The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with Her Mind (The Frost Files)

by Jackson Ford

  “But we can do it?” Annie replies. “Right?”

  Paul shrugs. “I mean, sure, in theory, there’re a bunch of ways to—”

  At that instant both he and Annie look in my direction. Paul stops dead. It catches me off guard, and for a second the question of what they were talking about dances across my tongue.

  You know what? I don’t care. Whatever it is, it’s between them, and I am way too tired right now.

  “Night, folks,” I say, squeezing past them.

  Annie says nothing, but Paul gives me a tight nod. “Yeah, Teagan, see ya,” Paul replies. His tone is frosty but still polite.

  I’ll give him this: he’s annoying and anal-retentive, but he’s a professional. He might have been angry with me, but now that the debriefing is over, he’s keeping it to himself. He’s a former navy quartermaster, and unlike Annie and Reggie he loves talking about his past. Blue-collar upbringing in Ohio, high-school football champion, his time in the navy.

  Of course he usually skips over the parts from after that. For someone obsessed with details and logistics, Paul was an absolutely terrible businessman. He tried everything, from selling web ads to flipping houses, even tried to market an app where you tapped on the screen to make virtual grass grow faster.

  He’s got not one but two failed marriages, and child support to pay. And say what you like about Paul, he’s a pretty good dad—or at least I assume so, given how often he talks about his son. But he is drowning in debt, and China Shop is a decent, secure, guaranteed income. He is forty-four, balding, with a swelling beer gut and just about zero chance of finding an alternative career.

  And I’ll say this: Tanner knows how to pick people. It would be easy to surround me with a group of special forces operatives—career soldiers with beards and ugly tattoos, who could run a tight ship and make sure that nothing went wrong, ever. The reason we have our current motley crew is that we all have a lot to lose. If China Shop ever disbanded, through a job failing or us getting caught or me revealing my powers, we would all be screwed in a number of interesting ways.

  Carlos would almost certainly be deported, right back to the hands of the Zetas in Tecomán. Annie would never be able to hold a decent job again—not with her record. Paul would go bankrupt, and there’s a very good chance that he’d never see his son again—not after a few missed child support payments. Reggie might be OK… but it’s Tanner who paid for her Rig. Her life would get a lot harder if she wasn’t with us.

  And then there’s me.

  Here’s what happens if I fuck up, or if Tanner decides I’m not worth the trouble. I don’t get deported, or get a visit from the cops. No, I get a visit from some nice men with black ski masks, who whisk me off to a faceless building in North Dakota or Virginia or Missouri and give me to the security-cleared scientists who are desperate to cut me open and figure out how my parents made me. I work for Tanner as her own private psychokinetic operative (sounds cooler than it is, believe me), and she keeps those assholes off my back.

  I step past Paul and Annie, out into the garage. Carlos has the van’s hood open, tinkering with something inside. He doesn’t realise I’m there until I slap him on the ass. “Night, sweetie.”

  “Mierda,” he mumbles, almost bumping his head on the raised hood. “Aight. Later, bitch.”

  It sounds forced. Said on reflex. He must be tired too.

  As I move along the side of the van, he straightens up. “Walk you to your car?”

  I don’t particularly want to people right now—even with Carlos. But there’s something in his eyes, an unsettled look.

  “Everything OK?” I ask.

  “Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I could just do with a walk, is all.”

  The alley is quiet, baking hot, with just the faintest rumble of traffic. There’s almost no light save for the faint glow from the lights on the main drag. The smoke isn’t as bad in this part of town. I take a deep breath, savouring the scent of the air: a little smoke, a lot of ocean, the faintest hint of jasmine and surf wax. Someone, somewhere, is getting high.

  Carlos and I walk in silence for a few moments. My Jeep is parked at the far end of Brooks Court, right after it spills out onto Main—technically, we’re not supposed to park in the alley, and I have more than one ticket to prove it.

  “Long night, huh,” Carlos says, as we turn the corner. I’m already digging in my bag for my keys.

  “What? Oh, um, yeah.” I’m barely paying attention, already thinking about whether there’ll be traffic on the 405 at this time of night, and whether I should get bulgogi, or splurge and go for some fried chicken.

