The Firefly Code

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

“I’m not sure.”

  “Me either,” she said with a shrug, and I guess the conversation was over because then she asked, “Do you think that’s enough time?”

  “Your parents need to dampen your impatience,” I said, because it was a whole lot easier—and safer—than trying to talk about these things with her. She didn’t see any problem with Krita or Old Harmonie. Me, I was feeling more and more like Agatha Varden—weary and wary.

  Julia laughed. “I just had this idea last night, and I really want it to work. I’m going to add some glitter, I think.”

  “But then it’s not really a sun print,” I said. “You might as well have just drawn the fishbowl and added some glitter.”

  Julia thought about that for a minute. “I guess you’re right. I do kind of like glitter, though.”

  “Me too,” I agreed. “I bet they’re done.”

  We pulled out our papers. Julia’s was perfect. Her fishbowl and fish were crisp and clear. Mine looked like a tree caught in a storm.

  “That’s nice,” she said.

  It wasn’t, but I thought it was kind of her to lie for me.

  “I’m glad we agreed,” I said. “About Ilana, I mean.”

  “Me too.”

  “It’s better this way.”

  And as long as I told myself that, again and again, I could drown out the voice that was calling me a traitor, the type of person who would abandon a friend just when things got hard.

  23

  We met at the playground in the morning. It had been my idea to start doing that, but I hadn’t told them why. I bet Theo knew, though, since I first suggested it so soon after he and I found out about Ilana, and we’d been doing it for almost a week. I didn’t want her to see us, didn’t want her to invite herself over to Julia’s or Theo’s. It’s like I wanted to erase her from my life.

  She rode her bike by us a few times the first couple of days, but didn’t stop. I saw her go over to the Collinses’ and help with the younger twins. They climbed all over her like she was a toy, which, in a way, I supposed she was.

  But that first Tuesday in August it was blisteringly hot. “Pool,” Julia said. “Must have pool.”

  I didn’t want to risk running into Ilana until I figured out how to talk to her, how to look into her not-really-real eyes, but Julia was right. It was too hot to be anywhere but in her swimming pool.

  When we parked our bikes, Julia’s mom was across the street, talking to Ilana’s mom. Meryl had her hair wrapped in a scarf with threads of silver and gold wound through it. They glittered in the sun, making Julia’s mom—always so perfectly dressed—look dowdy in comparison. Julia’s mom had her hand up on her forehead, shielding her eyes from the sun. She was nodding, but her body was tense, and turned a bit away from Ilana’s mom. Then Ilana’s mom leaned over and hugged her, which seemed strange, especially given the heat. Julia’s mom crossed the street, heading straight for us.

  “Ilana’s coming over,” she said. “You can go in the pool. I’ll make sandwiches.”

  “Mom—” Julia began. I wondered what she was going to say. We don’t like her anymore. We aren’t friends. But Julia didn’t get a chance to say anything else.

  Her mom said, “I don’t like hearing that you guys are leaving someone out. That’s not the way we act in Old Harmonie.”

  “But—” Julia tried again.

  “You know what Steve Jobs believed?” Julia’s mom asked, and Julia rolled her eyes. Her mom was always quoting Steve Jobs. “He believed it was the weird ones, the odd ducks, those are the people who changed the world.” She looked across the street, and some sort of worry fluttered across her face, but then she trained her gaze right on me. “You should know that better than anyone, Mori.”

  I felt myself go hot. Was Julia’s mom calling me weird? “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “Dr. Varden and your great-grandmother, back at the beginning, they thought of themselves as odd ducks. The world didn’t quite know what to make of them, but this was their place. And they changed the world. They made history.”

  I looked at the ground.

  “So go swim,” she said. “Ilana will be over in a minute.”

  We trudged back to the pool.

  “I can’t believe her mother talked to mine. What a loser,” Julia said.

  “I guess maybe she’s lonely,” Benji said. He hopped from slate tile to slate tile on the path.

  “Whatever, I still think it’s stupid.”

