Teen, Inc., Page 4

  “Hello,” Jenny said back. They shook hands and Robot-Mom stepped back. I felt like looking for her remote.

  “I’ll let you two start your project. I’ll be working in … here, if you need me,” Nancy said. Then she turned and marched off to interface with her robot masters.

  It was brief but normal enough.

  “So, let’s go,” I said. I trotted up the stairs and felt her follow.

  “This is your room?”

  “Yeah. It’s okay, isn’t it?”

  “Okay? It’s your room. What difference does it make what I think?” she said. “As long as you’re not, you know, polluting the world or making crack cocaine in here.”

  “Ha,” I said again.

  She made a beeline for the spaceship. “The Falcon! I love Star Wars.”

  So far so good.

  “Me too. Especially the new ones. The old ones look … old.”

  “I really liked Revenge of the Sith, but it’s so sad,” she said. She put her books on my bed and sat next to them. I guess if it really had been my bed it would have felt great to have her and her books on it.

  “Do you have the assignment?” she asked.

  My eyes went wide. I knew I’d forgotten something. “Uh … no.”

  She laughed. “That’s okay. I’ve got my copy.”

  “Great. I’ll boot up, so we can take notes,” I said. I popped my laptop’s on button.

  “Nice rig,” she said. “I’m jealous. Dad hates Microsoft so he insists on installing Linux, only he’s not very good at it so it never works quite right.”

  Computer chat was a dead end for me, so I said, “You like South Park?”

  Her eyes lit up. “I love the one where Cartman tells the Christmas story. You see it?”

  “Uh, no. I’ve only seen a couple of episodes…”

  One, really. Maybe I should have stuck with computers.

  “Why don’t we pick our project? Have any favorites?” she asked.

  I hadn’t even read the list. “Not really. It’s hard to choose. They’re all so … so biological.”

  She laughed. “There’s one on mercury poisoning, if you’re into the environment.”

  I walked over, sat next to her on the bed and we both looked at the list for a really long time. To this day I have no idea what was written on that sheet of paper. I just knew that we were so close I could feel warmth coming off her body. When she shifted a little, to get closer, her hair tickled the side of my face.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Uh,” I answered. I can be a real wit, huh? I looked at her and she smiled.

  So we were sitting there, smiling. It was the kind of moment where if this was a movie, the guy would lean forward, then the girl would lean forward, then they’d both pause a second, look at each other, lean forward some more and wind up swapping spit.

  But Jenny and I just sat there smiling.

  “Jaiden!”

  I thought about moving forward, but couldn’t.

  “Jaiden!”

  “Um, Jaiden, I think your mom’s calling you,” Jenny said.

  “Nah. She’s not my…”

  “Jaiden!”

  “Oh. I guess she is,” I said. “I’ll…”

  “Go see what she wants?” Jenny said with a giggle.

  “Yeah.” I stood up. “Be right back.”

  “I’ll read over the assignment,” Jenny said. “Maybe we can get some work done.”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  I liked her. Really. It wasn’t like staring at her across class. She knew South Park and Star Wars.

  But what the hell did Nancy want?

  I scrambled down the stairs and realized we had company: two guys, one woman, all in dark suits. Nancy pointed to the tallest, the one with slick black hair.

  “Jaiden,” Nancy said. “This is Frank Gerard from Legal. They have…”

  “Frank who from where?” I said, my voice cracking.

  “I’m sorry,” Nancy said. “They went over my head.”

  “We have a short waiver for your partner to sign,” Frank Gerard from Legal said.

  Part of me died. Then another part. Then another. I think a total of five parts of me upped and died. If I’d been a cat with nine lives, more than half of me would be dead.

  “My partner? Jenny? Are you crazy? You’ll ruin everything!” I was shouting in spite of myself, not even thinking she might hear.

  Frank kept a steady voice. Lawyers, after all, are used to being yelled at. “The situation here creates the possibility of certain contingencies. It’s our responsibility to ensure that should those contingencies occur, NECorp’s exposure will be limited.”

