Assured Destruction (9 page)

“Well, maybe we do have some stuff in common.” If he looked happy before, he now seems to float as he wanders into the elevator.

Something Jonny said in the car reminds me. Whoever is doing this needs a motivation, whether it’s Ellie’s for my liking Karl, or Chippy’s for the attacks on his website. Just then I figure out Peter’s motivation. My mom has been dating him for at least a week or two and old people have lots of time. If he knows computers, then he’s had plenty of chances to hack me. What if he wants me to go to the police so that my mom loses her business—loses her business and falls right into a certain wealthy lover’s protective arms?

Chapter 14

T
here’s an old movie called
Fatal Attraction
that my mom let me watch when I was too young to see it. In one scene, this psycho chick cooks the family’s pet bunny rabbit. All afternoon I picture Peter cooking rabbit for dinner.

Luckily dinner is fish. But I hate fish. At least, I hate fish skin and fish bones, and the fish head Peter lops off with the glinting cleaver—and the clear suggestion that it could be used to cleave the head from my neck too. At least that’s what I assume; I didn’t even know we had a cleaver. It freaks me out that his first step toward moving in would be to bring a knife and not a toothbrush.

Sitting at the dinner table across from Peter, I eat the fish but only because I hadn’t dared venture back upstairs for lunch and am near starving.

“Do you want the cheeks?” Peter asks.

“What?” I reply.

My mom nudges my arm with her elbow.

“
Pardon
, Janus, the word is
pardon
.” My mother slumps further in her chair. Normally she gets into a real chair for meals, but tonight she just rolled up to the table as if she couldn’t be bothered.

“Pardon?” I try.

“The fish cheeks,” Peter says, “are a delicacy and only given to the most honored guest in Chinese culture.”

He offers up a small piece of meat. The gelatinous eye of the fish accuses me. I imagine it saying—no, not my cheeks. I need my cheeks to make fishy faces.

“I, ah, no thanks. You’re the guest.” Although I feel more like an outsider every day.

He shrugs and places it on my mother’s plate.

For a moment the only sound is of our cutlery. Fragrant dill and lemon scent the air.

“When was your first date?” I ask and they both pause mid-fork stab.

“Why?” my mom asks, eyeing me.

“No reason, just wondering,” I say.

“Would have been a week or so ago? Maybe eight days?” Peter looks to my mom for confirmation and then back to me. “Why don’t you tell me what happened to your network.”

I tense. Is this like when a serial killer returns to the scene of the crime to glory in people’s reactions to his dirty work?

“Janus?” My mom prods.

I fail to see the harm in explaining the symptoms. “I’ve got a ring network attached to a server. They all went blue screen.”

“All at once or one after the other?”

“One after the other.”

“Firewall?” he asks.

“Yup.”

“Updated antivirus.” He waves it off, and together we say, “Overrated.” And I laugh despite myself.

“So what do you think?” he asks.

“I don’t know. I don’t download much.”

“What about something you didn’t download, something you brought in on a memory stick from school?”

Right—or a hard drive. I shake my head, but inside I’m screeching. It makes perfect sense that the trojan came from a hard drive, but my most recent acquisition is Jonny’s. Did I manage to unplug the network before the virus got to Paradise57? Or did the virus come from it? Just when I think I’ve figured out my enemy, I find another clue.

I barely make it through dinner being civil. I want to return to the ruins of Shadownet. Of course my mom can read my mind, and she raises her sing-song voice as I clear all the dishes and scrape the scraps into the waste bin.

“No more computers, Janus.”

I go cold. She has no idea what’s at stake. I can’t be banned from computers, not now.

“I need it, Mom.” I try to keep the fear from my voice.

“For what? People lived quite well before Facebook and Twitter.”

“Homework. I have homework assignments.”

“And we have a library with lots of books and you have a library card.”

I stifle a laugh. Homework using books? What is she thinking? She’s gone mad. I need an excuse, a foolproof one.
I’m working on an app
isn’t going to cut it.
I need to talk to my potential boyfriends
won’t either.

“Hard to do computer science homework without a computer,” Peter says lightly.

We both whirl on him.

My mom turns slowly back to me, and I wipe the look of desperate appreciation from my face.

“And do you have computer science homework?” she demands with one eyebrow arched.

“Some,” I say. “I am failing.”

“Thirty minutes a day. That’s it. For homework.”

She checks her watch as if to say
starting now
. And I sprint for the stairs. I ignore the muted argument behind me, figuring that if Peter’s the bad guy, he’d want me on the computer. The jury’s out on him.

