Fallout (Lois Lane)

by Gwenda Bond

  “We’re okay, I think.” I lightly shrugged Maddy’s hands off and stood. “Devin, I’m so sorry for what they did. I can’t believe . . .”

  “Yeah,” he said, dazed, “me either. That was two years of work. Gone.”

  “You still have your troll army and the griffins and the elephants,” I said.

  “For now.”

  “I am not following any of this,” Maddy said.

  “Neither am I,” James put in.

  “Anavi and the Warheads attacked us, but they’d done way worse before we got there,” I said. “They took Devin’s castle apart brick by brick.”

  “Ancient stone by ancient stone,” Devin corrected. “They must have used explosives.”

  “Devin has a castle? What kind?” Maddy asked.

  “Never mind,” Devin said, and I stayed quiet. “It’s no big thing. I’ll rebuild later.”

  He didn’t sound so convinced. And I knew it was a big thing. Two years was a long time to spend building something to have it torn down in an afternoon with no warning.

  Then there was Anavi, her personality gone.

  But not for good. I won’t let any of this be for good.

  Devin said, “Thank your friend for me. It would have been worse if he hadn’t helped out.”

  “What friend?” James asked. “Is that the other person you were talking to? The one you told you’d never . . .”

  My cheeks were definitely burning, and not the elvish ones. They’d heard my side of the conversation with SmallvilleGuy. About how I’d never fit in. About how being different wasn’t so bad.

  “Never. Mind.” I examined my desk so I wouldn’t have to face them. “We have a plan for Monday. This weekend we’ll use for intel and lying low. Let them think they have the upper hand.”

  The Warheads probably did have it, but I expected someone to respond to me and agree. When no one did, I looked up to see why. The others were staring at the door to the Morgue.

  I turned and discovered that Perry was standing there.

  Next to my father.

  Dad was in his full regalia. He stuck out in the dim, dusty cavern of the office like a heroically sore thumb.

  “You won’t be doing anything this weekend, Lois,” he said. “You’re grounded.”

  My hand went to my hip. “What are you doing here?”

  The others were gawking at me like I might be crazy.

  Oh, right. He was in full intimidation mode, wasn’t he? Even Perry was subdued.

  “Your dad wanted to chat, make sure I was aware of the situation,” Perry said. “He wanted to discuss the timeline for following up on Principal Butler and Anavi Singh’s complaints.”

  “I bet he did.”

  “Lois,” Dad said. He was using his warning tone.

  Fine, I had one of those too. “Dad.”

  “You can get your things together. Perry assured me that he takes this all seriously, and that if the allegations are true that this—” he glanced around, searching for a word, and I had to admit the office probably made the Scoop look like it wasn’t much. But it was. Appearances were deceptive. “—this outfit will be disbanded.”

  So he’d settled on outfit. As if my job was a dress or some random clothes I picked up on a shopping spree at the mall.

  He went on, “You’ll spend the weekend thinking about that instead of trying to get the upper hand at whatever you’re up to.”

  Aha. Bingo. Eureka. What he was doing became as clear as the crystal James’s family no doubt used at the dinner table.

  This was his next move in our battle.

  “You’re shortening my timeline. You know the less time I have to do legwork, the less likely I am to prove my story was right.” I whirled to my desk and picked up my phone, taking the time to text Grounded in the app with my right hand while I fumbled around with my left to cover what I was doing. Then I logged out. I never knew how snoopy my parents were going to get when they were mad at me.

  And I wasn’t sure Dad had ever been this mad before.

  Picking up my bag, I jammed in some random papers before heading his way. “This is very nice of you, Dad. Very supportive.”

  He sighed, a sound of pure frustration. “Lois, I am supportive . . . of you making a fresh start here. We talked about you staying out of trouble. It sounds like you’re using this job to do what you always do.”

  Yeah, we had talked about it. But it wasn’t my fault that I wasn’t willing to stand by and let bad things happen unchecked. He should understand that as well as anyone.

