"As in Fiona?" the woman pressed.
"Just Fe," he said firmly, hoping that his voice wasn't going to give him away. Perhaps if he pretended to have a cold? He coughed into his hand, wishing that he'd brought a handkerchief. Alias would have brought a handkerchief.
"Right," the woman sighed. She was clearly losing patience. "Just wait here, then."
And she left. Cadel was relieved. He sat down and picked up a brochure from the table next to him. It looked more interesting than all the dog-eared
Women's Weekly?,
and torn picture books underneath it, because it was scattered with photographs of computer keyboards. Cadel soon realized, however, that these keyboards were of a kind utterly strange to him. There were keyboards with extra-large keys, with multicolored keys, with a feature ensuring that each key would only type one letter no matter how long you held it down. There were removable key guards, for people with a tendency to hit more than one key at a time. There were programmable membrane keyboards, with their own types of key guards.
Cadel was fascinated. He knew that keyboard shortcuts—or mouse keys—were usually employed by disabled people who couldn't use a normal mouse, but he hadn't been aware that special keyboards were being made. And special mice, too, by the look of things. He pored over descriptions of mice with extra-large roller balls, with joystick configurations, with drag locks, with different cursor speeds, with removable guards...
"Ahem," someone said.
Cadel jumped and glanced up.
He was face-to-face with Kay-Lee McDougall.
She looked exactly the same as her picture. There were no visible scars. Her sandy-colored hair was pulled back in a ponytail; she wore black mascara, a touch of lip gloss, and a plain white polo shirt over a knee-length skirt. Her arms were lightly dusted with freckles.
She looked tired.
"I'm Kay-Lee," she said. "Do I know you?"
Cadel stared. He was suddenly frightened—frightened and confused. It was as if he didn't know this woman. As if she was a stranger. She seemed so
old.
What am I doing here?
he wondered.
This is insane.
"I—I—"
"What?"
"I've got a message," he said hoarsely. "From a
friend.
"
He didn't want to spell everything out. Not in this public place. But Kay-Lee was disappointingly slow on the uptake.
"What friend?" she asked, sounding impatient. After glancing around quickly, Cadel fluttered his fingers, like someone using a keyboard.
Kay-Lee's head suddenly jerked back, as if she'd been slapped. Shock registered on her face.
"Christ," she said. "You mean—you don't mean—
Tom Carter?
"
Cadel frowned. Who was Tom Carter? "No," he said. "Eiran Dempster."
"Yeah, right." Kay-Lee had recovered somewhat. Her drawl was flat and nasal—almost sarcastic in tone. She folded her arms. "Alias Tom Carter."
"I don't know any Tom Carter," Cadel said impatiently. He wasn't bothering to disguise his voice, and Kay-Lee narrowed her eyes. She peered at him. Then she suddenly caught her breath and coughed.
"Christ," she exclaimed. "Christ, you're—you're not—"
"I'm a boy," Cadel said. "Don't talk so loud."
"You're
him,
aren't you? You're Tom Carter!"
"Look, will you stop?" Cadel grew more and more angry as it dawned on him that he didn't know this woman. He didn't feel any connection with her at all. "I told you, Tom Carter doesn't mean anything to me! My name is Cadel!"
"I don't believe it." Kay-Lee was shaking her head in amazement. "This is unbelievable. You really
are
thirteen."
This time it was Cadel's turn to be shocked. He changed color. He nearly choked.
"
Who told you I was thirteen?" he.
demanded.
"The coppers."
"The
what
?"
"They came here," Kay-Lee revealed. "On Thursday. Barged right in, told me they had some information. About Partner Post." She spoke sharply. "Said it was all a big scam, run by some thirteen-year-old kid named Tom Carter. Said he made up all the partners—wrote the stuff himself. Showed us printouts." She paused and waited. But Cadel was struck dumb. "Pretty smart thing to do," she continued. "Pretty low as well, I reckon."
Cadel put his hands to his head. "But—but this isn't right," he stammered. "I'm not Tom Carter. I'm Cadel Piggott."
"So you really did it? Shame on you."
"But they couldn't have found out! They
couldn't
have!" Cadel had been so cautious. And who was this Tom Carter person? "I was so careful! This doesn't make sense!"
"You're telling me," said his companion, watching him. There wasn't a spark of affection in her eyes. "Why did you do it? What for? How could a kid your age be so bloody
cruel?
