The Firefly Code

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  “It’s just a couple of months early,” Julia said. “I was on track to be one of the first anyway, since I’m so tall and already started puberty.”

  “TMI, Julia. Like totally,” Benji said, trying to lighten the mood. It didn’t work.

  “It wasn’t because of Ilana. After the fitness test, the trainers said I was ready.”

  “After the fitness test. When Ilana was beating you.”

  “Until she made us all crash,” Julia said. “Another example of how she’s just ruining everything.”

  “She’s not ruining everything,” Benji said. “I feel a little bad for her, actually. I mean, she came to this new neighborhood all the way from Calliope. Everything’s new and different for her. She’s having some trouble adjusting.”

  Theo took my hand and lifted my arm. “This is not trouble adjusting,” he said. Then he turned to me. “If you’re not going to tell your parents, I will.”

  Everyone looked at me, but what could I say? My parents would see the finger marks. If I lied, I would only be implicating someone else, someone innocent. It’s not like I could say I’d done it to myself.

  “I’m getting more journals,” I said. “So if you could help me open the door, Theo, that would be great.”

  “Sure, Mori,” he said. “Of course.”

  We lifted the bulkhead together. It was at an angle since he had most of the weight. When we put it down, he offered me a hand to go down the stairs, but I didn’t take it. I went down into the deep of the basement, the cool air surrounding me and cutting me off from the heat above. Put the door back on, I wanted to call up. They could just put the top on and leave me there. I could live in that house all by myself, just like Agatha had. I’d shut the door to the creepy room with all the old robot parts and make a home for myself in the rest of the house.

  “Mori,” Theo called down. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” I called back. It was a lie.

  25

  Benji came with me to tell my parents. We hung out at his house until my mom got home from work. I wore one of his sweatshirts, and his sister said, “Don’t you know it’s summer?” Benji told her to shut up.

  “It was an accident,” I assured them as I slipped my arm from my sleeve. Dad’s eyes grew wide and Mom put her hand on her lips.

  “Ilana?” she said.

  I don’t know how they knew. Julia would have been strong enough to do it. Or Theo. Or any of the adults on our cul-de-sac, for that matter.

  “We were going to go back into number nine, and she stopped me.”

  “Number nine?” Dad asked.

  “You’ve been going there?” Mom asked. “For fun?”

  “Just exploring, you know. Being curious?”

  “There’s honey there,” Benji said. “Delicious, delicious honey.”

  She clapped her hands over her mouth. “Is that where you were? When you were stung?”

  I lowered my head. “Yellow jackets don’t make honey.”

  “Mori, you lied to us?” She seemed confused by it.

  “I didn’t lie. I just—”

  “Went along with what your friends said.” She bit her lip.

  Benji lowered his head. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

  Mom stood up and paced the floor in front of our mantel. Her sake set looked a little off-kilter. “Mori, you can’t lie to us. Or hide the truth. We need to— It’s part of keeping you safe, you know?”

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “I just, by the time I got to talk to you, you already thought I’d been in the woods. And anyway, we don’t go by the yellow jackets anymore. We know where they are.”

  “What about the snakes?”

  “There’s a path through the grass.” I didn’t tell her how Theo and I had almost stepped on one.

  “You can’t go there ever again.”

  I hesitated.

  “Mori.”

  Dad cleared his throat. “So Ilana grabbed you?” he asked, getting back to the first of the awful subjects.

  “I really don’t think she meant to grab me so hard. Something’s happened to her. I really think she was trying to protect me.”

  “It was all kind of crazy,” Benji said. “But we were there with her, and Ilana let her go.”

  “And then did you go into the house?”

  I shook my head. Lie by body gesture.

  They didn’t say anything else about it. They just sat there for a little while, as if the information was sinking through their skin and into their brains. Finally Mom said, “Why don’t you two go outside and enjoy the sunshine. It’s a beautiful day.”

