Code Orange

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Step in, start swimming, and soon enough, the cold and the current would win.

  But could he do that to his parents?

  Mitty believed suicide was the most vicious thing a child could do to his mother and father. It was saying “You don't matter enough to me to stay alive.” It was saying “I hate you so much I'm going to make you think about my dead body every day of your life.”

  But Mitty would be doing this for the opposite reason. He'd be saying “You and the world matter so much I can't let you be exposed to disease.”

  But did that justify it?

  “Mitty?”

  Mitty roused himself. They were in the library again, he could tell by all those rows of books. “Hi, Mr. Lynch. How are you?”

  “Worrying about you. Come on, Mitty, make an effort.”

  “I'm all efforted out.”

  “You were off to such a great start. How about an interview? Have you tried to get one yet?”

  “Yes …,” Mitty said slowly.

  “And?”

  Mitty felt disconnected. Eventually he said, “Nobody wrote back.”

  “You just don't know the right people, Mitty,” said Nate.

  “My father knows everyone. I can help you.”

  Mitty would rather get smallpox.

  The principal did not call Mitty to his office.

  The secretary did not summon him to the phone.

  The FBI did not spring into the classroom.

  The choice was still Mitty's.

  Mitty had not frequently observed acts of personal physical courage. Sure, in action films or on TV But in real life, in America, who exhibited physical courage?

  Only in extreme circumstances, or faked ones on TV, did the need for courage arise. Nobody in the city had to face the wilderness or a panther. Your problems were a full parking lot or final exams. Even if true danger was coming, like a hurricane, you just bought your extra quart of milk and watched it on television.

  In fact, Mitty could think of only two current examples of people walking into true danger and fighting back: the firefighters and police officers of 9/11 and the soldiers sent to Afghanistan and Iraq.

  How vividly Mitty remembered a video of firefighters running into one of the towers. Young men trained to rescue the innocent, regardless of danger to themselves. The nation and Mitty stood in awe.

  But in everyday life, physical challenge consisted of in-line skating on a paved path in a civilized park. Mental challenge consisted of counting carbohydrates. Moral challenge consisted of deciding whether to cheat on a quiz.

  I still have time, he reminded himself. I can delete my letter to my parents. I can call the hotline. Or shrug and tell myself nothing could happen.

  When school was out, he headed straight home. He had things to do. But Olivia caught up to him. She had an odd, fragile smile on her face.“Mitty?” she said, as if he might be somebody else entirely.

  He stopped walking. He hadn't wanted his parents near him. He didn't want Olivia near him either.

  “Let's walk in the park,” she said.

  Mitty hesitated, thinking about it, and her face fell. It wasn't how he wanted to say good-bye. “Okay,” he said finally. “It's pretty nice out.”Although it wasn't.

  Central Park: magnificent trees and awesome views, unexpected sculptures and stunning skylines. What if he never saw Central Park again?

  For Olivia, more than anything, Central Park meant dogs. Everybody on the Upper West Side had babies in strollers or dogs on leashes or both. Olivia greeted every dog walker, knelt to rub every dog's ears and told every dog how beautiful he was. Then she had to ask the dog's name and verify the dog's breed and of course discuss her own dogs. Olivia cuddled a Rhodesian ridge-back and then a pair of blind white Labs, a brace of bouncing long-haired dachshunds and finally a tall, proud shepherd.

  Mitty thought of Macaulay, who had written: The smallpox was always present,

  filling the churchyards with corpses,

  tormenting with constant fears all whom

  it had not yet stricken, leaving on

  those whose lives it spared the hideous

  traces of its power … making the

  eyes and cheeks of a betrothed maiden

  objects of horror to the lover.

  Through the leafless trees he could see the stone tower of the American Museum of Natural History. Infectious disease was natural history. God, don't let me be a chapter in that kind of history he thought.

  Olivia took his hand before he could stop her. They walked on together. Olivia swung his hand slightly. “Saturday is Valentine's Day.”

