Teen, Inc.

by Stefan Petrucha

  “You Jaiden?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Uh … Ben … left something for you,” New Guy said.

  He handed me a plate with eggs, bacon, and home fries, just the way I liked them.

  I was freaking, but I ate the breakfast. I didn’t savor it, I just wolfed it all down. It wasn’t Ben’s best effort, but I figure he was as distracted making it as I was eating it.

  If you think about it, anything can change anytime, like the way it changed for those people pushing their bagel carts in the Twin Towers when the planes hit. Everyone has expectations, I guess, like that the sun will rise or you’ll have Ben’s home fries every morning, or you’ll live through the day. You’d go crazy if you thought you couldn’t count on certain things, right?

  So I spent the next hour going crazy.

  When eleven A.M. came, I grabbed my backpack and headed to the fourth-floor executive meeting room, the only place Tony and NECorp would let me go anyway.

  Usually I trot in like I own the place, but when I opened the door, I froze. The room was designed to intimidate, with a long, long table and a high, high ceiling. The chairs were huge, the way they’re larger and more comfortable in first class than in coach. Even the air tasted pricier.

  The rest of the room looked like the Valued Employee photo in the lobby. Anyone with NECorp mojo was here: Banks, Kracik, Jenkins from Acquisitions, Fogarty from Forecasting and Budgeting, Lewison from Marketing & PR, even a few guys from the West Coast office. They even all had assistants, Robo-Suits, men or women, but Robo-Suits just the same, standing stiff behind them, waiting for their buttons to be pushed.

  The only one missing was Desmond Hammond III, which in itself was weird. Like maybe they were planning a birthday party for him. Or some other surprise.

  At first I was relieved to see Nancy, but she looked so cowed. She didn’t look up when I waved. I even said hi and got a big nothing.

  Maybe this was about her letting me go to Jenny’s without supervision? Were they firing her, too, like Ben? Was that what she meant about it not being about me?

  Except for clicking laptop keys and shuffling papers, everything was terribly quiet. That is, until I hit the tile floor with my rubber-soled sneakers, which squeaked loud enough to shatter glass. Everyone looked up at me. Cowed Nancy winced.

  I stopped dead, but what could I do? I’d make the noise wherever I walked in that room. Gritting my teeth, I headed toward an empty chair at the head of the table, squeaking madly all the way. I always sat at the head of the table, so I figured it would be the same here, but Ted Bungrin waved his hand and shook his head.

  “That’s Mr. Hammond’s chair, kiddo. It stays empty. You sit there.”

  I glared at him, mostly because of the “kiddo,” but he ignored that and raised the right side of his lips in a half smile, like he was saying, “Do I have to repeat myself?”

  So, with my sneakers still squeaking, I dragged my embarrassed butt over to a seat next to Kracik. The chair creaked loudly as I pulled it out. And, of course, as if I hadn’t been through enough, as I sat, the upholstery made this gargantuan farting noise.

  Looking dead ahead at a wall, I’d no idea if everyone was staring, but if I were them, I would be.

  Bungrin ended my comedy routine by speaking. “Nancy requested we begin with Jaiden, so he can get to school, which I guess is more important than our schedules.”

  A few annoyed smirks lit the Creep Veeps’ faces. Bungrin went on. “Point being our young ward was visiting Jennifer Tate yesterday afternoon.”

  Nancy spoke softly. “Yes.”

  Hearing that, I thought I’d figured out what was going on. I leaned forward in my chair, which made another loud fart, and spoke. “I know Nancy was supposed to keep an eye on me, and if you want Anthony following closer or something, I’m fine with that, but don’t take it out on her, okay? Nancy’s doing a top-notch job, really, much better than that last guy. And the whole running away thing, that was just … just…”

  “Jaiden,” Bungrin said, cutting me off. “We want you to keep seeing Jenny.”

  “What?”

  For half a second I thought he was going to reveal he was actually an alien entity and I was going to be asked to participate in a bizarre breeding experiment.

  “How was the date?” he asked.

  Before that, his every word was quick and functional, so this was a change of pace.

  “Did you meet her dad?”

