Blackout

by Meredith McCardle

  “I’m game,” Colton says.

  “Sweet.” Yellow looks to the others. “And what about you guys?”

  “Are you going, Iris?” Mike asks. His tone is casual, and I can’t tell if he’s being friendly or if there’s something more there.

  Yellow jostles my shoulder, and I say, “Of course.”

  “Then count me in,” Mike says.

  “Excellent,” Yellow says. “And Paige?”

  Paige brushes a strand of curly red hair behind her ear. “I don’t know. I’m in the lottery for a fall semester Gov 94 seminar, and I’m really hoping I get my first choice—political economy. I want to get a leg up, so I think I should just stay home and read some more Iversen and Soskice tonight.”

  “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” Yellow says, which makes Colton snort. “I won’t take no for an answer.”

  There’s a shuffle of footsteps behind us as Violet and Indigo walk into the library, making small talk about some MTV show I’ll probably never watch. Abe’s right behind them, looking down at his scrambler.

  “Hey, Vi, you up for Lucky Strike tonight?” Yellow asks. “We’re doing a night with the interns. You, me, and Iris.”

  Violet stops talking midsentence and says something to Yellow, but I don’t hear. Because I’m looking right at Abe. He looks from Colton to Mike to me and back to Mike. It’s subtle, but his expression sours.

  Later, I mouth to him, and he nods and looks down.

  Yellow links her arm with Violet’s and pulls her over to the stacks of banker’s boxes lining the far wall. “It’s a date then.”

  But as soon as her back is to the interns, Yellow’s facade crumbles. Her shoulders slump and her head drops to her chest.

  There’s a knock on my door a little after eight thirty that night. I hop off the bed to open it, but then Yellow barges in, Violet right behind her. Yellow hugs her makeup bag to her chest.

  “Your turn,” she announces. “I just finished Violet.”

  Violet holds her hands to her face, framing it. “I’m stripped-down, nineties Naomi Campbell.”

  “I have no idea what that means.” I’m underdressed in jeans and a Yoda T-shirt. Violet has on white cropped pants and a flowy, lavender tank top. Her short hair has deep-purple lowlights at the nape of her neck. Yellow’s paired a denim blazer with a black-and-white striped dress that’s so short, I’m not sure how she’s supposed to sit in it. Her blonde hair is pulled back into a high bun, and she has on thick black eyeliner, light-pink blush, and mauve lipstick. Her eyebrows somehow look darker and thicker.

  “And I went with Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” she announces. “Sit. We’re all going vintage tonight, and you’re finally going to let me do Liz Taylor. A cat eye would look absolutely amazing on you.”

  “I’m already wearing makeup.”

  Yellow squints and leans in so she’s about two inches from my face. “Where? I know you’re not talking about that nude eye shadow and”—she sniffs—“cherry lip balm.”

  “Yellow,” I say softly. “You can drop the act around us. I know this investigation is really hard on you.”

  Violet doesn’t say anything. She picks at a chip in her nail polish.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Yellow says. She won’t look at me.

  “It’s really hard to watch you put on this show day after day when—”

  “When the only thing I can think about is whether I’ll ever see my dad again? Yeah, I know.” She hugs her makeup bag tighter, like someone’s trying to steal it. “Because you’re right. It is all I can think about. It’s on my mind as soon as I wake up in the morning, and it’s with me the entire day. All day, every day, Iris. And especially at night. When the sun goes down, all I can think is that my dad’s not just being held somewhere. He’s being tortured in a dark, dank cell, or he’s already decomposing in a shallow grave with a bullet in his head.

  “And the only thing that’s keeping me from having a complete mental breakdown is this act, or whatever you called it. Makeup, clothes, stupid gossip. It’s all meaningless crap, and it’s what I need right now. Okay?”

  “I’m so sorry, Yellow. I . . . yes. Okay.”

  “Now sit down and let me do a damn cat eye.”

  Everyone’s silent for a moment, but then Violet breaks the tension. She lets out a giggle that’s completely inappropriate but also so perfect.

