Exposed

by RJ Crayton

  It was just another reminder of how desolate their situation was. They had only themselves to rely on.

  Elaan tried to remain cheery throughout dinner. Despite comparing Josh to his father, her mother was quite chatty and overly solicitous with Josh. It made Elaan wonder if this was a “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” situation. Her mother didn’t seem like the conniving type. Well, the mother she thought she knew wasn’t conniving. This mother had faked her death, lied to her children, and lived under the radar for several months. Maybe this Shonda was that type.

  After dinner, they all pitched in cleaning up, and then Shonda went to the computer to examine the data her father had sent. She suggested Amadu show them his stereo fix and play some music.

  Elaan was trying to keep an open mind toward Amadu. She could ostensibly still see that he was an attractive guy, but she’d taken an immediate dislike to him once she thought her mother was sleeping with him. However, her mother said she wasn’t, and Amadu hadn’t been particularly affectionate in the few interactions she’d seen. Elaan decided to try to view Amadu the way she’d viewed her mother’s teaching assistants, who occasionally came over to the house: as just part of the package of having a mom who’s a professor. Amadu was part of the package of Mom in a world turned upside down.

  Amadu was friendly enough. He showed Elaan and Josh the stereo and the CDs that went along with it. A lot of the CDs were actual albums, but a half dozen were burned CDs with hand-scrawled labels. Those had newer songs on them, ones Elaan was more inclined to listen to. “Want to Whip and Nae Nae?” she asked Josh with a grin.

  “What if I just want to Nae Nae?” he responded, grinning back at them.

  “Personally, I like to Superman,” Amadu added, in his thick Ghanaian accent. Elaan laughed at his joke. She could see why her mother liked Amadu. He was quiet and contemplative, yet still fun, popping into the conversation at exactly the right moment with something humorous. Something that showed he was familiar with the Silento song, as it featured several dance names, including the Whip, the Nae Nae, the Bop, and the Superman.

  Elaan glanced at Josh. He wasn’t smiling. Apparently, he didn’t find Amadu’s sentiment remotely amusing.

  “So, how did you come to be staying here?” Josh asked.

  “I was living nearby and ran into Shonda. We had some trouble with looters at my place, and we thought it best to team up. She invited me to stay here, and given how lonely it is trying to survive by yourself, I jumped at the invitation.”

  Elaan nodded. “Mom said you’re a student at one of the universities here.”

  “U of I,” he replied. “The Urbana/Champaign campus.”

  “And you were studying engineering, but it took you a month to fix the stereo?” Josh asked.

  Whoa! That was a Kingston Wells thing to say. Elaan stared at Josh. Her mother couldn’t be right, could she?

  “Chemical engineering student,” Amadu said. He smiled when he spoke, but his eyes flashed anger. “So, yes, it took me longer than I would have liked. But I did have to hunt for a few parts from other appliances around the house.”

  Elaan wanted to ease the tension, so she quickly popped in the homemade CD, and the first chords of Silento’s song beckoning people to Whip and Nae Nae began to play.

  “I’ve had a long day,” Amadu said loud enough to be heard over the music. “I’m going to bed. Goodnight, Elaan,” he said, smiling at her. He simply turned and nodded to Josh.

  Elaan had an urge to tell Amadu he needn’t run off, but Josh was being a bit of a jerk, so it was probably for the best. She wasn’t sure why he was in such a bad mood, but she didn’t want to delve deeply right now. There was music. Not bad music. She and Josh listened to a few songs. Elaan even danced a little, just to feel like life was a little bit normal. She convinced Josh to join her for a couple of songs, but then his expression soured, and he sat down. At a lull between songs, she said, “Hey, can I talk to you?”

  He nodded and they left the living room and went back to Josh’s room. Given the room’s limited furniture, Elaan headed to the only seating option available: the bunk bed. Josh closed the bedroom door and then joined her on the lower bunk.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  She took in a short breath and tried to calm her demeanor. “What’s going on with you?” She hoped not to sound judgmental, but wanted and answer.

