Drowning in You (26 page)

“
It’s…”

“
Too easy?”
Elliot finishes.

Exactly, is what I think, but a
red, angry ball festers inside my gut. I tell myself not to be like
this. This won’t help, and so I shake away murderous feelings.

“
They’ll take
away my dad’s name, his effort, his life.” That’s what money is.
Not the shallow thing that people say “isn’t what life’s about”,
but a symbol of what Dad did to save the car industry in this
country, giving thousands of people a way to feed their families
and sleep in a bed at night. Even if I never spend a cent of Dad’s
money, no one else should have it. It’s
his
.

“
I’ll do
it.”

“
Do what?” I
say, confused.

Elliot grabs my hand, but looks
at my face as if it’s someone else’s doing. “I’ll download or build
a program and we’ll find this hacker. It might take a while but I
won’t sleep until I figure it out. I’ll outsmart them at their
game. Once we know who’s behind this, we could do this in a night
or two.”

“
Well,” I say,
“that’s easy. We already know.”

“
What? How do
you know that?”

“
Because Dex’s
father, Mick, is the one running the show.”

I’ve just realized why Dex
didn’t tell Elliot anything; he was too ashamed. What scares me
most is that self-inflicted guilt is the worst kind.

I don’t know how Dex will get
over it, or how he’ll see me without that guilt.

24. Hacking and Chatting

Charlee

Elliot follows me to my house
in his car. He parks beside my car in the driveway, which is
already beside Dex’s dirt bike. How Dex got here in the few minutes
between me calling him and us arriving is beyond me, but then
again, so is the way that guy’s brain is wired.

As I take Elliot through the
front door, the first sign Dex is at my home and not Darcy is the
music. One of Maroon 5’s songs fills every inch of air in the
house, the sound coming from upstairs. The beat grabs hold of my
feet and sends vibrations through my bones as we walk. As I lead
Elliot to where Dex is—the music is coming from my bedroom—I think
I lose myself, just for a second, in old memories of my senior year
at high school and kissing my first boyfriend, and Rosa and I
getting ready for house parties.

I nudge the door open. Dex is
sprawled in a chair, his hands strumming an invisible guitar, his
legs propped up on my desk, crossed at the ankle.

“
Bro,” Elliot
says, coming up behind me, laughter in his voice.

Dex is oblivious, humming and
strumming and looking so relaxed that I know he doesn’t hear us,
even though we’re only a few feet away from him.

“
Dex,” I say,
louder.

He shoots up straight, legs
under my desk, feet flat on the floor and hands piled in his lap so
fast I’m not entirely certain he wasn’t using my chair and desk as
if they were his own.

“
Charz?”

If seeing me bringing Elliot in
my bedroom alone bothers him, I can’t see past that poker face. Dex
grins, thumps my space bar, and the room is suddenly so quiet, the
air feels dead. I can hear myself swallow. Even when I make an
effort to smile, the breath coming out through my nose is loud.

“
Hey,
numbnuts. Took long enough,” Dex says. He pats a spare chair beside
him for Elliot to sit on.

Elliot turns
to me, poking me with his expression,
is
it okay if I go?
Or maybe that look
says
is it okay he’s the one inviting me
in and not you?
I nudge him forward and
dash off to grab a spare chair from Darcy’s room.

Darcy’s room, without any
bodies in it, is also beyond quiet. The carpet fibres rustle,
separating beneath my toes. His curtains are open, the moon filling
this room with a peaceful beam of light, but I find myself choking
when I swallow, and then I grip the back of his chair and run out,
pushing the chair as fast as I can.

Two weeks is long enough, I
think. I don’t know how I spent days at a time in my room, hours
without moving. Did I eat? Could I count the total amount of words
I spoke on my fingers? I remember feeling Darce poking my back and
darting off, and then nuzzled against my shoulder, his face wet
with tears as I held him to me, and all the brother/sister up and
downs I can’t forget if I tried. Tomorrow or Monday I’ll tell Nana
and Pa I need him back.

