Fallout (Lois Lane) (12 page)

It didn’t make sense. And it wasn’t like her.

I pulled out the chair next to Anavi, who kept staring straight ahead. Sitting down, I put my hand on her arm. “Everything all right?”

“You can’t sit here,” Anavi said, flat, toneless. “Go away.”

“Anavi, talk to me. Are they still bothering you?”

Anavi threw off my hand, kicking back her chair as she stood. “
You
are the one bothering me.”

She stalked away while I watched her go, gaping.

Devin and Maddy walked the rest of the way over. “Told you,” Maddy said, without a hint of smug.

As Anavi went through the cafeteria, people were pointing and noticing her. Maybe that was all it was. Maybe she hadn’t counted on so much attention.

But another thing I hated was trying to convince myself of something that I felt in my gut was a lie.

CHAPTER 14

I entered the Morgue alone after school,
feeling like I’d swallowed the kind of giant boulder that might be used to landscape Devin’s castle. A giant boulder that remained stuck in my throat. I wasn’t in trouble, but I was
troubled.

The rest of the day had been more of the same.

I hadn’t been able to return the smiles and high fives, and even the continued posting of testimonials and supportive comments on the
Scoop
site didn’t break the spell of the worry that weighed me down. I
was
proud of the story, and I stood behind it, but the point had been to help Anavi out of the dark place she’d been in. Not to isolate her further.

I wished Anavi would talk to me.

The others were already at the office, chattering away and gathered around one of Devin’s giant monitors.

The
Scoop
site was up on it and visible from all the way across the room.

“Listen to this one,” Devin said, and read aloud from the screen. “‘I could never tell anyone, until I read this story. I thought I was the only one who stopped playing because I was too weak to fight back.’”

He paused before adding his own commentary. “Dude, if I recruited this guy and all the others who mention gaming, I could have the biggest kingdom in
Worlds
.”

Maddy laughed. “You hide it well, but you are such a nerd.”

“I am not,” Devin countered. But as he spotted me, he amended, “I’m the coolest nerd you know.”

“That’s probably true,” James said, then turned his head in the same direction as Devin, catching sight of me too. “There she is, the girl of the hour.” He raised his voice and called, “Perry, Lois is finally here.”

I hadn’t even noticed that there was a door back in the most dismal corner of the office. But today it was propped open by an old cardboard box and darkened by the shadows around it like the entrance to some missile-toting dragon’s cave. Why did everything in real life suddenly feel as dangerous as in the war game?

“Get in here, Lane!” The shout rang loud and clear from the gaping black maw. Er, door.

The metaphorical boulder lodged in my throat, I didn’t say anything to the others. I answered the boss by walking past them, ready to get reamed.

Perry was a pro. He didn’t read our stories before we filed and posted them, but he did select which ones got linked to on the
Daily Planet
website. He must have believed the facts were good when he gave the go-ahead for my story to be featured. He might not have had Anavi blow him off, but I suspected that by now he’d sense something was wrong, that the entire story wasn’t known yet.

Or not. When I reached the threshold of the dungeon-like office where Perry waited for me, he was grinning—hardly scary dragon-esque or even intimidating editor-esque. His feet were propped up on a desk as ancient as the ones out front, contrasted by the lightweight laptop open on top of it.

“The newsroom gets noisy,” he said. “Sometimes I come down here, where I can hear myself think. When I’m figuring out a tough story, the quiet helps.”

Like we were equals. Like we were going to swap techniques or something.

Me? Oh, I use my friend from a fringe message board to help me out when I’m up against a tough problem . . . like mind control
.
Do you believe in mind control? Wait, silly me, I mean psychological coercion. Or it could be a hive mind thing, hard to say.

“Sit.” Perry’s well-shined shoes swung down to the floor, and he waved me forward.

“I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop,” I said, relieved to discover my throat was functional.

I took a seat in an oversized wooden chair in front of the desk. The back and arms were coated with dust, but I wasn’t about to complain.

Perry’s grin slipped when he registered what I’d said. “Well, it’s not going to drop right now. I wanted to give you my ‘atta girl, way to go, cub reporter’ speech. You should be riding high on your first story. What’s wrong?”

I ran my index fingers through the film of dust on the chair arms, not meeting his eyes. If I couldn’t tell Devin and Maddy about my suspicions related to the Warheads—and the real reason for my continued worry about Anavi—then I definitely couldn’t tell Perry.