  “That was some pretty crazy shit back there.” He pulls a cigarette from a pack. “You mind?”

  I shake my head absently. He knows better than to offer me one, of course—I don’t smoke, don’t want anything that hot anywhere near me. But I don’t mind if others do it.

  My Jeep, a rusty black ’06 Wrangler, is a short distance away. Its name, in case you were wondering, is the Batmobile. I bought it with my first cheque from Tanner’s Los Angeles Bureau of Insane Shit. The Batmobile is the bomb. It’s crusty and messy and has an engine that Carlos regards as a personal challenge, and I love it to pieces.

  “Well,” I say. “This is me. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He nods, not looking at me. He’s lost in thought, eyes somewhere in the distance. I wait for him to respond, and when he doesn’t, my heart sinks a little. Something’s wrong, and he’s not going to tell me what it is.

  And no, before you point out the obvious, it’s not what happened with Annie. Carlos would never give me shit about something I got into shit for already—not seriously, anyway.

  “OK. What’s up?” I say.

  “Huh?” He jerks himself out of his thoughts. “Oh. Nothing. Have a good night, Teags.”

  He turns to go. I nearly let him too, even though it’s not like him to be this straight up. Every atom in my body just wants food and bed, and really doesn’t feel like dealing with someone else’s problems right now. Except Carlos isn’t just someone else, and I’m not going to leave whatever this is bottled up inside him. Friends don’t do that to each other.

  I drop my bag next to the Jeep’s front tyre. There’s a low concrete wall running along the sidewalk opposite my car. “Sit.”

  “I…”

  I point to the wall. “Carlos Jesús López Morales,” I say. “Sit your ass down.”

  He sits his ass down. I plop myself next to him. It’s probably not a smart move, since getting up again is going to take some willpower, but fuck it.

  I nudge him. “You can talk to me, cabrón. You know that right?”

  “You really shouldn’t say that. In Mexico that’d get you knocked out, you say it to the wrong person.”

  “Then why’d you teach it to me?”

  He says nothing. Which is really odd. I practically served it to him on a silver platter.

  “Dude, come on. Talk to me.”

  “I’m just…” He scratches his head. “Just missing home, that’s all.”

  “Home? Like Mexico?”

  “Yeah. Kind of.”

  “I don’t get it. Don’t you have, like, a price on your head there? Plus, the way you talk about Tecomán…”

  “I know, but—”

  “And the whole gay marriage thing… I mean, no offence, Carlos, but you haven’t exactly made it sound like a barrel of…”

  I stop when I see the set of his shoulders.

  “I just… I don’t know, man.” Again, the hand scratching the head, running across his buzz cut. “I was just waiting for you guys tonight, in the van, and I was just thinking about it. We used to go down to this beach when I was little—Playa Cuyatlan. Not the most beautiful beach in the world or anything, but it was all right, you know? And I just…” He lets out a sigh, long and slow. His eyes have gone back to the middle distance. “You ever just get bored?”

  “You’re running around doing secret-agent shit, and you’re bored?”
I don’t mean it to sound as dumb as it comes out. Maybe it’s just because the question cuts a little too close to the bone. It’s not that I’m bored—my life is way too weird for that. But what happens if that changes? What if I want to get out? Or if I get older, and can’t do what I do now? Somehow, I don’t see Tanner giving me a gold watch and wishing me well.

  I can’t change jobs or leave town, and so far I’ve done a pretty good job of ignoring these problems. Carlos’s question makes that impossible.

  “Maybe bored is the wrong word,” he says. “It’s just like… I didn’t wanna be working on cars for the rest of my life, you know?”

  “Thought you liked cars.”

  “I do. But…”

  He trails off. I’m about to prompt him when his eyes light up. “Hey—you wanna get out of here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Take a road trip.” He hops off the wall, spreads his arms. “Fuck it, let’s get out of LA for a while. I was reading about this amazing place, up by Point Reyes, these really cool cabins. We stay there, we check out the area, we go try the bars or whatever. Just hang out.”

