I needed to get in control, pronto. He had me on his side of town, waiting for his information, and I needed to balance the scales.
“A restaurant would be fine,” I said. “But I can pay for myself.” I could pretend my charge account number had been hacked.
“If you want.” We continued walking. “Did you find what Link was missing?”
“I told you, there isn’t one missing.”
“Huh.” He scanned my face, making me acutely uncomfortable. “I thought you just didn’t notice or something.”
“Of course I’d notice if a whole Link was missing!” The question hit too close to home. I took a deep breath. “Sorry.”
“You keep saying that. What do you have to be sorry about?”
“I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” I said. “I don’t know you.”
He grinned, sporting the shaggy puppy-dog look. “Yeah, yelling should be saved for those we love most.”
“That’s not what I meant. I—” The word came automatically. “Sorry.”
He shook his head. “Sorry. Please. Excuse me. You Mementi are always so polite, even when you’re looking down your nose at us.”
His tone said he was half-joking, but I wasn’t laughing. “I am not looking down my nose at you. All I want are answers. What were you doing out that night? You said you’re trying to stop the Link thief?”
“Yup. Me and a few other people.”
“Why?” I asked. “You’re Populace. It doesn’t affect you.”
He snorted. “Watch the news. All that pent-up anger behind your Mementi politeness is coming out against people over here.”
“So you don’t want to be blamed. That’s why you’re trying to stop him. Her. The thief.”
“Yeah. And well, it’s just wrong, isn’t it? Someone stealing lives.”
“And you care about that.” I couldn’t help the suspicion in my voice. “Why?”
He stuck his hands in the pockets of his cargo shorts. “Because of my grandma.”
My head snapped around. “What?”
“She got Alzheimer’s before she died.” He focused on the sidewalk. “It was awful, walking into her house and not being recognized. It’s not fair that other people have to go through that because of some psycho.”
For a brief moment, I felt connected to this boy through our departed, memory-tormented grandmothers. “I’m sorry.”
We walked in silence for half a block.
“So, what about the other people you mentioned? Why are they into this?” I asked finally. My suspicions might be softening toward him, but that didn’t extend to his little detective force.
“My dad has a thing about helping people.” Kalan grinned. “And his sermons have a way of convincing others to help him do that.”
“Sermons?”
“He’s a minister.”
So. A vigilante church congregation. How frustratingly unhelpful. I eyed Kalan. He wasn’t what I’d expect from a churchy boy. “You’re a preacher’s son.”
“Yeah.”
“You believe in God?”
“With all my heart.” The laugh lines in his face smoothed, and his expression sort of . . . deepened.
I tilted my head, studying him as we walked. He’d flipped that switch again, from charming to intense. I hated how that fascinated me. “Oh.”
“Here we are,” he said, nodding to a squat building tucked between an arcade and a bowling alley.
I looked warily at the neon sign. It flickered briefly. “Sushi Ya? We’re eating sushi?”
“Yeah. You a fan?”
“Never had it,” I said. Mom and Dad worked so much—and such odd hours—that food at my house usually consisted of Fast Feast meals. Or Dad’s favorite Chinese restaurant on the rare occasion we went out.
“Never had sushi? You?”
Tension made me easily irritated, but I bit back another outburst. “Being Asian does not a sushi-eater make. I’m a quarter Chinese. Sushi is Japanese.”
“What? No, I didn’t even think . . .” He shrugged. “It’s just, you’re Mementi, and sushi can get sort of expensive. So I guess I thought you’d eat it a lot.”
“Right.” Because that was much less stereotypical.
He turned red beneath his tan and paused next to the door. “Look, we can eat somewhere else if you want.”
Raw fish. The thought made my nose wrinkle. But I was breaking all kinds of comfort-levels lately. “I’ll try it, I guess.”
Kalan swept the door open, giving me a deep bow. “My Lady. The feast awaits.”
