But what just happened? What was that?
“Don’t worry about them,” Margaret said. Janis caught herself staring at the place where the surfers had disappeared. “They were jerks. Worse than jerks. Pigs. And they did interrupt us. You were telling me about a dream?”
Janis felt herself nod, but before she could reassemble her thoughts, Margaret’s friends burst onto the blanket: “Did you, like, see that girl’s hair?” “What a total disaster.” “It’s like she set it with a waffle maker!”
Margaret rose and brushed her legs off, scolding the girls for tracking sand onto the blanket. At five foot ten, she stood a full head taller than her friends, completing her role as mother hen to them in stature as well as manner. When she got them settled, she drew several quarters from her canvas bag and announced she was going up to the pay phones to call her boyfriend, Kevin. She set off through the patchwork maze of beach towels and glistening sunbathers while Janis tried to come up with an excuse to tag along.
Before that could happen, Heather swiveled toward her. “Feather Heather,” Janis still thought of her, because of her blonde Farrah Fawcett ’do. She’d trimmed it shorter over the years, but the neat center part, highlights, and flipped out sides had never quite gone away.
Heather plucked up the book at Janis’s hip and held it at arm’s length. “Eww,” she said, making a face. “Summer reading?”
Janis started to shake her head, then stopped. She had been assigned summer reading, but this wasn’t 1984. It was The Outsiders, a book she’d already read twice but grabbed off her bookshelf anyway. There was something in the urban edginess that captivated her, something in the idea of kids her age — Ponyboy and Johnny — having to go it alone in that kind of world while somehow managing to “stay golden.” It wasn’t Sweet Valley High, that was for sure.
It also wasn’t something Heather would ever understand.
“Yeah,” Janis said. “Summer reading.”
“Who’s your freshman English teacher?”
“It’s not Mr. Adams, is it?” Tina asked hopefully. She had pulled a Flashdance-style workout shirt over her blue bikini and begun fumigating her dark, voluminous hair with Aqua Net. Janis squinted and held her breath as the mist blew past, the chemical tang finding the back of her mouth anyway.
“Tina had, like, the biggest crush on Mr. Adams,” Heather explained.
“You thought he was hot, too!”
Janis cleared her throat. “Fern,” she said. “Mrs. Fern.”
“She’s totally weird,” Tina said.
“Weird?” Janis asked. “How so?”
“Like, forget the teachers.” Heather waved her hand. “They’re all weird.”
“For sure,” Tina said. “The important question is…”
Janis’s face began to burn. She knew what was coming.
“…do you have a boyfriend yet?”
Kelly’s crimped hair shook as she giggled.
“Well, no… I mean…” Janis hoped her cheeks weren’t as red as they felt. “I play a lot of sports, so I don’t really have time…”
The girls pressed nearer. Janis winced, trying her best to endure their close company. They were Margaret’s friends, after all, and high school seniors. But the truth was, she would have traded them for her fellow summer-league outfielders in an instant. At least she could communicate with them, especially Samantha, her best friend. Samantha would be starting Thirteenth Street High tomorrow too, but bummer of bummers, wasn’t going to be in any of her classes.
“So, like, listen,” Heather said, turning a serious face on her. “If you’re going to start out on the right foot, there are a few groups of guys you totally need to know about. First, avoid the losers.”
“Losers?”
“Yeah,” Tina said. “The ones in black. Heavy metal shirts. Commando pants. Gross, stringy hair.”
“Pizza-faced burnouts,” Kelly added with a giggle.
“They park on Titan Terrace behind the school and smoke cloves,” Heather said, “among other things. Get mixed up with that crew, and you can, like, kiss your reputation goodbye.”
“Forever,” Tina added gravely.
Janis looked around for Margaret.
“So right, forget about them,” Heather said, taking Janis’s arm. “The group you totally want to start with are the preps. They’re clean, well-dressed, have money, so you’re, like, guaranteed a good date. Not some cheap park-and-grope.”
