“It gets more complicated,” Cornelia continued.
“I’m so wishing we weren’t having this conversation.”
“It’s possible that the connection between Thornhill’s system and the Endeavor system has a GPS component.”
I was completely confused. “GPS? You mean the thing in Mom’s car that she’s always saying gives bad directions?”
“I mean that thing in Mom’s car that tells you where you are.”
“O-kaaay,” I said slowly. “So that would mean . . . ?”
“That would mean if someone knows about the system Thornhill set up, or if someone found out about the system, that person could track Thornhill’s computer using GPS.”
I thought about what Cornelia was saying, then pointed at our mother’s computer. “That person would be able to track this computer.”
“Right,” said Cornelia.
“That person would be able to find the physical location of this computer.”
“Right,” Cornelia repeated.
“That person—” I began, but this time she cut me off.
“I think,” she said, “that you should find what you’re looking for as quickly as possible and then shut down the computer.”
“Once I do that, will we be able to get back on?”
Cornelia shrugged. “We might. Like I said, it depends on the security Thornhill set up.”
“So you’re saying I need to find what I’m looking for fast and I might never be able to access this information again,” I summarized.
“That,” said Cornelia, standing up, “is exactly what I’m saying.”
In dreams, I’m sometimes trying to dial a phone or unlock a door but my hands are shaking so badly I can’t hit the right numbers or I keep dropping my key ring before I can get the key in the lock. Sitting at my mother’s computer and trying to make my way around Thornhill’s files as quickly as possible, I felt like I was in one of those dreams. I went to hit the paper clip icon next to my name and ended up hitting an entry two names down: Sol Rosa. The screen immediately filled with photos of someone I’d never met, but when I went to go back, I didn’t move the curser up high enough and I ended up opening one of the folders in Sol Rosa’s file. Suddenly I was looking at a scan of a third-grade transcript, where I learned Sol “has done impressive work mastering cursive.” I clicked back, found my name again, and hit the right paper clip this time.
But what I found was almost as bewildering as what I’d left. At least a dozen photos of me appeared on the screen. The first was from a road trip my parents and I had taken cross-country the summer before Cornelia was born (my mom was pregnant with her at the time). I was standing between them in front of a sign that said elevation 12,671 feet. In the background were mountaintops so high they disappeared into the mist. I was giving the photographer a thumbs-up, and both my parents were smiling for the camera. I had no recollection of the trip and no idea where we were at the moment the photo was snapped.
In the next picture, I was with my dad and we were sitting in a boat, fishing. Neither of us was looking at the camera; it was like we didn’t even realize we were being photographed. I looked at the next photo: a shot of me breaking a ribbon at a race I’d run in seventh grade—an Orion Township 10K—something I’d entered before I joined the track team in eighth grade.
My heart pounded in my chest. What the hell was going on? Why did Thornhill have all these pictures of me? It was almost like . . . had he been following me for some reason?
I clicked away from the screen with the photos to a document called L-C33159, and there was a list of addresses, places my family had lived. It was brief—both of our houses in Philly followed by our address in Orion. I clicked to a new file and found myself staring at the Bennett family tree.
There were tons of other documents. Report cards, medical records, IQ tests. Even vision and hearing tests that I had no memory of taking. I clicked back to the main list and clicked on Cornelia. Again there were the photos, the addresses, the school records. Seeing so much intimate information about my family members was starting to make me sick. Something dripped onto the keyboard, and I realized I was sweating. Wiping at my forehead with the back of my hand, I clicked away from Cornelia and onto a stranger, Maude Cooper. Maude was a short, older woman, maybe fifty. There was a photo of her standing in front of a house with a guy who might have been her husband. Maude, too, lived in Orion, as did Stefanie Stone and Laden Chapel. Back at the main list, I clicked on Beatrice Rossiter.
I’d forgotten how pretty Beatrice had been before the accident. There was a picture of her standing with her mom (a tall, gorgeous African American woman) and her dad (a way-shorter and skinny white man with enormous glasses) in front of a restaurant that looked like it was in some European city. I clicked on a folder marked PC13342+13367 and suddenly the screen was filled almost entirely with a black-and-white picture of two smiling girls in identical wigs.
