by Danny Tobey
“That’s okay. It’s worth it.” Her mom could land a comment like no one else, a few simple words, no drama, yet it always sliced through every defense and went straight to the bone.
Mary’s heart sank. She ran back upstairs and fixed herself up.
As she headed out the second time, her mother gave her an approving nod and told her the same phrase she’d heard for years: “It’s important to look pretty.”
The bracelet burned on her wrist. She wanted to throw it in the trash. Or better yet, return it to whatever fancy store Tim had bought it from and give the money to charity. She didn’t dare. She remembered the pain when Tim had dug into her wrist. But the real power he had over her was elsewhere. He didn’t have to remind her of what he knew. It was in his eyes.
I own you.
It was funny. Everyone wanted to be her. And she was the last person she wanted to be.
She felt the need to do something reckless.
Without thinking, she walked toward the east stairwell, where she knew Charlie met Peter after school.
It’s just a ride, after all, she thought.
Who could blame her for that? Who would even know?
* * *
Vanhi ran home during free period, to work on her application. She wanted to be alone to do it, in the quiet of her home. No other students around to freak her out.
Vanhi was a bundle of contradictions. She was an ace student. She loved manga and Comic-Con and Neil Gaiman. She had desperately wanted to go to Harvard since she was ten, when her mom and dad brought her back a Harvard T-shirt from a rare vacation. She played electric bass in a band called the Dipshits, until they broke up. Her hair was red with black stripes now. Before that, it was purple, and before that, silver. She was punk and nerd and misfit and badass, all at once. Sometimes she wished she could just pick one because most of the time she felt as if she were being pulled in twenty different directions.
She logged into the system and stared at her Harvard application.
It was perfect, except for the one thing no one knew about. Not even her parents, because she doctored her report card online before they saw it.
She bombed AP US History. It was crazy. She was a great student. She could code like nobody’s business. She aced every class. But she got cocky and blew off studying for the exam. In chemistry, in physics, she could just feel how the problems could be solved. In English she could compose a fluid, lovely essay without a second thought. The atoms snapped together, the balls bounced, the words popped. But she scoffed at AP History—a bunch of rote memorization of dead facts? That’s what Google was for. There was no logic, no thought. Memorization was so twentieth century. She’d read the book but she hadn’t memorized what color George Washington’s jockstrap was, for God’s sake. How was she supposed to know or care who John Muir was? It was a onetime mistake, but she couldn’t take it back. There, on her perfect record, was a bleak mark. It pulled her whole GPA down. It sank her class ranking from 1 or 2 to 57. And when Harvard rejected 95 percent of applicants, that’s all it took. Her life dream went down the toilet in one bad day.
Nobody knew. They just assumed she would get in. She hadn’t told anyone. It was her secret shame. Vanhi read her essay for the twentieth time. She felt like a fraud. All this work, and it was pointless. The grade was a deal killer.
She fixed a couple commas, then knocked the mouse away.
She picked up her bass and let her fingers stretch over the frets, feeling the tension.
She could hear her mom in her head:
Whoever heard of an Indian bass player anyway?
Um, Mohini Dey, Ma?
She let her fingers run the bass line to “Another One Bites the Dust.”
In honor of her Harvard application.
Screw it.
She put the bass away.
It was time for the Vindicators.
* * *
Charlie was waiting for Peter by the stairs when someone entirely unexpected approached.
“Hi, Charlie.”
And there was Mary Clark, a vision from his past, floating above it all, looking stunning. She was a cheerleader, a student-body rep, founded their Students Against Destructive Decisions chapter. And, a genuinely nice person, unlike the circle of monsters she surrounded herself with.
He remembered their friendship, freshman year on student council. They would talk and laugh as they worked together on anti-graffiti initiatives or dress-code reform. But there was an invisible boundary. Outside student council, they kept to different worlds.
So the idea of her walking up now, in broad daylight, without even the thread of student council connecting them anymore, was a shock.
“Hi,” Charlie said back, waiting for her to reveal her purpose.
“Are you going to the Grove tonight?”
He wasn’t. The Grove was where students went, deep in the woods, to drink and hang out, under the pagan lights of bonfires and idling cars. Charlie hadn’t ventured there ever, much less been invited there. But something made him lie now.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Could you give me a ride?”
He thought he heard wrong, but he decided to pretend he hadn’t. “Sure. I can get my dad’s car.”
He wanted to say something suave, or clever, or anything. But he was so confused he didn’t know where to start. Mary Clark was not short on rides. And more perplexing was why Tim wasn’t taking her, if any guy was. And what would Tim do to Charlie when he found out?
“Thanks” was all she said, as if this were all the most natural thing in the world.
She was walking off when Peter appeared at Charlie’s shoulder and said jovially, “What the fuck?”
“I don’t know.”
“I thought you quit student council?”
“I did.”
“Maybe she needs help with her next campaign for better toilet paper.”
Charlie ignored him.
“Come on,” Peter said. “We’re gonna be late for the Vindicators.”