  “Take your contingencies and shove them!” I shouted. “What about my exposure?”

  “Jaiden!” Nancy said, sounding like a mother for the first time in her life. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t know this would happen. I guess this was just a stupid idea.”

  She said something else to Frank Gerard, but I didn’t hear it because I’d turned and was running back up the stairs. I raced into “my” room and slammed the door. Startled by the sound and the look on my face, Jenny jumped up.

  “Jaiden, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing! We … we have some company and my mom wants us to be quiet!”

  I heard footsteps.

  “Then why are you screaming? You look all red-faced.”

  Frank Gerard knocked. The doorknob turned.

  “Jaiden?” Jenny said.

  I threw myself at the door.

  As I struggled to keep it shut, I smiled and said, “Jenny, think maybe you could leave through the window? It’s really cool, and it’s only a short jump to the sidewalk.”

  “Mr. Beale,” Frank Gerard said. “You’re only making things more difficult.”

  Jenny knew the deep male voice wasn’t Nancy’s.

  “Who is that?” she said.

  I wedged my shoulder into the door and pushed for all I was worth.

  “It’s okay, really. Just, maybe … the window?” I knew I wasn’t making any sense.

  “We just need a moment of the young lady’s time…,” Frank Gerard was saying.

  “Um … no one’s here! It’s fine, Jenny, really … they’re just salesmen.”

  The hinges creaked. The door bent. Frank was stronger than he looked.

  I flew forward, spun, and fell flat on my butt. Figuratively and literally.

  The suits swarmed in, black blazers and attaché cases a blur.

  Jenny stood up on the bed and looked like she was going to scream. Frank whipped out a pen and a three-page document with the NECorp logo on it. He handed it to Jenny, who looked more and more like a deer caught in headlights.

  A very cute deer, mind you.

  “Who are you?” she yelped.

  “Attorneys. We just want to make it clear that while we’re not saying the woman downstairs is not Jaiden Beale’s mother, we’re also not saying she is. It’s a simple waiver, but I want to assure you that any protections you have as a visitor in this house and as a minor would be identical, legally, as if she were. That includes injury due to equipment malfunction, fire, or the unlikely event of unwanted sexual advances from Mr. Beale.”

  “Sexual advances?” Jenny shrieked.

  “No! No! Will you shut up?” I screamed.

  It was like a nightmare, only the monsters were really well dressed.

  Jenny was looking back and forth between me and the suits. She looked like she was going to freak any second and run away. I’m not one for praying, but I sure did then.

  The woman in the blue suit finally found her voice. I thought maybe she was going to try and calm Jenny down, but instead she cleared her throat and said, “Jennifer, you …uh… will have to get a parent to cosign since you are a minor.”

  You can guess what happened next, right? Exactly.

  Jenny freaked and ran away.

  5

  ACTIONING OUT

  The front door sl
ammed, and I dove for the window. I wanted to throw it open and scream something, but couldn’t figure out what. Instead, I watched Jenny race off on her bike. Her hair flashed in the sun as her body and the bike got smaller and smaller until she was a dot, and I couldn’t tell which part of the dot was Jenny, and which was her bike.

  Funny how one minute you can feel like you’re on top of the world and the next like you’re under it.

  The suits and I stayed in the room. While they looked at their watches and made a few calls, I kept myself busy by making small moaning noises.

  I don’t know why they stayed. Maybe they were so stupid, they figured Jenny was coming back with a parent to sign the freaking form. Or maybe they figured the people they worked for were so stupid that they should look like they were waiting for her, in case someone really, really stupid asked them about it later.

  I think that second one was most likely.

  Common sense or boredom soon won out, and they left. I sat pathetically on the bed, cradling my Falcon model, remembering how Jenny liked it.

  Ten minutes later, Nancy came by and stood in the open door. She looked like she wanted to say something, but, like me at the window, couldn’t figure out what it was. I sure as hell wasn’t going to start the conversation for her.

  After just standing there got too ridiculous, she shrugged, said: “Take an hour to pull yourself together. I’ll see you back at the office,” and left.

