The Cipher (20 page)

151

SMILES COULDN'T BRING
himself to do it, not just yet. The page was right in his back pocket, but he couldn't make himself pull it out and ask his dad to sign it.

Smiles had taken his regular seat at his dad's bedside, the one by the picture of his mom. It was the only part of this visit going according to script—everything else was terribly wrong. In the two days Smiles had been away, his dad's complexion had faded to a shocking, ashen gray. He wasn't even listening to his classical music anymore. Worst of all was the fact that his dad had turned into a different person. The ball of emotion collecting in Smiles's throat felt like it was going to choke him.

It had started as soon as he stepped into the room five minutes ago. Before he could even say hello, his dad had bellowed,
“About time! Where have you been?”

Smiles halted, trembling inside. Shanti had warned him it was a bad day, but he hadn't been prepared. Not for the person in the hospital bed—the rageful man inhabiting the body of his calm, collected dad.

“Sorry,” Smiles had mumbled, and walked carefully to his seat. His dad had a right to be upset—Smiles probably should have checked in a few more times over the weekend—but he'd never been one to yell.
Don't take it personally
, Smiles told himself.
It's the cancer—changing his brain, affecting his mood
. The doctors had told him this could happen, but so far the scariest effect Smiles had witnessed was the memory loss. This was something different, and it didn't matter whether he'd been warned by the doctors or not—it shook him.

As Smiles began explaining that he'd taken a last-minute trip with a friend (he left out the casino part), his dad suddenly seemed to remember himself. The anger leaked out of his eyes, replaced with confusion . . . and then shame. He covered his face and began to shudder.

As his dad wept into his hands, Smiles checked Erin in the hallway. He was glad he'd left her out there—things were screwed up plenty without adding anything else into the mix. She mouthed the words,
You okay?

He nodded a yes and felt more in control of himself. Going to the foot of his dad's bed, he spun through the vast collection of classical music on his dad's iPod.

At the front of the room, the green-screen setup had grown more elaborate. A glass podium with a microphone had been placed over an X of duct tape on the floor. A glass panel faced the podium, and at the edge of the setup were three oversize monitors. Smiles assumed the panel was a teleprompter, and he worried that the pressure of the IPO was doing all of this to his dad's brain. If Zach leaked the cipher before Smiles could stop him, what would that do to his dad?

Smiles turned back to the iPod and chose a random symphony heavy on the violins. By the time he got back to his seat, the music had brought his dad around a little bit.

“Oh, thank you,” his dad said, finally emerging from behind his hands. “I don't know where that came from.”

He hung his head in embarrassment, turning Smiles's world upside down. Smiles was the messed-up one; his dad was the one with his crap together. It had always been that way, and Smiles realized now that he'd liked it like that.

“Dad, it's all right. I know that's not you.” Smiles cringed inside—another moronic bedside platitude. They were all that seemed to come out of his mouth around here.

“You've had problems, but you're a good son. You don't deserve any of this.” Smiles didn't even know what he was talking about—the cancer, his mom dying, or maybe all of it. Tears welled at the corners of his dad's eyes, and Smiles wished it would all stop. This was almost worse than getting yelled at. This Overly Emotional Dad was no more his own father than the one who'd barked at him when he entered.

Smiles shifted in his seat and felt the folded page from Mr. Hunt's office crinkle in his pocket. He had to get his dad to sign it, but it didn't feel right just yet. All Smiles cared about now was protecting Alyce Systems, but it still felt somehow like he was taking advantage of the man before him.

He tried to draw strength from the image of his mom. In the picture, she carried a flute of champagne in her hand. She was holding it out for balance, laughing inside a ring of flower girls she'd been leading in a dance. Her eyes were drawn to creases by the huge smile on her face. It was a black-and-white photo, and Smiles knew from her exhaustive cataloging of the family albums that if he turned it over he would find a handwritten description on the back.
Robert and Rose's wedding day
, it would say in her big chunky handwriting. Or
Rose dancing with flower girls
. Or
Rose, your mom, gone from the world but never your heart
.

