The Firefly Code

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  “You don’t?”

  “No. It’s just for fun.”

  “Are you sure?” She handed me the pebble.

  I tossed it and it skittered out of the court.

  “Tough break.” She said it with a smile. “My turn again.”

  Of course this next round was just as perfect for her.

  She gave me the stone. This time I had to jump from a straddle to a single leg, and for some reason I decided to add a spin move, so I stumbled and fell onto my knee. A red patch of blood bloomed up behind the dirt. “You’re hurt!” Ilana said.

  “I’m fine. It’s just a scrape.” I handed her the rock. “Your turn.”

  Another perfect run. And she did a spin with no problem.

  “It’s not fair,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You’re so good at this.” I shook my head, but the words echoed in my mind. Not fair.

  “Maybe if you practiced some more—”

  “That’s not it.” Not fair. Not fair. No matter what any of us did, we would never match up to her.

  “Is it your eye, then?”

  “No. Not my eye. Or my legs. Or anything to do with me.”

  Ilana stood up straight and cocked her head to the side.

  My knee was still bleeding. I could feel the blood trickling down. “I need to go home. I need to get a Band-Aid.”

  “We have bandages.”

  “No. I need to go home.” My brain was pounding, and I thought I might explode with all I knew. I would just erupt and be left as a sticky puddle on the ground, and even that would be better than telling her the truth of what I knew.

  “See you later? We could go out to Oakedge.”

  “Sure. Maybe.”

  “We really should check our garden.”

  “I said sure.”

  I grabbed my bike and pushed it instead of riding it. My knee was throbbing in time with my brain. I wish I had never read that file. Because now I couldn’t see her the same way. The things that had been so beautiful about her—her strength, her skill, her kindness—all of it was fake. None of it was real.

  Ilana was not real.

  22

  Ilana was riding her bike up and down the street in front of my house. I saw her after breakfast, when I was headed back toward the stairs to go up and brush my teeth before going out for the day. I had known her secret for two days, and still didn’t feel ready to face her. Back and forth, back and forth she rode, slow and easy. But my heart started beating like a mouse on a wheel, faster and faster until it started to pinch my throat. I was frozen midstep. I pivoted, but what would going back into the kitchen do? Instead I hurried up the stairs and into the bathroom.

  I watched myself as I brushed my teeth. I looked at my eyes behind my pink-framed glasses. I barely blinked.

  I spit into the sink.

  It mattered.

  I didn’t want it to, but it did.

  I kept brushing. My little toothbrush clicked off each tooth as I cleaned it, and when I was done with all twenty-eight, I started over and did them again.

  When I spit and rinsed, I still stayed in the bathroom. I organized all my toiletries, lining them up like the trees in the woods—neat little rows. Then I looked at myself in the mirror.

  “Coward,” I whispered.

  Traitor, I thought.

  I returned to my room and sat down to go over Agatha’s journal again as if it might offer me some sort of guidance.

  Prince Philip sat beside the notebook as I flipped through it, occasionally buzzing. I reached out and stroked his head, and he flapped his wings slowly. “You like that, huh?” I had never had a pet before. Theo’d had a dog when we were very little, a yippy sort of a thing, and Benji had a hypoallergenic cat that mostly just sat in patches of sun around the house. Now I had Prince Philip.

  I sat up on my bed and looked out the window from time to time. Ilana still rode back and forth.

  “You are like her. She is like you.” I whispered it to Prince Philip, just to see how it sounded. And the words felt true, though they didn’t feel right.

  “Mori!” Mom called up, and I swear I jumped. When I looked out the window, Ilana was still there, but her bike was stopped.

  “Yeah,” I called, too softly for Mom to hear.

  “Mori!” she yelled again.

  I hopped down from my bed and padded to the top of the stairs. Mom was at the bottom, looking up at me.

  “What are you even doing up there?”

  “Reading,” I said.

  “Julia’s mom sent a text. They want you to come over to make sun prints. I think that’s a terrific idea. It’s a beautiful day and you should be outside.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I told her you’d be right over.”

  “Oh,” I said again.

  She took a step onto the bottom landing of the stairs. “Is everything okay? Did you and Julia have a fight?”

  “Me and Julia?” I tried to look past her out the window, but I couldn’t see anything.

  “My best friend and I used to get into fights all the time. Huge blowups.” She actually smiled like this was a fantastic memory.

  “We’re not having a fight,” I lied.

  “Are you feeling okay, then?” The concerned-mother look took over her face.

  “Yes!” I said, perhaps too eagerly.

  “Then come on down and get your shoes on. Really, it’s far too nice to be inside.”

  “You’re inside.”

  “You know, I’m going to see if it’s possible to dampen sass,” she said as she turned to go.

  I remained at the top of the stairs, but what could I do? I couldn’t hide from Ilana forever. So I hopped down the stairs and shoved my feet into my flip-flops.

  With a deep breath, I stepped outside. Ilana was there, but I looked at the ground the whole way down our short driveway and onto the road. I thought maybe she was going to let me just slip by.

  “Hey, space shot, over here.”