  All the Creep Veeps leaned forward. Even the Robo-Suits craned their necks. It was like they were all one big person with a lot of heads and eyes. Aliens.

  “It wasn’t a date,” I muttered.

  “Whatever it was, how was it? Did her dad say anything to you?”

  Having read the 4Bs, I knew that what we were talking about wasn’t what we were really talking about, but not knowing what we were really talking about, there didn’t seem any harm in talking.

  “We worked on our bio project.”

  “Great. Did you meet her dad?”

  “Yeah…”

  Bungrin shrugged. “What was he like?”

  “He was … upset because he thinks LiteSpring is dumping extra mercury.”

  Jeremy Banks shook his head. “We knew that much.”

  Bungrin gave him a little wave of his hand that said, shut up. “Did he mention what he was planning to do about it?”

  “Well, he finally got the local papers to listen and he had an interview with them.”

  When I said that, there was this gasp and all their heads moved back a bit. I looked at all of them as they stared at me, clinging to my every word.

  Finally, it dawned on me what this meeting was about, and why I was there.

  “You’re worried about Mr. Tate, and you want me to spy. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Bungrin shook his head. “Spy is a comic-book word. It’s about TV and movies and heroes and villains. You’re more sophisticated than that, even if you pretend not to be. I know you are. I read your English paper. We just want to know what you know.”

  “I’m not telling you anything about Jenny’s dad.”

  Kracik cleared his throat. “Give me a second, Ted. Jaiden, Tate wants to make a lot of trouble for us. He’s a fanatic and he’s wrong. You know that plant’s won awards; you know how proud we are of that. But if he starts convincing people his lies are true, that could cost us a lot of money. Good people could lose their jobs. Even Nancy.”

  Even Ben. Now I knew what had happened to him. He’d overheard them talking about grilling me for information and he told them exactly what he thought of it.

  Ben got fired because of me.

  I shook my head. “I’m not telling you anything.”

  Bungrin tried to sound friendly, but you could see behind his eyes how he was getting annoyed at all the time this was taking. “Kiddo, we know how you feel, but we wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

  “I don’t have to tell you anything,” I said, right to his smooth, smiling face. I turned to Nancy. “Nancy, tell them I don’t have to tell them. It’s my life.”

  Nancy lowered her head and Kracik got back into the act.

  “Tate’s planning to lie about us. We all know lying is wrong.”

  Except, according to the 4Bs, when it’s to make you look better. If memory served, Carl Kracik had an autographed copy.

  “We just want you to get this man talking a little, so we know what new lies he’s planning to tell, so we can protect ourselves from his lies.”

  “No. No way. Conversation over. What are you going to do? Fire me?”

  Bungrin looked at his watch, a fat Rolex that probably cost six billion dollars. “Let’s spell it out. Jaiden, how do you feel about no more school?”

  Not good, really, but I played my only card. “I’ll tell the press. I’ll tell them you asked me to spy on Mr. Tate.”

  Everyone leaned forward again, except Bungrin. The smile vanished from his face, like a light when you flip the switch
. He spoke slowly, unhappy to take the time. “Go ahead. No one asked you to spy. Lie about it and we’ll go public with your little crime spree. Any news about you would be white noise anyway if Tate’s story gets out.”

  I was thinking I’d call his bluff, have him kick me out of school, the whole nine yards, rather than cave. Only one thing held me back.

  “You gonna fire Nancy the same way you fired Ben?”

  “Who’s Ben?” Bungrin said. The Robo-Suit behind him whispered in his ear.

  “The big-mouthed cook?”

  Robo-Suit nodded.

  “Jaiden, If I were you, I’d worry about me. How does a teen rehab camp sound? You know, with the drill sergeants, the drug addicts, and the accidental deaths?”

  It was old Jeremy Banks’s turn to clear his throat. “But if you play ball and we can make things easier for you. I don’t know … send you and Jenny to Disney World for a week. Have breakfast with Mickey, on me.”

  I stood up. “I have to go to school.”

  Bungrin exhaled from his nose. “Okay. The newspaper interview gives us a lot to talk about anyway. But we’ll meet again. Maybe just you and me, kiddo.”

