Crosstalk

  No, you don’t, he said. What if you need another ride?

  I won’t.

  You might. You never know. If you do, you know how to get in touch with me.

  Very funny. She went back into the kitchen and sat down again. Can you hear me, Trent? she called. Where are—?

  Someone knocked on the door. If that’s you, C.B., Briddey thought, go away.

  “Briddey?” Mary Clare called, knocking again. “Open the door. I have to talk to you! It’s an emergency!”

  “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.”

  —Monty Python’s Flying Circus

  “Can you hear me, Briddey?” Mary Clare called from outside the door. “I’ve got to talk to you about Maeve. And don’t try to pretend you’re not in there, because I know you are. You’ve got the deadbolt on.”

  Yes, or you’d already be in here, Briddey thought, crossing the room to let her in.

  I wouldn’t do that, C.B. warned. Your hospital bracelet, remember?

  “Hang on. I’ll be right there, Mary Clare,” Briddey called, and sped to the kitchen to get a knife.

  And you’d better do something about that bruise from the IV, too.

  Briddey grabbed a steak knife, sawed the plastic bracelet off, jammed it far down into the wastebasket, and then ran into the bathroom to find an adhesive bandage for her hand.

  None of them were big enough. Use an Ace bandage, C.B. told her. That way you can say you’ve got a touch of carpal tunnel, but she didn’t have an Ace bandage either. She had to settle for tying some gauze around her hand, with the sinking feeling that that would only draw attention to it.

  It did. When Briddey opened the door, Mary Clare said, “What on earth were you doing that took so—oh, my gosh, what happened to your hand?”

  “Nothing,” Briddey said. “I cut it…” And then for the life of her she couldn’t think of a single thing she could have cut the back of her hand on.

  You don’t need anything, C.B. said. Remember Rule Number Two? No explanations. They only get you into more trouble.

  Go away, Briddey hissed. “I had a flat tire on the way home from my meeting,” she said, “and—”

  “How on earth did you manage to cut yourself on a tire?”

  “I didn’t. I cut it on the jack.”

  “The jack? Why on earth were you changing the tire yourself? Why didn’t you just call Triple A to come and change it? Or Trent?”

  “I didn’t have any cellphone coverage—”

  “You’re kidding! Where were you?”

  Told you, C.B. said.

  Oh, shut up, Briddey snapped. “You said you needed to talk to me about Maeve. What’s happened? Did she lock herself in her room again?”

  “Yes. How badly did you cut it? Let me see.” Mary Clare reached for her hand.

  No wonder Maeve locked herself in her room, Briddey thought, snatching her hand back out of reach. “I’m fine,” she said. “Tell me about Maeve.”

  “She refuses to let me in, and when I tried to get on her Facebook page to see what was going on, she’d unfriended me. I knew I shouldn’t have let her be on Facebook! You’re friends with her, aren’t you?”

  “Yes—”

  “Good. Then you can get me to her page.” Mary Clare went over to Briddey’s computer. “What’s your password?”

  Briddey glanced at the clock. After two. She was almost out of time, and if she didn’t give the password to her, Mary Clare would be here forever.

  You’re kidding? C.B. said. You can’t let her invade a little kid’s privacy like that!

  Like you’re invading mine? Briddey shot back, but he was right. Maeve would never forgive her. “Mary Clare, I’m not letting you spy on Maeve using my computer. And if she unfriended you, she’ll have unfriended me, too.”

  “True. You don’t know how to pick locks, do you?”

  “No. I thought you were going to install a nanny cam.”

  “I did. Maeve did something to it so that it transmits YouTube videos instead,” Mary Clare said, and Briddey had to bite her lip to keep from smiling.

  “We’ll have to call a locksmith,” Mary Clare was saying. “Do you know any?”

  “No, and even if I did, I am not helping you break into Maeve’s room,” Briddey said.

  “But what if she’s arranging to meet a terrorist as we speak?”

  “She’s not meeting terrorists—”

  “You don’t know that. Just because everything seems fine on the surface, that doesn’t mean it is.”