  “Carlos…”

  “No, for real.” He points in the direction of the China Shop offices. “Vámonos. In fact, fuck it, I’m sick of this shit. Let’s just go tomorrow. We go back in there, tell Reggie we need some time off. We can head up there in the morning. Just hang out, drink some beer. Laugh at the other tourists.”

  “That’s not…” I take a deep breath. Carlos is being genuine here—I love hanging out with him, and he’d be amazing to road trip with. But that’s not why I’m hesitant. “I think it’s a good idea,” I tell him.

  “Great! Let’s—”

  “But not tomorrow, OK?” Just taking off, as tempting as it is, would not exactly earn me brownie points with Reggie and Annie. Or Tanner. As much as I’m not known for my forward planning, these are not people I can afford to piss off more than I have already. “Let’s talk to the guys properly. Let’s make sure they know why we want to take time off. Maybe we can convince the whole office to take a break—like, all of us, going to Tanner and just saying we need a vacation.”

  “But—”

  I push myself off the wall, tilt my chin up to look him in the eye. “I know you’re feeling it, dude. I get it too. And I do think it’s a cool idea. But I need sleep, and I don’t want to spend the night worrying about whether or not Reggie’s nuclear explosion is gonna take out the whole of LA, or just Venice.”

  A smile flickers across his face. And in that instant I want to say, Fuck it. Take what I just told him and throw it in the trash. The idea of spending the weekend getting drunk in Point Reyes is almost too good to turn down.

  I make the thoughts stop by gripping his hand tight. “We’ll do it, man, for sure. Let’s just do it right.”

  He won’t meet my eyes. “I don’t know if that’s gonna happen, though. You know what the guys’ll say. They won’t let us.”

  I stand on tiptoes and give him a peck on the cheek. “Yeah, they fucking will.”

  Someone on a motorcycle shoots past, the sound way too loud, dopplering into the night. The tiredness comes rushing back, settling on me like a blanket.

  “I gotta go,” I tell Carlos. “Hasta luego, cabrón.”

  He forces a smile onto his face. “Sí. Hasta luego.”

  But as he turns away, the worry comes back. The uncertainty. The feeling that I’ve just let an opportunity go, and I might never be able to get it back.

  NINE

  Teagan

  There’s traffic on Slauson, because this is LA, and not even the fact that it’s nearly 1 a.m. can change that. The Batmobile moves at a crawl, inching along behind a rumbling train of Priuses and Civics.

  Maybe it’s a good thing I’m not driving at sixty right now. I didn’t get formal driving lessons until after I arrived in LA. Before that, it was just Dad’s truck in our backyard, which meant I could drive, but knew dick-all about traffic signals and road laws. Driving takes concentration, and right now I can barely keep my eyes open. My stomach is not happy with me, and neither are my lungs. Even this far south, the smoke from the fires in the north worms its way down my throat, turning it scratchy.

  Normally, I like to blast music while I’m driving—the Batmobile’s speakers are ancient, but it’s got decent volume. No Bluetooth or even a CD player—just a radio. Right now it’s tuned to Power 106, which is playing a bunch of old-school rap. Volume down low. Every so often a bunch of ads will play: car commercials, shady loan offers, ads for Universal Studios. The kind where they squash the terms and conditions into about three seconds of voiceover at the end of the AD, making it sound like the guy reading it snorted an entire bag of coke right before he got in the booth. I let it wash over me, comfy as a security blanket.

  I love Los Angeles.

  Even now, when I’m exhausted and cranky. A lot of people hate it—even those who live here. Too smoggy, too expensive, too full of actors and writers and shitty movie people. They hate the fact that it hardly ever rains or gets cold, which is insane to me. But I fell in love with the place from the day I got here. I love the huge sky, the constant hum of traffic, the restaurants and bars it feels like only you know about. I even love the history, although there’s no way I’d let Annie know that. I love how nobody here gives the tiniest shit where you come from.

  And I fucking adore the music. I’ll admit: there are a lot of gaps in my knowledge. Most of what I got growing up was what my parents listened to, and most of that was what happened to be on the radio. Country, bluegrass, 80s pop. Nothing that held my attention for more than a minute or two. But I knew what hip-hop was, and after I came to LA I got a huge dose of it, right into the mainline. It was everywhere, and hearing it was like having a light come on in a dark room.