I land in my rolly chair and walk it over to Jonny’s terminal. I disconnect everything except for the power supply and boot up. I don’t know what to think when it loads perfectly. Paradise57’s luminous eyes sparkle at me.

My suspicions are high. I start to inspect. Trojans like to change the registry keys so they can restart your system without you around. They usually attach themselves to programs you use a lot like a web browser. That way, when you start the browser it starts the trojan program too. I run a virus scan and it comes back clean. I figured that, though. This code was specially written for me.

It takes the full thirty minutes for me to find the odd registry keys. I don’t bother trying to clean it out as it’s guaranteed to be hidden in more than one spot. This guy is good. It’s not worth my time. I’ve found what I’ve come for. My mom calls out. My time is up.

What hurts the most is whose computer the trojan is on: Paradise57’s. It came from Jonny’s hard drive.

My mom calls again. “Now you’re losing tomorrow’s time.”

I swear and pick up my iPhone, only to see that I’ve missed a text from Jonny. He’s outside. I freeze. I just found out he or his mom is my torturer. Good. Maybe I can put this behind me.

I jog upstairs to the warehouse and kick open the back door. It’s dark and cool out. A light rain is falling.

“Jonny?” I whisper.

A cat scoots past the entry; I clap a palm over my mouth to keep from crying out.

Boots on gravel, and then he’s here, wearing a sodden, black hoody. It’d be funny and cute if I wasn’t ready to accuse him of sabotage. But when I try, I can’t say the words. If I do, and I am wrong, I lose a friend. And I have very few friends. My mom calls again.

“I have to go,” I say.

His eyes flash from disappointment to anger. “I’ve been out here almost half an hour.” His teeth are chattering. If I wasn’t so suspicious I’d hug him, or I’d let him inside and he could leave after he’d warmed. But, I don’t trust him. Not now. Not when he might have brought a trojan into Shadownet.

“Does your mom like me?” I ask.

He seems to darken beneath the hood. “She’s kind of overprotective,” he says finally. “She wouldn’t like that I’m here, if that’s what you mean.”

What I mean is maybe she doesn’t like me and she’s setting me up to hate her son. This is nuts.

“Did you find out about Heckleena and Frannie?” he asks, wiping water from his eyebrows.

“They’re okay,” I say.

He starts rubbing his arms. My heart breaks a little and I wave him inside. “Just for a minute.”

“Thanks.” He bounces up and down and smells wet and cold. I bite my lip and shudder when he draws me close. I tense in his arms.

“I’m sorry this happened,” he says.

He says sorry a lot, but never has anything to really be sorry for, unless maybe he has a guilty conscience. He might be cold, but his lips feel hot on my neck and send white lightning down my spine.

My mom’s next shout is insistent. The kind that says
just because I’m in a wheelchair doesn’t mean I won’t come and get you
.

I don’t want to go anymore.

He presses his lips against mine and we kiss for a moment, fingers threaded together. It feels like I’m making out with the enemy—like I’ll come home sometime and find him cooking the cats. I stop and realize that I’m not really kissing back.

“I have to—” I begin.

He doesn’t wait for me to finish.

“Jan—” He shakes his head. “You know I’ve liked you for a while … and you invited me here.” I nod, remembering how he asked me out and that it wasn’t all that long ago that I thought of him as stalker. “So,
do
you like me?”

I want so badly to say the right thing. I even open my mouth, but all that’s racing around in my head is that I’ve determined why he’d do this to me. He’s angry for my rebuffing him the first time.

He grunts as he breaks my grip and tugs his hoody tighter. In a dozen steps, he disappears into the night and rain. The door slams shut.

Slowly I start to walk away, but then I remember to feed the cats. I open the door again. And gasp.

Karl is staring at me with a mixture of annoyance and uncertainty, white hair plastered on his face and blue eyes shining. In his arms is a fat gray cat.

“I thought he’d never leave,” he says.

“Karl!” I say. “What are you doing here?”

He steps inside, puts the cat on the steps, and lets the door shut behind him. He’s only wearing a T-shirt, now soaked and sticking tight to his muscles.

“I want to talk to you,” he says. “I felt terrible that you were stuck at …” He glances around the warehouse interior. “... here. What did Jonny-boy want?”

The whirr of the elevator starts as it climbs up to our living room.

“Crap, my mom is coming. Wait right over there.” I point to the deepest shadows and then run for the exit, climbing the stairs and hoping to beat the elevator. I push into the living area as the elevator car arrives. My mom is halfway into the elevator and backs out.

“Mom,” I say. “I just need ten more minutes.”

“No,” she replies, her stare icy.

“I forgot about something beautiful. You said I need to make something beautiful every day. I forgot.”

