My mother had no idea how lucky she was. Compared to my friends I was a walking saint.
A bad day's bag of anger began to rise, I was going to unload all of it on her when Nana stepped out and hugged me, kissed me on the cheek, and said to my mom, "Back off, Julie. She's a grown woman of eighteen."
I'd have walked over broken glass for that woman.
Mom rolled her eyes behind Nana's back before hugging me goodbye. "I mean it, Hailey, be good, okay," she whispered in my ear. "A quiet weekend, I mean it."
That was exactly what I wanted. A nice, quiet weekend.
Chapter Two
Ryan
Squinting my eyes, I tried to find the glitch in the code. I was the King of Nerds remember. The guy with no car and no money who spent his days suffering through high school and his nights holed up in his mother's basement. Cutting code and fixing other people's computer problems.
Turning to Mark, I laughed to myself. He was sitting on the old couch we'd rescued from the curb, rereading a Batman comic, taking a break from what he was supposed to be doing, which was helping me break into this system. The comic was one of dozens spread out around him. He'd probably read it a hundred times before, that never stopped Mark. Each time it was as if he'd discovered a new planet or something.
I sometimes thought that Mark would have preferred to hang out in the Geek world. It seemed a more natural fit.
Add that to the list of my problems, getting Mark to care about something important like this project.
"Why are you here again?" I asked him.
"Your stuff's cooler than mine," he said without looking up from the page. "Besides, you got special plans or something?" Mark asked.
My brow scrunched, he knew full well we never had plans on a Friday night. Just like we didn't have plans for Saturday nights. We'd spend the weekend in this dank basement. Mark hanging out, mooching my Mountain Dew, while I worked testing computer security programs.
Looking around the room, a sense of pride washed over me. "The Bat Cave" Mark called it. Two six foot metal cabinets held my equipment. Servers, routers, switches. A dozen green and red lights flashing. I knew intimately what each light meant and what it was saying.
My workbench overflowed with tools and spare parts. An empty computer case sitting ready to be filled with new parts. A one-meg copper disk, the size of an old-fashioned vinyl record, hung on the wall next to a poster of Emma Watson. I'd found it behind the federal building on a trip to Seattle. The disk that is, not the poster of Emma Watson. That I got off the web.
I'd built it all myself. Every screw, every wire. One piece at a time. For the last three years, I'd spent every extra minute and every spare dime developing a reputation as a pretty good security hacker. Way more than some script kiddy who couldn't break into a paper bag without help.
Most of my customers didn't know about my age. Those that did know couldn't care less, I was that good.
Now, I was turning that reputation into money. A freelance job here and there went a long way. Heaven knew Mom could use the help. With a derelict of an ex-husband, a going-nowhere job at the hospital, a nerdy teenage son, and a blind fifteen-year-old daughter. Every dollar I added to the household budget meant a little less stress on her.
Companies paid me to try and break into their systems, hoping to learn about their vulnerabilities. You'd be surprised how often I got in. But then, that's why they paid me.
Mark gave me crap about it. Saying I should have used some of the money to get a car. He'd never understand. I had plans for that money. Or at least, what little was left.
Turning back to my computer, I resumed where I'd left off. Probing, trying to find the holes in the system. There were always holes. The trick was getting them to line up so I could get in. My hands flew across the wireless keyboard trying all the normal things first. It was unbelievable how often these idiots forgot to lock down a simple path.
"Hey, did you hear? Hailey Martin broke up with Numb Nuts McGee," Mark said.
My hands froze over the keyboard. Numb Nuts McGee was the name Mark had tried to hang on Jarret McGee, the school prick and firm evidence that there was no God. No one should be that good looking, that athletic, and that rich. A true and just God would have spread some of that wonderfulness around.