Elliot’s taken over my
computer. But that’s all Dex has allowed. I can sense Dex’s hold
over everything else. Elliot is tucked into the desk chair,
clicking boxes and buttons and sifting through codes. He attacks a
few keys as I push my chair through the stubborn carpet to form a
triangle between the two of them.

Dex doesn’t move his legs for
me. His heels sit on the carpet under the chair, and his knees poke
out, ninety degrees between them. His forearms rest—more like
bulge—on his thighs. He sits behind Elliot, murmuring things to
him, and finally notices me, beckoning me to come closer with his
fingers.

Yep, I am definitely a guest in
my bedroom.

“
Elliot’s
found out some stuff to do with Walter,” Dex says, wrestling a
mound of papers behind him on my bed. “Mick is so fucking dumb.
He’s been speaking to some guys in his gang back in Chicago.
Sometimes Dad asks if they’ve been up to anything lately and how he
misses their life before all the charges, but at other times this
guy signing off as Freddie says Dad better get his shit together.
There’s another dude, Joe, whose name comes up a lot,
too.”

I can’t listen to this. I just
can’t. “I’m just going to grab some drinks for us. Elliot?” He
shakes his head. “Dex?” He nods. I bolt out of my room as fast as I
can without actually running.

I dart into the bathroom, press
my weight against the door and slide into a heap on the tiles. My
head is so heavy. My brain has burst and dead weight is always
double—we know that. I hang my head between my knees and gulp air,
my breath a haggard sound.

Dad.
Walter.
Even thinking it feels wrong. How
can Dex just say “Walter” as if it’s a name from a baby book? How
can he sit there and talk facts while my dad is dead?

I hiccup, pressing my hands to
my chest to help me breathe. I don’t feel the pressure on my back,
the door moving, until Dex has pushed my body forward and his head
pokes through the gap, next to mine.

“
What are
you…” I say, clambering backwards on my knees.

Dex folds himself in through
the door, closing it again with his weight, and taps the floor next
to him. When I sit in my spot, shaking my head in confusion, he
reaches out his hand. I take it because my mind can only take one
order at the moment, and, yes, I suppose I can take his hand. Dex
reels me into him, me sliding on my butt on the tiles.

“
Here. You
okay, Charz?”

“
I’m good.
What would make you think I’m not fine?”

“
Well, Miss
Robot Voice, that might be because you bolted out of your room
zombie-style to hide behind your bathroom door.”

A hysterical snicker bursts out
of me, which makes me ashamed. I try to hide it, cover my mouth
with my hand, but it’s there, my laugh out in the world, and I
can’t suck it back inside. Dex grins, looking at my face, pleased
about something. God only knows what. Then his expression turns
dreadfully serious.

“
You were
planning on bringing me water from the toilet. Weren’t
you?”

“
What?
No!”

“
Yes, I’d bet
all my money—which is probably only a couple hundred so don’t get
any stupid ideas—that you were going to sit back and enjoy me
slurping from your toilet.” Dex gags and looks away
horrified.

“
God, I swear
I didn’t—”

“
Charz,” he
says, picking my chin up with a finger, “I was kidding.”

“
But…”

Okay, Charlee, if you didn’t
see he was joking then you need a reality check.

“
I have
something for you.”

“
I ain’t
drinking that toilet water either, if you’re wondering.”

“
Like hell you
are.” Dex reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folded paper,
wiggling it in the air as if it’s a prized catch.

On my knees, I lean over Dex
and snatch, but I snatch at the air, because Dex’s reflexes are
inhuman.

“
Give
it.”

“
You don’t
know what it is. You can’t steal my property.”

“
But you’re
waving it at me. You’re offering it up.”

Getting used to his face being
near mine, I close up the gap until our noses mush against each
other’s. All the while trying my mighty best to look like I’m five
again and he’s stolen my doll off me. He loves it. Things like
these are the only ways to break through Dex’s poker face. It’s
somewhat pleasing to know I’m his kryptonite. “What did you write
on there?”