I settled on, “Just . . . today was a little overwhelming. That’s all.”

Perry’s eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward.

Great, I just lied to my editor, a man who’s been nominated for a Pulitzer. Smart.

“Get used to it,” he said. “Your story was solid work, but it’s only a start. You need more. We need more, if the
Scoop
’s going to prove viable.”

“Yes, sir.” I rubbed the dusty fingertips of each of my hands together.

“Sir? Now I
know
something’s wrong. But hey, I’m familiar with the type who doesn’t go in for praise. I don’t care that much for it myself. Go. Get back to work. That’s the only thing for reporters like us.”

Like us
. I wanted to accept that as the truth, but I’d never been gladder to be dismissed from anyone’s presence. I practically jumped out of the chair.

When I reached the door, Perry said, “Good job, though, Lane. I knew my instincts about you were right.”

Uh-huh. And I’m pretty sure my instincts are also right.

The others had migrated back to their own desks. Devin appeared to be hard at work moderating the ever-lengthening comment thread, but he looked up when I reached him. “Don’t let Anavi’s reaction get you down. I’m sure she’ll be fine tomorrow.”

I grunted in response.

“And don’t worry that we’re feeling lazy,” James said. “Perry already told us we need to pull in another half-dozen stories like that in the next few weeks. No pressure.”

I sat back down at my own desk, nodding. Why did I feel like the firing squad was still waiting? I survived my encounter with Perry. Devin might be right about Anavi—maybe she did just need time, space.

This sense of foreboding wasn’t logical.

But it
was
real and I couldn’t seem to shake it.

I considered asking Devin to borrow his holoset, see if I could find Anavi in the game right now. That might make me feel better, to see her behaving normally. But he was busy, and I had James’s game set up at home waiting. I could try later, see if SmallvilleGuy would meet me so I didn’t have to go in alone.

Maybe he could help me figure out why I was so uneasy.

But I made no move to log on to the computer or take out my phone to ping him. I sat, waiting, for what I couldn’t have said.

I didn’t have to wait long.

A burst of screeching guitars blared from Maddy’s general direction. Of course she’d have an old punk song for a ringtone. It stopped when she answered her phone. “Mom, what is it? . . . Um, I don’t know what you’re . . . Mom, no. I’m sorry, I . . .”

Maddy stopped talking to listen. I could hear the voice she was listening to from five feet away, because Maddy’s mom was shouting.

I couldn’t make out the words, but no parent called to yell like that without a reason.

Next came a loud buzzing from James’s vicinity—he took out his phone, the latest model, the same he’d whipped out at us earlier. He glanced down at the screen and frowned, answered quietly. “Mom, is everything okay?”

“Weird,” Devin said to me, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his own vibrating phone.

“Your mom too?” I asked him.

“Nah, Mom’s on a big case this week. She’s a public defender.” He gaped a little, then set the phone on the desk. “A text here from my grandma, tipping me off to a message on the machine. She says I have detention. Because I work here.”

I swiveled back to James and Maddy, who were both talking on their phones. They wore expressions that could be classed as Unhappy. Extremely Unhappy.

James said, “But I didn’t even participate in the article.”

My own phone trilled then, the word
HOME
popping up on the screen. I’d saved the number the night before. The Lanes had to be the only household in America that kept a landline, but my dad insisted backup communications were essential, even for a family.

Not in a case like this.

I hit ignore, postponing the inevitable.

“Nothing about the reason except that it involves the
Scoop
?” I asked Devin.

But before he could answer, Perry interrupted, shouting, “Lane, get back in here now!”

Right. The firing squad. Here it is
.

Maddy was fast-talking back at her mom, and James continued to argue innocence to his. Devin watched the unfolding drama like he was in a theater and missing only the popcorn.

I stood to walk into the verbal hail of bullets that surely awaited me. But Perry didn’t wait for me to come to him. He stormed out of the back office toward me, gesturing for quiet. Maddy and James used it as an excuse to say goodbye and hung up on their mothers. “Lois,” he said.

So I
was
in big trouble. Definitively. He’d called me Lane earlier when we were talking. And he was speaking softly. Something I’d never heard him do before.

My phone rang again on my desk,
HOME
flashing. I reached over to hit ignore. Then I turned back to Perry.

