Fine. Have it your way. But you aren’t going to like Plan B.
I don’t really like Plan B either. I grab a handful of nuts from the table and head for the steps to the second level. I slip through the crowd and walk straight toward her. I don’t have time to waste. If I can’t charm her, I’ll work on her friends. I have to find a way in. I step up to their group of five. Raine, two other girls, and two boys.
“Hi. I’m Locke Jenkins. New to Boston—and all of this.”
Raine doesn’t respond. She just looks down at the torn knees of my pants and then away. The blond girl next to her smiles. “I heard there was a new guy in the Collective. We rarely get new blood. I’m Vina.” She holds out her hand, the backside of it up, like I’m supposed to kiss it. I’m caught off guard. I missed this lesson on social graces, but since I don’t know what else to do I take her hand in mine and lightly kiss it.
“A pleasure, Vina.”
The group’s eyes widen and I know I’ve missed the mark, but Vina giggles and seems pleased.
“And you are?” I say to Raine.
“Bored,” she replies. She begins to look away again but I don’t give her a chance to disengage.
“Not having fun?”
She’s a piece of work. She blinks her eyes at glacial speed. “This is a requirement of the Collective. Do I look like I’m having fun?”
“Dance?” I grab her hand and pull. She doesn’t budge, but there’s a brief moment of surprise on her face. It’s a relief to see any expression there at all, but just as quickly she gives me a very firm and deadly, “No,” and shakes my hand loose. From behind her shoulder I see a large Bot rapidly approaching us. He’s taller than me and his skin is rigid metallic gold. Even his eyes are gold and he has no pupils at all. He looks like he’s been extruded from one solid chunk of metal. He steps around her and grabs me by the throat, lifting me off the ground so we’re eye to eye.
“Never lay a hand on the Secretary’s daughter unless you would like your hand permanently removed. Do you comprehend?” I claw at his grip, unable to respond.
“Hap! I have it under control! Put him down!”
Hap drops me and I land on my feet coughing. I put my hands up indicating I’m backing off. “No problem, pal—she’s all yours.”
I turn to her friend, trying to rescue the situation. “Dance?”
Vina’s shoulders rise in a happy gush. “I’d love to.”
I shoot a disgusted glance at Raine as we leave and I’m happy to see what I think is irritation on her face. At least it’s something.
When Vina and I reach the dance floor, I look at the upper level and see that Raine’s watching us. Vina grabs my shoulders, her arms board stiff, and begins making the spastic dancing movements I had seen earlier. I’m in trouble. I don’t know how to do these moves. With all the things Gatsbro taught us in our year at the Estate, modern dance was not part of our studies. I reach out and put my hands on Vina’s waist and sway to the music instead, periodically glancing up to see if Raine is still watching. She is. Just beyond her I see the gold muscle-head in the corner probably still ready to dismember me, but then something much more interesting catches my eye.
Sitting in the shadows at a table is the Secretary. He’s chatting with LeGru, who must have entered another way. The Secretary finishes his drink with a quick backward movement and rises, whispering something to Hap. He’s not an easy read, cautious with his lip movements, but I make out, Leaving for the night. He disappears through a door on the second level, followed by LeGru. I see other adults on the upper level so he wasn’t the only parent here, but I suspect he’s the most intimidating. As soon as he leaves the volume in the room rises and I notice more people coming out on the dance floor.
“Locke?”
I look back at Vina. “Sorry, what did you say?”
“Where’d you learn to dance this way?”
“Oh. This? I can’t remember. I guess it’s kind of old-fashioned.”
“No, not at all,” she says. “But it is strange. I like it! Show me!”
The music changes to a slower beat and I slide my hands around her back, pulling her a little closer. “Well, you just—”
“Excuse me. I need to speak with Mr. Jenkins. Do you mind, Vina?”
Raine cuts in. No one is more surprised than me. “I don’t think so,” I tell her. “I don’t want to lose a hand.”