  “Sure,” Benji said for both of us. “That sounds like fun.”

  But all we did was sit on the lawn and pick buttercups. Benji held one under my chin, but I wasn’t up for games. I said, “You know, in beehives, there are guard bees, and they stand at the door of the hive, and they use smell to know which bees belong there and which bees don’t.”

  Benji leaned over and sniffed me. “You belong.”

  I sniffed him back. “You, too.”

  I wanted to sleep in my tent, but my parents said no, and I didn’t argue that it was the perfect night for tent sleeping—the Perseids meteor showers would even be starting. I was sick of arguing and fighting, and I knew they wouldn’t change their minds, not after the day we’d had.

  So instead I lay in my bed on my stomach and looked out my window. I took Prince Philip out of the box I kept him in and put him on the sill so he could look with me. He gave a little buzz. “Today was just . . . confusing.”

  He batted his wings as if agreeing with me.

  The moon was full, and it rained its light down over our whole block.

  I hadn’t written about the day in my journal. I didn’t know what to say, didn’t have the words to describe it.

  And this was definitely a day that I would be happy to lose.

  My arm still hurt, a throbbing reminder of what had happened. Not that I needed it. When I closed my eyes, all I could see was Ilana staring back at me. What was it that she didn’t want me to see in there? What did she think would happen to me?

  I put my chin on my fists. Prince Philip buzzed closer to me. “Do you miss your friends?” I asked him. At one time, there had been hundreds of these robobees built in the Krita labs. “Do you even remember you had friends?”

  Outside, something moved and caught my eye. A fox? We had those sometimes, prowling around the edges of the neighborhood. But no, it was much bigger. A bear? Once these woods had been full of them. But no, it was much smaller than a bear, I thought.

  I stared out into the shadows and silver light. Then I saw her. Ilana. Making her way down the street in fits and starts as she raced through the light to the shadows.

  What’s she doing out there?

  What’s she up to?

  But who was I to be suspicious? I liked a nighttime walk. Maybe she just wanted to go out to the woods to the fence, too. Or somewhere else. Somewhere all her own.

  “I could follow her,” I said to Prince Philip. He didn’t respond. “Or not.”

  I ought to let her be, I thought. Let her figure out what she needs to figure out. I was glad to see her, though. I was glad to see she was okay. But I couldn’t follow her and I probably couldn’t be her friend anymore, not after what she had done to me. It was time to let her go.

  26

  “Those are funny clouds,” Benji said. He and Theo and I were walking back to our houses for lunch after a swim at Julia’s. Benji was right about the clouds. They looked like a stack of blankets, one on top of the other, each a slightly different shade of gray.

  “Storm coming,” I guessed. “I love a good thunderstorm.”

  Theo glanced over at me. “Really? I would’ve figured they scared you.”

  “I’m no fraidy cat,” I said, my voice sharp.

  “Hey, sorry,” he said.

  We were passing in front of his house when we heard the woo-woo of the alarm siren. I felt my eyes go wide.
We had thunderstorms all the time with no alarms. “It has to be a drill,” I said.

  Theo grabbed Benji and me and dragged us into his house, where he finally said, “Why would we have a drill so soon after the real thing?”

  “Maybe this storm is worse than it looks,” Benji said. “Or maybe another outbreak?”

  “Ugh, I’ll be stuck inside for another week.” I moaned.

  The rain started coming down in heavy sheets, and we watched as it turned over to hail, thumping against the ground and the roof and even against the windows of his house. There was a sharp sound, and then a crack appeared in the glass of his front door.

  I stumbled back as the hail kept coming, pelting the house.

  “What’s wrong with you lot?” Theo’s nanny, Clara, called. “It’s a bad storm! Down to the basement with you.”

  She held the door open for us, and we hurried down the stairs. “Tornado?” I asked when we were settled onto the big old leather couch in front of the television that flashed colored bars and the word “STORM, STORM, STORM” over and over.