  At least she looked a little sad for me.

  So there I was, all alone, in my crappy fake room, in my crappy fake house, with my whole crappy fake life. I thought about smashing the Falcon just to smash something, but Jenny liked it. I thought about kicking in a door. These were cheap, hollow, and couldn’t block any sound, let alone stand up to a good kick. After running through a long list of things and people I really wanted to smash, I couldn’t think of anything that would make me feel better that wouldn’t lead to something that’d make me feel worse.

  Because if I really smashed anything, Team Jaiden would just get me into a behavior modification program or send me off with some accountants, or maybe some doctor would put me on drugs for my ADD or bipolarism or depression or whatever it is they’re calling being alive and feeling royally screwed these days.

  And that did it. I mean, really.

  You ever have a moment when you suddenly realize the thing you want most out of life, the thing you’ve been working hardest for, kind of even counting on in the back of your mind, just ain’t gonna happen, no way, no how?

  I want to say it wasn’t about Jenny, but it was. Things were working out like I couldn’t believe, and fate just yanked her out of my hands. And by fate, I guess I mean the legal department of NECorp, which is a lot like fate, if you think about fate as something powerful that you can’t escape. Kind of like the aliens in the Alien movies, without the dripping slime.

  And lawyers never die.

  So why bother wanting anything anymore? Sure, there were still some DVDs I hadn’t seen, and I still had some levels to go on Doom VI, but that wasn’t exactly something to pin a life plan on. When you’re done with a DVD or a video game, you can think about the best parts for a while but even that starts to get dull sooner or later.

  But a crush, now that’ll never bore you. Not me, anyway. And when Jenny left, I felt like I wasn’t allowed to even have the crush anymore, and, man, if you can’t have a private little feeling in the back of your head, what can you have?

  So, I ran away.

  Ben once told me I ran away when I was six, because I hated my tutor. I made it all the way to the boiler room, but I never even thought to leave the building. NECorp’s headquarters was the world to me.

  I don’t remember that, but I don’t have any reason not to believe it. When you’re a little kid, you think running away is heading down the block with a knapsack full of cookies. You figure you’ll meet a hobbit or a flying horse and come back in time for dinner with everyone so happy to see you they’ll serve ice cream instead of veggies.

  I wasn’t looking for treats anymore. I put on my hoodie, got on my bike, and rode off, thinking I wasn’t going to come back unless they shot me with a tranquilizer dart.

  It had warmed up since morning, turned into one of those autumn days where the temperature was just right and there were big clouds in the sky that looked like the billowy cotton from a Q-tips ad. A few people were mowing lawns, doing gardening. Little kids played in some of the yards. As I biked past them, I felt like everyone was staring at me. Maybe because they’d never seen me in the neighborhood before. Well, they weren’t going to be seeing me again.

  At the end of the road, about where Jenny vanished, I hit an intersection. To the right, it led onto an access road for the expressway that connected the corporate parks to the main bridge that headed north, where most of the commuters came from. I don’t know what I was thinking, maybe that big roads lead to bigger places, but I followed it.

  In no way was I allowed to bike anywhere near the expressway, so this was already a major revolution. I was breaking rules, crossing boundaries, feeling free. Nancy and Team Jaiden would probably call this a paradigm shift—if only because they insist on taking the fun out of everything.

  I stuck to the shoulder and tried not to wobble, but even here the cars zoomed by at forty or fifty miles an hour. It was dangerous as hell, in my mind anyway, the chief advantage being that every time I heard an engine rumble—my mind was not on Jenny so much as on staying alive.

  I kept this up for a couple of miles, then swerved off toward a familiar street sign: Gunson Road. I’d never noticed before, but once you get past that development where the fake house was, past all the bright and shiny corporate headquarters, things get gray and grimy. The houses get older, and are more packed together and painted less often. Most of them held more than one family.