“I’ve spoken to Hap.” She stands there waiting like I’m a huge jackass for even mentioning it.
I look at Vina and shrug. “We’ll dance more later?”
She nods and smiles but aims an annoyed roll of the eyes at Raine before she walks away.
I turn to Raine, leery of touching her first. “You sure?”
She grabs my shoulders, her arms stiff, keeping me at a distance. I don’t put my hands on her waist. “So, what kind of clothes are those?” she asks.
“Regular ones.”
“You don’t think much of social codes?”
“Ones that matter.”
“I see.” She bites her lower lip, all orchestrated affectation, like she’s really contemplating my words. “Does that include peeping at girls in the middle of the night?”
The charm is punched out of me. Busted. That’s why she was staring at me. She saw me last night. Going on the offensive is my only save. “You own the park?”
“Yes, for the most part.” Her fingers dig into my shoulders. “The truth’s a bitter pill,” she says. “Don’t look so put out.”
Put out? Hardly. I study her, trying to figure out what she wants. Her face is hard. Each plane a mask, hiding something beneath. She closes everyone out. I think my chances with Vina were better, but then, her father isn’t the Secretary who has the information we need.
I shrug. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“So your mother lets you walk the streets of Boston in the middle of the night?”
“And your father lets you straddle rooftops?”
She glances over her shoulder to where the Secretary had been sitting.
“He’s gone,” I say.
She looks back at me. Her eyes are large worried pools of deep brown, soft and beautiful, but her pupils are the tight hard circles from the photos. Something inside of me catches. Is she frightened of her own father?
“I won’t tell anyone,” I whisper. Her hands relax on my shoulders and I reach out and try to pull her closer like I did with Vina so we can really dance.
She vacillates between stepping forward and pulling back, both of us acutely aware of my hands on her waist, a moment that seems to stretch on forever, and then she jerks away from me. “Never come to my park again. Capiche?”
She stands there waiting for a response to her ridiculous order with her hands on her hips and her brows raised like I’m her dense gold-headed Bot.
Capiche?
Lesson two: Restraint. Restraint, Locke. Don’t blow it. Don’t let her push you. But something else inside of me speaks up. I’m not a Bot or her lackey. I’m not anyone’s lackey.
“I don’t speak Italian,” I finally answer, my tone thick with ice.
She hesitates for only a second before rage flashes across her face and she turns and walks away.
A Pig’s Eye
I walk down the steps to the PAT station. I’m not ready to go back to the apartment.
Her park? Capiche?
I’m livid. At myself. At her. I want to break something. Maybe my own bonehead. I didn’t let Carver push my buttons when he asked about my past. Why did I let her push them? Yes, something about her is dangerous. And incredibly annoying.
I hope Xavier doesn’t try to call me tonight but I know he will. Did you charm her? Are you in? What will I tell him? Is there any way I can salvage this? Vina took an interest in me, but Vina won’t open the doors I need. Even if she gets me into their small group, that isn’t going to get me close to the Secretary.
The PAT pod opens and I step in. “Ashmont,” I say.
“Not a valid destination.”
How can Ashmont not be a valid destination? But I don’t care where I go. Anywhere away from here is fine. “Jackson Square.”
“Not a valid destination.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“Not a valid destination.”
“Copley Square!”
The hatch closes and the pod takes off. I try to focus on the speed, the lights, the thrill, but none of that feeling is with me now. I redirect three times and exit as I’m required, still feeling just as ready to blow as when I started. I’ve walked two blocks before I realize I’m not even sure where I’ve ended up.
The skin of my palm ripples. The iScroll is alerting me to a message. I don’t answer. Whoever it is, Xavier, Carver, or Livvy, they’ll have to wait. It ripples again a minute later. I swipe the iScroll, and yell, “Off!” The iScroll goes silent and disappears, the tattoo invisible in my palm. I imagine Percel cowering somewhere in my hand, wondering what set me off.
