by Harrison, S.
There’s a quiet beep and steps instantly form into a descending staircase. She walks down them and is soon gone from sight. The opening molds over with earth again and we’re alone.
Ryan walks over to me. “Wow. How freaking amazing is this place?!” He grabs my hand. “How are you feeling?”
“Um, I’m OK,” I say. The truth is, my face feels suddenly hot.
“I asked the Professor if I could stay behind with Betty to check if you were OK. He and the tour guide took the others to the center to get them out of the way, and said they’d wait for us there.”
“It’s Bettina, not Betty,” her voice pipes up from behind him. “And Finn doesn’t like to be touched.”
Ryan looks down at our hands. “Oh,” he says, letting go. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s OK, really.” I almost stammer the words, not knowing where to look.
“I think we should go. Here’s your bag, Finn,” Bit says, shoving my shoulder satchel into my hands. “I don’t wanna miss anything good.” Her eyes throw daggers at Ryan as she huffs down the white-tile path curving off into the jungle.
With Bit leading the way, we set off along the path through the rainforest. Brightly colored butterflies flit from leaf to leaf beside us as we go. Howler monkeys bellow down at us from the branches overhead. There are rustling and crunching sounds in the undergrowth all around us. I never imagined a jungle could be so beautiful and so noisy all at the same time. Ryan is gazing open-mouthed at our surroundings, obviously enthralled by it all.
“Hey,” I say. “Thanks for catching me . . . y’know, when I fell.”
“You’re welcome,” he says smiling, his eyes holding my gaze. He is seriously gorgeous. I can’t stop myself from smiling back.
“Hey, can I ask you a question, Finn?”
“Sure.”
“What do you think of this place so far?”
“It’s amazing.”
“What do you think of that Richard Blackstone guy?”
My stomach twists. “What do you mean?”
“Everyone knows that he’s a total shut-in. He never goes outside, ever. Even when he’s on TV, it’s always a video interview deal. Don’t you think it’s weird?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it much.” Single biggest fib ever.
“Well, I think he’s crazy,” Ryan says, circling his finger around at his temple. “If he had any kids, they would probably be crazy, too.”
I look sideways at Ryan. He’s looking at the ground. Does he know something about me that he shouldn’t? Whether he does or not, this topic is getting a little too specific and insulting for me.
“Most of the billion-dollar brats I’ve met are a sandwich and some cake short of a picnic,” I say venomously. “Arrogant, overprivileged, badly parented idiots. You’re probably no different yourself.”
Ryan smiles. “I think I’m pretty normal considering I was raised mostly by servants.”
That strikes a chord deep down. “Really? Me too.”
“My dad is Travis Forrester. Have you heard of him?”
“Yeah, Forrester Aerospace, right?”
“Yeah. When I was little, my mom died and my dad married a supermodel. She doesn’t like kids, so from the age of four to seven I was homeschooled while they traveled the world. Then I was sent to any expensive military training school that would take me. So far I’ve been kicked out of nine.”
“Wow. Not an ‘A’ student then,” I say with a smile.
Ryan chuckles and shakes his head. “Nope. I learned how to fly a plane but I just never quite got the hang of keeping out of trouble. Daddy would be soooo proud.”
“Sorry to hear about your mother,” I say honestly. “Mine died when I was a baby.”
Ryan looks a little surprised. “I’m sorry, too. Sucks, right?”
I nod in agreement.
“Sometimes I wish I was a normal kid. Anyone but a Forrester. With a normal family and an ordinary dad.”
I can see the sadness in Ryan’s eyes. It’s the same familiar kind of sadness I’ve seen so many times in the mirror. To my surprise, I find myself reaching across the path and curling my fingers gently around his.
He turns and smiles and softly squeezes my hand. “I guess we’ve got a lot in common, Finn Brogan.” Deep inside I melt just a little.
Bit stops in the middle of the path and spins around. My hand whips back to my side. “Boohoo, at least you both have dads. My mom raised me by herself; I don’t even know who my dad is!”