She eyes me. Peter is on the couch and offers me a wink.

“Ten minutes,” she says as the elevator doors
whomp
shut.

I race back downstairs.

“I only have five minutes,” I say to Karl, “but I really do have to make something in Photoshop while we talk.”

Karl leaves wet footprints as he follows me into the bowels of the warehouse. I’m chilled now, and after I sit in my chair, he leans in over my back and places his hands on my shoulders.

“Why do you have a cartoon on your computer?” he asks as I click away from Jonny’s caricature as quickly as possible. Should I tell him about Jonny and me? Is there a Jonny? If I do, then I’ll lose all chance with Karl.

“I’m crazy, okay?” I crane my neck. He’s looking out at all the blank computer screens. “Why did you come?”

His fingers begin to massage my shoulders and slip down over them, inching toward my chest. I lean forward, only granting him access to back. The fingers keep working, and it feels good.

“I told you,” he says, “to work on something beautiful.” His hands massage a little harder to ensure I catch his drift. Strong fingers peel back the stress in my muscles.

I flush and tap away on the keyboard for a minute before realizing that I’m not connected to the Internet. I swallow as I bring up the only pictures I have to work with—graffiti.

“You like this stuff?” Karl asks with a note of surprise in his voice.

“Yeah,” I say. “I like it a lot.”

I choose a mural of a woman dancing on top of water; she seems as light as dandelion fluff. Then I import it into Photoshop and add text: LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. Satisfied, I connect the printer and then hit print so I can prove to my mom that I did something. Karl’s fingers are edging close to my breasts again, one hand swooping down. I catch his palm and hold it.

“Sorry, Karl,” I say. “I really have to go.”

He grips my hand, spins the chair, and pulls me up and into him. He presses his lips against mine and we linger for a moment before I pull away. Jonny would apologize at this point, but not Karl. He smiles like a Viking with a chick over his shoulder.

“Maybe once you’re done your suspension,” he says.

I swallow and draw him up the stairs by the hand. At the backdoor, I hold it open as he steps out into the rain, feet dancing through the puddles as he jogs away.

Chapter 15

L
ife sucks then you die
,
Heckleena tweets.
Except me, I will live on in Twitter.

Even Twitter will die one day,
Hairy says.

@Hairysays Sacrilege!
Heckleena replies.

I send these as I stand, bored, in the Assured Destruction store. It’s morning and I know what I have to do. Today I will eliminate Jonny as a prospective boyfriend and quite possibly uncover the identity of my nemesis. But I can’t enact my plan immediately. I have to take my mother’s shift until Fenwick arrives, at which point I’m supposed to do homework at the library.

My mom may be limiting my computer time, but she doesn’t know about the ThinkPad. After the Jonny and Karl tag-team event last night, I couldn’t sleep. I spent most of the wee hours under a blanket, working on my iPhone app. Even if Jonny’s a crook, it’s a cool app, and I finally got it finished around four o’clock and sent it off to Apple for approval.

This morning, I discover that
Life Is Beautiful
has been passed around the Facebook walls like wildfire. Maybe it’s not such a bad punishment after all. But even with being able to tweet and Facebook, I still spend three hours twiddling thumbs until Fenwick arrives, then I pack up and make like I’m heading out to do my schoolwork.

“I’m leaving for the library, Mom.” What I really need is a nap as I grab the car keys from the dining room table.

“And you need to take the car to get to the library?”

It’s around the corner. I freeze mid-step toward the stairwell. “I … I’m so used to going to school I guess.” I toss the keys back.

Her brow rises, but she doesn’t say anything. Close one.

I fly down the stairs and run to the back of the warehouse to grab my bike. Biking will cost me time.

At the nearest Starbucks I borrow their WiFi—I don’t have enough money to pay the coffee-rent and my iPhone isn’t great for hardcore Web research. Using my laptop and the 411 directory, I discover that there are three Shaftsburys living within a ten-mile ride of the school. I check the school catchment areas and rule out one of the families as living outside of the borders. With only pedal power this is going to take longer than I’d hoped, but I still have a couple of hours before Jonny would typically return home from school. I can do this. I slip the laptop into my backpack and swing on to the bike.

Soon I’m sweating and my palms are slippery on the handlebars. I’m sure this is supposed to be good for me, but as salt burns my eyes, I can’t see how. I turn on a busy street and climb a long steady hill. I pedal for another fifteen minutes. Sweat’s running down my back in rivers, and I catch the bike chain on my jeans three times before I pull over to the curb. I look around and don’t recognize a thing. I punch the address into the Google Maps app. It helps take me from A to B in the form of a flashing blue dot and highlighted path. I hug my phone to my chest.

