“That’s not what I’m saying. You’ve got a good life. Your parents…” Moses trailed off. “They’re good to you.”
“But bad to everyone else, right?”
Moses shook his head, his brow furrowed with frustration. “How did we end up on opposite sides of this argument? I’m the one who’s supposed to be all crazy, and you’re supposed to be the one who doesn’t want to make waves.”
“Relax, Batman.” Alix grinned. “Just enjoy it.”
“Seriously, Alix. Cut out the superhero stuff. That’s the kind of thinking that gets people nailed. Don’t get cocky.”
Alix sobered and reached out to him. “I get it.” She held his gaze, trying to let him know that she wasn’t crazy, that she wasn’t reckless. “I’m careful. I’m really careful. You can trust me on that.”
“I just don’t want to lose you.”
They started walking again, their arms interlinked. Alix leaned against him, enjoying the stolen time together. Moses still didn’t seem totally relaxed, though. Alix glanced up at him again. “You’re not going to lose me,” she said. “Okay?”
He blew out his breath. “I know.”
“But you don’t believe me.”
“Sometimes things get under your skin. You watch two parents die. You see your uncle locked up.…” He trailed off, looking troubled.
“Moses?”
“Yeah?”
Alix swallowed, unsure of how to ask the question. “What were your parents like?”
“You really want to know?”
She slipped her hand into his and squeezed tightly. “I just want to know whatever you feel like telling me.”
As she said it, she was surprised how true it felt. She just liked being with him. She liked the way it felt to have Moses holding her hand, and she liked the easy way he gave her room to stand aside when a jogger zipped past them. Everything she did with him felt right. She didn’t even have to think about it.
When she’d dated Brad Summers in her sophomore year, she’d always felt self-conscious, trying to figure out even the simple mechanics of holding hands, let alone kissing. Let alone anything more. It had all been something she had to think about. She worried what Brad would think when she held his hand, or when she didn’t. When they kissed, she worried about what he was thinking when she let her tongue slip into his mouth.… It had all been so much work. Watching herself from the outside, and trying to do everything right.
With Moses, Alix didn’t think about any of that. She just was. She walked beside him because she liked it, held his hand because she wanted to, kissed him how she liked, and liked what he did to her in turn.
Alix caught him looking at her. “What?”
“Beats me. You were the one smiling.”
Alix felt herself blush. She looked away. Okay. Maybe still a little self-conscious.
Out on the river, a man was sculling downstream. Strong strokes, silent and smooth. They stepped off the trail to watch.
“Watch out for the poison ivy,” Alix warned.
“Which one’s that?”
“Seriously? There’s something you don’t know?” Alix asked. “I thought you knew everything.” She pointed out the shiny leaves. “Those ones. Three-leaf clusters.”
Moses frowned, staring at the plant for a serious moment, seeming to lock it into his mind. “Never needed to learn about plants. I’m a city boy.”
“And what city was that?”
“Chicago. Then Vegas. After I started living with my uncle.”
“Chicago?” she prompted.
“You’re the inquisition today, aren’t you?”
Alix felt a little annoyed at the implication. “You know, you stalked me for like eight months and did background checks on all my friends and family. I’m still catching up here. Help me out, will you?”
Moses laughed. “All right. I hear you. I’m not used to talking about this stuff. My uncle always said it was smarter not to tell too much real stuff. It’s better to separate… different parts of your life.”
“Like targets and friends.”
Moses blew out his breath. “Yeah. So, with my family… I don’t know. It was a long time ago. My dad worked for the city. He was an engineer. Built overpasses and stuff. My mom was an actress before they got married. She was in plays, little parts, though. Nothing big. Later on, she was an office manager for a company. Middle-class life, all that.”
“Were they nice?”
“I know I liked being with them. I liked my dad when he came home from work, and we’d do these puzzles together when I was real little.…” He shrugged. “I don’t know. They didn’t really get a chance to screw me up much. My uncle did all that.”
