Gifted (10 page)

Tati moves a bookshelf to get down into the basement while I run up the creaking steps to the attic where the air is thick enough to make me sneeze. I turn on the lights to illuminate my father's old paintings. Dark studies of the river, swirling clouds about to rain, and several portraits of my mother. She was gorgeous back then. Tall and strong, with the same nose as me and a gap between her teeth that was handed down from Nonda to my mother to me. But most of the resemblance is in our hair.

Like my mother, I keep mine short on the sides and let the top grow wild and free. Nonda would prefer I braid it, but I like my hair au naturel. Sturdy tendrils wind their way out from my skull like sweet-pea vines searching for something to climb. At night, I rub my hair with shea butter and tea tree oil just like my mother did, then twist it up to sleep. In the morning, I run my fingers through until it puffs out like a dandelion gone to fluff.

After paying my respects to my parents, I pull the tarp off my setup. I love the way it looks—tidy black boxes with little knobs and switches begging to be tweaked. Then I hop on the stationary bike Tati and I installed to crank up the generator and I pedal fast. When the battery is juiced up enough, I transfer my audio file to the box. It only takes a minute for the whole concert to upload. Then I set the timer. For a brief half hour starting at midnight tonight the transmission will reach anyone within a five-mile radius who's scanning the waves. Finally, I disconnect the recorder, erase the contents, cover everything up again, and slip out.

*   *   *

The minute I get back to our POD, I know something's not right. The apartment seems too still. Everything is just as I left it when I popped in an hour ago. There are no shoes in the foyer. No cooking smells. No gentle sounds of Nonda singing to herself or snoring from the couch. It's as if she hasn't been here all day.

My heart slams against my rib cage. Since I was little, there's been a part of my brain that fears the worst every time I get home and no one's here. It's not a stretch to figure out why. I had just turned ten when my mom took off, and was barely eleven when my father took the plunge. Not that it was a surprise. He'd been slipping away synapse by synapse for months, especially after my mother left. By the time he threw himself off the bridge into the river, he was barely present anymore. Even his body had shrunk down to almost nothing because he hardly ate.

I check everywhere in the POD, but unlike last night with Marley and Dorian, this time Nonda does not appear. “Where did you go?” I whisper as I look out the window into the night. Most likely she got confused again. Maybe she went out looking for me and lost track of time. She probably got turned around and is wandering again. I ping her with my HandHeld, knowing it's a long shot. The older she gets, the more she resents any device. Says they're an affront to her personal liberty. I jump when I hear a faint noise coming from the sofa. For a moment I wonder if Nonda could have fallen between the cushions. She's gotten so small in the past few years she just might fit. I shove my hand in that soft place and pull out her HandHeld, blinking and pinging with my message.

A voice deep inside my head starts screaming,
This is your fault. You're selfish. Hurting everyone around you so you can make your music.
I know that voice. It's my father, yelling at my mom before she left. Now I've gone and done the exact same thing. I wasn't here for the person who needs me and loves me most because I wanted to play my stupid songs on the stupid radio for the one random stranger who might be listening. How could I be so selfish? Especially when it comes to Nonda—the only person who protected me when our family fell apart?

 

ORPHEUS

As much as
I want to see my sister, I'm relieved to get out of the MediPlex and away from the endless back-and-forth between my parents. From inside my Cicada, I ping Arabella to let her know I'm free because we've been missing each other all day. First she was at a movie premiere, then a fashion show while I was visiting Al, and now she's at an after-party for the release of a horror novel called
The School for Broken Children
in an old college where everyone is dressed as scholars as a joke. We agreed to meet for dinner, just the two of us at The Deep End, the hottest CelebuChef restaurant in the City, then we'll hit another premiere or maybe a concert, depending on how we feel and how much Buzz Ara stills needs.

While I wait for her reply, I turn on my receiver and scan the waves for pirate radio on my way into the Distract. But then my dad calls. Not even a ping, but a real live video connection, which can't be good. Quickly I stash the receiver as he appears on my WindScreen.

“Orpheus! What the hell have you done?” he demands. “Who the hell have you been talking to?”