Not seeing anyone I know around, I bend down and cringe as I wrap my white athletic sock over my already oily pant cuff. I’m a dork, but I refuse to wreck my second pair of jeans in a week. I set off pedaling again.

The blue dot finally connects with the Shaftsbury’s address pin. Their home is on a quiet residential street with older houses from the twenties, the yards dotted with large oaks and maples. Nice—not poor—middle class with some low-rent housing mixed in. I cycle right past the house as I don’t want to raise suspicions. The porch is clean and newly painted. Bright yellow shutters stand out against red brick. No car in the cobblestone driveway. Nice.

I cross the street and circle back, stopping in front to lean my bike against the rugged bark of an oak tree. Brown and orange leaves crunch beneath the tires. My first job is to confirm I’ve got the right place.

Mail sticks out from the mail slot. I look around casually and then jog up the porch steps. Without knocking, I check a letter.
Mr. and Mrs. Michael Shaftsbury
. This gets my feminist goat and doesn’t help. The next letter provides my answer. Ms. Aliana Shaftsbury.

I’m actually relieved it’s the wrong house.

“Excuse me?”

A woman on the sidewalk squints up the steps. She and a two-year-old stand between the house and my bike.

“Aliana?” I ask, mind whirling.

“No,” she says. “I’m a neighbor.”

“Do you know when she gets back?” I keep everything light. I’m supposed to be here. No need for police. You’ve seen me before. On your way. Move along now.

“Usually five, who are you? Reading mail is a felony.”

My Jedi mind tricks clearly aren’t up to par.

“Can you tell her Iva Goddago stopped by, please?” I ignore her comment about felonies. People are so over dramatic. Really? Are all mail carriers felons then? It’s a wonder any mail makes it to the right place.

She doesn’t say anything, and I waltz past her and her kid, stopping to say, “Well hello there, cutie-pie.” And then I’m off.

As I turn the corner, I start laughing and laugh so hard I have to stop and clear my eyes or risk whacking into a parked car. My phone buzzes again and I check it. A tweet to Heckleena telling her off—one of many. But it’s weird:
What happened to you?
It appears someone has hacked her Twitter account and is sending out nice, syrupy tweets worthy of a greeting card on Valentine’s Day.

I’ll love you until the day after forever.

When you see a falling star tonight, make a wish, it will come true because I wished and I found you.

Holy crap,
I
even hate her.

I don’t have time for this, but it reminds me of my plan. I punch in the address for the next Shaftsbury and start pedaling. My thighs are already burning and my butt feels like I’ve sat far too long on something way too pointy. The next house is on the other side of a really big triangle, and it takes a good half hour to reach. Factoring in time to bike home, I have maybe twenty minutes on site to do what I need to do.

As I approach the address, I skip the drive-by. I let the bike fall against the sidewalk and rip the laptop from my backpack. The home is a pre–war job. Semi-detached, squat, ugly, aluminum sided with a single-car drive and a carport. The garden in front is well tended and the lawn trimmed.

I don’t even bother checking the mailbox. I don’t have time—this is either Jonny’s house or I’m too late. I sit on the curb, buttocks rebelling from the cold, hard concrete, and boot up the ThinkPad, which is grindingly slow.

Breaking into a wireless network isn’t all that hard if you know what you’re doing. I loaded the hard drive with the programs I need, and the old wireless card is actually handy for this job. Unfortunately I’m not using Linux, and so this makes placing the wireless card in monitor mode a little trickier. This is all blah-blah-blah to most people but it costs time. Basically, by using some special software, I can collect data that allows me to figure out the password with another piece of software.

I don’t collect as many packets of data as I’d like, so the second piece of software—AirCrack—takes a lot longer than I had hoped. Still, I penetrate the wireless network within six minutes and only one car has driven past.

After that it’s a cinch to find Jonny’s computer—there are only two on the network. I wonder if I should look at his or the other one.

A door slams behind me, but it barely registers.

I’d rather rule Jonny out than his mother, so I choose Jonny’s. I need to be able to trust someone in case this starts to get really dangerous. A cold fist in my stomach is telling me it already is. I see he has a webcam. I could hack it if I wanted to and look around his room. Sick, right?

Instead of totally violating his privacy, I find his Firefox web-browsing history and pull it up.

“Hello?”

The question is to my back. At the familiar tone of the voice, I almost wonder if the last Shaftsbury’s neighbor followed me here. I flip the lid of the laptop down.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

This woman is overweight and wearing a large floral print dress with black tights underneath. Another big yellow flower sticks out of her hair. Her gut sticks out at me.

