So Yesterday (15 page)

She didn't respond, her green eyes trained on the
still-frantic images of the cartoon. Had she gotten caught up in the
plot?

 
"Jen?"

She slumped forward, rolling over onto her side.

Her eyelids were fluttering.

Chapter 21

"JEN!"

I jumped off the couch,
scattering clumps of gooey rice. .

"Oh, whoa," Tina
said. "It worked! I never thought it would actually work!"

Jen's eyes were closed, but
the lids shuddered like a sleeper's in a frantic dream. I steadied her head
between my hands.

"Jen? Can you hear
me?"

She moaned, then her hands
went to my arms, grasping them weakly. Her mouth moved, and I bent closer.

"I'm a tapanese
jen-year-old," she said.

"Huh?"

"A Japanese ten-year-old,
I mean."

Her eyes opened. She blinked.

"Hi, Hunter. Whoa. That
was cool."

"That was
not
cool!" I said.

Jen giggled.

"Should I call 911?"
Tina asked, her pet phone in hand. In the adren
aline
rush of the moment, I noticed
quite clearly that it had pink plastic ears on either side of the antenna.

"No, I'm fine." Jen
pulled herself up into my arms until she was sitting again. Her grip on my
shoulders felt weak and shaky.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I feel great, actually." Her voice
dropped to a whisper. "I've got it now. I know what's going on."

"Huh?"

"Just take me home. I'll tell you there."

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

Tina was freaked out, but the shock had definitely
reset her to Tokyo time. She wouldn't be sleeping anytime soon. She and Jen
apologized to each other four or five times ("Sorry I gave you a
seizure!" "Sorry I drooled on your carpet") and then we left.

We walked toward Jen's house, her weight against me,
the night looking very real and solid. After an evening of epilepsy-inducing
flashes, the slow passage of car headlights and measured blinking of Don't Walk
signs seemed as stately as a sunset.

"I feel like such a wimp."

"Don't be silly. It could've happened to
anybody."

"Oh, yeah? I didn't see you getting all drooly
and spastic."

"Well, I wasn't sitting as close as you were. And
I was squinting."

"Cheater."

I shrugged, remembering that I had in fact looked away
at the exact moment of paka-paka. "Anyway, maybe it's a good thing."

"What is?"

"Being a tapanese jen-year-old. Remember what
Tina said: The effect works best on people whose brains aren't fully developed
yet."

"Gee, thanks."

"What I mean is, maybe that's why you're an
Innovator. Because you don't see things the same way as everybody else. You're
like a kid. You rewire your own brain all the time. So a little paka-paka has more
of a chance with you."

She stopped in front of her building, turning to face
me, a broad smile on her lips.

"That's the coolest thing
anyone's ever said to me."

"Well, it's just—"

She kissed me.

Her hands squeezed my shoulders, their strength suddenly
returned, her lips firmly pressed to mine. Her tongue slid across my teeth
before she pulled away. Passing headlights swept across us, and she turned her
head away from them, as if suddenly shy. But the smile still waited on her
lips.

"Remind me to say it again," I said.

"I will." Her hands joined across my back,
pulling me closer.

After a while longer, we went inside.

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

When Jen opened the door to her apartment, we found
her sister sitting at the kitchen table, a flour sifter in her hand giving off
angry puffs of white. Her hair tied back, she wore a Yale sweatshirt with
rolled-up sleeves and running pants, her hands white to the elbow. When she
looked at us, I saw our black-tie finery spark a well-tended annoyance, possibly
that of an older sister who works full-time and lives with a younger sister who
doesn't work at all.

"Hi, Emily."

"Did I say you could borrow my dress?"

Jen sighed, her hand falling from mine. "No,
that's why I left a note."

"Are you okay, Jen? You look like shit."

"Long night. But thanks for saying so."

Emily pursed her lips, looking at my torn sleeve,
Jen's shorn head.

"Back to a buzz cut, huh? Where did you guys go,
anyway?"

"A launch party."

"Are you drunk?"

"No, just tired. Hunter,
this is Emily, my
mother."

 
"Loco parentis.
Nice to meet you,
Hunter."

"Hi."

