The Firefly Code

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  We all sank back. There was a morning of summer vacation wasted.

  But then the man knocked on the back window.

  “It could be a dog,” Julia said.

  It wasn’t a dog.

  A girl stepped out of the car, tall like her father—her legs seemed to sprout out of her shorts—her hair pulled back into a ponytail full of curls. She stretched her lithe arms above her head and leaned her body from side to side.

  “This is what I’m writing about in my journal tonight.” Benji sighed.

  “She’s not a what, she’s a who,” I said. But I knew that I, too, would note the arrival of this new, wholly unbelievable family when I sat down to write in my journal, but the entry would be mostly questions: Where did they move here from? Were they from another Kritopia or outside? It had to be someplace amazing, so what would they make of our little neighborhood? We had to write in our journals every night; it was supposed to help if we ever had memory loss. They could use recordings and our journal entries to reupload our own past into our hippocampus. It seemed so far-fetched that we would lose our memories, and unless something truly spectacular happened, I usually rushed through it. This girl was worth writing about. She spun around and appeared to look right at us. Benji raised up his hand in a wave, even though the bush was between us and her. She bent her body back into the car, retrieved her backpack, then headed into the house.

  A dull silence overcame us. Like a Thirteenth party where suddenly the guest of honor just disappeared.

  “Good grief,” Theo finally said. “At least now we can go get something to eat.”

  Before we could stand up, we heard the clip, clip, clip of fancy shoes on the pavement. “What are you children doing hiding behind the shrubbery? Didn’t you see we have a new family joining our neighborhood?” Ms. Staarsgard stood on Julia’s driveway wearing one of her typical business suits: bright blue with a skirt that looked difficult to walk in. She had thick-rimmed sunglasses that barely covered her eyes, but were so dark you couldn’t even be sure she had eyes. “We’re going over to introduce ourselves. Come on, children. Theo!”

  There wasn’t a single one of us who was about to argue with Ms. Staarsgard. We stood up, and I brushed my dirty hands off on my shirt, which only left a smudge on the white cotton.

  Ms. Staarsgard was a couple strides ahead of us as we made our way across the street. “We are so lucky to have a house open up just when this family needed one.”

  “I bet Mr. Merton didn’t feel lucky,” Theo muttered.

  Ms. Staarsgard turned to look back over her shoulder. “You all are about to make a new, dear friend. Someday you will understand how exciting this moment is.”

  “Oh, I understand, Ms. Staarsgard,” Benji said. “I was hoping for another boy, but I bet this girl will be great, too.”

  “You have no idea,” Ms. Staarsgard said, more to herself than us. She took her sunglasses off, folded them, and tucked them into the breast pocket of her suit. Then she knocked two sharp raps on the front door of Mr. Merton’s old house.

  After a moment in which none of us spoke, the door opened and revealed the two parents, but not the girl. Ms. Staarsgard extended her hand, and when the man took it, she wrapped her other hand around his, too, and shook firmly. “Hello!” she said cheerily. “I’m Tova Staarsgard and I live just across the way. I know you are very busy, but I wanted to come right over and introduce myself.”

  “Thank you,” the woman said. “I’m Meryl Naughton, and this is my husband, Greg.”

  “We could not be happier that you have moved in. We’ve heard so much about you and your special, special girl. I’ve brought some of the neighborhood children over to meet her. You’ll find they are very bright—perfect playmates for your precious one.”

  Ms. Staarsgard had to butter people up as part of her job—greasing the wheels, Dad called it—but I thought she might be laying it on a bit thick with a “precious” plus two “specials.” I mean, was any kid that magnificent?

  “I thought all the children in Old Harmonie were very bright. Isn’t that the design?” When Meryl Naughton spoke, the right side of her mouth twitched up into a half grin. Up close I could see that her hair was the orange-brown color of an end-of-season chrysanthemum. Her cheeks were paler than the rest of the skin on her face, and dusted over with fat freckles.

