“You need anything?” I asked.
“I need you to shoot me in the head. All these Fourier transform calculations, the conceptual modeling, pattern recognition, interpretations—I have to write all those programs, make all the formats, and encode and encrypt all that crap because it has to function like Internet traffic. And it is not normal Internet traffic.” She dropped her hands. One eyelid was twitching, as if it was planning to rebel, to shut whether Rebe wanted it to or not.
I grabbed a lawn chair and dragged it over next to her. “Can I help?”
Rebe squeezed her eyes closed for a second. “Sure. Thanks.”
“We’re so close.”
Molly got up from her station in the living room, headed for the hallway. She glanced at me, glanced again, and stopped in her tracks. “Stop looking at me! Every time I get up, you’re watching me.”
Suddenly feeling like a creepy stalker, I dropped my gaze. “Sorry.”
Molly stormed out of the room.
“What’s her problem?” Rebe asked.
“Cabin fever.” Basquiat was standing in the entrance to the kitchen. “We’ve been cooped up in here for too long.”
That was probably true. When people are ground down by stress or exhaustion, they say things they normally wouldn’t, but I’d also found those things are sometimes legitimately bugging them.
I stepped toward the bathroom to wait outside the door for Molly, but Basquiat waved me over. “Just give her some time. It’s the pressure, it’s not you.”
He was probably right. I was definitely feeling it myself. “I’d do anything to get out of here for a while. Just to toss a Frisbee in the park, go hear a good band. At least you and I got to get out for the spare parts. Soon, though. A week.”
Basquiat didn’t look particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of finishing.
“What?” I asked.
He stretched his neck from side to side. “When we first talked about building a foolproof lie detector, I pictured people getting caught in ugly lies. Murderers and rapists, people embezzling millions of dollars, corrupt politicians, heroin dealers.”
“And the truth app is going to expose all of them.”
“Yes. But I wasn’t thinking about all the lies we tell to protect people’s feelings. And to be honest…” Basquiat paused, laughed harshly. “ ‘To be honest.’ There’s an irony. I might as well be honest now, before I have no choice. To be honest, I’m not sure I’m comfortable feeling exposed like that.”
A brief flashback of Molly in the shower lathering her body as I watched from my electronic hiding place sent a stab of guilt and panic through me. Would she ever speak to me again if she found out?
I didn’t want to talk about it. That type of thinking sapped our resolve, and with everything that had happened, everything we were facing, we needed to stay positive, or the whole enterprise would collapse, and Theo would have died for nothing. Boob was barely functioning. We couldn’t afford to lose Basquiat. If we were ever going to give birth to this device, we couldn’t be afraid of it. And we were definitely afraid of it.
“We want to release this on the world,” Basquiat went on, “and I’m not sure I want one.” He raised a hand. “I’m not backing out—I agreed to help, and I’ll keep that promise. But I wonder if I have any business creating something I don’t want to use myself.”
He waited for an answer. He was right—we couldn’t be afraid of our own technology.
I shrugged. “I still think we’re better off with the truth. We just have to learn not to be afraid of it.”
Basquiat gave me a skeptical look. “And how are we going to do that?”
I had no idea. I thought of my own secret. How could I not be afraid of Molly finding out?
There was only one way: pull the splinter. Get it out. Confess. Maybe Molly would never speak to me again, but once the truth was out, one way or the other, I wouldn’t be afraid of it coming out. Once all my secrets were out, what would I have to fear from the truth app? Not a damned thing.
“What if we confess it all?” I said.
Basquiat’s eyes got wide. “All of what?”
“Everything we don’t want people to know about us. Rip the Band-Aid off. Get it all out in the open.”
He looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
I hadn’t grown up particularly religious, but my grandfather had been Catholic. He’d gone to confession every week without fail.
Down the hall, the bathroom door opened. Molly headed toward us.
