I watched my family fall apart, slowly, like a sunset, all the brilliant colors fleeing and stretching and shrinking until they can’t compete with the dark sky. It was strange that the structure of our house could be so strong and solid when all of the energy inside it was crumbling. It made me want to save my mom.
“Before I leave, I’d like to talk to you in my office,” my dad said, and stood up. I followed him down the hallway, past the foyer, and into his office. He pulled a chair over to his desk and motioned for me to sit down. I sank onto the cold leather cushion.
“I’m still doubtful you weren’t involved in what happened last night,” he said, getting to the point. I met his questioning eyes. I wasn’t in the mood for one of his interrogations.
“Is this when I shamefully retreat up to my room so I can think about what I’ve done wrong? Is this the part where you ground me again, instead of trying to listen to my side?”
His eyes regarded me.
I crossed my legs casually. “Well, that’s not me anymore.”
He tapped his fingers on the desk. “Is that why you came home? To prove me wrong? To make me look bad? Is that what this is, a game of right versus wrong? Good versus evil?”
“I’m here to finish what I started when I was fifteen. You said that you were open to listening. I didn’t come home so you could ground me. I’m not your property. And I’m not a kid anymore.”
He unlocked a side desk drawer by scanning his fingerprint. He pulled out a white square box and took off the lid. Inside were narrow strips of paper, the size of Band-Aids. He took one out and peeled off its backing.
“I’m putting a skin tracker on you,” he said, and held the sticker out to me.
“Dad—”
“The adhesive lasts for one month.”
“No,” I said.
“It’s safe,” he assured me. “It dissolves in your skin.”
“I don’t care if it gives me superhero powers,” I said. “I’m not letting you track me.”
“Maddie, I don’t want you to run off to Eden, or back to him. That’s what worries me. I know you’re wired to run on your emotions, but that’s what gets you into trouble. You need to try to control your flight reflex. That’s why I don’t want you interacting with your friends, especially Justin. They’ll just tempt you.”
I looked skeptically at the tracker in his hand.
“If you can use it to track me, what would stop the police? Or Vaughn? Couldn’t someone else trace this?”
My dad shook his head. He pointed to the second tab on the paper.
“It has a twin signal. The only way I can follow you is by keeping the other half. I’ll wear it, just like you. There’s no way for a third person to track it.”
I looked down at the bird tattooed on my wrist. I rolled my fingers into a fist and squeezed to make my blood flow faster.
My mom stood watching from the door. I looked up at her and her eyes were sympathetic. She walked around to the side of my chair and leaned down next to me.
“It’s temporary, Maddie. This is all very temporary.”
Great, I thought. My life will suck, temporarily. For the time being, my life is going to be claustrophobic and awful and lonely and desolate and depressing. Temporarily.
She put her arm around my shoulder.
“You have me and Baley, and you can start looking into college classes. I found an online soccer team you can join. The team you played on last fall ended. They couldn’t find enough girls interested to keep it going. I dusted off your running machine.”
I wanted to shrug her arm off me. All of these things felt like a punishment now. But she didn’t understand. Her hand slipped off my shoulder.
“Dad, what prison movie are we starring in right now?”
He bit the inside of his cheek. It was one of his mannerisms that showed he was losing patience—subtle, but one that I had picked up on, since he usually did it in response to me.
“I’m sure it seems strict after you’ve been running around in Eden for the past month with all the other invalids.”
“Strict?” I said. “Where do you get your parenting ideas? Dictatorship dot com?”
My dad almost cracked a smile, but it was more of a lopsided frown. “I take it you aren’t willing to cooperate?”
He adjusted the cuff of his sleeve. I was trying to read into his movements, into all the things he wasn’t saying. He was fidgeting more than usual, that much was evident. Something was at stake here.
I pressed my feet against the side of his desk and swiveled the office chair back and forth. My dad wanted me home for his own reasons, reasons he wasn’t willing to discuss. I realized my bargaining chip was myself. My dad had one goal: to keep me under his watchful control, as if the future of digital school rested on his ability to keep me in check. Instead of being frustrated that he was trying to lock me down, for the first time in my life I was intrigued. It was a compliment that my dad was so afraid to let me loose. This gave me a power of negotiation I hadn’t realized I had.
I had always felt like a chess piece to him, but one that was easily dismissible. Now I knew I had high stakes. Maybe I was a queen—one sudden move could alter his strategy. Maybe we’re all that significant in life, we just have to realize it.
“Here’s my rule,” I said. “I’ll wear your skin tracker. If.”
My dad raised his eyebrows.
“Yes?”
“There are a few things that I want in return.”
My mom was still watching us. She looked amazed at my tenacity.
“Such as?” he asked.
“Your files,” I told him.
He leaned his head toward me like he hadn’t heard me right.
“The same ones that I stole from you when I was fifteen. The files with all the digital school contacts. I won’t steal them ever again. I promise.”
“Then how do you plan on acquiring them?” he asked.
I raised my hands. “I want you to give them to me. Willingly, because you want to do the right thing.” I sat up straighter in my seat. “You could consider it my eighteenth-birthday present.”