"
Cadel flinched. The last word was like a whiplash. Frightened and disoriented, he gazed up at Kay-Lee in supplication. "I'm sorry," he mumbled. "I'm so sorry."
Kay-Lee stared at him for a moment, before looking away. When she spoke again, some of the steely quality had left her voice.
"Don't apologize to me," she said gruffly. "You didn't break
my
heart. It's someone else you should apologize to."
Cadel didn't understand. "Someone else?" he echoed, and Kay-Lee took a deep breath.
"I might as well tell you," she said. "You haven't been talking to me. I'm just a front. All this time, you've been talking to someone who was using my name. And my face."
Cadel blinked. He was already so overwhelmed, this new information didn't even affect his heart rate.
"I—I have?" he said, in dazed accents.
"That's why she couldn't stay mad at you. She was mad at first, obviously. But then she reckoned, well, she hadn't exactly been honest with
you,
either. So she wanted to warn you. That you were under investigation." Kay-Lee cocked her head, arms still folded. "Personally," she drawled, "I still don't think you deserve it. In my opinion, you're a parasite."
Cadel accepted this insult without comment. He was beginning to piece things together.
"You mean—this was all done for
my
sake? Jorge, and the hidden message? It was to warn
me?
"
"That's right."
"Because the police are after me?"
"At long last."
"But how can they be after me, when they're talking about Tom Carter? I'm not Tom Carter. I've never even used that name."
"I don't know and I don't care," Kay-Lee snapped. "All I'm worried about is Sonja."
"Sonja?"
"Sonja's the one you've been tricking all this time. That's why she deserves an apology.
In person.
" Kay-Lee grabbed Cadel's arm and yanked him to his feet. "Come on," she ordered. "I'm taking you to visit Sonja."
Cadel didn't protest. He allowed himself to be hustled through another set of double doors and down another corridor. He hardly noticed where they were going. He was too appalled by this new state of affairs. The police! How had the police ever tracked him down?
Why
had they? Why bother with a silly little scam like Partner Post when there were international drug cartels to worry about? Was it something to do with his father? Were they trying to get at Dr. Darkkon through Cadel?
But no, that couldn't be right. The police had been talking about someone called Tom Carter. Could they have made a mistake and traced Cadel's messages back to a hapless nerd of that name? Or were they concealing Cadel's actual identity from Kay-Lee, for reasons that Cadel simply couldn't fathom?
It was all so strange. So very, very strange.
"Here," said Kay-Lee, and abruptly stopped. They were standing outside a closed door. Kay-Lee knocked at the door, and raised her voice. "It's Kay-Lee, Sonja! Can I come in?"
There was a long pause. Then a strangled noise, which Cadel couldn't decipher.
"Okay," said Kay-Lee, and pushed the door open.
She dragged Cadel into a large, sunlit room. A mobile of numeric symbols dangled from the ceiling, each symbol made of blown glass. As it moved in the draft caused by Kay-Lee's entrance, colored shards of light danced around the walls, which were covered in pages of printout, a photo of Stephen Hawking, a poster of a geometric eye-puzzle, a hologram of Albert Einstein, a giant numeral 2 executed in red paint, and a picture of the Count from
Sesame Street,
torn out of a coloring book. Beneath this dazzling array of images stood a bed, equipped with various poles and mounting arms. It was draped in a beautiful patchwork quilt, and Cadel suddenly remembered talking to Kay-Lee—Sonja, that is—about the geometric perfection of patchwork quilts. They had traded various formulae for the log-cabin, monkey-wrench, and courthouse-steps designs.
There was also a desk near the window, fitted with various adjustable shelves. A computer monitor was perched on one. The only thing Cadel could see that remotely resembled a keyboard was more like a small laptop, propped up on a mounting arm, which in turn was attached to a wheelchair.
In the wheelchair was a girl. She had dark hair, caught up in a barrette. She wore baggy jeans (from which her feet stuck out at a slightly uncomfortable angle) and a crumpled green blouse. The muscles in her neck were taut, as if she was straining to see something. Her arms were very thin, and her fingers almost clawlike. She had enormous, haunting brown eyes in a narrow face.
Her head jerked uncontrollably, and her mouth was open. Cadel could see her tongue writhing behind large, crooked teeth.
