So Yesterday (22 page)

"No, you don't. You watch. You analyze. You
follow. That's the part of the pyramid you like the best: the outside, looking
in. But you're afraid to change anything."

I swallowed, the taste of smoke in my mouth like
burned toast. No denials came to my lips because frankly, she was right. I'd
followed her every step of the way here. Whenever I would have given up, she'd
provided the next step. Just as cool hunters have always done, I'd latched
onto Jen's initiative, her dogged pursuit of the weird and terrifying.

And in the end, I hadn't even managed the one thing I
am
good at: watching. I hadn't
noticed us being followed and had let Jen be used by a bunch of stupid purple
heads, leaving her with nothing but ashes.

I remembered sending the picture of her laces to
Mandy—selling Jen out the very first time I'd met her. I was nothing but a
fraud. As I'd found out from the moment we'd left Minnesota, there wasn't
anything cool about me.

I didn't belong with the
Jammers or deserve to be with Jen.

"Okay. I'll get out of
your way." I stood up.

"Hunter..."

"No, I
really
want to get out of your way." I'd never heard my
voice so harsh or felt the lump in my stomach so hard.

I walked away, and even before I reached the alley, I
heard her back at work, picking through the pile.

CHAPTER 34

"DID YOU WASH YOUR HANDS?"

"Yes, I washed my
hands."

My father looked up at me, for
once finding*my tone more disturbing than this morning's terrifying graph.

"Oh, sorry. Of course you
did."

Victory. If only I could have
smiled. After so many years of trying, I had finally managed exactly the right
robotic voice. Toneless, soulless, empty. I knew Dad would never ask me again
if I'd washed my hands.

My anger at Jen, and at
myself, had faded on the way home the night before, turning to something hard
and cold by the time I'd gone to bed. This morning I was a dead thing.

Mom poured me coffee silently.

A solid minute later my father
asked, "Long weekend?"

"Very."

"Still love your hair like
that," Mom said, her voice tipping up at the end, as though she were
asking a question.

"Thanks."

"And those hands don't
look as purple today."

"I wouldn't go that
far." Under the harsh light of my bathroom mirror, I could see that the
dye had faded only a tiny bit. At the current rate of decay, I might be
graduating college with non-purple hands.

"Tell us what's wrong,
Hunter?" Mom asked.

I sighed. They'd probably
already guessed, and I do tell them most things, sooner or later. Might as well
get it over with.

"Jen."

"Oh, I'm so sorry,
Hunter."

"That was fast," Dad added, bringing his
brilliant empirical mind to the matter.

"Yeah, I guess it was." I'd met Jen Thursday
afternoon. It was what? Sunday morning?

Mom put her hand on mine.
"You want to talk about what happened?"

I shrugged, moved my face around, tried out different
sentences in my head, and finally said, "She saw through me."

"Saw through you?"

"Yeah. Straight through." I could still feel
the hole her gaze had left. "Remember when we moved here? When I lost all
my friends?" My confidence, my cool.

"Of course. That was
really hard on you."

"I'm sure it was hard on you guys too. But the
thing is, I don't think I ever got over it. It's like I've been a wimp since
then. And Jen figured me out—I'm too lame to hang with her."

"Lame?" Dad asked.

I found a better word:
"Afraid."

"Afraid? Don't be silly, Hunter." Mom shook
her head at a forkful of eggs. "This is probably something you two can
work out."

"And if you can't," Dad chimed in, "at
least you haven't wasted much time on her."

Mom did a minor coffee spit at this, but I managed to
say the mature thing: "Thank you both for trying to make me feel better.
But please stop now."

They stopped. And went back to saying and doing the
usual, predictable things. Eating breakfast with the parents is always
calming: they follow immutable patterns in that married-couple way, as if
things have always been and will always be the same. They aren't Innovators.
Not at the breakfast table. For one hour every morning they are Classicists of
the best kind, my own Rock Steady Crew.

But after I finished and went back into my room, there
wasn't much to do but sit on the bed, wishing I still had my bangs to hide
behind.

The tiny teams of bottle jerseys were mocking me from
their shelves, so I began a little project. I took the jerseys off the empty
water bottles one by one, entering the vital statistics of each into eBay, then
placing each jersey underneath its own book full of obscure and useless facts,
flattening them for shipment.

