Assured Destruction (10 page)

Chapter 16

I
wait, sweating in the entry of Assured Destruction. Inside, it’s cool and dark as my eyes adjust. My mom’s shoulders are back and her jaw flexed. Slowly I roll my bike to the wall and lean the frame against it. Her sighs whistle from her nostrils.

“Where were you?” she demands.

I can’t tell her what I’ve really been doing, but I can’t lie to her anymore. “I went to a boy’s house.”

Her chin tilts down so that now she’s looking at me like a wolf might when ready to pounce.

“It’s complicated,” I add with a sniff.

Her expression suggests she’s considering whether to lock me in a closet or to hug me close, but something else is wrong. Her mouth opens and closes, and she frowns. I’ve never seen the vein at her temple throb so prominently.

“Your school called,” she says. “They’re deliberating your expulsion.”

I stand nonplussed, wracking my brain for what new terrible deed I have committed.

“Why would you do it?” she cries. “What are you going to do if you are expelled?” Both my mom’s hands are in the air like she wants to karate chop something.

“I haven’t done anything, have I?”

“Are you this mixed up?” she asks, face screwing in confusion. “How can you not remember plagiarizing?”

“Plagiarizing …” And then I catch on. OMG. The essay. I wouldn’t have thought it possible for me to get into more trouble.

“No, no I remember, but—” I set my bag down slowly, like I’m placing a gun on the floor under threat of death. “I just didn’t have time to finish the essay.”

“Because of your computers.”

“No—well—yes, sort of,” I begin and sag. “Listen, Mom, I need to tell you about everything that’s happening, but I can’t. You’ll understand why when I’ve fixed it.”

She rolls her chair back and forth. I’ve seen her do this before. She’s thinking, weighing the options.

“Maybe you need some help,” she says. “Maybe I can help you.”

And this is why I think my mom is so cool. Here I am, a cyberbully, a plagiarist, a liar, and a jerk to someone she cares about, and still she’s there for me. I begin to cry.

“I’m really sorry it’s gotten out of control. I’m losing friends because of it too.” I sob.

“What got out of control? What’s going on?”

“I can’t explain yet. I would if I could.”

“And you will,” she says quietly. Anger is not far off. “And until you do, you will go from here to the library, where you will check in with me, and then you will return and you will work. That is all. You will rewrite that essay tonight and hand it in to me at midnight.”

“Then I need my computer,” I say, wiping my eyes.

Her face pinches. “Why should I trust you?”

I swallow hard. I’m sixteen. My mom is treating me like I’m six. “You can’t. You shouldn’t. I’m a lost cause.” My tone is sincere.

“But I want to trust you.” Her voice cracks. “So I will.”

She turns slowly in her chair, only using one hand, with the other at her temple. I realize that I just used reverse psychology on my mother. Her heart is in my hands.

“Take over for me, please,” she says, and I can’t believe how much I’ve hurt my mom. “Peter’s coming, ask him to come back tomorrow.”

She wheels into the elevator before I say anything in reply.

I wait and the doors close with a thump. The sadness wells in me; my mom, my failures, my hurting Jonny and Hannah, Harry, Astrid. My lungs hitch and my mouth turns down; another choking sob escapes my chest. With its echoes I’m overcome by grief and I’m on my knees, tears dripping from my elbows as they run from my hands and down my forearms.

After a few minutes, I rub my eyes and run fingers through grimy, sweaty hair. The cry has cleared my head and strengthened my resolve. All my pain, and everyone’s vengeance, hinges on me solving this mystery. My expulsion. Mom’s business. A boyfriend. Justice for Harry and Astrid. Even for Ellie. I need to set this to rights. I climb to my feet and head for my mom’s office.

The office is a room with no windows, two filing cabinets, no chair, one desk, and a shelf at the same height as the desk so that my mom can reach everything. We keep security video tapes on a seven-day rolling basis, so we have tape from a week ago, which we’ll soon copy over. The images are grainy, but enough to identify a person or car or—if I’m lucky—a license plate.