He stared at me, pressing his hands together like he was praying. Maybe I should be—for divine intervention. Because he took a few menacing steps closer to our desks. Closer to mine. I resisted the urge to flee.

“You did vet all your quotes in the story . . . The sources are all confirmed, correct?”

That wasn’t what I expected him to ask. I went through the piece mentally before I answered.

“Lois?” he prompted.

“Well, Principal Butler might not have known he was going to be quoted . . . exactly.” I didn’t know what Perry was getting at. “But he did provide the responses to direct questions. They weren’t out of context.”

“And the girl? This Anavi Singh, she corroborated all the allegations?”

The boulder returned to my throat, growing in size. I swallowed, my foreboding transforming into fear. “Is she okay?”

Perry didn’t answer for a long moment. “If by okay you mean requesting a retraction of the entire article, saying that she hasn’t been bullied a day in her entire life, then yes, she’s fine. We here at the
Scoop
, however, are on life support if you can’t make this story stick.”

“A retraction?” I was choking again. “But it’s true. You saw Butler dismiss her. All the rest is true too. I saw it myself. She told me to use her name.”

Perry stalked toward the door. “The paper has a strict correction policy. No request hangs out there for longer than three business days, not unless Legal gives the thumbs up. Tomorrow’s Friday, so I’ll give you until Monday after school—at the very latest—to get her to withdraw the request. Or we’ll probably be shutting this whole thing down. The
Daily Planet
’s reputation is too important to risk.” He stopped in the door’s threshold, not bothering to turn and look at us. “Maybe the Morgue was too symbolic a place to house this little experiment.” The way he spat the word “experiment” made me cringe. And then he slammed the door behind him.

So much for me being a reporter like him. At least he and his accusations were gone.

But the silence that he left in his wake didn’t last long.

“We have detention!” Maddy said.

Devin said, “So it is all of us.”

James nodded. “Assuming Lois has it too.”

“I’m sorry I got you all caught up in this.” I tugged on my lip. Trying to think. But there wasn’t an easy way out. I gave up. “Please blame me. It’s my fault.”

Why would Anavi lie like this?

“It
is
your fault,” James said. “I wasn’t even credited on your apparently way overblown story. This job is important to me. You better fix this.”

“I will,” I said.

If I can
.

The last remnants of the plan were falling apart all around me. My promise to Anavi wasn’t working out that well either. I should have known better than to hope things would be different—be better—here.

“You have to,” James said. “I don’t want my reputation to take a beating like my—”

I could have finished the sentence: like his dad’s. But I didn’t. I’d done enough damage for one day.

Instead I went to my desk to collect my things. Gathering up my messenger bag, I slung the strap over my neck and proceeded to the door.

“Where are you going?” Maddy asked.

“Home,” I said, “to face the General’s music.”

CHAPTER 15

And that angry music was already cranked
to maximum volume when I crept through the front door, attempting to sneak past the real firing squad, aka my parents. I barely noted the garlic-infused smell of lasagna—my favorite—because dinner was going to be the opposite of fun.

“You do not ignore calls from me,” Dad said, meeting me. He was decked out in his full dress uniform. Which meant he’d left work earlier than he planned, almost certainly because Mom had called him to tell him about the detention.

He waved me toward the kitchen.

Oh no.

“Now, get in here,” he said. “We need to have a talk over dinner.”

I’d been crossing my fingers, if weakly, for actual yelling when I got home. Talks over dinner were what my dad used for serious business. Every move we’d ever made was announced at a “talk over dinner.” Every grounding I had endured, every phone privilege lost, every punishment that had ever been meted out to me had started this way. The situation had already been bad and now it was getting worse.

I couldn’t afford to be punished. I had to do my job—or it would no longer exist. I wouldn’t have just wrecked things for me, but for Maddy, Devin, even James.

I barely had time for dinner.

But I didn’t argue. I dropped my bag, not bothering to avoid Lucy’s trap when I reached the arch of the kitchen, but instead reaching around the wall and pulling her out, gently.

“Not now, brat,” I said. “I’m about to get a talking to.”

“I know,” Lucy said, eyes big, interested, and a touch sympathetic.

Mom was waiting at the kitchen table, the perfect lasagna sitting in the center of it, along with a bowl of salad and a plate of garlic bread. Her expression was neutral, which gave me no hint of whether she might be in my corner. Sometimes she was, when Dad reacted unreasonably.