  Why couldn’t he seem to?

  I ignored him, stopping in front of Perry. “Mr. White . . . Perry . . . sir, don’t worry. I take the Daily Planet’s reputation seriously and I know the Scoop reflects on it. It won’t be damaged, not by me. Even if he seals me up in a closet all weekend.”

  So the last part was a little grumbly. Sue me.

  Perry’s eyes widened with alarm. But when he spoke, the words were simple. And oh-so-important to me.

  “I believe you,” he said.

  This was more than progress, after how he’d flipped the day before. It was enough to carry me out of the office with my dad.

  Dad could try to shackle me all he wanted. It wouldn’t work.

  *

  Or maybe it would.

  As soon as we walked through the front door at home, he held out his hand and said, “Phone,” waiting until I placed mine in his palm. This was after a long, tense, silent car ride home.

  Mom was coming off the bottom of the stairs into the living room. She carried my laptop with her.

  I bit my lip against a protest that would give away how much I didn’t want them anywhere near my computer. The passwords should be uncrackable, even if they tried to get on it. But this would mean no chats with SmallvilleGuy all weekend long.

  No intel. No nothing.

  Good thing I had proposed lying low until Monday. “You’re seriously taking all my stuff? How am I supposed to get anything done?”

  Dad said, “You can do your homework in longhand. You can’t have that much to do after just a week. Grounded means no contact with the outside world. It means thinking about what kind of life you should be making for yourself. Lois, I know at sixteen it seems like you have all the time in the world, but before you know it—before your mom and I do—you’ll be in college. You’ll be out on your own.”

  “Right now I’m counting the seconds until that sweet, sweet freedom is mine.”

  “We only want what’s best for you,” he said.

  “No,” I said, “I think you just want me to be someone else. Someone I can’t be.”

  I started for the stairs, slipping past my mom. I turned back to them. “If you really think what I’ve done is so bad . . . Dad, go read the comments. On the story at the Scoop page. Read the comments and see if you think that it didn’t need to be told, that there was no merit to it. I did not lie. Perry believes me. It’s too bad you can’t bring yourself to.”

  I pounded the rest of the way up the steps, only slowing when Lucy peeked out of her bedroom door, making puppy-dog eyes. I paused to brush my hand across the top of her head. “I’m not going anywhere—really, I’m grounded, not being sent away,” I reassured her. “Don’t worry.”

  And I finished the journey to my room across the hall, shut and locked my door.

  My parents might be able to prevent me from reaching the outside world, but I would also keep them out of mine.

  One way or another.

  *

  I had plenty to keep me busy. Plotting, worrying, planning, more worrying.

  First, I plugged Maddy’s tiny MP3 player into my docking station, and I listened to the playlist she’d put together. She really did have excellent taste. It proved to be a nice mix of arty ballads that captured my frustration at
being trapped in my room along with punk and hip-hop influenced anthems I jumped around to, raging against the injustice of same.

  Then I spent more time plotting. I might have been forbidden access to my phone and outside assistance, but giving a girl time to think . . . that was turning out to be useful after all. As had the stationery set my parents gave me for my eleventh birthday, in case I wanted to write any of my old friends. Was it a coincidence that year had been my first foray into calls home from school because I was in trouble?

  Not likely. Even back then, I’d been fighting for someone else. The first time the school had called home to complain about my behavior was when a teacher mispronounced the word “massacre” as if it ended “cree” and a straight-A student named Angie corrected her. The teacher had flipped out and sentenced Angie to lose her recess time for a week. I knew massacre was pronounced “mass-a-ker” from the military history shows Dad loved to watch, and so added my voice of support to Angie’s.

  That had gone over well.

  Anyway, now I used the pastel pink stationery that had been given to me soon after to write a heartwarming note of apology to deliver to Principal Butler on Monday—something I projected would come in handy at getting him off my back. If only temporarily.

