While You Were Gone

by Amy K. Nichols

  “We gotta get to class.” Germ tugs on my sleeve so hard I lose my balance. “See ya, Angela.”

  That’s Angela?

  As Germ pulls me away, I manage to sputter out, “See ya.” In no time she’s flirting with another guy. He mutters, “What’d I tell you? You get all the”—his voice goes high and girlie—“Oh, Danny.” He rolls his eyes. “And I get nothing.”

  Where I live—or used to live, I guess—it’s hot, it never rains and never, ever snows, and some people put green rocks in their yards because it’s too hard to get grass to grow. And Palo Brea, the school I go to—or used to go to—is a bunch of separate buildings that look like airplane hangars connected by sidewalks. To get to your locker, you have to walk halfway across campus. When it’s hot out, that totally sucks, which is why I don’t bother with books. If I go to school at all.

  We don’t have metal detectors. We don’t have security guards. And we definitely don’t have this many people. Geez, it’s like swimming upstream. We elbow our way up the stairs to the third floor and I follow Germ into a classroom. It’s crammed full of desks. The walls are covered in posters of pillars inscribed with red, white and blue text. Germ grabs a seat near the back and pulls a book from his backpack. Civics. Sounds like a real snoozefest. I take the chair next to him and look in Danny’s bag. No book. I almost laugh out loud. Maybe we’re not so different after all.

  A bald man in a polyester suit walks in and goes right to the whiteboard. “Take a seat. We have a lot to cover today.” He uncaps a pen and starts writing: GOVERNMENT. FAMILY. BUSINESS. MEDIA. EDUCATION. RELIGION. ARTS. They’re the same as the labels on the pillar posters. “Hurry,” he says, watching students fill up the desks. “We don’t have all day.” The bell rings, and he motions for a girl to close the door. “Due to Friday’s events,” he says, his right eye twitching, “we’ll be postponing our discussion of the Twenty-Ninth Amendment to cover, again, the essential components of a functional society.”

  The class groans.

  He launches into a lecture about the government and people working together to strengthen the course of…I don’t know. Maybe it’s habit or a kink in my brain, but I immediately tune him out. My eyes stare at the board. He writes his Es with weird extra loops. My eyelids start to slow-blink, so I shift in my seat, trying to stay awake and learn something about this world.

  Then I see her, and suddenly my brain kicks into overdrive.

  Sitting two rows over, she’s scribbling something in a notebook. She has the same long dark hair as the girl at the grocery store. Is it really her? I lean to the left to get a better look, but her hair is in the way. Lean to the right, but I’m blocked by a guy with big shoulders.

  “…because for everyone to live in peace and security,” the teacher says, circling the word RELIGION, “we must adhere to the standards set by our elected leaders.

  “Now, when it comes to the next pillar, we see how proper aesthetics in the arts reinforce the ideal…”

  I scoot my desk for a better view. It scrapes across the floor, making a sound like a sick cat. The teacher looks annoyed, but I don’t care. She turns toward the sound and her hair falls away from her face. I hold my breath, but—

  Not her.

  Not even close.

  Antonio overturns the last box of scraps onto the worktable and spreads out the pieces. Seeing the tattered remains of what used to be my paintings is overwhelming, but I’m determined not to cry. Whenever my throat feels tight and my eyes begin to burn, I ask myself what daring Eevee would do. The truth is, I don’t actually know, but I’m guessing tears wouldn’t be an option. So I take a breath and keep going, even though this feels hopeless. When it gets to be too much again, I sigh and press the heels of my hands into my eyes.

  “Sigh, yes,” he says. “But also work.” Resolved to salvage what we can, he chooses another scrap and turns it like a puzzle piece, seeing if it fits with the one next to it. He grunts. It doesn’t.

  The studio always feels cold, with its cinder block walls and high windows. Even more so today. The smells of linseed oil and turpentine hang in the air. On the table by the door, a small radio pipes out tinny opera arias, his favorite. He hums quietly.

