“This all sounds really exciting, Dad, but--”
“Jill, there are people beating down the door for a chance to work with us! Starting on Monday we’ll be selling billable hours to the highest bidder until we hear from Daciana again. We’re about to make some serious, serious money.”
Jill hid her disgust. She hated the way her father said We as if anyone but Carolyn Wentworth was doing anything of value for the company.
“You all have fun,” she said. “I’ll be in my room.”
She pushed her way through the crowd and ran upstairs, pulling her door shut behind her. She sat down at her computer and tried to think about how one might track a vampire.
Two hours later, frustrated and angry, she grabbed her laptop and headed for the garage. She was unable to think with her father’s party going on. It wasn’t so much the ruckus, which could be negated with noise-canceling headphones; it was the reminder of how much she despised Walter Wentworth. If he was in the house having fun, she had to be somewhere else. Somewhere far away.
She got in her car and left. She drove past three coffee shops and the library, and considered each as a place where she might set up her laptop and get to work, but none of them seemed far enough from her father. She kept going, leaving Potomac altogether and heading for DC. Once she was in the city, a good place to work was even harder to find. It was Friday afternoon. Every coffee shop was packed with suits from downtown. It was like Capitol Hill was a giant zit that had just popped and all the dreck from inside it had spilled into the coffee shops. Yuck, yuck, yuck, I can’t work here! she thought as she went from one to another to another.
She was all the way to Columbia Heights when she forced herself to stop at a café in an old, industrial neighborhood. She pulled into the small lot between buildings and parked in the only available space. Riverwinds was the name of the shop. Jill went inside, intent on gulping down some iced coffee drink that was heavy on caramel and whipped cream before she got to work.
The Riverwinds Café seemed to take great pride in being the little guy. A sign hung above the coffee beans preaching the benefits of supporting local business. The barista at the counter had a button pinned to her apron that read “Low Prices For You & Jobs For Your Community.” With its grungy and outdated tile floor, its stained couches that would be a hard sell in a thrift store much less a coffee shop, its flickering and buzzing lights, its gigantic, messy bulletin board of local events and causes, Riverwinds practically screamed at someone like Jill to turn away. You can have your mansions in Potomac and summer homes in France but leave this place to us was the clear and unequivocal message Jill got when she walked inside.
She liked it. Finally, she felt like she was far enough from her father that she could get to work.
The café’s proprietor, a forty-something woman named Della, was like an octopus behind the counter, swinging her long, skinny arms back and forth at blistering speed to keep up with the afternoon crowd’s demand for lattes and cappuccinos.
“What can I getcha?” Della said when Jill approached the counter.
Jill ordered an Iced Caramel Velvet Breeze With Soy and Extra Whip, paying cash and leaving Della the change. She took a seat at the bar and opened her laptop.
She had only written two lines of code when her mind, and her eyes, began to drift. The people in this shop were much more interesting than the program she was supposed to write. There was a tired-looking man in a blue shirt sitting in one of the recliners and reading The Times. That newspaper alone was a nice reminder that she was out of her element. In Jill’s world, you read The Post if you read anything. The Times was for subways and buses….and local coffee shops.
Seated next to the man in the blue shirt was a pudgy guy with an unfortunate nose. Pudgy Guy really wanted to strike up a conversation, but Blue Shirt wasn’t having it. Blue Shirt was all about his paper this afternoon. Blue Shirt looked like he’d had a bad day.
Across the way, three women sat at a round table that was shored up with a big wad of newspaper under one of its legs. They were sharing stories about their teenage children, one of whom had broken his ankle in a soccer accident.
A woman in a bright yellow blouse asked if she could take the seat immediately left of Jill.
“Yes, of course,” Jill said.
Jill took a sip of her drink. She looked back at the mothers of the round table. Now they were discussing their displeasure at all the fundraising required to send their children on school trips.
“Why can’t they just stay home?” one of the women said. “We’re in Washington for goodness sakes! I thought kids raised money to come here, not get away!”
The women laughed at the silliness of it all. They were enjoying life, talking about their burdens to lessen the load. It was a good thing. These three were living the lives they were meant to lead.
Jill wondered what life she was meant to lead. Since freshman year, she’d thought her purpose was in the Network. Today she wasn’t so sure.
The memory of Nicky’s confession was still fresh in Jill’s mind.
He asked me to run away with him. He asked me to run out of the Masquerade, get in a car with him and drive.
Nicky and Ryan. Annika and Shannon. It seemed like everyone had a partner who wanted to run away with them. They didn’t want to change the world; they just wanted to leave it behind and start again someplace else, together.
Who was going to run away with Jill?
“Excuse me, is anyone sitting here?”
“No, go ahead,” Jill said.
The guy sat down with a mug of black coffee and a spiral notebook. With his left hand, he began to doodle.
Jill found her eyes drawn to the colorful tattoos on his arm. She saw intertwining snakes, or maybe dragons—they were all different colors and their heads were drawn in vivid detail. The snake-dragons swirled up and around his arm, disappearing under her shirtsleeve.