“Sam thinks we should have another poker game,” Basquiat said. “Only this time we drag it all out into the open.”
“I didn’t say that. The poker game was angry and confrontational. This time we would be kind about it.” At least, I hoped we would.
“Like a confession,” Molly said.
I pointed at her. “Exactly.”
Her hair was matted and oily, her glasses smudged and crooked, and as she stepped closer, I caught a whiff of a musky, old-sweat odor, but she was still so beautiful to me. I hoped Basquiat appreciated her.
“I’m willing to try it,” Molly said.
My mouth was so dry, my upper lip kept sticking to my teeth, and my tongue made a clicking sound. I didn’t want to do this. No one else looked particularly eager. “This is not an interrogation, it’s a confession,” I said. “The idea is, if we have no secrets, we have no reason to be afraid of the truth app.”
“Cast no shadow,” Basquiat said softly, staring at the grass.
Rebe frowned. “What?”
“It’s a line from a Bungees song: ‘When you cast no shadow, you can walk where you will.’ I always took it to mean if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”
I nodded emphatically. “Exactly. We take turns. When it’s your turn, give us the worst thing you’re hiding.”
“We don’t judge. This is a healing process.” Molly looked around our little circle, her eyes pleading. “Be kind. The worse the secret, the more courageous you are for confessing it.”
“I like that way of looking at it,” Basquiat said, his voice shaking.
Rebe tossed a stick into the little bonfire we’d built in the far corner of the yard, as private a spot as we could find under the circumstances. “What about Boob?”
I shrugged. “It’s his loss.” I caught a glimpse of Mom, up on the roof. I still hadn’t gotten used to seeing her out of her wheelchair.
“I’ll go first. I want to get this over with.” Basquiat blew out a breath, puffing his cheeks. “All right. Here we go.” He looked upward, avoiding eye contact with us, which was so not Basquiat. “When I was eight years old, my sister, Trina, died, and I’ve been lying about how it happened ever since. Trina didn’t fall from our deck when my father was supposed to be watching her; she fell trying to climb the ladder to the tree fort in the woods behind our house.”
All the air rushed out of my lungs. Basquiat was talking about the ladder he’d built on a huge tree. I could still picture those rickety boards rising up the trunk to form a makeshift ladder that reached so, so high. That was the point of the ladder—climbing it had been a way to prove you had guts. We never stayed at the top very long, because it wasn’t comfortable to sit up there on boards nailed between branches, your feet dangling. Trina would have fallen at the very top of the ladder, trying to stretch her little legs to reach the seats. It had happened nine years ago, but for a moment it felt as if she was falling right now, and I couldn’t stand it.
“I egged her on. ‘You can do it. Be brave.’ And when she fell…” Basquiat struggled for control, his chest hitching. “When she fell…” He covered his face with his hands and burst into tears. “I ran away. I ran away.”
Molly wrapped her arms around him, pressed her cheek to his shoulder.
“I went to my roo
m, and I heard our dad calling our names as he walked into the woods looking for us, and then I heard him scream Trina’s name—” Basquiat wailed, hands still covering his eyes, rocking back and forth like he wanted to run even now. Molly hugged him fiercely. She was crying as well.
Basquiat took a deep, hitching breath, tried to finish. “I never told my parents I was there with Trina. They still don’t know.”
I don’t know what I had expected, but it wasn’t this. He’d been carrying that secret for nine years.
“You were eight years old,” I said. “Just a kid. It’s time to forgive yourself.”
“What I did is unforgivable.” Eyes still squeezed shut, Basquiat gestured with one hand. “Move on. Someone else.”
“I’ll go,” Rebe said.
The back door opened. Boob came down the steps, head lowered. We watched him cross the lawn and flop between Rebe and me without a word.
I clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man.”
“You already know one of mine,” Rebe said.
“Rebe, I’m so sorry,” Molly said.
