Matt smacked himself upside the head with the heel of his hand. “Buying.”
“Yup.”
“You sure?”
“He walked in waving a wad of cash and telling Vanessa exactly how many AASs he wanted. He wasn’t pleased to see me, that’s for sure.”
Matt jerked in his seat and almost fell off the untrustworthy chair. “AASs?”
“Anabolic androgenic steroids. AASs.”
“Dude, I know what they are. I figured it might have been prescription stuff she was dealing. Vicodin or Ritalin or whatever. But AASs? Damn. No wonder Shawn’s got such a short fuse. Shit.”
And then he lunged from the chair, sending it crashing to the floor. “Shit! AASs. Perfect.”
Tyler could only describe the expression on Matt’s face as unholy glee—an expression he’d often seen on his sister’s face. An expression that meant things were gonna start getting real out of hand, real soon. He switched his attention to his chair. Which was now in two distinct pieces. “Yeah. Perfect.”
“Big match coming up in a couple of weeks,” Matt said, looking all nonchalant. “Word is, there’ll be some scouts snooping round. And I’ve got two words for you, dude: Compulsory drug-testing.”
Tyler groaned and covered his face in his hands, picturing all the drama involved with trying to get Shawn to pee in a cup without him getting suspicious. “Isn’t that three words?”
~~~
Jay scanned her immediate environs. When she was satisfied all was clear, she leaped from one of the uppermost branches of the large oak, startling the scruffy little dog that had been patiently sitting beneath the tree. She hushed Fifi, and checked her elderly owner was still napping in his old wingback chair in the sitting room.
He was. She could hear his snores, even over the blaring TV.
She squatted on her haunches to ruffle the dog’s fur. “Thank you for keeping me company, Fifi. It was a most interesting way to spend an hour. I’ll see you later, okay, girl?”
Fifi whined and Jay rewarded her with one last pat and a scratch behind the ears. She performed one last scan to confirm she wasn’t being watched, then leapt the fence and hit the pavement at what she considered to be a sedate jog.
Now she knew Tyler’s secret—the sordid little trinity involving him, Vanessa and Shawn. What she would do with the information, how she might leverage it, she had no idea. Yet.
The first words out of Caro’s mouth when she barreled through the entrance doors were, “I still can’t believe you live in the same building as my favorite recycled clothing boutique!”
Because Caro seemed to expect a response, Jay said, “Yes. I believe I mentioned my apartment is on the top floor.”
“That’s so cool!”
“It certainly seems that way.”
“Do you shop there?” Caro asked. And then, casting her gaze over Jay’s jeans and t-shirt, answered her own question. “I guess not.”
Jay examined the clothing Caro wore more closely. She’d already mentioned to Jay that she’d purchased the outfit at Black Angel. The ensemble consisted of a black vinyl corset-style bustier worn overtop a blood-red t-shirt, a tattered net skirt, and red leggings. The red-toned eye-shadow Caro had dusted around her eye sockets made the contrast of her green eyes all the more startling. They glowed like she was some otherworldly creature. Her lipstick was an unexpectedly deep green that complemented her eyes.
Caro preened beneath Jay’s attention. “It’s my pseudo-Goth look. I figured I’d wear it today to shock the natives. What do you think?”
“I like it,” Jay said. “I presume you didn’t practice in that outfit.”
She snickered. “Of course not. Bettina would’ve had a cow. I ditched the skirt and corset.”
“You should be banned from that store,” Tyler said. “You look like you’re suffering a bad case of goth-witch-itis.”
“Gee, thanks, bro.” Caro made a point of sweeping her gaze over Tyler’s tatty sneakers, worn jeans, and a plain black t-shirt that had been through the wash so many times it was more grey than black. “Coming from you, that really inspires me to make more of an effort with my appearance.”
“I think you look amazing,” Jay told her.
“All you need to complete the look is a tat,” Tyler said.
“Really?”
“I was joking.”
“Still….” Caro heaved a hugely disgruntled sigh. “Like Mom’s ever gonna let me get a tattoo.”
Tyler snorted. “Like you’d ever handle the pain of getting one. Besides, if you really were stupid enough to get some spider-web tat all over your neck, or face, or wherever, you’d be screwed once this phase wears off. You’d have to save up to get it lasered or something.”
“What makes you think it’s a phase?” Caro demanded. “And I’m not stupid enough to tattoo my face. I was thinking more the back of my neck, or my hip. Or even the base of my spine.”
“Ick,” said Tyler. “I’m imagining old wrinkly pensioners with saggy tattooed skin, just so’s you know. Sure doesn’t do much for me.”
Caro paused to consider that. She grimaced. “Much as I hate to admit it, you got a point.”
“I can’t imagine you with saggy skin and wrinkles,” Jay said. It was the truth. For some reason she had yet to fathom, she couldn’t visualize Caro as old. Or Tyler, for that matter.
Tyler laughed. “Happens to us all, eventually.”
“Mmmm.” Growing old with Tyler—Jay could do it of course, outwardly age her appearance to keep pace with his aging process. Spending the rest of Tyler’s life with him…. It was something to consider.
“Hey, sorry I couldn’t come over straight after school,” Tyler said. “Did you get my note?”
He’d stuck a note in her locker, warning her that his music teacher had asked him to stay after class, so he’d stick around and wait for Caro.
“Yes. Thank you for being so considerate.”
He slanted a sly glance at his sister. “We’d have been here earlier if someone hadn’t insisted on putting on her finery and redoing her makeup.”
Caro sniffed, unrepentant. “Cheer practice is hell on makeup.”
Jay led her guests up the two flights of stairs and ushered Tyler and Caro inside.