  “I think that part went over here.” I pick up the same piece, brushing some dirt away, and move it over to my side, where the pieces of the lower half of the painting are supposed to be.

  “You think that goes there?” He scowls. “No. That was at the top. Up here.” He pokes a fat finger against the wooden tabletop.

  “I know my own painting.”

  He throws up his hands. “And me? I know nothing?” His Calabrian accent grows thick. “I’m only the teacher. I only learn you everything I know so you can be success, but no”—he walks away, shaking his head—“you know more than the teacher.”

  I push my hair back from my forehead and swallow. The lump in my throat forms again, and I press my hands against the table and breathe until it’s gone. Then I grab another piece of mangled canvas from the pile and smooth it out before picking it up to take a closer look. I can’t tell if the black is paint or soot. A quick rub of my thumb over a section solves the mystery. Soot. The piece falls as I put my face in my hands. “This is impossible.”

  “Work!” Antonio calls from across the room, where he stands at his easel, a paint-smudged apron covering his stomach. “Find your way through.” He dabs crimson on the chipboard and swirls it with his typical flair. Antonio Bosca, the master.

  “Find my way through,” I mutter, turning the damaged piece to place it among the wreckage. “Find my way through.”

  “Yes, compagna. Find your way.”

  He’s using his pet name for me. Maybe I’m back in his good graces.

  I uncrumple the next piece and my heart leaps into my throat. In my hands is a scrap of Confidante, the best painting in my collection. The one I was sure would secure my spot at Belford. I close my eyes and see it whole again in my mind. The long branch adorned in gold leaves and the two birds sitting like shadows, side by side. When I painted it, I worried it was too simple, but Bosca declared my palette-knife technique perfect. The scrap in my hand is of the birds…almost. Half of one is torn away. Maybe the rest of it’s here somewhere in the pile. Maybe I can find all of the pieces and restore it somehow.

  The studio door opens with its familiar squeak and Vivian walks in, chirping a cheery hello. Antonio sets down his brush and greets her with his Continental kiss-kiss.

  “Hello, Eevee.” She strolls over toward the worktable.

  I don’t look up. Can’t. My hands continue to work through the pieces, my mind clinging to a glimpse of hope. I’m afraid if I stop searching, I’ll never get started again.

  “What’s all this? New project?” She stops on the other side of the table. I keep my head down and scrape dirt away from one of the pieces. “Isn’t that…?” She picks up part of my canvas puzzle. I grab it out of her hands and put it back in its place.

  “Sheesh. Sorry.”

  Bosca walks up. Please don’t say anything. I don’t want her to know. “Eve’s paintings were burned in Friday’s fire.”

  Great.

  “Oh my God,” she says, her hand to her mouth. “How awful.”

  I stop and look at her. Is she being sincere?

  “It’s like you can’t catch a break. One bad thing after another.”

  Nope. Still snarky Vivian.

  “Come.” Antonio guides her away from the table. “Let her do her work. You do yours.”

  The light-rail powers down twice on the way home. Just stops dead on the tracks. It makes me think again about the grocery store.

  “I met this girl.” The train stutters forward, shifting everyone on board.

  Germ grins. “Of course you did.”

  “At Abbot’s. She acted like she knew me.”

  “Did she?”

  I shrug.

  “Well, did you get her name?”

  “The power went out.”

&nbs
p; He laughs. “You can’t talk to a girl in the dark?”

  “Shut up. I’m serious. The lights went out, and she was gone.”

  “Maybe she was a ghost.”

  “In a grocery store?”

  “You never know,” he says. “But I wouldn’t sweat it. I’m sure there’ll be another girl along any minute.”

  I shove his head. He pulls his arm back to swing at me, but I point at my bruise. “Don’t, man. You’ll give me brain damage.” He swings anyway. And misses.

  The train powers down a third time. Germ groans. “This sucks.”

  “Better than what they’re going through over at the blast site.”

  “No kidding,” he says, his voice low. “They’re saying everything’s fried. Electricity. Traffic lights. Even cars blitzed out.”