Jen pulled me toward her room.
"See you later, Emily."

Emily's eyes narrowed.
"Say hi on your way out, Hunter."

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

"Sorry about my
sister," Jen said. "She hates it when I borrow her clothes. Which 1
frequently do."

I glanced at the door, expecting it to swing open at
any moment. I could feel Emily's clock ticking away my time in Jen's room and
wondered what exactly the rules were here. My heart was still beating from the
kiss outside.

Jen followed my gaze. "Don't worry, I'll explain
everything to Emily tomorrow."

"Explain what? How you
needed her prom dress to solve a kidnapping?"

"Hmm. Maybe I'll just buy
her a macaroon pan or something."

"She's already got
one," I said. My head was spinning, exhaustion sinking in.

Jen sighed. "Emily also kind of hates it that I'm
here at all. I mean, she doesn't mind living with me, but it annoys her that I
got to come back to the city when I was sixteen. She didn't get this place
until she was eighteen. She thinks I'm the spoiled one in the family."

I raised one eyebrow.

She swallowed. "That
obvious, huh?"

I shrugged. Anyone who took risks like Jen did was
definitely the spoiled one. For the last seventeen years someone had spent a
lot of effort putting her back on the horse after she'd fallen off. Possibly a
certain older sibling.

I glanced at the door again.
"Maybe I should go."

"I guess." She
flopped down on her bed. "But first let me tell you about my revelation.
When I was spazzing out."

"You didn't see God, did
you?"

"No, I saw Pikachu. But something hit me. I
realized the obvious thing we've been missing out of all these clues."

"Which is?"

"Whoever the anti-client is, they know about a
lot of stuff. But it's a certain
kind
of stuff: Wi-Fi, Japanese
animation, launch parties, cool shoes, the latest magazines, and corporate
branding."

"Yeah. That's the
anti-client in a nutshell."

"So who does that sound
like?"

I sat there for a moment, forcing my brain to work through
exhaustion and paka-paka headache, trying to add up the pieces. The latest
technology, the coolest-ever shoes, the party with the best gift bags, the
secret mind-controlling effects of Japanese pop culture.

Then it came to me in a flash. Not in an epilepsy-inducing
sequence of primary colors, but an old-fashioned monochrome flash of ordinary
Hunter brain insight.

"That sounds like one of
us."

"Yeah, Hunter. That's all
your
stuff, you and your cool pals,
all put together into some kind of twisted marketing plan." "You mean
...
?"

"Yes. Somewhere in this city a cool hunter has
gone haywire." She took my hand. "And it's up to us to stop them, or
the world is doomed."

"Eh?"

"Sorry, I just
had
to say that." She smiled
broadly. "I slay me."

Then she sighed, her eyes
closed, and she tipped backward onto the pillow, suddenly and completely
asleep, a princess from some skinhead fairytale in her scarlet dress and buzz
cut.

I watched her steady breathing for a while, making
sure no epileptic tremors visited her eyes or hands. But she slept as soundly
as an exhausted ten-year-old. Finally I kissed her forehead, lingering for the
vanilla scent of her hair.

Standing shakily, I went into the kitchen, where Emily
sat at the table, still sifting flour.

"I guess I'm headed home.
Nice to meet you, Emily."

She stopped sifting and sighed. "Sorry if I was
kind of rude before, Hunter. I just get sick of playing mom sometimes."

I had a brief vision of what
it would be like to have an Innovator in
I
the family: your little sister
always acting like a weirdo, getting all the attention (negative and positive),
stealing and reconstructing your toys and later on your clothes, and finally,
unexpectedly, turning out much cooler than you. I guessed that could get
annoying.

My own relationship with Jen
was costing an average of just under a thousand dollars a day, so my shrug was
sympathetic. "No problem."

Emily looked at her sister's
closed door. "Is she okay?"

I nodded. "Just tired. It
was a crazy party."

"So I gathered." Her eyes locked onto my
purple hands and narrowed, but she said nothing.

I stuffed them into my pockets. "Yeah, crazy. But
Jen's fine, or will be tomorrow."

"She better be, Hunter.
Good night.

"Good night. Uh, nice to
meet you.

