Trade Me

  He nods. “You?”

  “Give me a year with a therapist and we’ll talk about me and Cyclone again.”

  It really is that easy. I can say no. I can tell him I have a problem, and it becomes just a…thing. An obstacle. Something I can attack. It was only silence that made it insurmountable.

  “And Tina?”

  I shut my eyes. “I don’t want to talk about Tina.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  I’m saved from answering by a knock on the door. My dad’s administrative assistant comes in.

  “Hey, George.” My dad does his best to look comfortable in a green hospital gown. “Is something going on?”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” George says, “but I’m not sure if this is important. Blake, the police contacted us.”

  We do not want the police involved in this. Not now. Not ever. “What about?”

  “They have your car.” He clears his throat.

  I begin to feel lightheaded.

  “And they want to know if they should charge the driver with theft on top of everything else. Normally, I’d have told them to fuck off—but the driver’s Tina Chen. I’ve seen that name on Adam’s schedule.”

  “Shit.” I shut my eyes. “It’s not theft. Wait. What do you mean, on top of everything else?”

  George starts to talk.

  It turns out, my father and I are going to have to talk about Tina anyway.

  TINA

  My mother arrives six hours later. I know because I’m conducted from the prison cell where I’m staying to an interrogation room.

  “They say I can talk to you,” she says. “Just the two of us.” She’s still speaking Mandarin. I’m still in handcuffs.

  “Why would they let you do that?” I wrinkle my noise.

  “Because I acted like I was stupid,” she says with a smile. “‘Oh, let me talk to her, I’ll make her apologize. My daughter is a good girl, I promise, I’ll make her tell you what happened.’ They got greedy. They’re recording everything. They think all they need to do is get an interpreter and boom, easy conviction.” Her smile is sharklike. “DA says he’ll think about bail. Your father will figure that out, and then we’ll walk away, leaving them with nothing.”

  I have to smile at that.

  “So, tell me,” she says. “Talk about anything but this. What is going on with you?”

  “I broke up with Blake.”

  “Ah ha!” Her face lights. “I knew you were dating him. Trying to keep things from your mother? Never works.” She frowns. “Wait, why break up with him? He seemed so nice. Did he do something wrong?”

  “No.” I shut my eyes. “Mom, do you remember China?”

  She stills. “Yes. But you don’t much, right?”

  “Only little things.” I look down. “A doll. Grandma.” I swallow. “And I remember that one day, I told someone that Dad was in the park with the others. They took him away and shattered his kneecap and we didn’t see him for two months.” Now that the words are spilling from my mouth, I can’t stop them. “I remember that it was my fault, my fault he got taken away. My fault that—”

  “Shh!” My mother leans forward. “Never say that. Never. It was not your fault. Not anyone’s fault, except the Communists.”

  “All this time,” I say, choking, “I’ve been trying to make it up to you guys, to make things right. I’ve been scared, so scared, and so convinced that I had to do anything I could to stay safe.”

  My mother rubs her eyes. “When I got on the plane leaving China, I promised myself that I would never be afraid again. That I would never be quiet again. I have never done so.”

  “No. You haven’t.”

  She looks over at me. “Maybe I should have promised that my daughter would never be afraid, too. I should have realized. I should have asked.”

  “No, Ma. Never.”

  She leans over and sets her hand on my shoulder.

  But at that moment, the door opens. I expect the officer to gruffly tell us not to touch. Instead, he saunters in and undoes my handcuffs.

  “You’re free to go,” he says.

  “What?” My mother stands. “Why? No bail?”

  “You,” he says to her with exaggerated slowness, “can go.” He demonstrates with two fingers walking.

  “I understand what,” my mother snaps. “Just not why. Explain why.”

  The guard shrugs. “The DA made other arrangements.”

  My head is spinning. I don’t know what that means, what will happen with me.