  I sidestep Yellow and grab my favorite khaki messenger bag, then sling it over my head. “Sorry. Put your liquid liner away for another day. We’re going to be late.”

  It’s a few minutes after nine when we walk into Lucky Strike. The place is packed for a Monday night, but Colton is easy to spot. There’s a tall Secret Service agent hovering by the bar, and a gaggle of college-age girls a few feet away. Sure enough, we find Colton standing in the middle of them, dressed in designer jeans, leather loafers, and a shirt that I assume cost more than an average mortgage payment.

  “Oh, hey,” he says, his eyes trained on Yellow. The music is so loud that he has to yell. He pushes away from his groupies and sidles up next to her. It’s like he doesn’t even see me or Violet.

  “Where’s everyone else?” Violet yells.

  Colton jerks his head toward the bowling lanes and grabs ahold of Yellow’s wrist. “Come on, I have a table.” He leads her toward a curved leather booth, and she lets herself be led. She looks back at me and winks. I know that going undercover involves playing along, which sometimes means making yourself seem weak and submissive. But damn if I don’t have a hard time with that. Especially when Colton Caldwell is involved.

  Mike catches my eye and waves. He and Paige are set up on the far left lane. Perfect. Away from the crowd a bit. There are red paper lanterns and blue lights hanging over the lanes, and thankfully the music is a little lower over in this corner.

  “Hey!” Mike calls. He’s changed into jeans and a T-shirt and already has on red-and-blue bowling shoes.

  “I’ll get us shoes,” Violet says. “Eight, right?”

  “Yep.” I pull my bag over my head and set it next to Paige, who hasn’t changed since this morning. Her white dress shirt is perfectly unwrinkled, as if she ran home after work to iron it. She nods a polite hello at me.

  “How’s it going?” Mike asks, and that’s when I notice his shirt. It’s dark gray with white lettering that reads “Whenever You’re Having a Bad Day, Just Imagine a T. rex Making a Bed” and has a picture in the middle of a T. rex facedown on a mattress.

  “So what’s with you and T. rexes?” I ask.

  He looks down at his shirt and smiles. “I just think it’s hilarious. They’re supposed to be these ferocious killers, right? But then they have these tiny little baby arms that make them seem as adorable as kittens. I mean, try to imagine a T. rex using a fork and knife.” He pulls his arms close to his chest and mimics it. “Hilarious.”

  I laugh. And not just a polite laugh, but a full laugh that makes my stomach hurt. The kind of laugh normally reserved for adventure bodywash, which makes me stop.

  “So, are you any good at bowling?” I ask.

  “Nope. You?”

  “Nope.”

  Paige takes the seat at the computer and starts typing in our names. “Are we playing or what?”

  Violet comes back with the shoes and gravitates toward Paige. It’s part of our game plan. We each get one of the interns alone and try to see what we can find out. Mike is my assignment, but it’s not like I can just come out and ask him if he’s disclosing our secrets to anyone, so I figure natural conversation is the best bet. Still, I have to keep reminding myself I’m here to do a job. Talking with Mike is just so . . . easy. So natural.

  “Good one,” he says after I make my seventh gutter ball in a row. He jostles my shoulder with his, like Abe would do.

  The mole, I repeat in my head. You’re here to find out if he’s supplying information to his defense secretary grandfather.

  “So tell me a l
ittle bit about your family,” I blurt, then cringe. Smooth.

  Mike sits down next to me. Paige and Violet are lined up at the ball return. “Well,” he says, “you know who my grandfather is, and I’m pretty sure you know I have two moms.” I nod. “And my résumé told you I grew up in Manhattan, so what else do you want to know?”

  I shrug and tell myself to play it cool. “I just like getting to know the people I work with. So tell me something I don’t know.”

  He leans back. “Something you don’t know . . . Hmm. Do you know why my last name is Baxter?”

  I nod. “After one of your moms. The one who works in finance.” Layla Baxter, the one Bonner referred to as a renowned venture capitalist. I looked her up after Bonner told me that. Turns out she’s one of the only high-powered, female venture capitalists in the world. She’s worth more than a billion dollars, 99 percent of which she’s already pledged to charity. His other mother works for a nonprofit that provides vaccines in third-world countries.