I pick the tape for three days ago and plug it into the display unit. It goes all crazy with snow and then returns with an image of our parking lot just in front of the door on a sunny day. The time stamp is 8:04 AM, which is when we switch the tapes. Then it goes black. I rewind it well past halfway, trying to recall when Foxy Lady came in. It takes another minute of searching to catch the snarling eyes peering into the camera lens, but the car is parked out of view and a lens flare obscures some of the frame. I pause the tape and start to rewind to see if I can catch the car as it comes in. I do; it’s a Honda Civic, black, but there’s no plate on the front. I try for the rear as it leaves.

The door jangles, and at first I think it’s the tape, but there’s no audio on it.

“Dear?” a man asks.

Who says
dear
?

Peter!
I pause the video and scramble out of the office. Peter stands at the cash, on the threshold of crossing over into the
Employee Only
area.

“Hi, Peter,” I say. Instead of a bouquet of flowers, he’s holding a pizza box with a hard drive on top. On most days I’d be impressed that he’s carrying my two favorite things in the world. Today I need to get rid of him. “My mom’s really upset—because of me—and asked you to come back tomorrow.”

His face crumbles, and I can see how upset he is. On the other hand I still believe he is a retired dude who likely has too much time on his hands. He’s probably planning on taking my mom on an all-you-can-eat cruise as we speak. I quell my evil thoughts and try to like him.

“It’s not you, I swear, we just had a huge fight,” I say. “She needs a long time after a fight; she’s always been like that.”

“Can I leave these with you?” He proffers the pizza and hard drive with a hurt smile.

“What’s the hard drive for?” I ask.

“It’s mine. Destruction, please.”

I hold it tight in my white-knuckled grip. It’s my chance to rule this guy out. It’s my opportunity to unearth who this man really is. There could be souvenirs from past killings on it. Records of his fraudulent activities. Or, better yet, evidence of his plans to destroy me. I owe it to my mom to search it.

“Assured,” I say.

He stands, looking from the drive to me to Chop-chop. I can tell he’s torn between wanting to make a good impression on me and wanting to see the thing shredded into strings of metal.

“Don’t worry, no charge,” I say.

He pauses for another moment, makes some sort of decision, and smiles thinly before letting the door jangle behind him. The drive still feels hot in my hand as if it’s just come out of a computer. I’ve been here before: A tempting hard drive, one with something potentially malicious onboard.

After his Mercedes exits the parking lot in a swirl of dust, I slip the hard drive into my backpack for later and sprint into the office. The screen is paused with a view of the lot and the nose of a Honda Civic at the bottom edge of the frame. I move the video forward frame by frame until I have the rear of the car. And I’ve got it: Foxy Lady’s license plate.

It’s too late in the day for phase two of my plan. I feel like a runner peaking for a big race. Twenty-two hours remain between now and when my life shatters into a million tiny pieces.

I can’t leave the cash for a while yet, so I do something I should have done weeks ago. I fetch
The Bell Jar
from downstairs and crack the spine.

I read the first page and my knee starts to shake, jouncing the book. I flex my leg muscles to make the tremor stop. Then I take a look around for customers and run my hands over the conveyor rollers as I devour page two. The rollers make a fun sound, especially when I spin them back and forth. I set the book down and see how many I can keep rolling at once. Fourteen. I read another page and have the urge to pee.

I admit it; I have a problem. I have the attention span of a gnat with ADHD after six cups of coffee. Forget for a moment that a gnat wouldn’t drink coffee. Here I am, only about seven pages in, and my mind drifts toward the hard drive and what secrets reside there. I snap back to the book for a few more pages and I learn how this chick Esther gets this wicked job at a fashion magazine and instead of being like—whohoo! Woot! Woot! Woot!—she’s like,
whatever
. Then I’m back ogling the hard drive and am pretty sure that I can beat my record of fourteen rollers.

I have to figure out a way to keep my attention focused on the book. Six hours remain before I need to hand the essay in, and for some reason that deadline seems almost as important as Jonny’s. While balancing a slice of pizza on my fingers, I boot up the laptop.

I have an idea. If I can spend hours going back and forth between Twitter accounts, blogging, and Facebook, why can’t I use Shadownet’s accounts to write my essay? I mean, I’ll just let each of my Shadownet characters respond to one another and they’ll write my essay for me?