  But I’m not about to question my good fortune. I elbow my mother and frown at her, and then stand up and follow the guard to get my things. Which is good; even though the launch is today, I don’t want to think about leaving my prototypes in the hands of the police.

  They’re keeping the car, the officer tells us as he leads us down a long hall. Apparently, that’s evidence.

  Fine. I’ll let Blake deal with that.

  I see another policeman coming our way. A man is following him. I don’t even register who it is until we’re almost on top of them.

  And then I do. His sandy hair is tousled; his eyes are bright blue and he’s wearing glasses. But the man being led down the hall is most definitely Blake Reynolds.

  “Blake?” I come to a stop. “What are you doing here?”

  He gives me a long, slow smile. “What do you think?”

  I can’t think anything at all.

  “We’ve got twelve minutes until the launch,” he says. “Everything we agreed on together? It’s still on. Come on, Tina. Trade me.”

  My eyes go wide. My heart starts to thump. “What? Blake—your dad, the product launch—no, I can’t let you—”

  “Too late,” he says. “I already signed the papers.”

  “Blake.”

  “Have fun, Tina.” He winks at me. “And, oh, if you have a chance, do watch the launch. For me, okay?”

  23.

  TINA

  “What is going on?” My mother grabs my arm as we head to the car. “What is Blake doing here? Why is he staying? Is he dealing drugs? What did he mean launch? Is it a rocket launch? Why is the DA listening to him?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  My mother looks at me sidelong. “We have a long drive.”

  I glance at my watch. “Um. Not yet. We have to watch the product launch.”

  “Product launch. What is this product launch? And how do we watch it without a TV?”

  I’m not going to get around this one. I take a deep breath. “Okay. Here’s the deal. Blake is…”

  “I know, your boyfriend. Don’t you know you can’t lie to your mother?”

  “He wasn’t my boyfriend when we came down,” I mutter. “Really. That came afterward. And we broke up this morning.” I frown. “I think.”

  “Huh. Didn’t look like a break-up to me back there.” We arrive at her car. She unlocks my side of the door and I open my bag. I take out a tablet and check the reception. It’s complete crap. “Drive north,” I tell her. The launch has already started.

  She starts her car. “Fancy gadget.” She frowns at it on my lap. “Very fancy gadget. Are you selling meth or something? I was only joking when I said you should deal drugs.”

  “Ma! No. Of course I’m not.”

  “I had to ask,” she says mildly.

  “Look. I didn’t lie to you about Blake being my boyfriend. I did imply, incorrectly that he had…not a lot of money.”

  “Oh?” My mother perks up. “He’s rich? Is that a present from him?”

  “He’s Blake Reynolds,” I explain.

  She frowns. “Who? Some kind of actor?”

  “His dad is the CEO of Cyclone. The company that makes these.” I tilt the tablet to her. “This is a preproduction model.”

  “Hmm.” She frowns.

  I stick to the basics. “Cyclone is launching a new product right now. Blake was supposed to be running the launch. His dad had a heart attack last night.” I inhale. “If Blak
e is here, getting me out of this, he’s not there. So if he wants me to watch the product launch, I will.” I keep my eye on the reception on the way back, and once I have four bars, I motion my mother into a supermarket parking lot.

  She parks next to a flock of shopping carts. I navigate to the Cyclone website. It’s twenty-two minutes into the launch by the time I get the feed working. David Yu, the chief product engineer, is finishing the demo on the updated tablet and the new video app, to massive applause.

  The screen behind him goes black and a spotlight falls on him.

  “So,” he says. “Internet: we have to talk about your gossip problem. Apparently there are rumors out there that we have a new, undisclosed product codenamed Fernanda. The top three claims are…”

  He does a quarter turn, and as he talks, bullet points appear behind him. They’re familiar to me. They should be; I wrote them. I can’t help but feel a sense of pride.

  “One,” he says. “Fernanda is a flying smart drone that will mix drinks and deliver them.” A cute little animated video plays, demonstrating this, and the audience’s laughter can be heard over the feed.