Mark had started calling him Numb Nuts after an unfortunate incident with a baseball a couple of years ago. Jarret McGee being who he was, the name didn't stick. Mark had tried everything to hang the nickname on the guy. It had become his mission in life. I was convinced that Mark saw it as his only lasting legacy for high school. Even dirty stares and a threatened beating hadn't stopped him.
Hailey Martin and Jarret had broken up. Wow. My stomach turned over and my hands froze in space above the keyboard. My heart raced every time I thought about her.
She had a laugh that could stop the wind and a body that could stop a clock. When she walked into a room, the world came to a screeching halt. Time stood still. I forgot where I was, what I was doing, and why I was there. Every time I was within a hundred feet of her my heart would race, my palms would begin to sweat. My lungs would forget how to work and my brain forgot how to think.
Her perfume had a way of turning my insides out. A subtle mix of lavender and rose that gently wafted through the air letting every guy within range know that there truly was something right with this world.
Besides being drop dead gorgeous, she was sweeter than cherry pie. I'd seen her stop and help a lowly freshman pick up their spilled books. She'd acknowledge someone with a smile and a nod. They'd light up like a roman candle and float on air for a day or two.
She was the ultimate triple threat. Heart stopping gorgeous. Very smart, especially for a Celeb. And, old fashioned sweet.
Don't react to Mark's news, I told myself as his words registered. If you show the slightest sign, he'll be relentless all weekend. The last thing I needed was to be teased about Hailey Martin. I'd made the mortal mistake last year of telling him that I'd had a crush on her since eighth grade.
He'd scoffed. "You and every other guy in school."
Of course, ever since then he'd used it like a weapon, a club to hit me upside the head every time he wanted a good laugh. I really was going to have to find a better best friend.
I slowly returned to typing, pretending like it was no big thing, trying to focus on the screen. Ignore him, that's the best way, I told myself as I typed a couple more lines of code. The fact that the code was meaningless was beside the point. I'd go back and fix it later.
"Wow, you've still got the hots for her haven't you? I can't believe it." Mark said with a snicker. "Man, you are aware that she doesn't even know you're alive. Right?"
"Shut up," I shot back with one of the dumbest comebacks ever.
Mark laughed again, obviously loving the poor come back.
"Come on, get serious. Look at you. You're what? Six two and a hundred sixty soaking wet. I believe the term bean pole has been used more than once."
Mark returned his comic to the pile, getting excited about this new game, tear Ryan apart.
"You ride that big yellow school bus every morning while every other senior pulls into the parking lot in their very own vehicle. You're okay looking, I guess, if you're into boring brown hair and eyes. No obvious blemishes, but nothing that could interest a girl Like Hailey Martin."
"Hey, looks aren't everything," I said before I could stop myself. Don't give him ammunition, it was like feeding a polar bear. They always wanted more.
Mark snorted and shook his head. "To a girl like Hailey Martin they are."
I kept quiet. Somewhere deep inside my soul, I knew he was right. Someone as beautiful as Haley couldn't be seen with someone like me. Besides, she didn't know I was alive. A fact that was not likely to change, anytime soon.
"Let us continue," Mark said. "You have the athletic ability of an eight-year-old girl and the social skills of a Trappist Monk. And, to top it all off, you have the well-deserved reputati
on as the King of the Nerds. These facts, and many, many more, make it a sure thing that Haley Martin will never, ever, go out with you. It is a physical impossibility."
"Yea. Well, you're not exactly GQ material yourself. You sit there like an apprentice Jabba the Hut, telling me I'm the screwed up one."
Mark wasn't really that big. In fact, he'd lost some of his weight as he grew this last couple of years, but it was Mark's only sensitive spot and I desperately wanted to change the subject.
"Maybe," Mark said with a frown. "The difference is that I'm not weeping into my pillow every night about some girl I'll never have."
An awkward silence fell over the room like a humid night. Both of us stared at each other. Knowing full well that we'd come close to crossing the line into discussing emotions. Another of those rules that could never be broken.
