Javier leans toward the Director.
“I can get in the house easier than she can. I should be the inside man, and she can handle exit strategy.”
The Director gives him a patronizing smile. “And how would it be easier for you to get inside? Angel is known to recruit young women. But men he doesn’t know aren’t allowed on the property.”
“It said in the profile he hangs out with the Death Heads,” Javier counters. “I know the leader of the Death Heads, Ray Gomez. His little brother is a friend of mine from way back. Put Ray’s number in my phone and I’ll take care of the rest.”
The Director idly spins the fob on his wrist. “Won’t he think it’s strange you’re suddenly out of jail?”
“Ray’s got a lot on his mind. If I tell him I got out on appeal, he won’t dig. And he won’t notice when I go off the radar again.”
The Director considers this. “Normally I forbid involving outsiders, but it’s a valuable connection, especially if Signal is as inept as you claim. Of course, it would have to be just your friend Ray. Not him and his three best friends. Just him.”
“Understood.”
“Very well. I’ll allow you to contact your friend, and he can bring Signal into the house.”
“No, man, it’s got to be me and Ray!” Javier has pushed back too hard, and a cold silence condenses between them. The fob stops spinning, the Director holds it, considering him.
“I’m starting to think that you’re trying to protect her, Javier.”
“I don’t care about the bitch,” Javier sighs heavily. “I just don’t want to get caught out on my first mission!”
“Then why not follow the plan I’ve just described?”
“Because Ray is not going to ride in with someone he doesn’t know. Ray will do it with me, but he won’t do it for me. You understand the difference? I don’t have a kill switch in his neck. I have to strike an actual deal with him, not just give him commands—”
The Director’s voice cuts in: “Whoever goes into that compound is almost certainly not coming out again.”
“I’m not afraid of some hippies,” Javier says. “You want this guy dead or not? Because I promise you, Signal can’t get it done. Sending me in is your only chance.”
The long silence that follows is agonizing.
“All right,” the Director says at last, his tone cool. “Both you and Signal will go in with your friend. And we’ll see who comes out.”
Javier pauses, then scribbles out Ray’s number, which the Director assures him will be “assiduously checked.”
“Okay,” Javier says, putting out a hand. “Thanks.”
The Director looks down at Javier’s hand with disgust, like it’s already covered in blood. Then he gets up and walks out from the covered porch, straight into the trees.
When I’m sure he’s gone, I step around the door and into sight.
“Javier, what are you doing?”
“Signal!” he startles. “I thought you were asleep—”
The wind is so cuttingly cold, it’s like walking through icy water to cross the patio.
“I get that I’m a burden to you, okay?” I wrap my arms around my chest. “But I never thought you’d go sneaking around to tell the Director you need to ditch me—”
“What?” Javier is aghast. “I’m trying to protect you, Signal. That’s all I’ve ever done!”
“Since when?”
“Since I volunteered to do the obstacle course so I could climb behind you?” His eyes flare. “Since I traded mannequins with you? Since the first time I saw you?” His voice breaks in frustration. Then he bites his lip and says, with effort: “Forget it. Forget I said that. I swore to myself I was going to break it off with you.”
“Whatever, Javier. Whatever you want.”
“What I want is for you to be safe. And this mission … There’s no way to make it safe, okay? I would have done anything to keep him from sending you in, but I’m powerless, okay? I’m completely …” His voice breaks, and he looks away quickly, one knee jiggling wildly above the picnic bench. He bows his shoulders, his hands covering his face.
I sit down beside him at the picnic table, chills cascading down my back, my arms, my teeth chattering.
“He’s dead set on you going in,” Javier blurts, face still in his hands. “Maybe because you traded? I don’t know. But that place is a death trap. If we use you as bait? You won’t get out.” He shakes his head back and forth, and I realize he’s keeping his sentences short because he’s fighting back tears. “I don’t know how to keep you safe.”
I fumble awkwardly for his hand.
“I don’t want you to like me anymore. I don’t deserve it.” Javier’s tone is stern, but his fingers clutch at mine.
I heard him say the words myself: “I don’t care about the bitch.” But he was saying that to keep me out of a deadly mission. Or is he just saying all that to me now because I overheard? Was he just saying what I wanted to hear when he called me a flower? How could he think that, if he believed I was guilty? Is there a real Javier, or does he just say whatever he needs to?
“I’m not a good guy, Signal,” Javier says, but his hand is still holding mine.
“Aren’t you?” I ask, staring into his eyes.
His hand drifts to my neck, and it’s the only warmth in the world. Our lips meet, and the kiss deepens; and it’s not a performance or a claim on me. I let my fingers graze the plane of his cheek, his rough stubble, then force myself to pull back.
“What is going on with us?” I ask Javier. “Are we together? Or broken up?”
