the slimy menu. He was just going to get his usual. “And I’ll have the Ultimate Omelette and the Lumberjack Slam with sausage, scrambled eggs, and wheat toast.”

  “An Ultimate and the Lumberjack with sausage, scrambled eggs, and wheat toast.” She repeated it without writing it down. “I’ll put that order in and be right back with your coffee.”

  “Thanks.”

  Max waited until she had gone to the kitchen before picking up his phone. He wiped his hands on a napkin before scrolling through the top news article.

  There wasn’t much personal information about Evan yet, but that would certainly change. Right now, all they were talking about were basic facts: Evan had been a seventeen-year-old student at Granville High School, diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. He was described as a computer wunderkind who kept to himself.

  Max was more interested in the glaring omissions: how Evan had died, where his body had been found, and how the FBI had ultimately figured out his identity.

  Jess came back with a mug and a coffee pot. She filled his cup and Max gulped the coffee black.

  “Can you leave the pot?” Max asked.

  “We aren’t supposed to.” She refilled his cup. “Just ask when you want more. Your food should be out in five minutes.”

  A rusty green pickup truck pulled into the lot outside. Max propped his elbows on the table and held his coffee cup up to hide the lower half of his face as he watched a man in his thirties with long, tangled hair approach the Denny’s, a camo backpack with a broken strap slung over his right shoulder.

  The man entered and shuffled past Max’s booth to a table in the corner behind him. Max shifted to keep an eye on him. The man pulled a battered laptop from his bag and plugged it into an outlet. DoubleThink?

  The man started typing on his computer, paying no attention to Max or anyone else in the restaurant. When Jess tried to hand him a menu, he waved it off and ordered a coffee and cherry pie without looking away from his screen once.

  The sky was turning gray. Distant clouds were tinged with a soft, rosy glow. Max stared out the window, searching the parking lot for anything out of the ordinary. But it looked exactly as it should: boring. Peaceful.

  He kept looking at the man with the laptop in his reflection in the glass until Jess brought over his food. For the moment, Max was content to scarf down his meal and let DoubleThink approach him when he was ready.

  By the time Max had polished off his second plate of breakfast and ordered a slice of cherry pie, the truckers had left and the local morning crowd was filtering in. A couple sat in the booth across from Max, holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes. Max turned away and kept watching the vehicles coming and going outside.

  Jess brought over a thick wedge of cherry pie and a receipt.

  “My shift’s ending. Do you mind if I ring you out? You don’t have to leave or anything. Lorraine will take care of you if you need anything else.” Jess nodded toward an elderly woman with curly white hair.

  “Thanks.” Max’s phone showed it was just before eight. He didn’t know how long he should stick around. The man in the corner was still working intently on his computer, and none of the other customers seemed like hacker types. Maybe DoubleThink was a no-show.

  Max paid his bill with a generous tip, mentally revising the amount of money he had left.

  Just when Max was gathering his things to go, a young woman slid into the booth across from him. The first thing he noticed was her hot pink ski jacket, followed by the black knit cap pulled down low over her forehead, covering the tips of her ears. She wore a pair of those yellow-tinted glasses favored by programmers and gamers who spent a lot of time staring at screens.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” she said.

  “Um,” Max said. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m here to help you.” She turned her head to survey the parking lot.

  “You’re DoubleThink?” She looked about Max’s age. She looked like a she.

  “Bingo.” Satisfied with what she saw—or didn’t see—outside, she looked at Max.

  He looked over her shoulder at the older guy still tapping away at his laptop, oblivious to everything around him.

  “I thought he was DoubleThink,” Max said.

  “Nah. He’s writing a screenplay.” She sniffed. “It’s terrible.”

  Max turned to the girl. “How do you know that?”

  “I was curious, so I grabbed a copy. You know, public Wi-Fi. He’s on page 223, with no sign of getting to any kind of point. And his Panjea password is ‘mommy.’ I can’t make this crap up.”

  Max stared at her. She had dark circles under her eyes. Of course, she’d had a long overnight trip too.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said. “You’re . . . ”

  “A girl?”

  “A teenager,” Max said.

  “So are you. So was Evan.”

  “Okay, yeah, now that you mention it, I’m surprised by the other thing.”

  “Why is it a surprise that I’m a girl? Did I seem particularly masculine online?”

  “No, but . . . you didn’t seem particularly feminine,” Max said.

  “What does that even mean?”

  He massaged the corners of his eyes. “I don’t know. Forget it.”

  “You didn’t seem particularly sexist online, but here we are.”

  Lorraine swept over to their table and deposited a second coffee mug on the table in front of DoubleThink. The waitress filled her cup, refilled Max’s, and left the pot between them.

  “Thanks,” DoubleThink said.

  Lorraine winked at her and bustled off.

  Max stared at the coffee pot.

  “I’m sorry. Does the rest of Drama—” He lowered his voice. “The group know?”