  I was about to tell him exactly what I thought of his “kiddo” remark when he motioned toward Nancy. “Walk him to his ride. Try to convince him we’re not the International League of Super Villains.”

  Yeah, that’d be real easy right after “Doc Doom” Bungrin had just done such a great job convincing me otherwise.

  A few titters raced around the table at Ted’s grand jest, but Nancy just nodded and stood. We walked out of the room together, me squeaking, she slumping.

  She didn’t say a word until we were in the elevator.

  “This is serious, Jaiden. NECorp has a lot of money and prestige wrapped up in that plant. Eric Tate wants to make us the next Enron.”

  “And that makes it right to ask me to spy on my girlfriend’s father?”

  She looked at me. “I thought you said she wasn’t your girlfriend.”

  “Forget I said that and answer the question.”

  She sighed. “You need to think about what Bungrin said. He’ll do what he threatens, so you need to think about it carefully.”

  “But you don’t think it’s right, do you?”

  The elevator doors swished. She stuck her laptop in to keep them from closing and came nearer so she could whisper. “You need to think about what Mr. Bungrin said. I could get fired for telling you anything else. Do you understand?”

  I nodded. “Ben said I should tell NECorp to screw itself.”

  Nancy grimaced. “Ben’s a good guy.”

  We came to the lobby. Tony’s car was parked outside.

  “I’ve got a lot to do, Jaiden. Have a good day at school,” Nancy said, then she walked off. As she did, a sheet of paper slipped from her laptop case. It flitted in the air then slid onto the floor.

  “Hey, Nancy, you dropped something,” I said.

  I said it pretty loud, but she didn’t seem to hear me, so I trotted up to grab the paper. As I did, it dawned on me that Nancy never dropped anything. When I bent over to pick it up, I saw what it was. It was a confidential memo outlining NECorp’s potential liability for the mercury pollution from the LiteSpring plant, which, as it turned out, was really four times greater, not 75 percent less like they’d announced.

  Eric Tate was right. Bungrin and everyone else had been lying.

  She’d dropped it on purpose. Numb, I stuffed the sheet into one of my books and headed out. Tony didn’t bother saying a word to me for the whole trip.

  By the time I reached school, it was lunchtime, so I went to the cafeteria. The place was packed, the sound like a low, deep beehive.

  Nate was in our usual spot, toward the center of the big room. When he saw me, he waved me over. I headed toward him. I smiled a little, but the smile on my face made me think of Bungrin, so I stopped.

  “Jai-den!” Nate said.

  “I’ve got to tell you something,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Hang on. You’ll see.”

  But I didn’t just tell him. Instead, I grabbed the top of one of those plastic trash bins and stood up on the table.

  “Jaiden, what?”

  Don’t know why I did it, really. At first I was going to just tell Nate, but then I was like out of my body, watching myself. I slammed my hand against the trash-bin lid louder and louder. Pretty soon I had about a quarter of the cafeteria looking at me.

  When I thought I had enough of them, I shouted, really loud: “My name is Jaiden Beale. I am the first person ever to be adopted and raised by a corporation.”

  “Who gives a crap?” someone screamed. “Sit down!”

  “Google me! Google me now!” I screamed.

  “Google yourself, retard!”

  But someone else shouted, “Wait a minute, my dad told me about that story.”

  A buzz floated through the cafeteria, getting louder and louder.

  “Whoa,” Nate said, typing into his PDA.

  I don’t know if that was good or bad.

  I was too busy thinking what Ben had told me. Screw NECorp.

  11

  DOTTING TS, CROSSING EYES

  I felt like I was astrally projecting when I did it, but it’d been what they call a calculated move. No way Bungrin could get me to spy for him. Eric Tate would know who I was. As for his threats, well, I hoped he wouldn’t follow through because it wasn’t worth it. It was like this Clint Eastwood movie where he and the bad guy both have guns, so the bad guy grabs Clint’s daughter and holds his gun to her head.

  “Move and I’ll shoot her,” he says.

  Clint says, “Go ahead.”