“I should just push you away and keep pushing until you hate me …” Javier trails off. “But it’s harder than I thought, pretending not to care about you.” And he traces the dandelion on the inside of my forearm. When he looks at me, when he touches me, it’s like I transform into this beautiful girl. I know that feeling isn’t true. But if a lie feels this good, does it even matter?
Is that what romance is? Pretending?
Oh, Erik, get out of my head.
“Can’t we just try and enjoy this trip?” Javier goes on. “Considering how it could end? Can’t we just try and make it a clean slate, like you said that first night? Enjoy ourselves while we still can?”
He has no idea.
“Okay,” I say, wiping at my eyes. “Clean slate, starting tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.” He smiles at last. “You and me. We start again.”
He leans over and kisses me, fast and hard and with searing heat, and then we return to the silence of the main cabin, to our bedrolls at opposite ends of the room, to steal a little oblivion.
At four AM they wake us, to pitch black windows and the chill of night. Out front Dave and the Director are inspecting four cars lined up along the gravel.
We crowd around the kitchen counter, a cold excitement banishing the last of the sedative from our systems, and power down instant oatmeal as Kate hands out counterfeit licenses and credit cards with our new fake names embossed on them.
“You have fifteen hundred each for expenses. After you hit your target, a bonus will be deposited, so you can have a little fun on the way back home.” She wiggles her eyebrows.
I’m taking my turn in the main cabin bathroom, trying to replicate what Jada did with my makeup yesterday, when Dennis knocks and I let him in. He scans the hall before closing the door behind him and then leans on the sink counter.
“You still sure about what we talked about?” he asks quietly.
“Yes, I am.”
“Okay. Well, me and Nobody are going to be driving pretty hard the next couple days. But I should be able to find a couple hours on the seventeenth. If I hit some kind of firewall where I absolutely cannot jailbreak your kill switch, I’ll try and text you or Javier—”
“You can’t tell Javier.”
Dennis frowns. “You’re not going to warn him that he might lose his partner halfway through his mission?”
“I’m betting on you, Dennis. I think you can do it. And if you can’t …” Then I don’t want to spend the next three days with Javier trying to talk me out of it, or worse, physically restraining me. “Then the fewer people who know you tried, the safer you’ll be.”
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll be trying on the seventeenth. If something goes wrong, I’ll text you a single asterisk. If it does work, and you cross the perimeter without activating the kill switch, I’ll be able to tell from the code. Don’t contact me, that’ll draw their attention. Just keep going, and I’ll go down the line and break us all out as fast as I can. But you have to understand, I won’t know for sure if it’s worked until you’ve crossed the perimeter. You are the test case.
“And I’m not happy about that, at all.” He blinks, as though confused. “I’m a Class A who’s always wanted to hurt someone. But I hate that you’re doing this, Signal.”
I’m aware this is as mushy as Dennis could ever possibly be, and I throw my arms around him in an impulsive hug I immediately regret. He remains still, arms at his sides, patiently waiting for me to get hold of myself.
“Thank you, Dennis,” I tell him, tearing up again. Everything’s very close to the surface today. “No matter what happens, never forget you’re way more than a Class A. You’re one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met.”
“… I also need to use the bathroom now,” he says, and I suppress a laugh and return to the crackling energy of the central room, where the rolled-up bedrolls and backpacks are piled in the middle of the empty floor.
As Javier dips down and grabs our packs, I realize something is wrong with his face and blurt out, “Where’s your tattoo?”
“Cover-up. Kate said the tear didn’t go with my outfit.” His tone is almost shy. As I reach over and pick up my pillow, he leans in and whispers softly,
“Do you have any idea how gorgeous you look right now?”
Before I can recover, Dave is thrusting a pair of keys between us, anchored to a USC keychain. “You’re in the 2002 Volvo station wagon,” he says gruffly. “With the ‘Coexist’ bumper sticker.”
We walk out into the thin light of dawn, to the line of cars, and find ours. Behind us, the Director is talking solemnly to Erik and Jada, leaned up against a matte-black lowrider. Erik doesn’t look at me, even though I stare at him, hard. He just nods, intent on whatever the Director is saying.
Behind them, Kate is instructing Nobody on how to stack several computer towers into the back of a gray Arrowstar van as Dennis punches buttons excitedly on the GPS.
Kurt, in a blue Jeep SUV with a surfboard mounted on the top, is at the very back of the line, engine idling. From the sound of it, he’s programming radio stations.
Javier and I load in our backpacks and bedrolls, throwing pillows in the back seat in case one of us wants to nap. “I can take first driving shift if you want to sleep?” Javier offers, and I nod, though there’s no way I’m sleeping. Every moment I have, I want.
I wander over to Nobody’s van once she’s got the computers loaded.
“Hey!” I reach out my arms and she hugs me, tight.
