Impulse

by Steven Gould

  “Suit yourself. If I knew more, I might be able to give you a better solution.”

  “If you can restrict it as discussed, it will do just fine.”

  “Get the carrier’s best Android phone and then root it.”

  “Root it?” Davy pictured burying the phone in the back yard until white rootlets sprouted from plastic.

  He was in an Internet café in Tornoto and they were talking computer-to-computer, voice over Internet. Both their cameras were turned off but, like he did every time he used a public computer, he’d stuck a Post-it over the computer’s camera anyway.

  “Get root access. Most carriers lock it off but we’ll need access to take control of the phone’s radio.”

  She’s not even trying to speak English.

  “You can give me directions?”

  “I’ll point you to a website. It’s easy. I’ll e-mail you the app and you can install it on the phone.”

  “Three phones.”

  “All with the same need? Location confirmation before tower connection?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay. Same procedure for all three. The GPS stuff is going to eat battery, but I’ll make it turn on and off when it needs to verify a new tower. That should help. I always buy a bigger battery, myself.”

  “Right. Bigger batteries. Check.”

  “Half to start?” she suggested.

  “The fee? I transferred the whole amount ten minutes ago, to your PayPal account.”

  He heard keys clicking. “Ah. So you did. Give me three days.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Uh, if I misplaced one of the phones and needed to locate it, do you make an application that could do that?”

  “No need. Several people make those kind of apps.”

  He winced. “I don’t want just anyone to be able to locate it!”

  “Not a problem. You get to set the security. I use one called ‘Where’s My Droid.’ If I text the correct keyword to my number, it returns the GPS coordinates. A different keyword causes it to scream with a siren sound. You get to choose the keyword and, of course, you have to know the phone number of the handset, right? So, fair security.”

  * * *

  Davy showed up with dinner, South Carolina BBQ, in the Yukon kitchen at 6:30 PM Mountain Time and found a note which said, “We’re eating at the house.”

  He jumped to New Prospect and found Millie staring out the window into a snowstorm. He put the food on the counter then did a double take at the snow piling up on the window ledge. “That’s pretty heavy. I didn’t even notice at first because—”

  “Yeah,” Millie said. “We’re used to it up north. Did you know Cent’s school got out at noon because of this?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, neither did I.”

  Davy began removing the containers from the bags. “What did she do with herself? Go to the coffee shop with her friends?”

  “Her friends were picked up by their parents and taken home. They didn’t want them out in this.” Millie looked at Davy. “We should have, too.”

  Davy blinked. “Why?”

  “We should’ve known that school was let out. If we were normal people, we would’ve heard it on the radio. We would’ve been here and seen the snow coming down and checked.”

  Davy didn’t see what the fuss was. “Even if she couldn’t jump, it’s only fifteen minutes along the road. Less, through the woods.”

  “On the road she could get hit by someone who didn’t see her in the snow. And she could get lost in the woods.”

  “Millie? She can jump. She won’t get lost in the woods. She won’t get hit by a car.” He crossed his arms. “This isn’t about Cent, is it?”

  Millie looked away.

  This is also about Millie not having a normal life.

  Davy started to get plates out but Millie said, “The table’s set. Cent did it.”

  “Is that why we’re eating here? Because Cent wants to?”

  Millie nodded. “She keeps checking the answering machine, even though she’s been here. She doesn’t want to miss a call.”

  “Ouch.”

  “New friends, you know?”

  Davy shook his head. “Not really my thing.”

  Millie raised her eyebrows. “Yet you said ‘ouch.’”

  “An old thing,” Davy said.

  “A Vineyard thing?”

  “Oh, no. Way before that.” He stared out at the swirling snow. “Remember when I reconnected with my mom?”

  Millie winced. His mother had been killed shortly after that and in that same few weeks Millie and Davy had nearly ended their relationship, though not because of his mother’s death. “Yes.”

  “I’d sent a letter through her lawyer?”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Millie said. Davy would never have sent the letter without Millie’s persuasion. “Was it the waiting between the time you sent the letter and the time she called?”

  “No. The first call went to my answering machine while I was visiting you, but she didn’t leave a number, just said she’d call back in twenty-four hours. Longest twenty-four hours of my life. That’s what I was thinking about.”

  Millie put her arms around him from behind. “Ah. Well, I don’t think she’s quite there, yet, but I’m glad you can sympathize.”

  Cent came up the stairs, yelling, “Is there food yet? Some of us would like to eat, you know?”

  Davy turned around and looked into Millie’s eyes.

  They both sighed.

  * * *

  Davy bought prepaid smartphones at Walmart and a stack of prepaid phone cards to top off the voice and data credits, as needed. He paid cash and though he had to enter names when he activated them, there was no identification requirement.

  At the San Jose Fry’s Electronics, he bought high-capacity batteries and extended phone back covers.

  While rooting the phone wasn’t easy, exactly, he finally muddled through the process, and by the time he’d done the other remaining two phones, it was routine.

  When Amerikate e-mailed him the program, he was ready. He installed the apps, set the range of locations allowed, and jumped all over the country. As hoped, the phones refused to connect to cell towers anyplace but the vicinity of New Prospect, though they could still connect to wireless Internet hotspots.