“Janis said she’s into sports.” Tina pronounced it as though it was a foreign word. “She’d probably have better luck with the jocks.”
Janis tuned the girls out as they went back and forth on whether she was better suited for a prep, a jock, or some hybrid of the two. She looked past them to the surf, where the heads of swimmers bobbed like buoys and waves frothed toward shore, some carrying surfers. Farther out, the water had turned the color of gunmetal. Black clouds churned against the horizon. From deep inside one mass, lightening flashed. Janis squinted, trying to gauge whether or not the clouds were moving inland.
“Whatever!” Heather relented with a loud sigh and took Janis’s arm again. “The point is, preps are for sure where you want to start. And there are preps among the jocks.” She shot a narrow look at Tina. “Nice ones, too.”
“Anyway, after preps and jocks, the pickings are pretty slim,” Tina said. “Though it doesn’t hurt to flirt with the nerds now and again.”
“Why would you do that?” Janis asked.
“To get help with your math.”
The others nodded wisely. It took Janis a second to realize they were serious and another to decide that the last five minutes had been a complete waste of her life. She found herself wishing again that she’d stayed home.
“What kind of nonsense are you filling my sister’s head with?”
The girls spun from her so abruptly that Janis felt like she was being dropped. It was a relief, though. She had been getting that prickly, pressed-in feeling she sometimes got around large crowds. She squinted up at Margaret, who stood over them looking toward the ocean.
Margaret clapped her hands briskly. “We’ve got about ten minutes to pack it in, girls. A storm’s coming.”
* * *
Janis slept most of the ride home, her sluggish rest textured by the grit of salt and dreams of black thunderheads. She awakened when Feather Heather, their last drop-off, hugged Margaret through the window and jogged up her parents’ walkway.
“See you tomorrow,” Heather called over her shoulder.
Janis yawned and looked over her ruddy arms, which stung when she stretched them. SPF 20 or no, the sun had done a number on them.
“Did you have a good time?” Margaret asked as she swung back onto Sixteenth Avenue from Heather’s neighborhood. They had beaten the storm inland, and now the setting sun filtered through the canopy of oak trees, flashing the car with golden light. Margaret smiled and squeezed Janis’s knee, not waiting for her answer. “My little sister. I can’t believe you’re going to be a Thirteenth Street Titan tomorrow.”
Janis winced, watching the blanched spots on her knee turn red again. Her legs had fared little better than her arms. “Yeah, me neither.”
“Don’t worry about whatever Heather and the others told you.” Margaret sighed and shook her head. “They’re boy crazy, so I can only guess. Take care of yourself first, and the boy thing will take care of itself. Just look at me and Kevin…” Her voice trailed off.
When Janis peered over, she found her sister’s gaze lingering on the rearview mirror.
“So it was him,” Margaret said.
“Who? Kevin?” Janis asked, turning.
“No, no, I saw his car in the parking lot when I went to call Kevin. It was parked a little down from ours. He’s been behind us most of the way home.” Margaret returned her gaze to the road. “Never struck me as the beach type.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Leonard.”
“Leonard?” Janis echoed.
; “Yeah, from the neighborhood.”
And now Janis could see the bug-eyed Datsun some three or four cars back. A cold queasiness besieged her and she faced forward again, slumping down. Sweat broke around her throat.
“Is something the matter?” Margaret asked.
“Nuh-uh,” Janis answered quickly.
Then why are you losing it? She pressed her hand to her chest as if that could suppress the escalating thuds. Her body was reacting to his name, to the fact that he was behind them. But why? It wasn’t like her to freak out. If she were alone, she might have slapped herself.
The Prelude slowed toward the landscaped island and wooden sign that announced their neighborhood: OAKWOOD. Janis peeked into the passenger-side mirror in time to see the signal light on the green hatchback flashing. She imagined Mr. Leonard’s long, pale brow looming over the wheel, his yellow-tinted glasses tracking the turn into Oakwood. Tracking them, maybe.
