Megan whistled, eyes wide. “Wow,” she murmured. “Wow. Is that everything?”
“Everything that was in the briefcase.” Jon looked up after he said it—he already put the empty briefcase back in his closet—afraid just the word might make Megan feel ill again, but she was fine. Her attention was completely focused on the arsenal of gadgets spread out on Jon’s bed.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing to a round silver disk with a glossy black knob in the center. She sounded like a kid on Christmas morning. Lights blinked and a digital readout was scrolling words that floated a quarter-of-an-inch above the surface.
Jon bent over, reading the scrolling type. “’Holographic Decoy,’” Jon said. “’Digitize subject for any length of time, up to three hours. Press the blue button on the edge to record, once to prepare and align and then once to record with the digitizing unit centered on the subject. Use laser sight to align. Press the center button to deploy. Look for and press the circular black shadow centered beneath the decoy projection to deactivate. To include audio—”
Megan’s eyes were wide and round. “Cool!” she said. “This is supposed to be, like, a holograph? Do me!” she picked up the silver disc and handed it to Jon. “Do what it says. Point it at me and press the button.” She took a few steps back and then clapped her hands together. “Cheese,” she said perkily.
The image of Megan reaching into the locker, then engulfed in blue light, then struggling to breathe, was still very fresh to Jon, if non-existent to Megan. “I don’t know if this is such a good idea—”
“Jeeze, don’t be a wuss, point it and push the button.”
Jon frowned. He assumed that whatever had happened at the locker was a booby-trap set by Dr. Berhnard, in case somebody other than Jon showed up to mess with the locker. But what if that wasn’t it? What if that had been meant for Jon, or what if Bernhard just hadn’t given a shit? He had always been weird. What if he was more than weird? What if he wanted the book to be a doomsday device? What if all of this stuff was booby-trapped? How the hell was Jon supposed to know?
“He who hesitates will get a foot up his ass,” Megan said cheerfully. “Come on, come on. This will be so cool!”
Jon watched the instructions scroll by again. He found the blue button—it was in the form of a ridge at the base of the disc—held out the disc and pressed.
Silently, a web of brilliant blue light shot from the black knob on the top of the disc and hit Jon’s lamp, locking onto the ceramic boy-and-dog and scanning it, up and down, with razor thin lines of light. The lines split and folded, turning into diamonds, as the beams began to draw a series of progressive concentric circles, first out from the eyes of the sad ceramic boy, then the dog, then the boy’s hand that held a short fishing pole, and then the circles began to radiate from the hand resting on the dogs head. Luminous waves of light seemed to pulse down the lamp shade, at first straight and then curving around in pulsing sine waves. Erratic, seemingly random slots of light shot out, hitting objects on the periphery of the lamp—the night table, the pair of ratty shoes, the book on assembly language programming the shoes sat on, the wall, the Blondie poster. Each flash started out as a circle with notches around the circumference, expanding outward while quick blips of lines went up and down in the middle. Then the beam disappeared.
“Holy Crap!” Megan said, eyes wide and glistening. “Oh my God. That is just so cool.” She glanced for a moment at Jon, frowning. “You missed me, though. That’s supposed to be me, not your lamp.” Then, she looked back to the lamp, clapped her hands together and laughed. “That is so cool.”
“I wasn’t aiming at you,” Jon said. “I wasn’t going to do me, either. You don’t remember what happened to you at the bus station,” Jon said. “I do. I think you about almost got killed. Or put in a coma for the rest of your life.”
Megan giggled and slapped her hips, her eyes, sparkling with reflected blue, almost perfectly round. She stared, lips parted in smile, in awe at the dancing blue lights. “Or maybe you could have suffered permanent brain damage,” Jon finished.
As abruptly as it started, the light show stopped. In the center of the black knob a little green light flashed on and off, beneath the surface. “Okay,” Jon said. “Part two. You might want to get back.”
“No way, I want to see this,” she said, eyes bright, her smile all teeth. “Go on, put it down, put it down.”
The bed was full of everything else out of the briefcase, so he placed the disc on the floor, and pressed the black knob in the center. Immediately, the disc seemed to melt into the floor, leaving only a small black stain where the knob had been, and with a blue flicker of light, his lamp sat on the floor in front of them.
Megan nodded vigorously. “Wicked,” she said. “How cool! I can think of about a million things you could use that for. Okay, now do me! Come on!”
Jon swiped his hand at the lamp on his floor—his hand passed right through. He did it again, slowly. His hand disappeared on one side and then reappeared on the other. He felt nothing, absolutely nothing, but there was nothing translucent or ambiguous about this illusion—it looked every bit as solid as his lamp did. It even appeared to be lit correctly, even though he was on the other side of his room and the shadow of his bed fell across it—the shadow was there, just as if it were solid.
He had to admit, it was cool. He still hadn’t adjusted quite as well as Megan apparently had—he should have just told her in the first place, he guessed, but this was definitely not the reaction he had expected. He felt fear, too. He was worried something else might happen to him or Megan. That at any moment, the government would show up in black suits and big black cars and Megan and Jon would both end up in some government-run hospital in New Mexico, permanently drugged into some semi-catatonic state. Or, maybe, they’d just end up in a river. Or one of these gadgets the good doctor had left with him might blow up. By accident, or maybe by design—Jon was none to sure, at this point, of Dr. Bernhard’s benevolence or sanity. Still, there was no denying it—it was the coolest damn thing he’d ever seen.
Megan had crouched over beside Jon, and started sticking her finger into the middle of the holographic lamp. “It’s just—it’s just like it swallows your finger. Like a statue made out of water. That’s something else.”
“Could you turn the light off?” Jon asked Megan. “I want to see if it changes with the light.” Jon traced the line of the bed’s shadow on the lamp with his finger—and the immaterial lamp seemed to cast an accurate shadow on the floor, as well. Amazing.
Megan grunted and stood up, turning off the light. There seemed to be perhaps the briefest delay, just a fraction of a second, where the lamp still appeared to be lit, complete with shadow, as if the light hadn’t just been turned off. Then, it was darker as well, and looked perfectly normal. “Wow,” Jon said. “It’s got to be simulating all that. Wow.”
“Okay, okay, now me! Come on!” Megan stood back near the door and stretched out her arms, chin up. “Scan me!”
Jon stuck his hand through the lamp, and immediately felt the disc. He pressed down on the knob, and the lamp vanished. For a moment, after the lamp had disappeared, it looked as if he was holding his finger an inch-and-a-half over a dull stain on the floor—and then the silver disc rippled back into existence, green light blinking. Jon picked it up.
“I don’t know,” Jon said. “You don’t remember the bus station, or what happened to you at the locker, or the briefcase—”
Megan’s smile faltered a little bit, but apparently whatever had happened to her at the bus station was wearing off. “I don’t care,” she said. “It hasn’t blown us up yet, it did what it said was supposed to when you did it with the lamp, it is, like, the coolest thing I’ve seen in a year—do it to me!”
Jon smiled a little. Who could resist an offer like that? Finding the little blue ridge on the side of the disc, Jon held the disc towards Megan and pressed the button.
The web of blue light erupted, even more brilliant and dazzling in the shade-drawn darkness of Jon’s room, now that the overhead light was off. The blue beams drew a grid over Megan’s body, and the grid moved with her as she shifted on her feet.
“Cool,” Megan breathed, twisting her torso. “It’s like it’s stuck to me. It’s like I’m wearing it!”
She looked down as addition shafts of light shot out from the little disc, drawing at first notched bars that moved and stretched and then went elsewhere—up a leg, at her hips, at her shoulders—it was almost like it was taking measurements. Concentric blue circles began radiating from the center of her abdomen, and then her chest—a set of circles for each breast, though barely distinct under the white knit shirt and brown suede vest, radiating out from the center.
“Heh!” Megan laughed, looking down. “Magical nipples. Kinky little gizmo—” She looked up at Jon. “Don’t get any ideas, pervert,” she said with a smile, and then looked back down. “Oh. My. God. This is so fucking cool.” The concentric rings were intersecting and rippling all over her body. She bounced up and down on her heels and shook her torso—the radiating rings matched every movement, sticking to her like they were magically draw on. “Oh, wow.”
“Cool,” Megan breathed, twisting her torso. “It’s like it’s stuck to me. It’s like I’m wearing it!”
She looked down as addition shafts of light shot out from the little disc, drawing at first notched bars that moved and stretched and then went elsewhere—up a leg, at her hips, at her shoulders—it was almost like it was taking measurements. Concentric blue circles began radiating from the center of her abdomen, and then her chest—a set of circles for each breast, though barely distinct under the white knit shirt and brown suede vest, radiating out from the center.
“Heh!” Megan laughed, looking down. “Magical nipples. Kinky little gizmo—” She looked up at Jon. “Don’t get any ideas, pervert,” she said with a smile, and then looked back down. “Oh. My. God. This is so fucking cool.” The concentric rings were intersecting and rippling all over her body. She bounced up and down on her heels and shook her torso—the radiating rings matched every movement, sticking to her like they were magically draw on. “Oh, wow.”
“Do you feel anything?” Jon ask—he moved the disc back and forth, but the beams stayed stuck on Megan, tracking perfectly. “Is it warm? Does it hurt?”
“Nothing,” Megan said, shaking her head—there was a flurry of light shooting from the disc and it looked, for a moment, like Megan’s braids were filled with glowing blue pixie dust.
“What’s it doing on my face?” she asked, seeing that Jon was staring at her. “Is it cool?”