The girls looked so much alike that for a second I found myself thinking, I didn’t know Beatrice had a sister, and then I gasped. Because the smiling girl next to Beatrice wasn’t some unknown sister I’d never met.
It was Amanda.
“Hi, guys, I’m home!”
I’d been sure I’d hear the garage door open, that I’d have time to exit whatever file I was looking at and pull up some innocuous blank Word document, but clearly I’d been wrong. I heard my dad talking, then my mother was calling, “Hal! Hal, come say hello.”
Beatrice and Amanda were friends?! I’d never seen them together and she’d never once mentioned her to me.
Not exactly a shocker, though, right?
“Hal? Are you upstairs?”
“Um, coming, Mom!” Beatrice and Amanda. Did Callie and Nia know? Nah. Callie had told us every detail of the night of Beatrice’s accident; there was no way she would have left out the fact that Amanda wanted her to do right by Beatrice because they were friends.
“Hal?”
My mom’s voice was coming from just beyond the den. If she came in and found me looking at a photo of Amanda, she’d start asking questions. Lots of questions. I clicked out of the window and onto my name, then spun around to face the door, hoping my expression wouldn’t betray just how totally I was freaking out.
But just as I put my feet down to stop my spin, I realized what a colossal error I’d made in clicking back on my own file. The pictures of our family were guaranteed to catch my mom’s eye, make her come over to see what I was working on. I needed to . . . I needed to . . .
“There you are!” She appeared in the doorway, still wearing her bright red raincoat and yellow hat.
It was too late. My mom was smiling at me, her eyes bright with pleasure at everyone’s being home. I waited for them to widen when she saw what was on the screen behind me, but all she did was nod when I said hello.
“Dad’s home!” she announced with enthusiasm.
What do you say when your parent states the obvious yet you do not want to piss her off? “Yes!” I half shouted, trying to match her excitement. Had she not seen the screen? Had she been too distracted by the prospect of a rare family dinner (one she did not have to cook) to focus on the pictures? Or maybe . . . of course, the screen saver must have come back on. She wasn’t looking at the computer screen because she didn’t care about a bunch of random tropical fish.
My mom pulled off her hat. “Good day?”
“Oh, yeah!” My relief translated itself into enthusiasm and I actually clapped my hands together.
“That’s great, sweetie.” She came over and kissed the top of my head, then headed back toward the kitchen. “Dad says dinner is in about thirty minutes.”
I touched my hand to my damp forehead and breathed deeply in, then out. What I needed was to calm down. What I needed was a system. I’d look at the files of people I knew and compare them to the files of strangers. What did Hal Bennett have in common with Maude Cooper? What did Callista Leary have in common with Stefanie Stone? I reached
into the middle desk drawer, took out a pad with Orion Community College printed on it, and grabbed a pencil from the Orioles mug on the desktop. Then I turned around and prepared to get to work.
But instead of facing a screen full of tropical fish, I faced a screen full of . . . nothing. No fish. No photos of me. Just darkness. I hit the Space key, then the Enter key, but still there was no response. I listened and realized that not only was the screen dead, but the computer itself was off.
Heart pounding, I pushed the Power button.
Nothing.
I pushed it again, this time holding it for a count of five. I released it, counted to thirty, then pushed it again.
Nothing.
There was no doubt about it: Something—or someone—had just murdered my computer.
Don’t you know it’s dangerous for you to be together?
They’ve got him.
You gave Amanda’s most treasured possession to her enemy.
I put my head down on the cool plastic of the keyboard and tried to convince myself everything was going to be okay.
Chapter 15
As the week passed, I realized I was slipping back into my pre-Amanda, pre–Callie and Nia life, as if being friends with them was a summer vacation that had come to an end. I ran into Charlie, the drummer for Girl Like Me, in the hall on Friday at lunch, and he slapped me on the back and said, “Where have you been, man?”
