Still Point (12 page)

I looked past the trees and saw two murals painted on the fence next to a small studio. I smiled because I recognized the prints; I had seen them online four years earlier. The murals depicted outdoor scenes. One was of the Three Sisters, a famous triplet set of mountain peaks that cut through central Oregon. Another mural showed Marys Peak, a hill outside of Corvallis, the tallest point of the Coast Range. The scenes were set as a high, panoramic view. Around the murals were log benches that had been split down the middle with the flat side facing up. It reminded me of a small-scale Eden.

A mosaic path cut across the yard to the studio. It was carved out with blue and green beach glass, rocks, a scattering of red bricks, even crushed shells. I almost didn't want to walk on it. I just wanted to stare at it. I loved that someone took the time to make even the ground look like artwork.

Clare suddenly grabbed my arm and her eyes widened. I looked to where she was staring. A guy was standing at the door of the studio. He was tall and wore a white T-shirt and dark green shorts. He had dark hair and eyes and olive-toned skin. I had never met Jax in person.

“You always make house calls?” he asked.

“We like to make people extremely uncomfortable,” I said, grinning.

He walked down the steps in front of his studio toward us. “Madeline Freeman,” he said. “At last we meet.”

“Hi, Jax,” I said. I introduced him to Clare, and she took the opportunity to reach out and shake his hand. She slipped on some of the beach glass and ended up falling forward, into his chest. I tried not to laugh as Jax steadied her, his hands on her shoulders. Clare didn't seem to mind the contact, a gushing smile lighting up her face.

I felt my hands lock behind my back.

“Sorry for the surprise visit. It's how we roll,” I said.

He shrugged. “I'm not going to turn away two hot girls,” he said.

I ignored the compliment, but he wasn't hard to look at either. He had all the Italian looks that his last name, Viviani, would imply. Eyes so dark you could barely see the pupils, and brownish black hair that was short on the sides but longer on top.

I pointed at the yellow house behind us.

“What did we just walk through?” I asked him.

“Oh, the digital gates of hell? That's my cousin's house.” He nodded toward the studio. “I moved in back here after I was intercepted. She acts as a cover for me.”

“You're still hiding out?” I asked.

“After I turned eighteen, I decided to stick around,” he said. “It's a safe house now. I'm the lone renter.”

“How do you two know each other?” Clare asked.

His eyes stayed on mine. “I met Madeline four years ago. She was my first date.”

“It was not a date,” I said to him. “We met on a museum tour,” I explained to Clare as we sat down on one of the wood benches. “We were with a class of art students,” I clarified.

“But you ate lunch with me,” he pointed out.

“We didn't eat anything,” I said, laughing. “The whole thing was digital,” I told Clare. I was surprised how well I remembered it. “We made fun of the virtual café.”

He smiled. “Then you hacked into the system and drew graffiti all over a Monet. You've never seen art until you've seen unicorns jumping across a Monet.”

I laughed again. “The guide didn't appreciate it. He kicked me out of the tour,” I said.

Jax's eyes fell to my shoulder, and I realized he was looking at my hair. “Nice color,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“Is that your rebellion flare?” he asked.

I couldn't help it. I laughed again. “It's rated number two for ‘how to scare your dad' products, online.”

“Right under piercings,” he said.

“Actually, I think pregnancy tests are number one,” I said, and he laughed.

“And we can't forget tattoos,” Jax offered.

“I've got that one covered.” I raised my wrist with a smile. I had been waiting for this moment for a long time.

His eyes widened when he recognized the bird on my wrist, the same bird that he'd drawn for me four years earlier. He sat down next to me and grabbed my arm. I studied his profile. I had talked to Jax online, but I never knew what his voice sounded like, that it was raspy. I never knew that he talked fast. I never knew his eyes were nearly black beneath his thick lashes. I never knew his lips were light brown, not red like Justin's, that there was a crease in the middle of his bottom lip, that he had a dusting of freckles on his nose.

I glanced at Clare and she watched us curiously, with a small smile creeping over her face.

“Wow,” he said, admiring the tattoo.

“It was fitting,” I admitted.