“Hello to you, too,” I say.

“It's all over the Buzz!” he yells as he paces his office, drink in one hand and the lights of the Distract behind him.

“What is?” I ask.

“That you're refusing to have an ASA!” He gesticulates wildly, sloshing bourbon on his shoes.

“I never said that.”

“It must have been your mother then.”

“Couldn't be,” I tell him. “I was just with her at Alouette's.”

“Well someone said it,” he snarls. “The media is having a field day.” He points to his giant wall screen where the Buzz is chaotic with images of our family.

I scroll through the headlines on my ExoScreen. Sure enough, he's right. It's everywhere.

“How do you think this makes me look?” he rages. “My own son, a freeloader, never worked a day in his life, now refuses the very thing that's made our family fortune.”

“For the fiftieth time, I'd gladly work if you'd let me! There are lots of jobs at Chanson I could do.”

“Is that so?” Spit flies from his mouth, leaving droplets on the camera eye. “What can you do besides be charming and appeal to a broad range of people? You're no genius yet!”

My face stings like he slapped me. “If I don't know how to do anything, that's your fault. You're the one who sent me to SCEWL. Which was a joke! All they do is groom CelebuTantes for fame.”

“Which is exactly what I need from you. The heir apparent to my empire. You're supposed to look good and not screw it up. Now all you need is an ASA and this family stays in business.”

“No,
you
stay in business, Dad! But what about me? What if that's not what I want?”

“You selfish little…” Now Dad is so mad, he's muttering. “I worked for everything this family has. I found your mother in the gutter and resurrected her career. I saw the writing on the wall for the entire music industry before anybody else did and I saved it. I bought the dead copyrights to huge catalogs of music then solved the digital distribution problem. You play a song, you pay. End of story. Before that, music had become a useless commodity aimed at the lowest common denominator of society. Anybody could shake their ass, auto-tune their voice, and give away a song for free on the Internet until I fundamentally changed the industry. And I did it all for you. But you'd throw it all away!”

“That's exactly what Calliope said you'd say!”

For a moment, my father looks startled. Then he recovers and slowly walks toward his camera so he looms large on my screen. “What are you doing talking to Calliope Bontempi? Are you on her side?”

“No, of course not,” I say. “She cornered me. I told Esther.”

He marches away, screaming, “If you or your mother or Calliope Bontempi think you can take me down, you're all sadly mistaken! I'm smarter than all of you combined.”

“Or just greedier,” I call after him.

He spins around and opens his arms wide as if to absorb my insult. “That's right! I'm a greedy man! But I'm doing the best I can for this family. So just you remember this, Orpheus.” He skulks toward the screen, poking at the air. “You are nothing without me. Do you understand?” He shoves his finger in the camera lens. “Nothing but a piece of crap on the bottom of my shoe. And I'm tired of you mooching off of me. You come to my office right now. I don't want you seen in public until we fix this Buzz debacle.”

“No way,” I tell him. “I'm not coming there. I have plans with Arabella.”

“Cancel them,” he growls. “Cancel everything. I made you an appointment. You're going in for an ASA tomorrow.”

For a moment, I'm speechless. I sit and stare at him, trying to process what he just said. Finally, I blurt out, “No. I won't do it. It's my body. My brain. I have a say in my future.”

“As long as you're under my roof and I'm footing the bills, your body, your brain, and your future belong to me!” Dad declares.

“Fine,” I tell him. “Then I won't be under your roof anymore!” I disconnect.

Since I can't go home and I don't dare show up in the Distract with this much Buzz going on, I tell the Cicada to land while I figure out what to do. The car leaves our flight platoon and swirls off the SkyPath, looking for an empty space among the blanket of lights sprawling from the Distract center all the way out here on the edges of the City. On the WindScreen map I see that we're approaching the Alibaba E-Gaming Arena parking lot, a vast expanse of blacktop surrounding a 100,000-person dome. When we touch down, I call Mom.