  That’s true, Briddey thought.

  “There could be all kinds of things happening that we don’t know anything about. You read constantly about children getting into trouble and their parents not knowing. I just read about an eighteen-year-old who was running an international money-laundering operation from the computer in his bedroom, and his parents didn’t have the slightest idea.”

  “Maeve is not running a money-laundering operation. She’s nine years old.”

  “Then what’s she doing, and why won’t she let me in her room? And why this sudden obsession with reading?”

  “I told you, all the third-grade girls are reading The Darkvoice Chronicles.”

  “No, no, she finished that. Now she’s reading something called The Secret Garden. Do you know that one? What’s it about?”

  A nine-year-old girl with lots of freedom and no mother.

  “It doesn’t have any zombies in it, does it?” Mary Clare was asking.

  “No. It’s a Victorian children’s classic. With a totally unsquelched heroine. Look, Mary Clare, if you’re so worried about what she’s reading, why don’t you read the books?” Briddey asked. If she was busy reading, she wouldn’t have time to harass poor Maeve.

  “That’s a good idea,” Mary Clare said thoughtfully. “But it still doesn’t explain why she’s unfriended me. Or why she won’t let me in her room.”

  I have got to get her out of here, Briddey thought. I’m running out of time. “Look, how about if I call her and talk to her?”

  “Or, better yet, Skype her,” Mary Clare said eagerly. “That way we can see if she’s hiding something in her room.”

  What? Stacks of laundered money? “I can’t call her while you’re here,” Briddey said. “She’ll know you put me up to it.”

  “I’ll keep out of the frame so she can’t see me.”

  “No. Go home, and I’ll call her in a little bit.” After I’ve safely connected with Trent. “And in return, you have to promise me you’ll stop fussing over her like a psychotic mother hen.”

  “I am not a—you really should get that hand looked at, you know. You might need stitches.”

  “And stop fussing over me,” Briddey said, pushed her out the door, and leaned against it, thinking, Finally. Trent, please make contact before something else hap—

  There was a knock on the door.

  I told you you should have come over to my apartment, C.B. said. There’s a lot less traffic.

  Go away, Briddey said, and opened the door.

  It was Mary Clare. “There’s something wrong with your phone,” she said. “I just tried to call you and couldn’t get through.”

  “What did you want?” Briddey asked.

  “To tell you if you can’t get anything out of Maeve when you talk to her, you could suggest taking her to Carnival Pizza and then to a movie.”

  Though presumably not one with a princess in it, Briddey thought, and tried to shut the door.

  “If that jack was rusty, you could get lockjaw. You need to get a tetanus shot—”

  “Goodbye, Mary Clare,” Briddey said, and shut the door.

  “Don’t forget to check your phone,” Mary Clare called.

  “I won’t,” Briddey called back, and since Mary Clare would come back again if she couldn’t get through, she switched her phone on.

  It rang instantly.

  “I forgot to tell you something,” Mary Clare said. “You’re not still planning on getting that EE
D, are you? Because I read this thing about how they can cause terrible side effects.”

  I should have had C.B. install that app that diverts calls to the Department of Motor Vehicles, she thought. “Goodbye, Mary Clare,” she said, ended the call, and sat down on the couch.

  Come in, Trent, she called. Please. Before Mary Clare calls again.

  Her phone rang.

  It was Maeve. “Mom said you wanted to talk to me.”

  “I do. How would you like to go to lunch with me sometime next week?”

  “Mom put you up to this, didn’t she?” Maeve asked, and Briddey could almost see her eyes narrowing.

  “No,” Briddey said, and thought, That makes it official. I am now lying to everyone.

  “She did, too,” Maeve said. “She thinks something’s going on and I won’t tell her, and she thinks I’ll tell you.”

  “Is something going on?”

  Maeve made a sound of disgust. “You’re as bad as her! I bet you think I’m talking to terrorists, too! They cut people’s heads off! How can she even think I’d talk to somebody like that?”