He laughed out loud. “Those are confidential, Maddie. I can’t share those, with anyone. Family connections and birthdays don’t apply.”
I leaned closer to my dad and smiled. “No one would have to know about it. I know people who can help. We can make it look like your computer was hacked. We’ll be careful to keep you innocent. We just want to spread a message, Dad. People have a right to know what else is out there.”
His mouth tightened. He looked away and nodded once. “I’ll think about it.”
I exhaled a long breath. Internally I was screaming. Justin was right. There was no point in talking to my dad when he can’t listen. “Got it.”
“Your mother will keep an eye on you while I’m gone.”
“Terrific,” I said, and stood up. “Good talk, Dad.” I turned sharply on my foot and stomped out of the room and up the stairs. It was bratty, I knew, but so was his pathetic effort at communication.
Two could play the dismissive game.
I sat on my bed and soft footprints padded down the carpeted hallway and into my room. I looked up and expected to see my mom, her neutral eyes pleading for a truce. She was our live-in peacemaker. But instead, my dad stood a few feet inside the doorway and looked as surprised to be inside of my room as I was to see him there. He hadn’t been in my bedroom in years. He walked over to my window seat and sat down, next to a pile of books. He picked one up and flipped the pages, his eyes looking wistful for a second before he set it down.
“I’m not trying to hold you hostage. I’m trying to protect you. That’s all. You always see protection as control, Maddie. Please try to understand the difference.”
“You don’t need to protect me,” I said.
“It’s not because I don’t trust you. It’s because there are people outside of here I don’t trust,” he said, and glanced through the open window blinds
to look out at the empty street. “That’s why I want you home.”
I knew exactly who he was referring to, and every time he showed that he would never accept Justin it was harder to take, because it was the same as saying he would never accept me. I wanted to love my dad. But how do you love someone who doesn’t see you? How do you become close to someone so set on changing you?
“I don’t think you trust anyone,” I told him. “And that’s your weakness. That’s why your system is going to fail.”
His eyes shifted to mine. He looked more amused than annoyed. His amusement irritated me. Did he ever take me seriously? I guess my pink hair didn’t help my I’ve grown up and I demand respect case.
“How do you see that?”
“You’re all about power and control. But you hold it all on your own shoulders. It’s like trying to hold up a mountain that doesn’t have any foundation. You need to spread it out,” I said. “Give everyone a voice. You put all the pressure on yourself. You can’t do that. The foundation is everything. You like to imagine it’s the other way around. You’re standing by yourself, trying to hold up the world, Dad. We’re going to topple you.”
“Interesting theory,” he told me.
“New offer,” I said. “I’ll wear the tracker so you’ll always know where to find me, if that’s what you want. I’m not trying to hide anything from you. But then let me talk to my friends.”
He rubbed his eyes. “Maddie, we can’t take the risk right now. Your phone could be tapped. Everything you do online, digitally, is followed. I have enough issues over the detention centers to deal with. You are an additional, volatile concern that I can’t have loose right now. I need it to look like you’re at home and cooperating.”
“Fine,” I said. “I won’t interact with anyone digitally. But what if I should happen to see them face-to-face? At least you’ll always know where I am.”
My dad thought about this. He knew as well as I did that if something happened outside, it was as if it never happened. No one took the time to wonder about the real world anymore.
He handed me the tracker, and I stuck it on my wrist, below my tattoo. The adhesive rose on my skin like a bug bite.
“Deal?” I asked him.
He nodded and left me there, inside the walls, inside a heavy block of time.
Chapter Six
I woke up to the sound of a woman screaming and bolted upright in bed. My hand went to my heart, and for a brief second I thought I was back in the DC, until my soft comforter and Baley’s barks howling through the dark house reminded me I was home.
Another high-pitched shriek flooded through my bedroom window. I flipped the covers off my bare legs and pulled back the blinds, but the usual electrical shower of streetlamps was out. It looked as if there was no world beyond my window, just a black, inky canvas.
“On,” I said, and rubbed my eyes, but nothing happened. “On,” I muttered again. I looked around at a pitch-dark room. Did the voice-recognition system cut out? I reached blindly for a pair of shorts at the side of my bed and tugged them on.
My dad’s voice called out in the hallway, shouting for Baley to be quiet, and my door tapped open as I was pulling on a sweatshirt.
“The power is out,” he said. Our house generator kicked in, and emergency ribbons of light streamed along the edges of the ceiling. I followed my mom and dad downstairs.
Baley was still barking at the foot of the stairs, and I ran my fingers down her back to quiet her. My mom pulled a white robe tight around her waist, and I opened the curtains in our foyer to look outside.
“All the streetlights are out,” I said. “The whole block must have lost power.”
My mom pointed out a group of people huddled around flashlights and pulled the door open. “Maybe they know what happened.” Her hand hesitantly unlocked the screen door, and Baley took the opportunity. She pushed the screen door wide enough to wriggle through and jumped down the porch steps.
“Baley!” my mom screamed after her.