Deciding that a stare-down wasn't going to solve anything, I swiped the hair out of my eyes and returned to my work, promising myself to ignore my friend and to not think about Haley Martin.
Mark returned to his comic books and a silence returned to the room, interrupted by the rapid clicking of the keyboard on my lap.
"Hey, speaking of girls. Where's your sister? Any chance of getting her to cook us some dinner?" Mark said with a smile. The awkward moment put behind us.
"That has to be the most sexist thing I have ever heard," I said.
"Yeah, well I'm a seventeen-year-old American male. It comes with the territory."
I shook my head, the guy was unfixable. Don't even try. If it weren't for the fact that he had stood by me since third grade. No matter what. Plus, he'd have killed anyone for messing with Amanda.
"She's upstairs, but Mom doesn't like her cooking. Not after that whole burnt towel incident."
"You guys treat her too easy," Mark said.
"She's blind, remember."
"Actually, sometimes I forget. I'm just saying, she's going to have to learn how to cook for herself. You're going off to college next year. Your mom works a lot of double shifts. She's fifteen." Mark said, shrugging his shoulders. "I thought they taught her all that stuff at that school she went to?"
Was he right? Had we been too easy with Amanda? She was so independent, already. Should we be pushing her to do more?
Before I could continue, a loud thunk reverberated throughout the room as everything went dark. Where there had been power, now there was none. No warning. Just an eerie silence that engulfed the room as computer fans stopped twirling and the overhead florescent lights stopped buzzing.
Fumbling around in the dark I grabbed a flashlight off the workbench and jumped to the equipment rack to start shutting things down. I raced to get everything off before the power came back on. It wasn't the shutdown that killed equipment, it was the sudden surge of returning electricity that burnt up components. I really should get a UPS, but it was one of those expenses that hadn't seemed vital.
Beginning to breathe again, I secured the last router and shut the cabinet door letting out a heavy sigh.
"How long do you think it will be out?" a disembodied voice said from the couch.
"Fourteen minutes and thirty-eight seconds."
"Huh?"
I shook my head. Mark rarely got my jokes. "I don't know," I said with more patience.
The two of us sat in the darkened room and waited for the lights to come back on. I began to get twitchy after only a few minutes. My fingers itched to be doing something. The muscles on my neck and shoulders began to tighten up. I should be doing something. This was wasted time that would never be made up.
"Can I borrow the flashlight?" Mark asked.
I glanced at the standard flashlight sitting on its butt end pointing towards the ceiling, reflecting a pale white light into the room. It seemed to be the last piece of modern civilization to still work. "Why?"
"So I can finish reading," Mark answered as if it were a stupid question.
"No way, just sit there and wait. It should only be a minute or two."
We sat and waited.
The boredom was threatening, hanging over my head like a big knife. I retrieved my cell phone off the workbench and checked. No bars. That was strange. The Cell towers had a backup generator. They should have been working. A sick, worried feeling passed through my bones. I tried dialing my mom but got nothing. Not even a dial tone.
"Enough of this crap. I need to check on Amanda," I said as I snatched the flashlight off the table and marched up the basement stairs. Each step stomping.
"Hey, wait up," Mark said as he scrambled to stay close to the light. "It's not like the lights going out are going to bug her."
"Jesus, you can be such a jerk."
The basement door opened into the kitchen. Our house was second generation suburbia. The first generation had bought the houses in the seventies, raised their children, sent them off to college, and then sold out to the newcomers who would repeat the process.
Built on the outskirt of a logging town, it had been the lost dream of some politician or chamber of commerce official. Instead, it had become something of a joke. Twenty-four houses sitting on a cul-de-sac in the forest. You could still find signs where they'd laid sewer lines for the future expansion. An expansion that never happened.
The town itself had never grown to meet up with the housing development, leaving several miles of forest and rugged wilderness between them. It wasn't rural, but close enough.
The main thing was that it had high-speed cable. That's all I cared about.