  I want to ask him more about Friday, but don’t dare. Not only could it tip him off that I’m not who he thinks I am, but in this Phoenix you never knows who’s listening.

  When the doors open, we ditch the train, walking along the tracks until we reach a shopping area closer to the harbor. Trees line the street, and a winding sidewalk runs along the front of stores and restaurants. The sun is trying hard to make an appearance, but clouds keep getting in the way. Germ stops outside West Coast Espresso and leans back against a tree, one foot on the trunk. Roots push through cracks in the concrete, making the slabs uneven, like they’re moving on slow-motion waves. Cars stop and go at the traffic light. A couple of workers, one high up in a cherry picker, tinker with the power lines. People sit at tables outside the coffee shop. “We got time,” he says. “Wanna do some digging?”

  “Uh…sure.” Whatever that means.

  “Think we can do it without getting caught?” He looks at the tables. One woman is reading a book. Another sits with her back to us.

  “Probably.”

  “You want the nab?”

  “No, you go ahead.” I have no idea what he’s talking about.

  Germ looks down the street. When there’s a break in traffic, he walks over to a garbage can at the edge of the coffee shop patio and reaches under its lip while pretending to throw something away. He walks back, flashing something in his hand before shoving it into his pocket. He leans against the tree again. “You know, after this Skylar thing goes live, there’ll be no more hiding. Like, at all.”

  My eyes move to the camera mounted on the roof of the coffee shop, pointed toward the intersection. “We’ve already got cameras everywhere, watching us.”

  “Yeah, but they’re saying Skylar will be like Spectrum on steroids.”

  Another puzzle piece falls into place. The cameras are Spectrum.

  “You know what we should do?” He glances over his shoulder. “Before Skylar goes live, we should totally bomb the city.”

  “What?” A chill runs up my neck.

  “You know.” He makes a Duh face and holds his hand out like he’s using a spray can.

  “Oh. I thought you meant…” With my own hands I make an explosion.

  “RD’s got that covered.” He looks past me toward the coffee shop. “We’d have to do something everyone would see.”

  “Commandeer a billboard?”

  “That’d definitely get noticed.”

  I scan the fronts of the buildings, seeing them like blank slates instead of walls. “Eye level would be better.”

  Germ follows to where I’m looking. “We’d totally get caught.”

  “What if we were invisible?”

  He laughs.

  “No, I’m serious.” I nod at the workers up on the power lines. “What if we blended in?”

  Germ grins. “That would be awesome. But”—he shakes his head—“risky, man.”

  Dad’s words come back to me No more taking risks. Keep your head down.

  Germ looks over at the patio again. One of the women is gone. The other still has her back to us. After another quick glance over his shoulder, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a rectangular box smaller than his palm. It has a strip of magnet across the back. He slides open the hatch with his thumb. Inside is a flash drive. He tips it out and holds his hand open for us both to see. “Is that a seven or a nine?”

  A piece of paper with letters and numbers scribbled on it is taped to the back of the drive. “Looks like a nine,” I say. “See the loop?”

  He tucks it into his other front pocket. “So, that means what? Thunderbird and…Fifty-First?”

  “Sounds right.” I have no clue.

  “That’d be the Parkside drop, over by the Canal Bridge. Too bad we don’t have any paint.” He hands me the box. “Your turn.”

  “I don’t have anything to throw away.”

  He makes a face. “Pretend.”

  Right. Because I’m great at that.

  I take a step toward the garbage can and he pulls me back, his eyes wide. A patrol car rolls by. “What are you doing? You’re gonna get us caught.”

  The woman stands up from the table and goes inside the shop. I check to make sure the coast is clear, then stride over to the can and slip the box under the lip. My method isn’t as smooth as Germ’s, but it gets the job done.

  “Come on,” he says. “Let’s unload this thing.” We walk to the next intersection and take a right into a neighborhood. It looks older, with smaller houses and huge trees. This Phoenix is so green it almost hurts my eyes. And not a single cactus in sight.

  “You know who could totally make us invisible?” Germ says. “M.”