But my fear was that a big reaction was merited this time around, from their perspectives. My history of getting in trouble would not do me any favors.

I sat down at my usual place like I’d been sentenced to. I wasn’t hungry—a first.

Dad took his own place at the head of the table. “Your principal called here,” he said.

“You should know he’s a world-class jerk.” I couldn’t help pointing it out. “The kind of fawning fake you usually can’t stand.”

None of this helped my case.

“Mom gave him my number,” Dad said, “so we could speak about you. I talked to him before you started school and he was very nice. He told me he legitimately cares about his students’ futures.” I bet he had—and my dad, who was normally decent at spotting fakes, had bought the line. “Everyone I asked said East Metropolis is the best public school around, one of the best in the country.”

And the best schools in the country always loooove me
.

I was smart enough not to say it.

“You promised me you’d try to make things work here. But it might be time for us to discuss military school again,” Dad said.

Mom frowned at him but didn’t say anything. She half-rose and began serving the food. A quiet way of communicating that she wouldn’t be on board with that.

Or that’s what I hoped, anyway.

So I did not counter with the argument I had the first few times Dad had raised the specter of military school: that I was confident I could—and would—get myself kicked out in twenty-four hours or less.

“Now,” Dad went on, “I don’t know what possessed you to write a false story accusing the principal himself of running a lax operation and not protecting students from bullies, but he assures me that’s what you’ve done. This . . . newspaper business may not be the best fit for you, Lois. We can compromise. No military school, but no more news either.”

He stopped to let that rest, as if it was a completely rational solution, and began to eat. Lucy was gaping at both of us. I reached over and picked up a piece of garlic bread. I took a bite of it, trying to be casual.

It tasted like nothing. Like cardboard.

I knew that my mom’s garlic bread was delicious.

I wasn’t even able to fool myself that I wasn’t freaking out. If I let my dad see how much I wanted to work at the
Scoop
, I’d be showing a vulnerability. He could then use it against me.

But there was no other way.

“Dad,” I said, setting down the bread, “do you think bullying isn’t a big deal? What if Lucy or I were being tormented by people at school? If it was bad enough that we couldn’t do anything without being afraid?”

His fork hovered in the air. “I’ve taught you how to handle yourselves. That wouldn’t be a concern.”

“But what about for people who don’t know? People like the girl I wrote about, Dad. She’s a former spelling bee champion. She plays videogames, but she doesn’t know self-defense—and anyway, they weren’t bothering her in that way. I think maybe you don’t understand what it’s like now. It’s not like in your day.”

“In my day?” he asked.

Whoops.
“You know, like jocks stuffing nerds into lockers.”

“You know what she means, Sam,” Mom said, entering the conversational fray. “Things are different now.”

“At any rate,” Dad said, “the principal says that you made this up. That this girl denies any of it ever happened.”

My hands formed into fists. I shifted them to my lap. “Because she’s being bullied. I am going to prove the story is factual. Just watch me. I have until the end of the day Monday.”

“That was not the compromise I put on the table.”

“I reject that compromise.”

We sat in silence, me staring at Dad and him staring back.

He hadn’t even asked for my side of the story.

“Lois—” he started.

But that was enough. “I did nothing wrong. I’m trying to help a girl who is being preyed upon and needs my help because the so-called ‘adult’ in question, your precious humanitarian Principal Butler, doesn’t want to get involved. But he
is
involved. The kids I wrote about—the Warheads—are bullying Anavi, and Butler’s a part of it. This is bigger than just the story I wrote. Can’t you see that? Why can’t you ever trust me? I’m doing the right thing. The trouble will blow over, like always.”

Dad fumed at me from the end of the table. He set down his fork.

“Now, Sam, you know that Lois’s heart is always in the right place,” Mom said. “She just has trouble making others see that sometimes.”

“Sorry, Mom,” I said. “I have to leave the table.”

She looked at me, and I managed a weak smile for her. I could read Dad well enough to know he was preparing to give me a lecture. Before he could start, I pushed my chair back from the table. “I’m not hungry. So I’m going upstairs to work. And I’m
not
leaving the
Scoop
.”

“Go to your room,” Dad said.

“I just said that I was.” I tossed my napkin onto my plate, shaking my head when Mom started to protest.

Blood rushed to my face, my ears pounding with it as I raced upstairs. I automatically locked the door and prepared to log in to my computer, still so mad I could barely talk. Or type.