* * *
While Charlie and Peter went to the basement of the school, Edward Burklander was in the office of the principal, Elaine Morrissey. A forty-eight-year-old, married mother of three, including one son at the high school, she had summoned Mr. Burklander to her office. She asked him to close the door. She had a serious look on her face. As they got close, the door closed, the electricity between them became too much to bear, and they fell into each other, again, knocking papers and a plastic bin of pencils off her desk. He slid her skirt up and ran his hand along the soft inner line of her thigh. She arched her back up and he pulled off his belt. As he slipped into her, she cried out, just a little, and tried to knock over a picture of her husband and children on her desk so that they wouldn’t be staring at her. But the photo was just out of reach, and soon she forgot about it entirely.
In the corner of the room, her computer hummed.
6 THE SIGN
“And why would we do this?” Vanhi asked. She sat cross-legged on the table, looking skeptical. As always, her sarcasm was spiky and electric, dominating the room, and Charlie would’ve married her in a heartbeat if she were interested in boys. As it was, he’d spent the first half of freshman year pining for her anyway. She’d told him, “I’ll be your best friend, but you’d have better luck flirting with a tree.”
Now she was asking them why they would take on this particular stunt. Just as she had before the phallic pumpkin patch. Just as she had before the skeleton incident, or the aptly named Hack Against Douchebags. But they knew Vanhi always came around. She had a special place as the only girl in the Vindicators. Which meant she had a slightly better frontal lobe, but deep down, she still liked to ride the edge like the rest of them.
“Well, it’s an election year,” Peter answered. “And our senior year.”
“Go class of 2017,” Vanhi said. “So … why again?”
“A special year deserves a special prank,” Charlie said.
&nb
sp; They had decided not to mention the chatbot, or the instructions from the pearly gates.
“What level crime is this?” Kenny asked nervously. His parents’ words were echoing in his head: No false steps; second chances don’t exist. It didn’t help that his brother had dropped out of medical school to be a “writer” in LA. Kenny was now the good son.
“Class A misdemeanor,” Alex said.
“Not so bad.” Kenny felt a little queasy. Every fiber of his body said leave, but these were his best friends, smart and talented if a little mischievous, and he wasn’t going to leave them in a foxhole. Nor did he want to be labeled a chicken later.
“I’ve done worse,” Peter added, to no one in particular.
“Still…,” Kenny said.
“You don’t have to come,” Alex taunted him.
Kenny looked away, shamed.
Vanhi said, “We should do it.”
“Really?” Charlie asked, surprised.
“The guy is an asshole. Flirting with white supremacists and neo-Nazis. And the Vindicators have a strict no-asshole policy.”
“That’s true,” Kenny said, psyching himself up.
“That is true,” Charlie admitted, a little worried at how easily his friends had agreed to do this. Throwing his own life away seemed fine. But he didn’t want to take them down with him. College applications were coming due, after all. But it was just a misdemeanor.…
“We’ll need a bolt cutter,” Peter said.
“I have one,” Alex offered, surprising no one.
“Put ’em in,” Kenny said, putting his hand in the middle of their group. Everybody laid hands on top. “Our senior year. Our final prank. ‘No assholes’ on three?”
It was agreed.
“One…”
“Two…”
“Three…”
“No assholes!”
On the way to the parking lot, Charlie tugged on Vanhi’s sleeve. “You really don’t have to come,” he whispered, saying it so only she could hear. Unlike Alex, Charlie said it genuinely, not as a dare. “Maybe you shouldn’t. It’s not exactly a great time to get arrested.”
“That goes for you, too,” Vanhi shot back.
Neither of them blinked, so they found themselves with Peter, Alex, and Kenny in Kenny’s Honda Civic on the way to the highway. They had agreed Peter’s BMW was way too conspicuous for this mission.
They found the sign where they expected, having cased it earlier. The bright orange lights announced TRAVEL TIME TO WESTVIEW EXIT—10–12 MINUTES against a black background, enclosed in yellow metal and rising above the highway.
They could have done it in the middle of the night. Under cover of darkness. But what fun would that be? So TxDOT could have it down before the morning commute started? No. This was senior year, class of 2017. An election year. It called for a bold gesture. A hack for truth and justice, which were in short supply these days. They parked the car in a Whataburger parking lot and found a remote way down under the bridge, where they could slink in the darkness beneath the overpass, seen only by a homeless couple balled up in sleeping bags deep in the crevice between the grass bank and the bridge base. They had anticipated this, and Peter, with his effortless charm, passed them a couple chicken sandwiches from Whataburger and assured them that the Vindicators had never been here and weren’t here now. The chicken/secrecy oath transacted, they worked their way down and crept in the shadow of the sign, hopefully out of view from the road, and found the control box.
Its cheap lock fell easily to Alex’s bolt cutter. It fell into two pieces, which he merrily twisted apart. “Let’s do this,” he said, grinning.
He pried open the control box, and Peter knelt in front of it.
Inside was a panel with a keyboard and small screen, housed in black plastic. On prompting, it asked for the admin name. Peter typed in the default, admin, and tabbed to the password prompt. He tried the default password, which he’d looked up on .narthex.
“They never change these,” he said gleefully.
He typed DTOC and hit Enter.