His eyes met mine. “How did you find me?” he asked. He was still holding my wrist in his hand.

“You started showing your work online again,” I said.

“I don't use my real name anymore,” he pointed out.

I slid my wrist out from his fingers. “No one else paints like you,” I said. “You always paint images like you're thousands of feet up in the sky. As if you're flying. I've never seen anything else like it. After you were intercepted, your gallery site closed down. But a few weeks ago your work started popping up again and I recognized it. It was under a new name, but I knew it was you. I traced the name to this address.”

“Impressive,” he said. He smiled and it made me feel relaxed. Too relaxed. I noticed he smiled with his entire face, his eyes curled up and his cheeks lifting, not just his mouth. It made him look young, even though I knew he was older than I was. I cleared my throat.

“We're here on official business,” I said, changing the subject.

He stretched his legs out and casually crossed his feet. “That sounds boring,” he said.

I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees. “I'm interested in what you were doing that led to your arrest. I did some research. You managed to get the names of all the kids who served time in detention centers.”

He nodded. “I had a few friends spend time in DCs. I was just trying to organize support groups. It's almost impossible to find those kids after they're released. They all have aliases.”

I slowly recapped what happened at the DC in Los Angeles. I told him what happened to me, what happened to all of the kids, how we were emotionally brainwashed and mentally tortured.

“We freed one of the centers, about two months ago,” I said. “The rest are on lockdown.”

He looked down at his fingers, stretched over his knees. “I heard about what happened,” he said. “I know they're brainwashing people. I've worked with some of the kids. But the list doesn't exist anymore,” he said. “I haven't worked on it since I got busted.”

“Yeah, but other people probably picked up where you left off. I bet you could track it down.”

“Why don't you make your own list?” he said. “Besides, most of those kids don't even want to be contacted. They wouldn't communicate with me when I tried.”

“Exactly,” Clare cut in. “Since no one who comes out of a DC wants anything to do with us anymore, they usually block us. We're understaffed as it is, so we stopped keeping track of people. Now with all the DCs on lockdown, all of those names are confidential. And most kids who get out of DCs are sent to halfway homes, or relocated.”

“You designed a program that intercepts those names,” I said. “We'd have to start from scratch, and it would take us months. With your connections, you could probably do it in a few days. You'd be a hero in our crowd.”

He laughed. “I'm not in your crowd anymore,” he said. “Sorry, I can't do anything.”

“You can't or you won't?” I said, pressing.

He stood up, and his casual smile slipped into a frown. “The list is gone. It's been destroyed. Tell your little gang to stop bugging me about it.” He held out his hands. “I'm out.”

I stood up as well. “I didn't take you for somebody who would give up. I remember the day we met; you told me to start speaking my mind. You told me we were living in a lie. That's why you started painting. You wanted to show people what was real.” I stopped and took a breath. “That was so inspiring,” I said. “You were the first person who ever inspired me.”

He kept his eyes locked on mine.

“So, do you want to help us, or do you want to play it safe? You want to hide inside all these walls?
That
sounds really boring.” I was yelling now. I threw my hands up in defeat. Humility took over. “I need help, Jax. Please help me.”

His eyes narrowed and he took a step closer, so I had to look up at him. I could feel the energy pushing off his chest. I thought he was going to scream back at me and lose it, like I had, but he just watched me carefully, like he was examining me. He reached out and I winced, but he only gently brushed a piece of hair out of my eyes. Something in his face told me to calm down. Slow down. I was letting my personality become a rapids, crashing downstream.

“You got intense,” he said.

I sighed. “Yeah.”

“I always thought you were laid-back,” he told me.

I narrowed my eyes. “I was fourteen. You barely knew me.”

“Who wound you up like this? Did the DC do this to you?”

“Nothing did this to me.”

I glanced away because his eyes were looking for loopholes, for ways inside. I backed up and reached into my purse and pulled out my red leather journal. I asked Clare for her phone number and wrote it down, then tore it off the page.

“If you change your mind, give us a call,” I said, and slapped the paper in his hand.