  Mitty thought of what his Valentine's Day gift to New York City might be. He extricated his hand.

  Olivia's cheeks stained red and she blinked hard, looking away from him.

  He knew what it meant for a girl to mention Valentine's Day. He and Olivia were at the right stage for Valentine's Day. Ready to be together, not for study and not for school, but for love.

  He did not want to touch her, even though that was the only thing he wanted.

  He looked at the bare trees. They would leaf out in spring. Would he be there to see them?

  Olivia waited for him to speak.

  He knew what she was really asking. How much do we like each other?

  A lot, thought Mitty.

  But he didn't say anything.

  She took a step back from him and he ignored it. She turned and took one step in the opposite direction. He said nothing. Her shoulders slumped. He knew she was crying. She walked away.

  He let her go.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  On Wednesday, February 11, Mitty Blake did not show up for school.

  Neither did Olivia Clark. Since Olivia had nearly perfect attendance and never skipped homework, never mind class, this was an interesting pair of absences.

  “She has to be with Mitty,” said Emma excitedly.

  “Maybe not,” said Constance.“She could be sick.”

  “She's never sick,” said Zorah, who had first dibs on Olivia, because the Clarks had stayed in her apartment right after September 11. Zorah whipped out her cell phone and called Olivia. Olivia did not answer.

  “I bet she told somebody,” insisted Madelyn. “Who knows what's happening?”

  But Olivia had not called anybody.

  Derek found himself surrounded.

  “Well?” demanded Zorah. “What's Mitty doing? Is he with Olivia?”

  Way to go, Mitty, thought Derek. He checked his phone for messages from Mitty, but there weren't any. This was not surprising. You didn't notify people when you skipped school.

  Derek headed to English, where Mrs. Abrams took attendance. The attendance secretary would now telephone the home of every student who hadn't shown up. If the parents had already called to say their kid was sick (or they were taking him skiing), the parent didn't get a call. But now and then, the parent waved good-bye to the kid and left for work, while the kid sauntered right back into the apartment for a happy day of television. Such a parent wanted to know the score.

  Checking was done by phone because any kid could compose and send an e-mail that sounded as if it were from a parent.

  Derek figured the school would cut Mitty a little slack, because just the other day, when Mitty was late, his mother telephoned the office twice more during the day, as if Mitty might slither out a crack in the wall and skip afternoon classes too. The office would dread phoning the Blakes only a few days later, because the thing about private school was, even something that was completely the kid's fault, the parents would say was the school's fault.

  Mrs. Abrams had left Beowulf behind and was forging on to a British poet named John Milton, who had written something called Paradise Lost. Derek's initial take on Paradise Lost was that he and Mitty wouldn't be reading this one either.

  When her classroom phone rang, Mrs. Abrams yelled irritably toward the speaker,“Yes?”

  “Is Derek Skorvanek there?”

  The cl
ass looked up. That was not the attendance secretary's voice. Not the upper school secretary's voice. It was the headmaster. Dr. Larkin was interested in parents, not students, so this call was extraordinary.

  “Yes, he is,” said Mrs. Abrams, regarding Derek with curiosity.

  “Send him to my office immediately, please.”

  The class was delighted. Somebody was in serious trouble, and who better than Derek? Derek tried to look bored, but he left the room with his heart pounding. In spite of a reputation for stuff like hacking into corporate computers, Derek was all talk. He'd never done much of anything. He could think of no reason for Dr. Larkin's summons except that something was wrong at home. Derek found his parents massively annoying and tried never to associate with them, but still, he didn't want them having heart attacks.

  He walked slowly down the hall, as if the bad news might have worn off by the time he got there. But when he was ushered into the headmaster's office, two men Derek did not recognize wanted to know where Mitty was.

  “Mitty?” said Derek, as if these two syllables were unknown to him.

  “Your best friend,” Dr. Larkin reminded him.

  Derek stared at the two guys. They stared back.

