Awaken

by Katie Kacvinsky

  I quickly took another bite of the bar and raised my eyebrows in surprise.

  “Is everything all right?” I asked with my mouth full.

  “It only lasted twenty minutes.” He smirked. “You’d think with all the advances in technology they could avoid things like this.”

  I nodded with agreement and hoped my acting was convincing. “How long will you be traveling?” I asked, and did my best not to sound hopeful.

  “Probably another week,” he said. He gave me a careful stare. I noticed dark circles under his eyes and wondered how many hours a week my father worked. The older I got, the more I noticed his job demanded him twenty-four hours a day.

  He and Mom discussed a volunteer luncheon she promised to organize this week. He turned to me before they hung up and his identical eyes met mine.

  “I love you, Maddie,” he said. We always ended conversations this way. And I never thought much into it. They were just words, like a standard greeting. But now love was starting to mean more to me than a simple expression, than a routine. Maybe I was demanding more out of the word.

  “Have a safe trip,” I said. My dad nodded and his face disappeared from the screen. Even though his image was gone, I could still see those dark, untrusting eyes. I looked outside and low gray clouds swept by overhead. I felt lonely for my dad. I wondered if he, like Justin, let himself get close to anyone.

  I stayed in my room the rest of the week sulking. This life had always been my routine but now it felt like a cage. I had walked from a moving, living, breathing artificial world back into my digital real one but now it felt so backward. I sat at my computer and pressed buttons, but found myself staring at my fingertips, craving more.

  My mind drifted away from school and papers and practical things I should be concentrating on. My brain decided irrational ideas were more important to consider, like how many girls Justin had trained. Probably hundreds. I imagined how many girls, like me, he was recruiting.

  I wondered if there was a Justin Solvi fan site. Most likely. The thought made my heart sink. Every girl he meets has to fall in love with him. But, did he call those girls gorgeous? Did he take those girls out for cake and coffee? Was that a date? Oh, god. Obsessing over a boy is like throwing precious time into the garbage, and all I have to show for it is chewed-off fingernails, self-doubt, and emotional distress.

  Saturday night, a week after I’d seen Justin, I sat at the window seat in my bedroom and stared outside. I studied the leaves intently, as if I could see all the answers to my questions perched on the branches if I looked hard enough. I spent too many days thinking, only to end up back where I started. Thoughts are circular, they don’t take you anywhere. They don’t have feet—they can’t gain any ground. They can trap you if you don’t eventually stand up and make a move.

  I heard a knock at my door and sat up straighter.

  “Maddie?”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled, still gazing out the window.

  “Can I come in?”

  My mom opened the door. I moved over on the seat to make room for her. She crossed the room to join me and carried two books.

  “Here,” she said, and sat down next to me. “I thought you could use these tonight.”

  I took the books and ran my finger along the spine of one, titled Emma, and opened it up. I inhaled the strong, rich scent of the aged paper and ink and flipped the soft paper through my fingers. This was the third Jane Austen book my mom had given me. I looked at the other book, small and thin, titled The Little Prince. I didn’t recognize the French author.

  She looked at the cover and smiled. “That was one of my favorites when I was your age.” She laughed to herself. “You’re probably going to think this is dumb, but I kept a reading journal all through school. Every year I wrote down my top ten favorite books. I even wrote reviews on them. Those are the books I’ve been handing down to you.”

  I looked at the bookcase in my room, a large, dark mahogany wooden unit with glass doors, and realized she was right. She gave me about ten books a year and each one felt like a friend to me, always there when I needed it to lift me up. My bookshelf was my favorite part of my room. It had a calming presence. Maybe there was something to be said about the feeling and presence of real books.

  “That isn’t dumb at all. It’s your passion.” I held the books tightly in my hands and thanked her. She creased her eyebrows and studied me like she was worried about something.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Your father loves you, Maddie. You believe that, don’t you?”

  Her words surprised me. I looked out the window and thought about the question. “He pretends to trust me but then he turns around and questions everything I do.”

  “You’re too young to understand. Someday—”

  “Mom,” I interrupted, “you’ve been telling me that since I was five years old. And you know what, I grew up. Look at me. I’m an adult. If I had to go out into the world tomorrow and live on my own, I’d be okay. Making all my decisions for me on who I can be friends with and where I can go isn’t love. It isn’t helping me. It’s limiting me.”

  My mom took a deep breath as she registered this.

  “Pretty soon I will have to start making decisions for myself,” I said. “So I’d appreciate it if you guys would start weaning me off of your control a little bit.”

  She shook her head. I knew she thought I was overreacting.

  “I’m serious. Do you want me to call you when I’m thirty-five and ask you if I can watch an R-rated movie? Do you want me to be that needy? Because that’s how Dad’s trying to raise me.”

  Mom had such amazing patience with me. I always said too much around her and she always listened, never raising her voice, never contradicting me. She was the one person my dad listened to, the only person who could ever make him reconsider his ideas.

  “It’s partly my fault,” she said. “I’ve been trying to give you more freedom and convince your father to let you socialize. But certain people aren’t the best influence for you.”