Smiles found himself wishing for a last glimpse of her brilliant green eyes. He wished he could hear the encouragement she would give him now.

Get over yourself and get your dad to sign that thing. He's having a bad day—we've all had them, cancer or not. You need to do this to save Alyce Systems. And to save your friend. I mean, forget how you got into this. Forget that you started all this as a shortcut path to self-respect, and that it got your friend kidnapped and put the entire company in jeopardy. Even though I sorta warned you about that. I mean, I did. So listen to your mom: What's important right now is that you save your dad's company. Just get him to sign the thing
.

Smiles shook his head free—it hadn't helped quite as much as he thought it would.

His dad was mumbling to himself now. He'd gone from angry to sentimental to whatever this third stage was. Confused? Incoherent? Smiles only knew that he had to get out of this room before he lost his own mind. “You're a good son,” he heard his dad say amid a stream of babble.

Smiles didn't know what to do, until a last uninvited comment from his mom sounded in his head:
Being honest is the best gift you can give to someone
. It was a motto of sorts; she'd used it on him several times when she knew he'd lied about something.

Smiles suddenly felt centered. He knew what was getting in the way of asking his dad this last favor—he had to cleanse himself first. He held his dad's hand.

“Dad, I . . .” Smiles cleared his throat. A cool glass of water would help at this particular moment, he thought. That or maybe some appropriate words on the teleprompter. “I'm actually not a very good son, you know,” he said. “Or I haven't been, anyway.”

His dad's face went still, and Smiles became a torrent of confessions. How he'd gone on spring break to Cancun instead of lacrosse camp; how he used to drive his dad's car when he was out of town; how the weed that got him kicked out of Kingsley Prep hadn't just been Darby Fisher's—half of it had been his own. How he couldn't stand living in Weston because he always felt nervous around his dad. How he'd never loved him the way he should. “I'm not smart enough to figure myself out, but I've always resented you. That's terrible, I know, and it's not your fault at all.”

Had he understood any of it? Smiles wasn't sure until his dad shook his head. “Doesn't matter,” he said softly.

“Dad,” Smiles said, gripping his hand firmly now, ready to do what he'd come for. “There's something else I want to tell you.” He gave him the background in broad strokes: Ben's discovery, and the danger his algorithm presented to his dad's encryption method. His dad listened passively, his concentration straying. Smiles forged on, determined.

“I can't explain all the details,” he said, gliding over the small matter of Ben's kidnapping and Zach holding the cipher for ransom. “But I've got a chance to put everything right.” He retrieved the page from his pocket and looked directly at his father, something he rarely did. “I need you to sign this.”

Smiles laid the page on the blanket over his dad's legs. Slapping at his pockets, he realized he'd forgotten to bring a pen. But then Erin appeared at his side, Bic in hand. “Thanks,” Smiles whispered, and she retreated as quickly as she'd come.

His dad's eyes followed her out of the room. “Melanie?”

Smiles nodded awkwardly. It felt like he was betraying Melanie, Erin, and his father with a single move of his neck. But there was no time to get into his love life now. He raised the pen.

His dad didn't take it. For a long minute, he held the page in his good hand and read it over again. Or did an impression of reading it over—it was hard to tell what was registering anymore. At last he turned his head up and motioned for the pen.

“You read the letter, then?” he said. “You got the package?”

The letter he'd asked Mr. Hunt to destroy, the package that may or may not even exist. Smiles swallowed around the lump in his throat. “Yeah.”

The feeling of betrayal sunk deeper into his heart.
It's the only way to get through this
, Smiles told himself.
Let him think you got her letter. You don't want to read anything from her anyway, and you don't have time for a talk about memory loss
.

“I named the company after her, you know?”

“Yeah, Dad. That was nice.”