“Who’s your mom, Betty?” asks Ryan.
Bit’s brow crinkles angrily; she pushes her glasses firmly onto the bridge of her nose and plants her hands on her hips, jutting her elbows out in defiant angles. “For the last time, my name is Bettina Otto. Not Betty.”
“Sorry,” Ryan says, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “Oh wait, your mom must be Katherine Otto. She owns the second-biggest tech company in the world.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Bit replies with an angry tone that I’ve never heard from her before. “Always second to Blackstone,” she says, glancing at me. “Story of my life,” she mutters as she turns back onto the path and storms off ahead of us.
“Whoa! What was all that about?” asks Ryan.
“Ah . . . she must really be annoyed that you got her name wrong,” I reply with the first lame made-up excuse that comes to mind.
Ryan shrugs his shoulders. “I heard you both talking at lunch yesterday. I honestly thought Bit was short for Betty.”
“Eavesdropping on our conversations, Mr. Forrester? That’s a little creepy, don’t you think?”
Ryan smiles. “I just wanted to know what your name was.”
A cloud of butterflies takes flight in my stomach. “Really?”
“Yes. Really,” Ryan says with that cute, crooked grin of his. “And now I’ve pissed off your best friend. This is not going as well as I would have liked.”
“I’m sure she’ll get over it. And it’s not going as badly as you think.”
“Oh, really?”
I just smile and keep my eyes on the path.
“So . . . um, Bit is short for Bettina? I’m making sure I get this right.”
“Kinda. Bit is actually taken from the online name she uses. ‘8-bit.’ Her real last name, Otto, means ‘eight,’ and ‘bit’ is like a computer bit. She’s forgotten more about computers than I’ll ever know. Bettina Otto is an amazing gamer, and an even better hacker.”
“No way.”
“Yep. You better be careful; Bit could erase your life with just a few keystrokes,” I say with a cheeky grin.
Ryan suddenly looks a little nervous.
“Just kidding,” I say quickly.
Ryan smiles and breathes a tiny sigh of relief, but I’m actually not kidding. She’s really that good. In fact, just last year, hacking was exactly how she found out who I really am. It seems that even Onix can’t make a fake identity good enough to fool Bit for very long. I swear one time I woke up in the middle of the night and saw her staring at her computer slate as code spilled onto the screen. It looked like she was typing with her mind. She can’t have been; I know it’s ridiculous, and, considering my relative lack of computer expertise compared to Bit, I could totally be wrong—but cross my heart, that’s what it looked like.
We follow the path the rest of the way in silence. Soon we are distracted from the rainforest noises by sounds of a different kind. There’s a loud crack, and then what sounds like a huge crowd cheering.
The path curves around a thick clump of trees and ends at a tall blue wall with an open doorway, a tangled curtain of jungle vines hanging over it. Through the gaps in between them, I can see movement. Is that Brody? Ryan pushes his arms through the vines, spreads them aside, and we step out of the dappled shadows of the jungle and into bright
sunshine.
With only two words, Ryan describes out loud exactly how I feel—two words I would have said myself if Jonah hadn’t raised me not to swear. Inexplicably, stretching out high and wide before us, are tall gleaming grandstands filled with thousands of people surrounding the perfectly manicured grass of a full-sized baseball stadium. I look behind us and the door is still there, vines hanging just on the other side of it, but it’s as if we’ve just walked through a portal and arrived in an entirely different country.
A little way in the distance, Brody is jogging from second base to third, waving to the crowd as an entire baseball team in the outfield watches him go, hands on their hips and disgruntled looks on all their faces. “HOME RUN” flashes in huge capital letters on a giant screen above the scoreboard on the other side of the stadium. He taps his foot on third base and jogs around to home base. He jumps on home plate and bows to the crowd, which erupts into even louder cheers and applause.
“Let’s go,” Ryan says excitedly and jogs off across the field toward Brody. I follow right behind him. As we get closer I spot everyone else, including Bit, who seems to be avoiding eye contact with me, sitting on wooden benches under the low roof of the dugout. They’re listening to a man talk. He’s wearing a pale-blue jacket over a crisp, white collared shirt, red tie, and black pants, and has sandy-blond hair so thick with gel it almost looks like a plastic-molded wig.
