Flash Point (7 page)

Violet said, “I was promised a spot in the chorus line of
Dance Dance Dance
.”

“With one guaranteed appearance on air, I know,” Alex said. “You’ll get it, after this show has filmed all its episodes. You’ll all get whatever you were promised in your contracts. Now, let’s introduce ourselves. Lynn? Tell us a little about yourself.”

The small, sharp-faced girl to Alex’s left said, “Well, I’m Lynn Demaris; I’m eighteen years old. I just graduated in December from a full-form high school, and I want a career in TV production. That’s why I’m here. And I’m grateful for the opportunity, Alex.” She smiled, eyes downcast as if overcome with gratitude.

The abrupt phantom in Amy’s mind astonished her: the same empty box that had appeared twice before. But about this girl—what did it mean? Lynn Demaris, dressed in undistinguished jeans and sweater, had nondescript features and brown hair that would frizz at the first hint of dampness. She looked completely ordinary.

Alex prompted, “And do you have any hobbies, Lynn?”

“Playing computer games. And I’m
good
.”

A few laughs and smiles around the table; everyone was relaxing except Amy. Alex said, “Waverly?”

The blonde who had thrown herself on the doll gave them a practiced smile. She wore clothes that Amy thought of as “punk socialite”—expensive jeans, silk top artfully sewn in ragged layers, and the Louboutin red-heeled sandals. Her spiked jewelry, including a nose ring, said
trendy
and her perfect teeth said
money
. “I’m Waverly Balter-Wells. I’m seventeen and I’m an actress. This is my first big break, but it won’t be my last. I hold a brown belt in karate and I enjoy golf and racing my parents’ sailboats.”

“La di da,” Violet whispered to Amy.

Amy had to lean forward and crane her neck to see the next speaker, mostly hidden by the huge bulk of another boy. The moment she glimpsed him she knew two things: that he was the one who had assaulted the fake criminal in the lobby, and that he was the most gorgeous person she had ever seen.

“I’m Cai Marsh,” he said.

His thick black hair fell over his forehead; instantly Amy wanted to run her hands through it. Pale brown skin like warm sand. Eyes like pieces of blue sky. Full red mouth. Amy felt her body grow taut and she crossed her arms across her chest.
No no no
. This job was complicated enough without any stupid yearning for a boy who would never look at her.

“I’m eighteen, half Hawaiian and half Welsh, which is where I get such a weird name. ‘Cai’ means ‘full of color’ in Chinese and ‘rejoice’ in Welsh. I surf, or at least I did when we lived in Hawaii. I have no idea what I want to do for a living eventually, and I didn’t know what I would be doing here until the dog-in-a-tree thing Thursday night. But I’m really glad to meet you all.”

Oh, God, he sounded as if he meant it. Nice as well as hot. Amy deliberately looked away from him.

“I’m Violet Sanderson, a dancer. I trained with the Caroline Mallard Company for six years. I’m eighteen, and with dance class every day and now this job, I don’t have time for any other hobbies. Although I do like shopping.”

Waverly rolled her eyes. She and Violet seemed to have taken a dislike to each other on sight.

Next to speak was the thin, brown-haired boy whom Amy had glimpsed at her callback audition. “Rafael Torres—Rafe,” he said flatly. “I’m here for the money.”

Amy looked at him more closely, both liking and surprised at his bald honesty. He said, “I’m sixteen. I work a crappy job, or I did until now, doesn’t matter what it was. I’m interested in politics and science. Someday I’m going to med school and becoming a doctor, and after that I’m going to solve the Riemann conjecture.”

Everyone looked puzzled. Apparently only Amy knew that the Riemann conjecture was math’s holy grail, a problem the best mathematical minds in the world had not been able to solve in over a hundred and fifty years. Rafael Torres was very smart, and either he was very arrogant or his brusqueness covered up massive insecurity. There was a little silence.

“Tommy?” Alex prompted.

The tall boy sitting next to Amy blinked twice. Slowly, as if dragging the words from memory, he said, “My name is Tommy Wimmer. I’m eighteen. My address is 643 Sycamore Lane Apartment 3B. I live with my uncle Sam. His phone number is—”

“That’s fine, Tommy,” Alex said as shock replaced the dregs of Amy’s anger. What was this boy doing here? Either his IQ was subnormal or he was mildly autistic. A girl like Tommy had lived next door to Amy pre-Collapse, before Gran’s investments tanked and she got sick and lost both her job and the house. Amy had tried to be extra kind to Elise, because most of the other kids were not.

Alex said, “What do you like to do, Tommy?”

