by LS Hawker
“Sure,” Olivia said.
Clementine headed for the stairs. As always, Clementine’s head wagged side to side as she climbed the stairs. Jade and Olivia followed. Clementine opened the door at the top of the stairs and flipped on the lights. Olivia and Jade joined Clem inside.
Clementine’s setup included a Mac desktop computer loaded with the latest digital audio software with two large monitors. Three different keyboards were arranged in an L shape, with two of them stacked in a riser configuration. Robert had retrofitted the third, their grandmother’s old Lowrey Genie organ, with MIDI to turn it into a synthesizer. A long soundboard completed the horseshoe shape of the workstation. Four studio monitors stood sentry at the corners.
Cables snaked away from the equipment into three different wall sockets with surge protectors. Microphones, music stands, and three sets of headphones were scattered about as well as stacks of songbooks and sheet music. The walls were design free to minimize distraction for Clementine. A handmade sign that said NOT ABOVE 5 NOT ALL AT ONCE hung on one wall.
Olivia pointed at it. “What’s that mean?”
“Our house is almost a hundred years old,” Jade said. “So the electrical is a little iffy, even though Dad’s upgraded it. If Clem turns the volume up above five with everything on at once, it’ll blow a breaker and maybe even take out the whole neighborhood with it.”
Olivia lifted her eyebrows as she took in the impressive array of studio equipment.
“Play something for her, Clem,” Jade said as Clementine seated herself on the stool they referred to as her throne. She moved her fingers over the bottommost keyboard and began playing.
Olivia’s mouth dropped open at the sweet, ethereal sounds that emanated from the speakers. Jade swelled with pride for her sister’s talents.
The music came to an abrupt halt as Clementine straightened, her expression unfocused and faraway.
“Uh-oh,” Jade said. “Autisma’s getting an idea for a song.”
Clementine’s hand began floating through the air, counting time, then her expression turned serious.
“You have to go now,” she said, putting on her headphones and turning away from them. But she turned back, uncovered her ears, and rose to give Jade a quick squeeze. To Olivia, she said, “Nice to meet you. Bye!” and plopped back down onto her stool, replacing the headphones.
They left the room and Jade closed the door behind them. “Did you see that?” she said as they descended the stairs.
“What?” Olivia said.
“She stopped herself and remembered to say goodbye. That’s a huge improvement over past behavior.”
At the bottom of the stairs, Olivia fixed Jade with a horrified stare. “Autisma? What’s wrong with you?”
“Dude,” Jade said, leading the way into the living room where Robert and Pauline sat. “She knows she’s autistic. We’ve told her. It’s not a secret.”
Her parents laughed, but Olivia was clearly not amused. Jade got a kick out of the random list of things Olivia found offensive. All of Olivia’s UN talk at their first meeting had given Jade the impression nothing was off-limits, but she’d learned Olivia could be very touchy about certain things. Clementine made jokes about her own autism all the time, and Olivia no doubt wouldn’t approve of that either. Jade didn’t care. Olivia wasn’t on the inside of this, so she didn’t get a say.
As Jade and Olivia sat on the couch opposite Robert’s and Pauline’s favorite chairs, Pauline said to Olivia, “Jade tells me you’re getting close.”
Jay dells me ur geng glows.
Jade hoped Olivia had understood.
“Yeah,” Olivia said. “We’re pretty excited. I just hope it works.”
“It’ll work,” Pauline said.
“So I’ll be here for a whole weekend as soon as I can,” Jade told her parents.
“Great,” Robert said. “In fact, I wonder if you could get a little more time than that off.”
Robert looked at Pauline who smiled encouragingly at him.
“Your mom wants for the four of us to go on a Caribbean cruise. There’s one that’s just for autism families, with therapy and activities especially for the kids.” He turned to Olivia and said, “Trying to take Clementine on a trip surrounded by regular folks would be too stressful—for everyone.”
Jade’s heart clenched like a fist. It would be the farewell tour.