Jon nodded. “Very cool,” he said. Solid blocks of color flowed over her face while concentric rings of blue light radiated from her eyes, intersecting at her nose and flowing over the entire front of her head. A distinct beam seemed to be tracing her lips with light, and when she opened her mouth to talk her teeth flashed blue and even her tongue seemed to be criss-crossed with bright blue lines. Her hair swam with light—it was luminescent, almost as if the illumination was radiating from beneath her hair. Every few moments, a notched circle appeared or a notched set of lines, as if something was being measured and recorded, and then the shape was gone. Blue beams would appear, drawing a shape or a notched line on the door behind Megan, on the floor in front of her, on the ceiling, and then disappear. Jon thought perhaps it was trying to get perspective, or distinguish edges or boundaries—the holograph of the light had not included anything on the table, or the wall, or anything like that, so it had to have some system to decide where it was starting and stopping.
“Turn around,” Jon said. “I don’t know if it needs to get both sides but I would think—let’s just see what it does.”
Megan had already raised her hands above her head and, almost perfectly on the tips of her toes, pirouetted. Jon remembered something about how she had used to take ballet. As she raised one leg up and extended it—damn, she was good at that, too—Jon saw that bright blue dots went up and down her legs and arms, larger dots at her elbows, shoulder, knees and hips. Unlike the grid and circles, which stayed glued to her as she moved, the dots seemed to float over her arms and legs, not disappearing as she rotated around. Rather than her physical appearance, it looked like the dots were tracking her motion. She did two turns and then stopped, back towards Jon. “All dark back here,” Megan noted. “What’s it doing? You’re not staring at my butt, are you?”
Jon heard the smile in her voice, but found himself blushing anyway. He half-way wished that he had something to make her forget that whole at-least-I’m-not-wearing-a-bra episode. Good humored or not, he suspected that was going to haunt him. Plus, he had sort of been staring at her butt, watching the bright blue lines of light tracing the shape of each buttock, clear and distinct in her tight denim jeans. So she was busting him without even turning around.
“Yes, and it’s big and fat,” Jon shot back. “No, I’m not staring at your butt. I just, like, looked at it for a second.”
“Uh-huh,” Megan said skeptically. “Like I believe that.” She wiggled her hips, the criss-crossing grid of light the little disc was drawing on her rear-end staying perfectly conformed. The dots on her legs and arms, the large, filled circles her hips and knees and elbows were, moved as well, but not so perfectly matched, as if they were somehow tracking the specific motion of her bones and joints, not the skin and clothes on the outside. Circles spread from the back of her head and down her back, lines radiating down the back of her legs. More random beams shot out, as if measuring something on her, or the wall, or the door.
“Nothing,” Megan said, shaking her head—there was a flurry of light shooting from the disc and it looked, for a moment, like Megan’s braids were filled with glowing blue pixie dust.
“What’s it doing on my face?” she asked, seeing that Jon was staring at her. “Is it cool?”
Jon nodded. “Very cool,” he said. Solid blocks of color flowed over her face while concentric rings of blue light radiated from her eyes, intersecting at her nose and flowing over the entire front of her head. A distinct beam seemed to be tracing her lips with light, and when she opened her mouth to talk her teeth flashed blue and even her tongue seemed to be criss-crossed with bright blue lines. Her hair swam with light—it was luminescent, almost as if the illumination was radiating from beneath her hair. Every few moments, a notched circle appeared or a notched set of lines, as if something was being measured and recorded, and then the shape was gone. Blue beams would appear, drawing a shape or a notched line on the door behind Megan, on the floor in front of her, on the ceiling, and then disappear. Jon thought perhaps it was trying to get perspective, or distinguish edges or boundaries—the holograph of the light had not included anything on the table, or the wall, or anything like that, so it had to have some system to decide where it was starting and stopping.
“Turn around,” Jon said. “I don’t know if it needs to get both sides but I would think—let’s just see what it does.”
Megan had already raised her hands above her head and, almost perfectly on the tips of her toes, pirouetted. Jon remembered something about how she had used to take ballet. As she raised one leg up and extended it—damn, she was good at that, too—Jon saw that bright blue dots went up and down her legs and arms, larger dots at her elbows, shoulder, knees and hips. Unlike the grid and circles, which stayed glued to her as she moved, the dots seemed to float over her arms and legs, not disappearing as she rotated around. Rather than her physical appearance, it looked like the dots were tracking her motion. She did two turns and then stopped, back towards Jon. “All dark back here,” Megan noted. “What’s it doing? You’re not staring at my butt, are you?”
Jon heard the smile in her voice, but found himself blushing anyway. He half-way wished that he had something to make her forget that whole at-least-I’m-not-wearing-a-bra episode. Good humored or not, he suspected that was going to haunt him. Plus, he had sort of been staring at her butt, watching the bright blue lines of light tracing the shape of each buttock, clear and distinct in her tight denim jeans. So she was busting him without even turning around.
“Yes, and it’s big and fat,” Jon shot back. “No, I’m not staring at your butt. I just, like, looked at it for a second.”
“Uh-huh,” Megan said skeptically. “Like I believe that.” She wiggled her hips, the criss-crossing grid of light the little disc was drawing on her rear-end staying perfectly conformed. The dots on her legs and arms, the large, filled circles her hips and knees and elbows were, moved as well, but not so perfectly matched, as if they were somehow tracking the specific motion of her bones and joints, not the skin and clothes on the outside. Circles spread from the back of her head and down her back, lines radiating down the back of her legs. More random beams shot out, as if measuring something on her, or the wall, or the door.
Then, all at once, the light stopped and the blue grid was gone.
“Am I done? Did you stop it?” Megan asked, turning around. “Okay, come on, let’s see it.”
“Hang on, hang on,” Jon said. “I didn’t stop it . . . I don’t know how long it recorded. The read-out said it could do that for up to 3 hours . . . I don’t know. Maybe there’s some other setting if you’re going to be moving. Maybe it’ll just be, like, a still picture.”
“Well, come on, come on, let’s see!” she demanded, and Jon put the disc down in the same place as before, and pressed the knob. The disc seemed to melt into the carpet and then, with a blue flicker, Megan was standing over Jon, chin up, arms spread.
“It’s me!” Megan cried, delighted. “Oh my god, it’s my twin! It’s like, it’s me!” she clapped her hands together. Then, she ran up and stuck her hand through the ghost-Megan’s torso. In and out, without resistance, without a sound. “Oh, my God,” Megan said. “That is so, so cool.”
The ghost-Megan lowered its arms a little and bent its head down, looking down. It seemed to be mouthing something, but there was no sound.
Megan stepped back. “Huh. I look a little nuts, doing that like that. I guess it makes sense, when you see all the blue lasers and everything, but that just looks like I’m in love with my own boobs.”
The ghost-Megan pirouetted. ”Hey,” Megan said. “I’m still pretty good at that.” She walked around the ghost-Megan as it lifted one knee and extended its leg, and then brought the leg back down again. “Wow. I’m better at that than I thought, Megan said. “I could’ve done ballet. But—”
She stuck her hand through the ghost-Megan’s head. “—too tall.” She stuck a finger into its torso. “Too heavy.” She swiped her hand through its chest. “Boobs too big. For ballet, anyway. But I could do toe ten times better than that scrawny little bitch Andrea Morlen that David thought was going to, like, ‘break out’. ‘Maybe you need to find something your more suited for, Megan—‘” she started, wagging her finger at the ghost-Megan’s head. Then, seamlessly, the ghost-Megan turned around and lifted up its chin and spread out its arms.
“Cool,” Megan said. “It’s looping.” She cocked her head. “Although I’m not sure how good a decoy it makes. You’d think seeing somebody do something like that would attract attention.”
Jon laughed, and Megan smiled at him. “You knew I was joking.” She turned around and poked Jon in the ribs. “You, I like.”
She turned back around, looking at the pirouetting ghost-Megan. “Andrea couldn’t pirouette that good when she was at the top of the stupid class. Scrawny little bitch.” Megan sighed. Then she turned back around to face Jon. “Well, that’s done, what’s next?”
“What’s—what’s next? What’s next is my mom is going to get home and the CIA and the FBI are going to me knocking on more door and probably yours—”
Megan gasped, and for a brief moment Jon thought that perhaps the gravity of the situation was getting through to her. But, she broke out in a wide, toothy smile, her eyes shining with excitement. “No way! Really? Do you really think so?”
“Uh—” Jon started. “Well—uh—I mean, Bernhard told me he thought they would be coming after me—the government, or the military, or somebody—we might end up in jail, or I might—”
Megan closed the space between them, so her face was three inches away from his. “You mean some guys from the FBI and the CIA might show up and knock on my door and get my mom and Larry and tell them we’ve got some secret government project and we’re out to, like, take over the world or something?”
“I—”
“Do you think they’ll show up with police cars and badges and guys with guns?” she continued.
“Oh, God, Larry would shit a brick. He’d drop dead on the spot, that’s what he’d do. Making me feel like the worst piece of shit on the planet because I skipped school or I got suspended. That time I got the in-school suspension, man, he acted like I had murdered his mother and set fire to the preacher. He wanted to disown me. I told him he didn’t own me, so there was nothing to dis-own, and he said he wanted mom to disown me, and then there was another one of those it’s-all-Megan’s-fault knock-down drag-out fights. Wait until he gets a load of government goons at the front door. ‘Excuse me, sir, your step-daughter is part of a plot of take over the world—‘ Hey, can I leave a note about how my folks, like, masterminded it all? I wish I could be there when he gets the knock on the door.”
Jon stared at Megan, eyes wide. “You want the FBI and CIA showing up at your house to arrest you?”