“This is so cool!” Ryan says, high-fiving Brody.
“Yeah it is!” he replies joyfully.
I join the boys and walk down the steps into the dugout.
“Ah, here she is,” the man in the jacket says, holding a hand out in my direction. “I hope you’re feeling better, Miss Brogan?”
I nod at him.
“Oh, that is good. Anyway, my name is Percy Blake and I will be your tour guide today. How did that home run feel, Brody?” Percy asks.
“It was awesome,” Brody says with a wide grin.
“Good, I’m glad you enjoyed it.” Percy beams a huge, gleaming, white-toothed smile.
Brody, Ryan, and I walk past the others and bunch together on the far end of one of the benches.
“What did we miss?” Ryan whispers.
“Percy asked us to think of something we’ve always wanted to see or do. I said hit a home run against the Tokyo Katanas and he made all this appear. Before that, Dean asked for a T. rex and one totally burst out of the jungle; it was roaring and stomping around like it was real! I think Miss Cole almost crapped herself.”
“Whoa,” Ryan marvels, staring into the rainforest. “How can they fit a whole stadium in here?” he asks quietly. “The dome was big, but not big enough for a jungle and the whole of Kyosho Stadium.”
“I dunno,” Brody says with a dopey look on his face. “But it’s awesome.”
“Shhhh,” Miss Cole hisses at them from farther along the line.
“Righty-o!” announces Percy. “Now that we’re all here, I can fill you in on what we will be seeing and doing today at Blackstone Technologies!” Percy waves his arms in a wide sweeping motion like the ringmaster of a three-ring circus. “If you would all be so kind as to follow me to the conference area.”
“C’mon everyone,” chips in Professor Francis and we all stand, looking from side to side, wondering which way to go. Percy turns, walks up the short steps of the dugout, and out into the middle of the baseball diamond. We follow in a muddled group behind him.
“Computer. Dissolve stadium display gamma one,” Percy commands. There’s an echoing tone of acknowledgment, and, with that now-familiar hissing sound, the baseball diamond, the bases, the players, and the bat that Brody left on the field all melt down into the grass. Even the grass itself is sucked into the ground. Miss Cole jumps from one foot to the other, screeching like a little girl as the grass disappears from under her feet, and everyone, including me, can’t help laughing.
The crowds in the stands, the stands themselves, the scoreboard, and the sunny blue sky overhead all flicker, then vanish into darkness like someone has thrown a switch and turned off the world. Spots of blue light blink on, forming a wide circle around the edge of the dark clearing, and I notice that a shiny gray tile floor is now where the grass used to be. The whole place is dark—not so dark that you can’t see, but the same kind of dark it goes in a theater just before the movie starts. It’s eerily quiet. Even the jungle is silent.
Some of the ambient light from the blue circles reflects off the high black curve of the dome. They must have closed it after I passed out. If I didn’t know it was daylight outside the dome, I would swear it was the middle of the night. It appears that the blue sky I saw just a few seconds ago over the field, the same blue sky that I saw peeking through the treetops on the walk through the jungle, was actually some kind of projection on the wall of the dome. That explains the stadium, too. They weren’t real; they were merely 3-D illusions on a screen. An amazing, hyper-realistic picture—but only a picture. Is anything here real?
“Computer,” Percy announces. “Conference table construct beta.”
There’s that familiar tone again, and a bright light flicks on from somewhere overhead, shining down in a wide circle. Four glowing red patches suddenly appear on the floor, painting themselves into lines at our feet. They quickly meet at the corners, forming the outline of a large rectangle beneath us. One by one, shorter red lines draw themselves and connect into squares down the long edges of the rectangle. After a few seconds there are fifteen red squares, eight on one side of the red rectangle and seven on the other.
“Everyone please stand outside the red lines,” says Percy.