I didn’t know what to tell him. I’ve been with my friends? But were Callie and Nia even my friends anymore? I’ve been with my fellow guides.
Sure, Hal. Hare Krishna much?
I ended up just shrugging. “Around.”
Somehow I was walking with him toward the cafeteria as he talked. “Dude, you missed the worst practice last week. Brian’s mom was all, ‘You’re too loud,’ and Brian’s all, ‘It’s a band, Mom,’ and she’s all, ‘Well, be a quieter band.’” He shook his head with amazement at Brian’s mom’s failure to appreciate classic rock. “She made us turn off the amp. It’s like we’re Girl Like Me unplugged.”
I couldn’t really focus on what he was saying, but luckily talking to Charlie doesn’t require active listening. The guy could have a fulfilling conversation with a tablecloth.
“Yeah,” I said, not sure if it was a total non sequitur.
“Seriously messed up, right?” We’d reached the cafeteria and Charlie crossed the threshold. Only when he’d actually been talking to thin air for a few steps did he turn around to see where I was.
“You eating?”
It was just after noon, and the cafeteria was filling up. I looked around, but neither Callie nor Nia was there. Simultaneously relieved and disappointed, I just shook my head. “Nah, I’ve gotta do some stuff in the art room.”
Charlie nodded. “Later, Picasso.”
“Later,” I said to his back. As Charlie was swallowed up by the lunchtime crowd, I wondered if I should just follow him. Have lunch with the guys in the band, talk about music, what we should play for the talent show, fight about whether U2 is one of the greatest bands in the history of music or entirely overrated. It was something I would have done a few months ago, just hung out with people who weren’t exactly friends but were close enough.
Before Amanda came along, close enough had been fine.
So why wasn’t it now?
“God, I hate this song.” I pressed my hands to my ears to prove my commitment to silencing every note of “Silly Love Songs,” which was blasting over the speakers at Aqua.
Amanda took a sip of her espresso. “It is a pretty bad song.” She was wearing a ladder of black rubber bracelets on her arm and a short, blond, asymmetrical wig. Whenever my mom has to do some household chore she hates, like vacuuming or cleaning out the fridge, she always blasts old-school Madonna CDs, so I got the reference.
I loved talking about the Beatles with Amanda, and now I leaned across the table with enthusiasm. “You know why it’s a bad song? Because Paul McCartney is a crap songwriter.”
To indicate her disagreement, Amanda raised her right eyebrow. “‘Revolution,’ ‘Dear Prudence,’ ‘Rocky Raccoon.’ Shall I continue?” Given her agreement that the song sucked, I was surprised by her defense of Paul McCartney.
I waved away her list. “John Lennon wrote every one of those.”
“Lennon/McCartney,” she corrected. “Read the album cover.”
“John Lennon’s being man enough to share the credit for those songs with Paul McCartney doesn’t make Paul McCartney a decent songwriter. Exhibit A: Wings.”
“When they were young, they’d go to parties and just stand in the corner writing songs together.” Amanda smiled at the image in her head.
I snorted. “You know what I’d like to see? I’d like to see a transcript of those conversations. ‘Hey, Paul, could you try not to write the cheesiest lyrics ever?’ ‘Sorry, mate, don’t think I can do that.’”
“‘Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive.’” She swirled her spoon around the sides of her cup.
I remained thoroughly unconvinced. “I hate Paul McCartney.” When she reraised her eyebrow at what I’d said, I backed off. Slightly. “Okay, I hate the post-Beatles Paul McCartney. Happy?”
Her smile was sad and she shook her head. “You can’t hate Paul. Hating Paul is the same as hating John.”
What she’d just said was so outrageous I nearly choked on my hot chocolate. “Hating John?! Are you seriously accusing me of hating John?!”
“Friendships like theirs . . .” Amanda linked her ring-laden fingers together to illustrate her point. “They were each changed forever by the other.”
“It’s too bad Paul wasn’t changed a little more. Maybe then his post-Beatles music wouldn’t be such garbage.”
