The Karma Beat

by Juli Alexander

  “Morning, Mom.” I couldn’t think up a good reason for being up early, so I chose distraction. “That your second cup?” I asked, motioning to the coffee.

  “Yes,” Mom said with a smile. “I’m afraid it’s going to be a three-cup morning. I have meetings all day.”

  “U.N.I.V.E.R.S.E. or cell phone?” I asked. Mom worked for the U.N.I.V.E.R.S.E., but she was also a vice president in the cover corporation, a cell phone company.

  “Both.” Mom sighed. “The Directorate wants to change my position at Genie Communications so that I’m just a VP with an office and no real duties. Then I could focus on the work for the U.N.I.V.E.R.S.E. But I don’t want to. I enjoy the cell business, and besides, I like having a job I can fess up to. I don’t want my friends to think that I’m paid to do nothing.”

  The U.N.I.V.E.R.S.E. had decided to start a cell phone company as a cover in the early nineties. Unfortunately, the company had been a huge success. They’d intended to have primarily genie clients. The flat monthly rate for unlimited local calls had caught on. Everyone I knew had a Genie phone. Now they were the most successful cell phone company in the Southeast. Mom basically worked two demanding jobs.

  We had free cell service and lots of goodies. My friends loved the free merchandise Mom brought home. Pink pens, pink lava lamps, and lots of mirrors shaped like genie bottles. Their logo was a genie rising from a pink, bejeweled bottle with the words, “Who needs three wishes when you have unlimited local minutes?”

  “What are the U.N.I.V.E.R.S.E. meetings about?” I asked casually as I poured some cereal.

  “Jen, you know I can’t tell you that.” She continued to flip through the large binder, so I figured she wasn’t onto me yet.

  “Mom, I was wondering. How many people know everything I do? I mean if I go to grant three wishes, you know about it, but who else? Does everybody who works with you have that information?”

  Mom looked up from her work. “I’m not sure what you’re worried about. I can tell you that your assigned monitor, the Directorate, and their senior staff can access the information.”

  That was a lot more people than I realized, and it wouldn’t make Leo’s search very easy.

  She tucked a strand of her fiery red hair behind her ear. “You’re not reading 1984 in school are you? I know your father rants and raves, but the U.N.I.V.E.R.S.E. really isn’t that kind of big brother.”

  “Um, yeah, I know.” I took a big bite of my cereal. I didn’t even know who my monitor was, much less Leo’s father’s. I knew who was on the Directorate, but I didn’t know where they were or what they looked like. The senior staffers probably numbered more than fifty, but I could maybe find their names.

  “How are you liking the Genie5000?” Mom asked.

  My new cell phone was the latest and greatest, a phone engineered solely for Genie Communications. “I love it. I like the new purple.” I’d passed my old one on to Alex.

  “I prefer the nostalgic pink myself.”

  They’d chosen pink twenty years ago because they thought it would limit their customer base. I guess their market share proved them wrong.

  They’d gotten tired of seeing men walking around with the pink phones. In Atlanta, the Genie phone was a sure-tell sign of how cheap a man was. Most of the realtors and businessmen in town had used the phone despite the color. A few had done some scary things with magic markers. Then a competitor capitalized on the situation by selling skins in a variety of colors. Suddenly men were back to carrying silver or black, and Genie Communications decided to give in and manufacture additional colors. They still pushed the pink though. I’d grown up with pink phones.

  “Tell Alex I can get her a skin for the phone if she gets tired of the pink,” Mom said as I finished off my cereal.

  “I’ll try,” I mumbled, but Mom didn’t notice. I hadn’t found time to mention my problem with my best friend. If Alex didn’t forgive me by dinner, I’d ask my mother for advice.

  Thirty minutes later, Ian pulled the Toyota into a space in the Bearden High lot between a Mercedes and an Audi convertible. Our school was situated squarely in Dunwoody, an upper middle class suburb of Atlanta. Even the apartment dwellers among us had parents who could pay well over fifteen hundred dollars a month on rent.