The basement door opened into the kitchen and the dining room beyond.
"Amanda," I yelled at the top of my lungs. A heavy silence greeted me. Shaking my head, I reached the bottom of the regular stairs and yelled again.
She was probably upstairs in her room listening to her music. Racing up the stairs with Mark on my heels I banged on her door three times. Loud enough to pierce through whatever it was she was listening to.
"What?" a soft feminine voice demanded.
My heart started beating again in relief as I opened the door, shining the week flashlight beam on my sister. She was laying on her bed, her hands tucked behind her neck.
Her head turned to follow my movement across the room. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt she looked like any other fifteen-year-old girl until you saw her eyes. They weren't strange or deformed. Just slow to track what was going on around her. They always seemed to be a split second behind.
Mark halted at her door. He better. Amanda would skin us both alive if Mark stepped into her room.
"The power's out," I said.
She frowned for a moment, "So?"
"The lights are out," Mark said from the doorway.
Her head whipped to the side. I could tell she was placing Mark into her reference points and making sure he was still outside her room. Sitting up she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and removed her headphones, gently placing them into their normal spot on her bedside table.
"Again. So?" she said with a soft smile. "Welcome to my world guys."
My heart turned over. I really could never understand what my sister's life was like.
"I just thought you should know," I said as we made our way downstairs. "Where does Mom keep the candles?"
"In the junk drawer in the kitchen," Amanda said. She was the resident expert on the location of all items in the house.
I made my way downstairs with both of them following.
"Damn," Mark muttered as he banged into an end table. "Hey, how about shining the light this way. She doesn't need it, remember."
Amanda laughed. It was obvious that she was enjoying his pain.
I retrieved the candles, lighting them with a book of matches I found in the same drawer. Placing one in the dining room I brought the other one into the living room, cupping it to ensure the flame wasn't blown out.
Turning the flashlight off, I flopped into a recliner and waited. Mark and Amanda had taken opposite ends of the couch. Each of them scooted into the far corner. As
far away from each other as it was possible to be without being obvious.
I shook my head, those two had perfected the art of ignoring each other. To Mark, Amanda would always be my annoying little sister who had interrupted way too many late night sessions of World of Warcraft and insisted on joining our Star Wars marathons.
To Amanda, Mark would always be my infuriating best friend who treated her like a necessary evil. Something he had to put up with if he wanted to hang out with me.
"You should check on Mrs. Thompson," Amanda said.
"You're probably right," I said as I grabbed the flashlight.
"Who's Mrs. Thompson?" Mark asked.
"She's our next door neighbor," Amanda answered. "She's older than dirt. Probably in her sixties, I bet. She used to babysit me when I was a little kid."
"You're still a little kid," Mark said with a sneer.
Amanda returned the sneer. "Careful, you're showing your stupidness again. Anyway, we've always looked out for her."
"Mom says we owe her big time," I added. "When Dad left, Mrs. Thompson stepped in and helped Mom get through the tough times."
Amanda winced when I mentioned Dad, but it didn't do any good ignoring the truth.
"You guys stay here, I'll just run over and check on her. I'll be right back."
Grabbing the flashlight, I headed next door. It felt good to be doing something. I liked Mrs. Thompson. She was one of those people who always smiled. She seemed to enjoy life and couldn't understand why anyone wasn't having a great time.
Outside was as dark as inside. A black moonless night with a heavy cloud cover. Several of the houses across the street had their candles or lamps working.
It was the silence that hit me like a fist to the gut. The only sound, a slight breeze ruffling the leaves across the grass.
My breath hitched a little in the cold air. If there'd been any light, I probably could have seen my breath.
Mrs. Thompson's house appeared dark and empty. I'd expected candles flickering in every window. Hurrying, I reached over to push the doorbell, then laughed at myself. Knocking, I stepped back and waited. A faint noise behind the door let me know someone was there.
Unbreakable Rules (Too Many Rules Book 3) Page 2