Cyber Genius (36 page)

Pecking away at my keyboard, EG hit the
Send
button and probably notified the entire planet of my
whereabouts. “I’m out for summer vacation, and she wants to visit the ski
slopes of Switzerland with the sheik. Since we’re temporarily homeless . . .”

She didn’t have to finish. I knew the routine by heart. Our
mother loved to live like the royalty she claimed to be, but the crown jewels
were long since pawned, and nannies could only be paid by men with
better-paying positions than Magda’s. Not that we ever knew precisely what her
position was. I gave up asking long ago.

“Set up your bed,” I agreed in resignation, once more
returning to the role of family doormat. I didn’t want to talk to Magda, but
even I realized I’d have to let her know EG was safe. “The cupboard is bare. I
have to run to the grocery if you’re staying.”

EG shrugged and waved me off.

None of this was really the kid’s fault. The schism had
always been between my mother and me. I believed in homes, security, and
routines. Magda was a staunch advocate of chaos.

In rusty caretaking mode, I tugged on my running shoes,
grabbed my shoulder bag, and jogged up the stairs and out the tall front door,
making mental grocery lists.

Another sister would have felt guilty for leaving a
nine-year-old in a run-down apartment house riddled with druggies and
psychotics. I was confident EG would have erected an elaborate security system
and conned, coerced, or otherwise convinced an alarm company to arm it before I
returned. That wasn’t just EG’s genius. It’s what our family’s lifestyle had
trained us to do. We are the future—prepared for any event from nuclear
holocaust to Martian invasion. Of course, the commonplace, like going to the
supermarket or living in houses, eluded the rest of my family. That had always
been my job.

I longed to pound out my frustration on the punching bag at my
favorite gym down the street, but I didn’t trust EG alone in my apartment
that
long. A good run would have to
suffice.

***

EG breathed a sigh of relief now that she was inside the
apartment. Ana might huff and puff, but everyone in the family knew she was the
safe haven they could rely on. It had been a little scary when Ana had dropped
out of sight, but the
Oracle
had been
extremely helpful in locating her after EG had quizzed a search engine.

She didn’t know who Oracle was, but the instant she’d explained
her problem, his e-mails had given her Ana’s screen name. Their computer geek
brother, Tudor, had helped trace it. Nick had instructed her on the best
methods of transportation since she’d never been in the States before, although
she had an American passport because her parents were born here.

The last time EG had seen Ana, she’d been only four or five,
but she distinctly remembered the visit. Magda had dumped several of the
younger kids at the Italian villa where Ana had moved after she’d declared her
independence and run off with her new computer. At the time, Magda had signed
on for some African junket as a newspaper correspondent. Or spy, but no one
ever said that aloud. Whatever, she’d needed a nest to leave her cuckoos in.

Magda had left a nanny to help Ana out, but the nanny had a
tendency to smoke pot in her off hours, which seemed to be 24/7. Ana had come
home to find the kitchen stove on fire and the stoned nanny admiring the blaze.

Grinning, EG recalled the image of her petite sister as
heroine that she’d cherished over the years. Four years ago, Ana had been
growing out her bangs. She’d pulled the odd lengths of her shorter hair back by
little butterfly barrettes that marched across her scalp in single-file lines.
She’d been barefoot and in some gauzy ankle-length skirt, looking no older than
a teenager. Walking into the kitchen, Ana had morphed from caretaking sister to
berserker in two seconds flat. She’d competently slammed a cover over the
flaming pan, grabbed the stoned nanny by the arm, and with a nonchalance that
had left EG open-mouthed, flipped the nanny off the balcony into the patio
umbrellas and shrubbery below.

She’d then taken them all out for Italian ices while the
smoke cleared.

Of course, the nanny had threatened criminal action, and Ana
had been evicted from her apartment for almost setting the building on fire.
She hadn’t blamed anyone for the episode. She’d just efficiently packed them
all up and found a new home until Magda returned, and Ana had disappeared for
good.

EG wanted to be Ana when she grew up.

Even in her adoration, EG knew she was imposing on her
sister’s limited goodwill. But Ana was the only hero she knew.