I start by logging into a half dozen accounts. Everything has been hacked and is messed beyond belief but I don’t care. I know the voice of the characters and this is a good idea. Besides I’m not sure I care as much about these people anymore, they don’t seem as real as they once had. All I know is that between them I’ve written over ten thousand tweets, and if you figure ten words a tweet, that’s one hundred thousand words, which is a book. I CAN write an essay across social networks.

Heckleena pipes in that she thinks Esther is a head case. Esther isn’t engaged by the New York fashion scene because she’s totally depressed. Frannie wonders why Esther never recognizes herself in any photos, or even in the mirror.

I don’t have Gumps alongside me, but I can imagine what he’d say to that, so I type into a new Word document:
Who you are is what you see.
Or don’t see, I guess. And that sounds smart even if it isn’t totally clear.

I keep working like this, reading—there’s even sex in this thing! Way to go, Mrs. French—and having the characters comment. The hours tick by and Esther leaves New York and becomes trapped in the suburbs—the symbol of the suffocating bell jar painfully obvious. Heckleena says it’s Darwinian when Esther’s thinking about suicide, but Hairy posts to Facebook that she’s just paralyzed by indecision and I can actually relate to that.

As I’m tweeting and updating and blogging, friends and followers are commenting. Someone even adds the hashtag #thebelljar, which means people can track the topic. Really smart people begin to tweet in. I didn’t mean to crowd-source this essay, but can I use their ideas? I take the bold step of doing something I have never done. I quote them and give them credit.

Back in the novel Esther has sex with an older dude, and Frannie is shocked and appalled—so am I! No, Mom! Don’t do it! The whole thing is frigging exciting, and I’m biting my nails as she’s draining a bottle of pills and hiding beneath the house … saved in the nick of time. This woman isn’t just trapped in her head, but trapped in her home and a psych ward.

In the end it’s not her that commits suicide, but her friend Joan. I’m not sure what to think about the ending. She’s not dead. And she seems to be getting better with the cajillion volts of electricity they keep pumping through her.

After copying all the posts, tweets, and blogs, I put it all together in some semblance of an essay format and realize—with a warm feeling in my stomach—that I’m done. I read it over and rewrite bits to make it halfway professional and title it “The Bell Jar: A Discussion Between Friends and Followers.”

“Well, holy hullabaloo,” I say and then thank all of the people who made it possible. Even Shadownet. I take a picture of my Twitter feed and email it to the principal:
Beautiful
. He may not understand it, but this was one of the most beautiful things that has ever happened to me.

I send the essay to the printer and look up. I’m reflected in the dark plate glass. Black hair shimmers in the computer light, my eyes shining and pink lips puckered like my mom says happens when I’m deep in thought. It’s nearly twelve o’clock. With the fresh pages of the essay in my hand, I’ve done the easy part. I’ve sixteen hours to restore my life and save my mom’s business. Or I’ll be as trapped as Esther ever was.

Chapter 17

R
ise and shine world! Frannie tweets.

Today is gonna be a good good day,
Paradise57 posts to his Facebook wall.

I start a Heckleena tweet and then delete it.

Today is all about timing and I have a ton to do. I start packing my bag for the “library.”

“I want you to take my shift this morning,” my mom says.

I go cold, one hand adding a token textbook to my bag. I can’t waste valuable time, but I also can’t say no to my mom.

“I read your essay,” she continues, “and I think it is brilliant.” She’s really smiling.

I bite my lip, telling myself that I’m not going to cry. Her belief in me is so unfounded.

“Can I take your shift tomorrow instead?” I ask quietly, wringing my hands.

She squints and I can tell I’m raising her suspicions.

“It’s okay,” I add. “It’s not like I’ve got anything else to do.” I force a little laugh and she nods.

When I get downstairs, I listen for the sound of the elevator and then rush into the office. I pick up the phone and dial.

“Fenwick?” I say. He sounds really surprised. “I need a mega favor.”

I explain and he agrees to come in early to man the cash—but to be really quiet and that I’ll pay him for the extra hours myself, not my mom. I’m planning a surprise for her, I tell him. I think the tone for desperate secrecy is the same in any language, and he stops asking questions and finally agrees to help. I gasp with gratitude.