  When you lived in a school district like this, there was no need for private school. BHS provided every possible academic and extracurricular opportunity.

  Ian pulled the parking brake and grabbed his backpack. “Nice talking to you,” he said.

  I had refused to speak to him all morning. I suspected he preferred it that way, but it was a matter of principle, and I refused to relent. My brothers were the bane of my existence. I slammed the car door as my parting shot.

  If I were an only child, my life would have been perfect. Maybe I’d have Alex’s confidence. Of course, no one ever outed Alex for passing gas.

  Since Alex and I shared a locker, I was pretty sure I could run her down this morning. She still hadn’t called me. I wasn’t so sure she was going to forgive me. Last night’s basketball game had been the last of the season. Unless they made the district playoffs, and from what I’d heard, the chances were slim.

  When I got to our locker, I realized she’d already come and gone. This was really bad. The last time she’d been that mad at me was in seventh grade when her parents were getting a divorce. I’d tried to cheer her up by saying at least they’d both be buying her good presents from now on. She said my comment about them buying her affections was selfish and unfeeling. She was right, of course.

  The fact that she’d gotten there early just to avoid me wasn’t good. Now, I knew I was in serious trouble.

  After trig, I headed back to my locker as fast as I could. I had to shove a couple of people out of my way to make it, but my hardcore hall tactics paid off. Alex, dressed in one of her funky chick outfits, with pink and black polka dotted top, black jeans, and black chucks, still had her head in the locker searching for a book.

  “Hey, Alex,” I said.

  The silent treatment I’d given my brother this morning didn’t feel so hot from this side.

  “So you won’t believe what Sean did to me.” I watched as she loaded her backpack, still ignoring me. “He totally sent…”

  “Hi,” a deep voice came from over my shoulder. “Jen, isn’t it?”

  I turned to find Leo standing in the hall near my locker, and I almost dropped my books. What was he doing here? He didn’t look like a high school student. With his five o’clock shadow and muscular form, he couldn’t begin to fit in among the peach fuzz mustaches and boyish cheeks of most of the guys in the school.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked before thinking better of it. I didn’t want him to say anything that Alex shouldn’t hear, and she’d definitely be listening.

  He gave me a “duh” look. “I go to school here,” he said, as if I were not the brightest.

  No way! I glanced around to see if the School Resource Officer was going to bust him for trespassing.

  “I just wanted to touch base about what we talked about yesterday…”

  “Yesterday,” Alex asked, finally turning to me. “You went out with this guy instead of coming to my game?”

  “No!” I couldn’t believe Leo was making this worse. “I didn’t miss your game for a date. I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Right.” Alex’s voice held disgust.

  “I just wanted to thank you for helping rescue my grandmother’s cat yesterday,” Leo said.

  Cat?

  I just stared at Leo and he raised his brow meaningfully. “She was so upset about it climbing that tree, and you really came through.”

  He was trying to help. If only he hadn’t knocked me off kilter, maybe I could actually find a response.

  Leo turned his baby blues on Alex. “My grandmother lives down the street from Jen. It took me an hour to get there after Nana called, but Jen kept her calm. It was great of her.”

  Alex wasn’t immune to L
eo’s looks or charm. “When you went home to get Sean? Why didn’t you tell me?” She turned to Leo. “How awful for your grandmother. Is the cat okay?”

  “They’re both fine. I’m Leo, by the way.”

  “Alex,” my friend said with a flirty grin.

  With a twinge of jealousy, I realized that his dark coloring complimented hers perfectly.

  “I think you’re in my history class.” Alex slammed the locker shut.

  “Then I’ll see you there,” Leo said smoothly. He turned to me and said, “Tell your brother you have a ride home. I’ll meet you in the senior lot.”

  He waved to Alex and walked off down the hall.

  “Oh my God!” my usually stoic friend said. “You didn’t tell me you knew him.”

  “I met him yesterday. Since when does he go to our school?”