  Theo didn’t say anything and neither did I. I just felt sick to my stomach. Sick about what Julia’s mom had said, and sick about seeing Ilana.

  Julia and I tucked into the little pool house. I kept a spare bathing suit there, and shimmied out of my clothes to change into it.

  “You think it’s stupid, don’t you?” Julia asked. “That she had her mom do the talking instead of just coming to see us. We never said she couldn’t come with us to the playground. We never left her out. She left herself out.”

  I yanked the straps of my bathing suit up over my shoulders. “I guess,” I said. Then: “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Julia huffed, but she didn’t say anything. She grabbed her goggles from a peg on the wall, and a moment later I heard a splash that I assumed was her diving into the water. I kept my goggles in a special case by the door. I carried them out, took my glasses off, and was pulling on my goggles when Ilana came down the path. She was only wearing her bathing suit, brightly striped in orange and yellow. “Hiya, Mori!” she said. Julia was doing handstands in the water, or I bet Ilana would have said a cheery hello to her, too.

  “Hi,” I mumbled, then hurried into the pool. The water was sweet relief.

  I grabbed a couple of pool noodles and hung on them. Theo and Benji came out of the pool house in their swim trunks. Benji lowered himself down onto the stairs. “Ah,” he sighed. “Pool, have I ever told you how much I love you?”

  Theo did a cannonball into the deep end that sent little waves the length of the pool. Right after him, Ilana jumped in with a sleek can opener. They traded jumps for a while, each one a bit more elaborate than the last: spins, straddles, backward dives. Then Ilana ran and did a forward flip in the air, diving deep across the water and popping up near me. “Hi, Mori,” she said again. She had her huge smile on her face, the one that crinkled her eyes.

  My heart felt lighter just to see her, and for a second it was like nothing had changed. I felt myself smiling back at her. “Hi,” I said. Maybe nothing had changed. Maybe it was all in my head.

  “So,” Benji said, leaning back and looking up at the sun. “The ’rents are bugging me about my latency, and I want some idea of what I’m thinking before I go in for my final testing next month.” Benji was one of the oldest in our grade. His birthday was in the fall, so he was going to have to make his choice before school started.

  “What do you think you want?” I asked.

  Benji glanced over at Ilana. “I have many intellectual strengths,” he said. “I’m good at designing and building and implementing. Then of course there are mathematics, computer science, and—”

  “We get it, Benji,” Theo said. “You’re amazing. You probably don’t even need a latency. Your genius is already wild and running free.”

  “True that,” Benji said. “Still, everyone has a latency, and I plan on picking a good one. I’m really leaning toward the mechanical.” He turned back to Ilana. “I designed a skateboard ramp that measures your velocity, the torque on the wheels, the air you got—any measurement you can think of. My parents won’t let me build it, but if I did, it would be way coolio.”

  “It sounds like it,” she said. “Way, way coolio.”

  “And I had this internship in a lab where they put these computer chips into mice—”

  “Why?” she interrupted.

  “It’s a long story, but the point is I realized that there was a hiccup in the system, you know, in relaying the data, and I designed a fix. They practically wanted to hire me on the spot.”


  “Benji’s mother doesn’t believe in dampening, or else she definitely would’ve put the reins on his modesty,” Julia said, splashing water at Benji. “It’s just so sad how he thinks so poorly of himself.”

  “He doesn’t think poorly of himself,” Ilana replied. “In fact, he seems to have a very healthy ego for a small preteen boy.”

  “Joking,” Julia said. “And whoa, weirdness.”

  “And I’m not exactly small,” Benji said. “I’m definitely in the average range. The small side of average, but still totally normal.”

  I did not want this to dissolve into more of Ilana being pushed out of our circle, so I turned to Theo. “What was it like when you got yours?” I hadn’t brought it up all summer, not since he’d been so cruel the day after it had been done. I was afraid just mentioning it would relight that angry spark.

  “It’s like a regular doctor’s appointment. You go in, and they scan you. And then you just lie down, and they put you to sleep, and when you wake up, it’s done.”