  “Get it straight,” he says with a straight face. “That’s next year’s product line.”

  The laughter doubles.

  “Two,” he says, “some of you think that Fernanda is an injectable microchip for people that allows you to pay for things without using your wallet or a phone.”

  There’s a clip of a woman waving her hand in front of a credit card reader.

  Yu wrinkles his nose. “That’s disgusting. Where do you get these ideas?” He pauses. “No, don’t tell me. Do I look like I want to know? We don’t mind if you write Cyclone/microchip fanfic. Just don’t show it to us. Thank you.”

  I can’t help myself. I grin and lean back.

  “Three,” Yu says. “Some of you apparently think that Fernanda is a watch. Come on, internet. How unrealistic can you be? Even though the smartwatch technology is relatively new, the field is already crowded. And the challenges of producing a truly excellent watch are enormous. You guys know that Cyclone doesn’t get into a field unless we can leave our competitors in the dust. Unless we can put out something that is easier to use and more robust than anything on the market. Come on, people. What are the chances that Cyclone would be getting into the smartwatch business?”

  There’s a long, dramatic pause.

  Yu smiles. “Actually, one out of three isn’t bad.”

  The audience erupts in applause, and despite myself, despite the fact that I wrote that last little section, I find myself smiling along with them.

  “I want you to meet our newest product. She’s been codenamed Fernanda, but now she’s ready to be called by her launch name: the Cyclone Vortex.” The watch practically sells itself, and as Yu goes through its features, he does a good job of snarking on the competition without ever mentioning them by name.

  “Of course,” he says, when discussing the health monitoring features, “if what you want is to have a GPS record of your run, you’ll do what every athlete does. You’ll put on your watch. And then you’ll strap a tablet, a phone, a printer, and the complete works of Shakespeare to your back.” He grins. “Oh, wait. Nobody wants to do that. That’s why the Vortex has a built in GPS chip, so it’s not dependent on any of our other technology.”

  The crowd oohs over the circumference ring scrolling.

  “But the Vortex has another amazing feature,” Yu says. “Remember how I told you earlier that we had updated our computers with the newest, the best video app ever invented? One that could follow your face as you walked around the room? Well, the Vortex is the first fully video-capable watch in the world. Let me bring up Lisa, our product management specialist.”

  He taps the watch, and Lisa, a smiling brunette, answers. They show how the watch automatically adjusts the video to stay on his face, even when he gestures, waves his hands, and then—to tumultuous applause—performs a handstand. The video of his face is jerky, but it’s video.

  Lisa on the other side of the call smiles. “It’s amazing,” she says. “I only wish…”

  Yu clambers to his feet. “Yes. We’re trying. But it’s not the same thing without them.” He doesn’t say who they are.

  From here on out, this part of the launch is new. It was going to be Adam and Blake, but Adam’s in the hospital and Blake… I lean forward.

  “Some of you found the patents last night,” Lisa says, “and so you know that Blake and Adam had their hands on the Vortex the way they do all Cyclone products. We’re told that Adam is in the ICU and active at the moment, and that he’ll make a full and complete recovery. We’re sorry that they can’t say hi in person and introduce the Vortex to you themselves, but Adam’s health has to come first.”

  Yu shakes his head, looking sad. “After all, it’s not like we made a portable device that allows people to make three-way video calls over a cellular network.”

  There’s a single second delay—a moment of breathless silence while everyone processes this—and then a beep.

  Incoming call, the projection of the watch screen behind them says. Adam Reynolds.

  “Oh, wait.” Yu grins, taps his watch, and a little icon of Adam’s face projects onto the screen. “It turns out that we did.”

  The video rearranges to show Adam in a green gown, a slice of gray wall and an IV pole visible behind him. “Hey David,” he says. “How’s the launch going?”

