by Susan Vaught
“He’s smart like that. That’s why you need him, and he needs you, too, even more than I do.”
“You don’t need me.” My words burst out, almost like a laugh or a swear. “You gave up on me.”
“I gave up on me, not you.” Mom’s expression turned flat and distant. “I sent you to live with Dad because I had no idea how to be a good mother to you, not after the wreck.”
That didn’t make any sense to me. “Why would it be any different, being a good mom when I could walk and being a good mom when I couldn’t?”
“I don’t know. But it felt different.” Her expression just kept getting more distant. “Maybe because you getting hurt was my fault. And maybe because I could tell I was being too scared, saying ‘no’ to you all the time when you needed ‘yes’ instead.”
Since I barely remembered being little and living with her, I didn’t remember her saying “no” all the time. But I believed her.
“I didn’t want you to get hurt again,” she said. “And I really didn’t want to let you down a second time.”
“You did,” I said.
“I know.”
“I don’t want to live with you.”
“I know that, too.”
I changed positions in my chair out of nerves, not because it was time to shift.
“Did you—” I almost choked, but I made myself ask a really important question, at least for my heart. “Did you ever really want me? Before the accident, I mean?”
Mom’s mouth came open. “Of course I wanted you. You weren’t planned, not at that age, but when I found out I was going to have you, I was so happy.” Emotions flickered across her face too fast for me to keep up with them. “And the accident didn’t change how much I wanted you in my life.”
I fidgeted in my chair. “What did it change, then?”
It was a long time, and a lot of face-changing, before Mom came up with, “My confidence, I guess.” And then, “I don’t honestly know.”
You can’t always make something haul the load you want it to, Max, Toppy’s voice said in my head. Not when it wasn’t made to do that work.
For a strange second or two, I saw my mother as one of my circuit boards, blinking and flaring and burning out into dark nothingness. Then I saw her as that picture from her yearbook, just five years older than I was right now, not knowing what she wanted to be, or where she wanted to live—not knowing what would happen to her, not at all.
“I . . . wouldn’t mind if you visited more, Mom.” There. That wasn’t so awful. Except it kinda felt scarier than Thornwood’s creepy picture, and even the fire at my school. “It hasn’t been awful this time. Not the you part, anyway. The only awful thing right now is the hacker.”
“Guess we’re uniting against a common enemy?” Mom met my gaze again, and she looked so sad I wanted to get out my silver paint pen and draw a glittering teardrop below one of her eyes. “Like the superheroes you used to talk about all the time when you were younger.”
“Maybe.”
“I heard what you said in the workshop.” She gestured to my chair. “About working on your chair to turn yourself into a superhero in real life. If you really could be a superhero, any of them, which would you pick?”
“It changes,” I admitted. “But right now I’d pick Mr. Terrific. He’s from DC, not Marvel.”
“Why him?”
“He’s got fourteen doctoral degrees, and he’s brilliant in, like, everything.” I jerked a thumb toward my pathetic corkboard. “It would be nice to be smart enough to track down this hacker and get him off Toppy’s back. But honestly, Mom, I’m kinda past wanting to be a superhero. I just want to be . . . super.”
She looked confused.
That was okay, because I felt confused.
“Super,” I tried again. “More like heroes are supposed to be. Like, not getting mad all the time, and not saying mean stuff, and not doing things without thinking and making trouble I don’t even intend to make.”
“That’s hard,” Mom said. “I’m not sure I’ve got those things mastered, even at my age—but can I help you with any of it?”
“No, thanks, but—wait. You maybe could help with tracking the hacker and saving Toppy’s job, but only if you’re willing to break rules and really make him really, really mad.”
Mom folded her arms. “Try me.”
“I’m going to send you a photo.” I held up the iPad. “It’s too blurry for Lavender and me to read. We’ve been trying unblurring apps, but we’re not getting anywhere. Maybe you could.”