“No big deal. It would’ve come out now if it hadn’t then. I’ve been bingeing and purging on and off for two years.” She looked down at herself. “Not that it’s done much good.”
“You have a beautiful body,” I said.
Rebe gave me her best sarcastic glare. “We’re being honest here. I’m fat.” She held up her hand before I could argue. I was going to tell her to go get the truth app, because I honestly thought Rebe had a pretty damned nice body. “Since that one’s already out there, it doesn’t count. Fortunately, I have another. Well, I’ve got a million, but my biggest one is that I steal.” She waited a beat for the words to sink in. “I run Internet scams. Nothing big enough to get the attention of the big boys—they don’t appreciate competition, so that’s a good way to get yourself killed—just enough to help feed my family. You may have noticed I have a big family.”
“Does your mother know where the money comes from?” Molly asked.
Rebe considered. “Yes and no. I transfer it right to her account, and she doesn’t ask about it. A few years ago, it was just little bits here and there, but by this point I’m one of our primary sources of income.”
I wanted to ask if she was stealing the money from corporations and people who wouldn’t notice it was gone, or from people like us, but I thought that might sound judgmental, so I kept my mouth shut.
“Thanks for trusting us,” Molly said. “Who’s next?”
It was either my turn or Boob’s, and Boob was staring at his heavily taped Nikes.
“I guess I am.” I so didn’t want to do this. I turned to Molly. “Last winter, we were on the phone and you accidentally left the link open.” I swallowed. “I cloaked the line and secretly watched you for about an hour.”
Molly’s eyes went wide. I’d expected her to be angry, but she didn’t look angry. She looked disappointed. Somehow that was worse.
“What was I doing?” she asked.
I looked into the fire. “You took a shower.” I didn’t need to see her face to know I was now a different person in her eyes. I wasn’t a trusted friend; I was a creepy stalker.
“Thank you for telling me.” Her voice was tight.
There was a long, awkward silence. I wasn’t sure if Basquiat had even followed what I’d said. He looked like he was still baking in his own private hell.
“Hey, Boob?” Rebe said. “I see your body’s here. Is your brain planning to make an appearance?”
Boob folded his arms across his chest. “What do you want me to say?”
“What do you want, an instruction manual?” Rebe said. “Come clean. Whatever you don’t want people to know about you, spill it.”
Boob stared into the fire. He refolded his arms, with the opposite arm on top.
The seconds stretched out. I wanted him to say something, anything, to move us on from my confession. My face was burning like I had a terrible sunburn. Why had Boob bothered to come out if he wasn’t going to say anything?
Finally, Boob inhaled like he was going to speak. Instead, he held the breath. I was about to tell him to say something, when he finally spoke.
“I have no self-esteem whatsoever. Zero. I’m scared all the time. I doubt myself every day. My mother does most of my homework, including writing papers for me, because she’s afraid I’ll screw it up.” He kept his gaze glued to the fire. “She tells me how disappointed she is in me on a daily basis. She thinks I’m wasting my life watching Silhouette Lark, or one of the other microchannel stars, and she may be right, but their lives are way more interesting than mine.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Can I stop now? Because if this is supposed to make me feel better, it’s not.”
“It’s like pulling splinters. They hurt on the way out.” I wasn’t sure if I actually believed what I’d just said. The idea was that this would make us stronger and bring us closer together. For all I knew it was tearing us apart.
“I wish Theo was here spilling his guts with us. I miss him,” Rebe said.
“He’s the only one of us who would have actually liked this,” I said.
Molly leaned in toward the fire, elbows on her knees. “I guess it’s my turn. Okay, I can do this.” She was pressed close to Basquiat. “You all know my mom and dad separated six months ago. What you don’t know is, this all happened because Mom found the corner of a condom wrapper in their bed. She confronted Dad, and he admitted he’d had an affair with a coworker a few months before.” Molly paused, whispered something under her breath. “The thing is? It wasn’t his condom wrapper. It was mine.”