  He shrugged, smiled, and said, “Nothing, I’m fine.”

  She shook her head. “You basically accused Amadu of being some kind of liar or charlatan, which is so not cool. I admit I wasn’t that keen on him when we arrived, but he’s been nothing but nice to us.”

  He dipped his head in apology. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll apologize to him in the morning. I’m just in...I don’t know. I just feel a little out of place, and I took it out on him. I won’t do it again.”

  She put a hand on Josh’s shoulder. “Out of place?” she asked, unsure what he meant.

  Josh took a deep breath. “It’s been a long journey, and the whole time our goal was to get here. That was what we were focused on. I just thought we’d have peace or happiness or just information, when we got here. But, we don’t have any of that. Your mother’s as clueless about what happened as we are. And I don’t know what we’re going to do now. I mean, in the compound, our fathers were trying to find a vaccine, something to make people better. We were waiting for that. Once we left, we were trying to find safety, away from the government. What is there now that we’re here? Is this really safety? And how long can we hole up here? And Amadu stares at me, watches me. I feel like he doesn’t trust me. And your mother doesn’t like me at all. I’m feeling just a little bit lost, and I took it out on Amadu. I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”

  Elaan couldn’t help feeling awed. What Josh said to her was amazingly perceptive and accurate. They were here, but now what? Besides eating home-cooked meals, what were they supposed to do? Were they safe? And how had he known? How had he figured out that her mother didn’t like him?

  “Why do you think my mom doesn’t like you?”

  “It’s the way she talks to me. Very chatty, very friendly, sorta, but something about it feels off, like she’s testing me, trying to figure out who I am. Like she doesn’t believe the truth of what I’m telling her. It’s like she plans to keep asking me questions until I slip up. It’s the kind of thing my mother would do.”

  The implication was there. “The kind of thing your mother would do as a spy?”

  “As a human being who wanted knowledge, but yes, also as a spy. There are general techniques to use when talking to people to gain their trust. Certain things you insert into conversation, a general friendliness you need to muster, but you also can just be genuine. People like genuineness.”

  Elaan realized her mouth was hanging open. “How do you know all this?”

  “Do you know what percentage of the population has an eidetic memory?”

  Elaan shook her head.

  “Two percent,” he said. “Do you think that a spy with a kid who’s eidetic doesn’t consider what that kid could do if he were a spy?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I never really thought about it.”

  He laughed. “Well, maybe it wasn’t a desire to see me as a spy. Perhaps it was a simple desire to make sure that if things got weird, if we had to change identities or travel someplace that I would always fit in. Even before she told me what she did, she always had advice on reading people, on adapting to situations, on ways to tell if people were lying, on ways to fit in quickly in a new situation. It was easy enough stuff to learn, and she’d practice with me, coach me. She was good at it, better than me or my father. She used to tell my dad ways to get along better, but he has a bit of a stubborn streak, so he wouldn’t listen. And, on some level, I think he liked being the guy to buck against the norm. He liked being different. But, I know when people are testing me and your mother is.”

  Elaan wasn’t sure what to say
to that. He’d probably assessed her mother correctly. Shonda had admitted she wasn’t keen on Josh, so it wasn’t a stretch to think she was testing him. “She’s my mom,” Elaan said. “We’ve been traveling alone for days. I think she just wants to make sure you’re as nice as I think you are.” She glanced down at her lap, debating whether to say the next part, but then chose to go ahead. “Plus, she knows your father, and I don’t think she liked him that much. She probably just wants to make sure you’re more like your mother than your father.”

  He sighed, nodded. “Maybe,” he said.

  Elaan leaned her head on Josh’s shoulder. He wrapped an arm around her, and they sat like that for a while. It was nice, until an errant thought occurred to Elaan. She pulled away from Josh and turned to look at him in a new light.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She hesitated a moment, but then decided to come out with it. “I guess I always thought you were just naturally good with people, naturally a nice guy. But now, with what you just told me, I wonder, are you just good at acting nice?”