I turned away without looking back at him, without saying goodbye. I stalked through the yard and down the path along the side of the yellow house. I opened a metal latch on the fence, and Clare shut it behind us.

We walked down the street in silence for a few minutes. The air was balmy and humid, like rain was coming. A row of low gray clouds pressed over the western horizon, blocking out the Coast Range.

Guilt hovered over my heart and started to push down.

“I was too hard on him, wasn't I?”

Clare grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Your inspirational speeches could be a little more gentle.”

“I know,” I said, and slapped my hand over my forehead. “I wish I had your patience. I get so
mad.
”

She thought about this. “You take things personally,” she said. “And that's not a bad thing, but you have to realize Jax isn't against
you.
”

“Gentle prodding doesn't get you very far in life.”

She nodded. “You're more like a hard kick in the ass.”

Clare's phone beeped and she looked down and checked it. She showed me the screen.

“I guess you got away with corporal punishment,” she said, and I looked at the message, from Jax.

Okay, Madeline. I'll help you. On one condition. Meet me tomorrow. Alone.

The next day I waited outside, down the street from my house, where Jax told me to meet him. A ZipShuttle turned the corner and slowed down next to the curb.

I opened the door and Jax scooted over to make room for me next to him, but I sat across from him on the opposite side of the car. The inside was small, similar to a car interior, and Jax's long legs took up most of the floor space. He pulled earpods out of his ears and turned them off. He told me he was listening to a podcast and started rambling about some sci-fi television series. I was annoyed he was making small talk at a time like this.

Something about Jax's presence bothered me in general. He was too bright—the yellow rain jacket he wore and his blue tennis shoes with orange laces screamed for attention. I listened to him talk, noted his easy demeanor, as if we rode a ZipShuttle together every day. He didn't have Justin's intense eyes, the stare that's always observing, calculating every detail around him and storing it away. Jax just noticed the things right in front of him. He fixed his eyes on that. At this moment, on me.

I looked out the window, at the soft texture of gray clouds. When he stopped babbling about his nerd-show-whatever-the-hell, I met his eyes.

“Why don't you want to join the Dropouts?” I asked him.

“I'm not a workaholic,” he said simply and smiled because he knew I couldn't argue with his point. “Don't get me wrong, I like working. And the DS lifestyle is stupid as shit. But I also enjoy a little downtime. I like living.”

“So do we,” I said. “That's what we're fighting for.”

He leaned his head to the side. “Yeah, but you guys are always fighting,” he said. “I've been to a few meetings.
DS Dropouts Need You. For a Better Tomorrow,
” he said mockingly, in a militant voice, and it loosened my mouth. “I get it. I just don't need it shoved down my throat every day.”

“You don't want to work with us at all?”

“I just don't want to be told what to do. That's why I never liked DS. It was smothering. But the protesters follow the leaders too. I just want to do my own thing. Sometimes,” he said, and leaned forward, close enough that I could see his eyes light up, “I like to do absolutely nothing.”

“Sounds inspiring,” I joked.

“Have you ever tried to do nothing? It's actually really hard. There are so many distractions. But it's the best feeling in the world. If I could prescribe a bottle of nothing to people, it would make life so much better.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said.

I looked out the window at a city that was a ghost town. Buildings were boarded up. I had faint memories of downtown Corvallis when I was little. Shops had filled the main streets when people still shopped in stores, before everything went digital. I remembered mornings my mom would take me and Joe to a toy store downtown, full of kids and parents and toys and instruments we could touch. We'd stop at a bakery and get chocolate milk and shortbread cookies dipped in chocolate and covered in sprinkles. I remembered sitting outside and looking down at the river crawling past. I remembered the gardens blooming, the sounds of shoes and strollers and crosswalks full of people. It was like remembering a dream, but after a while that's all it is, just a memory, and memories can turn heavy and sit in your heart like rocks. You can either hang on to memories or try to forget them and fling them away like stones over a bridge. But I not only wanted to keep these memories, I wanted to relive them. I wanted to somehow bring them back. But can you relive the past? Maybe that was why people clung so loyally to traditions. They simply wanted to relive their favorite memories over and over.