Megan paused. “Well, not if I’m actually there to get arrested, I guess. But Larry would shit in his pants, and it would serve the old bald bastard right. And my mom—she’ll eat a dozen Xanex and drink a case of beer and puke all night. You really think the FBI or somebody is going to come looking for us?”
“Well, yeah, I mean, you’ve already seen—”
Then it happened. Megan grabbed Jon’s head, and gave him a big, wet kiss. Right on the mouth. As she pulled back, he felt the tip of her tongue run over his lips. Well, that answered the question of what he would do if and when they kissed. He would just sit there and do nothing like a dumbass.
“Mmm,” Megan said, her cheeks flushing red for a change. “Sorry,” she mumbled, looking down and smiling. “I didn’t mean to do that, I just got a little worked up. Sorry.”
“No,” Jon said. “Don’t apologize. That was—” And then he saw the ghost-Megan behind Megan’s back pirouetting, raising one knee and then extending its leg, but looking straight behind him, as if admiring Jon’s excellent Blondie poster, arms folded across its chest. Something he was pretty sure Megan hadn’t done. “—weird,” he finished.
“Weird?” she asked, smiling but turning redder. “Weird? I’ve had ‘oh my god’ and ‘great’ and ‘do it again’ and ‘did you just put your tongue in my mouth’ and even ‘I don’t think you brushed your teeth’ but I’ve never gotten a ‘weird’ before.”
Jon blinked, looking at Megan. He meant to explain why he had said “weird”, and what he was seeing the ghost-Megan do, but instead his mouth said, “Good Lord, how many boys have you kissed?”
Megan flushed, and the smile did go away. “Eight boys and two girls. Not counting gross cousins and stuff. But counting Marc, because he’s, like, a second-cousin twice removed and he was really hot. And he had this kind of accent.”
Jon blinked. Jon had kissed his quasi-girlfriend in sixth-grade, Allison, twice, and both times had been like kissing a dead fish. Well, until just after the second time, when she had bit him and told him to go to hell. That had been it. Of course, Megan was hot, and a year older than him, so it made sense that she’d have more experience. But eight boys and—had she actually said she had kissed two girls?
“Two girls?” he asked.
Megan sighed. “Once was on a dare and it wasn’t all juicy or anything, and once was I was really drunk and it was, like, a college girl.”
“Am I done? Did you stop it?” Megan asked, turning around. “Okay, come on, let’s see it.”
“Hang on, hang on,” Jon said. “I didn’t stop it . . . I don’t know how long it recorded. The read-out said it could do that for up to 3 hours . . . I don’t know. Maybe there’s some other setting if you’re going to be moving. Maybe it’ll just be, like, a still picture.”
“Well, come on, come on, let’s see!” she demanded, and Jon put the disc down in the same place as before, and pressed the knob. The disc seemed to melt into the carpet and then, with a blue flicker, Megan was standing over Jon, chin up, arms spread.
“It’s me!” Megan cried, delighted. “Oh my god, it’s my twin! It’s like, it’s me!” she clapped her hands together. Then, she ran up and stuck her hand through the ghost-Megan’s torso. In and out, without resistance, without a sound. “Oh, my God,” Megan said. “That is so, so cool.”
The ghost-Megan lowered its arms a little and bent its head down, looking down. It seemed to be mouthing something, but there was no sound.
Megan stepped back. “Huh. I look a little nuts, doing that like that. I guess it makes sense, when you see all the blue lasers and everything, but that just looks like I’m in love with my own boobs.”
The ghost-Megan pirouetted. ”Hey,” Megan said. “I’m still pretty good at that.” She walked around the ghost-Megan as it lifted one knee and extended its leg, and then brought the leg back down again. “Wow. I’m better at that than I thought, Megan said. “I could’ve done ballet. But—”
She stuck her hand through the ghost-Megan’s head. “—too tall.” She stuck a finger into its torso. “Too heavy.” She swiped her hand through its chest. “Boobs too big. For ballet, anyway. But I could do toe ten times better than that scrawny little bitch Andrea Morlen that David thought was going to, like, ‘break out’. ‘Maybe you need to find something your more suited for, Megan—‘” she started, wagging her finger at the ghost-Megan’s head. Then, seamlessly, the ghost-Megan turned around and lifted up its chin and spread out its arms.
“Cool,” Megan said. “It’s looping.” She cocked her head. “Although I’m not sure how good a decoy it makes. You’d think seeing somebody do something like that would attract attention.”
Jon laughed, and Megan smiled at him. “You knew I was joking.” She turned around and poked Jon in the ribs. “You, I like.”
She turned back around, looking at the pirouetting ghost-Megan. “Andrea couldn’t pirouette that good when she was at the top of the stupid class. Scrawny little bitch.” Megan sighed. Then she turned back around to face Jon. “Well, that’s done, what’s next?”
“What’s—what’s next? What’s next is my mom is going to get home and the CIA and the FBI are going to me knocking on more door and probably yours—”
Megan gasped, and for a brief moment Jon thought that perhaps the gravity of the situation was getting through to her. But, she broke out in a wide, toothy smile, her eyes shining with excitement. “No way! Really? Do you really think so?”
“Uh—” Jon started. “Well—uh—I mean, Bernhard told me he thought they would be coming after me—the government, or the military, or somebody—we might end up in jail, or I might—”
Megan closed the space between them, so her face was three inches away from his. “You mean some guys from the FBI and the CIA might show up and knock on my door and get my mom and Larry and tell them we’ve got some secret government project and we’re out to, like, take over the world or something?”
“I—”
“Do you think they’ll show up with police cars and badges and guys with guns?” she continued.
“Oh, God, Larry would shit a brick. He’d drop dead on the spot, that’s what he’d do. Making me feel like the worst piece of shit on the planet because I skipped school or I got suspended. That time I got the in-school suspension, man, he acted like I had murdered his mother and set fire to the preacher. He wanted to disown me. I told him he didn’t own me, so there was nothing to dis-own, and he said he wanted mom to disown me, and then there was another one of those it’s-all-Megan’s-fault knock-down drag-out fights. Wait until he gets a load of government goons at the front door. ‘Excuse me, sir, your step-daughter is part of a plot of take over the world—‘ Hey, can I leave a note about how my folks, like, masterminded it all? I wish I could be there when he gets the knock on the door.”
Jon stared at Megan, eyes wide. “You want the FBI and CIA showing up at your house to arrest you?”
Megan paused. “Well, not if I’m actually there to get arrested, I guess. But Larry would shit in his pants, and it would serve the old bald bastard right. And my mom—she’ll eat a dozen Xanex and drink a case of beer and puke all night. You really think the FBI or somebody is going to come looking for us?”
“Well, yeah, I mean, you’ve already seen—”
Then it happened. Megan grabbed Jon’s head, and gave him a big, wet kiss. Right on the mouth. As she pulled back, he felt the tip of her tongue run over his lips. Well, that answered the question of what he would do if and when they kissed. He would just sit there and do nothing like a dumbass.
“Mmm,” Megan said, her cheeks flushing red for a change. “Sorry,” she mumbled, looking down and smiling. “I didn’t mean to do that, I just got a little worked up. Sorry.”
“No,” Jon said. “Don’t apologize. That was—” And then he saw the ghost-Megan behind Megan’s back pirouetting, raising one knee and then extending its leg, but looking straight behind him, as if admiring Jon’s excellent Blondie poster, arms folded across its chest. Something he was pretty sure Megan hadn’t done. “—weird,” he finished.
“Weird?” she asked, smiling but turning redder. “Weird? I’ve had ‘oh my god’ and ‘great’ and ‘do it again’ and ‘did you just put your tongue in my mouth’ and even ‘I don’t think you brushed your teeth’ but I’ve never gotten a ‘weird’ before.”
Jon blinked, looking at Megan. He meant to explain why he had said “weird”, and what he was seeing the ghost-Megan do, but instead his mouth said, “Good Lord, how many boys have you kissed?”
Megan flushed, and the smile did go away. “Eight boys and two girls. Not counting gross cousins and stuff. But counting Marc, because he’s, like, a second-cousin twice removed and he was really hot. And he had this kind of accent.”
Jon blinked. Jon had kissed his quasi-girlfriend in sixth-grade, Allison, twice, and both times had been like kissing a dead fish. Well, until just after the second time, when she had bit him and told him to go to hell. That had been it. Of course, Megan was hot, and a year older than him, so it made sense that she’d have more experience. But eight boys and—had she actually said she had kissed two girls?
“Two girls?” he asked.
Megan sighed. “Once was on a dare and it wasn’t all juicy or anything, and once was I was really drunk and it was, like, a college girl.”
Jon shook his head. He had been spending too much of his life playing video games and writing stupid BASIC programs on his TRS-80. Not that he felt he was missing out by not ever having gotten really drunk and kissing a college guy, but for someone without much parental supervision, it suddenly didn’t seem to him like he’d really taken advantage of it.
Jon shook his head. “I didn’t mean you kissing me was weird,” Jon started, intending to explain that he had been talking about the ghost-Megan, which was now doing a pirouette, the left leg extended up above its head, its hand holding the toe. He also wanted to tell her that it had been wonderful. Even now, the taste of her, the sensation of her tongue flicking across his lips, lingered. He wanted to tell her that it had been electric. That, as she had pressed her lips against his, smelling like Ivory soap and cut flowers and fresh, warm laundry, that he had felt a circle of heat explode inside him, spreading out from the very center of his soul to the very tips of his fingers and the soles of his feet. He wanted to tell her that, although short and sweet, the kiss had been . . . transformational. Transcendent. That it was the closest thing to a religious experience that Jon had ever had.