  “I don’t think so,” Theo said.

  “Maybe a hurricane?”

  “They were saying something about high winds and flash floods,” Clara said, shaking her head so her red curls bounced. “And the three of you outside up there watching it like it was a movie.”

  “We weren’t outside,” Theo grumbled.

  “You know, I was trying to get these fools to safety,” Benji said. “It’s often said that I’m the brains of this group.”

  “Who says that?” Theo asked.

  The television crackled, then was silent.

  “Is it over?” Benji asked.

  “Stay put,” Clara told him. “All of you.” She started up the basement stairs.

  The lights flickered.

  “It’s still going—” she called down.

  And then the lights went out. We were in darkness. Absolute darkness. I could even hear the little camera on my glasses buzzing as it tried to make sense of it. I reached up and turned the camera off. What did I need it for now?

  “Mori?” Theo called.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Benji?”

  “Right here, chief.”

  Their voices sounded both closer and farther away. Like we were swimming in a swirling cauldron.

  “There are flashlights down here somewhere,” Clara said. Then a few unmentionable words. And then there was a faint glow of a light. I turned my glasses back on.

  Clara handed each of us a flashlight and we set them up on the table to make something like a central light, but it was uneven and frail.

  “We’ve never lost power before,” Benji said.

  Clara shook her head but didn’t say anything.

  “They’ll be out to fix it as soon as they can,” I told him. “The maintenance workers are very efficient.”

  “My brother’s on the crew,” Clara said.

  “But I thought they were all droids,” Benji said.

  “Droids with a human captain for each crew.”

  “And someone from outside can be the captain?” I asked.

  “You think a baby from Old Harmonie is going to grow up and do it?” she snapped back.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I glanced at Theo, but he was looking away from me. It wasn’t entirely out of the question that someone from Old Harmonie would be on the maintenance crew. Even with our interventions, some kids were more inclined toward that kind of work, less for the intellectual work of the Krita Corporation. Krita found a place for everyone.

  Clara smoothed out her skirt. “Storms make me nervous is all. And I don’t like to think of him being out in it.”

  I thought about Julia and my parents; they were all probably safe, either at home or in an office. But what about Ilana? I still hadn’t seen her since the day she’d hurt me. Was she safe? Was this type of thing even a danger to her?

  “You cold?” Theo asked.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “Just hoping everyone is okay.”

  The lights stayed off, and we stayed in Theo’s basement. Eventually I fell asleep on the sofa, and someone put a blanket on me. I woke up and saw Benji sleeping on a beanbag chair. Clara was on the floor. I didn’t see Theo anywhere.

  With my blanket still wrapped around me, I took a flashlight and headed up the stairs. Theo was back standing by the front door, which he had opened. The rain had stopped, and the moon shone through breaks in the clouds. A huge tree had fallen and lay across his lawn and driveway.

  There were more trees down all along the street.

  “It’s going to take them ages to clean it up,” he said. “Don’t you think?”

  I nodded. “You okay?”

  “I don’t know where my mom is.”

  “She probably stayed in Center Harmonie.”

  He rubbed his head. “But maybe it was worse there.”

  My house was on the other side of the cul-de-sac from Theo’s, through the woods. I squinted, but of course I couldn’t see any lights, if there were any lights to see.

  “I can walk you home if you want,” he said.

  “Should you tell Clara?”

  “She’s sleeping.”

  I shrugged the blanket off and left it in a ball by the door, and we stepped out together. It was even quieter than my usual nighttime walks. The hum of electricity was gone. But after a moment I heard other noises. The chirping of crickets, and the hoot of an owl. A bat swooped down above us before disappearing back into the clouds.

  The houses were darker, too, and it was easy to imagine that they were empty, that every other person on Firefly Lane had been sucked up by the storm and that we were all alone.

  I peered across the street to Ilana’s house. It was as dark as all the rest. Was she in there? I hoped she was. I hoped she was sleeping soundly.