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  “I had a terrible headache,” he said. He held on to the side of the pool. “And I had weird dreams, I remember that. Like, all of Firefly Lane was being sucked into this big sinkhole. It was bottomless, and the trees were going down it roots and all, and the houses, too, and I knew I had to get out. And I knew I had to find—” He stopped himself. Then he took a deep breath. “I had to find Mori and I had to find Benji.”

  “What about Julia? Or your mom?” I asked.

  “I guess I knew they were okay. It was a dream. It didn’t have to make sense.”

  “Trust me, Theo, only in your dreams would you ever need to rescue me,” Julia said.

  “And then what about after?” I asked.

  “Well, I guess I was a little cranky.”

  “Just a little?” Julia scoffed.

  He ignored her. “And tired. And hungry. Man, I was so hungry, I thought I could eat everything out of the delivery van and let the whole rest of the neighborhood starve. And here’s what was really weird: after, they had me solving all these logic puzzles to see how it worked. And my mind would pull one way, and then it was like someone else stepped in and yanked me back the other way. They had to go in and do some adjustments.”

  “Adjustments?”

  “Yeah, just getting the levels right. That’s what the doctor said. The latency is really a dampening, you know. They dampen certain areas in the left side of your brain so your right side isn’t hindered at all. And sometimes they just make a little error of calculation. That’s why I had to go back a couple of times. There were a few more adjustments than normal. It’s fine now, but that’s why I was so, you know, so—anyway, I’m sorry about that.”

  “I don’t think I need a latency, either,” Ilana said.

  I coughed into the water. Of course she didn’t need a latency. She was already constructed to be perfect, and I bet they could adjust her at any time, probably from some big central command at Krita.

  “Sure, Ilana,” Julia said.

  “Anyway,” Theo said. “Benji, did you hear that they might be getting a skate park over in Fruitlands?”

  “What? No way. No. Way.”

  I dunked my head underwater. It was easier than lying. Lying to Benji and Julia about Ilana. Lying to Ilana about what I knew. I felt my hair swirling around my face and shoulders. With both hands, I pushed it away, and opened my eyes. There was Ilana, staring right back at me. Her green-blue eyes were lovely, even underwater, maybe even more so.

  And then, like someone turning off a switch, her eyes closed, and she started sinking down. Her arms and her hair drifted up as her body slipped down and down and down. I thought it was a game, like she was trying to scare me, like when she’d jumped off the swing set. But she’d promised me then that she would never frighten me again. Not on purpose. And even with all the things that had changed, I knew she would never break a promise to me.

  I swam to her and tugged on her arm. She barely moved.

  My own lungs were starting to get tight.

  I pushed on her, but she didn’t open her eyes, didn’t flinch.

  My lungs screamed.

  I wanted her to open her eyes to look at me, for the light to flash back on, but she just sank lower and lower.

  Hooking my arms under hers, I kicked and dragged Ilana to the surface of the water. My fingers pressed into the skin by her shoulders, soft and firm as warm clay. My small fingers barely registered. I was surprised by her weight, the heft of her. It was like pulling a bucket through the water.

  When I burst through to the fresh air, I coughed out for help. I’m not sure who pulled her from the water. Julia and Benji, maybe. The light of the sun was so bright in my eyes, and colors danced around the edges of my vision. Theo grabbed me by the wrist and tugged me to the side of the pool. “You okay?” he demanded between heavy breaths.

  I didn’t answer. I watched as Julia tilted Ilana’s chin back. Drops of water spilled from Ilana’s hair and onto the pool deck. One clung to the side of her face. “Benji, go get help!” Julia cried. I laughed, I think. It was just like in our first-aid classes. The teacher said you should always designate one person to go for help, or else no one might go, and we had always done it in such an exaggerated fashion. And now, here it was, for real, with Julia’s lips forming the words so carefully, and Benji springing to his feet.

  “Mori, are you okay?” Theo asked again. I managed to nod. He still had his hand on my arm, and I wasn’t sure if it was to stop me from slipping underwater, or to keep me from going over to Ilana.