  “Oh, but these children are exceptionally so.” She reached back and grabbed Theo. “My son, Theo, just had his Thirteenth and has done his latency already. Puzzles.”

  Theo tried to squirm free of his mother’s grasp, but she held tight, her perfectly painted red fingernails tucking into his skin.

  “Good to know if we need some help with a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle,” Greg Naughton said. “As a matter of fact, we just got one of the Eiffel Tower that is quite a doozy!”

  Ms. Staarsgard laughed. “How clever! But of course his mind is meant for greater puzzles than that. All these children are. Including yours. We are forging ahead here on Firefly Lane—leading the charge of progress.”

  Theo finally managed to get loose from his mother, and he came back and stood next to me. His cheeks were red and I knew his mother was embarrassing him with her KritaCorp talk.

  “We also have an eye to our past. Did I mention that Mori here is a great-granddaughter of Lucy Morioka, a founder and a dear friend of Dr. Varden. Yes, the children of Firefly Lane are very appropriate playmates for the proper development of your child.”

  The way she said it made me feel like I was a prescription being offered up by a doctor. Then she patted my head and made me feel like a dog. Julia looked over at me and mouthed the word “playmates” to me. I just shrugged. Ms. Staarsgard had her strange ways.

  “I’m sure they will be. She’s sleeping right now, but I’m sure she will be happy to meet them soon.”

  “Not fully adjusted yet?” Ms. Staarsgard asked, and I wondered just what it was this girl needed to be adjusted to.

  “It was a long journey. She’s tired.”

  “Oh, I’m sure of that. We’re just so excited to meet her, to see what she’s all about. We—these children, that is—have been waiting a long time to meet their new playmate.”

  “Like a thousand years,” Benji said.

  Ms. Staarsgard turned to look at him. “Sometimes change is a long time coming, Benji, but once it arrives, the impact can be immense, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I guess,” he replied.

  Ms. Staarsgard turned back to the Naughtons. “Now, if there are ever any problems, you will call me. Immediately.” Her voice dropped an octave on that last word.

  Meryl Naughton looked over Ms. Staarsgard at my friends and me. “I don’t see how this charming group could lead our little one astray.”

  Ms. Staarsgard only pursed her lips and then, after a moment, said, “We just wouldn’t want an unfortunate outcome, would we?”

  “No,” Meryl Naughton said. “We wouldn’t.”

  Julia raised her eyebrows at me, and I knew she was thinking the same thing I was: adults are so strange. But then Greg Naughton gave us a warm smile and said, “It was so lovely to meet you all. We’re sure Ilana is just going to love you!”

  Ilana. I didn’t think I had ever met anyone named Ilana.

  “Right, then,” Ms. Staarsgard said. “I’m sure you have unpacking and settling in to do. It was lovely to meet you, and welcome to the neighborhood.” She spun around and ushered us down the path like a mother duck pushing her babies along with her wings.

  Once we were back across the street, she turned to us and smiled. She put one hand on Theo’s shoulder and one on mine. “I hope, in time, you will all realize what a great day today is.”

  “Mom, it’s just, like, one new girl. It’s not like we’ve solved the storm surge problem or something.”

  Her smile faltered, but then she said, “Come on, kiddos, I’ve had Clara whip up some tofu peanut satay for lunch, and we even have some cherries for dessert!”

  “Is th
ere any of that cake left, Ms. Staarsgard?” I asked.

  “For you, little Mori, of course!”

  So we all headed over to Theo’s. I looked back over my shoulder toward the Naughtons’ house. I thought maybe I saw a flicker of the curtain in the upstairs window but decided that was just my mind playing tricks on me, trying to make the girl appear.

  But she didn’t appear, not for two more days.

  Two days is a long time to theorize.

  Theo, Julia, Benji, and I met at Julia’s that second day in her pool. I swapped my glasses out for my prescription goggles so I could see in the water and clung to three pool noodles to keep myself afloat while we talked.