When I take the morning shift, my mom usually stays upstairs until after lunch, so with any luck she’ll never know. I’ll check on her at ten when Fenwick arrives and will text her at noon that Fenwick is on duty. I really have no idea where I’ll be at noon—except that I’ll be on my bike huffing. I feel terrible about throwing my mom’s trust back in her face but have no choice. The next phase of my plan will begin when Fenwick steps through the door. Until then, I have two hours to twiddle my thumbs.

If I listen hard enough, I can hear the door jangle from downstairs, so I head down to Shadownet. I still haven’t reformatted the drives and installed the operating systems, and I wonder whether I’ll ever bother. Besides my dad’s data, most of what I lost was used to create their Web presences. Until of course all the profiles got hacked. From out of my pack I draw Peter’s hard drive.

A hard drive is a small hunk of metal with a whole lot going on inside. I love the heft of it. I flip the hard drive over and over again in my hands. Finally I tap it against the external drive dock, trying to decide whether I should take a peek.

I shake my head clear and type a question into Gumps’s green screen.

8-ball question: Should I look in this hard drive?

Answer:
Curiosity killed the cat.

Huh. Gumps is appearing rather lucid today.

8-ball question:
Who is doing this to me?

Answer:
It’s best to go last in Russian Roulette.

I suppose it is, but it doesn’t answer my question. I try again.

8-ball question:
If you were me, what would you do?

Answer:
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Three questions, three ominous answers. I try one more, hoping for something optimistic.

8-ball question: Why did the chicken cross the road?

Answer:
Be the change you want to see in the world.
Gumps and Gandhi were close.

I go on my email and let out a shout of glee. The App Store has approved my app. I immediately download it from the store, but while I’m using my phone, I see I have over two thousand notifications. I receive a lot of notifications because of the Facebook and Twitter accounts and stuff, but not like this. These are all texts.

Cold trickles down my back as I open one.

lololololololololololololololol …
repeated hundreds of times.

The problem with texts is that they cost money. My best guess is someone has cost me over three hundred dollars in the last hour. Another three texts come in while I watch.

I race up to the office and call the phone company. It costs another eight dollars in text messages while I’m on hold, but I manage to get my subscription canceled at least until I sort out what’s happening. This really sucks. My iPhone was a big part of my plan today, and now I can use it only if I can access a WiFi network.

“Hello. Miss Janus?” a voice says in a hush.

I jog out of the office. It’s Fenwick. I want to hug him for being early and settle for shaking his hand like a jackhammer.

“I work,” he says and places a finger to his lips. “You finish surprise, like birthday?”

“Yes, like birthday, only better,” I say.

He steps behind the cash and faces the door, probably trying to think of another way to help the business. He’s the child my mom should have had.

I move back into the office and shut the door. Time to enact step one of the plan. I take the slip of paper from my pocket with Foxy Lady’s license plate and dial the phone number of the police anonymous tip line. What I’m about to do is wrong. I don’t know if it’s a felony like reading mailing addresses, but I’m positive that I could get into big trouble.

I lower my voice until it’s gruff and manly. “Please tell Constable Williams that a woman who is dealing in child pornography on the Web has a black Honda Civic with the license plate Alpha, Juliet, Kilo, X-ray, five, five, five.” I pause, uncertain that this will get the reaction I need. “I think I heard screams from the trunk.”

I hang up.

“Okay, now I’m in big trouble,” I say and run to my bike.

Fenwick waves and makes like he’s being really quiet. It would be funny, except I just lied to the police.

I slap my forehead and sprint up to the apartment.

I land before my mom, who is reading.

“Hi ya, Mom, just seeing how you’re doing, okay, I think I hear a customer! See you later, love you.”

My mom sighs.

“I’m fine,” she says. “Don’t forget to send your essay in.”

“Okay, sure will do, thanks.” I sprint out, wondering if I did more damage than good.

It’s just after ten and Fenwick will end his shift at four this afternoon, which is when I normally return from school. It’s also Jonny’s deadline.

The police precinct is a mile away. I pedal hard. I can’t imagine the police ignoring my tip and hope I arrive there in time. I also know what I’m doing has moved from stupid to officially dangerous. I’m tracking my enemies. Alone. On a bike.

Which reminds me—I swing to the nearest coffee shop with free WiFi and start the app I made for Jonny.