Her beautiful face fills my WindScreen. The camera is still kind to her. “Calm down, Orpheus,” she says when I tell her what Dad did. “Just take a deep breath.” She inhales long and loud then closes her eyes and lets the air go slowly like a leaking tire.

“Mom!” I yell so her eyes pop open. “Breathing is not going to help me right now. What am I going to do?”

“You're overreacting!” She smiles sweetly. “Your whole life is in front of you. What I would give to be your age again! So much to experience…”

“Mom! Are you even listening to me? He scheduled me for an ASA.”

“Doesn't surprise me,” she says with a snort that disrupts her calm composure.

“And who's talking to the media?” I ask, bewildered. “I never told anyone I didn't want an ASA. I hadn't even made up my mind yet.”

“Yes, you had, darling,” Mom says. “I could tell. You didn't want that life.”

“You only hear what you want to hear,” I tell her and look out the window while I sulk for a few seconds. Cars are beginning to enter the lot. I check my WindScreen feed and see the Dota 26 Playoffs start in an hour. Soon this place will be crawling with humanity like everyplace nearby. I sigh and turn back to my mom. “Anyway, I need a place to stay. If I show up at home, he'll drag me off to surgery tomorrow.”

Just then, Chester struts past behind Mom's sofa. He's bare-chested, as usual. Sometimes I wonder if the man owns any shirts. When he sees me on Mom's screen, he stops and leans over her shoulder so his stupid face takes up half my WindScreen. “What's this, a Plute pity party?”

“Shush, Chester,” says Mom. “Harold has upset Orpheus.”

“Boo-hoo,” he whines. “Daddy won't buy you the latest flying car?”

“Shove it, Chester,” I say. “This doesn't concern you.”

“I think it does concern me if you're looking to crash here,” he says. “Didn't your mother tell you the news yet?” He backs up a bit so I can see a fresh tattoo of a dragonfly with my mother's name,
Libellule,
in script across his heart.

“Mom?” I say. She looks everywhere but at me.

“You want me to tell him?” Chester asks, smiling slowly.

“Oh, now…” Mom's flustered. She fluffs the pillows all around her and readjusts her dress. “It's not that big of a deal.”

“Hey, whoa, that hurts!” Chester frowns.

She turns and pats his arm. “I didn't mean it that way. I meant it in terms of Orpheus. I mean it won't affect him much.”

“It will if he wants to stay here!” says Chester.

Mom turns back to me. “You are always welcome in my home,” she says.

“But it's not just your home now,” Chester says.

I clench my jaw. “Mom?”

She crosses one arm over her stomach and puts her other hand to her mouth. “Well now, you see, the thing is … Chester has moved in with me.”

“Great,” I say. “I'll be sure to send a housewarming gift.” Then I disconnect and refuse to answer when she tries to ping me back.

Furious and frustrated, I get out of my car to walk off some steam. More cars stream in from the SkyPath overhead and the terrestrial SwarmPath circling the Distract a few miles away. I can't believe my mother has allowed that cretin to move in. Now I have no place to go.

Desperate for advice, I call Arabella. Not a ping but an actual video call. I need to see her face on my ExoScreen. But she doesn't pick up. Instead, she pings me back.

Still at the party. Geoff Joffrey just walked in.

Piper says I MUST get pix with him. Do you

know him? Can you help?

Can't that wait? I need to talk to you. Something big came up.

Bigger than Geoff Joffrey?

Yes! My father's forcing me to have an ASA.

Good for you! Exciting.

No! That's not what I want.

Come here. Intro me to Geoff then we can talk.

I don't know him. Can't intro you.

Why not? You're a Chanson!

“Damnit!” I yell out loud.

Is that all I'm good for? My last name?

Forget it! I'll find someone else to help.

Gotta go. I'm supposed to be working!!!!

She disconnects, leaving me abandoned in the midst of gamers dressed in hero garb, flooding out of their vehicles into AutoTrams that will carry them to the dome. As a last-ditch effort, I reach out to Rajesh who, by some miracle, answers. He's in his house, his stylists flitting around him, pomping up his hair.

“Orph, my man! What's up? Your girl is getting mad Buzz at the scholar party. Are you headed that way?”