“I like insects and spiders. I make plastic models of spiders. There are over thirty thousand species of spiders. The hairy mygalomorphs like—”

“Good, good. Amy?”

“I’m Amy Kent. I’m sixteen, and I like chess, math, and gymnastics.” Let them know right away how much of a nerd she was. “Anybody else here play chess?”

Nobody answered, unsurprisingly, although she’d thought that Rafe might play. Well, at least she had Paul O’Malley across the street. Waverly’s lip quirked with superior amusement.

Alex Everett opened a box on the table and pulled out papers. “Well, then, let’s fill out the paperwork that Human Resources demands. Now, these forms are W-2’s—”

Afterward, as they all left the conference room, Amy put a hand on Violet’s arm until they trailed behind the others, out of earshot. “Violet, you told me to ‘do something’ in that fake lobby attack, and you were going to take me with you when you leaped up for the cameras. Why are you helping me? Aren’t we supposed to be rivals?”

“No, it’s not a direct competition, One Two Three—weren’t you listening? But if it becomes one, and I wouldn’t put it past that bitch Myra Townsend, I want an ally. Together we can come up with more camera-pleasing ploys than one person alone. You in with me?”

Amy didn’t want to “come up with camera-pleasing” anything. Nor was she ambitious to succeed at this show. But she didn’t want to be fired, and she liked Violet. “Yes, I’m in.”

“Great!” Violet said. “Now look at that Cai! Too bad I already have a boyfriend. Did you ever see anything so hunky in your life?”

“I didn’t notice,” Amy said.

Violet laughed. “Sure you didn’t. You’re not exactly a poker face, One Two Three. But don’t worry, nobody else was watching you.”

“Actually,” Amy said, desperately hoping to deflect Violet, “I already have a boyfriend, too. His name is Paul. He plays chess.”

“Ah,” Violet said, which could have meant anything. “I see.”

Violet saw too much. Myra and Alex staged too much. And Amy—“
You feel too much, Amy,”
Gran always said. Well, not this time. Amy had a job to concentrate on—even if she still, after three scenarios, two holographic species, and one gallon of fake blood, wasn’t exactly sure what it was going to demand of her. Or when.

Eight

M
ONDAY

ON THE LONG WALK
home, every time someone passed Amy on the sidewalk, every time a car slowed for a stop sign, every time a window opened in a building beside her, Amy expected the start of another of TLN’s “scenarios.” Anything could happen at any minute; she had to be ready, she had to respond—

A squirrel ran down a tree and darted across her path, and she cried out.

“Hey, relax, kid, it’s just a squirrel,” a man said, smiling at her.

Was he part of a scenario? No, he just kept walking. The squirrel ran away, just a squirrel. The children running past were just children—but why was that one girl looking back over her shoulder, directly at Amy?

No reason. Just children.

Calm down!

It was with enormous relief that she finally unlocked the door to the apartment, her refuge from Taunton Life Network. The delicious smell of stew wafted toward her. Kaylie stood at the stove, stirring. The table was set, the apartment clean. Gran sat in the easy chair by the window, a blanket across her knees.

“Kaylie,” Amy said, “that smells so good—wait, stew? I didn’t buy any stew meat.”

“I did,” Kaylie said.

“With what?” Amy couldn’t imagine her sister shoplifting a package of cubed beef, but with Kaylie, anything was possible.

“With your money,” Kaylie said serenely. “I told Mr. Fu you got a really good job and so he let me have some things on credit until Friday. You get paid every Friday.”

“How did you know that?” Amy said. She herself hadn’t known that.

“I called the TV station and said I was doing a research paper on the economy and had hard times changed how often they paid their employees? And the woman said no, they’d always paid weekly instead of biweekly, for a lot of boring reasons I didn’t listen to.”

Gran rolled her eyes. To Amy she said, “How was the first day on the job?”

“Boring but easy,” Amy said. Gran looked at her more closely and frowned.

Kaylie was enormously pleased with herself. She pushed Gran’s easy chair to the table, served the stew, and informed Amy that she had attended school that day: “The whole lame thing, even math,” so that she could turn in all the back assignments she and Amy had done over the weekend. “So I’m cleared for All-City on Friday night, as long as I go to school every single day this week. That’ll be hell, but it’s worth it. Orange Decision is going to
kill
at that show. And I’ll bet that talent scouts show up from the big music companies and everything, and they’ll see us play.”

“Talent scouts?” Gran said. “At a youth show?”

“Why not? Kids are where the talent is.”

Amy and Gran exchanged looks. Gran said, “Kayla, I don’t want you to get your expectations up too high and then the—”

Kaylie scowled. “Why are you always knocking me down?”