“Something smells good,” Caro said. “What’s for—? Whoa!” She whistled as she surveyed the apartment.
Tyler surveyed the space with a more critical eye. “This isn’t what I expected.”
“What did you expect?” Jay asked.
“I—” His gaze darted from her, to her living space, and back to her. He frowned and gnawed his thumbnail. “Dunno exactly. Just not this.”
She paused to consider her apartment from Tyler and Caro’s perspective. The area was like a smaller version of Greenfield High’s gymnasium. It had a high stud, with a series of small square windows inset just below the raftered ceiling. Given the lack of windows at viewing height, it would have been a gloomy, closed in space, save for two large skylights that drenched the apartment in light. Jay appreciated them solely because they provided her with another exit from the building.
The space had been partitioned off at one end to form two bedrooms and a bathroom. The rest of the interior was open-plan, with a galley-style kitchen and laundry along one wall. The appliances were yellowed with age but in good working order. They had come with the lease. Jay had furnished the rest of the space with second-hand furniture she’d acquired from a deceased estate.
Aligned with kitchen area was a massive mahogany dining room table with eight matching chairs upholstered in faded bronze velvet. The table was pitted with age but waxed to a high sheen. The lemon scent of the wax Jay had used still lingered in the air.
Beside the dining area, the living area had been delineated by a massive Persian rug. The rug was threadbare in patches, the intricacies of its pattern faded and now almost indiscernible. It’d been thrown in at no extra cost because it’d been deemed practically worthless. Jay had taken it because it reminded her of the rug that had adorned the polished floorboards of Father’s living room.
Atop the rug, two settees and a matching lounger were arranged around a large, solid mahogany coffee table. The chairs were upholstered in buttoned burgundy leather, now burnished and spider-webbed with age.
Tyler read aloud the ornate calligraphy specimen Jay had framed and hung on the exposed brick wall. “
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16.
What’s that about?”
“It was my father’s,” she told him, a statement which wasn’t strictly true. It was a replica of the piece the old man had hung on the wall of his study. Jay had done the calligraphy herself, then mounted and framed it. This was the third replica of the piece. It wasn’t always possible to pack her belongings each time she was forced to move. On more than one occasion, she’d uploaded a virus to wipe her computer’s hard drive and left with only the clothes on her back.
To Jay, the piece of calligraphy represented the old man’s sacrifice for her—the cyborg he’d created in the image of his dead wife. For so long as Jay walked the earth, Mary Durham would live on. And so would the memory of Alexander Durham, Jay’s creator.
She had also bought the estate’s library, and the entire spare wall of the apartment was devoted to bookcases stuffed with books. Even so, despite her efforts, only about a third of the large area was occupied with furniture. The emptiness didn’t bother Jay. She wondered if it bothered Tyler.
He wandered over to scan the titles in the nearest bookcase. “So you like to read, huh?”
“Yes.”
An understatement. Jay
needed
to read. The process of turning each page and disciplining herself to read every single word aloud, relishing the unfolding rhythm as each word segued into a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter, sweeping her inexorably onward until the final page when author’s vision was at last fully revealed…. It grounded her, gave her something in common with the humans she hoped to emulate and live amongst. Let her imagine, at least for the duration of each book she read, that she
was
human.
“Where’s the TV?” Caro wanted to know.
“I don’t have one.”
“You don’t
have
one? Oh. Okay.”
She appeared so dismayed by the lack that Jay felt compelled to add, “I watch a lot of DVDs and programs on my computer.”
Tyler had spotted the huge flat screen monitor and the rest of the computer equipment taking up an entire third of the dining room table. “That yours?”
“Yes.”
He ambled over to check it all out. “Hoh baby! No expense spared, huh?”
“No.” He seemed to be waiting expectantly so Jay elaborated. “When my father died, he left me heaps of money.”
Some of his enthusiasm diminished. “Shit. Sorry. Didn’t mean to, you know, get personal.”
She shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”
“Can I check out this sweet thang?” He indicated the computer, his gaze hopeful.
“Sure.” None of Father’s research notes were stored on this computer. They had all been destroyed. The only copy remaining was encoded within Jay’s artificial brain and protected by a verbal password calibrated only to her voice pattern. Other than music and eBooks, there were no personal files on the computer, either—why would there be, when Jay herself functioned like a computer and could recall everything of importance? She powered on the PC and input the bios password.
Tyler flopped into the chair and clicked on the media player icon to check out the list of downloaded songs in her library. Within seconds
Cold Play’s
latest blared from the computer speakers.
“Awesome!” Caro held out her arms and did a three-sixty. Her face broke into a huge grin. “Your system is way superior than Shawn’s Bose. He’d be green with envy.”
“There’s no point listening to good music on bad equipment,” she said, meaning it.
“The acoustics in this place are incredible,” Tyler said.
“You should bring your guitar over one day and check what it sounds like.”
“Thanks. I’d like that.”
Both he and Caro seemed to be waiting for her to do something. She concluded the “something” was for her to act the host.
“Would either of you like a soda?”
“Cola, if you’ve got it,” Tyler said.
“Diet for me.”
Jay knew exactly what the contents of her fridge happened to be at any given time. “Sorry, no diet sodas,” she told Caro. “Not that you need diet anything, anyway.”
Caro beamed. Her brother sniggered and she stuck her tongue out at him. “Jerk.”
Jay snagged the colas from her fridge and tossed one to Tyler and another to Caro. She popped the tab on her can and took a long swig, draining half the contents. Her appreciation for this beverage had only increased over time. She closed her eyes as sugary bubbles fizzed through her system like the nectar of some ancient gods.