Out (13 page)

“Well, okay.”
He digs into his pocket and pulls out his wallet, hands her a twenty.

She smiles
sweetly. “Can we take your car? Chris needs some more red pens anyway. For
school.” Warren frowns and glances at me. I nod mutely.

Warren hands her
the keys. “Oh, and maybe you could put some gas in it for me? Here's the gas
card.” He also hands her a rectangle of green plastic.

“C'mon,” Jana
says to me.

I just stare at
her. “We have to go right now?”

“Yes we do.
Warren can’t be without his coffee.” Jana grabs my arm and pulls, drags me
through the door, and then closes it silently behind her.

“What the hell?”
I shake myself free. “The coffee’s not going anywhere. Did you have to break my
arm?”

Jana unlocks
Warren’s mammoth Escalade, shaking her head as if I’m the dumbest idiot on
planet Earth.
 
“Get in.”

Before my
seatbelt is even fastened, she’s pulling out onto the main road. “What is going
on?” I ask again.

Jana flicks the
wipers on to clear off the morning dew. “Jesus, you are dense. You better get
smarter if you plan to survive any of this.”

“Survive what?
The trip to the store?”

She flips on
the radio, violently punches a button, and some loud alt punk music spews out
of the speakers. Guess that means I’ll have to find out when we get wherever
we’re going.

We drive in
silence for another thirty minutes, until finally Jana stops the car in front
of a cluster of maples and thick underbrush.

“Where are we?”

She jumps out
of the car, and through the open door says, “Get out and help me. I don't want
anybody to see where we're going.”

Okay, there’s
nothing around here but bushes and trees. No store. Not even a
porta
-potty. “What are you talking about?”

Jana starts
clearing away large sticks and clumps of brush. “Push some of these bushes out
of the way so we can get the car in.”

More confused
than ever, I help her sweep away branches that had already been cut, but had
been made to look like natural growth. “It's a secret entrance.”

“Genius,” Jana
answers. “There. We can get in. After we do, you have to jump out and
camouflage the entrance again. Quietly.”
 
She swings into the driver's seat and eases the huge car soundlessly
between thick clusters of trees, the headlights two fingers of illumination
cutting through the thick underbrush. I try to tuck the bushes and logs back to
where they look natural, but it ends up looking like a lobotomized bird has
mated with its own nest.
 
Guess I’m not
quite super spy material.
 

Jana parks
about fifty feet in; you can’t see the car from the road, and probably not from
above either. I skirt around the secret entrance, pick my way through some
saplings and trip on some roots, and find her smoking a cigarette.

“I guess we
weren’t really going to the store, huh?” I ask. She takes a long drag, blowing
smoke from her red-bow lips. “You really shouldn’t smoke.”

 
“I'm guessing it's pretty low on the list of
stuff I'm not supposed to do, don't you?”

“I guess.” I
lean next to her against a rough-barked tree. “So...”

“We just wait.”
Jana perks up, as if listening for something, then eases against the tree
again. “Someone will be here to pick us up.”

I know she’s
not joking, but it doesn’t seem real. “What do you mean?”

“I'm pretty new
to it. Best if somebody with more experience tells you. But—” She stops abruptly,
grabs me, and pulls me behind a tree. A crunch of boots on leaves comes closer
and closer, and then a male voice says, “Jana?”

“Here,” she
says, stepping away from the tree.

Unless he had
spoken, I wouldn’t have seen him. Dressed in green clothes that blend with the
forest, his brown beanie blends into the olive-brown paint smeared all over his
face. He grabs Jana, sweeps her off the ground, and she drops her cigarette,
giggling. They kiss, embrace, and my face feels hot, like I’m watching something
private and forbidden. When she draws back, her face is streaked in places too.

Jana smiles as
she strokes the boy's painted face. “This is Ben.”

“Hey, Chris,”
Ben says, extending his hand. My sister, the Perp. Her boyfriend. My brain sort
of locks up.

Ben laughs,
ice-blue eyes crinkling at the edges. “Yeah, it takes some getting used to. I
fought it as long as I could. But when I met your sister...” He gazes at her
lovingly. “Well, I knew it was meant to be, so what was I
gonna
do? Fight fate?” His smile fades as something buzzes in his pocket. “Damn,
we're late. C'mon.”

