Assured Destruction

by Stewart, Michael F.

  Chapter 14

  There’s an old movie called Fatal Attraction that my mom let me watch when I was too young to see it. In one scene, this psycho chick cooks the family’s pet bunny rabbit. All afternoon I picture Peter cooking rabbit for dinner.

  Luckily dinner is fish. But I hate fish. At least, I hate fish skin and fish bones, and the fish head Peter lops off with the glinting cleaver—and the clear suggestion that it could be used to cleave the head from my neck too. At least that’s what I assume; I didn’t even know we had a cleaver. It freaks me out that his first step toward moving in would be to bring a knife and not a toothbrush.

  Sitting at the dinner table across from Peter, I eat the fish but only because I hadn’t dared venture back upstairs for lunch and am near starving.

  “Do you want the cheeks?” Peter asks.

  “What?” I reply.

  My mom nudges my arm with her elbow.

  “Pardon, Janus, the word is pardon.” My mother slumps further in her chair. Normally she gets into a real chair for meals, but tonight she just rolled up to the table as if she couldn’t be bothered.

  “Pardon?” I try.

  “The fish cheeks,” Peter says, “are a delicacy and only given to the most honored guest in Chinese culture.”

  He offers up a small piece of meat. The gelatinous eye of the fish accuses me. I imagine it saying—no, not my cheeks. I need my cheeks to make fishy faces.

  “I, ah, no thanks. You’re the guest.” Although I feel more like an outsider every day.

  He shrugs and places it on my mother’s plate.

  For a moment the only sound is of our cutlery. Fragrant dill and lemon scent the air.

  “When was your first date?” I ask and they both pause mid-fork stab.

  “Why?” my mom asks, eyeing me.

  “No reason, just wondering,” I say.

  “Would have been a week or so ago? Maybe eight days?” Peter looks to my mom for confirmation and then back to me. “Why don’t you tell me what happened to your network.”

  I tense. Is this like when a serial killer returns to the scene of the crime to glory in people’s reactions to his dirty work?

  “Janus?” My mom prods.

  I fail to see the harm in explaining the symptoms. “I’ve got a ring network attached to a server. They all went blue screen.”

  “All at once or one after the other?”

  “One after the other.”

  “Firewall?” he asks.

  “Yup.”

  “Updated antivirus.” He waves it off, and together we say, “Overrated.” And I laugh despite myself.

  “So what do you think?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. I don’t download much.”

  “What about something you didn’t download, something you brought in on a memory stick from school?”

  Right—or a hard drive. I shake my head, but inside I’m screeching. It makes perfect sense that the trojan came from a hard drive, but my most recent acquisition is Jonny’s. Did I manage to unplug the network before the virus got to Paradise57? Or did the virus come from it? Just when I think I’ve figured out my enemy, I find another clue.

  I barely make it through dinner being civil. I want to return to the ruins of Shadownet. Of course my mom can read my mind, and she raises her sing-song voice as I clear all the dishes and scrape the scraps into the waste bin.

  “No more computers, Janus.”

  I go cold. She has no idea what’s at stake. I can’t be banned from computers, not now.

  “I need it, Mom.” I try to keep the fear from my voice.

  “For what? People lived quite well before Facebook and Twitter.”

  “Homework. I have homework assignments.”

  “And we have a library with lots of books and you have a library card.”

  I stifle a laugh. Homework using books? What is she thinking? She’s gone mad. I need an excuse, a foolproof one. I’m working on an app isn’t going to cut it. I need to talk to my potential boyfriends won’t either.

  “Hard to do computer science homework without a computer,” Peter says lightly.

  We both whirl on him.

  My mom turns slowly back to me, and I wipe the look of desperate appreciation from my face.

  “And do you have computer science homework?” she demands with one eyebrow arched.

  “Some,” I say. “I am failing.”

  “Thirty minutes a day. That’s it. For homework.”

  She checks her watch as if to say starting now. And I sprint for the stairs. I ignore the muted argument behind me, figuring that if Peter’s the bad guy, he’d want me on the computer. The jury’s out on him.

  I land in my rolly chair and walk it over to Jonny’s terminal. I disconnect everything except for the power supply and boot up. I don’t know what to think when it loads perfectly. Paradise57’s luminous eyes sparkle at me.

  My suspicions are high. I start to inspect. Trojans like to change the registry keys so they can restart your system without you around. They usually attach themselves to programs you use a lot like a web browser. That way, when you start the browser it starts the trojan program too. I run a virus scan and it comes back clean. I figured that, though. This code was specially written for me.

  It takes the full thirty minutes for me to find the odd registry keys. I don’t bother trying to clean it out as it’s guaranteed to be hidden in more than one spot. This guy is good. It’s not worth my time. I’ve found what I’ve come for. My mom calls out. My time is up.

  What hurts the most is whose computer the trojan is on: Paradise57’s. It came from Jonny’s hard drive.

  My mom calls again. “Now you’re losing tomorrow’s time.”

  I swear and pick up my iPhone, only to see that I’ve missed a text from Jonny. He’s outside. I freeze. I just found out he or his mom is my torturer. Good. Maybe I can put this behind me.

