While You Were Gone

by Amy K. Nichols

  He opens the door and looks, too. Then stands back and lets me in. He’s sporting his ankle pants again, and a serious case of bedhead.

  His room is so clean it makes mine look like a hoarder’s den. And I’m the only one here. Not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t this. “I, uh…What exactly did you invite me here for?”

  He lifts the blinds to peer out the window. “Just a little get-together with friends.”

  So there will be others. “Like, a study session? Or another dance party?”

  He makes a slicing motion across his throat, holds a finger to his lips and points at the ceiling.

  I look up. The ceiling is listening? “You’re kind of starting to freak—”

  Two knocks sound at the door, followed by a pause, followed by a single knock. Warren holds his hands out: See?

  He opens the door and there’s Danny. When he sees me, his jaw drops. So does mine.

  “Funny meeting you here.” He hugs me. Over his shoulder I see his friend Germ. Warren locks the door and punches buttons on a keypad on the wall. A ladder of lasers shoots from one side of the door to the other. Whoa.

  So this isn’t a study session. And it definitely isn’t a dance party either.

  Warren reaches under a cabinet and slides out what looks like a control panel. He presses buttons and there’s a humming sound. It’s so low, though, I don’t hear it so much as feel it raising the hair on my arms.

  “That’s better,” he says. He pushes his goggles up onto his forehead. “Dampening field.” He says it like it’s obvious and not at all weird. “Interferes with recording devices, scrambles imaging. You know.” He pulls a chair out from the desk and holds on to the back with both hands. “Before we can get started, Eevee needs to decide if she’s on board.”

  “For what?” I look at Danny. He gives me a small nod.

  “The team,” Warren says.

  “You guys are a team now? Are we talking baseball or…” My nervous laughter is swallowed up in the dampening field. “You guys are serious.”

  Warren’s eyes stay intent on mine.

  “She’s fine,” Danny says. “Give her a break.”

  “Not until she agrees.”

  Agrees to what? The way the three of them are looking at me, I feel like bolting for the door, but this is Warren we’re talking about. He’s cool, right? And Danny is Danny. Still…“What if I say yes and later change my mind?”

  “You won’t,” Danny says.

  “How do you know?”

  He shrugs. “I just do.”

  My stomach churns with the same helpless feeling I had in the bunker. This is another Moment. Once again I’m standing on the edge and it’s time to decide whether or not I’m going to—

  “Yes.” I inhale sharply. “I’m in.”

  “Excellent!” Warren walks back over to the control panel and presses a button. The lights under the cabinets dim. Flat-screen monitors descend from the shelves. A projected keyboard appears on the desk. The fishbowl glows blue.

  “Wha—?” My hands hang limp at my sides. “What’s all this? Who are you?”

  Warren doesn’t answer, but Germ leans over and whispers, “Mastermind.”

  “Master…?”

  Warren moves across the room with precision. His fingers type on the keyboard, and the monitors flash to life. One shows a map; another runs a display of coordinates. A third has only a blinking cursor, waiting for a command.

  “What does the fishbowl do?” Germ asks.

  “Oh, that’s just because it looks cool.”

  “Hang on,” I say, walking over to look at the monitors. “Isn’t that Skylar?”

  “Ding ding ding,” Warren says, his fingers on the projected keys. “We have a winner.”

  I watch yellow dots roam the grid. “Is it live?”

  “Not yet. They’ve run two successful tests, last Friday and again on Wednesday. A third is scheduled for Monday. Maybe it’ll be dead by then.”

  “Dead? But you helped build it.”

  “Yep.” He taps the desk where the ENTER button shines. “And now I’m going to take it down.”

  Warren is brilliant. Weird. But brilliant.

  By the end of the meeting, we really were a team. Four kids with a harebrained plan to change the world. Or at least shake it up.

  Warren built these computer chips designed to disrupt the security network. We call them M chips. M for Mastermind, since he created them. Or mayhem, because that’s what they’ll cause. Or maybe even mercy, because that’s what we’ll beg for if we get caught.