He had just enough nerdiness to not destroy his cuteness. Either that or he was a stellar nerd impersonator who used his charm to lure people into his clutches. An almost-smile dropped from my face and I gave my girly side a stern shake.
A koi pond sat inside the entrance, and the hypnotic weaving of the giant fish mesmerized me. Kalan led me away from it, past a dirty golden Buddha with pennies stacked on his belly.
Low-hanging paper lanterns swayed in the wake of rushing servers, tossing yellow light in arcs over dingy booths. Dishes clattered, and someone yelled from the kitchen. A busser wiped down a table in the center of the room. His rag circled around and around as his eyes fixed on me. Conversations faltered at each table Kalan and I passed.
They knew I was an imposter. I stuck as close to Kalan as I dared, anxiety kicking up a notch.
A frowning waiter slapped two paper menus on the table and slunk off to get our requested waters. To avoid the whispers and shifting of bodies around the room, I studied the menu. Unfamiliar words stuck out: unagi, yamagobo, nori, tobiko. The exotic feel gave me a brief thrill.
“I don’t even know what half this stuff is,” I said.
“It’s all good, I promise,” Kalan said over the top of his own menu. “I can order for both of us if you want. I’ve got a few favorites.”
I should say no. Stay in charge. But I really wanted my food to be as un-nasty as possible. “Thank you for the offer. I would like to try one with shrimp.”
His lips twitched again in a suppressed smile. He picked up a pencil, marked a few boxes next to his choices, and set his menu at the edge of the table.
The waiter dropped off our drinks and snatched the menu. He glared at me, making sure I noticed before he sulked back to the kitchen. I fiddled with the Links at my neck, then reached for my cup.
Seconds later, a passing customer bumped my elbow. Water slopped over the side of the glass, dripping into my lap. I jerked away from the edge of the table and set my glass down, rubbing the assaulted elbow. Kalan scowled at the backs of a couple headed for the exit.
He leaned closer. “You know, you might want to take off your scarf and gloves. They’re a dead giveaway you’re Mementi.”
I clasped my hands under the table. “I can’t, I can’t do that.”
He raised his thick eyebrows. “Why?”
“It’s protection,” I said. “We can only access memories through touch. It’s a chain reaction. When we touch someone, we can see any memory on any Link they’re touching, and on any Link that Link is touching. Certain fabrics are non-conductive, though. We can’t access memories through them. It’s not like we want to see each other’s whole lives.”
Most of us didn’t. Apparently some of us wanted to steal everybody’s lives. Another good reason for protective clothing.
“Huh.” He rubbed his lips. “So you can’t store a memory in anything you want?”
I shook my head. “Our neural impulses send charges through the molecules—”
Kalan’s eyebrow shot up.
I sighed. “We change stuff so it can store memories. But only some materials. Mostly it’s just natural or biological stuff like wood and rock. Different stuff does different things to the memory. Like, we use quartz storage ports and steel transfer cables for the Shared Link System. They have long-term storage and enhance detail.”
“Doesn’t the SLS grid run under the whole city?”
“Yeah.”
“But couldn’t you . . . I don’t know, touch the concrete and access all the memories on the grid?” he asked.
“No. The transfer cables are coated in plastic, which is—”
“A non-conductive material.” He grinned. “Awesome.”
Our testy waiter dumped a plate of colorful, rice-wrapped circles on the table. I stared at the plate, very conscious that I was in a shady restaurant about to eat raw fish.
“What did you order?”
“Your house special shrimp roll, the classic happy roll, and the unagi special. Very basic stuff.” He ripped the paper off a pair of chopsticks and clicked them together. “You know how to use these?”
“Yes.” Dad was a little over-exuberant about going chopsticks-only when it came to any kind of Oriental food.
“That’s the shrimp one you wanted. There’s nothing raw in it.” He poured some soy sauce into a dish, deftly dipped a sushi roll, and stuffed it in his mouth.