“I owe you one for trading, you know.”
“What are girlfriends for?” I squeak into her shoulder. “Just be safe out there, okay?”
“Oh, you haven’t seen the last of me.” She grins.
Kurt jogs over to give us quick goodbye hugs, and I’m shocked to feel tears slide down my cheeks when Jada’s tiny arms wrap around me.
“It’ll be okay, Skipper. We’ll all be back at camp soon,” Jada comforts me. “Think of it as a little romantic getaway for you and Javier.” Her voice goes grim, “Except the getaway part is no joke.”
Before I can respond, the Director calls for our attention. We fall into a line in front of him as he flicks at his smartphone in silence.
“Okay …,” he says finally. “HQ confirms kill switch perimeters rerouted.” He looks up from the display at last. “You’re cleared to take off. Be sure to follow your routes, take care with clean-up, and good luck.” He nods stiffly, then looks to Dave, who steps forward, clapping his hands like a coach giving a final speech on game night.
“You’ve trained. You’ve prepared. This is a way earlier launch than we expected, but you are exceptional young people, and we believe in you. We expect to see each and every one of you back at camp soon. So now all I have left to say is this …” Dave lets a smile spread across his face. “Just have fun with it.”
Hoots and clapping at this. My arms stay at my sides.
Kate clasps her hands together, her knuckles going pale from the pressure. “We are so, so proud of you guys. And we can’t wait to see you all safely back, very soon! Remember, guys: what did we come here to learn?”
An electric current of understanding passes down the line of campers, all of us thinking it: how not to end up like you. I have to bite the inside of my cheek. Kate looks confused by our silence so we all hurriedly jump in with “How to not get caught!” out of unison, knowing smiles flickering on our faces. Dave, staring straight ahead, seems paler under his tan.
The Director claps his hands, ordering us to our cars. I step toward the lowrider behind us to say goodbye to Erik, but Dave yells “Load in, Signal!” and Erik’s door slams. Unwillingly I turn and get into the passenger side of the Volvo instead.
But I don’t want to leave without saying goodbye to Erik. I said goodbye to everybody but him. I twist in my seat, staring into their car. Erik, in the passenger seat, stares out the window with a pillow wedged under his head, his hair blocking most of his face from view. I wave, a lot, but nothing.
This is the last time I’ll ever see him. After today I’ll either be on the run from camp or, well, dead. Say goodbye to me. I know he can tell I’m staring at him, but it’s like he’s refusing to acknowledge me. I twist in my seat waving frantically, trying to get his attention, and finally stop when Jada, at the wheel, gives me a puzzled thumbs-up.
Javier hits the accelerator, our car bumps down the white gravel road, and I turn forward, hot tears starting to stream as we pass under the Camp Naramauke sign. Then, once we’ve jounced down the switchbacks and gotten off the access road, the lowrider growls behind us and Jada swerves past, incredibly fast.
“She’s going to get pulled over!” I cry. “Isn’t there some way to get them to stop or something? Warn her to take it easy?!”
“It’s okay, she’s just burning off some steam.”
The lowrider shoots off into the distance before I can even see Erik’s face one last time, and I burst into sobs.
Nobody pulls alongside us twenty minutes later, Dennis throwing us a wave, then they turn off at a southbound exit, and I wipe my eyes with my sleeve. It’s impossible to think I’ll never see them again, these maniacs, these killers, my only friends.
We go through a drive-through for breakfast, and after we eat hash brown patties and egg sandwiches in what can only be called ecstasy, Javier cranks back the passenger seat and pulls out a pillow, and it’s my turn to drive.
Javier doesn’t sleep, though, he chats with me, light and playful. He wants to know about my other boyfriends, refusing to believe he’s my first.
“No way. I know you broke all the guys’ hearts. Look at you.”
If I could turn off the voice in my head that calls out every ridiculous thing he says, it would be pretty charming. But instead I just try to not to laugh and change the subject.
We don’t stop again until lunch, pulling off at a low-slung building on our route with a blinking EAT sign out front and no further enticement. Their veggie burger is dry and the décor is dour, but the freedom of walking through the world, of ordering from a menu, of wandering to the bathroom or poring over the jukebox without asking anyone’s permission … it’s everything.
“It almost feels real, doesn’t it?” I laugh to Javier as we walk back to the car hand in hand. “Like we’re really a couple on a road trip together.”
“We really are a couple on a road trip together.”
“Oh. Right.” I laugh.
“Don’t worry. I won’t let you forget it again, gorgeous.” He gently twists the hand he’s holding up to his lips and brushes my knuckles with a kiss. I, Signal Deere, am on a road trip with my handsome, adoring boyfriend.
Also, I might be dead in two and a half days.
Life is a fuse, and I am the red spark shooting toward its end, each moment burning away as soon as I exist within it, bright, sparkling, then gone.
