Teen, Inc.

by Stefan Petrucha

  “You know, Jaiden, I think maybe you can.”

  I kind of moved forward a little, testing the air between us. It was such a little move forward it could have just been me shifting my balance on my feet. I knew, of course that it wasn’t, but I had my story all ready in case she pushed me away.

  But she didn’t. She leaned forward, too. Shifting her balance.

  Seemed ridiculous to stop, so we both kept going forward. This time the lawyers didn’t break in and Jenny didn’t freak and run away. This time our lips met. I drew her in, putting my hands on her upper back, pulling her closer as we kissed.

  After that, things get a little fuzzy for me. There was more kissing, lots of it, and I remember our teeth clicking at one point, but mostly my entire brain was going, “Whoa!”

  Until, out of nowhere, she pulled back and said, “Stop!”

  “What?” I said, my eyes half-open. I thought I was dreaming.

  “Jaiden, stop,” she said again. But I was totally lost in the moment, so I kind of didn’t and she, apparently not so lost in the moment, pulled away, angry.

  “Jaiden, I said, stop!”

  That was confusing. “What? Am I doing it wrong or something?”

  “No, no! Look at the TV!”

  She was so upset, I did. Where there used to be an old baby picture of me, there was now a picture of her dad, Eric Tate. The announcer was saying something about, “an unfriendly takeover by NECorp that’s left JenCare company founder and consumer advocate Eric Tate apparently out in the cold.”

  Jenny pulled away from me and started climbing out of the can in this crazed effort to get closer to the TV, like that would make some kind of difference. She looked like she was going to fall over, so I tried to grab her and help her out, but she was squirming so much, we got all tangled. The garbage can tipped and she fell out.

  She swatted at me as she got to her feet, landing a good one right on my bad arm, and then we both just stood there awhile, watching the news. Apparently, the big announcement from NECorp, the one that Nancy thought was going to be about things going “our way” was really that they had bought Mr. Tate’s remediation company JenCare, and fired Mr. Tate.

  As Jenny watched, her face got all pale. Then it got kind of puffy and her eyes got all watery. She twisted her head back and forth trying to hold it in, not wanting to weep in front of me I guess, but then tears started falling and she half-screamed, half-cried, “How could I ever have trusted you?”

  And you know what happened next?

  Jenny freaked and ran away.

  13

  TO B2B OR NOT TO B2B

  I stood there staring at the screen as they repeated the story, unable to believe it. How the hell did Mr. Hammond, wacky though he may be, go from doing the exact right thing to the exact wrong thing in just twenty-four hours? Then it hit me.

  In all the excitement, I forgot. Even Nancy forgot. Like I said earlier, Mr. Hammond was also famous for his tendency to agree with whoever he spoke with last.

  And I’d left him alone in a room with Ted Bungrin.

  I kicked the garbage can Jenny had been hiding in, kicked open my door, then stormed past Marketing & PR, knocking over a small trash can. I expected someone to say something, but the staff was hunched over their computer screens as if someone had drained their batteries. At the elevator I kept jamming the button like it would make the car show up faster.

  As the little green circle lit up, Nancy came racing down the hall. “Jaiden, wait.”

  All the energy in her voice was gone. She sounded like a bored robot, which only made me madder. Shouldn’t she be furious, too?

  The elevator door didn’t open fast enough, so I kicked that, too. The kick made a really satisfying crunking sound and left a nice big dent in the shiny silver surface. I was wedging myself into the sliver of an opening when she reached me.

  “Something’s happened,” the Nancy-unit said.

  I tumbled into the elevator and spun to face her. “I know! I know something’s happened! I saw it on the news!”

  She closed her eyes a second. “No, you don’t understand.”

  I slammed the button for the top floor over and over. “Yes, yes I do. I’m not a kid! You work for a company that poisons people and me, I’m a decoration! Just like that stupid statue in the lobby. Expensive? Sure. But it impresses the investors.”

  Nancy shut her eyes again and this time didn’t open them. I kicked the elevator wall. The door closed and I stood in a corner, feeling my blood boil, trying to figure out how I’d gone from my first kiss to the end of the world in less then ten minutes.