  I knew exactly who she was referring to.

  “I’ve seen the way you act around him,” she said. “And it worries me a little bit. He brings out another side of you.”

  The best side of me, I wanted to say.

  “We’re just friends, it’s not a big deal.”

  My mom looked at me, confused. “What do you mean? You’re not dating Justin?”

  I groaned at the ceiling and could feel my face turning red. “No, we’re not dating. He isn’t interested in me like that.”

  Mom looked away as I said this. “Hmm,” she said thoughtfully. “That’s not the impression I get.”

  I brushed my hand in the air as if I could swat her comment away.

  “I really don’t want to talk about this. The point I’m trying to make is if Dad really loved me, he would let the past go.” I stammered over the last few words. “It’s been over two years. He can trust me.”

  “Trust comes by earning it, not expecting it,” she told me.

  “So does love,” I said. She studied my face and slowly nodded before she stood up.

  I looked down at the two books on my window seat after she left. A car passed by outside and my ears perked up hopefully and my heartbeat doubled but the sound faded away. I flopped down on my bed and stared at the ceiling, counting all the things I wished I could change about my life. But I’m learning it’s human nature to want the things you can’t have. What changes is how you go about pursuing the things you want. When you’re a little kid and you’re told no, you scream and throw a temper tantrum. When you’re a teenager and your parents tell you no, you’re old enough to internalize your temper tantrum. But you’re smarter and you’re sneakier this time around. So you nod and act like you care when they say no, when they tell you who you can be friends with, when they say they know what’s best.

  But then you go behind their backs to do it anyway.

  Because at some point, you need to start
calling the shots. At some point, you have to start believing you know what’s best. Or, I thought with a smile, you just stop asking for their permission in the first place.

  When I hopped on the train for soccer practice, I found Erin in her usual window seat at the back of the car. I sat down next to her, relieved to see someone in person again. I felt like my senses were waking up again and stretching out after being packed away for too long.

  “What’s new?” I asked her when I sat down. She was wearing a MindReader and staring at her flipscreen. She nodded in response and I raised an eyebrow. Another second went by.

  “How’s life?” she asked me. I watched her with interest. She rarely looked at me and it never really bothered me before. But I wanted her to look at me. I needed her to. I wanted to be seen and heard and appreciated. Isn’t that what friendship was?

  “Awful,” I told her. She didn’t hear me. She asked me what I’ve been up to.

  “I blew my grandma’s trust fund on gambling,” I said.

  She raised her eyebrows and nodded. I waited for her to look up, but she was engrossed in her computer. Her eyes stared straight ahead like she was hypnotized by the screen.

  I studied her face and for the first time in my four years of knowing her, doubted if we were ever really friends. “Hey, Erin?” I waited for her eyes to meet mine but they never did. They hadn’t since I got on the train.

  “Yeah?” she asked. She leaned closer to me. I took a deep breath and kept my voice friendly.

  “Can you turn that off for a second?” I asked, and pointed at her computer. She glanced up from the screen with surprise. At that same instant, her screen flashed and she touched the light to check a message. I clenched my teeth with annoyance.

  “Don’t you ever get sick of all this?” I asked. Erin slid her MindReader off her head and stared at me like she didn’t know who I was.

  “Sick of what?”

  “All this . . . shit,” I said, waving at her hands and ears and eyes, all plugged into some device as if her brain was a battery and couldn’t be charged, couldn’t think without all these programs and voices and messages doing it for her.

  “Can’t you just leave it alone once in a while?” I asked. “Why do you need to bring all this to soccer practice?” I felt bad for attacking her. I wished I had Justin’s words, the patient way he could explain things to me, but I accepted years ago that patience is a genetic trait that was never passed down to me.

  Erin’s mouth dropped open and she looked down at the flipscreen in her lap. She stared dumbly back at me.

  “I dare you to turn that off for an entire day,” I said.

  She blinked back at me. “Why?”

  “Why not?” I challenged her.

  “I want to be connected,” she said.

  “Who are you connected to?” I asked.

  She wrinkled her eyebrows, clearly puzzled. “My friends, my clubs, my life.”

  “You don’t think there’s more to life than that little screen? Believe me, if you shut it off for a little while, you’ll live. Just in a different way.”

  “Whoa, Maddie,” she said. “Where is this coming from? I’ve always been like this. And, might I add, until recently your flipscreen could have been surgically attached to your hands.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. Erin’s eyes were on me, her attention was mine. This might be the longest uninterrupted conversation we’d ever had. I stared at her eyes and never realized how beautiful they were, a dark blue with rings of brown around the center. I never noticed her eyes before because she barely gave me the chance to look at them. I told her this out loud and her face reddened. She closed her flipscreen with an awkward smile on her face.

  “Maddie, you’re being weird.” She looked at me skeptically. “Who have you been hanging out with?”

  When I got home from soccer practice my mom sent a voice message saying she met my dad for an interview downtown and they’d be home in a few hours.