  I looked up, and she was smiling at me. That big perfect smile with her bright white teeth all in perfect rows, and both halves of her mouth turning up exactly the same amount, and her green-blue eyes shining just so. “Hey.”

  “I’ve been riding back and forth forever. Ninety-seven times, actually.”

  “That’s a lot,” I said, still walking toward Julia’s.

  “I was thinking we could go to Oakedge. We really need to check on our plants. Mr. Quist gave me some special plant food that he makes himself.”

  My gaze flicked up to her. She had her head tilted to the side. I bet in communications classes when they want to teach you how to look engaged and sympathetic, they would tell you to hold your head just like that. I looked back down at my feet, at my uneven toes. “I’m going to Julia’s, actually.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, that could be fun, too.” She hopped off her bike and started walking next to me as she pushed it.

  “I don’t think you’re invited.”

  All the while, my brain was thinking, I know, I know, I know—I know all about you.

  “We could ask.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s just something for me and Julia. A best friends sort of a thing.”

  She stopped walking, and I kept going. My stomach felt like it was falling down straight and deep into some pit I didn’t even know I had inside of me.

  “’Bye, Mori!” she called, her voice hollow as an old bell.

  “’Bye,” I called back without looking.

  I waited for the sound of her getting on her bike and riding off, but I didn’t hear it.

  Julia’s mom was already out in their side yard. She had on big sunglasses and Capri pants and a brightly patterned apron. “Hey there, Mori! Sun prints await.” She’d brought a card table outside, and there was already a tub of water on it. “I’m so glad you could come over. Julia’s feeling better now, and she really wanted to see you.”

  “She was sick?”

  “That’s why she was
n’t out to play the past two days. She had an ear infection.”

  “Julia never gets sick.”

  “It’s from all the swimming you kids have been doing. The water was down in the ear canal, and well, she was in some serious pain. Swimmer’s ear is what they call it.”

  As I stepped onto the grass, Julia opened the door, clutching the silver folder of sun paper. Julia’s mom patted me on the shoulder, then headed toward the house. When she passed by Julia, she kissed her on the head.

  “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” I said.

  “Yeah, it was a killer headache.”

  “Your mom said it was an ear infection.”

  Julia clutched the folder of sun paper. “Yeah, I mean, that’s what it was. An ear infection, but it gave me the worst headache. But I’m better now.”

  “Good.”

  “I think I slept most of yesterday. That’s why I wasn’t outside. It’s a bummer, too, because my mom actually said I could watch the Zane and River We Are in Love special, but then I just conked out. Maybe it was the medicine they gave me. Did I miss much out here?”

  I suppose I could have told her then what Theo and I had learned. Instead I said, “Nah, nothing much. Same old, same old. I actually spent a lot of time inside reading.”

  “Not hanging out with Ilana?”

  I shook my head. “So, anyway, are we going to get started on these sun prints or what?”

  “I’m going to make it look like a fishbowl. And the water will be the blue part and the fish will be white with blue spots, and the outline of the fishbowl is going to be so thin. I’m going to do it with yarn,” she exclaimed. “What are you going to do?”

  I hadn’t really thought of it, but I said, “A flower, I guess.”

  “Like the ones Theo gave you?” she asked with a grin.

  “No,” I said. “Well, actually, yes, it probably will be a daisy, but only because that seems easy.”

  “You could do something spotted for the inside, something perforated, I mean, to get the little dots of the—what’s the center of a flower called again?”

  I wasn’t really listening. I looked over my shoulder. Ilana wasn’t back at her house, and of course I couldn’t see all the way over to my house, but I pictured her there, standing still as a statue while her mind raced to figure out why I was acting so terribly toward her. I clamped my hand onto my stomach. She had to think I was an awful person, an awful friend. And she wouldn’t be wrong, even with what I had discovered about her.

  “I said, ‘You ready?’ ” Julia asked.

  We crouched down in the shade under the table, and Julia carefully pulled two sheets of golden brown paper from the package. She immediately set to work outlining her fishbowl. She had already cut out a fish and punched holes in it. She was all done, but I was still staring at my paper. “Come on, Mori.”

  Instead of making a flower, I plucked blades of grass from her lawn and arranged them at the top of the paper. Then I found a wide, flat leaf, which I placed below them.

  “What’s that?” Julia asked as I put it up on top of the table next to her fish.

  “You’ll see,” I said, with more hope than assurance.

  “We can make more than one if you want,” Julia said.

  I shook my head and so she plopped down on the grass.

  “I’m so glad you’re here. Just you and me,” she said.

  “Me too,” I agreed.

  “I’m sorry if I’ve been a little, you know, a little crabby.”

  “More than a little crabby,” I said.

  “Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry. I’m sorry we fought. I never like to fight with you, and now we’ve done it twice this summer. I don’t like it at all. It makes me feel like someone is shaking me up and down until I’m going to puke.”

  “Me too,” I said. I tucked my hair behind my ear.

  “I just was feeling—I felt like she was taking you away from me.”

