So Yesterday (21 page)

The other figures were carrying baseball bats, and
their heads and hands were purple.

The
hoi aristoi
had arrived, and they were pissed.

CHAPTER 32

MWADI
WICKERSHAM WAS CHUCKLING.

"Damn, look at those
heads. That stuff worked
too
good."

"Run?" Futura asked.

Her broad shoulders shrugged. "Looks like it. You
take Mandy, I'll grab these two. See you at the factory. Lights!"

Seconds later the long banks of movie lights all
switched off, and once again I couldn't see a thing.

"Come with me, kids." A strong hand grabbed
my arm, lifting me to my feet. Then I was running, following the sound of
roller skates on concrete, in the wake of an unstoppable force that brushed
aside invisible obstacles. From behind us came shouts and crashes as our
pursuers stumbled through the hodgepodge of movie sets and lighting. The
Jammers were barely visible—a swift, silent horde marked by bobbing flashlights
in the dark.

I heard Jen's breath next to me, reached out to feel
for her hand. We steadied ourselves against each other as we were led around a
sharp turn, then pushed up a ladder, Wickersham's skates clanking on metal
rungs behind us. We stormed along the catwalk, then through a door high in the
wall. A long hallway opened up before us, dimly lit by a row of dirty
skylights, leading to a window red with sunset.

Mwadi zoomed around us, shot
ahead on her wheels, and had the security gate open before we caught up. She
pulled herself out onto the fire escape, and Jen and I followed. Our combined
weight tipped the ancient metal stairs into motion, Mwadi clunking down them as
they swung to ground level on a wailing, rusty hinge.

Hitting asphalt, she skated furiously around the corner.
Jen and I looked at each other.

"Maybe we should escape now," I said.

"We
are
escaping."

"No, I mean escape the anti-client."

"They're called Jammers, Hunter. Weren't you
listening? And we don't have to escape; they want us to work for them."

"What if we don't want to?"

"As if."

Jen turned and dashed after Wickersham. I couldn't do
much but follow.

Around the corner Mwadi was zooming up a handicapped
ramp to the sliding door—we had circled back around to the sound-stage
entrance. She rolled it shut, closed the massive padlock hasp, and jammed her
flashlight into it, leaving the
hoi aristoi
trapped in darkness.

"Lucky all that stuff's rented," she said,
rumbling back down the ramp. She looked at an empty limo waiting by the door.
The driver must have been inside the building with his employer. "Either
of you know how to drive?"

"No."

"No."

She shook her head. "Damn city kids. I can
hot-wire, but I
hate
driving
with skates on."

But Jen was already opening the driver's-side door.
"It's okay, I've played tons of
..."
She mentioned a certain video-game franchise with the same name as the crime we
were about to commit.

"Good enough for
me," Wickersham said.

Already outvoted, I got in.

************************************

In 2003 a University of
Rochester study revealed that kids who play mega-hours of video games have
superior hand-to-eye coordination and faster reflex time. Parents and educators
were shocked, appalled, disbelieving.

Every teenager I know was
like,
"Duh."

Jen took us through the empty streets of the Brooklyn
Navy Yard fast and furious, leaving streaks of rubber on the hot summer
asphalt. She slowed down only when we passed through the open gates and turned
onto Flushing, keeping it legal.

I turned to look out the back
window. There were no signs of pursuit.

"We're cool."

"What about everyone
else?" Jen asked.

"They'll be fine,"
Wickersham said. "Practice makes perfect."

I had to ask. "You
practice
running away?"

"We knew we'd make enemies. Other organizations
have fire drills; we have oh-shit-someone-found-our-ass drills. Now, a question
for you two:
why
did someone find us?"

There was an uncomfortable
silence.

"Well, you see, when we were tracking you down,
we enlisted some help from an acquaintance of mine"—I cleared my
throat—"of the purple-headed persuasion. And it appears that she called
all her friends, and they called their friends, and someone had us
followed."

"That's what I figured." Mwadi shook her
head. "And I thought you kids were so damn clever.''

"It's my fault," Jen
said.

"Not any more than
mine," I protested.

Jen's knuckles turned white on
the wheel as she grimly followed Flushing Avenue. "I was the one who told
Hillary what we were doing."

"That was just to get her to help," I said.
"You didn't plan on telling her what we found out, did you?"

"Of course not. But it was me who spilled the
beans. It didn't even occur to me that Hillary might be playing us."

"Take this left,"
Wickersham said. "And shut up a second."
    
I

She made a call, speaking quickly and softly into a
cell phone, guiding Jen with gestures. I wondered what was being arranged for
us at the other end of this trip now that we were in disgrace.

But part of me felt at peace: finally we had answers.
Things had fallen into place, not far from our theories and paka-paka
revelations: renegade cool hunters, a charismatic Innovator, a movement that
wanted to rock the world. Maybe Jen and I really did know the territory.

It was nice to discover that sometimes the useless
facts in my brain had some relevance, that my fantasy world matched up, at
least occasionally, with the real one. That all my time spent reading the
signals around me hadn't been completely wasted.

Maybe the signs had been around even before Mandy
disappeared, as obvious as the stones in the street. People pushing back from
being force-fed, ready to rebel; maybe Innovators only channel something that's
already there. Maybe the Jammers had to happen.

And whatever else went down, at least Mandy was okay.

I leaned back and closed my eyes, exhausted. There was
nothing more to do but wait for the car to get where it was going.

************************************

"That way.'' Mwadi
Wickersham flicked her phone closed.