  I catch myself from asking, Who?

  We walk another twenty minutes or so down the road before hanging a left. At the third house on the right, Germ stops. I keep an eye out while he reaches into the bushes at the base of the mailbox. He pulls out a second box. Inside is a piece of paper. He swaps it with the drive from the coffee shop, then puts the box back into the bushes. It takes seconds.

  “You know what else Skylar’s gonna do?” Germ asks when we’re farther down the street. “It’s gonna ruin digging. We won’t be able to do this anymore. No more passing along unfiltered information. No more sharing ideas or messages. First it was computers and phones. Then the cameras and street mics. They won’t stop until they know everything we say and do.”

  I kick a rock down the sidewalk. “You sound like my dad.”

  “I know,” he says, kicking the same rock again. “I sound like mine, too.”

  At the intersection we make a right. There’s the park-and-ride and Germ’s waiting car. “Speaking of M…” He pulls the paper out of his pocket and hands it to me. It’s random letters and numbers. I don’t have a clue what it means.

  But I fake it. “Cool.”

  My phone rings as I’m walking to meet Warren at the Archives. It’s Dad. I consider not answering, but the last time I tried to ignore him, security tracked me down in the middle of civics class. So embarrassing. And that was before we were under a terrorism watch.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “How’s my girl? Did the shipment of remains—”

  “ ‘Remains’? Geez, Dad.”

  “Sorry.” He clears his throat. “What I meant was, how are you doing?”

  “As good as can be expected, I guess.” I dodge students on the sidewalk. “Considering I’ve been sorting through the burned and shredded remains of my soul.”

  He sighs. “Anything salvageable?”

  “Of my soul?”

  “Of your paintings.” He’s losing patience with me.

  I scale back the melodrama and tell him the truth. “I found most of the pieces of one and still have a heap of scraps to sift through.” Saying it out loud makes the truth of it sink in even more.

  “Can you put the one back together?”

  “Sure. If I want my entry to look like something out of Frankenstein.” My feet stop in their tracks. An idea takes shape in my mind.

  He’s quiet a moment, then says, “This must be very difficult. Your mother and I, we just want you to know we’re here and supporting you.”

&n
bsp; “Thanks.” I start walking again. I’m going to be so late for our study session.

  “See you on Friday?”

  “What’s Friday?”

  “The Stand Up to Terror event.”

  “Where is—”

  “Richard will send you the details. Listen, I have to take another call. Good luck with the paintings, honey.”

  Even after he’s hung up, I keep walking with the phone to my ear. Guess I’ll see him on Friday.

  The Archives are in an old brick building at the heart of campus. Doric columns rise on either side of the double oak doors. Walking in, I’m greeted with the smells of musty paper and dust. My flip-flops make slapping noises in the entryway, so I tiptoe past a wall of student artwork, toward our meeting place. Warren is already sitting at the table reading, his glasses up on his forehead.

  “You look different without your lab coat.”

  “I’m in disguise.”

  “What are you, a spy?”

  He holds a finger to his lips. “Shhh. I’m casing out the guy behind you.”

  I look. There is no guy behind me.

  He smirks.

  “I’ll go find someone else to study with if you’re not careful.”

  “You’ll fail science.”

  I cross my arms. “And you’ll fail art history.”

  “Touché.” He moves his notebooks so I can set my stuff down.

  We’ve been meeting for a couple of months now, and I still don’t know what to make of him. He’s goofy, arrogant and slightly antisocial. And he wears ankle pants. He’s also super smart and makes me laugh. We’re an oddball pairing. The genius and the artist. Like Einstein and Picasso. We’re also a strangely successful pairing, given that we met through the student message board. Being the governor’s daughter complicates everything—friendships, relationships. I find it best to keep people at arm’s length. But when I saw the ad about swapping science help for art history, it just kind of made sense.

  I take the chair across from him and pull my science notes out of my bag. “You didn’t tell me you were part of the Skylar team.”

  “There are lots of things I don’t tell you.” He leans forward. “So, did you figure it out?”