Death Spiral (12 page)

Twelve

At seven thirty Wednesday morning when I climb into Hazel, a pair of hands, smaller than Anj's but adorned with as many fake jewels, covers my eyes.

“Surprise!” Chrissy squeals, releasing her hands and popping up over the seat. She grins at me with her red-tinted braces and matching red rubber bands.

Anj glares at her sister as she backs out of the driveway. “Will you sit down please and put on your seatbelt and pretend you aren't here?”

“Anj is skipping scho-ool!” Chrissy sings.

Anj stops Hazel in the middle of the street. “I am
not
skipping. I'm taking Faith to an appointment, then I'm dropping you off, and then I'll go to school, but if you don't stop acting like a five-year-old, I'll let you out here, and you can walk.” Anj turns to me and rolls her eyes. “Sorry. I forgot I had to take Chrissy to school today. It's too early to drop her off, so she's coming with us. I already forged the tardy note.”

“Yeah, and Mom will kill you if she finds out!” Chrissy pops up again and smiles, as if this is the best news in the world, then slips on a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses and slides back down into her seat.

Anj starts driving again and grimaces. “She swore she wouldn't tell if I promised to take her to Justice this afternoon and buy her one of those neon satin shirts with the puffy sleeves the fifth-grade girls call fashion.”

Chrissy springs back up. “And take me to the Sweet Factory!”

“Right. Now sit back down, be a good girl, and make yourself invisible.”

Chrissy obeys and sings along with her iPod the rest of the way to King of Prussia.

“Sorry I can't wait around to take you back to school,” Anj says, when we pull into the PluraGen parking lot fifteen minutes later.

“No prob.” I hop out of the car, relieved to get away from the off-key-sing-along concert tour of teenybopper pop taking place in the backseat. “I'll catch the bus. I already checked the schedule.”

“Okay, then.” She blows me a kiss. “Good luck. Oh, and before I go, take this.” She hands me a sheet with two columns of Arawak words. “Don't forget to learn these. You promised.”

I put the sheet in my backpack, close the door, and wave good-bye.

***

I glance nervously over my shoulder for the Rat Catcher as I cross the parking lot. If he knew how to find me yesterday, why not today? I push away this fear and head toward the PluraGen building, a gleaming pillar of tinted glass and metal columns, a high-tech monument to money worlds away from the Ben Franklin-era brick shops and homes of Society Hill and the poverty-stricken neighborhoods of North Philly.

I head into a slick, two-story lobby where all the doors and elevators have security panels, and all the people entering the building carry identification cards. I'm wondering if you have to take off your shoes and empty your pockets to get into work when a receptionist, who looks like she's just been plucked from the front window of Macy's, asks if I need any help.

My boots squeak on the slippery tiles as I cross the lobby. “I'd like to speak to someone in the legal department,” I say when I reach the woman's desk.

“The legal department?” She raises one perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Anyone in particular?”

I take the folder from my bag and plunk it onto her desk, realizing that Aunt T never mentioned an actual name or contact person when she told me about the deal. I'm about to explain my situation, but I lose my train of thought when a man in a gray suit and paisley tie passes the desk and smiles. There's something familiar about the smug way his lips part to reveal a set of chemically white teeth.

“Good morning, Carla,” he says to the receptionist as he scans his ID card and opens the door leading into the bowels of the company.

“Good morning, Dr. Glass,” she replies.

Dr. Glass. The guy from outside Dr. Wydner's office. My brain goes high speed, streaming snippets of conversation from the past few days.
These things are
confidential.…I have the data you were asking for.…I'm just glad Dr. Glass is presenting RNA 120 and not me.…

I snatch my folder off the desk, race across the lobby, and grab the handle of the door marked personnel that's about to swing shut behind Glass.

“You can't go in there!” Carla calls after me.

I ignore her and go in anyway.

“Dr. Glass!” I shout into the quiet corridor as I rush to catch up with him.

I've just reached his side when I hear the scuffling of feet behind me. I look over my shoulder and see a security guard with a face like a baked ham heading my direction. “Everything okay, sir?” he asks, settling his meaty frame protectively in front of Glass.

