Then he puts his finger over one of the red dots. “But if a single vertex of the triangle disconnected, the remaining shape is just an open angle—one of the weakest physical forms in nature. Even a small amount of pressure can break it.” He looks up at me. “That’s how the Gentry view our alliance—we’re a part of the strength of their community, and if we succumb to the Locusts, it will threaten all Gentry life.
“There’s another meaning, too,” he tells me. “Your work. You can also see this field of gray dots as a field of future possibilities—and the red lines are made up of ones that we need to secure in order to survive.” He traces the red triangle with his finger. “Every time you go under, Alex, you add to the red, and only when the lines are complete are we truly safe.”
“I’m part of something good?” It sounds cheesy as hell, but it’s honestly how I feel.
Richard smiles a really big smile. “Yeah, Alex.” His voice cracks. “You are. We all are.”
I nod, feel myself getting choked up, too.
I wish I could call my Tía.
“Richard?”
He looks at me.
“You said we’d work on getting word . . .” He doesn’t seem to understand what I’m saying. “Like to my aunt?”
He begins to nod, then reaches into his messenger bag and pulls out a sheet of paper. “Write her a message. Tell her that you didn’t do it. You can even tell her you’ll be coming home when it’s safe for you.”
I take his paper, and he offers me a pen. I write the note as best I can. When I hand it to him it feels empty, no better than blank paper.
He creases it, folds it in half without reading it, then examines my face. “I know it’s not enough, Alex, but it’s the most we can do.”
I look back down at the design on the table. “I know I can’t talk to anybody, but maybe you can help me get some news from home?” He looks at me, his lips pressed together. He sighs. “I guess the local news here isn’t going to carry what you want to know, is it?” He slaps his hands together softly and stands up. “Come with me.” Then: “Just remember—you can see what’s out there, but you won’t be able to communicate with anybody, is that clear?”
“Yeah,” I say before he can change his mind. I stand up and follow him to his office, where he sits me at his desk. There’s a screen I use to search for information on my parents’ case.
The first thing I find is that my Tía made a plea on TV for me to come home. Richard is right behind me as I watch. She’s up at a podium with some cops who announce that there was a $25,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of my parents’ killer. Then she stands up and she talks.
She’s weak when she comes up. One of the cops has to hold her hand because there’s nobody else there to do it.
I feel Richard behind me and I want him to not be there because I don’t know how I’m going to handle myself when she starts to talk.
“Little Alex.” Her voice isn’t her normal voice. It’s shaky and she’s nearly shouting. “Please come home right now because we love you and we need to talk to you so we can know what happened to your parents. You need to come home, mijo. You need to come home because you’re sick and you need help.” She’s crying now, her words coming out like barks from a dog. The cop who helped her up puts a hand on her shoulder. She tries to shake it off, but ends up just falling against him because she’s crying too hard.
Richard doesn’t say anything when the video ends. He just stands up and pats me on the back, squeezes my shoulder. Then he leaves me in his office.
When I’m able to, I search up more things. The LA Times has a thing called the Homicide Report. It has all the updates on the case, but there haven’t been any recently. It has some comments on the story, so I read them.
The first one is from “Anonymous”: Their family is in my prayers. Whoever did this needs to fry.
The second one is signed. It’s from Julio: They were good people. Plugzer, if you’re reading this, come home. No matter what happened, I got your back.
“Bullshit.” Nobody in LA has my back. They all think I killed my parents and no little note is going to change that.
I need to set things straight.
I go back and find the article that I read at the bus station—the first one that had the quote from my Tía. It was written by a lady named Sarah Campbell. Her email’s right there on the page. I know it won’t change anything, but I feel like I’ll explode if I don’t say something.
I stretch to look out into the gym on the other side of Richard’s door, but I can’t see or hear anybody nearby. I go back and copy down her email on a Post-it note and then open up a proxy server and go to an email service I’ve never used before and sign up for an account. When I’ve gotten it set up, I check the gym again—still empty—and then open up an email and put her address in the address bar.
I write the thing fast because I need to get finished before Richard gets back and I’m not really good at writing things anyway, so I probably don’t say it right. In the end, it says:
To the Reporter Sarah Campbell
My name is Alejandro Pulido Mata. You wrote an article about my parents being murdered and I want to tell you that I didn’t do it. I know you all don’t believe me when I say it was an Incursion, but it was. The bug has a hand like a knife and that’s what it used to stab my parents before it disappeared. I only survived because I had a Live-Tech and I scared it away.
The Incursions are real and we’re all in danger unless you listen to Jeffrey Sabazios. I’m innocent.
Can you tell my auntie Juana that I’m ok? I’m safe and I’m not crazy and I didn’t kill anybody.
Don’t try and find me. I’m not anywhere people would think to look, and please please please do not publish this or let people know I talked to you—it’s not safe yet. I’ll write you again when I can.