  “She doesn’t,” Briddey reassured her. “She’s just worried because terrorists don’t always tell kids they’re terrorists. Sometimes people seem nice when they aren’t.”

  “I know,” Maeve said, “like—”

  She stopped short, and Briddey suddenly wished she was on Skype so she could see Maeve’s face. “Like who?” she asked.

  “Umm…do you promise you won’t tell Mom?”

  Oh, my God, Briddey thought. Maeve is talking to a terrorist online. “I promise. It’s like who?”

  “Captain Davidson,” Maeve said. “He’s this cop in Zombie Death Force, and you think he’s the good guy and then you find out he’s not, that he’s the one who created the zombie army in the first place.” And then, as if anticipating Briddey’s question: “Mom doesn’t let me watch zombie movies. She says they give me nightmares.”

  “And do they?”

  “Everybody else in my class watches them.”

  Which wasn’t an answer. But Briddey was hardly in a position to say, “If everyone else in your class jumped off a bridge, does that mean you would, too?”

  “Where did you watch Zombie Death Force?” she asked instead.

  “At Danika’s. Her parents have Netflix. Please don’t tell Mom. She’d go ballistic.”

  Actually, she might be relieved to find out Maeve wasn’t joining ISIS or running an online money-laundering operation, but Briddey said, “I won’t tell her, but you have to promise me that if you do get into trouble or have something you’re worried about, you’ll tell us so we can help.”

  “But what if you can’t?” Maeve asked, and Briddey wished again that she could see Maeve’s face.

  “Can’t what?” she asked cautiously.

  “Can’t help. I mean, like if you’d been bitten by a zombie, there wouldn’t be any point in telling anyone because there wouldn’t be anything they could do. You’re gonna turn into a zombie anyway, and it’s better if you don’t tell them because they’d try to help and probably get bitten, too.”

  “Has something like that happened, Maeve? Something you think we can’t help you with?”

  “What? Geez, I can’t say anything without you and Mom going all psycho. I was talking about a movie! I’m fine!”

  But after Briddey hung up, she went and checked Maeve’s Facebook page, just in case. There was nothing there except a post saying, “My mom is driving me totally crazy. She keeps asking me what’s wrong and I keep telling her nothing, but she won’t believe me. Sometimes I wish I was an orphan like Cinderella.”

  Which Mary Clare would no doubt interpret as Maeve having latent matricidal tendencies. Although in this case they’re perfectly justified.

  She’d wasted half an hour talking to Mary Clare and Maeve, and now she had exactly ten minutes left to connect with Trent before the twenty-four-hour mark. She doubted that was enough time to establish a neural pathway, but she tried anyway.

  Nothing. Three o’clock and then four came and went with no sign of Trent in her head and no texts from him. Surely he wasn’t still in his meet—

  Her phone rang.

  It was Mary Clare again, saying, “Well? Did you talk to Maeve? What did you find out?”

  “That she’s fine. I can’t talk to you right—”

  “Did she at least tell you why she’s locked herself in her room?”

  “Yes, she said she had a ton of homework to do, and she locked the door so she wouldn’t have any distractions,” Briddey said, willing Mary Clare to get the hint.

  She didn’t. “Oh, dear, I knew it! She can’t keep up with her assignments. I read the other day that schools assign far too much homework, and it’s causing anxiety attacks and depression—”

  “Goodbye, Mary Cla—”

  “No, wait. When are you taking her to lunch?”

  “We didn’t set a date.”

  “You can take her on Saturday.”

  “No, that won’t work—” Briddey began, but Mary Clare wasn’t listening.

  “Her Irish dancing lessons are over at eleven,” she was saying. “You can pick her up at eleven thirty. Kathleen’s here. She wants to talk to you,” and put her on before Briddey could hang up.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon,” Kathleen said. “I think there’s something wrong with your phone. You said you needed me to do you a favor?”

  Briddey’d forgotten all about that. “No. I thought I did, but I didn’t.”

  “Oh,” Kathleen said. “You sounded sort of desperate, and I thought maybe you’d come to your senses and decided not to have the EED, and Trent got mad and dumped you like Chad dumped me, and you needed a ride.”