  He’d avoided cell phones, though Millie had used a prepaid phone once, back when he was a prisoner on the Vineyard. He was both fascinated and repelled by the devices.

  This should be interesting.

  TEN

  Cent: “Was he hitting on you?”

  The snow continued all the way through Saturday night, piling up at least three feet. I was worried that they might cancel school on Monday. Mom laughed at me. “Be aware that your peers will probably have a different reaction to a snow day.”

  I’d moved my anime and manga collection from the cabin to my room at the house and set out the first few volumes of the Tenchi Muyo! manga for Jade and Tara. While I was at it, I moved some of my other books, too.

  Dad saw me organizing the new shelves and said, “I wouldn’t do that. If we have to bug out, do you really want to leave these behind?”

  I hadn’t thought about it like that, but I shrugged. “That would be bad, all right. But they’re just books and movies, right? Replaceable.”

  He looked horrified. His mouth opened and he blinked several times, but the only sounds he made weren’t words.

  I went up to him and hugged him. “It’s all right, Daddy. I won’t let them get my books.”

  He looked even more alarmed at this. “What? NO! You see any sign of them you jump away. You don’t run back into a burning building.”

  I grinned. “Right.”

  That night we went swimming on a deserted stretch of the north Queensland coast, though in Australia it was early morning. The sun was barely up but the water was still lovely warm. Dad and I got into an epic splash battle which I won by jumping twenty feet into the air and then cannonballing down into
the water beside him while he was staring around to see where I’d gone. He got mad for a moment but Mom was rolling on the beach laughing, and his glare turned into a sheepish grin.

  “I’ll remember that trick,” he said.

  I slept well.

  In the morning the snow had stopped and the sun was glaring off the transformed landscape. By midday the plows were out in force, clearing the roads but piling the snow shoulder high in front of everybody’s driveways. Dad went out to shovel ours, but I’m sure he cheated because when I went outside to see how he was doing, the shovel was back in the garage and the driveway was not only clear, it was bone dry. I walked down the road a bit. Even the people who’d used snowblowers on their driveways had a layer of packed snow and ice left behind.

  Tara called the house at lunch time.

  “We’re sprung. Want to go sledding?”

  “Where?”

  “Chevron hill,” said Tara.

  I waited a second before asking, “And that’s located?…”

  “Right. You’re new. Behind the Chevron station, the one near school.”

  I was still drawing a blank. “I’m guessing it’s west of the school, since I live east and I haven’t seen a gas station around here.”

  “Right. About a half mile, maybe. On Thunderbird.”

  Thunderbird was our road, up the hill from the house. It ran east-west past the school.

  “Is it a long hill? I could bring my snowboard.”

  “Sure. Lots of kids do.”

  Mom drove me, since I’d never been there, parking at the Chevron station and getting out to survey the hill.

  It was busy. The hill dropped off behind the gas station in a series of dips and flats, continuing down into the river valley but, unlike behind our house, the creek was on the other side of the valley, leaving a gentle flat to kill velocity after a run. There were lots of kids with sleds, inner tubes, sheets of cardboard, and even one queen-sized inflatable mattress that shot down the hill with five shrieking kids atop it. There was a handful of boarders, too. Older kids, mostly.

  It was a long run and while I saw a few kids struggling back up the hill, most of them walked farther east, to where a road cut across the valley, and waited. A pickup came down the road and the driver climbed out, collected something from the kids, and they climbed in the back with their sleds and tubes. The truck turned around and drove back up the road. After a few minutes, it came around the bend on Thunderbird and the kids piled out on the shoulder. There was a paper sign in the window that said only “50¢.”

  “You bring any money?” Mom asked.

  I looked at the sign. “Why would I need a ride?”

  Mom glared at me. “You’ll get a ride or you’ll walk. Not with all these people around!”

  “Okay, already. Do I have to walk home, too?”

  “No. But be discreet, right?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  Mom looked at me over her glasses. “Millicent, you promised.”

  I had. It was the deal. They cooperated about going to school and I promised to be careful. To be discreet. “Sorry. Yes, I’ll be discreet.” I checked my pockets. “Yeah, I’ve got a ten. That’s twenty runs.”

  She gave me a twenty and jerked her chin toward the Chevron food store. “You might want hot chocolate or something.”

  I took my board over to the empty expanse, next to the station. The run was flat at the top, by the road, but the level area was not as deep as the gas station’s lot.

  Tara and Jade showed up then, dropped off by Jade’s father in a dark, sleek Mercedes. Jade had a snowboard. Tara had a tractor tire inner tube that took up the entire trunk of the car.

  Jade hefted her board and said, “Tara said you boarded, so I brought mine.”

  “Cool.”

  The boarders stuck to the left, on the steeper side of the slope, and the sledders favored the right or the center. “But you gotta be careful,” said Jade. “I’ve seen big guys jump on a tube and barrel down the hill with absolutely no control. Two years ago, one of them took out a kid at the bottom of the hill and he ended up with spinal cord damage. The kid, not the jerk on the tube.”