It’s called Canvas, and it’s a way of spray painting the world. With the app I can spray paint the side of a building, and anyone with the app can come along and see what I wrote. After I get the app up, I use the tip of my finger to pick pink from a palette of colors and then write in bright letters,
Jan was here first
. And then tap
Publish
. Jonny can use the whole world as his canvas! Isn’t that cool? Not that Jonny will ever care now.

I start pedaling again, promising myself to stop at the next closest Starbucks, which I know has WiFi, to mark my trail. Five minutes later I’m in front of the Ottawa Police Precinct. The car pool is in the back, and I ride around, waiting across the street from the huge chain link fence. With any luck, Williams has already been handed the tip and is heading down to her cruiser. I sit for fifteen minutes. Two male cops leave in a big SUV. Another rides a motorcycle, and three depart on bicycles. I’m beginning to wonder if I should have tailed one of the others when Williams tromps out to her vehicle and pulls out.

Here is where my plan starts to breakdown. I’m on a bike. She’s in a car. I’m an out-of-shape teenager. Her cruiser has three-hundred horsepower. To keep up, I’m dependent on Ottawa’s ridiculously timed lights, guaranteed to snarl traffic. She heads across town. Good news in terms of lights. Lots of them.

I actually stay ahead of her, crossing against traffic, anticipating where she’s headed by a block. This works well for about five minutes, until I get stuck unable to cross the busy intersection of Bronson Avenue.

She’s still not signaling, though, and drives another block, now ahead of me. I wobble back and forth on the bike as my thighs ache. My socks are already up around my pant cuffs. She turns, and I turn a block early, crossing the street on an angle and earning half a dozen honks. I flip them off. When I reach the next street, she’s gone, and I take too many short breaths and feel light-headed. Then I spot it. The cruiser sits beneath a big tree on a rundown street. I bike closer.

Williams stands in a doorway, talking to an unshaven man with a gut and dirty white shirt. Not my target, unless Foxy lives with this guy, but I can’t see it. Foxy was halfway to pretty and dressed to the nines. I bring out my iPhone and find another unsecured WiFi network. I paint on the road.
Jan was here next.

I hide behind a tree while the officer walks to the cruiser. It rumbles to life, does a three-point turn, and starts heading back the way we came. I roll my eyes and turn away so she doesn’t see my face as she passes. This was a dead end, some other thing she must have had to check up on.
Come on, Williams!
I said that screams were coming from the trunk of the car.

I wait until Williams pulls into traffic before working to catch up. She turns again and now I manage to cross a street at a light and take the lead. I have it for about six minutes, passing a Starbucks and painting an arrow on the sidewalk as I ease off. Behind me, the cruiser turns. I run into an old woman, nearly knocking her over and sending me over my handlebars. I am too out of breath to apologize, and instead stumble back and forth while gasping. She gives me a crazed look and mutters something in Italian that sounds like a curse. I lurch back on to my bike and cycle around the corner.

Officer Williams threads slowly through a neighborhood that grows seedier with every block. Soon homes have plywood over the windows. One has aluminum foil covering every pane of glass and possible entry, like the real risk isn’t gangsters, but rather alien mind-control rays. Police tape crosses the door of another. Weeds overgrow half the yards, paint peels from brick, and chimneys lean with exhaustion.

Finally, Williams hops out of her car. She doesn’t have any backup, and I wonder if they take tips like mine seriously enough. I try to guess what house she’s targeting and hang back, careful to keep out of the line of site of anyone who might be looking out of a window.

She knocks on the door, then bangs.

Nothing. I run behind a car. Then I dash to the rear of a dumpster across from the house. With my bike hidden, I clamber up the side and risk a look.

There’s movement in a window, but no one coming to the door. I get the willies and shiver, squatting down again.

I feel eyes on me, but the house I face is being gutted and there’s no glass in the windows. I hear footsteps and curl around the edge of the dumpster. Williams turns around, peers right at me, and then glances left and right. She starts moving, fast. I shrink back, my butt pressing against cold metal. But she’s not headed toward me, rather to a car parked on the street several doors away: a black Honda Civic. She knocks on the car trunk and crouches as if listening.

I have my address. My plan is working. I search for an unsecured network, but there’s nothing available. The area’s dead.

In a few minutes, the constable climbs back into her cruiser and pulls away. I’m alone again, but Williams has done her job. Now it’s up to me to figure out the rest.