  Alex rolled her eyes. “Haven’t you heard the girls talking about him? He transferred after Christmas break. The word is that he blew off Mindy Simmons on the first day. She went up to talk to him, and he totally ignored her. She deserved it of course.”

  Now I remembered something about a hot transfer student. At our school, midterm transfers were usually delinquents kicked out of private school. I hadn’t paid any attention. With honors classes, my music, and my genie gig, I had a lot on my plate. I studied my friend who was still staring in the direction Leo had gone. “So we’re good?”

  She turned to me and gave me her guilty smile. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I should have known it was something crazy.”

  It was crazy all right.

  “So he’s giving you a ride after school?” She didn’t bother to hide her interest, and I was pretty sure she was only seconds away from singing Jen and Leo sitting in a tree.

  I didn’t want her too interested in what I was doing with Leo. “He snagged the drummer spot in Ian’s band. So he’s headed that way anyway.”

  “No. Way.” With the appropriate outrage, she cocked her head and said, “Ian did not screw you over again.”

  “Uh. Yeah. Pretty much,” I admitted.

  Alex put her arm around my shoulder. “We’ll just see about that.”

  “I’ll tell you what my other idiot brother did to me at lunch.”

  Halfway down the hall, Leo turned and gave me a thumbs up.

  That’s when it hit me. Leo rode a motorcycle, and he was giving me a ride home. Me…on a motorcycle.

  The Oversight Committee wouldn’t get the chance to banish me to the other realm because my mother was so going to kill me.

  Chapter Four

  “I definitely think you should do the tidy whities thing,” Alex said between bites of her burger.

  “Sean does deserve it.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I mean to Ian.”

  I choked on my potato. “Ewww. There is no way I’m touching Ian’s underwear. Sean hasn’t hit puberty, but Ian…” I pushed my food aside as I thought of all the times he’d locked himself in his bedroom. And the magazines I’d seen him stashing under his mattress. “Do you have any idea all the gross stuff happening in the underwear of a high school senior?”

  Alex burst out laughing. “No. And neither do you.”

  “I know enough to stay far away. I’ve read Then Again Maybe I Won’t.” I shook my head to clear the unwanted images. “Besides, you’re starting to make me think you’re interested in Ian’s underpants.” I could totally see her handling his tidy whities.

  With a laugh, Alex said, “Your brother is hot. He’s only gross to you because he’s your brother.”

  “He’s a disgusting freak. How can you like him when he just screwed me over with the Armpit Hostages?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like him. I just said he’s hot for a high school boy. And he is. Brad Pitt is hot, but I don’t like him as a person either.”

  “I can’t believe my brother is your eye candy.”

  “Speaking of eye candy,” Alex said with a pointed look across the cafeteria and then back at me. “Leo’s sitting with the band.”

  I couldn’t meet Alex’s eyes because she would know I was hiding something from her. I was hiding a lot from her. I’m a genie. He’s a genie. Contact is forbidden. Oh, and he wants me to use my mother to help his father. Way too much going on here.

  “Jen,” she said in a teasing voice. “What’s the deal with you and Leo?”

  “Nothing,” I said, trying to sound convincing. “I just met him yesterday.” That much was true. I was glad Maggie was sitting outside with her boyfriend, and Brianna was absent. Kelsey and her boyfriend had disappeared too. I didn’t want all my friends knowing my business.

  “And you haven’t noticed that he’s yummy?”

  I was going to have to let something slip. And since I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks in a full-fledged blush, I figured I may as well fess up to the one part I could share. “I maybe noticed that he’s not so bad looking.”

  With a snort, Alex said, “I thought so.”

  “Alex, you know not to tease me!”

  “Oh, right. It makes you nervous and you won’t be able to talk to him at all.” She raised a brow. “You managed well enough yesterday.”

  Right. Another lie. “You know I come through in emergencies. The cat and the frail old woman were in trouble.” Was the fictional Nana frail? I hoped so. I hated lies. They got way too complicated. “Tell me about the game I missed, Alex,” I said, changing the subject. “I heard you scored fourteen points.”