  Josh stroked her cheek. “Hey,” he said. “I am a nice guy.”

  Elaan stared into his green eyes, wanting nothing more than to believe.

  “I have never pretended with you. I am a nice guy, OK.” He leaned forward and kissed her, his lips soft and warm. Her tummy fluttered and her toes curled when he kissed her. That still felt so real.

  He pulled back and smiled. “I have always been real with you,” he said. “It’s the thing I’ve liked most about you since we met. You don’t want lies and pretend. You want real. You see real. You know when someone is faking. Maybe that’s why I agreed to go along with Lijah when he asked me not to see you. I knew inevitably that we’d end up here. Where you found out that I hadn’t told you everything, even though I told you everything I could at the time.”

  “And have you told me everything now?”

  Josh shook his head, half laughed. “Nope,” he said. “There’s more. But not much more. I don’t know that you’ll care. It just has to do with what my father packed me.”

  “Besides the gun?”

  He laughed. “Yes, besides that. And I wasn’t trying to hide that from you. I just didn’t think a lot about it. It was only for use in a dire emergency. It was if I needed it. Well, he also passed me one other thing: a satellite phone with GPS.”

  Elaan crinkled her brows. “I don’t understand. How will that help?”

  “Well, presuming the person on the other end answers, it could offer me help. I mean, the satellite’s floating in space, and it should work for relaying signals.”

  Elaan nodded but wasn’t sure where Josh was going with this. “Who would you call?”

  “Depends. I could call my dad, presuming things got better. Presuming the world got fixed. If not, there’s someone at the CIA. A friend of my mom’s. He thinks that person would help me, if I needed it, and if he could.”

  “Who is he?”

  He raised an eyebrow and pursed his lips. He watched her a minute and finally said, “His name is Linc, but I’m not sure that helps you much.”

  “Link, like a chain-link fence?”

  “Like Honest Abe. Short for Lincoln.”

  “Oh,” she said as the explanation dawned on her. “Who is he?”

  “Just a friend of my mom’s. Someone who can help, if he’s still alive.”

  Elaan gazed toward the door. “Do you think he is?”

  Josh gave an immediate nod. “He was in an SPU, too, one in New York, so probably.” He turned back and looked at the closed door to his room. “Um, I trust you completely, and I don’t care that you know these things, but I’d appreciate it if you kept this between us. It’s not something everyone needs to know.”

  Elaan nodded. While she didn’t like secrets, this wasn’t hers to tell, nor was it really anyone else’s business. Josh leaned in and kissed her. She did believe him, did believe that he was a nice guy. Her mother was wrong about Josh being like Kingston. His hands slid along the side of her shirt, his fingers caressing the skin of her spine. His kiss had turned fierce and unrelenting. He seemed to desperately need his kisses returned, so she did. She kissed him back, her hands sliding her fingers beneath his shirt and up his warm back. His fingers grazed her bare skin, and it was like pure ecstasy. He leaned her back onto the bed, kissing her neck.

  A knock on the door startled them both. Josh had just pulled away from her when the door opened and her mother peeked in.

  Chapter 29

  Josh had turned beet red, and Elaan was pretty sure she could brighten any room just by her embarrassed glow. Her wide-eyed mother disappeared out the door. Elaan was standing up and straightening her shirt, when she heard her mother call from the other side of the door. “Elaan, I wanted to talk to you.”

  “OK, Mom,” she called back. “One second.”

  Guilt flashed across her face. “Sorry,” she whispered as she trundled out the bedroom door to find her mother in the hall, standing outside the door to their room. Shonda opened the door to go in and Elaan followed.