What he said instead was this: “Even though, yeah, it kind of is weird, because I’ve known you for two-and-a-half years and you barely even noticed me at school unless Johnny Miller was hanging with me. And even then—after I let you copy my homework, the time I took the heat for you and Johnny Two breaking the water fountain, the dozen or so times I got my mom to drive you to the library so you didn’t have to go home—I mean, there wasn’t even a handshake. It was like, ‘oh, hey, thanks, can I see your algebra homework’?”
Megan smiled, looking at her shoes. “I had forgotten about the water fountain.”
“I got into a shitload of trouble for that, and I didn’t say a thing, and I sure didn’t do it for Johnny Two.”
“Really?” Megan asked, her smile becoming a little more coy. “And who did you do it for?”
Jon shook his head. “I didn’t mean you kissing me was weird,” Jon started, intending to explain that he had been talking about the ghost-Megan, which was now doing a pirouette, the left leg extended up above its head, its hand holding the toe. He also wanted to tell her that it had been wonderful. Even now, the taste of her, the sensation of her tongue flicking across his lips, lingered. He wanted to tell her that it had been electric. That, as she had pressed her lips against his, smelling like Ivory soap and cut flowers and fresh, warm laundry, that he had felt a circle of heat explode inside him, spreading out from the very center of his soul to the very tips of his fingers and the soles of his feet. He wanted to tell her that, although short and sweet, the kiss had been . . . transformational. Transcendent. That it was the closest thing to a religious experience that Jon had ever had.
What he said instead was this: “Even though, yeah, it kind of is weird, because I’ve known you for two-and-a-half years and you barely even noticed me at school unless Johnny Miller was hanging with me. And even then—after I let you copy my homework, the time I took the heat for you and Johnny Two breaking the water fountain, the dozen or so times I got my mom to drive you to the library so you didn’t have to go home—I mean, there wasn’t even a handshake. It was like, ‘oh, hey, thanks, can I see your algebra homework’?”
Megan smiled, looking at her shoes. “I had forgotten about the water fountain.”
“I got into a shitload of trouble for that, and I didn’t say a thing, and I sure didn’t do it for Johnny Two.”
“Really?” Megan asked, her smile becoming a little more coy. “And who did you do it for?”
Jon swallowed. “I—I—” he stammered, then stopped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that stuff. It’s just—you know, three days ago you walked past me in the hall and I waved and said hey and I knew you saw me, but your friends from gym were behind me, so—I mean, I understand it, Megan, I do, I know why you walked by like I wasn’t there it’s just it—” Jon swallowed again. Damn, his mouth was dry. “That was just three days ago, and now it’s like I woke up on another planet and nobody told me—”
“Jon,” Megan said, eyes down. A the ghost-Megan was stretching, as if limbering up, behind her. “I was trying to avoid you in the hall because I didn’t want to talk to you, but not because I wanted to pretend I didn’t know you—for Eva and frickin’ Muffy? Are you nuts? They are both such total bitches. Who gives a shit what they think?”
“All I did was say hello—”
“Jon. I had dropped acid about ten minutes before I ran into you in the hall, and I was tripping. You don’t even drink beer. I didn’t want you to know how fucked up I was. On the day before exams. Because, yeah, it was really stupid, and I don’t know why I did it, and even when I was doing it I knew it was stupid and—I didn’t want you to know. That I had just done something really stupid that I knew was really stupid but did it anyway.” She looked up at Jon. “I knew if I started talking to you right then I would freak, and you would know I was a total mess, and that would make me freak more, so I pretended I didn’t see you. I’m sure I could have just said hello, hey, how are you doing, and that would have covered it, but I was, you know, tripping on acid and I wasn’t thinking straight.”
Jon blinked. “Oh.”
Megan sighed and shrugged. “You know, sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” Jon said. “I shouldn’t have said all that—I was trying to say that I wasn’t saying ‘weird’ about you, I was saying ‘weird’ about the hologram.” He pointed. “Look at it.”
Megan turned and looked as the ghost-Megan squatted, hands on its knees, stretching. “I don’t remember you doing that,” Jon said. “It’s been doing stuff you didn’t do for the last two minutes. Randomizing. It’s stopped looking like it was talking, too.”
“I didn’t do that,” Megan said. “That’s freaky. It’s got a mind if its own.” She shook her head. “All in that little silver ashtray.”
“And that’s why I was saying ‘weird’,” Jon said. “I didn’t mean to say the other stuff. It just—I opened my mouth and stupid stuff came out. I like hanging out with you, and I liked the kiss and it was really cool waking up with you snoring on the floor.“ Megan chuckled softly. “I like you a lot,” he continued. “I just—I’m a little frazzled. I didn’t have any right to say what I said.”
Megan was punching her hand through the ghost-Megan’s torso as it spun around. “You talk too much,” she said. “And I don’t snore. This is so freaky cool. You want me to do you?”
“Uh, I’ll pass right now. I don’t need my own personal ghost.” Jon bent down, reaching towards the dark smudge on the floor between the ghost-Megan’s legs. He paused, hunched over, and looked up as the hologram lifted its knee and then extended the leg until it was up in the air, even with it’s head. Jon’s face was less than six inches from its thigh.
“Yo, don’t be getting all kinky with my holo-me,” Megan said, and snorted with laughter. “What are you staring at?”
“Your jeans—its jeans. Even close up, they look perfectly real. Like you could touch them. All the fabric and even how it moves—I mean, it just looks perfect. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I see the pores in my skin,” Megan said, leaning forward and squinting. “And a zit. There’s a zit on the back of my neck! All the little hairs on the back of my neck. It doesn’t look like I quite got my braids right, either. Carla used to do them for me—I can’t see the back of my head in the mirror when I do them.”
Jon punched the space over the smudge—he could feel the knob, about an inch-and-a-half over the dark smudge on the carpet, but couldn’t see anything. Then, with a flicker of blue, the ghost-Megan was gone. The floor seemed to ripple, and the silver disc reappeared.
“Whoa,” Megan said. “That is so freaky. How many of them are there?” she looked at the bed and counted. “I count eleven, including the one you’ve got. You think I could have that one, huh?”
Jon stood up and looked directly at Megan. “You know, if I’m in deep shit like I think maybe I am then you’re in deep shit too, and that’s probably not going to help, having any of this stuff—”
The idea that they were in deep shit apparently left Megan unfazed. “So when do you think the FBI or the Army is coming? Maybe we should—I don’t know, go stay in a hotel or something?”
Jon put the silver disc back on the bed, and picked up a small box that looked like a tiny chrome calculator. He swallowed hard at Megan’s nonchalant suggestion that they go shack-up in a hotel together, but managed to keep his own tone matter-of-fact. “They don’t let kids check into hotels by themselves. You’ve got to have a drivers license. I think you have to be twenty-one.”
Megan picked up a shimmering blue ball, one of almost a dozen. “I know a couple of hotels where we can get a room,” Megan said.
Jon blinked, turning the chrome calculator over in his hands but not really paying much attention to it. He had wasted way too much time playing video games. Way too much.
“I just went to some parties,” Megan continued. “I knew some of the kids that got the rooms. Some places just don’t care that much, is all. Anyway, when is the FBI coming?”
Jon shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t. But—you know, I don’t think I can keep this stuff. I think I’ve got to turn it over to the government or the police or somebody. I can’t justify putting you in danger—”
“You’ve got my permission.”
“Or putting our parents in danger—”
“You’ve definitely got my permission on that one.” She smiled. “I’ve got money, too. Two-hundred and eighty bucks, give or take a nickel. I think I might be able to get some more. I know a hotel or two—what about your sister? Isn’t she in Memphis? Does she know somebody?”
Jon shook his head. “It’s too dangerous and, Meg, there’s no point to it. How do we get anywhere? Would you really want to spend who-knows-how-long on the run from the government or the police with Carla in the front seat?”
Megan nodded knowingly. “I’ve got my learner’s permit. I’ve been driving enough to know I can handle a car. I know where Carla keeps her keys.”
“Megan, we can’t keep this stuff. I think it’s seriously, seriously dangerous. I haven’t had any indication since this started that I should trust anything Dr. Bernhard ever said or did. I don’t know why he really wanted to stick this thing on me. I don’t know that this stuff—” He motioned towards the wide array of objects on his bed. “–isn’t booby-trapped. Or put together wrong. Or malfunctioning. This stuff might blow us up just because we do something stupid. God knows what would happen if I actually tried to build something out of the book—”
Megan leaned forward. “Which is exactly why you should. I mean, all you have to do is watch the news to see why you shouldn’t be trusting the police or the government. The police beat up black people just because they’re black—Reagan wants enough missiles to blow everybody up twenty-five times over and that senile old fart has his finger on the button—”
“And Dr. Bernhard had a picture of Reagan—I mean, a big fat one, signed, in his house. Dr. Bernhard told me that he—Dr. Bernhard—was the reason we could get a warhead to Moscow and deliver enough tonnage to incinerate it from end to end. And I think he was proud of that. And sometimes he would stop whatever he was doing and sing these weird ass songs—”
Megan shrugged. “Maybe there’s something else to do, other than do whatever your doctor told you to do or turning it over to the FBI and the CIA so they can use it to kill political dissidents or assassinate world leaders—or kill poor people, or kill black people, or keep women in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. I mean, if they don’t already have this shit and you just turn it over to them—when whole countries start blowing up mysteriously, whose fault is that? So maybe there is something else you can do.”
“Like what?” Jon almost yelped. This was getting more complicated by the second.
“I don’t know. You’re mister straight-As-in-everything, you ought to be able to figure out something else. If you don’t want to go cross-country with me, staying in cheap hotels, trying to save the world, that’s your call.”