It was sad to break up the carefully assembled teams,
but every general manager has to go into rebuilding mode every few years,
sending away the familiar players and starting over with the low draft picks
that losers are guaranteed. Plus if the auction gods were good to me, I might
have the minimum payment for my next credit-card bill by the time it arrived.

When my phone rang, I closed my eyes and took a
breath.
It's
not her,
I
repeated silently a few times, then forced myself to look at the caller ID.

shugrrl.
Mandy.

I should have been glad that she was calling, that she
had escaped the purple heads and was already talking to me again. But the name
made my heart sink a little further. If it was going to be like this every time
the phone rang and it wasn't Jen, my life was going to suck.

"Hi, Mandy."

"Hey, Hunter. Just wanted
to catch up with you."

"Sure."

"First, let me say sorry for missing our meeting
Friday."

I laughed, which hurt because of the cobblestone in my
stomach. So those were the rules: no mentioning the Jammers or the shoes.
Mandy's lost weekend would be our little unspoken secret.

"That's okay, Mandy. I know it wasn't your fault.
I'm just glad you're okay."

"Never better. Actually, I'm up for a
promotion."

I nodded, feeling a little twinge of pain that Jen had
called that one.

"But thanks for your concern. Greg told me you
called. So did Cassandra. In fact,
everyone
told me about how worried you were. I may have seemed
annoyed the last time I saw you, but I won't forget that you came looking for
me."

"No problem, Mandy. Looking for you led to some .
. . interesting adventures." The cobblestone rumbled at the words.

"So I hear. That's the other thing I wanted to
call you about." She paused.

"What's up?"

"Well, there are issues around this weekend,
things we need to let chill for a while. The client doesn't want to get
connected with events at a certain launch party. Certain influential persons
are annoyed, and we have constituency relations to consider."

"Oh." My mind translated slowly, however
straightforward the text: The client didn't want the purple-headed
powers-that-be to know about their deal with the Jammers. Those powers were
very pissed off and would be for a while. "What does that mean,
Mandy?"

"It means that I can't give you any work. Not for
a while, anyway."

"Ah."

I saw it all clearly now: I was the fall guy. The only
person that the
hoi aristoi
could get their purple hands on, the only thread that
might lead to the Jammers. The client would be keeping its distance.

Everyone would.

"I'm really sorry about
this, Hunter. I always liked working with you."

"Me too, with you. Don't
worry about it."

"And you know, these
things don't last forever."

"I know, Mandy. Nothing
does."

"That's the spirit."

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

Five minutes later I was searching my shelves for more
things to sell, and the phone rang again. Again I averted my eyes from the
caller ID.

It's not her, it's not
her....
Maybe ten times would do the
trick.

It was her.

"Uh," I said. (Which
is like "yeah" but much, much less hopeful.)

"Meet me at the park.
Where we first met. Thirty minutes okay?"

"Okay."

CHAPTER 35

"CAN I
TAKE A PICTURE OF YOUR SHOE?"

She lowered the binoculars, turned to me, and smiled.

"I'll have you know these are patented."

I looked down: she'd redone her laces. They were a
deep green now, threaded into a hexagon around the tongue, then knotting up in
the middle, bringing to mind a cat's eye but sideways. Everything else was
standard Logo Exile except for her jacket—sleek, black, and sleeveless, shining
in the sun, oversized.

"Don't worry. My interest isn't
professional," I said.

"Yeah, Mandy called and told me." She looked
down. "Turns out I did get you fired after all. Just took a little longer
than we thought."

"I'll live."

"I'm sorry, Hunter."

So that was why she'd called. She felt guilty. This
was a mercy meeting.

My lips parted, but nothing came out. I wanted to tell
her what I'd realized about the Jammers, but everything I needed to say was too
big to fit in my mouth. Jen waited for a moment, then raised the binoculars to
her eyes again.

"What're you looking at?" I managed.

"The Brooklyn waterfront."

I turned to stare across the river, where a few
features of the navy yard were discernible in the expanse of industrial
buildings, winding highways, and crumbling dock space.

Of course. Jen never gave up.

'"See you at the factory?" I quoted. That's
what Mwadi Wickersham had said after the
hoi aristoi
had broken in, all violet and violent. The Jammers had
been scheduled to relocate on Monday, but with serious forces in motion against
them, why not a day early?

