Chapter 3

<<I think everyone’s better off with @JFlyTrap using her chin,>> Heckleena tweets.

Jonny giggles.

“Hey!” I exclaim as the van slowly rolls out of the driveway. “Did you just tweet from my account?”

“It’s Heckleena’s, not yours,” he says.

I try to slam the brakes, but my mom has a protective plate where the pedal normally would be so that one of her foot-twitches doesn’t accidently hit the accelerator. I need to use the hand controls, but first I have to find them.

“No, seriously, Heckleena, Frannie, Tule, Gumps, JanusFlytrap, and Hairy are all my Twitter accounts. Don’t ever do that again.”

I’d be even more forceful if I wasn’t worried about the approaching stoplight—the one with the cars whizzing past—and my inability to think under pressure. The window wipers start swishing.

“Sorry. I—” Jonny begins.

“Jonny—” I say.

He waves me off. “I said, I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s not that. I don’t know where the brake is.” I run my fingers over the steering wheel. “Brake!” I say. You’d think a handicapped van would have voice activation.

The phone rings. I’m expecting a call from Detective Williams, but now’s not a good time.

“Do you want me to get it?” Jonny asks.

“No, I want to stop!” I’m rolling slowly, but the light’s only half a block away.

“Haven’t you ever watched your mom drive?”

I have. She’s always fiddling with her left hand. My fingers close around the hand controls to the bottom left of the steering column.

I pull. The car lurches forward.

“That’s the gas!” Jonny yells.

“But there’s nothing else, just the one handle.”

We enter the intersection, both of us screaming. I brace for impact.

Behind, someone honks.

I open my eyes to see that we’re sitting in the middle of the crossroads before a green light. The incline was enough to slow us to a stop.

“I should have biked,” Jonny says.

The car honks again, but I’m afraid to do anything without knowing where the brake is.

“Here.” Jonny holds up the screen. A video plays from YouTube.

Hi, I’m Russ, and I’m here to show you how hand controls work. You might be a little nervous, but don’t worry. Driving with hand controls is easy and safe.

Someone leans on their horn and I lean into the video.

Your lever controls both the gas and the brake. Just pull to accelerate and push to brake.

“Push to brake, push!” Jonny yells. “Pull, go!”

The tires screech and we’re back on a quieter street.

I test the brakes and Jonny jerks forward in his seat. The belt across my chest is a ribbon of fire.

“It works,” I manage.

“You and cars. Like I said, should’ve biked.”

With the controls down, we park in the school lot without incident. Jonny jumps down from the van and kisses the ice-frosted pavement.

“Ha, ha, ha,” I say.

“Who’s joking,” he replies while retrieving his bike. “You’re like a cat. Some day you’ll run out of lives.”

The gray sky is slate, looks like more snow tonight. I check who called. Detective Williams. With my phone stuck in the police evidence locker, I’d given her my mom’s number. She didn’t leave a message.

Williams is my police force sponsor. Without her help, the next 1945 hours of my free time—*I’m laughing and crying*—will be spent ladling soup to the homeless. Not that I have anything against the homeless, I’d just rather be out fighting crime.

“Can I see you tonight?” Jonny asks as we head for the stairs leading to the school’s glass atrium.

I pause. Probably for too long. “Yeah, late though, I need to visit my mom and then drum up some business. Make the mortgage payments and all.”

“And how are you going to convince people to destroy more hard drives?” Jonny asks. And I can hear him add in his head, Particularly since you had a habit of not actually destroying them.

“When I went to the banker for help on the mortgage, he might have been a jerk, but he did tell me that Assured Destruction used to be a lot more profitable. I checked, and he was right. When my dad left we lost a whole bunch of contracts. Today I’m hunting the largest customers we ever had. I’m hoping to see if I can’t win them back.”

He seems to weigh this. “Well, you shouldn’t be at Assured Destruction alone.”

Now Jonny sounds like Peter, my mom’s boyfriend, who has grown a little too fatherly as of late. I frown.

“I’ll just have to get used to it.” And then I remember. “Until the international students come—I won ten of them, can you believe it?”

“You’re billeting ten students?” he asks. “At Assured Destruction?”