Jon just stared at Megan. He wasn’t exactly sure he trusted her armchair politics any more than he trusted Dr. Bernhard. But traveling cross-country, staying in cheap hotels with Megan. Wow. He had never traveled anywhere without his mom, and had usually wanted to be traveling alone. Especially if Stacey had come along. His mom wouldn’t be happy about his running away. It would, he knew, make her miserable. But there was an unmistakable appeal to the idea of spending night after night in cheap motel rooms with Megan. Megan, who had kissed eight boys and two girls, one of them a college girl. Megan, who not only smoked cigarettes and drank beer and sometimes smoked marijuana, which Jon had heard about from her in the past, but she had also dropped acid. Megan, who had recently been unusually friendly with him, and had, just moments ago, actually kissed him. On the lips. Megan, the first to girl to ever actively kiss him in his life. Night after night, each in a different hotel—even if it didn’t work out, it certainly seemed worth a try.
Megan was still talking. “Hey, maybe we could go to Canada? The government is a lot better in Canada. They make sure everybody can get healthcare up there and they don’t spend all their money on tanks and guns and missiles. If you have to turn it over to somebody, wouldn’t it be better to be someplace that invests in healthcare and hospitals before bombs?”
“Uh, yeah,” Jon agreed. “Okay. I’d finally made my mind up and now you’ve made me go and change it. I don’t know how we’re going to do the hotel thing, but maybe you’ve got a point.” A very good point, about staying alone together in hotel rooms, night after night. A lot of his decision to turn everything over to the authorities, of course, had hinged on him doing it all alone, anyway. He hadn’t anticipated that, if and when he told her about it, Megan would want to help. That she would actually want to go on the run with him.
“What about everything else, though?” Jon asked. “Not just getting money or finding something to do with the damned thing, but what about Johnny Miller and what the FBI and CIA come calling on him? What about my mom? And your folks. And your sister. If this ends up being over or you decide it isn’t your thing anymore, I don’t think you’ve got the kind of parents who are going to welcome you back home. If you know what I mean. I mean, when it’s over, you won’t have a home.”
“Sure I will,” she said cheerfully. “Women’s prison.” Then the smile faded. “Or, I could go take a bath one night next month or next year or the year after that, drink a bunch of beer and take a bunch of Valium and draw two big fat crosses down from my wrists with a straight razor and get messy blood all over the bathroom floor.”
“Jon,” Megan said, eyes down. A the ghost-Megan was stretching, as if limbering up, behind her. “I was trying to avoid you in the hall because I didn’t want to talk to you, but not because I wanted to pretend I didn’t know you—for Eva and frickin’ Muffy? Are you nuts? They are both such total bitches. Who gives a shit what they think?”
“All I did was say hello—”
“Jon. I had dropped acid about ten minutes before I ran into you in the hall, and I was tripping. You don’t even drink beer. I didn’t want you to know how fucked up I was. On the day before exams. Because, yeah, it was really stupid, and I don’t know why I did it, and even when I was doing it I knew it was stupid and—I didn’t want you to know. That I had just done something really stupid that I knew was really stupid but did it anyway.” She looked up at Jon. “I knew if I started talking to you right then I would freak, and you would know I was a total mess, and that would make me freak more, so I pretended I didn’t see you. I’m sure I could have just said hello, hey, how are you doing, and that would have covered it, but I was, you know, tripping on acid and I wasn’t thinking straight.”
Jon blinked. “Oh.”
Megan sighed and shrugged. “You know, sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” Jon said. “I shouldn’t have said all that—I was trying to say that I wasn’t saying ‘weird’ about you, I was saying ‘weird’ about the hologram.” He pointed. “Look at it.”
Megan turned and looked as the ghost-Megan squatted, hands on its knees, stretching. “I don’t remember you doing that,” Jon said. “It’s been doing stuff you didn’t do for the last two minutes. Randomizing. It’s stopped looking like it was talking, too.”
“I didn’t do that,” Megan said. “That’s freaky. It’s got a mind if its own.” She shook her head. “All in that little silver ashtray.”
“And that’s why I was saying ‘weird’,” Jon said. “I didn’t mean to say the other stuff. It just—I opened my mouth and stupid stuff came out. I like hanging out with you, and I liked the kiss and it was really cool waking up with you snoring on the floor.“ Megan chuckled softly. “I like you a lot,” he continued. “I just—I’m a little frazzled. I didn’t have any right to say what I said.”
Megan was punching her hand through the ghost-Megan’s torso as it spun around. “You talk too much,” she said. “And I don’t snore. This is so freaky cool. You want me to do you?”
“Uh, I’ll pass right now. I don’t need my own personal ghost.” Jon bent down, reaching towards the dark smudge on the floor between the ghost-Megan’s legs. He paused, hunched over, and looked up as the hologram lifted its knee and then extended the leg until it was up in the air, even with it’s head. Jon’s face was less than six inches from its thigh.
“Yo, don’t be getting all kinky with my holo-me,” Megan said, and snorted with laughter. “What are you staring at?”
“Your jeans—its jeans. Even close up, they look perfectly real. Like you could touch them. All the fabric and even how it moves—I mean, it just looks perfect. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I see the pores in my skin,” Megan said, leaning forward and squinting. “And a zit. There’s a zit on the back of my neck! All the little hairs on the back of my neck. It doesn’t look like I quite got my braids right, either. Carla used to do them for me—I can’t see the back of my head in the mirror when I do them.”
Jon punched the space over the smudge—he could feel the knob, about an inch-and-a-half over the dark smudge on the carpet, but couldn’t see anything. Then, with a flicker of blue, the ghost-Megan was gone. The floor seemed to ripple, and the silver disc reappeared.
“Whoa,” Megan said. “That is so freaky. How many of them are there?” she looked at the bed and counted. “I count eleven, including the one you’ve got. You think I could have that one, huh?”
Jon stood up and looked directly at Megan. “You know, if I’m in deep shit like I think maybe I am then you’re in deep shit too, and that’s probably not going to help, having any of this stuff—”
The idea that they were in deep shit apparently left Megan unfazed. “So when do you think the FBI or the Army is coming? Maybe we should—I don’t know, go stay in a hotel or something?”
Jon put the silver disc back on the bed, and picked up a small box that looked like a tiny chrome calculator. He swallowed hard at Megan’s nonchalant suggestion that they go shack-up in a hotel together, but managed to keep his own tone matter-of-fact. “They don’t let kids check into hotels by themselves. You’ve got to have a drivers license. I think you have to be twenty-one.”
Megan picked up a shimmering blue ball, one of almost a dozen. “I know a couple of hotels where we can get a room,” Megan said.
Jon blinked, turning the chrome calculator over in his hands but not really paying much attention to it. He had wasted way too much time playing video games. Way too much.
“I just went to some parties,” Megan continued. “I knew some of the kids that got the rooms. Some places just don’t care that much, is all. Anyway, when is the FBI coming?”
Jon shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t. But—you know, I don’t think I can keep this stuff. I think I’ve got to turn it over to the government or the police or somebody. I can’t justify putting you in danger—”
“You’ve got my permission.”
“Or putting our parents in danger—”
“You’ve definitely got my permission on that one.” She smiled. “I’ve got money, too. Two-hundred and eighty bucks, give or take a nickel. I think I might be able to get some more. I know a hotel or two—what about your sister? Isn’t she in Memphis? Does she know somebody?”
Jon shook his head. “It’s too dangerous and, Meg, there’s no point to it. How do we get anywhere? Would you really want to spend who-knows-how-long on the run from the government or the police with Carla in the front seat?”
Megan nodded knowingly. “I’ve got my learner’s permit. I’ve been driving enough to know I can handle a car. I know where Carla keeps her keys.”
“Megan, we can’t keep this stuff. I think it’s seriously, seriously dangerous. I haven’t had any indication since this started that I should trust anything Dr. Bernhard ever said or did. I don’t know why he really wanted to stick this thing on me. I don’t know that this stuff—” He motioned towards the wide array of objects on his bed. “–isn’t booby-trapped. Or put together wrong. Or malfunctioning. This stuff might blow us up just because we do something stupid. God knows what would happen if I actually tried to build something out of the book—”
Megan leaned forward. “Which is exactly why you should. I mean, all you have to do is watch the news to see why you shouldn’t be trusting the police or the government. The police beat up black people just because they’re black—Reagan wants enough missiles to blow everybody up twenty-five times over and that senile old fart has his finger on the button—”
“And Dr. Bernhard had a picture of Reagan—I mean, a big fat one, signed, in his house. Dr. Bernhard told me that he—Dr. Bernhard—was the reason we could get a warhead to Moscow and deliver enough tonnage to incinerate it from end to end. And I think he was proud of that. And sometimes he would stop whatever he was doing and sing these weird ass songs—”
Megan shrugged. “Maybe there’s something else to do, other than do whatever your doctor told you to do or turning it over to the FBI and the CIA so they can use it to kill political dissidents or assassinate world leaders—or kill poor people, or kill black people, or keep women in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. I mean, if they don’t already have this shit and you just turn it over to them—when whole countries start blowing up mysteriously, whose fault is that? So maybe there is something else you can do.”
“Like what?” Jon almost yelped. This was getting more complicated by the second.
“I don’t know. You’re mister straight-As-in-everything, you ought to be able to figure out something else. If you don’t want to go cross-country with me, staying in cheap hotels, trying to save the world, that’s your call.”