He turns
noiselessly and strikes out onto a footpath, Jana tethered to his left hand. “Hold
my other hand,” she tells me. “Follow me and make sure you don’t fall down.”
 
Her face doesn’t look like her. I realize
I’ve never seen her smile that way, ever.

I have no
concept of how long it takes to hike the woods. Does Warren know where we are?
Does anybody? Panic starts to rise up in my stomach. I’m not the sneaky,
secret-meeting-in-the-woods kind of person. I’m sure this is a huge
mistake.
 
I’m about to tell Jana that we
should just go back, when Ben stops in front of a large hill surrounded by
trees. “Hey, Chris, give us a minute, huh?” He draws Jana off a few feet,
leaving me alone with my paranoia.

Sounds like
they’re arguing. Voices rise and fall, Jana sounds pissed. Whatever it is seems
to be settled, and they walk back to me. Jana still looks upset, but says
nothing.

 
A door carved into the mound of earth opens,
spilling blue-white electric light onto the dirt. Two men duck under the low
jamb, and step out. “Come in,” one says.

 
Secret hideout in the dirt hill. Right. Every
cell in my body is telling me not to go in there, but I follow. And inside
there’s... a big steel garden shed.
 
There’s
also a surveillance set-up, a compact generator that’s virtually silent, and
some communications equipment straight out of a high concept police drama. Two
men sit at a small folding table on the gray linoleum floor; Jana, still
grasping Ben’s hand, stands against a bank of machines.

“Chris,” the
tallest man says, gesturing to his folding chair as if it’s an overstuffed
recliner. “Welcome to the Underground. I'm Magnus
Karrell
.
We're really happy you came.”

The other man,
gray hair tucked under a blue wool cap, speaks up. “You're probably wondering
why we've brought you here today...”

“Sam, you sound
like a '50s B-movie,” Ben says, laughing. He turns to me. “Here's the deal,
Chris: we need you.”

“Who needs me?”

“Carmen,”
Magnus says without hesitation, as if he knows that will make me care. “Carmen
needs you.”
 
I glance at Jana. She told
them about me and Carmen? She doesn’t look at me.

 
I say, “Where is she? Is she in trouble?”

“Oh, she's
fine,” Magnus interjects. “I just mean that whatever you do to further the
cause will benefit her. And you.”

“Further the
cause? I’m not an action hero.” I lick my lips and the taste of Carmen’s skin
floats to the top of my consciousness. “I can’t help you. I can’t even help
myself.”

Ben motions
toward Jana. “To be honest, I volunteered so I could see her,” he says
bitterly. “We live in the same damn town and the only time I can bump into her
is when we're at the market and she drops something and I help her pick it up.”

“Which, by the
way, is happening way too often,” Sam scolds. “People are noticing. You'd
better stop it.”

“But the point
is,” Ben continues, ignoring the older man, “That it's wrong. We shouldn't have
to hide who we love. Don't you wish that you could just ask Carmen out on a
date without worrying about the alibi? Or about being taken away in the middle
of the night and sent to a camp?”

Jana says, “I
don't want to live like this.”
 
She turns
to Ben, gazes at Sam and Magnus also, silently pleading for something I don’t
understand.

Ben grasps her
hand. “We will get out, I promise,” he whispers to her as if they are the only
two people in the room. “But we have to do it the right way.”

“What is the
right way?” I ask.

Magnus
answered. “Our movement is ready to go mainstream. We've been underground for
years, gaining strength, gathering resources, making alliances with other, more
tolerant, countries, finding recruits. We have the numbers and the weapons—”

“Weapons?”
Whoa. “For what?”

Sam shoots
Magnus a threatening look, as if he’s said too much, then turns to me. “We need
weapons for self defense, Chris,” he says reasonably. “We're not aggressive. We
don't want to hurt anyone. But if the
Anglicants
knew
what we were doing, what we were planning, they'd step up their efforts, and
we'd need to have ways to protect ourselves.”

Weapons. Self
defense. Mainstream. They’d step up their efforts. What does that mean? They’d
hunt us down and….do what? I realize I’m standing there, mute, and everyone in
the room is staring at me expectantly, as if I’m somehow going to have The
Answer.