“It’s Typhon,” the guy said.
Now Jill looked up to his face and saw he was younger than the rest of the crowd here…maybe her age or a little older.
“I’m sorry, what?” she said.
“Typhon,” said the guy. He turned to her and she felt herself backing away in surprise. He had long black bangs that hung low on his face, but as he moved, the bangs parted and Jill could see his eyes. They were a vibrant, electric blue.
“Wow,” Jill said.
“Wow? Wow what?”
Wow your eyes are unlike anything I’ve ever seen, Jill wanted to say. “Wow…um…who’s Typhon?”
“From Greek mythology. The son of Gaia and Tartarus. The king of all monsters.”
Jill’s eyes drifted to the silver stud beneath the guy’s lower lip. It bobbed up and down on the word monsters.
“I’m Zack,” he said, extending his hand.
“Jill,” she said, taking it. “I’m…sorry to bother you. I didn’t mean to be looking at--”
“No, no,” Zack said. “I love this tattoo. I’m glad you were looking at it. My friend Brandon did it. It’s pretty cool, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” said Jill.
“You’re not big on tattoos, are you?”
“I don’t know,” said Jill. “I don’t…have any.”
Zack smiled at this, showing off two rows of perfect white teeth. Jill smiled back.
Although she couldn’t rightly say she’d met his type before, she felt like she knew everything she needed to know about this guy. The beautiful bad boy, able to make girls swoon with talk of his tattoo--with those crazy blue eyes this guy probably was accustomed to twenty girls following him around, and he got a kick out of sitting next to strangers and being a flirt.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” Zack said.
“I live in Potomac,” said Jill.
“Yes, I gathered that much.”
“You gathered that much? What does that mean?”
Zack laughed. “I’m sorry. That didn’t come out right. It’s just, you
look…put together.”
Jill glanced over her own outfit. She was wearing a blue and white striped shirt that hung off one shoulder and tight-fitting jeans. To her this was hardly a “put-together” sort of look.
“Are you in school somewhere?” Zack asked.
Jill nodded.
“State college?” Zack said.
Jill shook her head.
“Garrett,” said Zack. “You go to Garrett.”
“No,” said Jill. “I’m in high school.”
“Oh, okay. But you’re a senior, right?”
“Yes. I go to Thorndike.”
“Seriously?”
“Don’t act so shocked. Somebody’s gotta go there.”
“I know that,” said Zack. “It’s just…what are you…I mean—look at you. You’re slumming it at Riverwinds.”
Jill laughed. “I should let you get back to your drawing,” she said.
“No, please don’t. I only have this notebook because…well, let’s just say you’re a lot more interesting than my notebook.”
“Really?” said Jill. “What’s interesting about me?”
“Are you kidding? You’re like a total enigma. It’s fascinating.”
“An enigma?”
“Yes! You go to Thorndike, but you’re sitting here at Riverwinds, and you seem like…forgive me for saying—you seem like a normal person.”
“Thank you,” said Jill. “I think.”
“Oh, it is definitely a compliment,” said Zack. “I mean, I don’t have anything against your school and all, but I never in my life thought I’d be speaking to someone who goes there. Seriously. Thorndike. It’s like the future Presidents academy. I heard--”
He leaned in closer and spoke more quietly. “I heard that the immortals come to your school dance. Is that true?”
“It is, and you don’t have to be quiet about it,” said Jill. “Thorndike is their little playground. That’s why people pay the big bucks to go there.”
“Yes, totally,” said Zack. “May I ask, if it’s not too rude, what do your…I mean, your parents…”
“What do my parents do?”
Zack nodded vigorously, and Jill found herself giggling at his goofiness. There was something endearing about this guy, more than just his pretty eyes.
“My dad owns a software company,” she said. “And my mom is the lead programmer.”
“So you’re like…really, really, really rich, aren’t you?”
Jill shrugged her shoulders.
“Say no more. I’m being rude,” said Zack. “I shouldn’t be asking about your parents. I should be asking about you. Tell me something about yourself.”
With that line, Jill knew she was in the middle of a game this guy played with girls all the time. Tell me something about yourself, he says, then the girl, mesmerized by the blue of his eyes, starts babbling and he asks her to tell him more and she babbles some more and before you know it, he’s taking her back to his place for the score.
Not that she minded. She would know when to quit. It was nice to just sit and have fun with a guy, to do this little dance that she could have done all through high school if she hadn’t spent so much time at a computer.
“I don’t really know what to tell you,” she said. “I’m actually quite boring.”
“I don’t believe that for a second,” said Zack. “You could start by telling me what you like to do.”
“I like…”
Illegal hacking? Spying on the immortals? Being a covert agent for the resistance?
“I like hanging out with my friends,” Jill said.
“What do you guys do when you hang out?”
“What is this? Twenty questions?”
Zack laughed and again those gleaming teeth popped up. They were such a contrast to his jet black hair.