“I should be able to get some time off,” she said, trying to sound excited.
“Jade says Clementine is making all kinds of progress with this new therapist,” Olivia said.
“She is,” Pauline said.
“I remember the first time she let me hold her hand for more than a few seconds,” Jade said. “I sat there not moving, as if a butterfly had landed on me and I didn’t want to scare it away.”
“Physical contact is very difficult for her,” Robert told Olivia. “When Jade was in junior high she set up a demonstration to simulate Clem’s physical reactions to ordinary stimuli for the science fair. It was a big hit, and a reporter from the Kansas City Star came and interviewed her.” He beamed proudly at his eldest child.
Jade tolerated her parents’ bragging about her, because she owed it all to them, of course. Olivia’s expression indicated her familiarity with this sort of parental behavior as well.
“Did Jade ever tell you about the time she got in a fight to defend her sister?”
Jade rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t exactly a fight, Dad.” She could never stop him telling this story. It was one of his favorites.
“When Jade was almost nine and Clementine was three, Pauline took them to the playground. Clem hadn’t been diagnosed yet, but we all knew something was wrong. Anyway, Pauline saw a friend of hers on the other side—”
Pauline held up her hand and said, “I had to go to the restroom.”
“Well, whatever. At any rate, she left the two of them alone for a second. So Jade followed Clementine around while she did her hooting and flapping routine, and these three teenagers, a girl and two guys, wandered onto the playground smoking cigarettes, laughing too loud, and the noise and smell made Clementine slap her hands over her ears and scream. The teenagers freaked out and started calling Clem retard and feeb—a three-year-old, can you imagine? And Jade got pissed. So she motions to the girl. ‘Come here,’ she says. ‘I want to tell you something.’”
Overcome with laughter, Robert couldn’t go on for a moment.
“So one of the boys said, ‘What do you want, kid?’ and Jade says to the girl, ‘Come here and I’ll tell you. I want to whisper it to you.’ So the girl comes over and bends down to Jade, who hooks her thumb into the girl’s open mouth and closes her fist.’”
All three Veverkas were laughing now, to Olivia’s obvious bemusement.
“So Pauline sees what’s going on from across the park, and Jade is hanging from the girl’s mouth, while she’s punching Jade, who’s dangling about two inches off the ground. Jade’s thumbnail had gouged the inside of that girl’s cheek, and blood’s running down the girl’s face and shirt, but Jade wouldn’t let go no matter what the girl did. Pauline finally had to pry Jade’s hand off the girl’s face, and then the three teenagers ran away, yelling over their shoulders that they were going to call the cops on the retard and her bruiser sister. Jade was beat up pretty good, bruised and battered, fingernail scratches all over her, but just as calm and cool as could be.”
Olivia’s horrified expression made them all laugh even harder.
“Don’t mess with Autisma, man, that’s all I’m going to say,” Jade said. “Don’t mess with my family.”
Chapter Five
The drive back to the Compound always seemed shorter than the drive home. As they neared SiPraTech, Olivia studied the fields and the intersecting dirt roads in front of them. “How do you know where to turn? I always miss the damn turn.”
“You city people,” Jade said. “Look to the north over there.”
“Which way is north?”
“I never noticed that,” Olivia said.
“That’s because everything out here looks the same to you. When you grow up in the country, every landmark is significant. I drove over there a couple of weeks ago. It’s a horse ranch.”
“You just drove up to it?”
“Yeah,” Jade said. “I talked to the owner—real nice lady. She rents out the horses for rides.”
“Who knew there were actually things to do around here?”
“There’re always things to do.”
When they returned, Berko sat in the living room reading Marc Graham’s Of Ashes and Dust.
“Watch this,” Olivia whispered to Jade. Olivia now raised her voice. “What, Jade? You think Nikola Tesla’s death ray caused the Tunguska event?”
Berko raised his eyes from his book and pushed his glasses up. “You don’t really think that, do you?” he asked, his tone accusing.