Jon just stared at Megan. He wasn’t exactly sure he trusted her armchair politics any more than he trusted Dr. Bernhard. But traveling cross-country, staying in cheap hotels with Megan. Wow. He had never traveled anywhere without his mom, and had usually wanted to be traveling alone. Especially if Stacey had come along. His mom wouldn’t be happy about his running away. It would, he knew, make her miserable. But there was an unmistakable appeal to the idea of spending night after night in cheap motel rooms with Megan. Megan, who had kissed eight boys and two girls, one of them a college girl. Megan, who not only smoked cigarettes and drank beer and sometimes smoked marijuana, which Jon had heard about from her in the past, but she had also dropped acid. Megan, who had recently been unusually friendly with him, and had, just moments ago, actually kissed him. On the lips. Megan, the first to girl to ever actively kiss him in his life. Night after night, each in a different hotel—even if it didn’t work out, it certainly seemed worth a try.
Megan was still talking. “Hey, maybe we could go to Canada? The government is a lot better in Canada. They make sure everybody can get healthcare up there and they don’t spend all their money on tanks and guns and missiles. If you have to turn it over to somebody, wouldn’t it be better to be someplace that invests in healthcare and hospitals before bombs?”
“Uh, yeah,” Jon agreed. “Okay. I’d finally made my mind up and now you’ve made me go and change it. I don’t know how we’re going to do the hotel thing, but maybe you’ve got a point.” A very good point, about staying alone together in hotel rooms, night after night. A lot of his decision to turn everything over to the authorities, of course, had hinged on him doing it all alone, anyway. He hadn’t anticipated that, if and when he told her about it, Megan would want to help. That she would actually want to go on the run with him.
“What about everything else, though?” Jon asked. “Not just getting money or finding something to do with the damned thing, but what about Johnny Miller and what the FBI and CIA come calling on him? What about my mom? And your folks. And your sister. If this ends up being over or you decide it isn’t your thing anymore, I don’t think you’ve got the kind of parents who are going to welcome you back home. If you know what I mean. I mean, when it’s over, you won’t have a home.”
“Sure I will,” she said cheerfully. “Women’s prison.” Then the smile faded. “Or, I could go take a bath one night next month or next year or the year after that, drink a bunch of beer and take a bunch of Valium and draw two big fat crosses down from my wrists with a straight razor and get messy blood all over the bathroom floor.”
Jon’s eyes widened. The sudden shift of tone and language was not unusual for Megan—they would be talking about movies or music or TV, and something tangential would send her spinning some morose fantasy where she either died or killed herself. Sometimes they would watch TV shows together while talking on the phone, The Greatest American Hero being a perennial favorite, and one day, when he complained that they had shown the same stock shot of William Katt flying over some buildings for the third time, she had spun a fifteen minute fantasy of going to a city like Chicago or New York, just to jump, and what it would be like to jump, and how the wind would feel rushing past her face as the ground raced up to meet her. How complicated her very prominent suicide would make things for Larry and her mom.
Another time, he and Johnny Miller had been both pushing the conversation into the realm of sexual innuendo, both of them offering simultaneous back rubs where their hands were wandering a little far afield of her back, and she had been trading jokes with them, telling them to watch the fingers, she might bite them off, but clearly enjoying the attention. Then, without any indication of what precipitated the mood shift, she grew quiet. Almost sullen, pulling away from their hands, pointedly moving if they tried to touch her and not saying anything back when they tried to engage her in further witty male banter. Then, she had started talking about how she thought if she ever shot herself in the head, she would put the gun to her eye and angle it in, not in her mouth or at her temple, but press it right against her eye and angle it so the bullet would cut across her skull, and maybe exit behind the opposite ear. “Some people live after they shoot themselves in the head,” she had said. “But more often than not, they’re vegetables. Being a vegetable isn’t so bad. Mom and Larry—they’d pull the plug.”
An hour later, they had all been at Johnny Two’s house, watching Bewitched reruns, eating arid popcorn from Johnny’s AirPopper and laughing and carrying on as if Megan hadn’t inexplicably launched into a morbid fifteen minute monologue on suicide just an hour ago. So, yes, he had previous experience with Megan’s mood swings. Even so, they were disconcerting and often left him with nothing to say.
“Big t-shaped crosses,” Megan said, tracing a long line up the underside of one forearm with her finger. “If you just cut your wrist, it’s not enough, unless you’re going to almost hack your hand off. If you make the cut all the way up your arm and you make it deep enough, you’re guaranteed to hit a bunch of veins and arteries—the blood will never clot in time.”
“I hate it when you talk like that,” Jon said. “I wish you wouldn’t. I—look, can we at least plan this thing? If we’re running away together, and we at least plan it out and figure out where we are going and where might stay? I think we must have some time before the FBI shows up if nobody has shown up yet. Read the book. See what we can build. See what the rest of this shit is—let me read the notebook that was in the briefcase. My mom is going to go batshit if I end up running away. She’s always been pretty good to me, even if she’s a flake, and what if somebody comes after her? You might not care what happens to your folks, but Mom doesn’t have anybody to watch out for her but me. I want to make sure she’s protected.”
“Sure,” Megan said distantly. “I know. I wasn't saying we ought to run away tonight. You know, just—I think we could do this thing.” She paused. “I thought maybe you’d want to.”
Jon studied his feet. “Meg—”
“My point was, don’t worry about me,” she continued, looking to the side. “There’s a lot worse that can happen to me than getting kicked out by my folks. It wouldn’t be a real big loss. I know you’ve got to worry about your mom.”
Jon nodded. “Just let me—do a little planning. Write my mom and explain. See if I can do something or give her something to protect her. Maybe, like you said, see if I can build some of these things in the book. Maybe there is somebody else who can help us. I mean, won’t Carla report her car being stolen? Won’t your parents file a missing person? Or say I kidnapped you? I’m pretty sure my Mom is going to file a missing person report on me—she sure did that time Stacey stayed out the whole weekend, and Stace was seventeen when she did that! I’m just thinking we might want to see who else can help us. Especially if the police will be looking for us in your sister’s stolen car—”
“Think Johnny Miller might want to come with us?” Megan asked. “He would help.”
“Maybe,” Jon replied, non-committal. “I’m not saying we couldn’t travel alone, just if there are places we could stay along the way, or maybe if we could get a car that wouldn’t get reported as stolen right away. Or maybe there’s something in the book to help out there—I hadn’t really thought about that. Maybe to make us look older, or disguise the car. Mostly, I guess, we just need some time—”
Megan smiled a little, still not look directly at Jon. “Maybe we’ll just leave Mr. Miller out of it, then.”
“Yeah,” Jon agreed. “I wouldn’t want to put Johnny in danger, too—I’m already doing enough damage getting you involved—”
The dark cloud that had so suddenly come over Megan was dissipating. “No worries about me. I told you. If anything,” she smiled a little more, “It looks like I’m going to be the one dragging you into it.” She picked up one of the silver discs at the end of the bed. “Whatever happens, I’m taking one of these. These things are so cool.”
“Uh,” Jon started, about to object. Then he thought better of it. Why shouldn’t she take one? What made him any better a steward of the bag of tricks, and even the big book of magic, that Bernhard had stuck him with? What entitled him to be the sole possessor of this technology? Certainly, he wasn’t too keen on trying to shoulder the burden of it alone. It’s dangerous, he thought to himself. The bus station. And what if she gets weird and starts showing people or uses something to mess with her folks or—
He heard the front door open. “Jon? You back, sweetie?” Doreen called from the living room, and the door closed.
Megan looked at Jon, and stuck the disc in her back pocket. Jon quickly picked the extra blanket he had given Megan to use last night, and threw it on top of his bed, covering most of the gadgets and gizmos. Although, Jon noted, he could still see some lights blinking and flashing through the thin fabric of the blanket. Megan helped adjust the blanket on the far side of the bed, as footsteps and the jangle of Doreen’s keychain approached. “Jon, are you home?”
“Yeah, mom,” Jon called back, as casually as he could. Jon looked back at his bed, with his spare blanket carefully arrayed to look as much as possible as if he had been quickly trying to hide something, several blinking diodes and tiny flashes visible beneath the cover.
And he had been worried about Megan’s lack of discretion, and here he was about the blow it sky-high right here. Not that he hadn’t almost made up her mind to tell his mom before Megan began arguing the opposite case, but still—he wasn’t in a position to worry about what Megan would do with the little silver disc or anything else she wanted to take. He was no more responsible and maybe less, and would at least be equally as likely to blow it.
If she did want to use the holographic decoy thing to mess with her parents, why was it his job to say no? He certainly hadn’t played it smart so far. The bus station being the first clear example, and having spread the entire contents of the briefcase out on his bed being the second. Well, maybe the bus station wasn’t the first thing, maybe the first thing was going over to Dr. Bernhard’s house in the first place. Ever talking to the bastard.
You know, I’m pretty good at math, myself, Bernhard said in his head. Computers? Indeed I do. Ask your parents sometime if you can visit—I have a mini-computer in my house. I keep it in a room with a window unit, it gets so hot. I have a second terminal I could probably get working. Anyway, if I give you this candy would you like to hop into this garbage bag for me and then climb into the trunk of my car?
Well, Bernhard hadn’t said that last part, but he might as well have as far as Jon was concerned, given the naïve gullibility with which Jon had entered that relationship. If only—
“Jon?” she was right at the door. She was never so eager to talk to him that she’d actually approach his room. Something had to be up.
Jon looked at Megan, who looked back pointedly, eyebrows raised, lips pursed. I thought your mom was going to be gone all day, the look said. What’s she doing back now? Jon shrugged back at her, because he had no idea—his mom wasn’t home on Saturdays unless she was between having courses or seminars to take, or her normal Saturday activities were on a holiday schedule, like around Christmas. Even then, the first thing she did when got home would not be to locate him—it would be on the list, sure, but she didn’t run back to his bedroom to check on him.