  At the same time I’m not here by choice. I’m here because of Tanner and the deal she offered me. What does that make LA? A prison? Is it still a prison if you never want to leave?

  I don’t know. I don’t have any answers, and I’m too tired and hungry to think of any.

  On the radio a commercial ends—car loans, cable rental, I don’t know—and there’s a split-second of silence before the station ident plays. It goes on for a little too long, as if the DJ was caught napping.

  The traffic doesn’t let up as I dogleg south, heading for the late-night Thai spot. At the point where Fairview meets La Tijera there’s a house party going on, a bungalow blaring bass, dozens of people spilled out onto the sidewalk, swigging from red plastic cups. My gaze drifts to the other side of the street, where there’s a vacant lot bordered by a chain-link fence and overgrown with weeds. The fence is decorated with several ancient curling notices, cable-tied to the links.

  Is that a good spot? Maybe… if I did it right…

  It’s not a good spot. It’s a crappy piece of land in a not-too-awesome neighbourhood that would probably drain what little savings I had. All the same, I can’t help but see it there. See the building, the tables and chairs through the slightly frosted windows, the big wooden door with the discreet metal plaque.

  My restaurant.

  Before I know what I’m doing, I’ve popped the glove box and pulled out my little spiral notebook. I don’t have the energy to actually add anything more than the location details tonight, but it’s filled with notes on ingredients, scrawled ideas for specials, hastily scribbled phone numbers and website addresses for equipment auctions. The sketches I’ve done of the interior, wildly out of any possible budget I’d ever have, with a huge zinc bar and reclaimed wooden tables, a pinpoint-precise kitchen layout.

  I haven’t settled on a concept yet, but I will. Right now the front-runners are Italian or a classic steakhouse. I’ve toyed with the idea of Vietnamese, dreaming of the pho and bahn mi I’d cook, but I know I’d never do it better than the little mom-and-pop spots I’ve visited in countless strip malls across the city. It doesn’t actually matter: I am still going to find a way to work in
my own restaurant kitchen. Fuck knows how. I haven’t really got to that part yet. It hasn’t stopped me saving, squirrelling money away in the hope that one day…

  Tanner will never let you.

  There’s a break in the traffic, and I take it, the Batmobile’s engine grumbling as it takes me down 64th.

  LA doesn’t do late-night eating. Unless, that is, you know where to look. I do. I barely register ordering the takeout, which is fine, because they barely register me. I’ve been coming there for a whole year, and I don’t think the girl behind the counter has said more than three words to me. Not that I care right now. In minutes, I have steaming bag of plastic containers stuffed with pad thai and a side order of mango salad, the gem-like segments slick with juice. Most of it is gone before I leave the parking lot.

  Twenty minutes later I’m in Leimert Park. Home.

  Roxton Avenue is deserted as I pull the Jeep to the kerb. As the thump of the Batmobile’s door echoes into the night, I stand for a second, my legs a little unsteady. The street lamps turn the gnarled jacaranda trees into fractal shadows on the pitted tarmac, and the Spanish-style bungalows with their tiled roofs are dark and silent. Somewhere, very distant, a dog barks, just audible over the hushed traffic.

  There’s another sound too—the clinking of bottles. I look down towards the end of the block to see Harry pushing his bulging shopping cart. His belongings are wrapped in black plastic bags, hanging off the side of the cart like pontoons.

  Anand, my landlord, pointed him out after I moved here. Said he wasn’t quite right in the head—that he went out of his way to avoid people even as he walked the streets and never asked anybody for food or change. I don’t even know if his name is actually Harry, or if that’s just what Anand decided to call him.

  A lot of the neighbours don’t like him because they’re assholes. But he waters the jacarandas, and doesn’t make too much noise, and picks up any litter he sees. He comes and goes at odd hours, a gaunt figure with a huge scraggly black beard over a surprisingly pale face that could be thirty or fifty, his blue raincoat a common site on the street.