  By the time I reached the top floor, my foot was throbbing. It’s not such a great idea to go around kicking things really hard, especially metal things. When the doors slid open, they wobbled and squeaked. I was actually happy about that, maybe like Ranker had been when he stole the Herbert statue. But then I felt bad for the poor guy who’d have to figure out how to fix it.

  Trying to steady my breath so I didn’t look like a psychotic ox, I walked past Cheryl Diego without even looking at her.

  “I’m sorry, you can’t…,” she said, but I ignored her. I know it was rude, but what was she talking about? Of course I could. I thought about kicking in the office doors, but my foot hurt too much, so I shoved them. They flew open, then did that pneumatic braking thing.

  Mr. Hammond stood with his back to me, staring at the water wall like it was the whole universe. Sometimes I think the stupid bastard could forget the real world existed.

  Well, I planned to remind him.

  I was about to start yelling, when I noticed his hair was different. His height was off, too. His shoulders were too wide. Even his suit looked different. He turned around, and it wasn’t Mr. Hammond at all.

  It was Ted Bungrin, flashing his Satan smile at me. I looked around. The office was pretty much the same, but instead of Mr. Hammond’s pad on the desk, there was Bungrin’s laptop, looking like it owned the place.

  I felt like I was going to throw up.

  “Nice place, huh? I’ll make some changes, but I think I’ll keep the fountain.”

  “Where’s Mr. Hammond?”

  Bungrin’s eyes got all sparkly. “Licking his wounds, I guess. He tried to take me down, and I won. Doctors heal the sick, carpenters build things, and people like me, win.”

  “It’s not a game,” I said. Then I got all flustered. “What … what’d you win?”

  “Ha. We had a special meeting of the board of directors today, during which Mr. Hammond was voted out, and I was voted in. I’m the new CEO.”

  “No way.”

  Bungrin’s smile widened. “Yes. It is, most definitely, way.”

  He reached out and put his finger in the water cascading down the wall. A big upside-down V appeared beneath his finger. You could see the rock wall under it, only instead of slick and cool, it looked cheap and plastic. This guy could make even water look wrong.

  “I don’t know what the old man expected me to do,” he said.

  “What did you do?”

  He shrugged. “I told the board how much his ‘remediation’ plan would cost, and how little evidence there was that the mercury was doing real damage. That whole autism thing, the science is so anecdotal. You don’t put a huge corporation in the red for a theory. When I told them I’d been in touch with one of the senior partners at Jen-Care who was more than happy to sell us his shares, they applauded.”

  He turned away from the wall and stepped toward me.

  “I don’t blame you, kiddo, for doing what you thought was right. If anything, I owe you. If you hadn’t talked Hammond into this whole crazy honesty thing, I wouldn’t have moved against him for at least three years. So, thanks.”

  He stuck his hand out. Water dripped from his finger to the floor, making a little gray circle on the rug. When I didn’t move, he put it back down.

  “I’m not a bad guy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a good guy, either. But I am CEO. That makes
me your new daddy, so don’t you think we should learn to get along?”

  “That plant is poisoning people.”

  “Anytime you put anything into the world, it gets dirty. You want beef for billions of burgers? You chop down rain forests to feed the cattle. You want fossil fuels? You get global warming. Cheap light for hospitals and libraries? You get mercury. I didn’t get transferred here because I was saving the environment, I got transferred here because production went through the roof and the levels were still legal.”

  I stared at him. “I don’t care if it’s illegal or not, it’s wrong.”

  “Blah, blah, blah. It’s wrong. Blah, blah, blah. People get sick. Blah, blah, blah, the plant doesn’t do what we said. Please. Blame the regulations that make it legal. So maybe we spend a lot trying to influence those regulations, but can you blame us? I’m just trying to make a profit. I’m sure we’ve even got some very dedicated people out there somewhere trying to figure out how to make things even better and greener for everyone. Maybe you can grow up and be the guy who can make light come out of people’s butts for free. Meanwhile, life goes on, so can we at least agree to disagree?”