Jon grabbed Megan’s hand and then swung the door open. Doreen stood right at the door, hand raised to knock. “Megan and I were just talking,” Jon said. “About stuff,” he added stepping into the hall and pulling Megan with him. He squeezed past Doreen as she stood, mouth half-open, and then Megan slid past similarly, back against the wall.
“Hey, Mrs. Edmonds,” she said. “I like your hair.”
Actually, Jon’s mom’s hair was unusually undone for her, but it did look better when she didn’t try to feather it and spray glitter into it or do something else she had just seen on the cover of Seventeen. She also was unusually unmade for her—even for the Saturday classes, there was normally a strict regimen of come-hither makeup that was almost entirely absent right now. “I was running late this morning,” Doreen said distractedly, eyes moving from Jon and then to Megan. “I didn’t have time to spit and polish.”
Jon frowned. The awkwardness of his mom finding he’d been spending time alone in his bedroom with an attractive young woman had occurred to him as soon as he had heard the front door open. Minor, at the moment, compared to concealing the contents of the briefcase, but he had been a little worried about her reaction. What he saw, as Doreen’s eyes flitted from Megan—smiling a little too perkily—and Jon was not something he had anticipated. But he could read Doreen pretty well, and what the question in Doreen’s mind was not: oh my god, is my fourteen year old son having sex while I’m out trying to improve myself and save the world? or some variation thereof. What Jon saw on Doreen’s face was: oh my god, what is she doing with you?
“So, hey,” Megan said. “How was class?”
“Uh, fine,” Doreen replied, peering past Megan into the bathroom and then glancing to Jon’s bedroom. “Did Johnny Two go home?”
Megan looked at Doreen blankly. “Go home from where?”
“I thought you guys all went to the library together?” Doreen asked.
“Oh, yeah,“ Megan started. “The library—”
Jon interrupted. “I told you that Megan and I were going to the library. Carla was going to drive us and drop us off. Just us.”
Doreen looked at Jon and blinked. “Oh,” she said. “I thought you said you were going with John and Megan.” No, Jon thought, you just assumed that if Megan was going anywhere with me, it would be because Johnny Two was involved. It just didn’t occur to you to think that Megan would want to do anything with just me. Which he couldn’t exactly fault Doreen for, because, for as long as he had known both Johnny and Megan—and those two had known each other longer than Jon had known either of them—he had assumed the same thing. Up until yesterday that was how it had been. There had been some other signs in the past few months that he had dismissed as coincidence or his own wishful thinking, sure. The phone calls, for one. The walks home even when Johnny Two had band practice, for another. But Jon didn’t think his mom’s nonplussed reaction was because things had changed from what had been the status quo. He thought it was because she had always assumed that Megan was out of Jon’s league.
Jon’s brow creased. His mom was such a teenager. Forty-years old, and she almost seemed dismayed that a girl like Megan might actually go for a geek like Jon. Attractive girls like Megan were supposed to go for the Jackson Edmond’s of the world—the ones sensible women like Doreen always had—not the boring, geeky Jons.
Jon sighed. “No, mom, I just said it would be me and Megan. I didn’t have to bribe her with Johnny Two.”
Doreen’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t—” she started, and then seemed to think better of it. “Jon, I need to talk to you.” She looked over to Megan. “Megan, I think you’d better go home.”
“Ho-kay,” Megan said agreeably. “If I don’t call you later, you call me, okay?”
“Will do,” Jon said. Then, Megan leaned forward and planted a wet, noisy kiss on Jon’s cheek.
“The library was great,” she said, smiling. “Maybe we can do it again on Monday, huh?“ She pulled back, letting her hand rest on his shoulder for a few moments.
“Uh, sure,” Jon said. Then he smiled, with dawning understanding. Megan had read Doreen the same way he had, had seen the same thing in his mom’s face. And Megan had told Doreen to go fuck herself, she liked just Jon and liked him just fine.
Jon felt something melting inside. The kiss before had been great, but this made Jon feel like something deep within his body was cracking. Cleaving. It might not just be a lark, or a gag, or just because he was convenient, or because he knew Johnny Two. Megan might actually really like just Jon, just fine.
It felt like his chest was cramping. For a moment, Jon seriously thought he might be able to have a heart attack. Or a stroke.
Megan walked through the living room, opened the door, waved briefly and then vanished. Jon waved back.
Doreen watched dubiously as Megan shut the front door, and then shifted back to Jon. Her expression softened. “You look like shit, kid,” she said. Jon nodded. He did feel woozy and out of breath. A slight smile curled her lips. “I think somebody likes you, too. I wouldn’t’ve had guessed she had such good taste in men.”
The last part was reserved—as if she didn’t entirely believe it—but she was at least trying to be more Mom than prom-queen. Two points for that, he thought.
“It looked like you and Megan had a good time,” she continued.
Jon nodded, still trying to catch his breath. Doreen absent-mindedly straightened his collar. “You look like you might have some sort of bug,” she said. “I hope you didn’t bring something home from the library. That’d be a crappy way to start summer vacation. And I sure don’t need to be catching a summer cold right now.”
“Uh huh,” Jon replied. “I think I might need to—” He was going to say lay down, and then thought better of it, given what was still flashing and blinking on his bed. “—sit down,” he finished. He moved into the living room and sat on the dingy green sofa.
“That’s probably a good idea,” his mom agreed. “Because I’ve got something I need to talk to you about. And it’s pretty serious.”
Jon blinked. He had forgotten about that, the part where she had said she needed to talk to him—never a good sign—before she had told Megan to go home. Given who Doreen was, and the fact she was missing yoga, Jon didn’t think it was going to be about not having girls alone in his room, or the birds and the bees. It would be something else, and Jon suddenly felt, with absolute certainty, she would tell him she had been stopped by the police. Or the FBI had called her. That they were on their way, and there wasn’t any time left to run.
Another time, he and Johnny Miller had been both pushing the conversation into the realm of sexual innuendo, both of them offering simultaneous back rubs where their hands were wandering a little far afield of her back, and she had been trading jokes with them, telling them to watch the fingers, she might bite them off, but clearly enjoying the attention. Then, without any indication of what precipitated the mood shift, she grew quiet. Almost sullen, pulling away from their hands, pointedly moving if they tried to touch her and not saying anything back when they tried to engage her in further witty male banter. Then, she had started talking about how she thought if she ever shot herself in the head, she would put the gun to her eye and angle it in, not in her mouth or at her temple, but press it right against her eye and angle it so the bullet would cut across her skull, and maybe exit behind the opposite ear. “Some people live after they shoot themselves in the head,” she had said. “But more often than not, they’re vegetables. Being a vegetable isn’t so bad. Mom and Larry—they’d pull the plug.”
An hour later, they had all been at Johnny Two’s house, watching Bewitched reruns, eating arid popcorn from Johnny’s AirPopper and laughing and carrying on as if Megan hadn’t inexplicably launched into a morbid fifteen minute monologue on suicide just an hour ago. So, yes, he had previous experience with Megan’s mood swings. Even so, they were disconcerting and often left him with nothing to say.
“Big t-shaped crosses,” Megan said, tracing a long line up the underside of one forearm with her finger. “If you just cut your wrist, it’s not enough, unless you’re going to almost hack your hand off. If you make the cut all the way up your arm and you make it deep enough, you’re guaranteed to hit a bunch of veins and arteries—the blood will never clot in time.”
“I hate it when you talk like that,” Jon said. “I wish you wouldn’t. I—look, can we at least plan this thing? If we’re running away together, and we at least plan it out and figure out where we are going and where might stay? I think we must have some time before the FBI shows up if nobody has shown up yet. Read the book. See what we can build. See what the rest of this shit is—let me read the notebook that was in the briefcase. My mom is going to go batshit if I end up running away. She’s always been pretty good to me, even if she’s a flake, and what if somebody comes after her? You might not care what happens to your folks, but Mom doesn’t have anybody to watch out for her but me. I want to make sure she’s protected.”
“Sure,” Megan said distantly. “I know. I wasn't saying we ought to run away tonight. You know, just—I think we could do this thing.” She paused. “I thought maybe you’d want to.”
Jon studied his feet. “Meg—”
“My point was, don’t worry about me,” she continued, looking to the side. “There’s a lot worse that can happen to me than getting kicked out by my folks. It wouldn’t be a real big loss. I know you’ve got to worry about your mom.”
Jon nodded. “Just let me—do a little planning. Write my mom and explain. See if I can do something or give her something to protect her. Maybe, like you said, see if I can build some of these things in the book. Maybe there is somebody else who can help us. I mean, won’t Carla report her car being stolen? Won’t your parents file a missing person? Or say I kidnapped you? I’m pretty sure my Mom is going to file a missing person report on me—she sure did that time Stacey stayed out the whole weekend, and Stace was seventeen when she did that! I’m just thinking we might want to see who else can help us. Especially if the police will be looking for us in your sister’s stolen car—”
“Think Johnny Miller might want to come with us?” Megan asked. “He would help.”
“Maybe,” Jon replied, non-committal. “I’m not saying we couldn’t travel alone, just if there are places we could stay along the way, or maybe if we could get a car that wouldn’t get reported as stolen right away. Or maybe there’s something in the book to help out there—I hadn’t really thought about that. Maybe to make us look older, or disguise the car. Mostly, I guess, we just need some time—”
Megan smiled a little, still not look directly at Jon. “Maybe we’ll just leave Mr. Miller out of it, then.”
