Chapter 4

<<Computers are like brains, when in doubt, hit reboot,>> JanusFlyTrap tweets.

Whatever is wrong with the school’s network, I can’t solve it in the six minutes I have before class. Chippy shows me the blades of servers stuffed into a closet, but just looking at a bunch of blinking lights won’t fix anything. I don’t know all that the servers are used for here, but I can’t imagine that a school needs a whole lot of computing power. These should be more than enough.

“RAM, hard disk issue? Input output or CPU? Could be anything, right?” I say.

“It was operable until twelve hours ago and then usage spiked and remained elevated.”

“Distributed denial of service attack?” I suggest—essentially I’m saying that hundreds of other computers are asking the servers to do something and it’s bogging down the network. Crackers do this sort of thing to shut down websites. “With root access, I can dig into the logs and figure it out, but I’m late for class.”

Chippy’s lips shift from side to side as he ruminates, making him appear more bovine than ever. He nods. “Tomorrow?”

I shrug because I have only one free class tomorrow and I’d planned to use it to visit more former customers of Assured Destruction. The money from the Chinese students will barely cover us for the month. If my mom and I are going to keep a roof over our head, we need more business. We’ve had Assured Destruction for as long as I can remember. I toddled about its hallowed racks of computer gear. Computer cords were my teethers, mice my toys, and I napped with a pet hard drive named Byte.

With my backpack over one shoulder I reach English as the bell rings.

“Christmas holidays are approaching,” Mrs. French says. “And I want everyone to choose one book to read in preparation for delivering an oral report due by the middle of January.”

“How long?” Harry asks. Harry is Hairy on Shadownet, another of the online identities that are part of my digital orbit.

I orbit @JFlyTrap? Heckleena tweets. As if you’re my sunshine.

I can delete you, JanusFlyTrap replies.

And then what? Go ahead and say what you’re actually thinking. Good luck with that, Heckleena tweets back.

My fingers dance under the desk while the teacher answers questions.

“A novel,” says Mrs. French. “Two hundred pages minimum.”

I’ll need an audiobook or something made into a movie.

With my mom on the psych unit, the ensuing class discussion on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a bit too much for me. Today we’re—*spoiler alert*—discussing Chief’s escape after McMurphy, aka Mac, the main character in the movie version, is turned into a drooling idiot. Which reminds me. Glancing around, Hannah is nowhere and I wonder how she’s holding up. I mean, if I’d decided to shoot someone and then kill myself, I’d be a little shaken being alive and at school the next day too.

My chest burns with every turn and breath. Any other day, I’d sign out sick, but I know I can’t. Principal Wolzowski said I can’t be absent, even for illness. From now until the end of January, I must have a perfect attendance record or I fail. Retake. Same difference. I knew a kid who caught mono and had to retake—she never really recovered.

In my mind, I slip back into the creep’s apartment. Hannah’s waving a gun, I’m hurling a laptop, and my leg begins to burn again. It’s been a rough year and the Christmas holidays can’t come soon enough.

Finally class is over. Jonny grips my shoulders and looks into, first, one eye, then the other, and checks my forehead.

“You look terrible.”

“Thanks.”

“Sorry.”

“No, I don’t even need to look in a mirror,” I say.

“I have to go. My muse has struck,” he says. “Big mural.” I see his eyes are smiling again, imagining the mural and no longer looking at my broken body.

“You’re welcome.”

“What?”

“Aren’t I your muse?”

He scratches his head and then shakes it. “Muses are more fickle. Later.”

It’s okay. I have enough to do without the duties of a muse. I eat my lunch—banana, pickle, and leftover Hawaiian pizza—and sit through two more classes before leaving. I pause in the atrium to check the phone for the directions to AAA Limited, Assured Destruction’s former third-best gravy train.

The name makes me laugh. Companies choose names like that so that they’re alphabetically at the top if you need anything like a plumber or a towing company. But that was back in the days of the Yellow Pages, half-a-dead-tree worth of advertising that landed on Assured Destruction’s front step every year. I hope AAA Limited is having better luck with its business than Assured Destruction.

Time to find out.

Pull to go, push to stop @JFlyTrap, Hairy tweets once I’m in the van.

Row, row, row your ..., Frannie adds.

I sigh. Water beads the windshield and I sweep it away with a flick of the wipers.

“Call Detective Williams,” I say to the phone as I drive out, but then remember that it’s my mom’s phone, not mine, and Williams isn’t in the contacts. I pull over briefly to dial. Williams picks up on the first ring.