“What’s this a picture of?” Mom’s suspicious tone told me she realized I hadn’t been kidding about rule-breaking and Toppy-infuriating.
“A better crime board than ours.”
Pause. Eyebrow-scrunching. And then Mom said, “Okay.”
I pulled up the photo and sent it to her phone, and heard the ding when it hit. A few seconds later, Mom got some more dings, and so did I, but my brain was turning too many circles to care.
“For now, will you take down the rest of the cards on my corkboard?” I turned to my desk, to the stack of cards Lavender brought over, and chose a blue one. I thought about what I had read about Vivienne Thornwood before Mom came in, and how she was the one who had a right to revenge, way more than Hargrove ever did.
So, what if the hacker wasn’t a flashy, showy take-up-all-the-air-space person like Hargrove? What if the hacker was a quiet person who had actually been wronged, like Vivienne, who got tired of nobody knowing, nobody seeing?
I wrote in black marker, Tired of Being Invisible.
Mom handed me the old cards and I dropped them in the trash. When she put up the new card, I felt better, even though I didn’t really know why.
I thought more about Vivienne Thornwood and how she never got her own story because her husband controlled absolutely everything, even their legend, and I wrote, Might Have Been Overshadowed by a Bad Person.
Mom hung that one up under the first one.
Next, I thought about what Mayor Chandler said about Vivienne Thornwood, about how she might have loved her husband even with all his flaws, and I wrote, Might Love a Bad Person Even Though They Know the Person Is Bad.
After she hung up the third card, I said, “Do you think maybe Toppy and the police are searching for the wrong kind of suspect?”
Mom gave me an over-the-shoulder questioning look. “What do you mean?”
“Well, they’re hunting for criminals who want to get even with Toppy for arresting them.” I pointed at the board. “They’re assuming the person doing this is a bad guy, like Hargrove Thornwood. Maybe they should be looking for people like Vivienne Thornwood instead—people who got hurt in the situation, like family members of bad guys who Toppy arrested. Husbands or wives, boyfriends or girlfriends, brothers or sisters, maybe even kids. I mean, if somebody really hurt Toppy, I’d try to get even. Wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe,” she said, and not in that ignore-a-kid way. “It’s a good theory.”
“Wait! There’s a couple more.” I scribbled, Probably Knew About Detention, and handed that one to Mom, too, followed by Probably Local and Probably Knows Us Pretty Well. I finished with Has Good Computer Skills or Money to Hire Hacker.
She hung the card on the board, off to the side. I snapped a picture of the board.
Tired of Being Invisible.
Might Have Been Overshadowed By a Bad Person.
Might Love a Bad Person Even Though They Know the Person Is Bad.
Probably Knew About Detention.
Probably Local.
Probably Knows Us Pretty Well.
Has Good Computer Skills or Money to Hire Hacker.
There. Those cards felt right. I opened my iPad to send the picture to Lavender, along with the notes about by eBay discoveries.
That’s when I found the WHERE ARE YOU?? message.
And, Have you seen the news?
And, OMG, Max, it’s happening! THORNWOOD’S REVENGE!!
I closed
the iPad, crammed it next to my leg, and rolled straight at Mom and the bedroom door. She jumped out of the way. “Max?”
“Check your messages,” I said as I threw open the door. “And come on. We need to turn on the television.”
18
I got the television on in the living room just as Mom caught up with me. She had her phone in her hand.
“Mayor Chandler messaged. She said to stay inside. And Ms. Springfield wants to know if we’re okay.” She typed fast with her thumbs. “I’m telling them both that we’re fine.”
“ . . . night of chaos in tiny Blue Creek, Tennessee, to our north,” the newscaster was saying in the special report. “Multiple residents are reporting that their bank accounts have been cleaned out, and it’s possible the town’s general fund has been plundered. On top of that, several small fires are blazing in what looks like coordinated vandalism.”
“Not good,” Mom whispered as she put her phone in her pocket. I felt her hand grip my shoulder, and I didn’t push her away.