  I had a window of time. I knew what I needed to do. Who I needed to see. After I showered and dressed I pulled on my favorite brown army cap over my damp hair and headed downstairs. I stepped outside and the warm sunshine stroked my bare arms. I headed down the street and hopped on the train toward the coffee shop Justin took me to over a month ago. Just as I jumped down to the sidewalk, I noticed Clare walking down the steps of the café.

  “Clare!” I yelled, and ran to catch her.

  “Madeline,” she said with a grin, and threw her arms around me. Her eyes were wide and shining and genuinely happy to see me. “What are you doing here?”

  I glanced in the windows. “I need to talk to Justin. Have you heard from him?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I’m actually on my way to see him.”

  “He’s in town?” I asked with surprise. Something deflated inside of me, as if I expected to be the first person Justin would call. Like I was more than just a name on a long list of people he was recruiting.

  “Why don’t you come with me?” she offered. “I’m sure he wants to see you.”

  She told me they were at Scott’s apartment and it was right down the street. She pointed out a gray sky-rise apartment around the block. Before I could say no, Clare wrapped her hand around my arm and pulled me along. We walked up the steps to the glass entry doors of the apartment. She pressed Scott’s number and shortly after his voice spoke over the intercom.

  “I see you brought a friend,” he said flatly, and the metal door buzzed open.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have come,” I whispered as we walked up the stairs to the second floor.

  Clare shook her head. “Scott has zero people skills,” she said. “Try not to let him intimidate you.” When we got to apartment 28, Clare knocked and a voice yelled for us to come in. I followed Clare inside. We entered a large, open living room and Scott’s voice echoed off the bare walls.

  “Well, speak of the devil.”

  Scott sat next to Molly in the middle of the room. I narrowed my eyes at the mocking grin on his face and goose bumps rose up on my arms. My intuition was right: he didn’t want me here. I glanced around and saw the apartment was bare except for a tattered couch and folding chairs spread out haphazardly. Jake, Riley, and Pat sat in one corner and all nodded to me. The room was quiet, so quiet it screamed.

  Clare introduced me to two other men sitting there, Spencer and his dad, Ray, the same ones I met at the coffee shop, and I nodded in their direction. The strongest energy in the room came from the far wall where Justin stood. He was watching me. He leaned against the wall with a baseball cap pulled low over his face and his arms were crossed over his chest. He looked about as happy to see me as Scott.

  “Where’d you pick her up?” Scott asked Clare.

  Clare sat down and glared back at him. “She was at the coffee shop so I invited her along. What’s the big deal?”

  There was another spell of silence that lasted too long. I stood at the edge of the room, close to the door, and thought about turning to go until Scott spoke up.

  “You might as well be part of this.”

  “Why don’t we finish that matter up later? I still need to talk to her,” Justin interjected.

  “She’s a big girl, she can handle it.” Scott looked back at me and I met his gaze.

  “I can handle what?”

  Scott smiled again. “Come on, Madeline, you’ve got to know why you’re here.”

  Another heavy silence fell. I glanced around the room and cleared my throat.

  “I’m assuming you’re recruiting me, if that’s what you mean,” I spoke up.

  Scott nodded slowly. “You know how helpful you could be to us.”

  I frowned at this. “Helpful? How exactly?”

  He smirked. “You have connections we could only dream of acquiring. Right at your fingertips.”

  My jaw tightened. “What are you talking about?”

  Scott gave an exasperated sigh and glared at Justin. “Haven’t you told her anything? Wha
t the hell have you been doing this whole time?”

  Justin returned Scott’s question with a livid glare.

  “Look, Madeline, I’ll set it straight in two minutes.” He shot Justin a look before he continued. “We’ve had our eye on you for years.”

  “You’ve had your eye on me?”

  “Ever since Portland. You helped lead that sabotage. It was you that hacked into your dad’s files and handed out the location of those towers. Only about five people in the entire country have access to that information.”

  I felt my breath start to come out shallow. Too many steady eyes were on me. There was no point in denying it now. In fact, it was almost a relief to let the truth go.

  “How did you find out?” I asked.

  Scott stood up and paced back and forth. “It wasn’t easy. What were you, about fifteen when you pulled that off? After it happened, you created enough false computer trails to make the media give up investigating the case. So it never leaked out as to who actually released that information. It was brilliant, I have to admit.”

  “If it was so brilliant I wouldn’t have gotten caught in the first place,” I pointed out. I didn’t want to be complimented on the greatest mistake of my life, one that I paid for every single day.

  “Still, it couldn’t have been easy to pull off. I assume there’s some pretty high security set up on your father’s computer. We’ve been trying to figure out who that hacker was for the past few years. You keep your identity pretty anonymous.”

  I forced my voice to be steady. “My dad’s a political celebrity. I have to set up different identities if I want any privacy.”

  “Or maybe you just don’t want to be associated with what he represents?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Maybe.”

  “Well,” he said, “you made it a challenge to find you. Before you were caught, you were part of a lot of anti-DS groups. But then all of a sudden you disappeared.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Obviously. My dad blocked all those sites from my computer. He almost went to jail for my mistake,” I added. “He would have been tried for treason.”