“I’m not, I only—”

“If it was Amy doing something, you’d be telling her how she could conquer the world! But me you just put down!”

“I do not,” Gran said with a touch of the steady, level-tone authority she’d lost ever since she got sick. “I just want you to be realistic, Kayla. I’m sure your band is good, but there are so—”

“You’re not sure we’re good,” Kaylie said. “You’ve never even heard us. And now I don’t want you to. Either of you. Stay away Friday night!”

Amy said, “Kaylie, of course we’re coming, or at least I am and if Gran feels well enough to—”

“I said stay away! I don’t want you there, bringing us down!” Kaylie stood up so fast that her stew sloshed over the rim of her bowl. She grabbed her jacket off the peg by the door. “I’m going to practice! Saint Amy can clean up!” She slammed out.

“That was my fault,” Gran said. “She’s all on edge about this band performance. I’m going to be there Friday night, Amy, no matter what.”

“Let’s see how you feel then.”

“Don’t talk to me like a child,” Gran said sharply. “I’m ill but I’m not five.”

It was too much. The weird job, money, Kaylie, now Gran—Amy put her head in her hands and let the tears come.

She felt Gran’s hands on her shoulders. “I’m sorry, honey. I shouldn’t speak to you like that. You’re holding it all together here and you’re only sixteen. . . . Please forgive me.”

The words were like all the lollipops, all the kisses on all the booboos that Gran had given over the years. Amy raised her head, leaned back, and let her grandmother massage her shoulders.

“God, your muscles are knotted as macramé. Let me knead them.”

“Mmmm, that feels good.”

But after just a few moments the old hands faltered. Amy got up. “Gran?”

“Just a little dizzy. . . .”

Amy helped her into bed. Pale and drawn against the pillow, Gran said, “You remind me so much of your mother.”

She almost never mentioned Amy and Kayla’s mother. Gran didn’t believe in what she called “wallowing in grief.” Amy glanced at her mother’s picture on the wall and waited, in case there was more.

Gran said, “Kayla looks like Carolyn, but you have her sweet and trusting nature. She would be proud of you, Amy.”

Amy didn’t know what to say. This wasn’t like Gran. Was it her illness that made her so emotional? At the same time, Amy sucked up the praise like a vacuum cleaner. This place
was
her refuge.

But then Gran said, “Why are you lying to me about your job?”

“I—I’m not . . .”

“Yes, you are. You didn’t have a ‘boring but easy’ day. You had the workday from hell, and you’re trying to protect me from knowing why. Please don’t do that. It just makes me feel older, sicker, and more useless than I already am.”

“You’re not—”

“Amy,” Gran said, and now there was a dangerous glint in her eyes.

“OK,” Amy said, “it wasn’t boring and it isn’t easy. I’m a . . . a contestant on a new kind of game show, and it’s nerve-racking because today we got our first set of problems and I didn’t do well.”

“Like
Jeopardy!
?”

“Not exactly.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Logical.” That was true, sort of. Amy was not going to worry Gran any more than she had to.

“You should be good at logic. You are at math.”

“I’ll do better next time.”

“I know you will.”

Amy could see Gran’s strength ebbing. Her eyes closed. “Maybe I’ll just sleep a little. . . . Kayla was wonderful today but it’s tiring when she’s home, sort of like inhabiting a closed space with a small tornado. Amy, why don’t you go play chess with Paul? Chess always calms you. I don’t know why, with all its mock warfare, but it does. Kayla can do the dishes after band practice. Use up some of that energy.”

“I will,” Amy said. Suddenly chess looked as tempting as a couture dress. “But here’s your cell by the bed, and you call me if you need anything.”

“I will,” Gran murmured, already half asleep.

Chess did calm Amy. Paul, silent and awkward, wanted no small talk from her. Mrs. O’Malley watched TV in the shabby living room, merely fluttering into the kitchen during commercials to offer cookies, milk, water, a cushion. Twice Amy darted across the street to find Gran peacefully asleep. She beat Paul twice and he beat her once. Amy went to bed with her shoulder and neck muscles fully relaxed.

But at four in the morning she woke, aware of emptiness beside her on the sofa bed. Kaylie had not come home.

* * *

Amy had to be at work at eight thirty. She hadn’t slept since discovering Kaylie was gone, instead spending her time pacing, calling Kaylie on the cell, cursing under her breath, drinking cup after cup of coffee. Kaylie hadn’t answered, the cursing hadn’t helped, and the coffee had jangled her nerves.