  “They never asked, I never volunteered. And why should I? It’s your problem if you automatically assume that I’m a man just because I don’t say otherwise. And, let’s face it, our crowd isn’t big on sharing.”

  She wrapped her hands around her coffee cup. She was wearing frayed lavender fingerless gloves. Her fingernails were painted white with a black letter on each: A on her left pinky, followed by E, O, and U on her ring, middle and index fingers. Her right hand had H on her index finger, then T, N, and S. Her thumbnails had no letters.

  Max smiled. Her nails were decorated with the home row keys from a Dvorak keyboard, which had a different layout from the more common QWERTY keyboard. When she rested her fingers on the home row, her fingers would line up with their corresponding keys.

  “And maybe I was taking advantage of people’s expectations,” she went on, “but you can never be too careful online. Also: It’s fun seeing people’s reactions when they find out. Not that it happens often. Only ever once, actually.” She sipped her coffee. “So shall we get to business, Maxwell? I don’t have all day.”

  “It’s Max,” he said. “And you’re. . . ?”

 
“DoubleThink is fine.”

  “It’s weird using your handle in real life.”

  “Make it D.T. if you want.”

  “How about Deety?” Max asked.

  She shrugged.

  “You won’t tell me your real name?” he asked.

  “I wouldn’t be showing you my face if wearing a mask in public didn’t draw so much unwanted attention.”

  “You could have sent someone in your place.”

  “To pretend to be me?” Deety smiled. “Maybe I did. Maybe DoubleThink is really a guy after all, eh?”

  Max glanced at the screenwriter.

  “It’s not him, okay? Let it go. Jeez,” she said.

  “I didn’t see you come in. I was watching the door this whole time.”

  “Your eyes were closed a lot of the time,” she said.

  “No they . . . . You were watching me? How?” He looked around as if he could tell where she’d been hiding.

  Deety picked up the coffee pot and refilled her cup. “I’m a master of disguise and subterfuge.”

  “Dressed like that?”

  “I actually like pink. Is that too ‘feminine’ for you?”

  He shook his head. “It just makes it hard to blend in, doesn’t it?”

  “If you ran into me on the street, are you more likely to remember my face or my coat?”

  He studied her, wondering if this was a trap. She was cute, but the bright parka did draw his eyes more.

  “Your coat,” he admitted.

  “You can’t tell much about me under all this.” She prodded the thick padding with her fingers. “And clothing is a lot easier to change than a face. But I can do that too.”

  “Master of disguise.”

  “Right. You’re a good listener.”

  “I hear that a lot.” He smiled.

  “Like!” she said. “Anyway, I slipped in through the back door so I could see you before you saw me. I had to make sure you weren’t a creeper, even if Evan vouched for you. And I wanted to be sure you weren’t followed.”

  Said the girl who spied on him first.

  “How do you know I’m really Max?” he said.

  “I’ve seen your picture,” she said. “It was several years old, but you look about the same.”

  “It doesn’t seem fair that you have all this information on me and I don’t even know your name.”

  “Get used to it. At least I won’t use that information against you. Unless you try to screw me over.”

  Deety flagged down Lorraine.

  “I’ll have whatever that was,” Deety said. She pointed at one of Max’s empty plates.

  “The Ultimate Omelette,” Max said.

  “That,” Deety said.

  “Sure thing, sweetie,” Lorraine said. “Anything else for you?” she asked Max.

  “Nothing, thanks.”

  “We going to be here a while?” Max asked after Lorraine was out of earshot.

  “Not me. I didn’t sleep either.” She yawned.

  He poured the last of the coffee for her. “Did you see the news?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Now everyone knows about Evan, and of course they don’t understand.” She sighed. “But 0MN1 and the others trust you now. Your intel was good, and that’s the most important thing to them.”

  “There’s something you should know.” Max folded then unfolded his hands. “I saw Evan die. I mean, I can’t be one hundred percent positive what I saw on the video was real. But I believe it.”

  She lowered her eyes and stared intently into her mug. “Tell me,” she said.

  He described how Evan had delivered his cryptic message then pulled a gun. Max described the gunshot, how it had been so loud it scrambled the audio for a second, and then the spray of red. How everything was red, red, red, and Max’s ears were ringing long after it was over.

  The terrible memory turned Max’s stomach. He bent his head and swallowed hard, then sucked in deep breaths until the nausea passed.

  “I’m sorry,” Deety said.

  Max nodded. Deety’s eyes glistened behind her glasses. That’s when he decided he could trust her with everything.

  “I still haven’t found the whole video online,” she said. “I can find pretty much anything on the internet, but it’s like it didn’t happen.”

  “They must have it locked down tight. I know someone who had a copy, but the investigators probably wiped it.”

  “If we can get it, Dramatis Personai will make sure everyone sees it,” Deety said.