  Were these guys Olivia's uncles or something? Was she connected, and these guys were going to put cement around Mitty's feet and throw him into the Hudson? Derek tried to think of a way to protect Mitty.

  “Derek, these gentlemen are from the FBI,” said the headmaster.

  It was all Derek could do not to hoot with laughter. Mitty would love this.

  “We need to find Mitty now,” said Dr. Larkin.“He's missing.”

  “He's not missing,” said Derek. “He just isn't here.” Derek pictured Mitty and Olivia having fun somewhere in New York—presumably inside; it was pretty chilly for outdoor activity—and the FBI walking in on them.

  Mitty would laugh for years, but Olivia was not a big laugher in the best of circumstances. In fact, now that Derek thought about it, far from having a wild and crazy adventure, Mitty and Olivia were probably holed up in a library somewhere, while Olivia was correcting Mitty's spelling.

  “Do you know where he is, Derek?” asked Dr. Larkin.

  “Nope.”

  “It's urgent,” said the guy in the darker suit. His tie gleamed with a blue and silver iridescence, like spilled oil. Derek couldn't decide if he liked the tie or wanted to burn it.

  “Since when is cutting class a national emergency?” Derek asked.

  “This is not about school,” said a woman behind Derek. Derek spun around, expecting Mitty's mother. Mrs. Blake was just the type who would call in the FBI if her son missed a grand total of one hour of class.

  It wasn't Mrs. Blake. It was a much younger woman, quite hefty, wearing wool pants and a heavy blazer that did not become her. She was the exact shape of his own mother. This did not endear her to Derek. He scowled at her.

  The guy in the darker suit said to the headmaster, “Thank you, Dr. Larkin. We'll let you know when we're done.”

  Dr. Larkin turned red. Derek expected him to argue, but instead, the headmaster obediently walked out of his own office, shut his own door and left his student alone with the three strangers. What was up with this?

  The second FBI agent, whose suit was charcoal gray with red pinstripes, said, “Derek, I'm Agent Anthony Finelli and this is Agent McKay. We need your help. Mitty may be in trouble.”

  Trouble with the FBI? What did they think Mitty had been doing? Was Mitty doing it? How was Derek supposed to protect him?

  “Mitty didn't come home last night,” Finelli told Derek. “His parents usually talk to him on his cell phone every day after school. Yesterday afternoon, he never answered his phone. They called the NYPD around seven p.m.”

  Seven o'clock seemed pretty early to panic. Who would call the police because their sixteen-year-old was late for dinner? Well, actually, Mrs. Blake. But Mitty hadn't gone home at all? He'd been gone overnight? That was some serious hookup with Olivia. In fact, it didn't sound like either of them. “Mitty's parents didn't call me,” Derek protested. “They would have called me if they got worried.”

  Finelli shook his head. He was very spiffy. The triangular tips of a silk handkerchief poked up out of his jacket pocket. He had the lean, tight look of a runner. “There were other circumstances,” he told Derek.

  “Like what?”

  Nobody answered. But Derek had a sense that they were not being difficult; they were just not willing to say out loud what needed to be said.

  The woman spoke up. “I am not with the FBI, Derek. I am with the CDC. What do you know about your friend Mitty's biology paper?”

  The FBI and the CDC wanted Mitty because of his term paper?

  The paper Mitty was writing only so he could tag along with Olivia to her library of the week?

  Derek dropped into a chair, beaten. He had failed in his mission. He had not found the murderer of Ottilie Lundgren. Mitty must have pulled it off! Mitty must have written to the FBI. That was so massively not fair. “Okay, who did it?” said Derek tiredly“Who killed her?”

  When the phone rang, Olivia knew it was St. Raphael's attendance secretary. She really was sick. She had a headache from crying all night about Mitty Blake.

  She, most sensible of girls, had stupidly become romantic. She had flung herself on Mitty, bringing him little gifts she shuddered to remember. Books on viruses? Books on epidemics? He's probably been laughing at me the whole time, she thought. He and Derek are probably sitting together right now, laughing themselves sick.