“Well, I—”
“I can’t believe you believe that,” Berko said. “It was a superbolide, of course it was. Just because Admiral Peary said Tesla had told him to look for a ‘sign’ while he was up near the pole does not mean that—”
“Jade also loves the new Star Trek movies,” Olivia said, and Jade groaned. Why had she told Olivia she liked them? She knew Berko despised “JJTrek” (so named for the reviled director JJ Abrams) and reviled the movies as canonical heresy.
“I have four words for you, Jade,” Berko said. “Big hands and lens flares. That’s all there is to the first one. Oh, and it’s so rebellious to steal your stepdad’s car to a hundreds-of-years-old Beastie Boys song—”
“I like ‘Sabotage,’” Jade murmured. She couldn’t help it. She did.
“That would be like me stealing my stepdad’s Conestoga wagon while blasting out Haydn’s Symphony no. 8. And rather than going for story, they blow up Chris Pine’s hands, because that’s ‘hilarious’!”
“Thanks, Olivia,” Jade said.
“Where’s Elias?” Olivia asked Berko, who paused midrant.
He deflated. “He’s working out.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
“I already ran this morning.”
“I’m going to change and then we’re going to head to the restaurant,” Olivia said to him. “You want to come with or you waiting for Mr. Universe?”
“I’ll wait. See you over there.”
Jade decided she had time for a quick shower and a change of clothes before they were due at the restaurant. She’d done a lot of sweating that day, so she wanted to be fresh. She took off her blouse and then peeled off her jeans. She shook them out before putting them in the hamper, and a folded piece of paper fell out of her back pocket. She bent to pick it up. Was it the toothpaste receipt? But she didn’t think she’d gotten one.
She unfolded the piece of paper. Handwritten on the paper was 785-017-3021.
A phone number. Where had it come from?
But then in a flash, she remembered her would-be kidnapper’s hand on her butt. He wasn’t playing grab-ass. He’d slipped this into her pocket.
This was the most bizarrely original pickup tactic she’d ever seen, and she snorted in disgust. She couldn’t wait to tell Olivia. Jade crumpled the piece of paper, three-pointed it into the trash basket, and went into the bathroom for her shower.
Thirty minutes later, Jade and Olivia drove into Miranda on mostly deserted streets, except for a lone pickup truck that cruised Main Street slowly.
“Okay,” Olivia said. “Where do you suppose the police station is? We need to report this afternoon’s grope-fest.”
Jade glanced at the clock. “In a little town like this, they close up shop at five,” she said. “No point in going until tomorrow.”
Olivia reluctantly agreed, as if Jade had somehow planned it that way, then pulled up to the brand-new restaurant that had opened just prior to their arrival in May. There were only a few cars parked diagonally on the street in front of the eatery, and two of them had out-of-county plates.
Jade had been surprised when she moved to Pennsylvania that not all states required license plate stickers with the county in which they were registered. Wherever she went in Kansas, though, she could tell where the cars were from, and Robert had made a game of it when they went on road trips. Jade had learned the two-letter designation for every county in Kansas. This was not a skill, however, that she shared with people.
The Hungry Harrier Restaurant served family chicken dinners. Decorated in a country antique style, it reminded Jade of a Cracker Barrel, one of her favorite restaurants. A little old-fashioned general store was attached, with bright, pretty clothing, knickknacks, books, music, movies, candy, pastries, as well as electronics of all kinds.
Jade and Olivia went into the dining area where they waited for their colleagues. Berko and Elias appeared fifteen minutes later. Elias’s face shone red after his workout, fresh from the shower, his hair still wet.
Berko fixed Jade with a concerned stare. “Elias told me about the guy in the grocery store,” he said. “Are you okay?”
Jade scowled at Elias who shrugged. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. She pointed at them one by one. “Do not tell Dan about this.”
Everyone grumbled but agreed.
Dan entered the dining room wearing a sport shirt and shorts. Jade had only ever seen him in business clothes, and the fitness and size of his legs surprised her.