She desperately needed a hero right now.

With a click of the keys, EG switched the computer to the
MSNBC website to check the latest headlines and tried not to cry when she read
the top story.

***

I couldn’t say if it was instinct or luck that caused me
to take the long route to the grocery. With my size, I look like a victim, but
in my first few months of living in downtown Atlanta, I’d firmly corrected that
impression. I now had an unspoken pact with the local street thugs —they
disappeared when they saw me coming, and I didn’t send their mamas photos of
what they’d been doing. Life was good.

Besides, I didn’t expect trouble on a steamy August
afternoon. Most people had the sense to stay indoors until night cooled the
city streets. I was grappling with my frustration with my feckless mother and
still contemplating stopping to kickbox a few rounds to work it off, when the
jeering young punks on the street corner ahead of me raised all my protective
antennae. Without EG’s warning of Nick’s potential arrival, I might have turned
down a side street and avoided a confrontation.

On second thought, given my need to punch something,
probably not. I might be a doormat for my family, but I have an attitude twice
my size as a result.

“I trust you’re stopping a purse snatcher,” I called loudly
enough to be heard over the taunts.

Most people would think one diminutive white female in baggy
black T-shirt and capris from Goodwill wouldn’t be heard or listened to in a
fight involving hulking adolescents in a salute to the street’s ethnic
diversity, and they might be right. That’s why I carried a cap gun in my purse
that sounded like a rocket launcher.

I pulled the trigger.

The thugs with enough brains left to connect noise with
danger jumped three feet off the ground. The ones familiar with my dirty
fighting glanced over their shoulders, grimaced, and melted down an alleyway,
leaving the last baggy-pants combatant and his victim revealed.

“Greetings, Ana!” Nick shouted—well,
gaily
. He really was a cheerful fellow, even when provoked by
hoodlums with no fashion sense. “Would you be so kind as to explain to this
bloke that I need to keep my necklace?”

Nick’s father is a British lord. That didn’t give him an
excuse to adopt a posh accent since he mostly grew up with the rest of us, with
only an occasional interim in one of those expensive all-male Brit public
schools. Still, he sounded good. I’d missed that barmy accent.

Grinning in appreciation at recognizing Nick and the show
that would follow, I crossed my arms over my insignificant chest, cap pistol
prominently displayed, and waited for the last wiseass to wise up and depart.

Apparently on a coke downhill slide, the thug popped his
blade and glared menacingly at me. “Cute, real cute,” he sneered.

“I know.” I smiled big and fluttered my lashes and Nick
almost cracked up. In the decades of protecting my family in foreign lands, I’d
learned that coolness in the face of bullies showed them we were as crazy as
they were. Took them aback and gave me time to figure out an escape. “Take my
brother’s necklace, and he turns mean.”

The thug laughed and turned his back on me. Big mistake, but
one I had counted on. As did Nick.

He’d learned a new move or two since we’d learned basic judo
from a master. A little
tae kwan do
was my guess. Whatever. Nick hit first, showing off by swinging agilely to kick
the punk with an upper thrust of his heel. Going for the balls is usually a bad
option—the target is too small. But Nick knew what he was doing. We’d had lots
of practice, after all.

The guy bent in two to protect his valuables, bringing him
down to my level. I bopped him on his do-rag with the cap pistol, and he
toppled, howling.

My therapists tell me I may have a few repressed anger
issues. I’m cool with that.

Nick stepped on his attacker’s wrist and captured the knife,
flipping it closed and slipping it into his pocket in one smooth move.

A crowd of young punks watched from across the street. If
this had been some gang initiation, our victim was lucky he failed. Maybe he’d
live to grow up and be a lawyer. If it wasn’t an initiation, we were about to
be set upon.

“Just like old times,” I murmured, spinning around to jog
toward the apartment with Nick on my trail. At least he’d been bright enough to
leave his luggage elsewhere.

“And you’re looking more like Magda with every passing
year,” he agreed in his own oblique way. “What is that you’re wearing? Pajamas?
Why don’t you wear something to flaunt what you have instead of hiding behind
that abysmal disguise?”