  Olivia had had Valentine's Day fantasies.

  In class a few days before when people like Emma had been asking silly questions, Olivia Clark had been writing a love limerick. The first four lines had been easy. It was the punchline she couldn't get right.

  There once was a great guy named Mitty,

  The cutest and best in the city.

  for Olivia Clark,

  He felt quite a spark

  And they something and something were … pretty?

  Gritty? Committee?

  She knew she'd come up with the perfect ending for her Valentine's poem, and she'd present it to Mitty Maybe in a frame. For his gift, Mitty would bring roses and a box of chocolates with soft centers. They would go to the Metropolitan Museum, which made a big deal about Valentine's Day, where he would have reserved a balcony table for two.

  But yesterday afternoon, she had dragged him to the park when it was perfectly clear he had other plans; cuddled dogs when it was Mitty she wanted. She had taken his hand, which just lay in hers like an old newspaper. He didn't want her hand; he had peeled her off. He hadn't answered when she mentioned Valentine's Day. Olivia had turned away to hide an explosion of tears and found herself walking off. Surely he would follow her, grab her hand again, swing her in circles like in the library.

  But Mitty had not caught up.

  She could have turned around, gone back, called to him. But instead, she went silently home. He didn't call. He didn't IM or e-mail either, and those were easy and impersonal.

  She woke up knowing she could not attend school. Nobody but Olivia would be surprised that Mitty had lost interest. All the girls had been sure she was not Mitty's type, and she couldn't face them with their I-told-you-so smirks. Worse, she would have to face Mitty.

  Now the phone rang a second time. If she let the answering system respond, the school would call her parents at work. Olivia had never mentioned Mitty to them. They had no idea that their daughter had flipped upside down and inside out over some boy. They were physicians who liked to be at the hospital by seven. She could not stand to think of interrupting them in the midst of patient care.

  Olivia answered.

  But it was not the secretary. It was the headmaster.

  Derek was explaining his obsession with the murder of Ottilie Lundgren. It turned out the FBI guys were just as obsessed; they too had tracked recipients of anthrax mail and were frustrated by failure.
>
  “Can I read your files?” asked Derek excitedly.“Can I get at classified stuff?”

  They were sympathetic but not that sympathetic.“How were you thinking you could solve it?” asked McKay.

  “I believe the answer to everything is on the Internet,” said Derek. “You just have to know where to look.”

  “Did Mitty think that too?”

  Derek had practically forgotten Mitty in his excitement about anthrax murders.

  “I think Mitty was bored when I talked about anthrax,” he said cautiously.

  “This isn't about anthrax. It's about Mitty's topic. Smallpox. What do you know about the smallpox scabs Mitty has?”

  “I don't even know what a smallpox scab is.”

  “Did you ever touch them? They would have been scabs like from a bad cut that he had in an old envelope.”

  Derek shook his head. “He never showed me anything like that.”

  “Mitty was offering them on the Internet,” said Finelli.

  It was a lousy day when the FBI cared what you advertised on the Internet.

  The headmaster's door was flung open. Olivia Clark stood there, breathless and windblown, her velvet jacket buttoned wrong, her hair unbrushed, her eyes red rimmed.

  Mitty wasn't with Olivia? Olivia had been home sick?

  Derek felt a shiver of anxiety.

  Where was Mitty? In fact, Mitty rarely skipped or cut. He was the kind of boy who thought anyplace was better than school, but at the same time he didn't want to miss anything, so he was always here.

  “Ms. Clark?” the agents asked her, shutting the door carefully behind her.

  “What did Dr. Larkin mean, you're from the FBI? What did he mean, Mitty's missing?” Olivia cried. “He's cut school before. He's been late before. Missing seems like a very strong conclusion. What is your basis?”

  For the first time, Derek found Olivia attractive.

  Finelli said,“You're Mitty's girlfriend?”

  Olivia was belligerent.“Who says?”

  Go, Olivia! thought Derek. Talk back to the FBI.