Around ten o’clock Javier pulls up to the Sleepy Nite Motel. The smell of cigarette smoke almost knocks me backward when we get inside. Every sound echoes in the small room as Javier crosses to the far queen-sized bed and sets down his backpack on its plasticky quilt. I set my backpack down on the other bed, and then we turn and stare at each other.
“So …” He steps toward me. And then his phone goes off.
He’s so intent on me he doesn’t recognize what it is at first. I have to say, “Um, is that your phone?” and he pulls it out of his pocket.
“Hello?” A tinny voice from the other end. “Right. We are, we checked in.… oh yeah? Great! Okay, I will. I will right now. I appreciate it.” He clicks the phone off and looks up at me. “That was the Director. Ray’s number was just added to my directory.” He’s beaming. “I have to call Ray, set everything up.” He strides over to me and wraps me in a hug. “Hopefully it doesn’t take too long but … Ray can be a talker.”
“Yeah, great, okay.” I nod, head bobbing automatically as he scrolls through and finds the number. I go into the bathroom to brush my teeth. I can hear him speaking a rapid-fire mix of Spanish and English through the wall, so I take a shower as well. The hot water is absolute bliss.
Dripping in my towel and rifling through my backpack for bedclothes before I go back out, I’m stumped on what to wear. It’s not like Javier has never seen me in my pajamas before, but still. It’s different. We weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend before. And I don’t have to wear every piece of clothing I can fit into, because unlike the cabin, this room has heat.
Heck, I can wear underwear to bed if I want.
I stare down into my bag, heart hammering at the thought, then find the baggy red sweatpants and long-sleeved USC T-shirt tucked at the bottom and put them on as fast as I can before whatever mischievous mental voice that suggested the underwear gets louder. Dressed, I pad out of the bathroom to find our room empty. I go to the window and find Javier making loops under the sickly buzzing yellow of the parking lot lights, like a fish swimming in an aquarium.
So I climb into bed and click through the TV channels: the dire evening news, house hunting shows, Wheel of Fortune. I had Wheel of Fortune going the last time I saw Rose. She’d stopped talking to me when I stopped covering for her, but then one night she suddenly texted she was on her way over. Five minutes later a knock rattled the thin trailer door and Rose stepped into our scrubby living room, beaming at our old TV, at our stained couch covered in neat piles of folded laundry.
“Aww, Signal! It’s all exactly the same as when we were kids! I’m going to cry!”
“Yeah, me too. I think this whole trailer would fit in your room. What’s up?” I asked, wary. “Off to see Mr. Moody? You want me to cover if your mom calls?”
“No … I just had to get out of the house for a while.” She shook her head, then: “Tom took the lock off my door again, so I go to talk to him about it, and he starts going off on my shirt? About how he can ‘see everything’ and I just … I grabbed my keys and left.”
“… Did your mom hear him say that?”
She nodded.
“What did she say?”
“Nothing. Not a damn thing.” She laughed, but the corners of her mouth jerked down, and she ducked her head. I sat down on the couch next to her, my hand on her shoulder, unsure what to say. After a moment she threw her head back, shaking it off. “Anyway. Whatever. I turn eighteen in a month. And the second my trust comes in, the second, I’m going to buy a car, and drive straight to Portland.” She tilted her head. “You’d come with me, right?”
I held out my pinky, and she smiled, and we promised.
I woke up with her in the shed a week later.
We check out when it’s still dark. I huddle in the passenger seat, watching the sun rise. I don’t know how many of these I have left. But I guess no one does. Javier takes my hand, his thumb moving gently over the back of it.
“It’s going to be okay,” he promises, his gift to me. I smile like I believe him, my gift to him. Erik was right. We are hell-bent on playing pretend.
We drive straight until lunch, stopping at a small diner, and while I’m in the bathroom washing my hands I glance up at the mirror and realize I’m beautiful.
Not beautiful in the magazine model sense, like Nobody. Beautiful as in incredibly well designed and capable. My hands can tie a braid without thinking, they can touch type, and once, briefly, played the flute. My eyes are 20/20 vision, my mouth can say or sing anything. My meaty little space suit, protecting me from all things in this world that are not me, has done a damn fine job the last seventeen years. I marvel at my own body for maybe the first time in my life, and yet I can’t shake the feeling it’s not mine anymore. It exists for the moment in limbo, like money placed on a table for a bet.
We decide to do drive-through for dinner and push through northern Nevada to the motel, getting there earlier than expected. The motel room is a carbon copy of the last one, except mercifully no cigarette smell. We set down our bags and stare at each other.
“Any calls or anything we have to do tonight?” I ask shyly.
“Oh, I think you know exactly what we have to do.” Javier’s eyes are intense as he strides toward me and takes me in his arms.