She left Gran still asleep and ran to the high school. Kaylie had said she had to be in school every day this week in order to qualify for All-City. If Amy used the coins she’d been saving for Gran’s flimsies to catch the number 22 bus at Culver Avenue, she could make sure Kaylie was all right and still arrive at TLN just in time.

Damn her sister! If only she didn’t make everything six times harder than it had to be!

The high school looked even worse than when Amy had left it not even a year ago. There was no money to fix anything, so nothing had been fixed. Several windows had boards over them; the rest were barred. The lawn was long since trampled into bare dirt. Kids sat on the steps or milled around the street, waiting for the last bell. Kaylie wasn’t among them.

“Student pass, please,” said the guard beside the metal detector at the front door.

“I’m not a student. I need to see my sister, Kayla Kent. She may have gone inside already. I’m . . . I’m her guardian.”

“Sure you are,” he said. “No student pass, no entry.”

“But it’s really important. Our grandmother is ill, and I have to see Kaylie to—”

“No student pass, no entry. Move off the steps, please.”

The last bell sounded and students pushed Amy from behind. She thought of slipping inside in the crush, but a second guard grabbed her arm and firmly propelled her to the side. “Dammit, let me go!”

“Amy?” said a familiar voice.

Mr. Servino! Teachers had appeared in the hallway to try to control the flow of traffic—always futile, as Amy well remembered. Mr. Servino had been Amy’s math teacher. He’d hoped she would go on to college, or at least finish long-form high school so that college could be a possibility if the economy improved, but those goals had been impossible after Gran got so sick.

“Mr. Servino, I need to see my sister, Kayla, it’s really important! Please help me!”

“It’s OK, Javier, I’ll escort Amy,” Mr. Servino said to the guard. And to Amy, “Do you know what class she’s in first period?”

“No.”

“Let me check.”

He had student schedules on his tablet, which linked to the computer that registered student passes. Slowly the hallway emptied of students. Mr. Servino said, “Kayla’s in Ms. Renner’s history class. Do you want me to take you there? This is my free period.”

“You’re sure she’s there?”

“Yes.”

“Then no, I don’t want to see her. Actually, I don’t have time before I go to work. I just needed to know she’s all right. She . . . she didn’t come home last night.”

Mr. Servino nodded. Amy recognized the sadness in his eyes. She’d seen it all year when he looked at kids who were throwing away what little chance they had: getting into drugs or getting pregnant at fourteen or joining gangs. Now he was looking at her that way, and she hated it. Her chin came up.

“Amy, you OK?”

“I’m fine. Thanks for checking on Kaylie.”

“Wait—you can’t leave the building unless I escort you out.”

He did. She threw him what she hoped was a confident smile—
See, all good here, on my way to a normal job
—thanked him again, and set off at a brisk walk, ignoring the catcalls of the guys, pathetic or dangerous, who inevitably hung around the school. She was careful to make no eye contact with anyone. Once back on a main avenue, she started to run. Already 7:40 and she’d missed the number 22 bus.

She was out of breath when, at 8:20, she reached Lorimar Street, turned the corner, and ran into a mob.

No, not another scenario, not now!

People marched and chanted, carrying signs that said
TIMES BE TOUGH MAN
in scarlet lettering. A protest mob, right in her path when she was already late—it had to be a scenario. And there had to be more to it than Amy was seeing—what, holographic tear gas from non-real cops? She wouldn’t put it past Myra Townsend. But this time Amy knew she was on camera. She wouldn’t be caught passive or frozen or stupid-looking yet again.

Striding up to the nearest protestor, she demanded, “What are you protesting?”

The woman, a faded and tired actor in jeans and shapeless sweater, eyed her warily. Amy saw the moment that the woman pretended to think that Amy was just a mouthy kid. “You don’t know there’s a Collapse on? We’re protesting no jobs, no decent welfare, no hope. Also that those fat-cat bastards just laid off sixty more people with kids to feed.” She pointed at the building behind the protestors, which bore the sign
LIGNON INDUSTRIES
. Amy had never heard of them, but she nodded. No jobs was something she could identify with.

But what did TLN want her to do with this protest?

The woman resumed marching. More people crowded the street, some joining the marchers and some just watching. Amy stood irresolute, and all she could think of was,
That slogan still needs a comma between
TOUGH
and
MAN. Where was the scenario challenge?

Then she saw him.

He was working the crowd, slipping a deft hand into a back pocket, unfastening a purse. Amy saw him leave one wallet, evidently too hard to remove, and take another. He was about her age, dressed in completely unmemorable clothing, a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes. He was big, but so what? This was a setup, she was being filmed by hidden microcameras, and her job was to put on a show.