If it worked once, it’ll work twice, so I give it a whirl.

“I’m, ah, looking for Roz Shaftsbury.”

The woman lifts a drawn-on eyebrow. “Are you?”

“Yeah, I—” I pause, hoping she’ll come out with another comment but she doesn’t, only bringing a ham fist to her hip. “She’s not here so I’ll come back.”

“No, she’s here all right.” She smirks. “You’re looking at her. Now what do you want?”

I’m stunned. Unless Foxy Lady ate herself five times, this is NOT Roz Shaftsbury, not the one who dropped off Jonny’s computer.

“Mom? Jan?” Jonny’s walking down the sidewalk. He’s home early. Then I remember—computer science class is last today. Chippy lets you out early if you’re done. “Why are you at my house?”

“Who is this?” His mom asks him.

I need to run or I’ll be late for my shift. My head’s whirling.

“What are you doing here, Jan?” Jonny asks.

I’m realizing that something really bad is going on. If this isn’t Roz, if this isn’t some petty revenge taken too far, if this is a conspiracy, I’m in way over my head.

“I didn’t like how we ended last night,” I say.

“Well, maybe there shouldn’t be a
we
,” Jonny states. “If there ever was.”

He’s still mad—I would be, too. And he doesn’t know about Karl.

“Can I talk to you, Jonny?” I ask. His mother’s eyes narrow as I’ve lowered my voice. “It’s about the Shadownet.”

His lips are thinner than I remember, eyes a dull matte.

We walk a little ways down the sidewalk. “I have your old computer,” I say.

“What?” And a sudden light flashes in his eyes as if he’s hoping for a rational explanation. “You took it?”

“I didn’t take it. Some woman dropped it off at Assured Destruction, even asked for it to be destroyed, but she said her name was Roz Shaftsbury and I wanted to see if it was your computer.” I speak so fast I’m not quite sure what I’m saying.

“How’d you know it is mine?”

“Your files.”

“You went through all my stuff?”

I cock my head.

“You shouldn’t be looking through people’s private stuff!” he says. “Wait.” He points at his mom, but I know he’s talking to me. “Why are you really here?”

The question’s loud enough for the street to hear.

“I caught her with her laptop open.” His mom scuffs the curb with her slipper.

“You thought I was the person doing this to you.” Not a question. “You were hacking our network.” Jonny’s eyes fly wide with hurt.

“Shh … I just wanted to see if it was your mom.”

“But it’s not my mom, and I won’t
shh.
Someone very bad could have all my personal stuff and I don’t know why.”

“They’re after me,” I say, but I know he’s right. Someone had taken the trouble to find another student’s computer and ensure it landed in my hands by impersonating his mother. This is bigger than me, and Jonny knows it.

“Really? Because you haven’t had someone steal naked pictures of you, or had your medical history shared, or
anything
except that stupid website that you probably
did
create.”

I lower my gaze and my throat constricts. Everything is starting to make sense—why Jonny’s journal entries are all three months old and why there were no pictures of Foxy Lady on his hard drive. He has nothing to do with any of it. His laptop and Foxy were the true trojans.

“Am I one of your digital slaves?” he demands. I back up a step, but don’t answer. “Am I?” He grips my shirt and twists it into his fist. “I saw
Life Is Beautiful.
Funny thing, I took a picture just like that.”

“What’s this about, Jonny?” His mom stomps toward us.

I shake my head and say in a hush: “Don’t tell, give me a week and then I’ll go to the cops.”

He looks down at his fist and opens his fingers, letting my shirt go slack.

He seems to consider this—the Underpass feels so long ago. “Twenty-four hours,” he says. “Then I call the police myself.”

“Forty-eight hours,” I plea. “I need a friend, please.”

“This time tomorrow.” His voice is even and cold. “And if you want any more help, maybe you should talk to whoever I am on your stupid network.”

I can hear his mom’s huffs nearing, but I’m staring into Jonny’s dark eyes. He knows I don’t even have fake friends anymore.

“I’m sorry,” I say. And then I scramble around Jonny’s mom, grab my pack, and race off on my bike.

As I pedal, I hear Jonny say, “Don’t worry, Mom, she’s a freak.”

My tears aren’t of laughter this time as I turn the corner, and I’m still upset when I pull into Assured Destruction, sweating, disheveled, and out of breath. My mom’s at the cash. I’m fifteen minutes late. I stand at the door, mother grimly watching from inside. And just when everything seems dark, I catch a glint. A flash of hope.

Sunlight reflecting from the lens of our security camera.