  “No,” Briddey said.

  “Oh. What was the favor?”

  “Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Have you decided how you’re going to keep from going out with Sean O’Reilly?”

  “No. That’s why I was hoping you’d broken up with Trent, so you could go out with him instead.”

  “I’m not breaking up with Trent.” Though if we don’t connect—or if he finds out about C.B.—he may break up with me.

  “Aunt Oona won’t take no for an answer,” Kathleen was saying. “You know how she is. I’m going to have to come up with a boyfriend fast. I’ve been looking at dating sites—you know, Match.com and OKCupid. There’s one called Flame. What do you think about that?”

  “I think it sounds perfect if you’re Joan of Arc.”

  “Or there’s one called RolltheDice. Their philosophy is that all those profiles and compatibility algorithms don’t work, that your chances of falling in love aren’t any better than if you’d pulled a name out of a hat. Which is true. I mean, remember Ken, the guy I met on eHarmony? We had tons in common, and we still broke up.”

  “So if they don’t do profiles, how do they match people?”

  “They don’t. They just randomly assign you to some guy. What do you think?”

  I think it’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard, Briddey thought, and told her so.

  “Really? Why? I thought it sounded like fun.”

  It’s not. Trust me, Briddey thought, and said, “What if you get stuck with someone who’s a pain in the neck?” Who keeps telling you you could have connected with somebody worse. “Or what if Sean O’Reilly signs up?”

  “Oh, gosh, I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe I’d better go with Tinder instead. Or Hit’n’Ms.”

  There was no way Briddey was going to ask what that was, but it didn’t matter. Kathleen launched into a description anyway. “Listen, I need to go,” Briddey said. “Trent—”

  “No, wait, Aunt Oona just got here. She wants to talk to you.”

  Of course she does, Briddey thought. “Hello, Aunt Oona.”

  “Are you all right, childeen? It’s worryin’ I’ve been all day. I had a premonition something dreadful had happened to you.”

  It has, Briddey thought. But n
ot the sort of thing you’re thinking of. “Nothing’s happened, Aunt Oona. I’m fine.”

  “You’re not still thinking of having that VED thing done, are you? Peggy Boylan—you remember her from the Daughters of Ireland, don’t you?—well, she says her neighbor’s daughter was after having one and lost all her hearing. Deaf as a post, she is now.”

  Lucky her, Briddey thought. “Aunt Oona, I have to go,” she said. “Trent’s here.” And hung up. She checked the time—oh, Lord, it was already four forty-five—turned her phone off, and sat down at the kitchen table. She closed her eyes, clasped her hands before her on the table, and began calling: Trent? Can you hear me? It’s Briddey. Come in, Trent.

  She kept it up for the next hour, sending, listening, sending again, but nothing happened, even though it was now well past twenty-four hours since they’d come out of the anesthetic. She was surprised Trent hadn’t called to say that.

  Your phone’s been off, she reminded herself, and when she checked for messages, the only one was from Maeve, wailing, “What did you say to Mom? She’s talking about getting me a TUTOR!”—which meant Trent hadn’t received any of her transmissions. Or that he was still in his meeting with no way to get a message to her, though surely if he’d felt anything, he’d have found some way to let her know, secure meeting or not.

  His secretary phoned at six thirty to say he was still in his meeting and that was why he hadn’t returned her call.

  “Do you have any idea when it’ll be over?” Briddey asked.

  “No, but they just had dinner sent in, so I’m assuming it will go to at least eight.”

  Good, Briddey thought. That gives me more time, and went back to sending, but she didn’t hear or sense Trent, even though she sat there for the next two hours, clasping her hands so hard her knuckles were white.

  She didn’t hear C.B. either. And now that she thought about it, she hadn’t heard him since he’d made that comment about there being less traffic at his apartment, and that had been—what, six hours ago? She couldn’t imagine he’d been “researching” all that time. So either she had erased the pathway, or the swelling causing the crosstalk had finally gone down—or both.