  Tara shook her head. “Peter Morales. He’s walking again, but with crutches.”

  “So keep your eyes open, right? My parents didn’t let me sled here for a whole winter after that.”

  “Well, you’ve scared me,” I said.

  “See you at the bottom,” said Tara. She looked around and then dove down the hill, face down on her inner tube.

  Jade approached the edge and sat down, ratcheting her bindings. I copied her.

  “You lead,” I said. “You know the hill.”

  The snow was good, still powdery. I was shivering a little at the start but warmed up quickly. Jade was a competent, though careful, boarder. I could’ve zipped past her at any time but I didn’t see the point. It wasn’t a race, after all.

  The boarders had built up a ramp on the second flat, and Jade took it tentatively, killing a lot of her speed before lining up on it. She flew a few feet in the air and dropped down. I kept all my speed and as she cut off to the right, I crouched and, at the end of the ramp, popped up off my tail. Jade yelled as I flew by at head height, traveling so far that the hill dropped away before I touched down, and I landed on the downslope, flat bottomed and whisper smooth.

  I used the velocity to travel across the flat at the bottom, passing Tara as she was trudging toward the road.

  There were a few other boarders and a lot of sledders standing in a rough line waiting for the pickup. All of the boarders were male, and I recognized a few of them from school.

  “Awesome jump,” said one of the familiar faces. I think he was in my biology class.

  I looked back up the slope. You could just make out the top of the ramp from here. I looked back at the boy. Well, boy-man. He needed a shave. “Thanks.”

  “You’re Cent, right?”

  I nodded.

  He jerked his thumb at his chest. “Brett.”

  Tara caught up. “I thought I’d beat you here,” she said. “You must’ve really been booking.”

  I shrugged, suddenly shy.

  Jade coasted halfway across the flat before her momentum failed. She undid her rear binding and push kicked the rest of the way.

  “You nearly gave me a heart attack,” she said as she took off the other binding.

  “Sorry. Didn’t think I was that close,” I said. “I kept to the left of the ramp.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t that. It was how high you were. I was afraid I’d look down the hill and see pieces. Guess you had good boarding up there in Canada.”

  I shrugged again.

  A pickup came down the hill and turned around on the flat. The road had been plowed and graveled, but it was still somewhat slick. The truck had chains.

  The driver looked younger than me and I recognized him from school, too. He collected money and made change, working down the line. The truck filled up and the driver stopped the loading right before me.

  Brett, already in the truck bed, shoved over, raising a faint protest from the guy next to him. “There’s room for one more,” he said.

  The driver looked in the bed and then back at me, lifting his eyebrows.

  “I’ll wait,” I said, tilting my head toward Tara and Jade. “We’re together.”

  Brett opened his mouth to say something, but then his friend shoved him back into the corner of the truck bed.

  I turned back to Tara and Jade, not looking at the truck.

  As soon as the truck pulled away, Tara started laughing and not that quietly.

  I felt my ears get hot.

  Jade blinked. “Oh. My. God. Was he hitting on you?”

  Tara laughed again. “Definitely.”

  “He was just being friendly,” I said.

  Jade shook her head. “Really friendly. He didn’t have to move over. You could’ve ridden in his lap.”

  I stooped and slowly made a snowball, looking p
ointedly at Jade as my hands patted it firm.

  Jade took a step back. “Oh … kay. He was just being friendly.”

  Tara laughed some more until the snowball hit her in the forehead.

  A brief period of snowy violence ensued.

  The line started building up again. A different truck came down the hill and we paid our fare and climbed in. “How many people do this truck thing?”

  Tara shrugged. “Depends on the day. It can be tricky if there’s only one guy running. Sometimes they jack up the price.”

  Jade nodded. “But that can backfire. There was a day that Ronnie Arkle tried to charge two bucks when he was the only one here.”

  “Yeah,” said Tara. “Kids have phones. He may have gotten a fare or two, but then there were moms with SUVs running kids up the hill for free. He’d have made a lot more money if he hadn’t gotten greedy.”

  Brett’s snowboarding buddies had gone down the hill already, but he was still waiting at the top.

  Tara started giggling and I said, “There’s just as much snow up here.”

  “Er, right. You going to do that jump again?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Let me get down first, so I can see, okay?”

  “You just want to get out of range, don’t you?”

  She started giggling and slid away on her tube, this time sitting, face up.

  When Jade and I had fastened our bindings, we slid off to the left and paused. Brett stood up and slid off down the hill in front of us.

  “He’s showing off,” said Jade.

  He was doing ollies and aerial to fakies, popping off the ground and switching the ends of his board a hundred and eighty degrees, then back. Then he went to wider, high-speed carved turns, building up velocity as he lined up on the ramp. In the air, he did a 720, two full revolutions, upright—what Dad calls helicoptering when it’s on skis—but he caught an edge on landing and went head over heels down the last bit of the slope.

  I bit my lip, but he got back up again, beating the snow off, and took off one binding and started kicking across the flat.

  “Well,” Jade said, “It was spectacular.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Can you do that move?”