I grabbed an old leash hanging in the closet and kicked on a pair of tennis shoes. “I’ll get her,” I said, and ran past my mom.
“Maddie!” my dad yelled after me, but I ignored him to chase Baley. I spotted her halfway down the block, sniffing the ground, but she started to run when she saw the leash in my hand. Neither of us liked to be tied down. I chased her down the block and around the corner. I smiled as I ran, silently thanking Baley for giving me a reason to be outside. The night air was foggy and cool and smelled sour, a common effect from the wet turf grass.
We sprinted down the dark street, past people fumbling with tiny beams of light. I lost Baley and stopped to listen for her collar tags when a hand suddenly grabbed my arm. Out of instinct, I swung my free arm up to try to elbow whoever was holding me, but the person let go in time to catch my flying wrist and pin it against my side. Before I could scream, a familiar voice cut through my panic.
“It’s good to see you too.”
My eyes were still adjusting.
“Justin,” I breathed.
He let go of my arm, and I realized his other hand was holding Baley’s collar. I bent down and attached her leash while Justin scratched her ears. My heart was still hammering from the jolt of surprise, and my lungs burned from the sprint.
“What are you doing here?” I panted.
“I wanted to talk to you.”
My eyes adjusted well enough to see him. He was wearing a baseball cap backwards and a black soccer jersey, as if he had been sitting on the couch, bored, and decided to get up and shut down the city power just for kicks. He hadn’t shaved in a while, and a light stubble was growing in.
“Look at what you did,” I said. People were stumbling in the grass, fidgeting with flashlights, and staring anxiously around the empty street like being outside at night was as terrifying as a haunted house. One woman tripped over a curb and stared down like she had never seen one before. A tree branch hit her arm, and it made her scream and lash out like she was being attacked.
He smiled. “It’s pretty funny sometimes.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Are you trying to intercept someone?” I asked.
“I was,” he said, and looked at me. “I found her.”
“This was for me?” I asked.
He nodded. “We were interrupted at the benefit.”
I looked around. “You did all this because you want to talk?”
“You don’t like my romantic gesture?” he asked, and I rolled my eyes. “I can’t call you. How else was I supposed to get you out of the house?”
Someone screamed in the distance.
“Why do you feel the need to cause mass chaos everywhere you go?” I asked him. I wiped off a layer of sweat beading on my forehead.
He took a step closer to me, and even in the darkness I could see his eyes were hard. “Why do you make it so impossible to see you? First a detention center, now the impenetrable fortress of Kevin Freeman?”
“I thought guys liked a challenge.”
He shook his head. “No, we really don’t. A little mystery in the beginning is okay, but this is getting old.”
I blew out a sigh. “I know.”
“I needed to see you,” he said. “I want to finish our conversation.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Now I get the chance to tell you how I feel about you.”
He grinned. “That you’re more in love with me than ever?” he asked.
“No, that you’re more of an idiot than ever,” I said.
His smile faded. “What?”
“I didn’t leave Eden because I was breaking up with you,” I told him. “I can’t believe that idea even crossed your mind.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah, Clare tried to explain it to me.”
“And you didn’t believe her?” I asked.
A piece of hair broke loose from my ponytail, and Justin brushed it back off my face, letting his fingers linger on my cheek. “I don’t like secondhand information. I
prefer to hear it from the source.”
“That’s why you’re here?”
He dropped his hand. “I thought you left California because you were leaving me, but after I saw you last night, I knew I was wrong. That’s why I’m here. I came to get you.”
My eyebrows rose. “Right now?”
He nodded and laced his fingers through mine. “Why not?”
“Where would we go?” He looked at me as if he had never contemplated this.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said.
“We’d be on the run again.”
“We’d be together,” he pointed out.
I shook my head. “I don’t want to hide anymore, Justin. I’m tired of running away. This is where I need to be right now,” I said.
He squeezed my fingers. “Look, I let you rot in that detention center because you convinced me it was what you wanted. And even though it was crazy, I supported you. But it killed me every day you were in there. I can’t go through anything like that again.” He gave my fingers a soft tug. “Come with me. I have a car waiting down the street.”
“This is a little different,” I said. “My dad isn’t torturing me.”
He let my hand go and took a step back. He looked at me like he didn’t recognize me. I couldn’t blame him. “You want to be here?”
“I don’t want to be here, but I need to be.” I looked down at my feet because I didn’t want to see his disbelieving eyes at my next statement. “I know it’s the best thing.”
He slid his hands over his baseball cap. “You’re really messing with my head, you know that?”
I sighed. “I’m sorry. But I have to do this. I need you to trust me, one more time. I started something when I was fifteen that I need to finish. And I hate being here. I’d leave in a second if I could.”
His dark eyes dared me. “Then leave.”
“It’s not that easy. I’ve got my father to deal with.”
“Don’t let your dad scare you. Don’t let me persuade you, either. Just do what you think is right,” he said. “I spent a lot of time trying to protect you when I first met you, because I didn’t know you. And I finally get it. I don’t need to protect you. You push people away when they do; you think it’s suffocating.”