Two families, one with an infant and toddler, and one with three boisterous children between five and ten years old, were seated in the dining room. Jade watched them as the others perused the menu and ordered drinks. Something about these families struck her as odd, but she couldn’t figure out what.
Of course, Jade’s anxiety about Pauline and Clementine, her ever-present impostor syndrome, and the near-assault this afternoon made it impossible to concentrate. She needed to climb out of her head and join the living, so she turned her attention to Dan, who was showing photos of his wife and two kids to Jade’s coworkers.
“That’s Cecily,” Dan said, pointing at his phone, “and next to her is Dan Junior. He’s going to the Air Force Academy in the fall, just like his old man. Cecily is a junior at the University of Michigan.” He swiped at the phone screen and held it up, an image of him and a dark-haired, dimpled beauty of a middle-aged woman glowing there. “And that’s my honey, Melissa.”
“Where do you live?” Olivia said.
“We’ve been in Virginia for five years,” he said. “We both work in D.C.”
“What exactly do you do for the Crane Group?” Berko said.
“I do recruiting tours of universities and conduct seminars and generally travel around and meet people and schmooze. It’s a great gig, especially since I’m not actually qualified to do anything.”
Jade snorted. “Right,” she said. “He’s got an MBA from Wharton. He served in the Air Force for twenty years, made colonel, as you know, and has been involved in all sorts of amazing stuff.”
Dan held up his glass of iced tea. “But compared with you four, I’m a yahoo.” Everyone else held up their glasses and clinked them together.
After their food arrived, Dan went into storytelling mode, which Jade always loved. “I was in Chicago for a conference in the late nineties, and I bumped into this extremely well-dressed middle-aged lady trying to make sense of a map—this was before smartphones and Google Maps, of course—and so I offered to help her. I’ve spent a lot of time there, so I know how to find my way around. What I didn’t know when I offered to help was she’s the wife of The Rolling Stones’s drummer, Charlie Watts, and she thanked me by giving me two front-row tickets to that night’s Stones show. That may not mean much to people your age, but it dazzles the hell out of my generational peers.”
Jade could see from her friends’ expressions that they were suitably impressed.
Dan did seem to know everyone. He was one of those peop
le who somehow became friends with the rich and famous the way normal people find pennies on the sidewalk. He was tight with a former US Attorney General and hung out with PJ O’Rourke. One of his good friends was George Clooney, because of course he was.
Jade’s awestruck team members listened raptly, and Elias barraged Dan with questions he patiently answered, details about being in Berlin in 1989 the day the wall came down.
Dan leaned forward and gestured for everyone around the table to lean in too. “I’ve got a piece of the wall at home,” he said. “I smuggled it out of there. Don’t tell anyone. If you come to D.C., I’ll show it to you.”
Jade felt proud he’d chosen her as mentee. And felt stupid for feeling so proud.
“But enough about me,” Dan said, turning to Berko. “Tell me about your name.”
Berko startled, took an uneasy drink of his soda, and said, “It means ‘firstborn’ in the Akan language, which originates in—”
“Ghana, isn’t it?” Dan said.
Berko looked even more surprised. “Yes.”
“See?” Jade said. “I told you. He knows everyone and everything.”
“I have approximate knowledge of many things,” Dan said, and Jade laughed.
“Adventure Time,” Olivia said. “Nice.” She lifted her glass once more to Dan.
“Absolutely my favorite animated show,” Dan said, then turned back to Berko. “Did your ancestors come from Ghana, or did your folks just like the name?”
“It is a great name,” Olivia said, her chin in her palm. “Very cool.”
Both pleased and embarrassed, Berko said, “We don’t know what our ancestry is exactly. My mom thought it was a good strong name, even though I’m not the firstborn.”
“So how did you meet Jade?” Elias said. Being around Dan had made Elias unusually talkative. Dan routinely had that effect on people.
Dan threw a proud-father look Jade’s way and said, “I was visiting KU on a recruiting trip and happened into one of the auditoriums where Jade was giving a presentation.”