“They sound nice.” Alix tried to remember what she’d been like when she was that age. Wondering what her life would feel like if it were suddenly snapped into pieces the way Moses’s had been. She mostly remembered Zoe Van Nuys and Kala Whitmore starting a rumor that she stuffed her bra.
Alix cast her mind back, trying to pin down more details from that time. Birthday parties, sure. Her ninth she remembered because it had been a German chocolate cake with five layers, and Dad kept saying that the slice he was giving her was as big as her head.… She remembered Mom and Dad’s anniversary—their twentieth?—the two of them going out dressed in black while Alix and annoying baby Jonah were stuck at home with a sitter Alix nicknamed Milkface. That was before they’d moved to Connecticut and gotten the bigger house. Before Seitz. Right around the time Dad had started Banks Strategy Partners. Alix was disturbed to find that her memories were so fragmented.
The rower passed out of sight, and they started walking again, arm in arm. “My mom and dad took me to Disney World,” Moses said. “I remember that. My dad let me go on whatever ride I wanted. I went to SeaWorld, too. Saw Shamu. My dad got me a stuffed Shamu, even though Mom said it was expensive. He got me one that was so big.…” Moses stretched out his arms.
Alix was struck by how soft Moses’s expression became when he let down his guard. “I remember carrying this big orca around, and it was about as long as I was. Shamu’s tail kept dragging on the ground.” He was smiling at the memory, and his words were coming faster. “And I remember there was a hot dog stand outside Dad’s office building. Sometimes, if I was off school, he’d take me to work. I had to stay in his cubicle and stay quiet and color or read, but at lunch, we’d go out and have hot dogs.…” He trailed off. The softness left his face and his expression closed up again. “It’s all stupid stuff. I don’t know why I remember the things I remember.”
Alix swallowed and looked away, trying not to show him how much it affected her, but the sadness she felt was almost overwhelming. Listening to him hunt for memories of something good, and knowing how much he’d been robbed of.
“It sounds nice,” she said, and was glad her voice sounded almost unaffected. “They sound nice.”
Moses said, “I can’t remember their faces unless I look at a photo, you know? It’s weird. But I remember my dad had calluses on his hands because he’d lift weights in the basement. Sometimes I try to remember more, but mostly I remember finding Dad in the bathroom on the floor. Him trying to get up and not being able to. And then Mom—” He broke off.
“And you ended up in Las Vegas.”
“Yeah.” Moses’s voice hardened. “Uncle Ty. Tyrone Cruz. He always said Ty was short for Typhoon. Man was in the Army and got kicked out. That man…” He shook his head. “My Uncle Ty knew how to smile. That man could smile himself out of anything. Smile himself into anything, too.” Abruptly, Moses deepened his voice, mimicking, becoming someone else entirely. “‘We don’t do the nine-to-five, Mo. We too good for that ant work. We be grasshoppers. Smaaaart grasshoppers. Let the ants do all the work.’” He shrugged. “I didn’t figure out until a lot later that there was a name for his racket.”
“He was a con man, wasn’t he?”
“Taught me everything I know. Taught me the long con and short con. Tau
ght me to pick the marks and rope them. Taught me how to talk just the way you knew the mark wanted to hear. Taught me body language. How to read people. How to keep my fingers fast. Taught me how to fool the eye. Taught me how to slip a watch off a man’s wrist and chase after him and get a reward. Simple shit like that. But he taught me to fool the person behind the eye, too. Taught me how wearing a uniform will make someone trust you. Put on hotel livery, you ain’t just some stranger anymore. Wear a suit with a conference badge on it, and people think they know you, even when they don’t. How to talk, how to look, how to be. He taught me all that. Hacking is what he called it. Just like Kook does on computers, but I hacked people. I hacked conversations. Mostly, though, I did a lot of roping people into rigged poker games.” He shook his head.
“Was that good money?”