Fires? My eyes squeezed shut from the memory of what happened at school. For a second, I could smell that smoke again. My chest got so tight I couldn’t even take a whole breath. Then I forced my lids open and stared at the television.
The newscaster kept talking; burning trash cans had been left outside of one of Blue Creek High’s buildings, Blue Creek Nursing Home, an abandoned storage center on the outskirts of town, and the office of Blue Creek’s only commercial car lot. The fires were small, but they made a lot of smoke and set off alarms everywhere. Police, firefighters, and first responders were running in every direction due to nonstop calls reporting bomb threats, fraud, theft, and just about anything else that creaked in the night.
“Honey, be careful,” Mom said. “You’re about to dig holes in your armrests.”
I glanced down at my fingers. They were curled, my nails poking hard against the leather. My whole body felt rigid. I still couldn’t breathe right.
How far would this go? What if the fires came to my house—or to the police station? Toppy had to stop this. I had to help him. I had to.
“The voice calling in the threats sounds like a drone,” a frustrated nine-one-one operator said on the television screen, talking into the wide-eyed reporter’s microphone. “And different numbers show up on the ID each time.”
“They’re spoofed,” I said, my words coming out in a cracked whisper.
“What?” Mom’s voice sounded shaky.
“You can do it with a computer,” I told her. “There are apps for making phone calls through the Internet. You can put in whatever number you want as the origin—like the e-mail hoaxer did to you through your website.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“ . . . and the total haul from the cyberthefts is estimated to be nearly a million dollars,” the announcer continued. “That total could climb tomorrow as more Blue Creek residents wake to this nightmare and check their accounts and assets.”
Our front door, which was hardly ever locked, burst open. My heart almost burst open, too. I sat up straight and opened my mouth to scream. Mom jumped in front of me, and then—“Max?” Captain Coker sounded worried.
“Here!” I called back, relief flooding me with heat. “It’s okay, Mom. Captain Coker’s good.” Mom edged to the side of me, her fists raised like she had been planning to punch a monster right in the nose.
I heard the door shut, locks being engaged—and then Captain Coker was striding into the room, closing blinds as she moved. The look on her face made my heart race.
“Ladies,” she said in a steady, firm tone, “I need you to shut off that television and step away from these windows. Ms. Brennan, take yourself a chair into the hallway and sit between the kitchen and the bedrooms, out of line of sight of any doors or windows. Max, follow her.”
I followed.
“What’s happening?” Mom asked as she arranged her chair as instructed.
“I’m not sure,” Captain Coker admitted, and somehow that was even more terrifying than what we had seen on television. “Emergency lines are jammed, websites and automated town functions crashed, bank accounts and public funds have been wiped out, traffic lights have lost their minds, and we’ve got a bunch of threats coming in. Little fires, broken glass, charred walls and doors, but nothing’s burning out of control. Least of our problems. I think the vandal just meant to scare people.”
“Where’s Toppy?” I asked, surprised I could say anything at all.
“He’s at the station with the mayor, working on this mess,” Captain Coker said. “He’s mad as all get-out, but he’s fine. He called me himself to make sure we had you two covered, and I happened to be coming on shift to relieve the trooper you dragged all over the earth today.”
Mom let out a nervous laugh. It sounded like a squeak. She sank into the chair she had carried into the hall and started messing with her phone. I opened my iPad and told Lavender that we were safe at home with Captain Coker. I also resent her the photo of our reorganized corkboard, but I didn’t figure she’d look at it right away.
“We’ll just stay here away from the windows and doors for a while,” Captain Coker said, “until things settle down out there.”
Mom bent down and kissed me on the cheek.
It didn’t feel bad, having her next to me, so I sort of felt mean, but not really, for the next thing I said.
“I want Toppy,” I whispered.
“Okay,” Mom whispered back.
Captain Coker said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
• • •
At 2:17 am, when headlights finally swept into our driveway and I heard the ping-ping of a familiar old engine, I lowered my head to the workshop floor and lay still, wanting to sob with relief.