The scars of their conversations hadn't healed, and Smiles felt them fresh all over again.
It's better left alone
, she had said.
It's a case of bad timing
, she had said.
It's better left alone. I'll have to end this call now
. He didn't want to think about her anymore. He had a mom, and she was beautiful—she was laughing in a ring of flower girls at his side.

“People do their best,” his dad said. “They do their best and they make terrible mistakes.”

Then he signed the page.

157

MELANIE WAS HAVING
more fun than she'd had in weeks. Jenna had convinced her to go swimming, even though the lake wouldn't be comfortably warm for another month. They got dressed in T-shirts and running shorts, raced across the lawn to the water's edge, and leapt in before they could change their minds. The bracing water had literally taken Melanie's breath away. She had to tread water for a good minute until her chest relaxed enough to get a decent lungful of air.

And then, after the shock had passed through her system, it was great. Jenna dog-paddled out, smiling despite the violent chatter of her teeth. Her lips had turned three different shades of purple already. As she took a last stroke toward Melanie, she cackled and tossed a string of algae off her arm.

“Holy crap is this gorgeous,” Jenna said with shortened breath, twirling to take in the sun-dappled, tree-lined beauty of Squam Lake. She was a surprisingly good swimmer, treading water with practiced ease while Melanie bobbed up and down with each sloppy kick of her legs. “Any sandbars out here?” Jenna said.

There were. “That way,” Melanie said.

Jenna made it out first, standing waist-deep by the time Melanie arrived. The air was still, the sky cloudless. The lake mirrored back the lofty trees along the shoreline and powder-blue sky above. It was the kind of beauty that shut you up and made you stare at it.

The sun had dried their arms by the time they decided to head for shore. Jenna dove from the sandbar but Melanie held back, extending the moment. She used to feel like this when she and Smiles swam to the floating dock—wishing she could freeze time, halt the turn of the Earth and hold off her return to the world. It was more pronounced today, because going back meant diving into the mystery of Smiles's letter again. Into the mystery of her father.

Melanie hadn't made much progress on her investigation, and she'd found it easy to give in when Jenna suggested they go swimming instead of doing more research on Professor Worth, who remained her single lead. Only the thought of the hot tub got her to push off and plunge back into the cold water.

They had started up the hot tub the night before (Jenna insisted), and now Melanie was glad for it. It was set into the deck behind Mr. Smylie's house, and steam wafted from the gurgling water as they dipped in. It always felt best after you'd earned it—after a long run or a swim in the lake. Melanie closed her eyes and sunk to her chin, finding a good spot against a jet. The water smelled faintly of chlorine, but beneath it she could still smell the pine trees.

“This is the life,” Jenna said. She let her legs float out from underneath her and wriggled her purple-painted toes when they broke the surface.

Melanie was on the verge of saying something cheesy about Jenna being a good friend when they both heard a
tinking
sound from the direction of the house
.

Melanie was struck with a sudden fear that Mr. Smylie had been released from the hospital and decided to come up to the cabin to recoup. It would be so embarrassing if he found her there without Smiles—she and Jenna had basically broken in to the place. Or maybe some real robbers had come, she thought, and she would be responsible for having left the house open and unattended.

Tink, tink, tink
. Louder now.

The thoughts whirled through her mind, spinning her into a frenzy, as she half stood in the hot tub and scanned the back of the house for the source of the sound. Sunlight glanced off the windows, obscuring them in glare. But it was unmistakable when she saw it, and it was worse than any of her imaginings.

“Mel, is that—?”

“Yes.”

Yes it was. The air had gone out of her again, more forcefully than it had when she dove into the water. It was her dad at the kitchen window, rapping on it with a key, looking as angry as she'd ever seen him.

163

“WE SHOULDN'T STAY
here too long,” Smiles said as he shut the door to his apartment.

Erin walked into the kitchen, accidentally kicking over a collection of Cap'n Crunch boxes Smiles had left by the garbage can. A stray crunchberry rolled over the tiles and lodged under the refrigerator. Erin perched on the kitchen counter, looking beneath the overhead cabinets to the living room. “You're right, we shouldn't—this place is a sty.”