“
Walter wrote
it.”

Dex forces my shoulders back,
and holds my face up so I slobber awful, embarrassing tears into
his hand and to the world, when I’d rather be tucked in my bed
again for days straight without contact. After a couple of minutes
crying like that, the sadness recedes like a low tide, and I pick
myself up onto my feet.

“
For later,
then,” Dex says, patting the letter away in my jeans pocket, his
skin touching my bikini line albeit through the flimsy gauze lining
inside of my pocket.

It’s when
Dex’s finger lingers like that that Elliot shouts,
“
Dex
.”

“
Yep?” Dex
says, swaggering through my door as if nothing happened.

Elliot pauses as he sees my
eyes, no doubt obviously red and puffy from crying, then turns to
Dex. “We have a problem. A few, actually.”

We sit down, and although it’s
been a minute, the mechanical action of walking into my room,
seeing Elliot at my desk, and being told to sit down, clears the
sadness that had made it too hard to think just a moment ago.

“
So I found
this secret email account Mick has, right?” Elliot says, tapping
the air in front of the email screen. “It was easy to find through
a trail of linked IPs and whatnot. Anyway, I compared some emails
to the papers Dex brought and I was getting a feeling that…” Elliot
grabs the paper and simultaneously swaps screens, pointing. “Well,
here, check this out, both of you,” he says handing over the
paper.

Dex and I, still standing next
to Elliot, grab the paper together, sharing a look. Dex lets go and
reads over my shoulder. The paper is a bank statement with a
bazillion debits and credit entries I should know something about
as a twenty-year-old but still don’t get.

“
Walter’s
personal account,” Dex states.

So
not
what we’d expected.
How could Mick think he could take money from my dad’s personal
account without Dad or me knowing? Money comes in and out of our
family’s accounts next to nothing compared to Roycroft’s. It just
doesn’t make sense to take that risk.

“
Yep, now look
at this,” Elliot says, pointing to a specific entry.

“
FJH…$0.02,” I
read out. “What does that even mean?”

“
I’ve been
thinking, while you were getting Dex and yourself that glass of
water,” he says with as much inflicted hurt as he can muster,
“that’s our guys.”

“
Who?” I
say.

“
The gang,”
Dex answers.

“
Right,”
Elliot growls at him. I don’t think he realizes he’s fuming when he
glances between Dex and I. I really don’t, the poor boy. “Sit
down.”

Dex takes his chair, and I curl
my legs up on mine.

“
Freddie Joe
Hack,” Elliot says. “The initials are their names, and “H” the
hacking, maybe, I don’t know.” He swivels around to point at the
screen.

Elliot tells us to sit tight.
He’s going to customize a Hawk Eye program to send to these Freddie
and Joe guys. Although it’s now ten-thirty here in Melbourne, it’s
early morning in Chicago just before everyone begins work. With any
luck, Freddie or Joe will open the attachment.

“
If they do,”
Elliot says, “I’ll have access to their computer. Trust me, these
guys are n00bs; they won’t know. I’m actually worried that this is
too…never mind.”

I transfer to the bed and
collapse there. I haven’t spent too much time out of my room
lately, so I’m spent.

I find myself waking up to
Elliot shaking my shoulder. Dex is beside me curled around my body,
which is the reason why I jolt off the bed as if a spider has
crawled on to my skin. I don’t remember falling asleep, much less
being so intimate with Dex.

“
Charlee,
here,” Elliot says, pointing to the screen.

Dex mumbles “Charz.” A minute
after shaking the grogginess of sleep away, he stumbles to the
computer. He joins me hovering over the keyboard, peering through
someone else’s mouse moving on my monitor.

The three of
us watch the screen. The time in the corner says 9:34
am
—two hours after Elliot
began.

“
What’s…” I
whisper as if they can hear me.

“
It’s their
screen,” Elliot says. “He doesn’t know we’re watching his work
computer.”