“I’m curious, that’s all,” said Zack. “You’ll find I can be like that.”
You’ll find. It was a phrase that suggested long-term interest, as in After we’ve hung out and gone on many dates and I’ve taken you to dinner and to the movies and held your hand and kissed you under the moon you’ll find I’m just a curious guy. Jill was impressed. He was good. Even as she thought about what a player he was, she couldn’t help but imagine herself sitting with him in a movie theater, holding hands, then walking outside and kissing under the moonlight.
She smiled to herself, thinking that this was exactly what she needed today. She wished she could put Zack in a bottle and take him home so that every time she felt down she could turn to him and say, “Hey, hot guy. I’m feeling blue today. Can you come hit on me for a while?”
They talked for the next hour. Jill learned that Zack graduated from Lincoln High the year before. He was nineteen. He worked for a landscaping company by day and played drums in a band by night. He described his band’s music as “a cross between epic prog and seventies punk,” to which Jill responded, “I’ll take your word for it.”
It had been so long since Jill had allowed herself the luxury of an extended flirting session that she didn’t know where it was supposed to go. Were they going to be exchanging phone numbers soon? Would he be asking her if she wanted to leave the coffee shop and go someplace together?
Her phone buzzed with an incoming text. It was from Nicky.
Where are u?
The rest of her life was calling her back. Brawl in the Fall was tonight. She was supposed to be writing a program that found and tracked Melissa Mayhew.
“Excuse me for a second,” she said to Zack. She typed a response to Nicky that said: In DC, talking to a friend.
“You know, I never could get into that,” Zack said.
“Get into what?”
“Texting.”
“Texting? What’s there to get into? You read messages people send to you and write messages back.”
“I understand the mechanics, and it’s not that I haven’t done it. It’s the content that escapes me. I see people sending messages all the time. What are they saying to each other? What’s worth saying in short, stubby sentences? If someone sends me a text, I call them back.”
At that moment, Jill’s phone buzzed again with another text from Nicky.
Rockwell Transport is giving me a limo for Brawl in the Fall tonight. Want me to pick you up?
Jill sighed.
“Bad news?” said Zack.
Terrible, Jill thought. Nicky’s texts had shaken her out of this little fantasy she got to live for the past hour, where she wasn’t a Network agent on assignment, but instead was a normal girl who could hang out in the coffee shop and talk to a cute guy.
“I have to go,” she said. She started packing her laptop.
Zack sat up straight and leaned forward, as if on alert. “You have to go?” he said. “No, we were having fun. Where do you have to go?”
He was so sincere when he spoke—could it be that this guy was genuinely interested in her? Jill had assumed that Zack was flirting with her because it was what he did, that because he was beautiful it was his habit to smooth-talk all the girls and let them fawn over him.
“I have..” Jill said, feeling flustered. She pointed at her phone, as if the answer to Zack’s question came from the text messages he so reviled.
“You have plans,” Zack said.
“Yes, I have plans.”
“How about your phone number?” Zack said. “I want to talk to you some more.”
Yes, give him your phone number, Jill thought, even as a more reasonable part of her said, “I don’t think so.”
“Email?”
Jill let out a nervous laugh. “Zack, it’s time to say goodbye. It was nice meeting you.”
He sat there for a second, watching her put her laptop away and saying nothing. When he did speak again, his voice was more quiet and reserved than it had been all evening. “Okay, Jill. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
“Maybe you will,” she said, then she turned to leave.
She yanked on the heavy door, and an electric
doorbell let out a sharp ding half a second after she stepped through.
Jill moved quickly to get to her car, which was parked at the far corner of the lot. The back bumper was all that was visible from behind the truck parked next to it. Right away she knew something was off. The bumper was sitting at an odd angle, like the ground beneath it had cracked and shifted.
She reached her car to find that both tires on the driver’s side were completely flat. Getting in closer to the rear tire, she saw a long puncture wound on its face. Someone had poked a big hunting knife in there.
“What the hell?” she said.
She walked back and forth, looking at both tires carefully, as if they were some mystery she could solve. She circled the car, looking for other damage, or at least a clue as to why this happened.
She found the clue in the bottom corner of her windshield. A little black and white sticker with a logo and a bar code. Her parking permit for the Thorndike senior lot.
This wasn’t a random act of vandalism. This was a message to Jill that she and her Mercedes with its Thorndike sticker didn’t belong here. It was an anonymous bit of anger directed at the ruling class, of which Jill was very much a member, regardless of any secret double life she led.
She called the towing service her family subscribed to. Apparently they were having a busy night.
“Friday at rush hour,” said the dispatcher on the phone. “I’ve got wrecks all over the place. Might be an hour before I get to you.”
“An hour?” Jill said. She was unaccustomed to hearing bad news from anyone who was supposed to provide her customer service. Families like the Wentworths got first class treatment wherever they went. And her initial response was to tell him to buzz off, that she’d have her driver come down with two tires and take care of this for her.
The Festival of the Moon (Girls Wearing Black: Book Two) Page 15