  Lucy had been bringing food and drink to my cell, and she even offered to lend me Unicorn University. Though she’d looked vaguely terrified that I might take her up on it and ruin her reputation.

  But by Saturday night, I was out of productive distractions. I needed to get the bug for Monday.

  I waited until midnight to make a jailbreak from my room to seek it out, banking that my parents would be sleeping soundly by then. I’d avoided them since the heated discussion the night before.

  They were being unreasonable.

  I crept down the stairs barefoot—channeling my inner elf—and into my dad’s home study where the contraband was stored. I crossed the threshold and the glowing lamp he always left on at night rewarded me with the sight of both my phone and my laptop stacked in a chair across from Dad’s desk.

  Tempting, but only after I’d gotten what I came for.

  Although not being able to lock the office door wasn’t ideal for the search. I was afraid to even close it, in case someone made a trip downstairs to the kitchen for a glass of water.

  Wait. Dad wasn’t paranoid enough to have added a nanny cam, stashed away in some hollowed-out volume of military history or embedded in a statuette of a Civil War soldier, was he?

  I hadn’t even considered that. Then again, those were the spots I had to check, the kind of places where he sometimes hid the key to the heavy lock on the tall wooden cabinet in the corner of the office. The cabinet where he stored the cache of high-tech toys and gear I planned to raid.

  Well, not raid. Borrow from.

  I went to a bookshelf and checked inside a volume about President Ulysses S. Grant, or more importantly in Dad’s view, the great General Grant, which was actually a hollowed-out box. Nada.

  Given that we’d just moved to Metropolis, he could be homesick for places with a base closer by. So next I went to an end table with a model tank one of his soldiers had made for him years before and undid the hatch on top. Empty.

  “Argh,” I muttered, looking around.

  My attention landed on a framed photo on the short bookshelf beside his desk. It was us, our family decked out in our finest, with me and Lucy in front of Dad and Mom, the three of them smiling happily and me not. My black hair fell over my shoulders in soft waves that Mom had labored over, but I was scowling at the camera. We’d had it taken last year, and Dad and I had a big argument that day. I remembered slamming doors, but not what we fought about. Thinking back, though, he’d first mentioned requesting a permanent assignment right after that.

  I walked over and picked up the picture frame. And . . . felt a shape along the back. I turned it around.

  The key was stuck to the back of the frame with a small dollop of putty. I pulled it free and, setting the frame down, beelined for the cabinet. The key slid into the brass lock and the cabinet door gave up the treasures inside with a click.

  Row upon row of Dad’s goodies awaited. Directly in front of me were a tiny camera, a few small laser pointers, and some sleek black cylinders that might have been actual handheld lasers. Below was a line of close-quarters prism flares and other gadgets; the flares we were allowed to use on the Fourth of July, a more exciting alternative to sparklers, as long as you called for everyone to squeeze their eyes shut before you let them off.

  Finding the bug I needed was easy. I closed my palm around the ink-pen-shaped infrared video and listening device on the second to bottom shelf, complete with a pen-cap receiver. I stowed both inside the pocket of my fuzzy robe.

  I closed the cabinet, glad I didn’t need directions on how to use the bug. One of the military scientists who liked Lucy and me best had let us observe when he demoed it for Dad. I’d kind of hoped to find an even newer generation with fresh improvements in Dad’s stockpile, but this would do nicely.

  I relocked the door, crossed to the picture frame, and restored the key to the putty. I should go back upstairs, but I paused.

  My laptop and phone were right there.

  I scurried across the thick rug toward the chair. I was willing to risk booting up down here, instead of lugging the computer all the way upstairs where I might get caught on the way.

  And I rationalized that I’d risk only a few more minutes to attempt a check-in with SmallvilleGuy, make sure nothing else had happened in the game, tell him about my plan for Monday, see if he had any new info to share.

  Maybe he’d have a new picture of Nellie the baby cow or Shelby the dog to lift my spirits.