  The crowd screams in appreciation, and I can’t help but smile. Adam has been the public face of this company since its inception. They’re happy to see him. He looks tired, but he has a smirk on his face.

  “Good, good,” David says. “But the crowd voted for a drink drone as our next new product and I told them they could have it next Christmas.”

  “Man, who put you in charge? What were they thinking?” Suddenly Adam frowns and points at the screen. “Wait. Who did put you in charge? Isn’t Blake running things over there?”

  Yu frowns. “Blake? Blake isn’t here. I thought Blake was with you.”

  I feel a cold little chill.

  “No,” Adam says. “He’s not.” The two fall into silence.

  “Wait,” my mother says. “Doesn’t he know where Blake is?”

  “Of course he does.” I’m reassuring myself as much as I’m reassuring her. “These things are fully scripted.” They almost always are. Blake wouldn’t have told me to watch the launch if it was going to end up a complete clusterfuck. Right?

  “If he’s not at the launch,” Adam says. “Where is he? Dang it. If only we had built a video-capable device that handled robust four-way calling.”

  The dang it convinces me this is scripted. Dang is not the word Adam Reynolds would reach for on his own.

  On cue, the watch beeps.

  Incoming call: Blake Reynolds. “Oh wait,” Adam says. “We did.”

  The audience laughs, playing along, and the new video resolves into Blake.

  He’s taken off his glasses, but his hair is still disheveled. He smiles broadly. “Hey, Dad. Lisa. David. Internet.”

  “Blake, where the hell are you?”

  “About that…” Blake smiles. “So, there’s this really cool feature we haven’t shown you yet with the Vortex video. We’ve shown you that the camera will adjust to follow your face, no matter how you move your hands. But it turns out, um.” He grins. “Sometimes a picture is worth a million words. Before now, when someone asked you over the phone where you were, you’d have to answer with a description.” He beams at the screen. “For instance, I could say, ‘Hi, Dad! I’m in jail!’”

  The audience laughs disbelievingly.

  “Or,” Blake says, “you can tap the edge of the watch, telling the camera to go into scenery pan mode. And then you can show everyone where you really are.”

  His video shifts to an all-too familiar view of a bare cell.

  “Which,” Blake’s voice continues, “it turns out is…still jail. Sorry.”

&
nbsp; There’s a single high-pitched gurgle of laughter, quickly curtailed as it becomes obvious that Blake is serious. I’m leaning forward. I don’t know where this is going, what they’re planning to do with it.

  “Dude,” Adam says with an exaggerated clap of his hand to his heart, “are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

  That draws a wave of laughter.

  “Well,” Blake shoots back, “at least if I do, I know you’re in the right place to get the very best of care.”

  Another wave of laughter.

  “After all,” Blake says with a grin, “you are wearing a device with real-time heart rate monitoring.”

  “You can’t say that.” Adam holds up a finger. “The FDA has not approved that statement. Also, I pulled up the record of my heart rate during the attack. It doesn’t show a single useful thing.” He sighs. “That would have been good publicity.”

  Blake shakes his head. “You must be getting old. You can’t even have a heart attack right.”

  “You see that?” Adam points a finger at the screen. “Shifting the blame back to me already. You’re not off the hook. Want to explain what you’re doing in jail?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Adam raises an eyebrow and points to the IV pole behind him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  There’s another wave of good-natured laughter.

  “Fine.” Blake sighs. “It started because my girlfriend broke up with me.”

  Someone in the audience lets out a protracted Awww; someone else yells something that comes out indistinctly over the feed.

  “I heard that,” Blake says. “Don’t talk about her that way. I know it looks like she broke up with me just before a huge launch when my dad was in the hospital. But I don’t blame her for it, and by the time I’m done here, neither will you. Let me set the scene for you. It’s two in the morning. My father has just had a heart attack. The ambulance lights are receding in the distance. And I am doing what any good son would do under the circumstances.”

  Adam doesn’t say anything.