“Janus,” she says.

“Reporting for duty, ma’am.”

She’s quiet for a moment. “I wish you could, see …”

I do see. Last week I was supposed to profile a serial killer using the contents of his laptop, but it turned out that I had been given the chief of police’s old laptop. When I presented him as an alcoholic with a preference for wearing women’s clothes ready to go on a killing spree … well, no one was very happy. Funny thing was, everyone already knew about his drinking and fashion choices; in fact, he was well loved for being so open about them. What got me into trouble was my assuming that those things made him a murderer.

“The chief,” she continues. “He thinks you’d be better off out of harm’s way.”

The neighborhood is growing seedier by the block. Businesses are shuttered. Rust stains the siding on warehouses.

“Serving soup is more dangerous,” I say. “I might burn myself. There are lots of sharp things in kitchens. Blenders. More people die from fridge accidents than gunshots.”

“It could be worse—wait, really?”

“No, but thanks.”

“Stay in touch, Jan, all is not lost, I’m still working on the chief. Give me time,” she says. And I can tell this is hard for her. “Call me if you need anything.”

“It’s okay, Detective. I’ll be fine. I always am.”

“Well, in the meantime, they want you at the soup kitchen tonight—5 PM.”

I squint at the phone.

“Sorry …” I make shushing sounds. “… can’t hear you … all staticky.”

I hang up. I’ll let the soup people call me.

I find the street number and start counting down the dilapidated buildings. Six cars are parked in front of AAA Limited, a squat, single-story office building. A barbed-wire fence protects its warehouse.

I slam the door of the van and crutch to the entrance.

The door opens to the smell of cigarette smoke. I can’t remember the last time I’ve opened a door to smoke. I cough in a tiny waiting area, furnished by three plastic chairs and a door with a frosted pane of glass. Veneer peels from the top of an empty reception desk. A sheet of paper lies on its top. No Soliciting reads the sign glued to the opposite wall. Fluorescent lights buzz above, shining through a panel spackled with dead flies. A green rotary phone hangs beside the door.

Something tells me this place doesn’t see much traffic, but I’m encouraged by the cars in the lot and lift the handset.

“Hello?” I say to the tone.

I swing the phone dial to 0 and smile as it rattles back. OMG, the time people used to waste just dialing.

Using a rotary phone, how did people tweet with these things? #downsideofretro, Tule tweets.

The phone rings.

“Welcome to Bell, bienvenue à Bell, for service—” I set the handset back in its cradle. Why would they have a phone with no way of reaching anyone?

I knock.

Nothing.

Then with my fist.

There’s movement. I hear whirring sounds and then silence when a door shuts. The ground shakes; a shadow fills the frosted window and then nearly rips the door from its hinges.

Staring down at me is a fat man in a T-shirt with a Star Trek symbol at his breast. I’m tempted to give the Vulcan salute, but this guy isn’t going to live long or prosper. His goatee has collected several potato chip bags worth of crumbs, and the pizza sauce at the corner of his mouth is flaking as if it’s from last night rather than lunch.

“What?” he says.

I gather myself. The customer, after all, is always right.

“Hello, my name is Janus Rose and I work for Assured Destruction, a computer recycler that AAA used to use for—”

He squints at me as if searching for something and then points to the No Soliciting sign. Wordlessly he steps back and shuts the door.

I totally thought soliciting meant something different. I stand immobile for a minute, staring at the closed door. Cool air suddenly whisks underneath the doorframe and for a moment there’s another whirr. This time I place it—a bank of servers. And then cigarette smoke again.

What does AAA even do?

With my cast and bruised ribs, I’m hardly ready for sleuthing, and there’s the small matter of the barbed wire even if I could climb the fence, none of which would earn me a customer. Instead, I retreat to the van. No one else has come or gone, but that doesn’t mean much. We only receive one truck a week at Assured Destruction.

After five minutes, I start the engine. As I do, someone pops out of the office door and lights a cigarette. Unlike the geek earlier, this guy’s dressed more like a biker with a black leather jacket emblazoned with a skull. He keeps casting glances in my direction. From the distance, all I make out is his ponytail and thick-set chest, but he’s older, maybe mid-forties.

I pull the accelerator and drive out. Something else is bugging me. If smoking was allowed inside, why is he puffing away in this cold? Why, unless he wanted a better look at me?