Access denied.
“Not to worry.” He scowled. He held down ALT-CTL, then typed CIPC while holding the two buttons. The screen changed and informed him the password was now reset to the default.
“Easy.” He typed admin then DTOC again.
A menu came up, and just like that, they were in.
He selected Image Text, entered their agreed-upon observation, then selected Run w/o Save. Their AI archangel hadn’t told them what message to write, just that they had to pick one. Maybe that was part of the test. Charlie and Peter had come up with the line together.
The text lit up the bright, large construction sign above them, for all the world to see. Now was the time to get the hell out of Dodge.
Alex put the control pad back into the box, tucking the curly black cord inside with it. Vanhi slammed the door shut, and Alex clamped into place the new industrial-grade padlock they had purchased. Unlike the cheap city lock, it would not be so easily cut. Meanwhile, Charlie and Kenny had already put a similar bolt on the power source. Shutting this baby down would take some doing.
The first cars had started honking, whether in agreement or protest it was hard to guess.
They were halfway up the slope under the overpass when Peter grinned at the homeless couple, who had finished their Whatachick’n and balled up the garbage. He flipped them two Snickers bars. “You never saw us.”
One of the couple winked conspiratorially.
Back in the car, they U-turned and allowed themselves the pleasure of watching for a moment, engine running, as the rush-hour traffic streamed past the sign, honking, some slowing to take a second look.
It was beautiful chaos.
“Third-degree felony,” Alex said.
“What?”
“I lied earlier. When I said it was a misdemeanor.”
“Seriously?”
“Third-degree felony. Tampering with a road sign. Jail time.”
“Why did you lie?” Charlie studied Alex, trying to understand him. Charlie wasn’t worried about himself but Vanhi and Kenny and even Peter. They should’ve at least known the risk.
“I didn’t think we’d do it otherwise,” Alex said almost plaintively.
“Oh, wow,” Kenny said, with the giddy freedom of being on the far side of a rickety bridge.
“Yeah,” Vanhi said.
“Well, we did it.”
“Yes. Yes, we did.”
They admired their handiwork. The small gesture wasn’t going to change the world. But in a random, chaotic universe, it was a small, proud shot in the dark. Under the overpass, hundreds of cars passing by, their sign told the world in bright orange light:
DONALD TRUMP IS A SHAPE-SHIFTING LIZARD
A siren sang in the distance, and while it probably had nothing to do with them, they weren’t going to wait to find out.
“Third-degree felony,” Peter repeated aloud.
“Hot damn,” Charlie said.
“I’m applying to Harvard tomorrow,” Vanhi added.
“So … we should go?”
“Hell yes. Yes. Let’s go.”
They drove off, slow and steady in the opposite direction, leaving their glorious sign for the torrent of cars streaming home.
7 THE LIZARD KING
The Grove was where, rumor has it, the Friends of the Crypt met in secret during their reign of terror over the suburbs of Glendale and Pleasant Valley back in the 1990s. It was a cautionary tale for Charlie and his friends, of honors students gone wrong. They, too, had been a group of bright outsiders—the Vindicators sometimes thought of themselves as a benign version of that fabled group—but something had gone so very wrong for the FOTC. They were self-described techno-anarchists, a dangerous mix of knee-jerk teen outrage and mechanical savvy, pipe bombs and viruses. They were going to attack the system, even if they didn’t know exactly what should replace it. Every parent for decades had heard about them, casting gl
ances at those woods as if they were haunted and wondering, Could my kid ever … no. But like so much of the late nineties, those stories of ominous graffiti carved into trees—hooded rats with slit eyes—and dangerous acts ending in tragedy had faded year by year into a pastel memory.
Now the Grove was a place to party.
“I think you’re playing with fire,” Peter said that evening in Charlie’s room, the door closed and locked, the window cracked.
“It’s just a ride.”
“She’s got a boyfriend.”
“Yeah, and he’s a jerk.”
“Maybe, but he’s also a meathead and a jock and a violent guy. I’m just saying, he’s not gonna like it. And he’s got big friends.”
“What, he’s going to beat me up because I gave his girlfriend a ride?”
“I like this new you, Charlie. Totally fearless. I’m just saying, I don’t want to have to bail you out when the football team comes after you. I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“Okay. I’m not saying she’s not worth it. She’s hot. Like, crazy hot.”
“It’s just a ride. Jesus. He’s probably meeting her there later.”
“Right. And you’re the only person with a car.”
“Whatever.”
“It’s not even your car.”
“I get it.”
“It’s a Nissan, for God’s sake.”
“I get it. Enough.”
Peter started laughing, and it was impossible to be mad at him. He could be a jerk and win you back over in the same sentence.
Something chirped on Charlie’s phone.
Half an instant later, Peter’s phone buzzed.
They both glanced at their screens, then immediately met eyes and grinned.
On their phones, from the same anonymous number that had sent them a task from “God,” was a new message.
This one did not involve go fucking themselves.
It was the opposite:
You have an invitation.
The word invitation was hyperlinked.
“Oh, go on.” Peter grinned, his eyes twinkling, that icy blue.