Dylan left the next morning through the front door, picking up his skateboard on the way out and saying, “Thank you for letting me feel, you know, all the . . . you know.”
Oh, I knew, but no thanks were necessary. I was the one who should have been thanking him, for introducing a colorful diversion from our predicament, a predicament that became darker as soon as I sat down to breakfast.
My parents didn’t say a word about Dylan. Instead they informed me that authorities had captured my classmates Yuki Dolan and Cameron Quell as they were trying to leave town. Yuki was curled up in the trunk of her cousin’s Miata and Cameron was on foot, jogging through the woods with a backpack full of supplies. No dogs or helicopters were needed to track them down. Officers had simply predicted their movements and were waiting for them. It was eerie and telling, and made me want to hide in the house.
It was an instinct confirmed by Rosetti. Later that morning, she sent me a text:
Stay put. I’m coming over to talk.
Me: To me?
Rosetti: You can invite what’s-her-name too. I’m sure you tell her everything anyway.
She wasn’t wrong there. Between the two texts, I had already shot off a message to Tess:
Lady Nightshade Alert!
Because Paula had confiscated her keys for fear she’d blow up while driving, Tess arrived by bike half an hour later. Mom greeted her at the door with a hug. “You can’t believe how happy I am to see you, Tessy.”
“I’ve lucked out so far, haven’t I?” Tess said as she kissed Mom on the cheek.
When Rosetti rolled in a few minutes later, there was only a handshake and a quick explanation that she needed to “borrow the girls for a second or two” and then she’d be on her way. Mom saw no harm in that. Borrow away, as long as we were within yelling distance. So Tess and I wrapped ourselves in blankets, and we decamped to the back deck, where we watched the wind blow dead leaves into little tornadoes as Rosetti got, as she put it, “down to brass tacks.”
I had no idea where that term came from, but I imagined a corkboard full of photos of the victims and strings leading from each of the photos back to a series of brass tacks that were skewering an envelope emblazoned with a big black question mark. While we’d been in the tents, Rosetti had obviously been out there doing some serious detectiving, and now was the time for the big reveal, for her to take down that envelope, tear it open, and knock our socks right the fuck off.
“So what is it?” I asked. “GMOs? Aliens? Lay it out there.”
“It’s what I’ve feared since the beginning,” Rosetti responded. “And you deserve to know. You are victims of the most heinous violation of human rights I have ever seen perpetrated on this soil.”
“We’re what now?” I asked.
“You’re being monitored and tracked,” she explained. “Nanotechnology, injected and now embedded in your arteries. Most likely near your heart.”
“You’re kidding?” Tess said, placing a hand on her chest.
“You’ve been tagged like a wild animal and there is nothing you can do about it,” Rosetti explained. “That’s why the next thing I’m going to ask you is important. Since I’ve ruled out illicit substances as the delivery device, can either of you think of an instance when your entire class might have been subjected to invasive practices at the hands of government officials?”
“You mean besides what we just went through?” Tess asked. “You mean was there another time when we were sequestered for days in tents and given a full battery of batshittery?”
Rosetti smirked and said, “It would have been more subtle than that. A field trip to an army base, a—”
I shot a triumphant finger to the sky. “Washington, DC. Eighth grade. We all went to DC together.”
“Every eighth grader in the Northeast does that trip,” Tess said.
True but, nevertheless, the info raised Rosetti’s eyebrows. “I suspect you were all in the same buses and hotels?”
“Probably . . . definitely,” I said as realizations bloomed. Now this made sense. This wasn’t some blowhard jumping to conclusions. This was about collecting evidence and presenting a logical case that would stick. Brass tacks, my friends.
“Go on,” Rosetti said. “Give me details.”
“Oh, oh, oh,” I yelped. “We toured the Pentagon. We were all in this auditorium together and we listened to some military guy talk about national defense. I remember that.”
“Interesting,” Rosetti said. “Worrisome, but interesting.”
Maybe it seemed obvious to you from the beginning.
Well, duh, Mara, why’d you swim through that sea of red herrings when we all knew from the beginning that there are drones and war-machine shit out there that can vaporize a person from two continents away? Obviously.
A very good point, and one I would have completely brushed off unless it came from the mouth of Special Agent Carla Rosetti of the FBI. Her stellar record of sleuthing and bad-guy-catching was the single thing I needed to pull the veil from my eyes. Tess was tougher to convince.
“So you’re blaming the government?” Tess said. “Aren’t you the government?”
“Have you ever had a job?” Rosetti asked her.
“I used to work at Boston Market,” Tess said.
“And what’d you do at Boston Market?”
“I picked chicken carcasses. So they could use them in sandwiches. Carvers they called them, though there was very little carving.”
This seemed to please Rosetti, and she leaned toward Tess and spoke to her in a tone of respect she had not previously bestowed upon my pal. “Hard, thankless work. And during your chicken pickin’ stint, did you trust your employers? In other words, do you think the various levels of management at Boston Market always had your best interests in mind?”
“No, ma’am, I did not.”
“Okay then. Crazy as it seems, I’m no different from you. Only it’s the government I do my chicken pickin’ for. What do you two know about false flags?”
Tess stared at her, studied her, as if searching for a lie.
While I said, “I don’t know the first thing about false anythings, but I do know what you’re saying makes a lot more sense than some magical explanation. And really, isn’t that what everyone else is selling?”
“Exactly,” Rosetti replied. “People see what they want to see, even when the evidence points in the opposite direction. My partner, for instance. I’m not about to share this information with Meadows because he loves this government more than he loves this country. The government has an agenda. Unfortunately, they’re using kids like you to further that agenda. So you’re the only ones I can trust. Together, we might be able to expose it.”
“Seriously?” Tess said. “The last time you asked for our help, Mara ended up in the hospital.”
“And for that I am supremely sorry,” Rosetti said, nodding at me. “I will not ask you to take any more risks. I only ask that you stay in touch. Consider this more like a friendship. Sharing gossip. Girl talk.”
Then she reached into her handbag, pulled out two flip phones, and handed us each one.
“Ooo,” I said, holding my phone up to the light like it was a diamond. “Is this a burner?”
“It’s clean, untraceable, and has my number programmed into it,” Rosetti told us. “Call or text me whenever, about whatever.”
“Can Tess and I program each other’s numbers in it?” I asked. “So we can group-text the latest and greatest?”
“Fine, sure,” Rosetti said. “But only the three of us. Dylan will not be involved with this venture.”
“You want me to keep a secret from my boyfriend?” I asked, which seemed like an impossibility now that we’d shared everything we possibly could.
“Every girl should have at least a few secrets from her boyfriend,” Rosetti said. “You’re foolish if you don’t. I picked you because you’ve proven to be smart and trustworthy. Don’t let me down by proving otherwise.”
Tess held the phone in her lap. She opened it and shut it, making it snap like alligator jaws. She did it a few times as her lips moved, the same way they do when she’s doing an equation in her head. Then she looked up, and said, “I have my own theories, you know?”
Rosetti smiled. “I bet you do.”
“Legit theories,” Tess assured her. “Stuff I’ve spent a lot of time figuring out.”
“And that’s what it’s for,” Rosetti said, pointing at the phone.
Tess held the phone in her fist for a moment, then pocketed it, and said, “You might as well know, sometimes we call you Lady Nightshade.”