Jen turned, easing us down an
alley, the sides of the car scraping stacks of garbage bags. We pulled into a
bare courtyard, surrounded on
j
every side by derelict
buildings, their black windows watching us like empty eyes. A rental truck was
already there, the one we'd spotted on Lispenard Street the day before.

Two figures were tossing shoe boxes from it into an
unruly pile. My eyes caught the flicker of reflective panels as shoes tumbled
out onto the dirt.

A third person stood next to the growing pile.

She was pouring gasoline onto it.

"No," I whispered.

The limo came to a crunching halt, a bottle popping
under one tire. Mwadi leapt out, her wheels gliding across the rubbish-strewn
courtyard like it was a hardwood rink.

Jen and I ran to the edge of the pile.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting rid of these, as per our agreement with
the client," Wickersham said. "They'll get the prototypes and the
specs. The last thing they want is the originals showing up on the
street."

"You're
burning
them?" I cried. "They should be in a
museum!"

She nodded sadly. "You got that right. But thanks
to you two, our security's been compromised. We got to do this quick and
dirty."

A match went down onto the pile, and the smell of
burning gasoline rushed at us.

"No!" I cried.

Then a wave of heat forced us back, fire spreading
across the pile like the sweep of a hand. Shoe-box lids popped off, carried up
by the superheated air, revealing beautiful forms inside. The elegant lines
warped and twisted, reflective panels glittering for a few seconds in the blaze
before they blackened. The smell of burning plastic and canvas followed,
forcing acid tears from my eyes.

Jen tried to shout something but only managed to cough
into a clenched fist.

The pyre turned greedy, sucking the air around us into
itself. Bits of paper rolled past my feet, drawn toward the blaze by the column
of smoke climbing out of the courtyard. Sickeningly, I realized that the thick,
black cloud overhead
was
the shoes, transmuted from something beautiful and
original into shapeless smoke. I was breathing the dream shoes into my lungs,
choking on them.

Mwadi Wickersham shouted orders into her cell phone as
the last few boxes were thrown onto the fire before my eyes. I was forced back
farther by the heat, helpless to prevent the conflagration. The shoes were
going, going
...
gone.

CHAPTER 33

THEY LEFT
US THERE.

"Wish we could work together, but you two are a
risky proposition," Mwadi said, pulling herself up into the open maw of
the truck.

"We didn't mean to lead them to you." Jen's
face was blackened by smoke, streaked by tears. "We were just playing them
for information."

"They wound up playing you."

"We'll be more careful next time, I swear."

Wickersham nodded. "You better be careful. The
purple heads will be keeping their eyes on you. You're their only link to us.
And that makes you useless for future operations."

"But we know the territory, like you said."

"Exactly, and the purple heads know you do. If
you keep looking for us, you'll bring them straight to my doorstep."

"But—"

"Just forget we exist, Jen James. Pretend this
never happened." She smiled. "If you're good, I'll put you on our
mailing list."

Mwadi stamped her skate once against the metal bed of
the truck, a sovereign, final sound, and it jerked forward, rumbling in a slow
circle around the blackened pile, then out of the courtyard and down the alley.

Jen followed for a few steps, as if to plead her case
again, but didn't say anything. She stood silent until the sound of the truck
had faded to nothing.

When it was gone, she turned and faced the pile.

"There must be something left."

"What?"

"Pieces, clues." She strode forward to the
blackened edge, teeth gritted, her feet kicking ash into the air. "Maybe
we can find a sample of the canvas, or an eyelet, or one of those laces."

I almost smiled. With everything in ashes, Jen had
returned to her roots: shoelaces.

She dropped to her knees in the smoking pyre, pushing
her hands through the ruin, face averted from the heat still coming off the
smoking plastic.

"Jen..."

"We might even find a whole shoe in here. When
houses burn down, they always find weird stuff the fire didn't—" She lost
the rest of her words, coughing from the smoke and ash she'd raised. Her hands
went to her face, leaving solid black streaks on her cheeks. She gained control
of her breathing, then spat out something black.

"Jen, are you crazy?"

She looked up at me, clearly wondering why I wasn't
down there with her.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm looking
for the damn shoes, Hunter. That's what we've been doing all along!"

I shook my head. "I was looking for Mandy."

She spread her blackened hands. "Well, she turned
out to be fine. She's probably up for a promotion. You want to give up now?
Just because Mwadi Wickersham tells us to?"

I sighed and walked into the pile, feeling the warmth
of the ashes through the soles of my shoes. The sun had gone down, and the
remaining light in the courtyard came from the still-glowing core of the fire.
I knelt next to Jen.

"Give what up?"

"Looking."

"For what? The shoes are gone."

She shook her head, as hard and angry as a
twelve-year-old forced to move to New Jersey. Like the answer couldn't be
expressed in words, and only an idiot would think it could. She was looking for
lost cool, the hardest thing to find.

I spoke softly.' Jen, maybe it's better this way.''

"Better?"

"I mean, do you really want to work for those
guys? Carrying out the grand plans of the Jammers? Spending every minute of
your life thinking you've got to change the world?"

She glared at me, eyes flashing. "Yeah, that's
exactly what I want."

"Really?"

"That's what I've always wanted." She dug
into the ash again, raising a black haze that settled over us, forcing me to
turn away, eyes shut. "I mean, what do you want to do, Hunter? Go back to
watching advertisements for money? Hang out in focus groups and debate whether
leg warmers are coming back? Poach the latest shoelaces? Just
watch
instead of making something
happen?"

"I don't just watch."

"No, you take pictures and sell them, theorize
and read a lot. But you don't
do
anything."

My eyes opened wide.

"I don't do anything?" I sure felt like I'd
been doing things, at least for the last two days. Since I'd met Jen.