“When Uncle Ty wanted to work, it was. We’d make a big score and live for weeks on it.” He glanced over at Alix. “I mean, this is small money in comparison with Seitz life, but plenty to pay rent and eat steaks and for Uncle Ty to go out with his ladies.”
“Sounds surreal.”
“Looking back, I think it was. But I was young. It was just different. At first I thought it was strange, but then I just got used to it. Uncle Ty taught me different scams, we’d make a score, and he’d go out and party. And I’d read books in his apartment until he came back. It was life.”
“Did you go to school?”
Moses smirked. “Homeschool.”
“I’m serious.”
“Sometimes. Mostly it just turned out that I could always do whatever they wanted me to do, but I could do it faster alone. Uncle Ty didn’t really care.” Moses deepened his voice again. “‘Long as you can read and do numbers, you’re good, son.’” Moses laughed. “Mostly by that he meant he wanted to make sure I could count cards and figure odds. The rest of it was all just grind and rules for sheep. Uncle Ty always thought my dad was a fool, the way he went to college and got a job with the city and all that. ‘Working for the man,’ he called it. My dad believed in rules: Play by the rules, work hard, get ahead, American dream, all that. Uncle Ty wanted to play only if he could rig the rules. If he couldn’t rig the game, he wouldn’t play. He said all that rules and obedience and college crap was for sheep.”
“Do you think I’m a sheep, too?”
“What?” Moses looked over, surprised.
“I mean, my whole life, it’s been rules. Get good grades. Stay in school. Don’t be late for class. Get an SAT tutor. Have at least three extracurriculars. Keep your GPA above 3.9. Volunteer for two charities. Get into an Ivy League school. Get a job that people can brag about, maybe in an investment bank. Then get a husband who’s even richer than you so you can get a baby and then quit your job, or maybe become a supermom and do it all and rule the universe.…”
She trailed off, thinking of all the obedient Seitz boys and girls streaming across the quad in their school uniforms, heads down, cramming hard for the next round of exams, sweating hard for their 4.0.
“So, like I said, do you think I’m a sheep, too?”
“That was my uncle. Not me.”
“But that’s what I do. I go to school. I get good grades.”
“So? My dad built bridges. You don’t do that without going to college. I don’t think you’re some kind of Seitz robot girl.”
Alix wasn’t sure what kind of assurance she was looking for, but that wasn’t exactly it.
“Gee, thanks,” she said drily.
“Alix.” Moses stopped walking. “Seriously. Neither of us has to be whatever our people were. Maybe we’re outliers, right? Data scatter. Maybe we don’t show up as normal at all. You don’t end up in an investment bank, and I don’t end up in jail with my dumb uncle. You’re not like those other Seitz girls.”
“But I kind of am,” Alix pushed back. “That’s where I come from, right? Rich. White. All that.”
Moses laughed. “Well, you’re definitely white and you’re definitely rich. But no, you’re not the same. First time I saw you, I could tell.”
“What did you think you saw?”
“Something was just real screwy with you.”
Alix slugged him in the arm. Moses fended her off, laughing as she came after him again. He finally trapped her hands in his, leaving them both staring at each other, breathing hard.
“I’m serious,” he said. “As soon as I started watching you, I had a feeling about you. All the other girls you ran with… they were like perfect little dolls. Heads down, doing their little tests, going to their little parties, buying their little cars. Kook called you all cogs, but it was more than that. It was like you were the shiniest, prettiest, most expensive, high-tech cogs you’ve ever seen. I mean, you were all perfect, right?”
“And I wasn’t?”
Moses started walking again. “You know what I mean. It just looked like all the rest of your friends were going to find a nice, expensive slot to fit into… and you weren’t. I just kept looking at you and thinking your shape was wrong. Like if we bumped you right, you’d pop out. And then you’d be seriously dangerous.”
“You said that before, about my being dangerous. But I’m not.”
“Quit it,” Moses said.
“Quit what?”
“Quit it with the thing where you cut yourself down. You’re going to one of the best private schools in the country. You’re dangerous already. And that’s before you’re… you.”