“What, and repeat Magda’s mistakes?” I asked in incredulity,
reaching for my keys as we approached the apartment door. “I don’t need the
attention, thank you very much.”

“Some things never change,” he agreed with good humor. “Do
you ever intend to grow up and quit competing with her?”

“I’ve changed,” I declared. “I’m working on the important
stuff inside and not the superficial stuff on the outside. I don’t need to
compete with anyone.”

“Tell me another one, Dr. Faustus.”

He looked good today, as usual. We both have our mother’s
angled cheekbones, but Nick inherited her blond hair as well. I don’t remember
his father, but he apparently had a firm square jaw with a nice cleft that he
passed on. And Nick got the height in the family as well. I figured him for
movie star material, but he had absolutely no memory for words. He did,
however, possess an aptitude for mathematics that served him well in Monte Carlo.

“I like to believe I’m on the side of the angels,” I
countered. “Cover my back.”

“Turned chicken since last we met?” he taunted, scanning the
street, while I undid the locks.

If I didn’t know him so well, I’d take that as a reference
to my refusal to compete with my mother, but Nick isn’t that deep. He was
referring to the punks behind us.

“Until today, I’d taught them to leave me alone. It would
have been nice to keep it that way.” I let him into the foyer and secured the
bolt behind us before taking the stairs down to my rooms.

Showing her training, EG had already made herself at home.
She’d borrowed my extra set of sheets to make up her air mattress, tucked her
suitcase under my cot, and was pigging down my raspberry yogurt.

“Hey, Eezhee.” Nick slurred the initials into a Slovakian
name. “It really is like old times, isn’t it? How long have you been mooching
off the czarina?”

I left them to catch up and did my usual introverted
disappearance by retreating to my inner sanctum. My family hadn’t been here for
an hour, and already I was a marked target in the neighborhood. This was not an
unusual development.

On my own, I might have fought the odds just to keep from
moving again. I liked the old Victorian I’d made my home these last few years.
Admittedly, my two-room coal cellar wasn’t the most gracious home in the world,
but it was mine, and I treasured the few possessions I’d collected. I liked my
antique iron bedstead with the flowers painted on it, and the copper and black
Persian rug with the moth holes. They were
mine
,
and I’d worked hard to earn them.

But until I knew what to do about EG, I needed a safe house,
and this wasn’t a neighborhood for kids, especially one like EG who got in
trouble by opening her mouth.

As usual when I had some hard thinking to do, I sat down at
my laptop. Writing was a recommended anger management technique that I hadn’t
practiced enough. As soon as I poured my frustration into these pages, my brain
started whirring.

The first thing I acknowledged was that we’d just made ourselves
targets for every gang member in the area. The humiliation of being beaten by a
pip-squeak and a gay male model would incite the hoodlums like rabid
gunslingers. They’d have to come after us just to prove they were still top
dogs.

I’d been through this enough times to know it was fruitless
hoping trouble would go away. Once the rabble discovered my family’s eccentric
propensities, we were hounded into either retaliation or escape. Not for the
first time, I wished my family were normal with a huge house someplace safe and
boring where we could live in peace.

I didn’t follow that thought to its logical conclusion
immediately, because in my family, it wasn’t a logical conclusion. No, the next
step of logic was to wonder again why EG and Nick had arrived on my doorstep on
the same day and conclude that my first intuition had been right. Something was
vastly wrong.

Had I kept typing, I might have reached the right solution
sooner, but the realization that I’d been scammed drove me out of my seat and
back to the front room again.

“All right, no more evasions.” I waited in the doorway,
hands on skinny hips, trying to look formidable. “I want a good explanation of
why you’re here.”

Nick had the experience to look suitably innocent. EG
didn’t. She shoved a spoonful of my raspberry yogurt into her mouth to cover
up, but I had two decades of practice over her. I snatched the cup away and
pointed at the door.

“I get the whole story or I’ll put you on the first train to
D.C. and your dad if you don’t spill.” This last was directed at EG. Nick could
take care of himself.