  “I know it might contain another clue, but it’s gruesome. I don’t even want to see it again.”

  Lorraine delivered Deety’s omelette and a fresh pot of coffee, along with a second slice of cherry pie for Max. He picked up his fork, but the shiny, bright red filling made him queasy. He pushed the plate away.

  He watched Deety shovel massive forkfuls of omelette into her mouth.“Deety, did Evan know that you’re—”

  “A girl?”

  “That you have such cool nail polish is what I was going to say.”

  She eyed Max then unzipped the top of her parka and pulled a smartphone from an inner pocket. She thumbed in a lengthy passcode—Max counted at least twelve clicks of the keypad, which further won him over. She swiped at the screen and tilted it to face Max.

  It was a picture of Evan next to a girl with shoulder-length blond hair with pink streaks, parted on the right and pinned back. She was several inches taller than him, which would make her around five-foot-eleven, the same height as Max.

  It was summer, but Evan was wearing his signature black T-shirt and gray cargo pants, shoulders hunched and hands in his pockets. His red hoodie was draped over Deety’s shoulders, like a superhero cape. She was wearing a green babydoll shirt with the chemical structure for caffeine on the front and faded denim shorts. Long legs with thigh-high black boots. Curvy figure. A tattoo of a red line wound down and around her right arm. She looked like a video game heroine, or a badass Little Red Riding Hood.

  Max reached for the phone and she yanked it out of reach.

  “No one touches my stuff,” she said.

  “When was that taken?” Max asked.

  “HGH.”

  Hackers Gonna Hack, the hacker conference. So this picture had been taken in August.

  Stupidly, Max was jealous that Evan had other friends he hadn’t known about—maybe even a girlfriend? He should be happy he’d been fine on his own. Knowing that alleviated some of the guilt Max had felt over spending time with the soccer team and Courtney instead of with Evan.

  “I didn’t let anyone in DP know I was there, and only Evan knew I’m DoubleThink,” Deety said. “He was cool with it. He hated crowds as much as I do, so we hung out together a lot in Austin, whenever we weren’t coding.”

  “I bet Evan thought it was a date.” Max laughed.

  Deety looked at the picture somberly. “It does look like one.” She placed her phone on the table. “Tell me more about him.”

  “You knew him,” Max said.

  “We spent a few days together in meatspace. Evan didn’t talk much in person. But online, he was funny. What was he really like?”

  Max shook his head. “That was the real Evan online. In person, he was always reserved. Thoughtful.” Max picked at the crust of the cherry pie. Part of it crumbled between his fingers. “He was unsure of himself, except when he was hacking. Then, he thought he was invincible.”

  “Don’t we all feel that way?” she said.

  “Not me. I’m not as good as Evan was.”

  “Who is? Oh. But you don’t like being second best. Is that why you quit?”

  Was that it?

  “No. I wasn’t even second best. Hacking made me feel more vulnerable. I was taking chances I would never take in person, and honestly, it seemed
dangerous. That’s why I stopped. I was scared it would end . . . badly.”

  They fell silent again. But that felt okay, not like the awkward gaps in conversation that sometimes happened with Courtney. He would rack his brain for something to say, always trying to impress her and figure out who she wanted him to be.

  “Look at us,” Deety said. “We’re a couple of sad sacks.”

  Her eyes flicked around the restaurant and to the window.

  “Might as well get to it.” She swept her arm across the table, pushing their plates aside. Deety reached inside her parka again and pulled out a slim, translucent plastic CD case. Pink. She weighed it in her hand, looking at it thoughtfully. She placed it on the table and slid it across to Max.

  The disc inside was labeled “Music Mix” in black permanent ink in Evan’s handwriting. The titles of fifteen of his favorite songs were scribbled around it, spiraling toward the center from the outer edge of the disc.

  Evan had made a bunch of those for Max a long while back, when they first started hanging out; collections of his favorite selections from all the albums he’d downloaded that week. Max had asked him once why he didn’t just share all the files with him online, and after that Evan had stopped making discs for him.

  “He must have liked you. A lot,” Max said.

  Deety turned her head away and stuck her chin up. “It’s camouflage, idiot.”

  “This is what you were talking about?” Max asked.

  “What were you expecting?”

  “I don’t know. A thumb drive. An SD card. A roll of microfiche.”

  “Those are more conspicuous, and CDs are easy to destroy. Use a Sharpie, scratch the surface, break it into pieces.”

  “Put it in your microwave,” Max said.

  He and Evan once destroyed the Baxters’ microwave by nuking CDs in it and recording videos on their phones. It was powerful magic, making lightning in a box at home. They’d been mesmerized by the crackling blue sparks that danced across the discs’ surfaces. They burned up quickly, over in a literal flash, but it was so beautiful while it lasted.

  “Exactly. Plus, it was a clever way to send me something in the mail without anyone getting suspicious. Chelsea Manning snuck all those files out of her army base on—”