“I meant because the agents could track us here. They might know my name by now, and Ben lives right next door.”

“I know, I was kidding. Sort of. You've heard of maids, right? For a small price they come to your place and clean up this matter called dirt, which you seem to have—”

“Hilarious.” Smiles could feel his cheeks redden as he rummaged through the front closet for fish food. He wished he had something more substantial for the dragon eel, but the best he could come up with were some algae discs and shrimp pellets.

Erin kept at it while he made his way around the tanks. “I mean, you could even do it yourself. You'd have to become familiar with these things called sponges, and also a whole variety of cleaning products, but that would come. It may seem intimidating at first, but it's nothing beyond your ability to—”

“You should totally show me,” Smiles called out as he watched a shrimp pellet sway to the bottom of his hundred-gallon tank. The dragon eel didn't move for it; he was still in hibernation mode. “Really show me how to do it right, you know, since I'm not familiar with these advanced concepts you're talking about. I'll take notes and stuff.”

He was speaking loud enough for her to hear in the kitchen, but as he watched the dragon eel huddle among the rocks he felt Erin's hands slither around his stomach. Smiles turned in her arms.

“My bedroom's quite a bit cleaner, you know.”

“You don't say?”

“Immaculate. You should see it.”

Erin backed away, toying with him. “So what's with the fish, anyway?”

Smiles wasn't sure why, but something in her voice made him uneasy. “I don't know. I like looking at 'em. Don't you?”

“I just thought people lost interest in aquariums around eighth grade. I mean, you do realize that fish are meant to roam large bodies of water, not this little prison cell here?” Her hand caressed the glass, like she was trying to soothe them. “You're like a fish warden, that's what you are.”

Smiles had absolutely no idea if she was serious or not. “I always thought they had it pretty good,” he said feebly.

“Good? These guys are trapped.”

Smiles should have known by now: Putting a move on a girl by the fish tank never worked out for him.

“Well, I suppose we could debate fish justice all day,” Erin said, “but don't you have a phone call to make?”

He did. Smiles needed to get in touch with the dude at the bank who handled the trust, to get everything set for tomorrow. Luckily, the guy's name was on the papers Smiles received from Mr. Hunt on Thursday—they couldn't have gotten lost that quickly. Smiles picked the phone up off the carpet.

“Give me ten minutes,” he said, hoping she'd get over her fish issue by the time he returned.

The hardest part about the call was finding the papers Mr. Hunt had given him. After that, it went amazingly well. The bank dude's name was Nicholas Perry, and he had a mobile contact on his business card, which Smiles found after a thorough ransacking of his bedroom. (Only after a mental reenactment of Thursday afternoon did Smiles realize he'd crashed on his bed with the papers in his hand, leading him to their hiding place between his comforter and the wall.)

Mr. Perry was at his three-year-old son's birthday party, which might have explained why he asked only a few distracted questions of Smiles before telling him the transaction wouldn't pose too much of a problem. It was fine if he wanted to come by early, Mr. Perry said over a chorus of kazoos. The bank opened at nine.

Smiles clicked off the phone and fell back on the bed, hardly able to believe what he was on the verge of doing. Just last night he'd been faced with an impossible task, and by ten a.m. tomorrow he was going to have accomplished it. He stared at the ceiling with an unknown thrill in his heart, until he realized he shouldn't be feeling this good until the IPO went off okay and Ben was back in safe hands.

Erin knocked softly on the door and peeked her head in. “How goes it on the trust-fund front?” she said with a dash of tension lingering in her voice.

“All set for tomorrow.” He lifted his hand in a What-can-I-say? kind of way.

“Hmm. Color me impressed.” Erin looked the room over. “I'm afraid you oversold the cleanliness of your private quarters. And I think you're right—we need to get going. Any thoughts on where?”

It came to Smiles right away—it was perfect. “We've got a place on Squam Lake. No one will be there.”

The hot tub will make everything better
, Smiles thought.