“Wait, please!” I beg before Glass can give the order to have me hauled off. “I need to talk to you about the clinical trial for RNA 120.”

Glass steps out from behind the security guard and we lock eyes. He holds my gaze for so long I start to feel uncomfortable, but I don't look down.

“Thank you, Bernie,” Glass finally says, shifting his focus from me to the security guard who waits obediently at his side like a trained dog. “Everything's fine.”

Bernie lingers for a second, his tiny chocolate-chip eyes darting from Glass to me, as if assessing my risk factor and whether I've come to blow up the place. I guess I pass clearance, but only just. He plants himself next to a window a few feet away where he can still come to Glass' rescue, should I cause a fuss.

“Are you in charge of the clinical trial for RNA 120 being run at the Twenty-third Street Methadone Clinic?” I ask, trying not to let on to how nervous I am.

Glass' dark eyebrows creep up his forehead as he examines me. I tug self-consciously at my black t-shirt, wishing I'd worn something without a skull on it.

“I'm in charge,” he finally says. “What can I do for you?”

I slide my hand into my pocket, unsure how to proceed. I hadn't thought this through when I chased after Glass. Standing here now, smack center of the PluraGen mother ship with Rent-A-Cop a few feet away, it's hard to imagine confronting Glass with my theory on side effects of the drug his company is paying Dr. Wydner to test.

“My mother was in the clinical trial, and she died,” I say at last.

“I'm sorry to hear that,” Glass replies. He glances at his watch. “And I'm terribly sorry, but I'm late for a meeting. If you're here about our compensation fund, you'll have to speak to someone in legal. If you'd like to discuss the clinical aspects of the treatment, you're welcome to make an appointment.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet. “Here's my business card. If you'd like to set up something, my receptionist would be glad to help you. Now if you'll excuse me.”

He turns his back and starts off down the hall. I escort myself out before Bernie can do it for me. The receptionist is on the phone when I get back to the lobby. I figure she might not be so keen on helping me after I ignored her directive and ran after Glass, so I hop on the elevator and ascend into the clouds until I reach the floor marked legal.

Legal is a cubicle nightmare. Like which cubicle worker to talk to? The one sitting in front of a computer, or one of the other zillion sitting in front of a computer? I stop a young woman with a smart haircut and a smart suit and a smart water bottle and ask for her help. She gives me a blank look, so I cut my losses and figure I'll try legal another day. I leave PluraGen, Glass, and this sleek world of legal drugs and their profit behind for the improbable task of convincing the medical examiner that I'm connected to a nonexistent Dr. Bell.

***

I check my phone as the bus whisks me from King of Prussia back to Philly. Between yesterday afternoon and this morning Jesse has sent three texts and left four voice messages, all begging me to call him back. For a second I consider calling, but then no way. It's not hurt silencing the cell-phone waves. It's not jealousy. It's something far more basic. I'm pissed.

If I hadn't ditched first yesterday, what would Jesse have done? Let me stand on the front steps alone as he and Doc and Tia drove away? Waved good-bye from the Mercedes? The whole thing was embarrassing and stupid, but really, if I think about, it's myself I should be pissed at. I should've known better than to start liking New Boy and to think I could trust him. I'm a fool. A total fool.

***

At ten fifteen, I'm sitting in the waiting area of the medical examiner's building, the same building where Mom was sliced open, her rib cage sawn apart, her tissues cut and examined before she was turned to ash. Sadness, with an atomic mass heavier than plutonium, settles in my chest. I pick up a
People
magazine, hoping that pictures of pregnant movie stars and stories of the rich and famous and their troubles will chase away the heaviness and fill me with a lighter element. The lives of the glamorous are no match for the raw wound of my loss though, so I flip on my iPod.

“Both Sides Now,” a Joni Mitchell tune my mother used to play and sing over and over when she was nostalgic or sad, comes on. The melody is sweet, but the words lonely, a song about illusions and love. That always seemed ironic, how something so sweet could hold so much pain. Those sad Joni Mitchell words are singing in my head when someone taps my shoulder.