“Yeah,” Jon agreed. “I wouldn’t want to put Johnny in danger, too—I’m already doing enough damage getting you involved—”
The dark cloud that had so suddenly come over Megan was dissipating. “No worries about me. I told you. If anything,” she smiled a little more, “It looks like I’m going to be the one dragging you into it.” She picked up one of the silver discs at the end of the bed. “Whatever happens, I’m taking one of these. These things are so cool.”
“Uh,” Jon started, about to object. Then he thought better of it. Why shouldn’t she take one? What made him any better a steward of the bag of tricks, and even the big book of magic, that Bernhard had stuck him with? What entitled him to be the sole possessor of this technology? Certainly, he wasn’t too keen on trying to shoulder the burden of it alone. It’s dangerous, he thought to himself. The bus station. And what if she gets weird and starts showing people or uses something to mess with her folks or—
He heard the front door open. “Jon? You back, sweetie?” Doreen called from the living room, and the door closed.
Megan looked at Jon, and stuck the disc in her back pocket. Jon quickly picked the extra blanket he had given Megan to use last night, and threw it on top of his bed, covering most of the gadgets and gizmos. Although, Jon noted, he could still see some lights blinking and flashing through the thin fabric of the blanket. Megan helped adjust the blanket on the far side of the bed, as footsteps and the jangle of Doreen’s keychain approached. “Jon, are you home?”
“Yeah, mom,” Jon called back, as casually as he could. Jon looked back at his bed, with his spare blanket carefully arrayed to look as much as possible as if he had been quickly trying to hide something, several blinking diodes and tiny flashes visible beneath the cover.
And he had been worried about Megan’s lack of discretion, and here he was about the blow it sky-high right here. Not that he hadn’t almost made up her mind to tell his mom before Megan began arguing the opposite case, but still—he wasn’t in a position to worry about what Megan would do with the little silver disc or anything else she wanted to take. He was no more responsible and maybe less, and would at least be equally as likely to blow it.
If she did want to use the holographic decoy thing to mess with her parents, why was it his job to say no? He certainly hadn’t played it smart so far. The bus station being the first clear example, and having spread the entire contents of the briefcase out on his bed being the second. Well, maybe the bus station wasn’t the first thing, maybe the first thing was going over to Dr. Bernhard’s house in the first place. Ever talking to the bastard.
You know, I’m pretty good at math, myself, Bernhard said in his head. Computers? Indeed I do. Ask your parents sometime if you can visit—I have a mini-computer in my house. I keep it in a room with a window unit, it gets so hot. I have a second terminal I could probably get working. Anyway, if I give you this candy would you like to hop into this garbage bag for me and then climb into the trunk of my car?
Well, Bernhard hadn’t said that last part, but he might as well have as far as Jon was concerned, given the naïve gullibility with which Jon had entered that relationship. If only—
“Jon?” she was right at the door. She was never so eager to talk to him that she’d actually approach his room. Something had to be up.
Jon looked at Megan, who looked back pointedly, eyebrows raised, lips pursed. I thought your mom was going to be gone all day, the look said. What’s she doing back now? Jon shrugged back at her, because he had no idea—his mom wasn’t home on Saturdays unless she was between having courses or seminars to take, or her normal Saturday activities were on a holiday schedule, like around Christmas. Even then, the first thing she did when got home would not be to locate him—it would be on the list, sure, but she didn’t run back to his bedroom to check on him.
Jon grabbed Megan’s hand and then swung the door open. Doreen stood right at the door, hand raised to knock. “Megan and I were just talking,” Jon said. “About stuff,” he added stepping into the hall and pulling Megan with him. He squeezed past Doreen as she stood, mouth half-open, and then Megan slid past similarly, back against the wall.
“Hey, Mrs. Edmonds,” she said. “I like your hair.”
Actually, Jon’s mom’s hair was unusually undone for her, but it did look better when she didn’t try to feather it and spray glitter into it or do something else she had just seen on the cover of Seventeen. She also was unusually unmade for her—even for the Saturday classes, there was normally a strict regimen of come-hither makeup that was almost entirely absent right now. “I was running late this morning,” Doreen said distractedly, eyes moving from Jon and then to Megan. “I didn’t have time to spit and polish.”
Jon frowned. The awkwardness of his mom finding he’d been spending time alone in his bedroom with an attractive young woman had occurred to him as soon as he had heard the front door open. Minor, at the moment, compared to concealing the contents of the briefcase, but he had been a little worried about her reaction. What he saw, as Doreen’s eyes flitted from Megan—smiling a little too perkily—and Jon was not something he had anticipated. But he could read Doreen pretty well, and what the question in Doreen’s mind was not: oh my god, is my fourteen year old son having sex while I’m out trying to improve myself and save the world? or some variation thereof. What Jon saw on Doreen’s face was: oh my god, what is she doing with you?
“So, hey,” Megan said. “How was class?”
“Uh, fine,” Doreen replied, peering past Megan into the bathroom and then glancing to Jon’s bedroom. “Did Johnny Two go home?”
Megan looked at Doreen blankly. “Go home from where?”
“I thought you guys all went to the library together?” Doreen asked.
“Oh, yeah,“ Megan started. “The library—”
Jon interrupted. “I told you that Megan and I were going to the library. Carla was going to drive us and drop us off. Just us.”
Doreen looked at Jon and blinked. “Oh,” she said. “I thought you said you were going with John and Megan.” No, Jon thought, you just assumed that if Megan was going anywhere with me, it would be because Johnny Two was involved. It just didn’t occur to you to think that Megan would want to do anything with just me. Which he couldn’t exactly fault Doreen for, because, for as long as he had known both Johnny and Megan—and those two had known each other longer than Jon had known either of them—he had assumed the same thing. Up until yesterday that was how it had been. There had been some other signs in the past few months that he had dismissed as coincidence or his own wishful thinking, sure. The phone calls, for one. The walks home even when Johnny Two had band practice, for another. But Jon didn’t think his mom’s nonplussed reaction was because things had changed from what had been the status quo. He thought it was because she had always assumed that Megan was out of Jon’s league.
Jon’s brow creased. His mom was such a teenager. Forty-years old, and she almost seemed dismayed that a girl like Megan might actually go for a geek like Jon. Attractive girls like Megan were supposed to go for the Jackson Edmond’s of the world—the ones sensible women like Doreen always had—not the boring, geeky Jons.
Jon sighed. “No, mom, I just said it would be me and Megan. I didn’t have to bribe her with Johnny Two.”
Doreen’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t—” she started, and then seemed to think better of it. “Jon, I need to talk to you.” She looked over to Megan. “Megan, I think you’d better go home.”
“Ho-kay,” Megan said agreeably. “If I don’t call you later, you call me, okay?”
“Will do,” Jon said. Then, Megan leaned forward and planted a wet, noisy kiss on Jon’s cheek.
“The library was great,” she said, smiling. “Maybe we can do it again on Monday, huh?“ She pulled back, letting her hand rest on his shoulder for a few moments.
“Uh, sure,” Jon said. Then he smiled, with dawning understanding. Megan had read Doreen the same way he had, had seen the same thing in his mom’s face. And Megan had told Doreen to go fuck herself, she liked just Jon and liked him just fine.
Jon felt something melting inside. The kiss before had been great, but this made Jon feel like something deep within his body was cracking. Cleaving. It might not just be a lark, or a gag, or just because he was convenient, or because he knew Johnny Two. Megan might actually really like just Jon, just fine.
It felt like his chest was cramping. For a moment, Jon seriously thought he might be able to have a heart attack. Or a stroke.
Megan walked through the living room, opened the door, waved briefly and then vanished. Jon waved back.
Doreen watched dubiously as Megan shut the front door, and then shifted back to Jon. Her expression softened. “You look like shit, kid,” she said. Jon nodded. He did feel woozy and out of breath. A slight smile curled her lips. “I think somebody likes you, too. I wouldn’t’ve had guessed she had such good taste in men.”
The last part was reserved—as if she didn’t entirely believe it—but she was at least trying to be more Mom than prom-queen. Two points for that, he thought.
“It looked like you and Megan had a good time,” she continued.
Jon nodded, still trying to catch his breath. Doreen absent-mindedly straightened his collar. “You look like you might have some sort of bug,” she said. “I hope you didn’t bring something home from the library. That’d be a crappy way to start summer vacation. And I sure don’t need to be catching a summer cold right now.”
“Uh huh,” Jon replied. “I think I might need to—” He was going to say lay down, and then thought better of it, given what was still flashing and blinking on his bed. “—sit down,” he finished. He moved into the living room and sat on the dingy green sofa.
“That’s probably a good idea,” his mom agreed. “Because I’ve got something I need to talk to you about. And it’s pretty serious.”
Jon blinked. He had forgotten about that, the part where she had said she needed to talk to him—never a good sign—before she had told Megan to go home. Given who Doreen was, and the fact she was missing yoga, Jon didn’t think it was going to be about not having girls alone in his room, or the birds and the bees. It would be something else, and Jon suddenly felt, with absolute certainty, she would tell him she had been stopped by the police. Or the FBI had called her. That they were on their way, and there wasn’t any time left to run.
Doreen sat down beside him, folding her hands in her lap. Jon again observed the lack of hair work and makeup—unheard of for Doreen Edmonds when she had been out to face the outside world. Another bad sign. She inhaled deeply. Jon braced himself. With Doreen, bad news always started with a deep breath.
Doreen looked directly at Jon, concerned and even maternal, clearly worried about what effect what she had to say would have on Jon.
“Jon,” she said finally. “Did you know that Mr. Bernhard was dead?”
Doreen looked directly at Jon, concerned and even maternal, clearly worried about what effect what she had to say would have on Jon.
“Jon,” she said finally. “Did you know that Mr. Bernhard was dead?”
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