  He explained how they work. It’s pretty technical and I’m not sure any of us really get it, but it sounds cool. Skylar piggybacks on the Spectrum system, same network and hardware. He created a virus that will worm its way through and leave a path of destruction—if it can travel the system without being detected. That’s where the chips come in. They carry a code that will override any alerts or error messages. It’ll look like smooth sailing on the monitor even as the guts of the whole thing are being chewed up and spit out.

  “Simple,” Warren said, “but elegant.”

  Before we left, he gave us five each, to cover fifteen stations across Phoenix.

  “The tricky part,” he said, “will be planting the chips without getting caught.”

  Germ grinned. “We never get caught.”

  I look over at him now, holding on to the train railing, his face calm. I hope he’s right. If this doesn’t work and Skylar goes live, there’ll be no way to move undetected in the city. And apparently, if Skylar is successful here, they’ll install it nationwide. What would it be like knowing you could be tracked everywhere you went? I can’t even imagine. But it’s not going to happen, because we’re going to get the chips installed and Warren’s virus will kill Skylar dead.

  The doors close and the train lurches forward. Neither of us says anything. Outside, the station slips away and the city slides into view.

  Germ and I decide to combine our tasks—stencils and M chips—and by Sunday afternoon we’ve covered three whole sections of the city: upper downtown, lower downtown and out east near our own stomping grounds. At one point we almost got caught hitting the gas station by the baseball stadium. Even though we were set up—tarp and everything—around the side of the building, this guy got out of his car to ask us directions. Our utility worker costumes must be pretty convincing. He had no clue he was talking to a couple of teenagers, or that there was a ticking time bomb painted on the wall with SKYLAR scrawled in red.

  When we finished stenciling, we stashed away our gear, grabbed the case Warren gave us and headed for the train. My heart was racing when we went through security, but not loud enough to tip them off, because here we are.

  The box looks like a tin of breath mints. You can even open it and eat a few if you want, but the bottom slides off and there’s a place carved out where the chip goes. Like something out of a spy movie.

  I glance over at Germ. He catches my eye and smirks, then his face falls back to completely serious. When we’re painting the stencils, we laugh and goof around. But this? This feels different. Bigger. Scarier.

  The train pulls to a stop and we step off. The sun is just starting to sink behind the tallest high-rises downtown. We get our bearings, finding street names and location markers, trying not to draw attention to ourselves as we move down alleyways and across intersections. At the corner of Butler and Eighth, we stop.

  There it is. The first way station.

  Warren said we might encounter DART employees running diagnostics. Sure enough, there’s a work vehicle parked by the relay station, and a guy is hooking up wires to some gadgetry.

  So we decide to take a lesson from what happened at the gas station.

  Germ pulls his phone out and walks right up to the guy, distracting him by asking for directions. He’s so good at it. The two of them are tangled up in confusion in no time. Meanwhile, I sneak around back and find the control box. It’s smaller than I expect
ed. Even though Warren explained the steps, it takes me a second to figure out how to even open the thing. Finally, the panel slides across, revealing circuitry that looks like a minuscule city map. I don’t know what any of it is, but that doesn’t matter. I measure two fingers down, like Warren said, and count four chips over from the left. Pull the old chip out. Slip the new one in—hopefully fast enough that no alarms go off or blips show up on radar or whatever they do to monitor these things. I slide the cover back in place and slink away, still hearing Germ chatting with the DART guy.

  We meet up at the next corner and walk back to the train in total silence. We board again, no problem, and settle in for the ride home.

  Germ mutters, “I can’t believe I actually offered him a mint.” We stifle a laugh and do the tiniest fist bump. One down, nine to go. Hopefully, they’ll all be that easy.

  The movement of the train lulls me into a kind of trance. I watch downtown sail by and think of Eevee, the sunlight on her face, her hand in mine. “Ever feel like everything is so perfect you don’t even want to breathe because you’re afraid it’ll go away?”

  A smile breaks over Germ’s face. He leans toward me and singsongs, “Danny’s in love.”