I look around for a street sign, trying to figure out where I am, but there are none. I sit down on the steps of a nearby stoop and lean forward, running my hands through my hair, staring at my scuffed boots. How could I let her rattle me so much? Something about her gets under my skin.
My park. Maybe that was it. Those two words exploded in my head when she said them. With all the change I’ve had to deal with, the Commons is the only thing that still seems the same in Boston. It’s belonged to everyone here for hundreds of years, and in one dismissive sentence she bans me from it? In a—
I smile. Pig’s eye. One of my dad’s favorite phrases. I haven’t thought of it in years. I almost forgot it. But it fits perfectly.
That’s right. In a freaking pig’s eye I’ll stay out of her park.
The long walk to the Commons and the darkness of the park calm me. For 260 years, I hated the darkness. It terrified me. But now, for the second night in a row, I find this darkness freeing. It disguises the world I’m barely hanging on to. It blurs its edges. At least for a few hours, it makes it the world where I once belonged. No way will she ever ban me from the Commons. I plant myself on the same gnarled tree root as last night, looking up, just daring her to appear on the rooftop. I hear the rustling of the bushes. The nightlife better get used to me. I plan on coming here a lot.
“You don’t follow orders well, do you?”
I leap to my feet and whirl around, my heart pounding so hard I think it’s going to burst through my chest.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”
I catch my breath. “I think that’s exactly what you meant to do.”
Raine grins. “Maybe.” She’s shed her drab gray clothes and wears a simple sleeveless blue shirt and some dark blue pants that reach only to her knees. Her feet are bare.
“Going to sic your rabid Bot on me?”
“I’ve dismissed Hap for the evening. He knows the routine. My nights are my own.”
“So it’s you who’s going to kick me out of your park?”
She shrugs. “I suppose you can stay. Tonight, anyway.”
“Wow. Thanks.”
We stand there, awkwardly. Or maybe it’s just me who is awkward. She seems comfortable with the silence. She comes closer and touches the trunk of the tree where I had been sitting. There are only a few feet and the massive tree root between us. “This is one of my favorites too. It’s a great tree, isn’t it? I’ve always loved how the root’s twisted and out of control.” She runs her fingers over a large knot like she’s familiar with it and then looks up at me. “What brought you here?” Her voice is soft and genuine, and I can’t deny I’m taking in the transformation of her appearance as well. The hardness is gone there too.
I see the beautiful Raine I saw last night on the rooftop, her hair loose on her shoulders and her movements relaxed. But I remember her sweeping disdain earlier this evening and remember too that chess is one of her hobbies. Is this a calculated move? I can’t forget that there was something about her picture in the file that disturbed me. LeGru’s words come back to me. Trust your first instincts. But I’m not sure what those instincts were telling me. I rely on my own new motto instead: Watch your back, Locke.
I glance around me, wary of an ambush. The park is quiet, and even the bushes have stopped rustling. I look back at her. Is this sudden turnaround in her to make me let my guard down? I walk closer to her and she takes a step back. “You,” I say. “You’re what brought me here. I don’t like being told where I can or can’t go, especially by people who are a little too full of themselves.”
I’m waiting for her to come back at me with a snide remark, but she’s silent, her chest rising in deep slow breaths. She never takes her eyes from me and she finally nods.
“I think it’s time for me to go. Good night,” she whispers. Without another word she walks away.
The air is squeezed out of me. She’s already at the top of the steps that lead to the street but the memory of her eyes still pierces me. In her own clumsy way, I think she was trying to apologize. Have I become too much of a cynic? I want to call after her but she’s already crossing the street to her apartment, and then I see the oddest thing I never expected to see. She climbs a narrow rope ladder hanging from the roof, almost hidden in the shadows. Nine stories.
What makes a girl risk her neck like that, just to go for a three A.M. walk? That’s why she was barefoot. And why not just use the apartment elevator? She reaches the top and pulls the ladder up behind her and then briefly looks back toward the park before she disappears into the shadows.