Toppy. Home at last. Home with me and safe, where he belonged.
It didn’t take him long to check inside the house, then come out to find me in the workshop, my State Police guard manning the door and the propane heater roaring away in the background. I had books about electricity spread everywhere, and my iPad lying on the worktable. The floor looked like ten toolboxes got sick and vomited wires and wrenches and screwdrivers in every direction.
Normally, he would have hollered for an hour about that level of mess and disorganization in his sacred fixing-stuff space. This time, though, all he said was, “You should be in bed.”
I put my finger on my place in the electronics troubleshooting guide I had found and looked up from my spot on the workshop floor. “I slept for a while.”
He was standing there in his wrinkly uniform, his shoulders stooped and his eyes heavy with fatigue, holding what looked like a plastic shopping bag.
“Do I want to know what you’re doing?” he asked.
“My chair keeps shutting off. I’m trying to figure out why.” I marked my place with a long screw, then closed the book I was using. “It’s bugging me.”
Toppy rubbed the back of his neck with his hand, and the gesture made him look twice as old and three times more tired. “You know, we could actually call the company for a repair.”
“I’ve modified so much stuff, they’d have a heart attack and pronounce it unsafe and illegal and probably a risk to society.” I tried to smile, but had a hard time.
He grunted. “Well, any luck?”
“The problem is, some aspects are wireless and some are wired.” Butterflies cascaded through my stomach. Something about my grandfather’s manner scared me almost as much as anything that had happened tonight, but I kept babbling, hoping it would all get better. “My wired stuff is all good with consistent current, but the wireless is hard to test. Plus, stuff outside the chair can affect it.”
“Wireless, but not hooked up to any networks, right?”
“Right. I disabled the reporting-to-manufacturer stuff right away. So whatever’s happening, it must be something random—except, it’s always happening at the same place.”
“Thornwood,” Toppy said. “See
ms like the solution might be to stay away from Thornwood, Max.”
“Somebody’s trying to sell all the antiques out of Thornwood on eBay,” I said. “The seller account looks like a fake. It’s probably the hacker.”
“Well, isn’t that just par for the course tonight,” Toppy said. “He’s getting greedier and greedier, like old Thornwood himself. Maybe he’ll make his big mistake soon and tip his hand. I sure hope so.”
When I didn’t answer, Toppy walked over to me, crouched, then sat down beside me on the workshop floor. Almost immediately, he shifted his butt and groused that the concrete was cold.
“Yeah, it’s chilly,” I said, “but I’m used to it.”
“I need a better heat source out here. Maybe a wood-burning stove, or one of those new pellet-jobbies.”
“Did you catch anybody?” My question popped out so loud it startled me. “I mean, in town. All the stuff.” My fingers pulled into fists, because I needed him to say yes, even though I knew he was going to say—
“No.” Toppy brought the bag he’d been carrying across his lap, then set it in front of me. “Here. This is for you.”
I pulled myself into a sitting position and peeked into the plastic. Inside was a box holding a decent-model smartphone.
A month ago, this would have made me the happiest Max on the planet, but after the night we’d had, it made me nervous instead. I glanced up at Toppy’s unreadable expression. “Why did you get me this?”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. His face stayed all flat and professional-like, but his eyes—something was really wrong.
I steadied myself on my butt and put down the bag. “Toppy, what’s the matter?”
“I—uh.” He gestured to the bag beside my leg. “You need one. To, you know, call me whenever you want.” Pause. Frown. Rubbing the sides of his face.
Oh, this was bad. Worse than bad. I felt like I was freezing solid to the floor, turning to ice.
“Max,” Toppy finally managed. “Tonight, in town, things were bad.” He rubbed his face again, and I noticed the smudges. Soot, it looked like. And his jacket, it was torn. “Fires and threats—we couldn’t be everywhere at once. People were terrified.”