  Julia placed her mouth on Ilana’s, and the ends of her braids fell down onto Ilana’s face. Did it tickle? Can you feel anything when the breath has gone out of you? Julia blew a stream of air that inflated Ilana’s lungs. Pause. Then again. And again.

  From the house, I heard a screen door slam shut, and then there was Julia’s mom running down the path with Benji right behind, throwing open the fence to the pool.

  “Here!” Benji called, and spread his arms wide as if we had created this tableau just for Julia’s mother.

  “It’s Ilana,” I said. “She—”

  “I’m fine.”

  I swiveled my head back. Ilana was sitting up on the deck of the pool. The drop of water still clung to her cheek and she brushed it away. Her hair, heavy with water, seemed so much longer than usual, like a dark river going down her back. I raked my own hair out of my face. Next to me, Theo breathed hard. Julia still kneeled beside Ilana.

  “What happened?” Julia’s mom demanded.

  “I’m fine,” Ilana said again.

  Julia’s mom looked at her daughter, then at Ilana, then at me, but none of us said a word.

  Ilana didn’t want to go home, so I brought her to my house. Mom was sitting outside waiting for us. “Julia’s mother told me what happened, Ilana. Are you sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable at your house?”

  “No, I’m fine. Thanks, though.”

  “I could run a quick scan.”

  Ilana cocked her head to the side. “I don’t think that’s necessary. Do you?”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  We walked upstairs and down the hall. “So this is my room,” I said. “I guess you’ve never been in here before.”

  She spun around to see it all, then picked up a small trophy on my desk.

  “It’s for soccer. Everyone got one for something. Mine was for stick-to-it-iveness.”

  “That’s not even a word.”

  “Julia got MVP.”

  “Of course. And now that she’s had her latency released—”

  “No, she hasn’t. She’s not thirteen yet.”

  Ilana raised an eyebrow. “Every rule can be flexed, Mori.”

  She put the trophy down and picked up a thick binder from my desk. It had all my drawings in it, carefully organized by genus and species. She opened it, and her face softened into a smile. “Is this what you were telling me about? How you were cata
loging everything in Oakedge?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s really good, Mori.”

  “No,” I said. “The drawings are so shaky. No one but me could even tell what they are.”

  “I can tell,” she said. She turned the book so I could see. “That’s a pink lady’s-slipper.”

  “It says it right underneath.”

  “But I can tell anyway. See how you got the way it bends down toward the ground? It’s a humble, beautiful flower, don’t you think?”

  I had never thought of the flower that way, but when she said it, I knew she was right.

  “They almost went extinct, you know,” she said. “They take a long time to grow, and they need this special fungus in the soil, so people would dig them up, but then they wouldn’t grow, not outside of their natural habitat.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I told her.

  “So we’re lucky that they belong in Oakedge.”

  “I guess so.”

  Ilana put down the binder and looked at the holopics I had on a shelf above my desk. There were a lot of me and Julia, of course. My favorite was one we’d taken with Theo and Benji the summer before. We were all on the jungle gym at the playground. Theo stood up at the top with his arms above his head. Benji held on with one hand and had one foot on another bar, while his other arm and leg were stuck out to the side. He said it was like a skateboard trick he was going to learn. Julia hung by her knees so that her braids fell straight down toward the ground. I was sitting in one of the spaces toward the bottom. There’d been a time when I’d loved the top, too, but now the old thing seemed too wobbly and frail to risk it. We all had goofy smiles and it was clear we were as happy as could be.

  That was before Ilana.

  She looked back over her shoulder. “We need to get a picture of me and you. Maybe out in Oakedge.”

  “Maybe,” I said. I picked up Prince Philip and put him on the windowsill so he could look out.

  “We really should get out there tomorrow and check on the garden.”

  “I’ll see if I can.”

  “Oh wait, shoot.”

  She sounded just like herself. Her old self. It made my head hurt to think about. “What?” I asked.