  “She wasn’t, though,” I said, looking down at her as she sat in the grass. It wasn’t that Ilana had been pulling me: I went to her. I was the one who had left Julia behind, and so Julia had a right to be mad. “I’m sorry, too.”

  There was a tennis ball close by, and she picked it up and tossed it to me, an easy-to-catch throw. I caught it and sat down across from her. We passed it back and forth a few times, and I realized that this could be the moment where I cut myself free from Ilana. I didn’t know how to deal with what I knew, so maybe it was better, instead of twisting myself into knots, to just walk away. So I said, “She’s not exactly who I thought she was.”

  “Oh?” Julia asked. I knew she was being careful, that she didn’t want to push me.

  “And maybe . . . ,” I began. “Maybe things have gotten bad since she got here.” I meant the words as I said them, but also wanted to reel them back in. “It’s all been so mixed up, you know. The yellow jackets and the treadmills. And the fighting.”

  Julia nodded.

  “I mean, I don’t necessarily think it’s her fault. Not necessarily. I’m not saying I don’t like her. But, I don’t know, I guess maybe—”

  “No, I understand. She’s not a bad person,” Julia said.

  She’s not a person at all.

  “She doesn’t fit in,” Julia continued. “Once school starts, she’ll make all sorts of friends and we won’t even feel bad about it. It just feels weird now because she’s in our neighborhood and the rest of us are so close.”

  “Right,” I agreed.

  “She’s not a bad person,” Julia said again. “She’s just not one of us, you know?”

  We stood up to check our prints: everything that wasn’t covered had turned nearly white. We brushed off our leaves and paper and grass, and then dunked our papers into the water side by side. “The instructions say to leave them there for one to five minutes.”

  And so we counted. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three.

  Julia was right. Ilana just didn’t fit in with us. That might be the case even if she wasn’t a—whatever she was.

  One thousand thirty-four, one thousand thirty-five.

  And she probably would make friends at school. There was this group of girls who were a little bit odd, and they always hung around together. Not bad odd, just not like us. They were really smart and driven and made jokes that I never quite understood, but Ilana could. Those girls all lived over on Deer Ridge Road, not too far from us. Ilana could even ride her bike there; it would be no problem for her. And they had a brand-new playground.

  One thousand fifty-nine, one thousand sixty.

  “What do your parents do at Krita?” I asked.

  Julia raised her eyebrows. “You okay in there, Mori? You know my dad does some financial thing and my mom works in sustainability research.”

  “Right. But what do they really do? Like, I know what departments my parents work in. My mom is in fertility, but is she, like, helping people get pregnant or messing around with their babies or what?”

  “Messing around with their babies?” Julia asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I mean. Is she changing them somehow—”

  “That’s not messing around, Mori. That’s designing. It’s totally normal. Unlike you today. What’s going on?”

  “I just think it’s weird that our parents go off to work and we don’t even know what they’re doing. Krita is, like, the most powerful corporation in the world, and we assume they’re doing good, but . . .” Julia continued to frown and I let my voice trail off. We were veering into rocky waters again, and I didn’t want to have another fight right after we had gotten back together. “I’ve just been thinking about all of this lately, about Krita and what all of us are going to do there.”

  “If you must know, my mom is trying to figure out how to get more energy out of poop. I kid you not. Poop power is what my mom does.”

  I laughed in spite of myself. “Don’t let her hear you call it poop.”

  “Seri
ously.” Julia grinned. “It’s like, ‘fecal matter as energy operative blah blah blah.’ You really don’t want to go down that road. There’s this other person in her lab who’s trying to figure out a way to use nanotechnology coatings to produce solar power. That’s kind of cool.”

  “Sure,” I agreed.

  “And helpful. If that’s what you’re worried about—being helpful—there’s lots of jobs where you could make the world a better place.”

  “I know.” I tried to keep exasperation from edging into my voice.

  “And I guess it makes sense that you’re thinking about what we’re going to be when we grow up because of the latencies and all. But you know you really are just supposed to think about your talents and your testing and all that, and not worry too much about what job you might end up with.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of me or my latency; it was just, like—well, seeing all those projects on the computer at number nine. I guess I didn’t realize that we did that sort of thing in Old Harmonie.”

  “Artificial intelligence?”

  “No, like, creating a whole new consciousness. Like that girl, Victoria. You don’t think that was crossing a line at all?”

  I heard the squeal of a bike braking and wondered if it was Ilana, and if she could see us sitting here all cozy together.

  “I don’t know, Mori. That’s why we have the ethics department, right? To make those decisions.”

  “I guess.”

  “Really,” she assured me, but she was looking past me, and I figured she was trying to stay patient, too. When she ran the end of her braid over her lips, I knew for sure: she was getting tired of this conversation.

  Still, I pushed a little more, “Sometimes people make mistakes, don’t you think? They get all caught up in what they’re doing and don’t see the big picture.”

  She tugged on the end of her braids. “But that’s why Krita has all the systems in place, Mori. Krita takes care of everything. It’s what keeps Old Harmonie running and what keeps us safe.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  Julia looked back at me and softened her face. “That’s what you should do! For your latency! Something related to ethics. Do you think that would be problem solving or puzzles?”