Still looking at her hands, Amanda spoke slowly. “Maybe it wasn’t like that. Maybe John sucked all the genius out of Paul. Maybe Paul grieved so deeply for the end of the Beatles that he never recovered. Or maybe John kept Paul honest and Yoko kept John honest.” She shot me a look, knowing I could never resist an opportunity to trash Yoko Ono. “The point is, there’d be no John without Paul. Friends—real friends—they create you as profoundly as your parents.”
I felt some of the fight going out of me. “So what you’re saying is I don’t get to hate Paul anymore?”
“John said it, not me,” Amanda pointed out. “Now, let me hear you say it.”
And for the first time in our friendship, I was the one who quoted something to her. “‘Love is the answer.’”
As she raised her cup, I raised mine and we toasted the late, great Lennon by singing the end of the musical line together. “‘And you know that for sure.’”
Was that the problem? Had I been changed forever by these friendships? Was I never going to be able to go back to being the Hal I’d been before I knew these people?
Riding home from school on Friday, the watch Amanda had given me in one pocket and my silent cell phone in the other, I felt more sympathy for Paul McCartney than I’d ever dreamed possible. So he’d become a cheesy pop singer after the death of his best friend, so what? At least he didn’t spend the rest of his life lying around doing nothing or coming up with bizarre conspiracy theories about John’s death.
If only I could say the same thing about myself.
Saturday morning, my dad and I went for a long run, just the two of us. He asked me all about school and the band and what I was painting. All week, I’d kind of been lying in wait, hoping for a chance with him alone. Now I figured I’d let him get all questioned out and then demand to know what he’d meant by his “be careful” from the other night, but when we made the turn onto Briar Lane, my mom and Cornelia were waiting for us at the car.
“You guys are so slow! We’ve been waiting here forever.” Cornelia was standing with her back against the car.
My mom’s window was down and she was waving to us. “Who wants to go out for some really un-nutritious pancakes instead of finishi
ng his healthy run?”
“I’d say we’ve earned us some pancakes,” answered my dad, almost gratefully, then Mom added, “Followed by lattes at Just Desserts.”
“Awesome,” said Dad.
“Awesome Anna,” winked my mom.
I rolled my eyes. Before you could say, Tell me what you know, Dad, we were sitting in the back of the car and headed to Rosie’s Diner. Much as I wanted to talk to him, amazing Just Desserts lattes (served by Anna, who really is the world’s coolest waitress even if my mom thinks so, too) was at least some consolation for the interruption.
I wasn’t alone with him for the rest of the day, and at five he left for a business trip to Toronto. Lying on my bed after we’d hugged good-bye, I kept replaying our conversation. If I could protect you from every bad thing in the world, I would. I groaned and rolled onto my back. Naturally my dad didn’t know anything. A girl was missing. The vice principal of my school had recently been attacked in his office. Of course my dad would tell me to be careful. My thinking his telling me to be careful had something to do with some kind of inside information about Amanda was just one more indication that I was slowly, quietly losing my mind.
“Hal?” My mom pushed open the door to my room as she knocked, which I’d finally accepted was as close as she was ever going to come to knocking before entering. Seeing me lying on my bed in my running clothes, she crossed her arms in front of her chest.
“What? I went with Dad. You saw me.” My mom’s refusing to let me go for a run by myself was probably not helping my state of mind.
She didn’t relax her stance. “Nobody put you under house arrest, mister. I just don’t think it’s polite to go to the show dressed like that.”
“What show?”
“What do you mean ‘what show’?” She stepped into the room and I could see she was dressed in a pair of nice pants and a long sweater, a bright necklace of plastic beads around her neck. “The show you’ve been working so hard on. I told you we were all going to see it Saturday night.”
Had my mom told me we were going to As You Like It tonight? It wasn’t like I’d exactly been focused on every word she spoke at dinner the past few nights, what with trying to figure out everything from how I was going to get Callie and Nia to forgive me to whether or not they, my sister, my parents, and basically everyone I loved was in mortal danger. So, yes, it was possible I could have missed a simple declarative sentence such as, We are going out as a family Saturday night.
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