I prodded one of the rolls he’d gestured to with my chopsticks. It wasn’t going to squirm around. Raw didn’t mean live. Besides, he said this one wasn’t raw. So maybe I wouldn’t die of food poisoning after all. I followed his lead, dipping a roll in soy sauce and putting the whole thing in my mouth.
The flavors and textures danced on my tongue, salty and chewy and fresh with a slight crunch. My eyes widened.
Kalan grinned. “Good?”
I grabbed another piece. “Good.”
Kalan handled the chopsticks like a pro. I found myself watching his hands. Other than faces, I didn’t often see skin or the muscles that rippled beneath it. The urge to run a finger over the back of his hand made my arm twitch.
Stop it. Focus.
“Alright.” I laid down my chopsticks and lowered my voice. “So what do you know about the Link thief?”
“To business, huh?” he said. “Basically all I’ve got is from the news, and what you told me that night. Some of us from the church go out and patrol the streets at night, trying to spot the Link thief and catch her. Nobody’s found anything so far.”
“You mean you’ve got nothing?” I’d come all the way out here. Crossed the forbidden line, been accosted by a nasty man, and risked food poisoning. My cheeks heated with anger. “You just wander the streets and pray you’ll stumble across the thief in action?”
“Hey, at least we’re doing something.” He crossed his arms. “Even the cops don’t do that much.”
My politeness was taking a permanent vacation around him. “Because that tactic is useless.”
“Well, what would you do?” His eyebrows hung dangerously low.
“I—” There wasn’t much I could do. Or Kalan. Or the cops.
I should get up right now. This was pointless. All of it. How could you catch a thief who stole the memories of her crimes? Left no witnesses?
“Why did you even want to meet me?” I asked, slumping against the back of the booth.
“Because thanks to you, we’ve actually got something to go on,” Kalan said, his eyebrows in a more neutral position again. “We know the thief is a girl. We know exactly where she was the night of the last theft. She caught you and erased your memory of her, but didn’t follow her typical MO and take all your Links. We’ve got clues.”
I leaned forward, my face pinching. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘we’ know? You told your group about me?”
“Not the group, just my dad. He thinks if we work with you, we’ll actually make some progress. And he hears a lot of things at work, too. He’s got a theory.”
“What theory?”
Kalan hesitated. “One I’m sure you won’t like.”
I held back a growl. “I like not knowing even less.”
He laughed. “I knew I’d like you.” He took a sip of water, stalling. “It’s not a popular idea on your side. He thinks the thief is actually Mementi.”
I pressed my palms onto the table. Having it said by someone else, by a Populace, made it worse.
“Why does he think that?” I said. “What does he do, that he’d hear information to make him think that?”
“He’s a bartender at the casino.”
“A bartender? I thought he was a minister.”
Kalan shook his hair off his forehead. “Yup. But everybody loves to gamble, and everybody loves to drink, and my dad loves spreading the gospel to everybody. Not to mention all the rumors he hears. He’s got the best seat in the house.”
I could tell him that I was proof. That only a Mementi could have stolen my memories. The words felt like a betrayal.
Kalan gave me an earnest look. “We’re not trying to blame you. We just want it to stop. The town’s already divided about . . . well, everything. But now people are in some kind of a feeding frenzy.”
Divided on everything. That about summed it up. Rich versus poor, perfect memory versus imperfect memory, Ascalon versus Happenings. Our sole uniting factor was our hatred for each other.
Not that you could really blame us. Only a few months ago, my high school tennis team finally beat the Populace team in the finals round. That night, Populace players had vandalized the houses of our team. They killed a few pets, including Dom’s puppy, which really put people in an uproar. A couple of Populace students were suspended. Because getting a free week out of school was fitting punishment for animal cruelty.
Mementi didn’t forget things like that—we didn’t forget anything. No wonder the town was coming apart with the Link thefts.
“It’s only a theory,” Kalan said, breaking the silence. “But we can’t count anybody out at this point. If we work together, we can find the actual facts. Hopefully even find your memories.”