"You already said
that."

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

Walking home, I got a final burst of energy. My lips
were buzzing from the kiss, from the taste of free Noble Savage, and from one
simple realization: purple hands or not, anti-client or not, older sister or
not, I was going to see Jen again tomorrow. She liked me.
Liked
me.

I even had my cell phone back. But with that thought,
I saw again the last gesture of the woman on the museum steps. "Call
me," she'd signaled.

How was I supposed to do that? I pulled out my phone.

Remembering that the bald guy had called my phone in
the meteor room, I checked the incoming numbers. The call was listed and time
stamped, but he'd blocked his ID.

Maybe they'd put something in the phone's memory while
they'd had it. I scrolled through familiar names, looking for anything new.

When I reached Mandy's number, I stopped. They had her
phone now, of course. If I wanted to find them, to find Mandy, I could always
call.

My thumb hovered over the send button, but I was too
exhausted. I ! felt thin and transparent, like chewing gum stretched to
breaking between teeth and fingers. The thought of another encounter with the
anti-client was seizure-inducing.

So for the twentieth time that day I followed Jen's
lead and went home and to bed.

Chapter 22

"DID
YOU WASH YOUR HANDS?"

"Yes, I washed my hands." (For ten solid
minutes. Still purple.)

"I'm glad to
...
Good God, Hunter, your hair!"

Mom and I smiled at each other across the table as
this morning's terrifying graph slipped from Dad's fingers.

"Yeah, I decided to go for a different
look."

He took a breath. "Well, you managed that, all
right."

"And
he was wearing a tuxedo and
bow tie last night," Mom said, then added in a stage whisper, "It's
the new girl."

Dad's mouth closed, and he nodded with the
insufferable expression of a parent who thinks he knows everything. Which I was
glad he didn't.

"I thought you just met her two days ago."

"I did?" I asked. But he was right: I had
known Jen less than forty-eight hours. A sobering thought.

"She's an impact player," I admitted.

"Are your hands purple?" Dad asked as I
poured coffee.

"Retro-punk thing. Plus the dye kills
bacteria."

"You kids," Mom said. "So, what did you
two do last night? You never told me."

"We went to a launch party for this magazine,
then we, um, went and watched videos at Tina's house."

"Oh, what did you
see?"

"'Computer Warrior
Polygon.'" I sipped my first coffee of the day.

"Is Kevin Bacon in
that?"

"Yes, Mom, Kevin Bacon is in that. Oh, wait, no,
he isn't. It's animated and Japanese." I named the franchise.

My father spoke up, disconcertingly looking at my
bleached hair instead of my face. "Aren't those the cartoons that cause
epilepsy?"

I fought my way through this coffee-spitter. "How
did you know about that? Is epilepsy contagious now?"

"Well, in a way it is.
Most of the reactions in that case were sociogenic."

Okay, if there's anything sadder than your dad using
the word
sociogenic
at the breakfast table, it's knowing exactly what he
means.

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

Dad tells this cool story:

There was a garment factory in South Carolina back in
1962.
One Friday one of the workers there got sick and said
she'd been bitten by bugs while handling cloth from England. Then two more
workers had to be hospitalized with fainting and hives. By the next Wednesday
it was an epidemic. Sixty workers on the morning shift fell ill, and the
federal government sent in a team of doctors and bug specialists. They
discovered the following:

1.
There were no poisonous bugs,
from England or anywhere else.

2.
The workers' various symptoms
matched no known illness.

3.
The sickness hadn't affected
everyone on the morning shift, only workers who knew each other personally. It
spread through social groups rather than among people who had worked with the
suspect cloth.

It looked like a scam, but the victims weren't faking.
The disease was sociogenic, the result of a panic. As the rumors of illness
spread, people thought they felt bugs biting them, then a few hours later they
developed symptoms. It really works. Watch this: Bugs on your leg
...
bugs on your back
...
bugs crawling through your hair
...
bugs, bugs, bugs. Okay, do you feel the
bugs now?

I think that you do (or will in a minute or so). Go
ahead, scratch.

The contagion in South Carolina had spread the same
way yawning does, from brain to brain.