  I jog upstairs to the warehouse and kick open the back door. It’s dark and cool out. A light rain is falling.

  “Jonny?” I whisper.

  A cat scoots past the entry; I clap a palm over my mouth to keep from crying out.

  Boots on gravel, and then he’s here, wearing a sodden, black hoody. It’d be funny and cute if I wasn’t ready to accuse him of sabotage. But when I try, I can’t say the words. If I do, and I am wrong, I lose a friend. And I have very few friends. My mom calls again.

  “I have to go,” I say.

  His eyes flash from disappointment to anger. “I’ve been out here almost half an hour.” His teeth are chattering. If I wasn’t so suspicious I’d hug him, or I’d let him inside and he could leave after he’d warmed. But, I don’t trust him. Not now. Not when he might have brought a trojan into Shadownet.

  “Does your mom like me?” I ask.

  He seems to darken beneath the hood. “She’s kind of overprotective,” he says finally. “She wouldn’t like that I’m here, if that’s what you mean.”

  What I mean is maybe she doesn’t like me and she’s setting me up to hate her son. This is nuts.

  “Did you find out about Heckleena and Frannie?” he asks, wiping water from his eyebrows.

  “They’re okay,” I say.

  He starts rubbing his arms. My heart breaks a little and I wave him inside. “Just for a minute.”

  “Thanks.” He bounces up and down and smells wet and cold. I bite my lip and shudder when he draws me close. I tense in his arms.

  “I’m sorry this happened,” he says.

  He says sorry a lot, but never has anything to really be sorry for, unless maybe he has a guilty conscience. He might be cold, but his lips feel hot on my neck and send white lightning down my spine.

  My mom’s next shout is insistent. The kind t
hat says just because I’m in a wheelchair doesn’t mean I won’t come and get you.

  I don’t want to go anymore.

  He presses his lips against mine and we kiss for a moment, fingers threaded together. It feels like I’m making out with the enemy—like I’ll come home sometime and find him cooking the cats. I stop and realize that I’m not really kissing back.

  “I have to—” I begin.

  He doesn’t wait for me to finish.

  “Jan—” He shakes his head. “You know I’ve liked you for a while … and you invited me here.” I nod, remembering how he asked me out and that it wasn’t all that long ago that I thought of him as stalker. “So, do you like me?”

  I want so badly to say the right thing. I even open my mouth, but all that’s racing around in my head is that I’ve determined why he’d do this to me. He’s angry for my rebuffing him the first time.

  He grunts as he breaks my grip and tugs his hoody tighter. In a dozen steps, he disappears into the night and rain. The door slams shut.

  Slowly I start to walk away, but then I remember to feed the cats. I open the door again. And gasp.

  Karl is staring at me with a mixture of annoyance and uncertainty, white hair plastered on his face and blue eyes shining. In his arms is a fat gray cat.

  “I thought he’d never leave,” he says.

  “Karl!” I say. “What are you doing here?”

  He steps inside, puts the cat on the steps, and lets the door shut behind him. He’s only wearing a T-shirt, now soaked and sticking tight to his muscles.

  “I want to talk to you,” he says. “I felt terrible that you were stuck at …” He glances around the warehouse interior. “... here. What did Jonny-boy want?”

  The whirr of the elevator starts as it climbs up to our living room.

  “Crap, my mom is coming. Wait right over there.” I point to the deepest shadows and then run for the exit, climbing the stairs and hoping to beat the elevator. I push into the living area as the elevator car arrives. My mom is halfway into the elevator and backs out.

  “Mom,” I say. “I just need ten more minutes.”

  “No,” she replies, her stare icy.

  “I forgot about something beautiful. You said I need to make something beautiful every day. I forgot.”

  She eyes me. Peter is on the couch and offers me a wink.

  “Ten minutes,” she says as the elevator doors whomp shut.

  I race back downstairs.

  “I only have five minutes,” I say to Karl, “but I really do have to make something in Photoshop while we talk.”

  Karl leaves wet footprints as he follows me into the bowels of the warehouse. I’m chilled now, and after I sit in my chair, he leans in over my back and places his hands on my shoulders.

  “Why do you have a cartoon on your computer?” he asks as I click away from Jonny’s caricature as quickly as possible. Should I tell him about Jonny and me? Is there a Jonny? If I do, then I’ll lose all chance with Karl.

  “I’m crazy, okay?” I crane my neck. He’s looking out at all the blank computer screens. “Why did you come?”

  His fingers begin to massage my shoulders and slip down over them, inching toward my chest. I lean forward, only granting him access to back. The fingers keep working, and it feels good.

  “I told you,” he says, “to work on something beautiful.” His hands massage a little harder to ensure I catch his drift. Strong fingers peel back the stress in my muscles.

  I flush and tap away on the keyboard for a minute before realizing that I’m not connected to the Internet. I swallow as I bring up the only pictures I have to work with—graffiti.

  “You like this stuff?” Karl asks with a note of surprise in his voice.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I like it a lot.”