"You figure they'll stay
in Brooklyn?"

"Yeah. I think they
belong in Dumbo."

"It's the cool part of town, I hear." We
stood shoulder to shoulder. "Seen anything interesting?" I asked her.

"You weren't followed, were you?"

"Don't think so. Walked up through Stuyvesant
Town, then back down along the river. Not much cover in Stuy Town."

"Good thinking."

"Roger that."

She smiled, said, "Roger
this," and handed me the binoculars.

They were heavy, military,
camo-printed. Our fingertips touched for a moment.

The waterfront jumped into detail before my eyes,
every quiver of my hands amplified into an earthquake. I steadied my grip,
following a bicyclist along the Brooklyn Promenade.

"What am I looking for?"

"Check out the Domino
Sugar factory."

I swept ahead of the bicycle, everything a blur with
my speed. Then the familiar, long-stained factory walls flashed across my view.
I backtracked, found the unlit neon letters of the name, the diagonal sugar
chute that connected two buildings. Finally, a small, empty lot between the
factory and the river.

"Rental trucks," I said softly. A few
figures moved between the trucks and an open loading dock. "Jen, did you
ever trace the license number of the truck we saw in front of the abandoned
building?"

"Uh, no. Turns out I have no idea how to do
that."

"Me neither. But
...
have you ever seen professional movers wearing all black? In summer?"

"Never. And see how they're parked? All squeezed
up against the wall like that, so you can't see them from the street."

I lowered the binoculars. The trucks were grains of
yellow rice to the naked eye, the human figures no bigger than iron filings
moved by a hidden magnet. "They weren't expecting anyone to be watching
them from Manhattan."

"Yeah, those field glasses were fourteen hundred
bucks. Former Soviet Union military. But the guy said I can return them
tomorrow if I don't like them."

"Jesus, Jen." I handed the binoculars back
very carefully.

She raised them to her eyes, leaned against the
railing, the binoculars' neck strap dangling over the water now. "The
client must have coughed up some serious cash for the shoes. I heard they were
turning those buildings into residential condos. Beautiful Manhattan views at a
million a pop."

"Not all of them, apparently. My guess is that
they've got a TV studio in their part of the factory, an editing suite at
least, and who knows what else. So the Jammers are probably zoned light
industrial."

She smiled. "Postindustrial, you mean."

"Postapocalyptic."

"Not yet. But give them time."

We stood there in silence for a while, Jen following
the movements across the river carefully, me just glad to be there—analyzing
how the Brooklyn waterfront had changed over the years, watching Jen's buzzed hair
ruffle in the wind, liking the way it felt to be beside her, even if this was
as close as we'd get from now on.
j
     

“
How do you like your jacket?''
she said.

"My what?" Then a strobe of recognition flickered in my
brain. I reached out, touching the black, silken surface with its pattern of
tiny fleur-de-lis. It was the lining of my thousand-dollar disaster, now on the
outside.
 
The horrendous rip was gone,
along with the sleeves, the seams re-sewn to pull the jacket's elegant lines
into its new inside-out configuration.

"Whoa."

"Try it on." She slipped out of it.

It fit me as beautifully as it had two nights ago.
Slightly better, as things sometimes do when they're inside out. And this new
jacket— unexpectedly sleeveless, silken ersatz Japanese, and bow-tie resistant—
didn't belong to the non-Hunter; it was all me. "Gorgeous."

"Glad you like it. Took all night."

Her hands felt the seams down the sides, ran across
the breast pocket (originally inside, now out), felt the fit across the
shoulders. Then they slipped around my waist.

"I'm sorry, Hunter."

I breathed out slowly, looking into her green eyes.
Relief flooded through me, as if some terrible test were over. "Me
too."

She looked away. "You weren't the one being a
bitch."

"You were just telling the truth. Possibly in a
bitchy way, but the truth. I watch too much. Think too much."

"It's what you do. And you do it in a really cool
way. I like the stuff in your brain."

 
"Yeah, Jen, but you want to change things—and not
just how people tie their shoes."

 
"So do you." She
turned to look out across the river. "You were just trying to make me feel
better yesterday, pretending the Jammers weren't such a big deal. Weren't
you?"