  “After both of my moms, actually,” Mike says. “Back when they had a commitment ceremony—almost thirty years ago—they decided that they both would change their name. Partly because they wanted the same name and neither of them wanted to hyphenate, and partly for professional reasons. My mom Victoria is the pacifist, hippie type, and the Howe name doesn’t get you far in that crowd. My other mom, Layla?” He pauses. “When she was just starting out in the financial world, things were different. Women in general had a hard time breaking in, but a woman with an ethnic last name like Teremun? Forget it. So they picked a new name.”

  “Like . . . out of the phone book?”

  A grin spreads across his face. “Nope. It was the name of a shelter dog they’d adopted and recently lost to cancer. A mutt who was already named Baxter when they got him.”

  “Huh” is all I can think of to say. None of this was in the article I read.

  Mike laughs. “Yep, I’m named after a dog. Bet that’s something you didn’t know. I don’t think that story’s common knowledge because, you know, it’s a little weird.”

  “I think it’s sweet,” I say. And that’s the truth. It’s a sweet story, and it’s making me feel a little weird because I doubt it’s the kind of story Mike tells a lot of people. It feels personal. Intimate.

  “What about you? Any pets?” he asks.

  “Yeah, one. A dog. Dos.”

  “Dose? Like medicine?”

  “No, dos, like the number two in Spanish. It’s . . .” I’m not sure how much to disclose. “The dog’s name is actually Malarkey the Second, hence the dos.”

  “What happened to Malarkey the First?”

  “Malarkey was my dad’s dog,” I say before I can stop myself. “He died a few years after my dad died, and my mom rushed out the very next day and went to, like, four different shelters until she found a dog that looked exactly like Malarkey. Then she brought him home and gave him the same name.” And then I do stop myself. I don’t have a memory of this—I was too young—but it’s still bringing back feelings I don’t want right now. Sadness and bitterness, and a whole bunch of things I’d like to avoid. Besides, these days, the dog lives with our neighbor, Mrs. McNamara, most of the time.

  Mike’s leg brushes mine. I look down. He’s moved closer to me. “I didn’t know your dad died. When?”

  “I was a baby.” My stomach tightens.

  “What—”

  “He was a Navy SEAL.” The lie slips off my tongue. “Working overseas. I don’t have too many details. It’s pretty classified.”

  Mike’s knee inches closer, and his hand grazes my wrist, and this is wrong. All wrong. I look up and catch Yellow’s eye at the bar. Her eyebrows have shot to the sky, and she jerks her head toward the restroom.

  I spring up. “I’ll be right back.” Then I look over at Violet. “Bathroom?”

  She drops her purple ball onto the rack. “Definitely.”

  When we’re firmly entrenched inside the ladies’ room, Yellow grabs onto my arm. “Sorry, are we interrupting your date?”

  “My . . . what?”

  “Oh, come on, I’ve watched you flirt with him for the past twenty minutes.”

  I cross my arms over my chest. “I was not flirting with him. I was getting to know him, which, you know, is the whole point of this thing.”

  Violet smooths a few strands of hair while looking in the mirror. “Oh, please. I was standing right there. You were absolutely flirting with him.”

  “I have a boyfriend. I was not flirting. And besides”—I shoot a glance in Yellow’s direction—“pot calling the kettle black, much?”

  Yellow pulls out a tube of lipstick and dabs light pink on her lips. “Oh, I definitely was flirting with Colton. The difference is, I was doing it intentionally and with zero feeling behind it.”

  “There’s no feeling behind what I was doing either!” As I say it, I know that’s not the hundred percent truth, and I don’t know how I feel about that. Guilty? Not guilty? Somewhere in between?

  “So you admit you were flirting then? Finally,” Yellow says with a smirk, and Violet shakes her head with a telling smile on her face.

  I grab both of their arms and guide them toward the door. “Can we focus, please? XP. Chances are, one of the three people out there is related to someone who knows more than they’re letting on. So let’s focus.”

  “I’m not the one who’s lacking focus,” Yellow says. “But I think it’s a good idea for us to switch targets. I’ll take Paige.”