Then, for no apparent reason, Janis imagined his lips holding a cigarette.
Only there was a reason.
Janis sat upright as if she had slapped herself, her thoughts sharpening to points. The experience last night. The dream-that-wasn’t-a-dream. In it, the red-orange tip of a cigarette had illuminated a pair of glasses. Yes, yes, she remembered that now. Someone had been watching. From the house behind theirs, the one on Oakwood’s main street, up ahead on the left.
The house where Mr. Leonard lived.
Janis peered beyond Margaret as they drew nearer the dark brown house. It stood two stories tall, its windows seeming to possess a disturbing sense of sight now, a disturbing knowing. The windows were bracketed by false shutters the color of old yellow teeth, the same color as the front door. Looking on them, Janis felt an acute ache inside her own jaw — and in her right side, for some reason. She jerked when the garage door gave a lurch. It ratcheted upward like a gaping mouth.
“Janis?”
Janis turned from her sister’s concerned face to peer into the passenger-side mirror again. She watched the Datsun slow, then angle sharply into the driveway and disappear from sight.
3
Scott Spruel’s glasses clicked against something. His eyes opened to a green-pixelated blur and his lungs to a broth of computer fumes tinged with B.O. He pushed himself from the computer screen — vertebrae popping in a line — until he met the chair’s felt backrest. Gasping, he swiveled toward the window.
All of the cars in his subdivision had a distinctive sound, a signature, and Scott had come to recognize the Prelude’s, to anticipate its return. He parted two of the blinds, as he had done that morning, but now peered onto a street cast in tea-colored light and steep shadows.
Cripes, how long have I been gone?
Before Scott could twist his watch right-side up, the Prelude was passing in front of his house, turning down the short street. It circled the cul-de-sac, tires swishing against the blacktop, and eased to a stop in front of the Graystones’. Seconds later, Janis stepped from the car, her hair still up in a ponytail, but her face now ruddy with sun. Scott imagined the warmth of the beach across her shoulders.
He sat up straighter, his lips beginning to move: Hi, Janis.
Janis disappeared behind the car’s open trunk door and reappeared seconds later, canvas bag slung over her shoulder, soccer ball tucked inside her elbow. She backed toward the driveway and cocked a hip beneath the ball as she waited for Margaret to close up the car.
Enjoying your last day of freedom? he asked. Yeah, me too. Are you nervous about high school? Don’t be. They say it’s just like middle school… only astronomically harder. Scott gritted his teeth. (“Astronomically,” you dipshit? “Astronomically?”) And look on the bright side. We can count our remaining years of incarceration on one hand. Or, more precisely, on one of E.T.’s hands. With his… um… four fingers.
“God, you’re hopeless,” Scott muttered.
He drove his imaginary self away from Janis with a twelve-pronged flog.
Janis started up the semi-circular driveway, Margaret joining her. A cabbage palm centerpieced their front lawn, and Scott had to crane his neck to keep Janis in view. When she arrived on the front porch, she paused, her ponytail swishing as she looked around. Then she disappeared inside the house after Margaret.
Scott released the blinds. Another opportunity gone.
He sagged back toward his computer, picking at the handwritten notes piled in small drifts around the equipment on his desk. He fought to concentrate, his mind reeling from Janis’s entrance into his world, from her just as sudden removal. He selected a random scrap of graph paper and held it up to his glasses: ARPANet command lines he’d copped from a hacking board, nothing that was going to help him here. He tossed the paper aside. No, he was deeper in than that.
He blinked and read to the bottom of the screen:
.....
.....
- Open
WELCOME TO STLA-TAC – ARMY INFORMATION SYSTEMS COMMAND – ST. LOUIS
**FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY**
**TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED**
- Login?
>sys2428
- Password?
>ggt925
Only one digit remained in the password, one decisive digit.
Scott swallowed the bitter bite of adrenaline. He had taken special care to mask his modem call through a series of innocuous 1-800 numbers. But this caller wasn’t acting innocuously, far from it. He was dialing into no-no land.