Ben says, “I
know it's all new to you. Jana told us what happened, and it's all happening
way too fast. I wish we'd had more time to ease you into this, but we don't.”

“Why not?” My
voice squeaks. “Why don't you have time?”

The men look at
each other, as if silently negotiating who will be the one to tell me something
I don’t want to hear. Jana stares down at the dirty floor, clearly miserable.

“Things are
ready,” Sam says slowly. “All we need now is the catalyst. Something to set things
in motion. We need you to help us with that.”

“Catalyst? Like
what?”

Jana blurts
out,
 
“I had no idea they wanted you to
do this, Chris. You've got to believe me.”

“Do what?”

“They want you
to get McFarland, and—”

“Jana, let us
explain it—” Sam interrupts.

My head starts
spinning. I am in the middle of a bad spy movie. “You want me to kill him?”

“No, no,” Sam
shakes his head vigorously while Magnus sighs and rests his head against the
table in exasperation.

Magnus puts a
fatherly hand on my shoulder. “Chris, when Jana told us about you and Carmen,
we knew you were ready. The timing is perfect, with McFarland interested in
you, too. What we need you to do is to go home, get in good with McFarland.
He’s staying for two weeks. All you need to do is to get him to take you for a
drive, and we’ll give you the time and location. That’s it.”
 

A greasy,
queasy feeling begins to rise in my stomach. “I don't want to go anywhere with
him. It's bad enough that my dad is trying to hook me up with him, but…you want
me to lure him into some trap? Isn’t that just as bad as what
they
do?”

Jana looks
defeated and pale. She says, “Chris, this is a great opportunity. You have to
think of other people, not just yourself. Think of Carmen. Think of the life you
could have together!”

“Why do I have
to do that? Why do I have to think about anybody but myself? That's what
everyone else does, isn't it? David, you, McFarland.”
 
No one speaks. “For all I know, you sent
Carmen to turn me into a Perp. Is she in on this too?”

“Of course not!”
Magnus says dismissively. “It’s just a happy coincidence that you two sort of
found each other.”

“Happy
coincidence.” That sounds like a lie if I ever heard one. “What does that mean?”

Ben puts an arm
around my shoulder, and I try to shrug it off. “Chris. Carmen is the daughter
of the head of the
Perp
League. If we can get you two
out, expose what’s going on from somewhere safe, that will discredit them and
bust this whole thing wide open.”

“Does she know
about this?”

Magnus shakes
his head. “No. We need you to persuade her.”

“You’re really
depending on me for an awful lot,” I say. “McFarland
and
coming out with Carmen? Haven’t you heard? I’m a screw up. A
freak.”

Jana takes my
hand. “You have the chance to change all that. Don’t be afraid.”

I gaze into her
frightened eyes. “I just want to be normal.”

“Normal isn't
what you thought,” she says.

“It's nothing
to be ashamed of,” Ben says. “I know, it took some time for me, too. It's I
hard to turn off the voices you've heard your whole life, the voices that tell
you the
Perps
are deviants, and diseased, and
promiscuous, and that God's cursed them, that the Bible says they're evil. It's
hard to make those voices shut the hell up.”

Their faces are
so eager and earnest. They believe so much in what they’re doing. But I’m not a
brave person.
 
My head hurts. There’s too
much information here, too much to do, too many new things. “I don’t
understand. What do you want me to do, anyway? You want me to pretend to be in
love with McFarland, but somehow get Carmen to run away with me?
 
I'm not a very good actor.
 
McFarland would know I was faking.”

“Don’t worry
about Carmen.” Magnus inches forward and stares intently at me with his
wolf-like eyes. “And you don't have to be a good actor. It would be awkward,
wouldn't it, if you didn’t really know him? That's the beauty of it. An
innocent drive? A nice weekend in the country? A piece of cake. He’ll be
salivating.”

“A nice weekend
in the country?” Nobody mentioned that.
 
“I
have to stay somewhere overnight with him? I can't do it. Have you met him?
He's a toad, I mean, really, he's just disgusting, and I know he'd be...well...”