  I push him away. “No, I’m not.”

  “Listen to yourself, dude. You weren’t like this with what’s-her-face.”

  “Which one?”

  “Exactly.”

  When I push open my front door—minutes before curfew—I’m met with blaring classical music and the most amazing smell ever. Whatever Mom’s making for dinner, I want it in my stomach now. I’m so hungry I could gnaw off my own arm. I find her and Dad in the kitchen.

  “Oh!” She startles when she sees me. “There you are. Did you boys have a good time?”

  “Yep. What’s for dinner?” I flip on the oven light to see. “And why is the music so loud?”

  “Lasagna.” She doesn’t answer the other question, but Dad goes to the stereo and turns it down enough that we don’t have to yell.

  “Who won the game?” Dad asks.

  “The other guys.”

  “Again?” He pulls glasses from the cabinet. “That’s too bad.”

  The oven timer goes off, and we help Mom move everything to the table. Dad says grace and we dig in, talking about our days and what we did. I have to lie, which makes me feel awful, but I remind myself that it’s all for the good, and that takes away some of my guilt. Then I realize there’s something I can talk to them about. Something real.

  “Hey, Dad. Do you have a suit I can borrow?”

  He looks at me like I have two heads. “A suit? What for?”

  “I, uh…I got invited to a dance.”

  Mom’s face lights up. “By who? Is it Tricia?”

  “No.” Tricia? Sheesh, Danny. How many girls are there? I shake my head. “Not Tricia. It’s another girl. Her name is Eevee.”

  “Is it a school dance?” Dad asks.

  “Um, it’s a bigger deal than that, actually. It’s the, uh…Governor’s Gala?” I shrug. “Not really sure what that is.”

  Dad lowers his fork. “What?”

  “Yeah, I met this girl at a—” I realize I can’t tell them about the castle, but then I remember what Eevee said about the first time she and Danny met. “A museum exhibit. About a month ago. Remember?”

  “Oh,” Mom says, “when they lifted curfew?”

  “Yeah.” I try to read Dad’s face while I talk. He doesn’t look happy. “Uh, so I met her there, and she’s an artist, and also the governor’s daughter, and she—”

  They both say, “What?” at the same time.

  “I’m sorry, son,” Dad says, “but I really don’t think this is a good idea. That’s not somewhere you belong.”

  I look at Mom. She opens her mouth, then closes it again and looks at Dad.

  Are they kidding? For the last two days, I’ve been spray-painting antigovernment propaganda and conspiring to crash the city’s surveillance system, and I’m not allowed to go to a dance?

  “The thing is,” I say, looking back and forth between them, “I like this girl. I mean, really like her. And she likes me, too. And that doesn’t happen…you know…all the time. So, I don’t care about politics or government or any of that. She asked me on a date and I want to go. Do you have a suit I can wear, or should I find one somewhere else?”

  Dad puts his elbows on the table and rests his mouth against his folded hands. His eyes are stern. He’s thinking hard. Finally, he shakes his head. “Fine.” He sets his napkin on the table and pushes out his chair. “Just don’t tell them anything about us,” he says. “About our family, our friends. Nothing. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He looks at his watch and runs a hand through his hair. “I need to go.”

  “Go?” Mom asks, surprised. “Where?”

  “Meeting.”

  “But what about curfew?”

  “I know.” Dad’s voice is sharp. “But there’s something I need to do.” He sighs. “Sorry. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Be careful.”

  “I will.” He kisses her on the top of her head, touches me on the shoulder and leaves.

  Monday morning, I can’t sit still. I don’t know if I should be excited, scared or both. Danny didn’t say what he had planned, just that I should be ready for a surprise. Between that, my new position on Team Mastermind and Bosca’s idea for me to fast-track paintings for the jury, I’m a mess.

  And if I’m being completely honest with myself, I’m not all that sure the effort spent trying to impress the jury is even worth it. Do I really care about their approval? Do I still want to leave? My feelings aren’t as black-and-white as they were. They’ve gone a sort of neutral gray.