But I managed the passwords.

SmallvilleGuy:
Where have you been? I’ve been dying here, waiting for hours. I was afraid I missed you when I had to step out for chores. The story was great. How did your day go? What did Butler do? The Warheads?

SmallvilleGuy:
I want to know everything.

I took a few calming breaths, which did nothing to make me feel calmer. I almost felt sorry for him. All the things that happened to me today . . . I didn’t know where to start.

SkepticGirl1:
I have detention.

SkepticGirl1:
My dad is bringing up military school again.

SkepticGirl1:
I just stormed away from the dinner table.

SkepticGirl1:
The
Scoop
is going bye-bye if I can’t fix everything.

SmallvilleGuy was typing. My breathing steadied. A little.

SmallvilleGuy:
Wait—why is all this happening? The story was good.

SmallvilleGuy:
Great. It was great.

SkepticGirl1:
Oh, right.

I didn’t want to even type the words, they were so inexplicable. So mystifying to me. But I had to tell him the rest so he’d be able to understand.

SkepticGirl1:
Anavi claims everything is a lie, and requested a retraction from Perry. I only have a few days to get her to take it back.

SkepticGirl1:
She won’t even talk to me.

For a long moment there was nothing—not even an alert that he’d started to type a response. That he had to take a pause almost made me feel better. He must have been as shocked as I was.

Finally, words came.

SmallvilleGuy:
Lois, I’m so sorry.

SmallvilleGuy:
But you know what this means? You’re right about everything. And you can’t stop now. We’ll dig deeper. I already found out that ARLabs donated bunch of computers to the school this year. And that the main guy behind the real-sim tech had some interesting ideas back in the day about group play and neural pathways that I’m looking into.

The story—the real one—he was right. We had to keep chasing it.

SkepticGirl1:
Really? I’ll do some looking too.

I heard steps on the stairs.

SkepticGirl1:
Someone’s coming. Catch you tomorrow?

SkepticGirl1:
And thank you. Talking to you helped, more than you know.

SmallvilleGuy:
Wait, don’t forget!

But I had to shut the laptop then. It was the first time I’d ever closed one of our regular nightly chats without asking who he was, in one way or another. I wondered if that was what he’d wanted to remind me of, unable to believe I would disappear again without it.

I lunged over to the door and unlocked it, just as the knock sounded. I opened it ready for round two of my battle with Dad.

Lucy stood outside, holding a plate of lasagna.

“You really did it this time,” she said. “But you seem to be off the hook for now. Mom sent this up. Dad let her.”

“Thanks, Deathmetal,” I said, accepting the plate. My stomach rumbled its approval. I hadn’t been hungry before, but I was starving now. “You’re a good sister.”

“I hope they don’t send you away,” Lucy said. Then, “Night,” as if she’d said too much.

We were so alike, the two of us, battered by too many moves and too much change. I ducked inside to set down the plate on my desk, holding a finger up so she wouldn’t leave. I crossed back to the door and folded her into a hug. “I’m not going anywhere. Promise.”

“Okay,” she said, and extricated herself from my grip, faking cool. “Better go check in with my unis.”

I waited until Lucy went into her room, then shut my door on the rest of the world again. Talking to SmallvilleGuy
had
helped, but I needed to think. To try to figure out how victory had turned so quickly into such resounding defeat. So I didn’t go back to chat when I reopened my computer while wolfing down the lukewarm lasagna. I went to Strange Skies instead, clicking through new threads.

There was a hot topic, the little flame beside it indicating lots of conversation, and it had only been posted that evening.

Posted by
SPNscholar
at 7:15 p.m.
: I have a very interesting report of seismic activity in central Kansas to share. It occurred earlier this evening, nowhere near a fault line. You won’t hear anything about this on the news, because the tremors were deep enough that they barely registered on the surface. But a seismograph in our lab here at the university picked it up, and we can only assume it was an earthquake with subterranean origins. The oddity is that there was no hint of prior activity that might cause such a quake or any obvious explanation for its occurrence at this particular time.

At least I wasn’t the only one who’d had a day filled with weird upheaval.

The poster was a scientist researcher type, and they tended to be among the more reliable and sane members of the boards. I was too tired to look up a map to see if the quake was anywhere near Smallville.

I would have to try to remember to ask SmallvilleGuy if he’d felt anything.