So how did they cure this epidemic? Simple. They
fumigated the hell out of the factory, pumping clouds of poison gas into it
right in front of everyone. Real poison gas. Because if you
believe
the imaginary bugs are dead,
they stop biting. Sort of like Tinkerbell
...
but bugs.

And the epidemic was over.

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

"You mean those seizures weren't really
epilepsy?"

"Not most of them, just a few in the
beginning," he said. "From what I read, the number of kids coming
into hospitals started off pretty low. But once the seizures were reported on
the news, the numbers soared. Parents were panicking and freaking out their
children. The kids went to school the next day and of course talked about it on
the playground. Most victims went to the hospital the night
after
the show was broadcast. They
just wanted to go along with the crowd, I guess."

"That makes a lot of sense," I said, casting
my mind back to the party. Maybe Tina was wrong and the anti-client hadn't perfected
the paka-paka to work on everybody. They hadn't needed to. Instead the
mini-seizures had spread like imaginary bugs, leaping from brain to brain. The
Poo-Sham ad had showed actors being dazzled and dumbstruck, a hypnotic
suggestion to act dazed and confused. (Which is what ads are all about, by the
way—getting you to act a certain way.) Maybe only a few people had reacted to
the flashing. Then, like Trendsetters spreading a fad, they'd led everyone else
at the party down the path of bedazzlement.

If a few of us are open to having our brains rewired,
the rest will follow.

"That happens a lot with epidemics," my
father said. "Especially when kids are involved."

"So, is there an epidemic of kids dyeing their
hands purple, Hunter?" Mom asked.

"No, it's just me and Kevin Bacon."

"Really? He doesn't seem very 'punk' to me."

That's right, she said "punk" with quote
marks around it.

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

I was saved from breakfast by a call from Cassandra,
Mandy's roommate or girlfriend.

"Cassandra! Have you heard from Mandy?"

"Yeah, Hunter, she called late last night.
Apparently she had to go out of town at the last minute."

"She
called? From her own
phone?"

"Yes. Why wouldn't she?"

"Uh, how did she
...
I mean, did she sound okay?"

"Well, she sounded kind of stressed, but who
wouldn't, you know? She didn't even have time to pack, so they sent a messenger
to pick up some of her stuff. Anyway, after I got your message, I thought I'd
call and tell you. Mandy said her phone doesn't always work out there."

"Out where?"

"Somewhere in Jersey, I think."

I drummed my fingers, wondering if I should say
anything that might freak Cassandra out, but decided not to needlessly spread
my possibly imaginary bugs to her.

"Did she mention how long she'd be gone?"

"Not exactly. She just said to pack for a couple
of days. You can always try to call her."

I bit my lip. That's what they wanted.

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

Jen met me at the place with musty couches and strong
coffee. She looked much better after a night of post-seizure sleep. In fact,
she looked fabulous. Her buzz cut surprised me all over again, my mental image
of her having slipped back to long hair overnight. She hesitated for a moment
in the doorway, bracelet flickering, then grinned when she spotted me at our
usual couch.

I stood up as she crossed the room, and then her arms
were around me.

"Hi, Hunter. Sorry I passed out on you."

"It's okay." I sat her down and got coffee,
looking back over my shoulder as I waited for the barista to pour, just to make
sure Jen was still there, still smiling at me like,
Yeah,
I
kissed
you
last
night.

The coffees came, and I carried them back.

When Jen had heard about my call from Cassandra, we
agreed it had given us exactly zero new information. All it meant was that the
anti-client had somehow convinced Mandy to cover their tracks and that the cops
weren't going to be helping us anytime soon.

"So, I've got a theory," Jen said.

"Another vision?"

She shook her head, playing with her Wi-Fi bracelet,
which was twinkling in the heavy wireless traffic in the coffee shop as all
around us people deleted spam, downloaded music, and asked the world's most
powerful communication system to find them pictures of blond tennis players.

"Just normal brain activity, I'm happy to say.
And some tinkering: this morning I took my Poo-Sham camera apart. I was right.
When you take a picture, it sends a copy of the image to the nearest Wi-Fi
hub."

"But why?"