Tell my aunt that I’m doing good things.
I send it, then stare at the screen awhile longer. Then I close it up.
Richard’s nowhere to be found and there’s nobody in the commons when I get back. Nobody in the kitchen.
They’re all working. I wish I was working, too.
* * *
• • •
I’m lying on the bed when Paul comes in. He hesitates for a moment when he sees me, then gives me a small tight smile before grabbing his guitar and turning to go.
“Hey.” I sit up. “Wait a minute.”
He stops, but he doesn’t turn around.
“Look man, I . . . There’s nothing wrong with you.”
He doesn’t say anything back, he doesn’t move either, he just stands there, perfectly still, holding his guitar by the neck.
His silence makes feelings come up inside me that I have to work to keep from spilling out. “I don’t . . .” But then I trail off because I don’t know what else to say. “Never mind.” I stand up. “You don’t have to leave. I’ll go.”
I have to step past him to get to the door. It’s awkward and close and part of me wants to shove him and part of me wants to hug him and all of me just wants this to be over with, but as I reach the door, he opens his mouth:
“You don’t think I should hide who I am? You don’t think my mom was right to be humiliated?”
I stop, turn, shake my head. “No.” Then I look him in the eyes. “No.”
He smiles. It’s a really nice smile. “Okay, then.” He points at my bed with his pick. “Sit.”
I look at the bed.
“Yes. There.”
I sit.
He hands the guitar across to me. I don’t even reach for it at first but then he shakes it at me and I take it. “Play something.”
“Like what?”
He shakes his head. “Something that means something to you.”
My eyes move over to my backpack, to where m
y songbook is. “I don’t know . . .”
“Then tell me something.”
“What?” I can’t help myself from fingering an E major and running my thumb down the strings before tapping the harmonics on the twelfth fret.
“Something important. The only way for us to get things back in balance is for you to pour your heart out to me about something.”
I don’t look at him. I don’t want him to see the fear in my face, but he sees it anyway. “I won’t be a jerk about it. I’m not out for revenge,” he says.
I look up at him. “Serious?”
He stares at me. He’s serious.
I sigh. Strum. “Alright.”
And then I tell him. I tell him about Pete and I tell him about my mom and dad. I tell him about the look the last time I saw my dad and about Julio, who’s always better than me. I tell him about Mousie and about how much I miss my mom.
He’s not a jerk about it. Even when I get so I can’t speak at all.
We go to dinner, and when we come back to the room, I tell him: “I actually do have some songs I wrote.”
He smiles at me. “You going to play me one?”
“I . . .” Fuck it. “Yeah.” I go to my backpack and pull out the notebook, open to a page that has the right song. “I wrote this about my ex-girlfriend.”
We weren’t together that long—I’ve never had a thing with a girl that lasted more than a month—but she’s the only one who ever broke up with me.
“She broke your heart?”
I shake my head. “Nah.” Then: “She just . . . she just didn’t like me.”
I play him the song. I have to read the lyrics as I play, so it’s not smooth, and I keep looking at Paul, waiting for him to laugh at me, or for his face to say he thinks it’s dumb, but he’s quiet, looks focused on what I’m doing.
When I get to the last lines of the song:
Dear Alex, just so you know, I’m out the door, I’m gonna go
Just so you know, it’s not me, though. You should never have shown
Me the real you.
He waits a moment, then nods slowly. “That’s powerful, man.” Then he cocks his head. “You don’t really think people would like you if they knew you? The real you?”
I shrug. “I’ve . . .” I look at him, ready to answer but the moment passes. “I don’t know, man. It’s just a song.”
He drops it.
He plays me a song, too, but it’s not by him. Johnny Cash. “Ring of Fire.”
Then we talk more.
It’s really late when we fall asleep. Working in the morning is going to suck.
When I do lie down on my bed, though, I’m not even worried about tomorrow. Some things are worth being tired for.
Twenty-Seven
We’re sitting on a couch, legs pulled up under us crisscross applesauce. The air is bright all around us. Her colors are bleached even inside, and with the glare of the sun, everything looks like a faded Polaroid of the world she lives in.
Jordan is nervous. Excited. Her breath is shallow and I can feel her heart beating fast in her chest. She forces herself to take a deep breath. She hasn’t been alone since the party—tutors, church, the “birthday event.”
Last night when she got home, she wrote her thank-you note to Grandma Bev—and a longer letter, which she tucked inside for Grandma Bev to pass on to Will, a reply to the one he sent through Grandma Bev last week, in which he asked her to describe the party she would have.
Party.
Jordan couldn’t use the word when describing her birthday in the letter. It would have been a lie, and Will only gets the truth from her. He deserves the truth. It wasn’t a party. It was her mom, her sisters, Dr. Halliday, Julia, Fran and Tom, Dad on video. In the Central Hall, locked in the tower.
A Rapunzel event. Something her parents did for the daughter they think they have.