  He stuck his hand out again.

  I narrowed my eyes. “Why do you care what I think?”

  He put the hand back down again. “You’ll figure it out yourself in about twenty minutes, but I have a meeting in ten, so …Your speech at school put you back in the limelight. It’d be easier for both of us if we were on the same page, say, for a couple of news cycles. I wouldn’t ask you to say anything you didn’t want to, just not to comment on things a fourteen-year-old isn’t really qualified to venture an opinion on anyway. Is that such a big deal? There must be some new game console you want. It’s yours. I’ll slip you a few R-rated DVDs. I’ll hire back that short-order cook. What’s his name? Glen?”

  “Ben. He’d never work for you again.”

  “Oh?”

  He held up his cell phone and pressed a button on it. Ben’s recorded voice filled the room.

  “Okay, Mr. Bungrin. I’d like to come back next week.”

  “See, all Glen—excuse me—Ben ever had to do was apologize. At first he was about his ideals, but I guess his empty wallet caught up with him. Now, I don’t have to welcome him back. So, console, DVDs, and Ben, all in exchange for no comment.”

  He waited, but I was just stunned. He looked at his watch, all silver and shiny like the water on the wall, then sighed and rolled his eyes. “Okay, let’s get more realistic. Here’s your alternative: Say what you want about whatever you want and we smear your butt as a self-centered, ungrateful, teenage delinquent who’s unhappy and unbalanced because we didn’t buy you a pony. NECorp admits defeat at being your guardian, a ridiculous idea from a former CEO, and, after the rehab camp with the marines, you get placed on some antidepressants in a foster home in Idaho. I’ll even fire your manager Nancy just because I think she had a little something to do with all this.”

  I started grinding my teeth. Was this guy Satan, or what?

  “I’m not offering to shake hands again. Now, do we want poor Ben to show up and find out he doesn’t have a job waiting, or are you going to put your hand out? It’s time, kiddo.”

  And do you know what I did? That’s right.

  I freaked and ran out of the room.

  “Fine,” Bungrin shouted after me. “I’ll know you by your deeds.”

  I ran, limping, for the elevator, without the slightest idea what I was going to do. I only knew I wanted to get away, just for a while. After ditching my cell phone in a garbage can, in case they wanted to track me, I found my bike and a warm jacket and sneaked out via the loading docks. I walked my bike along the building’s edge, then through the small adjacent patch of woods. Finally, I hit a side street and started pedaling.

  My foot still hurt, and my arm was aching again, so I took it nice and slow, not really thinking, just feeling all sorts of variations of numb inside.

  By nightfall, I wound up back at the shopping center where that cop almost caught me. Curious, I cruised past the windows of Herbert’s Burgers and peeked inside. On the counter was a new statue of Herbert, eyes still different sizes, like a birth defect. Ranker was there, too. He was emptying small trash bins into a big one, staring at the ground. I guess business had gotten better and they hired him back. Nothing had changed. The great fast-food machine was up and running again.

  I rode on, back to the alley, where the tear in the chain-link fence had yet to be repaired. I dropped my bike by the fence and climbed into the woods. The moon was out and my eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness, so it was easy enough for me to find my way to the edge of that concrete runoff I’d fallen into.

  A cold wind blew, my arm ached like crazy. I sat against a concrete pylon, curling up for warmth. I listened to the water. It didn’t sound like the water in the fountain in Mr. Hammond’s, I mean, Bungrin’s, office. It sounded thick, like syrup.

  If what Bungrin said about legal mercury levels was true, even if I had the memo it wouldn’t mean anything. So maybe the EPA would withdraw its Excellence Award. Big deal.

  So what could I do, really? Embarrass Bungrin? What about Ben and Nancy? And no, I didn’t want to die in teen rehab or go to Idaho and never see Nate or Jenny again.

  I put my head back against the concrete, felt the rough surface against my skull, and shut my eyes. Just a few more years and I’d be rich for the rest of my life. I could hire Ben myself, hire Eric Tate and send him to Washington to change the mercury guidelines.