  I was a little surprised. The reason I’d swerved off was that Ben lived around here somewhere. If I changed my mind I could try to drop in on him, but I never pictured him living in a rundown area. I always figured Ben was secretly well-off and was just a short-order cook because he loved flipping eggs. I also didn’t remember the name of his street, and the looks of some of the side streets didn’t make me feel like exploring.

  So yeah, okay, I pedaled a little faster, but I tried to look cool about it. Finally, I reached a huge avenue with strip malls and gas stations. I got off my bike and walked it across the four lanes. I had a little cash on me, in case I’d wanted to go get something with Jenny. Now I planned to hit a CVS and get some running-away supplies. You know, cookies, milk, and maybe some sugar for my flying horse.

  Seriously, by this time, I had a plan. I’d buy blankets and enough food to last me a few days, go into the woods, stay until the heat died down, then come out the other side, near the interstate, and try to make my way across state lines. After that, maybe I could work odd jobs as I traveled across the country. You know, like the Hulk.

  Have I mentioned I’m a fan?

  I knew I’d have time before Team Jaiden was hip that I’d flown the coop. Nancy had left me alone because she knew I needed some “cooling down” time. It’d probably be two hours before she’d even start to wonder about me. When she finally came looking, there were lots of places I could be—the gym, the cafeteria, my room—it’d be at least another hour before she exhausted those.

  That’s exactly how she’d play it, even if she did get worried. She was methodical—not like my last manager, “Smiling” Al Jensen. He wanted to put one of those ankle bracelets on me so my location could be tracked. Can you believe it? Like I was a criminal.

  We didn’t get along so well.

  Anyway, the strip mall parking lot was like an asphalt desert, huge and flat and cracked. Even though this was Saturday, the place was pretty empty. Maybe it was because I was feeling particularly alone, but seeing it gave a whole new meaning to the word desolate. You could see dead weeds in the cracks, and I’m talking thick weeds, like if you pulled
one out and hit someone with it hard enough, you could do some damage.

  I was wheeling my bike along when I noticed four kids hanging out near this lame fast-food place, Herbert’s Burgers. They were leaning on the only car near the place, and it looked as bad as the parking lot; full of dents and cracks and a couple of half-hearted patches of that red stuff they paint over rust with.

  As for the kids, they didn’t look dangerous. They were just, you know, kids. They were older than me, maybe by a few years. A couple wore blue Herbert’s Burgers vests, so I figured they were just taking a break from work. As I got closer, though, I could see they were kind of tense. Really quiet and stiff, and nobody smiling.

  I wasn’t scared or anything, not yet anyway, but I found myself watching them. This was partly because they were the only sign of life around, and partly because there was a girl with them and she looked … interesting.

  Her skin was pale, practically white, her eyes a quarter of the way closed—I guess you could call them bedroom eyes. She wore a tight white T-shirt and these hip-huggers cut well below the navel, which made me start to understand our school’s dress code. If the girls at Deever dressed like that, I’d never hear a single word a teacher said. Her front teeth were kind of funny, though, not quite buck teeth but getting there, and one of them looked chipped.

  So here I was, running away, looking at the way this girl was dressed, and damned if I didn’t feel like I was some kind of outlaw. I even smiled at her. She smiled back. It was pretty cool.

  There were three guys with her, but I don’t really feel like describing them, except to say one was tall and thin with that really, really awful acne that seems to replace major chunks of your face with this rubbery pink crap, another was kind of fat with glasses, and the last guy had big muscles and a mean look in his eyes. I didn’t know any of them from Deever. They all looked more the sort who’d dropped out of high school, which would explain the Herbert’s Burgers vests. The tall, thin acne guy looked really unhappy, like he’d just seen a mirror or something.

  I was thinking, Hey none of my business, I should just take my smile and keep moving. So that’s what I tried to do. But as I started to wheel my bike away, acne guy took the cigarette he was smoking out of his mouth, put his arm way up, and chucked the burning butt down on the ground like he was mad at it. Then he stomped on it with his foot. I mean, stomped. First one foot, then the other, then both. He was wearing these really old sneakers, torn a bit on the sides, and he stomped so hard they looked like they’d rip apart.