  “I saw her leave the house early yesterday morning. Running. Toward Center Harmonie.” Julia pushed a strand of wet hair out of her face. She floated on an inner tube, her bum hanging down into the water. “She was gone a long time. It was like a training run. She could be getting ready for the Olympics. Track and field or the marathon. She’s that good.”

  Mom said the Olympics used to be held in one city, a different one every four years, all over the world. Now each country has its own team and, while they compete at the same time, each of them is in a local facility. You can watch it all on television, and they make it look like they are running or swimming or whatever right next to one another.

  “Was she faster than you?” Benji asked from the side of the pool. He hardly ever came in the water with us. He said he didn’t like to muss up his hair, but I think the chlorine made his asthma worse.

  “No,” Julia said, then spun herself around in a spiral. “No one is faster than me.”

  “So you think,” Benji said, still smiling at her.

  “Witness protection program,” Theo said. “Clearly. They dropped her and her family here, and they’re trying to make it seem all casual, but instead they’re just drawing attention to themselves.” He was acting more normal today. But even that was unsettling. Just what had happened over the course of this week to make his mood fly from place to place like a bird warning others of a coming predator?

  “My sister says she’s a narc,” Benji said.

  “What’s a narc?” I asked.

  “They work for the government, like undercover, and go into schools and figure out if kids are doing drugs or building bombs or anything,” Benji explained. His older sister gave us the real deal on everything.

  “No one’s building bombs or doing drugs here,” I said.

  But still the stories spilled out, each one more wild than the next.

  “I don’t think she’s a narc. Or in witness protection, or any of those other crazy ideas,” I said. “She’s just a girl. She’s just a girl and I think it’s pretty crummy that we haven’t gone back and asked her to play with us. Maybe she’s shy and is afraid to come over and see us.”

  “Maybe,” Julia said. “Or maybe she just doesn’t want to make friends.”

  But I was already swimming to the pool’s stairs. I tossed the noodles onto the pool deck and climbed out. I put my clothes on right on top of my wet bathing suit.

  “Where are you going?” Benji asked.

  “To see her,” I told them.

  As I coasted over on my bike, dripping wet and standing on the pedals, I thought about my friends’ theories about the new girl: narc, witness protection, actor researching a part, reporter writing about the youth of Old Harmonie.

  All those theories we had, we never came close to the truth.

  The truth, it turns out, was far too fantastical and strange for it to ever have occurred to us, let alone for us to defend or debate it.

  It was in us all the time, and we never saw it.

  The truth.

  It’s not always as real as it appears.

  9

  I should have gone home to change before I went to Ilana’s house. But anger and fear that I would chicken out carried me all the way to her doorstep. My swimsuit had soaked through my clothes, and my hair dripped down, leaving little splashes on her doorstep. I pressed the bell all the same.

  A moment later her mother answered. Her dress swirled with colors that dizzied me. “Why, hello there. It seems a wave has splashed a mermaid onto my front step.”

  “I was swimming,” I said. And then, “Hi. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Mori.”

  “I know who you are. We met the other day, remember?” Her voice sounded like sweet honey. She smelled like it, too. “Come on in.”

  “I’m all wet,” I said.

  “I can see that,” she replied.

  “I’m here to see, um, Ilana.”

  “So I assumed.” A faint smile played on her lips. Was she teasing me? “Tell you what, you go around back, and I’ll send Ilana out to you.” She pointed to a slate-tiled path that led to their yard. It was full of roses, bright and blooming. When Mr. Merton owned the house, the landscaping had been sparse and dying. In fact, some of the other grown-ups had offered to fix it up for him, but he’d refused. Now here it was in full bloom.

  I looked at the lawn furniture: some chairs around a glass-topped table and one chaise longue. Then there was a swing set. Would Ilana think we were too old for swing sets? But surely this had not belonged to Mr. Merton.

  I sat on the edge of the chaise longue.

  Ilana came out, her flip-flops flapping, and sat down on one of the swings. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Ilana.”

  “Mori,” I said. “I mean, I’m Mori. I live around on the other side of the cul-de-sac.”