“And I am…?”
“Okay.” Moses stopped. “How long did it take for you to put all the connections together about the Doubt Factory?”
“I don’t know. A couple of weeks.”
“It took me years.”
“But you told me where to start. It was easy with a jump start.”
“How late did you stay up doing all your research?”
“Late, I guess. I had classes, too.”
“Three AM? Four AM?”
“Sure. When else was I going to do it?”
Moses laughed. “You know a lot of your friends who spend their spare time rooting around in government acronyms? Trying to keep NIOSH and OSHA separate?”
“No, but—”
“What’s the Donors Capital Fund?”
Alix cast her mind back to her research, recalling her notes. “It’s a money anonymizer. There’s also Donors Trust, which is pretty much the same. Same address, anyway. Companies funnel money through it, and then Donors Capital Fund passes it on. Donors Fund spends a lot on climate doubt, but you can’t tell who’s giving the money to them. They’re funneling millions these days.”
“You see?” Moses was smiling at her. “You’re interested in the world, Alix. You might not know that, but it’s kind of rare. Someone throws a puzzle at you, and you start working it, and you start putting all these interesting pieces together while you work it. And, boy, do you work it. Next thing I know, I’ve got this Seitz girl wandering around in my factory, uninvited.”
“Well…”
“Seitz preps people to take a test, or go to college, or get a job, but it doesn’t want them to do anything important or new or risky or dangerous,” he said. “You’re not like them. You don’t want to be on a shelf.”
“So you think I was just waiting for you to come along?”
“I think there are some people who want to bite into something and just chew it to pieces. Not just take a little bite, but just mash the whole thing up and keep chewing. If I didn’t come along, you’d have stayed on track, for a while, and then, at some point, I think you would have jumped. I don’t think you were ever going to end up as an investment banker. You were never going to be a sheep.”
“I might have ended up working at BSP.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Definitely not.”
“No?”
“You would have ended up running BSP. You would have ended up turning BSP into a global company with offices in sixteen countries, but you wouldn’t have ended up just working there. Don’t sell your
self short, Alix. You’re dangerous.”
“I feel nauseated and complimented at the same time.”
“Just saying you’re not a sheep.”
“My boyfriend’s full of compliments today.”
Moses looked at her seriously. “Is that what I am? Your boyfriend?”
“What, you think I sleep with just anyone?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Of course you’re my boyfriend.…” Alix faltered, suddenly feeling presumptuous and unsure of what Moses really felt for her. “I mean, if you want…”
Maybe he doesn’t like you that way.
“I mean,” Alix stumbled, “if you think I’m your girlfriend.…” She felt like she’d stepped off a cliff and found open air under her feet. She threw up her hands. “Will you help me out here? I’m dying! What do you think we are?” She could feel herself blushing horribly.
Moses burst out laughing and pulled her close. “I think you’re cute when you’re blushing,” he said.
“You’re a jerk,” she said, her words muffled against his chest.
“Good thing you like me, then.” He pulled her in tighter.
“So this is serious, right?”
“Boyfriend, girlfriend, going steady, whatever you want to call it, I’m good with it.”
It felt almost criminal how much she liked being wrapped inside his arms.
37
BY THE TIME SHE PICKED up Jonah at Sirius Comix, Alix was sweaty and happy, enjoying the fact of her secret life with Moses. She looked at her little brother affectionately. Life was good, the brother was good, all was good—
“You’re late,” Jonah complained.
“Sorry.” Alix grinned unrepentantly. “I got held up. You could have called.”
“I left my phone in your car,” he groused. He reached around on the floor and came up with it. He gave her another glare. “You used to be on time.”
Alix nodded absently and pulled out into traffic. “I said I was sorry already.”
“It’s okay.” He was fiddling with the phone, staring at it. “I know why you’re late. I get it.”
Alix glanced over at him, feeling a twinge of worry. She suppressed it. First rule of getting away with things was to deny deny deny. “Get what?”
The Doubt Factory Page 29