I nearly fly out of my skin as I lurch around, thinking for sure it's the Rat Catcher, but when I open my eyes, it's not him.

I yank out my earbuds and drop them around my neck.

“What are
you
doing here?”

Jesse looks taken aback as if it's not totally obvious that I wouldn't want him here after what happened yesterday. “What do you mean what am I doing here? We had a plan, remember?”

“Yeah, well that was before you took off with Doc and your girlfriend to play polo or dine at Chez Five Star or whatever,” I say, shoving my earbuds back in. I'm being a sarcastic bitch, and I know it, but anger drives my mouth.

Jesse says something, but I missed the class on lip reading. I jerk out the earbuds again and glare at him.

“You think we could go outside and talk?” he says.

“No.” I'm about to put my earbuds back in yet again, but Jesse grabs my arm and pulls me to my feet before I have the chance. “Come on, Jesse, my appointment's in ten minutes.”

“This'll take five.”

I wriggle my arm, but he's not letting go. I want to hear what he has to say, though, in the infinitesimally small chance I got it wrong yesterday and Tia is like, what? His cousin? Not that it matters. Still. I let him pull me through the lobby and lead me through the front door.

Only once we're outside and he plants himself firmly on the sidewalk does he let go. He kicks a soda can into the street and watches as it gets flattened under the wheels of a passing car.

“So?” I say, shivering. “Is there something you actually wanted to talk about, or are we just going to stand around and watch traffic because in case there's something wrong with your short-term memory and you forgot I have an appointment in a few minutes.”

Jesse leans against the post of a
street light and fidgets with the string of his sweatshirt. Then, in a voice hardly louder than the breeze, he says, “I just wanted to say sorry I didn't tell you the truth about Tia and I.”

“I'm listening.”

“That's it. I'm sorry.”

“That's it? You're sorry?” I look at a plastic bag tangled around a tree limb like some kind of fungal growth and then look back at Jesse. “You know what I think about sorry? I think sorry is an excuse to do whatever you want and then think you can make up for your behavior with this one tiny word that frankly, without a little more to go on, means nothing.”

In a split second, Jesse goes from cozy herbal tea to high-octane espresso. He springs away from the metal post and starts to pace, short jerky steps—three in one direction, turn, three in the other.

“Okay. Fine. You want more to go on, here it is. Tia's parents and my parents are best friends. I've known her since I was five. Last spring we started going out, then her family moved to New York. She's a senior and she's going to college next year. With the distance and the college thing I didn't think I had to cut it off. I just figured it would end on its own, you know?”

“No.”

Jesse stops in front of me. He throws his hands in the air and looks skyward as if pleading with some deity to make me understand his self-inflicted quandary. “Tia's a great girl. She's pretty and we have fun together, but I'm not in love with her. Going out with her is like going out with my sister—not in some sicko way—but it's like she's family.” His hands flop to his sides, and under his breath he mutters, “She's Doc's dream girl.”

I wait while Jesse studies his feet. When finally he looks up at me, I offer up my biggest smile and say, “Okay, then I have a great idea.”

“What?” he says, a hopeful note in his voice like I might actually solve his problems for him.

“Your dad can go out with her. That should make everyone happy. And then you don't have to live the world's biggest cliché.”

“Funny.”

“I wasn't trying to be. God Jesse. It's your life. Try living it.”

He digs into me with his eyes. “You don't get it,” he says, kicking the curb. “Doc wants me to be someone else. Tia. Harvard. It's all part of his plan. It's impossible to stand up to him.”

“You don't think I understand having to stand up so I can be myself and not someone else's version of who they think I am or want me to be? My whole life is about standing up for myself, Jesse. Most people assume I'm some kind of druggie kid just like my mom, so spare me the ‘I don't get it' crap.”

I'm ready for a good knock-down-drag-out fight, and I arm myself with another verbal punch, but suddenly I realize I'm exhausted. It's his life. Why should I care what he does? I have bigger problems to deal with. Instead of saying anything else or waiting while Jesse comes up with his next line, I turn and start walking back to the medical examiner's building.