  “Fifteen,” Alex corrected, taking the bait. She hated when her stats were misquoted.

  Alex tends to be pretty laid back, except when she’s playing b-ball. On the court, she’s all intense and quite frankly a little scary. I’d stopped playing one-on-one with her years ago, and I credited that decision with saving our friendship. Five minutes in the driveway with Alex guaranteed a skinned knee and a couple of bruises. Thanks, but no thanks.

  Right before sixth period, I texted Ian that something had come up. “Don’t wait for me.”

  He’d assume I had some genie thing to do when he checked his cell after class. Luckily the genie phones we carried didn’t require charging. No way did Ian have the brain power to keep his phone charged.

  Confident that he’d get the message, I sat through English class fighting my nerves. Images of being imprisoned and sent to the other realm flashed through my mind. Mom had trained me a little too well. I was terrified to break the rules.

  Of course, no one seemed to have noticed that Leo was at my house yesterday. Being together for a few minutes hadn’t set off any alarms at the Oversight Committee. So we were probably okay.

  I’d just spend a half hour hearing him out, and then I’d go back to life as the docile daughter.

  When the bell finally rang, I realized I’d been doodling prison bars on my notebook. Yeah, I was a real badass all right.

  I shoved my book and notebook into my backpack and headed to the parking lot. I was scanning the huge student lot for motorcycles when a bright yellow Toyota Prius pulled up to the curb in front of me. Too bad Leo didn’t drive something like that, it would be easy to find him.

  A deep voice called my name from the direction of the Prius, and I turned to see Leo standing at the driver’s side door.

  Leo was driving the Prius.

  Bad boy Leo was driving a sunshine yellow environmentally friendly car?

  I scraped my jaw off the ground and walked over to the car.

  Leo’s eyes held amusement as he watched me from across the roof of the little car. “Hop in.”

  I opened the passenger side door and climbed in. “So,” I said trying to reconcile the car with the man, “You drive a hybrid?”

  Leo laughed, a warm, masculine sound. “What were you expecting? A Harley?” He pulled away from the curb.

  Ummm. Now, I felt like an idiot.

  With a grin, Leo said, “I didn’t think you’d want to ride on the Harley, so I brought my Dad’s car.”

  “You do
ride a Harley?”

  He nodded. “Usually.”

  We were officially stuck in the bumper to bumper traffic leaving the school grounds. “I’m glad you drove this instead.”

  “You’re already going out on a limb by meeting me. The least I could do is ensure your comfort.”

  “And safety.” The car didn’t even sound like it was running.

  “Hey, I’m completely safe on a motorcycle.”

  I searched for something to say. “Maybe you should go ahead and start telling me what’s going on with your dad.” Otherwise, the silence was deafening, and I had no idea how to make small talk with a male genie.

  “I’d rather wait until I can show you some things. How about we grab some appetizers and soft drinks at Chili’s? It won’t be crowded in the middle of the afternoon.”

  “Sure.” I loved Chili’s. I glanced at Leo. Had Ian told him things about me? No. If Leo had acted interested in me, Ian would have suspected something was up. Nobody was ever interested in me.

  When we finally escaped the school parking lot, the car whirred quietly down the road and into a neighborhood. We cut through to the main road on the other side and headed to the shopping center with the restaurant.

  I didn’t even realize I was drumming on the dash with my fingers until I caught Leo looking at my hands.

  “You can tell you’re a drummer,” Leo said.

  “Nervous habit,” I said. A nervous habit that drove my mother nuts.

  “I’ve never met a drummer who didn’t do that.”

  “Really? I don’t know many other drummers.”

  “You never played in the school band?”

  “In middle school. But I didn’t hang much with the other drummers. Most of my musician friends are on an email loop called RokrGirlz.”

  “Too bad you got activated so early. There’s no way you could play in a band.”

  “I know,” I grumbled. It wasn’t fair that the guys got to wait so much longer before they had to work for the U.N.I.V.E.R.S.E.