The wheelchair moved slightly, with an electronic buzz. He couldn't tell why.
"This is Sonja," Kay-Lee declared. "Sonja has cerebral palsy. Sonja, this—believe it or not—is Eiran Dempster.
"He's come to pay you a visit."
Cadel was speechless. He simply gaped like a fish.
Sonja also said nothing, though the muscles in her face worked convulsively.
It was Kay-Lee who finally broke the silence.
"Like they said, he's just a kid," she went on, closing the door behind her. "And he's not Tom Carter at all. He's Cadel Something-or-other."
"P-Piggott," Cadel supplied unsteadily. "Cadel Piggott." He couldn't believe his eyes. This, then, was the real Kay-Lee, the mysterious "Sonja." A disabled girl in a wheelchair, whose fingers were twisted into painful shapes, and whose head twitched as she craned to look at him.
"He must have taken you seriously," Kay-Lee remarked, addressing herself entirely to Sonja. "This getup is meant to be a disguise, I reckon. And let's just hope it's worked, or we're going to be in
big trouble
with the coppers, Son. They still think you're me, remember. I'm going to cop the flak here if anything goes wrong."
But Sonja was moving her arm. It lurched across to the device in front of her—a device that had
DYNAVOX
printed across its base—and began to skitter along the screen. For a moment, one rigid finger remained at rest in a particular spot; then it jerked onward. Eventually, the machine began to speak for her.
"
X-is-the-sum-of-unknown-quantities-y-over-one-x-minus-u-to-the-power-of-twenty-six,
" it said, in a toneless girl's voice—and Cadel knew, then. He knew that he really was talking to Eiran Dempster's perfect partner.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled. "I'm so sorry."
"You owe her," Kay-Lee pointed out. "Must be—what? Over a hundred dollars?"
"I'll pay you back," said Cadel, even as Sonja threw her head from side to side, making strained noises.
"Nyaa," she protested, and jabbed at her Dynavox.
"
No,
"it said.
"I will, though. I—I..." Cadel didn't know what to say. Not with Kay-Lee there, listening. It was all so terrible. Sonja couldn't even talk.
She couldn't even talk.
Her mouth didn't move well enough—her face kept stiffening and bunching up. Her hands didn't always do what they were meant to do. She was fighting against herself all the time.
Cadel's eyes suddenly filled with tears.
"I'm sorry," he quavered, and he meant that he was sorry for everything. For everything that had ever happened to her. "I was stupid. I was so stupid."
"Oh, settle down," said Kay-Lee crossly, as the Dynavox began to respond to Sonja's agitated fumbling.
"Police-came-here—
"
"I told him," Kay-Lee interrupted. "But they got the name wrong apparently."
"I don't know any Tom Carter," Cadel snuffled. "It doesn't make sense. My name is Cadel. Cadel Piggott."
"
How-old-are-you?
"
"Fourteen," Cadel admitted. "Yesterday." And Sonja began to laugh a slow, sawing, cawing laugh, her eyes searching for Kay-Lee.
"Sonja's only sixteen," Kay-Lee informed Cadel. "She was worried about the age difference, ha-ha."
"
Between-me-and-Eiran,
"Sonja added, through the medium of the Dynavox. "
What-a-joke.
"
"I'm sorry," Cadel repeated, in feeble tones.
"Only a kid would have the gall," said Kay-Lee. "They said you'd been ripping off hundreds of people."
"Oh no." Cadel shook his head. "Only sixty-eight."
"
Only
sixty-eight?"
"
Interesting-number,
"said Sonja, through her Dynavox.
"But you were special," Cadel assured her. "You—I didn't—I wasn't friends with anyone else."
"Oh, sure," Kay-Lee drawled, and Cadel turned on her. "I wasn't!" he cried. "You don't understand!"
"You can say that again."
"I
wanted
to tell you!" Cadel pleaded, addressing Sonja. "I did, truly! But I didn't know what to say. I didn't think you'd want to talk to me if you knew the truth."
"Got that right," Kay-Lee remarked, at which Sonja let out a bark of protest.
"
Shut-up,
" said the Dynavox, and Kay-Lee apologized: "Sorry," she murmured. "
Butt-out.
"
"I will. Sorry. None of my business."
"
Go-away.
"
"Can't, Son." Kay-Lee shook her head. "Can't risk it. We don't even know who he is, not really."