The Summer the World Ended (18 page)

“What did she say when you walked in on her?”

“I didn’t. I was a chicken. I ran upstairs. I was so mad at you. I went through this phase where I was jealous of anyone who had a father. Mom actually took me to a shrink because they thought I had emotional problems. Apparently I was ‘too friendly’ to grown men. I don’t really remember it.”

Dad reached across the table and put a hand on hers.

“I think I was eleven when I finally apologized to Mom for making her cry. She was shocked I remembered. We got real close after that. It was just us against the world.” Riley felt the tears coming, but held them back with a deep breath.

Her father remained quiet for a few minutes before heaving a weak sigh. “I’d give anything to send a message back in time and tell myself not to run.”

She grasped his hand, holding it for a moment. “Or at least call us on birthdays and holidays.”

He looked guilty until she ventured a weak smile. “Sorry. I didn’t want to run the risk someone would trace my calls and find you.”

They ate in quiet for a few minutes.

“So you really hate SpaghettiOs?” asked Dad.

“If I had them three times a day for a month, I’d throw up at the sight of the can. They’re okay… just not all the time.”

“I never got sick of them. Sometimes I’d cut up hot dogs or jackrabbit and drop them in. You know, for a little variety.”

She laughed. “Did you really eat nothing but canned pasta and ramen for six years?”

“Perhaps more than I should have, but not entirely.” He winked and tilted the stew bowl to his lips to drink the last of it. “Time for seconds.”

Riley fished the ‘carrot of staring’ out of her bowl and ate it while he ambled around past her to the stove. “Can I go to town again tomorrow?”

“Hah. I didn’t think you’d be so ready to risk driving again after today.”

She squirmed in her seat. “I don’t wanna drive again till I have a permit. Would you take me?”

“There’s no way you used up all those groceries already.” He ladled out another helping of stew, replaced the lid, and returned to the table. “Did you?”

“No. Kieran asked me to hang out.”

“You’re fourteen. You don’t need a boyfriend yet. You’re better off avoiding him.”

“He’s not my boyfriend. You barely know me anymore. You live like a hermit in a mountain of SpaghettiOs, and you hate a boy you never met? If I’m gonna live here, I might as well try to make
some
friends.”
Kieran hasn’t teased me about being skinny once.

He fished a slice of bread from the plastic sleeve and folded it in half. “I’m not sure that’s a great idea. The people in that town aren’t quite right.”

“They said the same thing about us.”

“Hmm.” He dipped his bread in the stew and took a bite. “I’ll need to think about it.”

You took me away from my friend.
She pouted at her stew.
I shouldn’t say that. He didn’t do it to be mean.

Dad swabbed the last of his second bowl away with another piece of bread. The house hung in eerie silence for three minutes, broken only by the scratching of Riley’s spoon. His head popped up. He dropped the bowl and bread with a clatter and ran to the radio in his room.

“Yes, sir. Copy. Go ahead.”

She sat for a moment swirling her spoon through the empty bowl.
Dad should load the dishwasher since I cooked. That’s how it was with Mom.
She thought about Amber, Kieran, and Mom. When it became clear Dad was engrossed, she got up and loaded the dishwasher with a lump in her throat and water in her eyes. He still muttered at his radio unit when she finished packing the extra stew into plastic bins and fridging them. Riley plodded along in a slouch to her room and fell face-first on the bed, hugging the pillow.

This sucks. Why do we have to live so far away from everything?

A little while later, a thought struck her, and she slid off the bed to sit on the floor. She grabbed one of the Xbox controllers and turned it on. The screen lit up, bearing a “No Connection” message. Riley fought with it for a moment, running the Wi-Fi scan three times, but the system detected no active networks. The controller almost went flying across the room, but she figured she’d have to drive at least two states away to buy another one in the ‘land that technology forgot.’ Grumbling, she set it back in the cradle before flopping face down on her bed again to sulk.

Unbelievable… he doesn’t have Wi-Fi. How am I going to hang with Amber?

She sniffled on and off for a while, until a light knock came from her open door.

“Hon?”

“Yeah?” She answered without moving.

“I suppose you won’t believe me about the town unless you see for yourself. If you still want to go tomorrow, I’ll take you.”

She rolled over onto her back and sat up. “Really?”

“Sorry if I am being overprotective. You’re all I got left.”

“Dad…” She scrambled off the bed and ran into a hug.

“Promise me you’ll be careful.”

She looked up at him, almost smiling. “I’ll be okay.”

iley’s eyes opened a little after 9:30 a.m. the next morning. It mystified her how the desert could get so damn cold at night, even in the middle of summer. She lay still after a long stretch, staring at the ceiling and thinking about Kieran. Sixteen wasn’t too bad. He was only two years older, and plenty of Mom’s friends had husbands farther away in age than that. Not that she was waiting for him to propose. Or even interested in him that way. Or… well, whatever.

She got out of bed and dragged herself to the dresser, grabbing clean undies, a beige, pleated babydoll top, and a pair of black cargo shorts. A scrap of camouflage on the rug caught her eye when she closed the drawer, and she traced it to a large backpack tucked against the wall between the dresser and the bed.