  If Dad caught me, I’d tell him I was looking at email. Lifting the laptop, I sat down and opened it, letting my phone drop down beside me in the chair.

  “If I wanted you to use that this weekend, then I wouldn’t have taken it away.”

  I flinched.

  Dad stood in the doorway. He flipped on the brighter overhead light. “I am surprised it took you this long to sneak down here, though. Now put that down and go back to bed.”

  Good thing you didn’t show up two minutes earlier. I closed the laptop, but hesitated for a split second, considering my odds of success if I tried to slip the phone into the pocket of my robe along with the bug.

  “Leave the phone too.”

  I scowled at him, imitating my expression in the family photo. But I did as he commanded. It was only one more day of this unnecessary captivity. One more day until I’d be able to take action.

  When I reached the door, he stopped me with a hand on my arm. Now it was his turn to hesitate, but then he said, “I did what you told me to, read all those comments . . . Look, I get the point. Maybe the job isn’t all bad. I hope you get things straightened out. All we want is for you to be happy, Lois.”

  I hadn’t expected him to take me up on the suggestion, or say anything remotely like that. I owed him an honest response.

  “I don’t know if happy is what I want. I may want more.”

  He nodded, fatherly, and I remembered that he wasn’t all tyrant. And even when he was, he was still my dad. He sighed and said, “Honey, that’s what we’re afraid of.”

  I returned to my room, and my sentence. Sure, I could do my dad the favor of thinking about what I wanted my life to be like for one more day. But I didn’t need to.

  I was beginning to think I’d figured out exactly what I wanted to do with it.

  CHAPTER 19

  On Monday morning, Maddy caught up with me at my locker, practically bouncing with excitement. “You ready?” I asked her.

  “Are you kidding? I couldn’t think about anything else all weekend,” she said, sweeping a hand down to indicate her leather jacket. “I tried to dress the part.”

  “E
xcellent.” I extended my hand to her with the pen-shaped bug across my palm. “You’re on planting detail.”

  She put out her hand and accepted the bug. She stared at it, like she was memorizing every detail.

  “Just don’t let her see you with it, okay?” I said.

  Maddy frowned. “But how do I . . . ”

  I bent and untied the left one of her heavy-soled, swirly-colored shoes. “You’ll notice your shoe’s untied, and while you’re fixing it, you’ll stash the pen wherever is handiest. Her backpack would be best, in an outer pocket. Somewhere she’s less likely to notice it.”

  “Oh, okay,” Maddy nodded. “What will you be doing?”

  “Me? I’m the distraction.” I shut my locker. “Let’s go.”

  “But what if . . . ” Maddy was worrying.

  I couldn’t blame her. I’d spent a fair amount of the weekend doing the same. “You’re going to pull this off with no problem. We are. Girl power, right?”

  “Girl power,” Maddy agreed. “Though it sounds really dorky when you say it like that.”

  We went up the hall together, slowing when we got close to Anavi, like we were approaching a strange dog that might attack us.

  Anavi might. Or if not her, then the Warheads around her, lounging against nearby lockers with no concern for whether they were blocking access. Anavi hadn’t seen us yet, busy putting books into her locker almost mechanically. Her backpack was slumped on the floor beside her feet, unzipped and open.

  That was a lucky break. Maddy’s eyes widened as she noted the fact too.

  The restrained quality to Anavi’s movements as she swapped out books was disturbing to witness. Not that she had been magically self-assured and the smoothest of smooth before the Warheads stole her soul, but she’d been . . . herself.

  “Steady,” I said to Maddy.

  Who rolled her eyes. Under the leather jacket, she wore yet another band T-shirt—King Wrong. My curiosity about it flared. About all of her shirts. Everything on Maddy’s playlist had been great, but none of the thirty bands on it were ones I’d seen advertised on her T-shirts, and that seemed odd. I’d ask her about it later.