  But part of me also hoped that the storm had picked her up and blown her away someplace—someplace where she belonged.

  Theo and I walked along the street with the two yellow circles of light from our flashlights in front of us. They bounced together and then apart, and then together again. Each time we stepped, our feet made a slapping noise as the soles of our shoes hit the still-wet street.

  A large tree, full of summer leaves, had fallen across the road. It was so big it didn’t seem like we could go under or over it. We both stopped. “We should just go through the woods,” I said. So we cut between the Grays’ and the Darlings’ houses—both dark—and entered the woods at the center of the cul-de-sac. These woods were not as wild as the ones around the outside of the neighborhood. The trees had all been planted at once, in even lines, and though there were a few new trees starting to sprout up, we could still walk down the aisles between the old trees with little problem.

  The ferns were all curled up, and the leaves beneath our feet were slick with water. I took a deep breath.

  “You really like it out here, huh?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” I sighed.

  His foot snapped a stick.

  “I like the other woods better, though. The ones around the neighborhood. It’s not so orderly. And there are still some things from before. Like once I found part of an old stone wall, all covered with moss.” I stopped myself. I was talking too much. Too loud.

  He held up a branch, and I walked under it. The leaves gave up their raindrops, and they dripped down on me.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “It’s okay.”

  Another bat swooped low near us, as if it wasn’t quite sure we were real. I wasn’t quite sure we were, either. That’s how strange the night felt.

  “Maybe when I grow up, I’ll build a cottage right out here in the middle of the cul-de-sac, and I’ll have a little dirt road that leads out to it. It will have a green front door with a curved top.” I stopped my description and asked him, “Where do you want to live?”

  “I don’t know. I guess Nashoba is as nice as any of the other villages.”

  “Y
ou don’t think about it more than that?”

  “Why bother? It’s not like you get a choice.”

  “Everyone gets some choice. And you, with your mother, I’ll bet you’ll get a big choice.”

  He snorted. “She’d send me down to Citroen if she could. Heck, I bet she’d even send me to one of the Kritopias in India or China.”

  “No way.”

  “When we went for my latency, she asked the doctor if it was too late to change it to something ‘more inclined toward leadership.’ Those were her exact words. ‘More inclined toward leadership.’ ”

  “But you are a leader,” I said.

  “Maybe I won’t live in a Kritopia at all.”

  “Very funny, Theo.”

  “Why? Aren’t you curious about what it’s like out there?”

  “Of course I’m curious. I’d like to go out there sometime to see it. Sometimes I—” I stopped myself from telling him how I liked to go out to the fence and look toward the lights and wonder what it was like in the city. He would probably get all nervous, though, like Julia had when I mentioned that I thought the town where the gardeners came from—Somerville—sounded pretty.

  “Sometimes what?”

  “You know how in high school some of the kids actually get to bring the supplies they gather out to the city, and they get to meet the little kids there and play with them for a bit? I think I would like to do that.”

  Theo smiled.

  “What?” I asked.

  “That doesn’t surprise me, that’s all.” The wind rustled a tree, sending a shower of rain drops from the leaves down onto us. He pushed his damp hair out of his eyes. “But you wouldn’t want to leave here. Not ever?”

  I hesitated. “No,” I said. But the word didn’t sound quite true, even to me. There was a time when there would have been no doubt in my mind. But things had changed.

  Another branch blocked our way. He held it way up above us, and I passed under his arm. “So this cottage,” he said. “What’s it like on the inside?”

  “Well, it will have a cozy living room with a stone fireplace. And the kitchen will be all yellow, like in number nine. And my bedroom will be right off the kitchen so I can get midnight snacks easily. And I’ll have a big feather bed with a canopy.” I hadn’t ever seen that type of bed, but I liked the idea of it. I’d read about it in books. “And a dog,” I added. “And a cat. She’ll like to sleep in front of the fireplace.”