  Violet nods. “I guess I’m with Mike, then.”

  Ugh. Colton.

  When we return, Mike is still down at the lane, but Paige has joined Colton at the table. I take a breath and slide in next to Colton while Yellow scoots next to Paige. Colton doesn’t take his eyes off Yellow.

  “So tell me something, Colton. How is it that you haven’t wound up on the front page of the newspapers yet?”

  Colton’s head snaps to me. “Huh?”

  I plant the biggest smile I can muster on my face as I tilt my head toward the Heineken bottle he’s holding. “Vice President’s Son Arrested for Underage Drinking at Local Bar.”

  He laughs, even though it wasn’t really a joke. “Yeah, well, last I checked, you had to be eighteen to get in here, so looks like I’m not the only one with a fake ID in this place.”

  I make myself keep smiling. “The only difference is, the government issued mine.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Not a chance.”

  And then neither of us say anything. Yellow and Paige are talking about the University of Pennsylvania for some reason, and I’m trying to think of how to ply Colton for information. He’s not even looking at me. He’s scanning the bar behind us, staring at all the pretty girls and winking at them. Really. Actually winking at them.

  “Look, I know you don’t like me, so I’m not even sure why you’re over here.”

  I sit up straight. “Excuse me?” I have to shout to be heard over the music.

  Colton turns to me. He really is attractive, which annoys me to no end. He has a strong jawline and chiseled cheekbones, and honey-brown eyes that twinkle. But it’s also obvious that he knows just how attractive he is.

  “I said, I know you don’t like me. So tell me, what did I ever do to you?” The soft Texas drawl comes out.

  “Honestly?” I glance at Yellow across the table, and she slowly shakes her head. “It’s not that I don’t like you, Colton. It’s that you’re not exactly taking your job seriously this summer, so I’m not quite sure what to think of you.”

  “Taking my job seriously? For real? It’s a BS job. I thought you would understand that.” He huffs. “Look, I know that my mom got me the internship as a résumé builder, and I know that the entire organization is annoyed that we’re there. Hell, you probably think we’re spying on you or something.”

  The comment knocks me over like a rogue wave, but I don’t change my expression.

  “But really, I don’t want to hav
e anything to do with politics. I grew up in politics. I know it’s not for me. I don’t want any of this on my résumé. Just like I know you don’t want any of us there this summer. I figured I’d just stay out of your way, and when the summer is over, we’ll never have to see each other again.”

  I’m silent for a moment, and the sound of pins knocking against wooden lanes fills my ears. What Colton said actually makes sense, and I hate to admit it. “So what do you want to do, then, if not politics?”

  He shrugs. “I really like music, so I figured maybe I’d get a job at Rolling Stone.”

  “Yeah, and I really like photography, so I figured I’d go get a job at National Geographic.”

  Yellow snorts across the table, but Colton misses it. “Ah, cool, you like photography? I have a Mark III my dad got me last Christmas that I have no idea how to use, so maybe you could show me—”

  I hold up a hand. “I don’t know anything about photography. It was a joke. You’re just . . . the most entitled person I’ve ever met, and I don’t think you even realize it. You just assume that because you like music you could get a job at the most influential music magazine in the world?”

  Colton shrugs and stretches his arm up over the back of the booth, over my shoulders. I think he does it to make me feel small. “You’re probably right. I am entitled. But I’m also extremely well connected.”

  Yellow kicks me under the table. XP, she mouths.

  “Speaking of being well connected,” I say, knocking Colton’s arm off the booth, “let’s talk about your mom a little bit.”

  “Ugh. Let’s not.” Colton picks up the beer bottle and swigs the last sip, then sets it down with a clunk. He pushes me out of the booth as he slides past me. “I’m tired.” He nods to the Secret Service agent, still lingering at the bar, who nods back. “See you in the morning. Paige, you hanging around?”

  Paige sets down the water she’s sipping. “No. I have so much reading to do.” Yellow stands up to let her by and then looks at me with a frown.

  “Baxter!” Colton shouts over the music. “Let’s bounce!”