  I choose a mural of a woman dancing on top of water; she seems as light as dandelion fluff. Then I import it into Photoshop and add text: LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. Satisfied, I connect the printer and then hit print so I can prove to my mom that I did something. Karl’s fingers are edging close to my breasts again, one hand swooping down. I catch his palm and hold it.

  “Sorry, Karl,” I say. “I really have to go.”

  He grips my hand, spins the chair, and pulls me up and into him. He presses his lips against mine and we linger for a moment before I pull away. Jonny would apologize at this point, but not Karl. He smiles like a Viking with a chick over his shoulder.

  “Maybe once you’re done your suspension,” he says.

  I swallow and draw him up the stairs by the hand. At the backdoor, I hold it open as he steps out into the rain, feet dancing through the puddles as he jogs away.

  Chapter 15

  Life sucks then you die, Heckleena tweets. Except me, I will live on in Twitter.

  Even Twitter will die one day, Hairy says.

  @Hairysays Sacrilege! Heckleena replies.

  I send these as I stand, bored, in the Assured Destruction store. It’s morning and I know what I have to do. Today I will eliminate Jonny as a prospective boyfriend and quite possibly uncover the identity of my nemesis. But I can’t enact my plan immediately. I have to take my mother’s shift until Fenwick arrives, at which point I’m supposed to do homework at the library.

  My mom may be limiting my computer time, but she doesn’t know about the ThinkPad. After the Jonny and Karl tag-team event last night, I couldn’t sleep. I spent most of the wee hours under a blanket, working on my iPhone app. Even if Jonny’s a crook, it’s a cool app, and I finally got it finished around four o’clock and sent it off to Apple for approval.

  This morning, I discover that Life Is Beautiful has been passed around the Facebook walls like wildfire. Maybe it’s not such a bad punishment after all. But even with being able to tweet and Facebook, I still spend three hours twiddling thumbs until Fenwick arrives, then I pack up and make like I’m heading out to do my schoolwork.

  “I’m leaving for the library, Mom.” What I really need is a nap as I grab the car keys from the dining room table.

  “And you need to take the car to get to the library?”

  It’s around the corner. I freeze mid-step toward the stairwell. “I … I’m so used to going to school I guess.” I toss the keys back.

  Her brow rises, but she doesn’t say anything. Close one.

  I fly down the stairs and run to the back of the warehouse to grab my bike. Biking will cost me time.

  At the nearest Starbucks I borrow their WiFi—I don’t have enough money to pay the coffee-rent and my iPhone isn’t great for hardcore Web research. Using my laptop and the 411 directory, I discover that there are three Shaftsburys living within a ten-mile ride of the school. I check the school catchment areas and rule out one of the families as living outside of the borders. With only pedal power this is going to take longer than I’d hoped, but I still have a couple of hours before Jonny would typically return home from school. I can do this. I slip the laptop into my backpack and swing on to the bike.

  Soon I’m sweating and my palms are slippery on the handlebars. I’m sure this is supposed to be good for me, but as salt burns my eyes, I can’t see how. I turn on a busy street and climb a long steady hill. I pedal for another fifteen minutes. Sweat’s running down my back in rivers, and I catch the bike chain on my jeans three times before I pull over to the curb. I look around and don’t recognize a thing. I punch the address into the Google Maps app. It helps take me from A to B in the form of a flashing blue dot and highlighted path. I hug my phone to my chest.

  Not seeing anyone I know around, I bend down and cringe as I wrap my white athletic sock over my already oily pant cuff. I’m a dork, but I refuse to wreck my second pair of jeans in a week. I set off pedaling again.

  The blue dot finally connects with the Shaftsbury’s address pi
n. Their home is on a quiet residential street with older houses from the twenties, the yards dotted with large oaks and maples. Nice—not poor—middle class with some low-rent housing mixed in. I cycle right past the house as I don’t want to raise suspicions. The porch is clean and newly painted. Bright yellow shutters stand out against red brick. No car in the cobblestone driveway. Nice.

  I cross the street and circle back, stopping in front to lean my bike against the rugged bark of an oak tree. Brown and orange leaves crunch beneath the tires. My first job is to confirm I’ve got the right place.

  Mail sticks out from the mail slot. I look around casually and then jog up the porch steps. Without knocking, I check a letter. Mr. and Mrs. Michael Shaftsbury. This gets my feminist goat and doesn’t help. The next letter provides my answer. Ms. Aliana Shaftsbury.

  I’m actually relieved it’s the wrong house.

  “Excuse me?”

  A woman on the sidewalk squints up the steps. She and a two-year-old stand between the house and my bike.

  “Aliana?” I ask, mind whirling.

  “No,” she says. “I’m a neighbor.”

  “Do you know when she gets back?” I keep everything light. I’m supposed to be here. No need for police. You’ve seen me before. On your way. Move along now.

  “Usually five, who are you? Reading mail is a felony.”

  My Jedi mind tricks clearly aren’t up to par.

  “Can you tell her Iva Goddago stopped by, please?” I ignore her comment about felonies. People are so over dramatic. Really? Are all mail carriers felons then? It’s a wonder any mail makes it to the right place.

  She doesn’t say anything, and I waltz past her and her kid, stopping to say, “Well hello there, cutie-pie.” And then I’m off.