  The guy gets all flustered. “You’d kill your own daughter?”

  Clint says, “No. You will. Then I’ll kill you. So why don’t you just let her go?”

  The bad guy, seeing the reason in this, lets her go.

  Clint shoots him anyway, but hey, the point is if I was useless to Bungrin now, why punish me? It was part of my new screw NECorp campaign, dedicated to Ben.

  Along those lines, I had one more thing to do, give Jenny the memo so she could give it to her dad. That’d get him the attention he needed, and force NECorp to clean up their act. Then, as Mr. Tate was given a Nobel prize for saving the earth, I’d swing down, grab Jenny, and take her out on my supercycle for fries and a shake. If not, at least Jenny might be proud of what I’d done and write to me at teen rehab.

  Meanwhile, it turns out that having people gawk at you like you’re a UFO flying down the hall is one of those feelings you just can’t anticipate. It was kind of neat when it was a bunch of cute girls, but even the janitors gaped.

  And search the halls as I might, I couldn’t find Jenny.

  Did see Nate, though, on my way to seventh period, and learned what he thought of the real me. He was grinning like a clown and talking like he’d swallowed a six-pack of cola.

  “Come here you big lug,” he said. “I’m gonna hug you whether you like it or not!”

  He moved toward me like he was really going to do it, so I backed up. Not so big on the hugging. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I said. “You’re not angry?”

  “Sure, if you want. You could’ve told me, right? But hell, you just turned my life into a little piece of heaven!”

  “And we are talking about what, exactly?

  “Beeswax29! Caitlin! I know you, she knows I know you, so she’s talking with her friends, yak-yak-yak Jaiden Beale, can it be true? Yak-yak-yak, she sees me and walks up to talk to me! It’s better than knowing a rock star! I even asked her out.”

  “You, Nate Buckman, asked Caitlin Fermelli out?”

  “Actually, I asked if she needed help getting an adapter for her cell phone.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “She said no. But then she checked out my PDA and now it’s a maybe … if I loan her my cell phone. Her parents track her calls on hers. Isn’t that medieval?”

  �
�Dude,” I said. “She’s using you.”

  “I know! Isn’t it great?”

  He looked like he was going to try to hug me again, but instead he slammed his hand into my arm really hard, right in the old bandage, which I’d almost forgotten about.

  “Ow!” I screeched.

  “Isn’t that better yet?” he asked, but before I answered he was trotting backward down the hall. “Gotta go. Caitlin’s in next period! Call me tonight, you magnificent bastard!”

  I rubbed my arm. It was throbbing. How long had it been since I cut it on the fence? Shouldn’t it feel better by now instead of worse? I thought about the water I fell into, looking all oily and silver in the moonlight. Then I thought I really should get that memo to Jenny. But I never saw her.

  When school finished, I stood out front, waiting. Finally, I spotted her, her hands buried in her pockets, her hair tied back as she walked resolutely through the crowd.

  “Jenny! Jenny!” I called, but she kept walking.

  I leaped right in front of her and said, “Hey!”

  When she looked at me, I babbled about everything, about Ben, about the meeting, about how I’d finally done the exact opposite of what they expected of me, but all along she just kept shaking her head, like I was a channel she wanted to change.

  “It’s all over the net. My dad called and he was really furious. I’m not supposed to talk to you anymore. I told you I wasn’t cool. I’m sorry.”

  I was stunned. Hadn’t she heard me about the pollution and the memo? Or had I mentioned the memo? What had I said, exactly? I couldn’t remember. I was about to shove the paper at her when it was suddenly snatched from my hands.

  “Sorry, Jai,” Tony said. “Nancy told me to grab any white papers you had.”

  “Wait! That proves…”

  But Jenny had already taken off. And before I could finish, Eyeballs, who I’d thought of as a real man’s man, stuck his fingers in his ears and said, “Nananananananan! I can’t hear you! Loo-loo-loo!”

  Then he tore up the memo.

  “Don’t you even care what it says?” I screamed.

  “No. Now, get in the car please.”

  Screw NECorp. Yeah, right. Screw Jaiden was more like it.