  I dip my brush in vibrant green and dab it onto the canvas, adding depth to a grassy lawn, not unlike the one here at school where I had a picnic with a particular boy. Then I slick a smaller brush through thinned-out dark green and pull the shadows through. When I’m satisfied the range of colors matches the picture in my mind, I load a medium brush with ocher to paint a leaf. This one isn’t a cottonwood, though. It’s a maple, because maple leaves are a symbol of love. How I know that, I have no idea, but now there is a maple leaf lying on the grass in my painting.

  I step back and look at what I’ve created.

  It’s not bad. I’m not sure it’s something worth showing to a jury, but I don’t really care. I like it. It makes me happy.

  “You are smiling.” Antonio leaves his work to see what I’m up to. “That makes me smile.”

  Standing beside me, he looks at the painting, grunts and rubs his hand over his face. I can hear the scruff of his stubble. “Something here.” He points to the lower half of the painting. “For balance.” Then he grunts again and says, “Yes. This is good. More of this.” With a final nod, he walks to his own easel. I step back from my painting to try to see it better. He’s right, of course. Something is missing. I load a fresh brush with muted green and close my eyes, seeing it in my mind before saying it in paint.

  Our footprints in the grass.

  With the smaller brush I add in dimension, shadow, depth. Then I step back and, in my best—and quietest—Antonio impression, say, “Yes. This is good.”

  My phone rings and my palette drops to the floor with a crash. Antonio curses in Italian. I fumble for the phone and barely get it to my ear in time.

  “Hello?” I wipe my hands on a rag, keeping the phone pinned between my ear and shoulder.

  “Ready for an adventure?”

  A million butterflies launch inside my rib cage. “Yes.”

  “At the corner of Sutton and Grand is a brick building. On the side is a box. Inside the box are your instructions.”

  “For what?”

  I can hear the smile in his voice. “See you soon.”

  He hangs up, leaving me with my brain spinning. Sutton and Grand?

  “Everything is okay?” Antonio asks.

  “Yeah.”
I wipe the paint off my phone. “It’s fine.”

  How am I going to get there? Call Jonas? I don’t know what Danny has planned. Maybe Jonas isn’t the best option. A taxi?

  The light-rail.

  You don’t seem like the kind of girl who scares easy.

  I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I’m going to actually take the train.

  With trembling hands, I clean up my mess, put the finished painting in a cubby to dry and set off on an adventure.

  It’s rush hour and the platform is full of people. Some are dressed in suits. Others look like they slept on the streets last night. Posters trumpeting the ease of the new Skylar registration plaster the station walls. After passing through security, I weave through the crowd, trying to take up as little space as possible as I look for the ticket kiosk.

  I have no idea what I’m doing. I should just give up and call Jonas.

  “Do you need help?”

  I turn toward the voice. A woman in a pantsuit with braided hair smiles at me. Her face is kind. “How do I get a ticket?”

  “Come on.” She walks with me over to the kiosk, which is only a few more feet down the platform, and helps me buy a fare card.

  “Where are you going?” she asks as a train pulls up to the platform.

  “Sutton and Grand.”

  She finds the nearest stop on the map. “You’re going to want the green line. This one is blue. See it on the train? Green will come along soon. You want the seventh stop, okay? Lucky seven.”

  “Lucky seven.” I smile. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” She boards the blue train and it’s just me making myself small again.

  Finally, a green-striped train arrives at the station and I shuffle on board with everyone else. It’s already crowded when we get on, and I have to ride standing, holding on to a pole. This isn’t what I expected at all. I thought it would feel like a regular train. Comfortable seats and refreshment carts. Instead, people I don’t know who live lives very different from mine surround me. They all seem at ease, but I feel strange. Out of place. The doors close and everyone sways as the train moves forward. The man next to me wears spicy cologne. A little kid squawks at the other end of the car. A small black dome watches us from the ceiling. The city whooshes by, and my fingers grip the pole tightly as I count the stops.