  Kicking off her shoes, she started pumping the swing, going higher and higher. I watched her floating above me, then shuttling back away. When I’d first glimpsed her, I thought she looked like a movie star, but now she looked like an athlete. I could see all her muscles moving beneath her coppery skin. And her eyes—shocking green blue and flashing bright above her lightly freckled cheekbones. She looked like the girls in the teen magazines that Benji’s sister subscribed to, mailed each month from the Kritopia outside of New York City. Only more so—more glowing, more real, more healthy, more present. If I ever fell down, she could bend over and right me without much effort at all. It helped that she was a full six inches taller than me, even taller than Julia, maybe even as tall as Theo.

  Natural. One hundred percent natural. The way she moved, the way she shined, she had to be.

  “Where’d you move here from?” I asked.

  “California.” Her voice drifted down to me.

  “California? You mean you were in Calliope?”

  “Calliope?” She paused in her pumping, her legs still straight out in front of her even as she swung backward. “Right, yes, Calliope. The Kritopia in Northern California.”

  She pumped herself back up higher and higher. I didn’t know what else to say. This had been a terrible idea. I should have at least brought someone along with me to help make conversation.

  Just as quickly as she started swinging, she stopped, letting her feet slide through the grass below the swing. “So what’s cool around here, anyway?”

  I wasn’t sure what she would think was cool. I wasn’t sure if there was anything cool at all. “I can show you,” I said. “Do you have a bike?”

  She walked around the house and pulled a red ten-speed from the shed. “Right on. Let’s go.”

  We rode slowly around the block, away from Julia’s house. I pointed out where Benji lived. “He’s really nice. You’ll like him.”

  She grinned, and it was like she turned on the sun and shined it right on me. “I’m sure I will.”

  I pointed out my house as we passed it, then pedaled up to the driveway of number 9.

  “Who lives there?” she asked, squinting back at the house.

  “No one. Not anymore, anyway. It’s Dr. Varden’s old house.”

  Ilana closed her eyes for a second. “Dr. Varden. Yes. Founder of Old Harmonie. What’s inside?”

  “Don’t know. We’ve never gone in,” I told her. “I want to see what she left behind, but no one will com
e with me.”

  “Really?”

  “We’re not supposed to go in there. It’s against the rules.”

  “Says who?” she asked.

  “Well, our parents, for starters. But I bet it’s amazing inside. They can’t move the house,” I explained. “Or change it in any way. That was part of the deal Dr. Varden made when Krita took over. Otherwise I bet it would be a museum or something.”

  “And you’ve never been inside?” she asked. She looked at the house, not at me.

  “Never.” I shivered a little, and hoped she wouldn’t see—I didn’t want her to think I was silly for being afraid of a house.

  “Huh.” Then she looked back at me. “Interesting.”

  “Let me show you something else. Something even cooler.”

  We rode down to the park and left our bikes in the rack.

  “Do you play?” she asked, nodding her head toward the tennis courts.

  “Not really,” I said. “I mean, I have played, but I don’t like it very much. Mostly I play with Julia, and she’s so . . .”

  “So what?” Ilana asked.

  “She’s just a little competitive is all.” I felt my stomach flip-flop. Julia was probably already fuming about me leaving her behind to go off with Ilana, and now I was bad-mouthing her before the two had even met. “Anyway, the courts are getting old and the ball bounces funny.”

  As we laced around the courts, I heard some of the littler kids squealing on the playground. “It’s nice here,” she said. “Real homey. We didn’t have parks like this in Calliope—there was a lot more concrete. We could smell the ocean though, sometimes; that was nice.”

  With a quick glance over my shoulder, I led her a few steps into the woods. Then I hesitated. The only friend I had ever brought in with me was Julia. I’d shown her the field of squishy green hypnum moss that seemed to me to be the world’s most luxurious bed. I showed her the mint leaves we could eat, and my special tree. She had been perfectly pleasant, and had even helped me to sketch a rare purple clematis that we found. But she never asked to come back with me, and it had become my solitary place.