Everyone obeys and steps back. As soon as we do, a shiny white conference table rises up from inside the red rectangle and stops at waist height. It’s closely followed by fifteen high-backed chairs that form up from the squares like wax reverse-melting, one chair oozing up from the floor for each of us.
“Please take a seat, everyone,” says Percy.
With a few amused giggles and assorted looks of wonder, people begin sliding chairs toward them and sitting down. I look over at Bit; she’s standing by the edge of the conference table. She still seems annoyed at me for some reason. A reason that I suspect involves Ryan. Sometimes I forget how sensitive Bit can be, and I did kinda ignore her back there in the jungle. I decide to extend an olive branch. I pull a chair out for her and nod toward it. Her sullen expression softens and she sulkily traipses over, plops herself down, and gives me a little smile. I grin at her and take my seat beside her. Ryan sits next to me. Karla Bassano chooses a seat directly across from him and slides seductively into her chair, staring at him like they’re the only two people in the room.
Ick.
“Good,” Percy says, walking to the head of the table. “Before we officially begin the tour, we must attend to a few formalities. If you would all be so kind as to put all your electronic devices on the table.” Almost immediately, worried looks appear on most of the faces in the group.
Margaux looks at Percy with an expression like she’s sucking on a sour lemon-drop. “Excuse me? No one takes my phone. If that’s what you’re thinking of doing, then you can forget it.”
Percy smiles warmly. “I assure you, your phone will be quite safe. Blackstone Technologies has many ongoing projects that I’m sure our competitors would love to have a sneak peek at. We can’t risk anything leaking out before it’s ready, now, can we? I know that none of you good people would ever think of doing such a despicable thing, but I’m afraid it’s our policy to collect all electronic devices before a tour commences.”
“All of you, please put your phones and computer slates on the table; you too, Miss Pilfrey,” Professor Francis says wearily.
Margaux crosses her arms and points her expensive nose defiantly into the air.
From everyone except Margaux there’s shuffling in bags and taps and clatters of phones and c
omputer slates on the table. I fish through my satchel, retrieve my phone, and lay it down in front of me. Jonah got it for me for Christmas a couple of years ago, so it’s way out of date compared to everyone else’s. It’s a little embarrassing that everyone here, even the Professor, has the latest-model Blackstone Jett 10, and I, the daughter of the man who owns the company, have this crappy old Jett 8.
“What the hell is that thing?” a voice says from across the table. I look up and see Brent Fairchild pointing in my direction. I’m prepared for this. I don’t seek that moron’s approval. So I have an old holophone, big deal. Get with the teasing, Brent, and move on.
He laughs mockingly. “Is that a Zortzi 4?”
That’s when I notice that he’s not pointing at my old phone. He’s pointing at Bit’s. Her face turns beet red as she tries to cover it with her Blackstone computer slate.
“Yeah, so what,” she mumbles quietly.
“It’s lame, that’s what,” Brent whispers cruelly. “Just like the third-rate company that made it.”
Bit turns away, obviously hurt.
“Oh wait, doesn’t your mother’s company make those?”
“Shut up, Brent,” I seethe.
Brent leans forward and whispers with treacle-dipped sarcasm. “Sorry, didn’t mean to offend. They really are pretty decent.”
I touch Bit’s elbow to see if she’s OK. She ignores Brent, looks at me, and we share a little smile.
“Except for the name . . .” Brent whispers, and our smiles vanish. “. . . Zortzi 4? Sounds like some kind of skin abscess.”
“Hey Brent . . . what’s a Zortzi 4?” whispers Brody, and Brent shrugs. “Wiping your ass with.”
Brody grins like it’s the cleverest thing he’s ever said, which, sadly, it probably is. Brent offers up a covert fist bump as they both snicker quietly like the idiots they are.
“Shut your mouths . . . or I’ll shut them for you,” I growl.
Brent raises his eyebrows. “Gorgeous and fiery?” The same lecherous look that he reserves for his swooning lacrosse groupies oozes onto his face. “Tell me, Finn, how can it be possible that you and I have never hooked up?”