Basquiat stared into the fire. He didn’t look surprised.
“I never told my parents the wrapper was mine, because by the time I found out, it was too late. Dad had already confessed. I didn’t want him to hate me for breaking up their marriage.” Behind her glasses, Molly’s eyes glistened, welling with tears. “A lot of kids wonder if it’s their fault their parents got divorced. I know for a fact it is mine.”
“Why were you doing it in your parents’ bed?” Rebe asked.
“Mine is too small.”
Basquiat was six foot three. An image of the two of them in Molly’s little bed conjured itself in my head. I pushed it away.
A thump-thump-thump startled us—the sound of muffled rifle fire. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye: Mom, jumping from the roof, landing on the lawn, still firing her rifle.
“Inside.” She hurdled the back fence, into the Spanoses’ yard. As the others ran for the door, I glanced back, then slowed. Mom was kneeling beside an especially dark spot on the dark lawn. Two weeks ago I might have mistaken it for a couple of trash bags.
Mom looked up, saw me alone on the lawn, watching. “Get inside.”
Kelsey ran past me, pistol in hand, looking all around, a glint of gold coming off his eyes. “Clear to three hundred yards. Inside, Sam.”
I went inside. Whoever that was on the ground in the Spanoses’ backyard, I had no doubt he’d come to kill us. He might have been taking aim when Mom got him. I hoped like hell it was Xavier Leaf, that this was all him, a one-man intimidation campaign.
“Get away from the windows,” Mr. Chambliss said as I slipped inside the house.
We ducked down on the floor, beside the couch.
“I guess they’re done being patient,” Rebe said.
The screen door flew open. Mom backed inside, holding black-booted feet. Kelsey was carrying the body’s front end. It was a woman, African American, maybe twenty-five, in a bulletproof jumpsuit. There was a bloody hole above her left eye.
“That’s it for the element of surprise.” Mom set her end of the body down on the carpet. “Now they know about me and Kelsey. Next time they’ll send more people, and they’ll be careful. I don’t think anybody in the neighborhood e
ven peeped out their windows, fortunately.”
“They didn’t,” Kelsey confirmed.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the woman. She was really dead. My mother had shot her.
“We need more soldiers,” Mr. Chambliss said.
“I know somebody. Beltane.” Kelsey shook his head. “Beltane is badass. She was Black Ops. She’s a quad now.”
It took me a minute to realize he meant quadriplegic. She’d lost her arms and legs, which meant she’d be both fast and strong once she was repaired.
“Do you know where to find her?” I asked Kelsey.
“Sure. She lives with her mother and brother. She’d be thrilled to get out of there; she hates them. And, full disclosure, she hates me, too.” Kelsey grinned. “We had a thing a few years back. Didn’t work out.”
Mom was going through the dead woman’s pockets. She pulled a second handgun from her jacket. “No ID.” She set the handgun on the carpet. “I would have been surprised if there was.”
Rebe snapped a photo of the dead woman’s face. “If we raise some cash, I can run a facial recognition search and see where she’s been lately.”
“What do we do with her body?” Basquiat asked. He looked like he was about to be sick.
“I’ll take care of it,” Kelsey said. He made it sound as simple as taking out the trash. I didn’t want to know how you took care of a body.
Beltane considered the truth app like it was a dog turd she’d stepped in. Or maybe that sneer, her lip curled in disgust, was her resting face. “What is this thing?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute. First we do the interview.”
“You’re doing the interview?” The notion seemed to amuse and disgust her in equal measure. She was wearing a low-cut sweatshirt, no bra; rows of ribs jutted below her collarbone. With her original arms and legs, she probably tipped the scales at about eighty-five pounds.
“Have you ever committed a crime?” I asked.
She tilted her head. “Sure. Bank robbery. Mom stuck a gun in my hand and wheeled me into the bank. I can’t feed myself. How the hell am I going to commit a crime?”
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