  So why not cave just for now?

  Because Bungrin was a total ass?

  No, because it felt wrong.

  I remembered all those people who sued cigarette companies for selling them the tobacco that gave them cancer. I knew what Bungrin would say. Could you blame those companies for not checking out the health issues too closely or hiring scientists to prove the whole cancer thing was a mistake? Can you really be surprised that they’d lie?

  It’s like building this really cool ultrarobot, full of guns and lasers, programming it to be a perfect killing machine, then being totally shocked when it shoots you and doesn’t understand for the life of it why you think it’s wrong.

  Foot and arm hurting, I fell asleep. I wish I’d dreamed about Jenny, but I didn’t. Or maybe I did, but I just didn’t remember.

  When I woke, it was morning, but there wasn’t a single bird chirping. My arm was the part of my body that hurt least. All my muscles ached and my head throbbed. My nose was stuffy and I didn’t have a tissue. I wiped my eyes, stood, and stretched.

  I was about to find my bike and head home, maybe try to talk to Nancy, but as I stared at the water and rubbed my arm, something dawned on me and instead, I followed the concrete runoff upstream. It ended a quarter mile later, with an iron grate in a hillside. If you looked up the hillside, you could see a fence and a building, and the building had a big, beautiful sign on it, a logo really:

  LiteSpring.

  I flashed back to what Jenny said about mercury and autism, how the plant had been poisoning the water for twenty years. I thought about how Ranker couldn’t look people in the eye. My arm twinged, and I wondered what kind of gunk had gotten into it.

  Okay, so maybe Ranker was a coincidence, but I knew how my arm felt. Standing there, it was hard not to see it, the plant in the background, the runoff all sparkly and shining, more like the river in the model Emperor Chin had in his tomb.

  Everything just looked and smelled wrong.

  And that was, at least to me, the truth.

  It was getting late, and I was still thinking I’d be going to school that day, so I biked back. It was warmer than the night had been and the sun dried my sinuses.

  I planned to sneak in through the loading docks, but as I reached the access road, I spotted a big crowd by the main entrance and a few news vans. There were even police cars. I ditched my bike and walked up, to check it out.

  About fifty people were chanting and holdin
g signs.

  “Down with NECorp!”

  “Stop poisoning our world!”

  They sounded tired, like they’d been at it for a while, but were giving it their best shot for the cameras. Some police officers, I think the guy who chased me among them, leaned against their cars, sipping coffee, like it was no big deal.

  Jenny was in the crowd. I thought about waving, but she was too far away. Besides, she was busy protesting. Her dad was there, too, the most energetic screamer. I walked toward them until she saw me. She stopped chanting and her face went blank.

  When her dad realized she wasn’t making any noise, he looked at her and followed her gaze, to me. Then he stopped chanting, too.

  Like a little virus passing from person to person, everyone in the crowd stopped chanting and faced me. It was dead silent as the cameras swung in my direction. Someone pointed at me and shouted, “Down with the Corporate Man!”

  The rest of them took it up: “Down with the Corporate Man!”

  Even Jenny and her dad: “Down with the Corporate Man!”

  It was like I was NECorp. “Down with the Corporate Man!”

  The world was being poisoned, and there wasn’t anything they could do about it other than scream. I was furious, too, because I thought there was something I could do about it and it turned out I was wrong. So I shouted back.

  I was just sort of yelling at first, not words, just noise. Then I saw one of their signs, Down with NECorp, right at my feet, so I leaned down, picked it up and shook it.

  “Down with me!!” I screamed. “Down with me!”

  And you know what? They stopped shouting and cheered.

  So I said, “Down with NECorp!”

  They said it back, en masse, “Down with NECorp! Down with NECorp!”

  A short woman in a suit shoved a microphone in my face. I thought I recognized her from one of the cable news shows.

  “Aren’t you Jaiden Beale, the boy adopted by NECorp?”

  “Yes.”

  The crowd was now all chanting behind me, “Down with NECorp!” like they were my backup band.

  “Why are you part of this protest? Isn’t it biting the hand that feeds you?”