“Where the heck did that come from?”

While that could wait, a shower couldn’t. When she emerged from the steamy, soapy bathroom, a cloud of coffee smell greeted her in the hallway.

“Morning, Dad.”

He moaned. Metal clanked.

She walked barefoot to the kitchen, finding her father in a pair of ill-fitting tightey whities, wrestling with an aluminum can. As thin as he was, if he bounced too hard, they’d be on the floor.

“Dad!” She whirled about, looking anywhere but at him. “Go put something on. You are also
not
making SpaghettiOs for breakfast. I’ll deal with it for lunch, but ack… not for breakfast.”

He murmured something and gestured at the coffee pot, rumbling and burbling. She kept her eyes averted and went to gather a frying pan, bread, and eggs.

“Dad. Clothes. Now.”

“Okay, okay.” He took his time covering the ten feet from the kitchen to his bedroom.

The static-laced crackle of his AM radio warbled on about something news-y sounding, dueling with some talking head on his TV. Riley tuned it out, searching back and forth along the counter, in hopes of finding a toaster. She had no luck in the cabinets either. “Dad, where’s the toaster… and the Internet?”

“I don’t have one.” His voice drifted in from the other room. “I haven’t had toast in years, and there’s no Internet here. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re a bit far out for a cable run.”

“They have these things called satellites, you know.” She shook her head, hands on her hips. “How the hell do you work out here? What kind of programmer doesn’t have the damn Internet?”

“Security risk. I take contract jobs and bring the code to T or C on a USB stick. Besides, if I had ‘net, I’d never finish a project… I’d spend all day on Facebook.” He paused. “Maybe I should have… to keep in touch with you.”

Yeah, you shoulda. S’pose you didn’t want to.
“God… you’re living primitive.” She smirked at the frying pan.
How hard could it be to make toast?
They had to do something before electronics.
“Facebook’s for old people. Did they eat toast before they had toasters?”

“I have no idea.” Dad emerged in yesterday’s jeans and unbuttoned, flannel shirt.

She rolled her eyes. “I guess I’m doing laundry too.”

“Hey… I wash my clothes.” He collected a mug and stood by the coffee maker like a dog waiting for the food bowl to go down. “Once a month.”

“Eww,” she droned. “That is changing.”

Dad poured himself coffee and took a heavy gulp. “Ahh. Nectaris deorum.”

She furrowed her eyebrows at him. “Whatever. So, about this Internet thing…”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You haven’t left the house since I’ve been here.” She dropped a piece of bread in a dry frying pan. “You write software, right?”

“The SINCGARS handles data transmission as well as radio. I do everything I need for the military on a secure channel.”

“Oh.” She frowned. Her first attempt to flip the toast threw it on the floor. “Dammit. Hey what about that… uh, Ted guy?”

“Three second rule.” Dad scooped it up and ate it. “Things have been slow there lately. Plus, I don’t really have time for that now.”

“Dad!” She cringed. “That was on the floor! It’s not even toast yet.”

“You were going to throw it out though.” He wandered to the table and sat, munching.

“Toast experiment take two.” She dropped another piece of bread in the pan. “Well, can we maybe get ‘net so I can talk to Amber?”

“Depends on what it costs out here. I’ll think about it.”

She started on scrambled eggs. “You say that a lot.”

“I’m a careful person as a general rule. Two times in my life, I’ve rushed into things with no planning. I regretted one of them, more than anything. The other time was the best thing I’ve ever done.”

Her whisk stopped beating.
First one’s obvious
. “What’s the other time? When you married Mom?”

“When I came back to get you.” He slurped coffee. “You still want to go to town today?”

“Yeah…” She stirred the eggs more than beat them. “So, um… how’d you go from writing bank software to going all double-oh-seven?”

“The NSA and the CIA monitor just about everything that passes through electronic media. I’m not sure what made me light up on their radar. Couple years after I got out here, I get this recruitment email and―”

“You don’t have Internet.” Riley stared at him.

Dad chuckled. “I had an office job in T or C right after I mov―”

“Left us.” Riley slammed a pan on the stove.

Neither spoke while she finished making breakfast. She set plates of food down and joined him at the table. Her attempt at home fries horrified her, but Dad seemed to enjoy them. At least he had pepper that tasted like pepper. An odd audio synchronicity developed between the crackly voice on the little radio in his room and the news commentator on the TV. Whenever the Fox guy shut up, the radio started. Both rambled about ‘Chechens’ and the impact of some border standoff on global markets.
They don’t care people are getting hurt, it’s all about the money.

“I’d rather you didn’t spend time among those people.”

Why did you leave? Why won’t he tell me?
Riley sulked. “It’s still kinda messed up you get picked to be a spy. Sounds like I’m in a shitty movie.”

“I didn’t believe it either. I guess it was the way I went about commenting and structuring my code. You can’t recruit someone with experience for this job. They train that. What they wanted was someone with a certain meticulousness.”