The ice cream social last night? She called that her “political cotillion.”
“Alrighty, then,” she says out loud, bringing the screen up so she can see it. We listen. Her dad is back, returned this morning. He’s in the game room next door with Jack, his chief of staff. She can hear them talking, muted by the distance in the hallways between them and her in the solarium. The windows are open, though, and she can hear them more clearly from across the patio.
But they’re not interested in her.
She taps the icon her grandmother told her to. Even though the icon is for a common finance application, that’s not what opens. SECRYPT. She doesn’t recognize the name, but I do. People use it for messages they don’t want anybody seeing.
Jordan wrinkles her forehead, clicks on the “contacts” box.
There are only two names:
Naomi
Will
Will. Jordan’s mind fills with moments. The More to Life, America Working Youth Congress. Will—brown hair cut short, white, built like a football player. He smiles. She laughs. Him touching her hand. A momentary sensation beneath the pit of her stomach, something I don’t recognize until I do. She shifts, straightens her legs, resettles, crosses them. Her heart is beating faster than it was even before.
She taps his name. A window opens. There’s already a message from Will waiting:
“Rapunzel Rapunzel, let down your hair.”
She giggles, taps out a reply. “Climb on up, young prince.”
She taps on Naomi. A new window opens. “Ruth cannot thank you enough! How on Earth did you think this up?”
Will’s name begins to throb. There’s a new message. Jordan’s breath catches. She taps his name. “There’s video . . .”
Jordan takes a quick look around. Her pod is in, already connected to the screen.
She could . . . She wants to see Will so badly it hurts physically, but just as we’re about to connect, the patio door opens from the game room. She sees shapes through the curtains, one tall, one shorter. Her dad and Jack.
“Can’t. People around.” Then: “Sometime soon.”
“Soon.”
More movement on the patio. She can see their shapes clearly, watches as Jack lights a cigarette. “It’s not if, it’s when, Vince,” he says. “Every two days, like clockwork—it’s just dumb luck none of them have been filmed yet—you think you’d survive an Incursion video if you go out there and deny they’re happening? How’s that gonna play?”
Incursions. Jordan freezes, her finger hovering over the screen. She knows what Incursions are—she sees a lot of the same channels I do—but she didn’t think.
Incursion.
The word sits heavy in Jordan the same way it did in me before.
“We’ll capture one before that happens, Jack.” Her father always sounds confident, like he has access to the truth, but Jordan knows better—the more confident he sounds, the less he believes. “Operation Roach Hotel is going to work.”
“With all due respect, Vince, that’s crap—Roach Hotel hasn’t captured diddly-squat so far, and they’re not sounding hopeful, either.”
Jordan’s mind races. Secrets are hard to keep in the White House—floors squeak, voices carry. She’s got to keep Sam and Avery from learning that Incursions are real.
Incursion. Roaches. Uncatchable, unseeable.
Demons. Abaddon, destroyers of things. Jordan’s mind swims in biblical names and stories—the image of Dr. Halliday, who leads Bible studies, stories of the crimes of man punished. The beginning of end of days. Jordan thinks about these things like a professor, not a believer—a secret she keeps locked away from all but Grandma Bev, who is the one who told her it was okay not to believe.
Jordan sees a scale in her mind, drops Incursions on the side with the Bible, bringing it to near equality with the side that says “untrue.”
ABADDON. The word is huge in her mind, the letter’s colors thick and dark like
a nightmare.
Jordan’s mind fills with pictures when she thinks, in a way that my mind does not. The images make good things better, but they also make scary things even scarier to me.
To her. Jordan’s mind fills with enormous roaches crawling out of a wall, engulfing a screaming child, devouring it until it’s gone. “It’ll play better than the president of the United States citing stuff off conspiracy sites as a legitimate national security threat.” Her dad turns, walks closer to the window of the solarium where Jordan is sitting. We freeze, try not to even breathe. “Unless we’re willing to declassify what we know, our only real option is to pretend it’s not happening.”
“That’s short-term thinking, Vince. Short-term at best—that could come back and kick you in the ass tomorrow—even later today. What happens when one of those things zaps into a TGI Fridays in Fredericksburg and steals a kid? And what about when it turns out that Sabazios has been right all along? Do you think he’s going to stay on the sidelines if you get caught with your pants down? People may think he’s a crackpot now, but if it turns out he’s been right about everything and you ignored the problem, he’s going to beat the pants off you if he runs next year.”
“I don’t know that’ll happen and neither do you, but if we legitimize this threat too soon by talking about it, we’re going to tank the markets and cause panic in the streets.” Her dad turns around again, walks back toward the game room, stops, turns again to face Jack, his voice a low growl. “And that’s why we’ve got to crush this Live-Tech thing before it takes hold—not only is it an immoral invasion allowing man to see what only God should know, but if it is useful against these Incursions we need it to be ours, not his.”
Strange Days Page 15