I’d hoped for information from him, not a partnership. I hadn’t gotten the first, and I didn’t want the other.
But I had no idea if the thief might catch up with me. Erase everything I’d learned, and would learn, about the Link thief. I should share everything with someone whose memories couldn’t be stolen. A Populace sidekick might come in handy. Could I trust that Kalan was who he seemed to be? Could I afford not to?
I bent a chopstick so far it snapped in half. “Your dad is right.”
Kalan laid his own chopsticks down and leaned across the table. “What makes you say that?”
“The way I lost my memory proves it. We can see each other’s memories when we touch skin. But we can also transfer memories away from someone else from certain points on the body.”
I drummed my fingers against my thighs and told Kalan everything, from the overheard conversation of Detective Jackson to the long list of suspects that included pretty much any female Mementi in town.
“Well. That’s mega-creepy.” Kalan spun a chopstick on the table. “But why are Links going missing, if the thief could touch people and take any memories she wanted?”
“Maybe she’s covering her tracks. If she siphoned something big, people would notice they were missing years of memory. Then it’d be obvious the thief is Mementi. By taking full Links, people still notice, but she can gear the blame toward the Populace.”
“So that’s why she used siphoning with you. She only had to take a few minutes, which you wouldn’t have noticed if it hadn’t been for me.” Kalan sounded disgusted.
I felt desperate not to vilify my entire town. “We’re not bad people. I mean, I know them all. Every single Mementi has a place in my memories. We’re . . . nice.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You’re all very polite to us, but you still don’t like us. Nice doesn’t mean a thing.”
I didn’t respond.
“Why don’t you like us, anyway?” he asked—curious, not aggressive.
I wanted to hug him for not being accusatory. I tucked my hands under my arms. Since when did I want to hug people?
“We don’t think you’re all evil or anything,” I said. “You’re just so different than us. I mean, petty theft and small-crime rates have gone up by over 75 percent with the rise of Populace in town.”
Kalan frowned. �
��You realize the non-Mementi population of the city more than doubled over the last five years. Rising crime rates are sort of inevitable, especially when most of those people are—”
Poor. Like Kalan, in his cheap t-shirt and his dead-end job and his “splurge” on cheap sushi. He wasn’t a criminal, but then he wasn’t desperate either. It wasn’t exactly the Populace’s fault they didn’t have the skills for Mementi-tailored jobs, and didn’t inherit Ascalon stock.
But nobody said they had to live here. Havendale had been built for the Mementi. For our security and prosperity, modified by our unique skills before any of them showed up. It wasn’t our fault, either, that they couldn’t biologically qualify for positions as doctors, cops, teachers, or anything else that required Mementi memories to function in our town. I pinched my mouth shut.
Kalan leaned back. “You know, you can counter me if you want.”
“Counter you?”
“Express your own opinion. You don’t have to sit there. I can tell you want to say more.”
“There’s no point in fighting about it.”
“Who said anything about fighting?” he asked.
“What I have to say contradicts what you said. We’d fight.”
“There’s a difference between a debate and a fight,” he said. “Tell me why I’m dead wrong.”
That sounded like a sure-fire way to end this possible partnership with a bang. Except he really seemed interested, the way he crossed his hands on the table and waited for me to speak. I chewed my lip.
His eyes twinkled. “I dare you.”
Twerp. “It’s about what’s behind the crime rates. It’s the biological fact of how you are. You just don’t . . . work in Havendale society, with all the Mementi-specific tech. And . . .”
I hesitated, but he looked thoughtful. “And well, our brains have adapted to process our memories more quickly. We’re more logical. You guys don’t make the same connections as fast, so your hearts jump in and make decisions before your brains understand what’s going on. It makes you more dangerous, and less . . .” I searched for a word, but nothing came.
“Less.” Kalan fiddled with the fake flower in a vase that decorated the table. “That pretty much sums it up. You think we’re less than you.”
The Unhappening of Genesis Lee Page 8