Once more, Scott closed his eyes and concentrated on the modem. A part of his mind — his consciousness, he supposed — began twining in on itself like copper filaments inside a tapering cable. The twists came sharper, tighter, his world constricting toward a suffocating darkness.
Hold on for a few more seconds.
His head felt like it was being crushed inside a compactor.
A few more seconds to… true… power…
At last he was forced through what felt like a pinpoint. He burst into a chaotic beyond.
Scott could still sense himself sitting at his desk, his fingers resting on the blocks of keys, but his immediate experience, his reality, was that of speed, of supercharged distances. He shot along the telecommunication lines, frames, and mechanical switches, becoming the connection: Gainesville to Jacksonville, then along a major trunk line to Atlanta. Within milliseconds, he was in the St. Louis area, cascading down local loops to the Army Information Systems Command, his latest and — if he succeeded — greatest hack.
The perfect job for Stiletto.
Of all his Dungeons & Dragons characters, Stiletto remained Scott’s guilty favorite. An 18th-level thief, Stiletto had a bad habit of getting into places he wasn’t supposed to get into and accessing things he wasn’t supposed to access. In one campaign, which had nearly come to blows with the other players, he’d hidden away their magical items and then ransomed them back for leadership. Craig and Chun refused to role-play with him for months after, but Scott didn’t see what the big deal was. He hadn’t kept their items, hadn’t pawned them for gold or platinum pieces. No, he’d only wanted to see whether he could do it — and with a pair of killer rolls on a twenty-sided die, he had.
Just like now. Scott only wanted to see whether he could, whether he could slip past Uncle Sam’s sentry, snoop around a little to prove he’d been there, and then leave for good. The campaign secure under his belt, nothing stolen or damaged, no one the wiser.
And that would be enough.
Scott concentrated, grounding himself in the data current. He imagined himself as Stiletto, crouched before a forbidden gate, peering into an elaborate locking mechanism. Scott owned a real lock-picking kit, something he’d sent away for the year before and then put into practice on every pin- and disc-tumbler system he could get his hands on. He imagined himself drawing the tools from his belt, inserting his favorite pick, listening, feeling…
Far away, Scott’s finger punched a key. He trained his thoughts on the modem, on “beaming out,” and in
a shot, his consciousness returned to his body. The screen swam into focus.
And there it was:
-Password?
>ggt9251
His index finger hovered over the RETURN key, but Scott already knew. He didn’t need to press the key to find out. He was on the brink of breaking inside the information system for the United States Army.
The power!
“Scott?”
He started and banged his knees against the bottom of the desk. “Cripes!” he cried, rubbing his thighs and twisting toward the door. Inside the growing shaft of light loomed his mother’s barrel-sized silhouette. J.R., their toy poodle, stood beside her in a knitted dog sweater, rattling with nervous energy. Scott threw his hand to his brow as his mother flipped on the light switch, his heart still racing.
“Don’t you knock?” he muttered.
“What was that, mister?”
Scott’s throat constricted as he swallowed his words. She stared at him another moment, her eyes like black tacks, then nodded. That’s what I thought, said the nod. She shot her gaze around the room.
“Have you been in here all day?”
“No.” Scott walked his legs further under the desk where she wouldn’t see his pajama bottoms.
“Do you think Lee Iacocca got to where he is by shutting himself in a sty and playing games all day?”
Scott shrugged. He had no idea who Lee Iacocca was.
His mother shuffled sideways into the room, just far enough to hold out the cordless phone. Sweat glistened over her wrinkled nose. She had come from Jazzercise, he saw: powder-blue leotard, pink knitted legwarmers, matching headband. The previous summer, it had been Weight Watchers and The Jane Fonda Workout. The summer before that, Richard Simmons and The Beverly Hills Diet. His mother didn’t embrace the latest health fads, Scott thought, she grappled them into submission.
XGeneration, Books 1-3: You Don't Know Me, The Watchers, and Silent Generation Page 2