"Not exactly." I took a deep breath, because
in between crippling bouts of feeling sorry for myself all night, I'd actually
thought about this. "Jen, I'm not sure about the Jammers. I think they
shoot for easy targets. And they take risks with other people's brains. You
can't just go around rewiring people without asking. The moment someone gets
seriously hurt, the whole trickster thing kind of loses its quirky appeal, you
know?"

She thought about this for a moment, then shrugged.
"Maybe. But that just means they need us to help them out. Your analytical
skills, your vast database of useless facts. And my, uh, original thinking or
whatever. We can help them. And they're just so cool."

"I know they are." I remembered my first day
at school here in New York, realizing how far down the pyramid I'd fallen. I
was suddenly a dork; anyone could see from the moment I walked into class. And
I could see in turn who the cool kids were. It was like they were glowing,
bright razors, so sharp that it hurt to look at them. I've been able to spot
the cool kids ever since, no matter how young or old they are.

But since that day, I've never really trusted them.

So why did I trust Jen? I wondered. This was the girl
who'd broken up with me only twelve hours before over
...
a pile of shoes. Or rather hated me because I hadn't stayed
there to help, oblivious to her conviction that if she lost this one chance
with the Jammers, she'd lose her cool again, as easy as tripping over a crack
in the sidewalk.

Which was a nutty thing to believe but very Jen.

Anyway, she'd stopped hating me now.

"Maybe we'd make them even cooler, Hunter."

I looked at her and laughed, knowing that I'd help her
find them. Because Jen thought she needed them, and I needed her. "Sure,
we would."

She looked at the factory.
Shrugged. "I've got a present for you."

"Another one?" I
said.

"The jacket wasn't a
present. It was yours, bought and paid for."

I twinged. "Not paid for
yet, actually."

She smiled and put the binoculars into her backpack
(in their thick, padded, Soviet-era case, I was glad to see). Pulled out a
paper bag. Before she even had it open, I caught a whiff of burned plastic.

"I told you I'd find one. You should have stayed
with me. If I'd had some help, it might not have taken two whole hours."
She unwrapped it carefully as she spoke. "Just one, right at the bottom of
the pile."

My mouth dropped open.

The shoe had remained miraculously untouched by the
heat, the panels still pliable, their silvery, liquid-metal shine unblemished.
The laces ran through my fingers like tendrils of sand. The eyelets glittered,
tiny bicycle spokes spinning in the sunlight.

I'd almost forgotten how good
they were.

"Smells like the fire," Jen said. "But
I stuck a couple of shoe deodorizers in it, and it's already better. Just give
it time."

"I don't care what it
smells like."

I needed this too, I realized. It didn't take much to
rewire Jen. Her brain was something unique, poised to turn ten years old again
at the drop of a paka-paka attack, ready for every rooftop emergency door or
plummeting
j
air shaft or secret revolution. But I hadn't felt this
way in so long—like I could fly or at least dunk from the free-throw line, like
the mortar in my brain was loosening. I took the shoe from her and held on
tightly.

"Still think the Jammers
are so bad?" Jen asked.

I swallowed, looked out over the river at the enemies
of all I held dear, and gave them the Nod.

"They have their
moments."

Chapter 36

I OWNED THE
SHOE FOR ABOUT THREE WEEKS. THEN MY CREDIT-CARD

bill arrived. Drastic action
was required.

"You can always buy a pair when they come
out," Jen assured me.

"Yeah, but not with the real logo." I'd miss
that bar sinister. As a certain French philosopher once said, "Man is the
animal that says no."

But I couldn't say no to a certain credit-card company
whose name is a four-letter word. So we called up Antoine to make sure he was
working that day, said we had something important to show him, and went uptown.

Dr. Jay's, like hip-hop culture itself, appeared in
the Bronx in
1975.
They're still there and now
all over town, selling shoes and tracksuits and all manner of sports gear made
from synthetic materials with names like Supplex and Ultrah, space-age words to
conjure images of robot courtesans.

"My man, Hunter," Antoine said, then gave
Jen the Nod, which probably meant that he remembered what she'd said at the
focus group and thought it had been pretty cool.

He led us to the back, through the good-natured chaos
egged on by the store's awesome sound system: little kids running the carpet to
test fit and feel, guys trying on jerseys to find that perfect length between
waist and knee, reflective rainbows of team logos spinning on their racks.