I’m batting a thousand. Twice in one night. A double bonehead. I need to stop thinking so much and just listen. Maybe Xavier was right. Maybe for this Favor, they did choose the wrong person.
An Impression
“Good work. You’re in.” I finally turn my iScroll back on and Carver’s image looms in front of me. “Livvy will be over this morning in case anyone decides to stop by.”
“Wait a minute.” I’m still trying to wake up, rummaging through the pantry while my coffee brews. I pull the half-filled coffee cup from the brewer and pour in cream. “I’m in what?” I stuff half a protein cake into my mouth. “Who’s stopping by?”
Xavier’s image pops up too. He glares at me. “Were you out all night again?”
“No.” I swallow the cake and try to pay more attention to them.
“The Collective called,” Carver continues. “You have been invited into Raine’s group. Good work. You made quite an impression.”
Not as I remember. “Are you sure? When did they call?”
“Last night,” Xavier says. “I tried to call you to let you know but you didn’t answer.”
His call came long before I met Raine in the park and ticked her off even more than I had earlier. It couldn’t have been her who put in a good word for me. Maybe it was Vina? “Did the Collective say who recommended me?”
“You scored big. It was the Secretary himself. Apparently—”
“What? I never even met him. This doesn’t sound—”
“Would you just pipe it and listen?” Xavier grumbles. I hate that he’s echoing my thoughts from the night before.
“Like I was saying,” Carver continues. “It seems he was there last night and saw you help a boy up off the floor who just happens to be LeGru’s son. Smart move. The Collective quoted the Secretary as saying that he found you to be ‘very gracious in an unpleasant situation.’”
Sheer luck and timing. But if he saw that, he must have seen me grab Raine’s hand too. Is he the one who sent Hap over to choke me? Something about this doesn’t feel right, but if the Secretary is the type who keeps hidden prisoners in the city, choking his daughter’s classmates might be par for the course. Or maybe he’s already checked out my profile and my conveniently rich dad is what did the trick. “What now?”
“Their next meeting isn’t for ten more days but then it really ramps up—you’ll be on nearly every night. The meeting is at the
Secretary’s residence, as most of them are. We’ll check in with you, but in the meantime stay put. The less you’re out and about, the better. Study the files, and make sure you have them memorized.”
I nod. Barely. I’m not thrilled about days filled with nothing but reading files in a quiet apartment.
Carver signs off but Xavier lingers, just looking at me.
“What?” I say. It’s more of an accusation than a question.
“You’ll come have dinner with me tonight.”
“Carver said no more face-to-face contact.”
“What Carver doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
Some team they are. And I’m in their hands. But I agree to go with him because I’m sick of the food in the pantry, sick of the apartment, and curious about what kind of life Xavier leads outside of a basement.
I sign off and go sit on the living room couch to finish my protein cake and coffee, but I know it’s more than curiosity or being sick of the apartment that makes me want to get out. When I’m alone my mind wanders to places I never want to visit again. I think about where I am and how I got here. I think of all the people I’ll never see again. My parents, my brother, my sister. I think about how building a new life is too much work and how much I still want my old one. I think about all the wasted years trapped in a cube and not a single soul on the planet knew I was there but Kara. And Kara opens another whole new dark corridor of guilt for me to get lost in. I think about her and how I made it and she didn’t, and I still wish I could trade places with her. I hear her voice over and over again, for you Locke … always there. But I wasn’t there for her when she needed me to be. I still miss her even though she wasn’t the Kara I knew anymore. The Kara I loved was gone long ago. That’s the Kara I miss. And Jenna. I miss her too. I think about her even though I know I shouldn’t. She wants me to live life. Move on. Grow up. Can I ever do that fast enough for her?
The Favor at least gives me some relief, something else to think about, an area of my life where I’m making things happen instead of remembering what happened to me.
Fox Forever (Jenna Fox Chronicles #3) Page 6