  Once they were in, Elaan turned to her mother. She thought she should say something to her mother but couldn’t think of what. “I can explain” seemed to be a thing to say, yet, she couldn’t. Well, she could, but she didn’t want to explain. Saying, “It’s not what it looked like” also crossed her mind. But that wasn’t true, either. It was exactly what it looked like. Also a good reason not to try to explain.

  “Elaan,” Shonda said, her voice calm and resolute. “I am aware that you and Josh have been thrown into a very adult situation, and that you have traveled by yourselves to get here and may have done things together out there that you wanted to do.”

  She wanted to disagree with her mother. She opened her mouth to say something, but she wasn’t sure what. Her mother hadn’t actually asked her do anything or refrain from doing anything. So, she closed her mouth.

  “But you’re not out on the road anymore. You’re here with me, and I’d appreciate it if you would treat this place the way you treated our home. If you’d act in ways you considered appropriate when we all lived at home as a family.”

  Elaan stared at her mother, wondering exactly what she was saying. “This isn’t home. You’re living here with Amadu.”

  Her mother sighed. “Alright,” she said. “Fair point. It’s not home. And we’re not in that world. I can’t pretend we are and make you behave like the seventeen-year-old daughter who lived there, the one who was not allowed to have boys in her bedroom.”

  Well technically, she’d been in Josh’s bedroom. He hadn’t been in hers, but Elaan thought raising that point at the moment was unwise. Shonda reached out and took her daughter’s hand. “I know you were hurt by what I did. And I am truly sorry about that. What I want now, and I know it will take time, is for you to trust me again. And to talk to me, again. And to feel safe here.”

  Shonda glanced at the closed door and bit her lip before turning back to her daughter. “I can see Josh means a lot to you. Because you’re a good judge of character, I’m going to trust in you, that you’ve pegged him right, and not make any more assumptions about him based on his father.”

  Elaan smiled. That was good of her.

  “What I’d like you to do is to give me the benefit of the doubt, and be respectful, remembering that as the mother of a seventeen-year-old daughter who is beautiful, smart, and resourceful, I’m going to have concerns about any guys she’s with. It just means I’m your mother and I love you. It doesn’t mean I’m trying to hurt you or bother you.”

  Elaan nodded. “I know.”

  Shonda sighed and released her. “Good.”

  “So, does that conclude what you wanted to talk to me about?”

  Shonda shook her head. “Well, not really,” she said, with a laugh. “I’d really just been heading to bed. I’d expected to find you in our room, and when I didn’t, I stopped in to tell you I was calling it a night.”

  Elaan rolled her
eyes. “Well, now I know.”

  Her mother gave her a hint of side eye. “Yes, you do,” she said. “But you should probably call it a night too.”

  Elaan checked her watch. It was after eleven and she was tired. Since her mother had promised to keep an open mind about Josh, she figured it best to agree and go to bed. She just needed to tell Josh goodnight, first. She was about to leave, when she remembered what her mother had been doing before talking to her. “Mom,” she said. “Did you figure out what Dad was trying to tell you on the drive?”

  Her mother shook her head. “Not entirely,” she said. “I think I know where he’s going with this, but I’d really like to see your brother’s drive. Plus, it’s late and I think I’d evaluate things better after a little sleep.”

  * * *

  Elaan awoke the next morning to find her mother gone from their room. She got up, stretched her legs, wearing one of her mother's nightgowns.

  Elaan left the room and found her mother staring at the computer. She walked over to her, put a hand on her shoulder. “You making any headway?”

  Her mother shook her head. “No more than last night,” she said. She smiled at her. “Would you like some coffee?”

  Elaan stared at her. “You have coffee?”

  Shonda laughed. “I know,” she said. “It’s completely impractical, but I was depressed after I left…. left everyone behind, my family. I wanted coffee. It’s my one vice, so I went to Sam’s Club after I got here, and I bought massive quantities of coffee. It was completely impractical and I should have bought more important supplies, but I just wanted one thing I could have in my life to make me happy, even if it was stupid.”