“If there’s one thing we have, it’s space. Besides we need the money.”

“That money’s for food—not mortgages.”

“Details.” Jonny always sweats the small stuff. By the furrows between his eyebrows, I can tell he doesn’t approve.

The bell’s already rung. No students lounge on the steps and the doors are locked. A security camera eyes us. We’re buzzed in and head to the office to pick up our late slips and crutch to class. Computer studies is first.

As we enter, Chippy—Mr. MacLean—is showing the class the proper ergonomic height of the chair. No one will ever learn how to code here, but at least their backs won’t be hurt not coding.

“Sorry,” I say. “My alarm didn’t—” My excuse is overwhelmed by an eruption of applause.

The only person not giving me a standing O is Ellie Wise, who quirks her mouth to the side in a fake smile. They’ve heard what happened to Hannah.

“Aw … shucks, guys,” I say, but I’m grinning and tears spring to my eyes.

Chippy grunts his endorsement and crumples the late slip before tossing it in the garbage. It’s a nice gesture but he still needs to sign it and send it back to the office. My relationship with Chippy has flipped head over heels this past month. He takes me by the elbow and whispers in my ear: “Can … muh … you speak with me for a minute after class?”

My eyes widen and he flushes. “Sure thing, Mr. MacLean.”

Then I sit, carefully adjusting my chair to the ergonomically correct height.

Ellie leans over with a sour look. “Thanks for helping, Hannah.” A stray blonde curl loops cutely over her forehead. “Now, she has to see a psychiatrist.”

I blink. Ellie was the inspiration for Tule on Shadownet where she could be best described as clueless in the let-them-eat-cake sort of way.

“A psychiatrist? No community service?” Hannah stole a police officer’s gun, broke into a guy’s apartment and shot at him. She’s sentenced to doctor appointments while I remain condemned to two thousand hours?

“Lucky, right? And by the way, I’m also in charge of inspecting your home before the arrival of the international students,” she says. “It’d better be ready for my visit—the week after Christmas.” She turns back to Chippy, who’s moving from ergonomics to a lecture on database systems.

Inspection. Before the students arrive from Beijing I need ten mattresses, ten towels, an extra set of plates and cutlery, what else? Sleeping bags? A stack of toilet paper. Will my WiFi hold up? How hard is it to learn Mandarin anyways? There’s probably an app for that.

That’s okay, I’ve a little less than two weeks before Christmas holidays and more than three until the students arrive. Plenty of time. My mind’s juggling all of this while keeping half an ear on Chippy, who rhymes off different types of database systems and models, only some of which I already know.

Sitting is hard with bruised ribs, but better than standing. I shift in my chair throughout class, desperate for a Tylenol and having trouble keeping the picture of a gun out my head. By the end of class, we haven’t even touched our computers.

Computer-less computer class. Up next: English class taught by Mrs. French? #strangeday, Hairy tweets.

I’m using my special power to tweet beneath desks without even looking at the phone. Is this what people mean when they talk about their misspent youth?

When I glance down to ensure it tweeted, I notice that I have a text from Peter.

Mom okay. Old people suck at texting.

OK like she had a heart attack and now is OK, OK? Or all better like talking again? OK?

The reply is immediate and I picture him hunched over my slip of a mother’s bed.

Didn’t die okay.

I take a deep breath and regret it.

“Janus?” Chippy says.

I bury my phone in my lap. We’re not supposed to be using them on school property, but if Chippy sees, he doesn’t mention it.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“We have a problem with the network,” he says. “Not worth using the computers until it’s fixed.” He pauses and I realize he’s waiting for me.

“I didn’t do anything,” I say. “Everyone always suspects me, but it’s not me. Though it might have something to do with what I’ve done,” I add as my thoughts race to Darkslinger and anything I could have posted on the hacker’s forum to cause this, “but it’s not me who is doing it. I swear—”

“Muh!” he interrupts. “I need your help to root out the problem.”

“Oh,” I say. “Sure. I’ll … root.” Helping is a defensive measure; for all my objections, if it does have something to do with me, I’d rather be the first to know.

“Follow me,” he says.