“Could you just open the door, please?” I clicked the autolock dangling from her bandaged finger. The hatchback popped. I grabbed my backpack, dropped my board and kicked off on legs that would have been a lot wobblier if I weren’t so mad at myself, at Nicole, for bringing me down here, into her pain, looking for a shoulder to cry on. Like I didn’t have enough hassle in my life without pulling hers into it. She tried to follow me, but I rode into the shoulder of oncoming traffic and lost her in the side streets. My phone rang. I turned it off. I went to Barnes amp; Noble but was too mad to read. I wandered the mall, hitting the electronics spots, first Radio Shack, Best Buy, moving my way up to the Apple Store, coveting things I’d never be able to afford.
EIGHTEEN
From Nicole’s journal:
Fri, 22 Oct-
I lost his friendship before I ever had it.
Mom’s pissed I went riding, says she’s thinking about not letting me leave the house until Nye clears me for “public interaction.” Exact opposite of what Dr. Schmidt said, that I should be getting out there, getting back to normal, getting my life back.
David left me six apology messages today, extremely annoying, probably as annoying as the six I left Jay tonight. That forced look in David’s eyes. I can’t bear it again. Staring too hard at me, pretending he doesn’t see the bandage when all he’s thinking about is what’s underneath it. I should show him. How would he look at me then? He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t be able to.
Emma’s still sick.
Xanax time, two bullets tonight, with Mom’s blessing.
I hate myself.
NINETEEN
My father was out when I got home, no message as to his whereabouts. He had probably covered an opening and was grabbing a late dinner with the gallery owners at some fancy place on their dime.
I forced myself to take my meds. I had grabbed a can of soup on my way home and a loaf advertised as “Health Bread” that was suspiciously spongy. After I got that stuff into me, I took a hot shower. I was still mad. I’d spent an hour with Nicole the day before, walking her home. I’d spent two hours with her this afternoon. In those three hours, she was happy to tell me her problems, but she hadn’t asked me much about mine. Did it occur to her I might be as messed up as she was? Then again, I still had my face.
To torture myself, I logged into my YouTube channel, searched “epileptic seizure in public.” Sure enough, somebody had clipped me at the stables. There I was, flailing in the dust. Just like before, most of the kids watching me seize were at least concerned, but others were out there with their phones. One girl was snickering. I was on my side, riding an invisible bicycle. Then there was Nicole.
She pushed them back. One kid stuffed a bunched lunch bag into my mouth. Nicole pulled the paper out. The kid protested, “So he doesn’t bite his tongue.”
“No,” Nicole said. She knew exactly what to do, the only thing you’re supposed to do when somebody seizes: Just keep him clear of anything he might smash his hands, legs, head on and let him get through it. But Nicole Castro did more than that for me. She smacked the phones from the hands of the kids who were clipping me. “How dare you?” she kept saying. “How
I paused the video there and reached for my phone. I had to thank her, to apologize for being an idiot, jilting her at the stables. I hesitated. It was two in the morning. I had doubled down on my anticonvulsant meds. I had enough trouble not saying anything stupid when I wasn’t looped. I put the phone down.
I didn’t have to think about it for very long before I decided to commit to it, no matter what. I was going to catch the son of a bitch who burned Nicole Castro. I pulled up the two emails I’d ripped from Mrs. Marks’s hard drive, the ones Arachnomorph sent her from an unknowable origin, and I got to work.
TWENTY
The next morning, Saturday, just before sunrise, I heard my father pull his suitcase from his closet. He was headed to Philadelphia for a fine arts conference. I had the place to myself for the weekend, right through to the next. I waited until he was gone before I got out of bed. I burned myself some toast and scanned the so-called news sites for bits about Nicole. The “New Beau” garbage was still out there, but it had fallen lower in the most- read story rankings. Why weren’t the detectives all over this thing? A girl gets burned, and they’re not worried the perp is going to attack again?
Before I left the apartment to log a double shift at BJ’s I tapped out an email to Nicole:
Perfect: non-stalkerish, leaves the door open for her to reply.
Work was busy with people lining up to save money on Halloween crap, five-pounder sacks of Three Musketeers, pumpkin lanterns big enough to pass for parade floats. I was too beat to skateboard home and grabbed the Access-A-Ride bus. Another rider gave me a dirty look. Nobody suspects you for an epileptic until you seize. I wondered if Nicole had been issued a bus pass.
When I got into the apartment, I took a few seconds to relish the fact that I wouldn’t have to deal with my father for a whole week. I cranked up a playlist of alternative rock that was heavy on Pearl Jam. Nicole’s suggestion of The Smiths had me digging through my father’s CDs. His collection was vast: classical, jazz, a ton of rock, five albums that featured Tuvinian throat singers. I found a Smiths compilation disc and added it to my mix. They were good. “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” ended too abruptly, though, or maybe that was the point. I cracked a Red Bull and then my backup laptop, which wasn’t really a backup. From the outside it seemed to be an antiquated Dell, the same open-box special with the scratched screen my mother got for me when I was in fourth grade. But I had modified it. Actually, I’d gutted it. The transplants were Mac turbo. I built my computers piecemeal from parts picked up at swap meets and shady discount stores in the city. I always paid in cash, so my machine ID was as untraceable as my IP address, which was changing all the time. I never used Ethernet or any other type of cable-based communication, sponging off my neighbors’ wireless instead. I had snaked fencing wire up and down the underside of the fire escape outside my window, hiding it in the wild ivy that covered the side of the building. This six-story antenna grabbed signals from three miles away. My computer had thousands of wireless networks to choose from. I’d programmed it to switch accounts every ninety seconds. Whether or not those networks were locked didn’t matter. Cracking a laptop firewall is ridiculously easy, pure script kiddie stuff. I’d tell you how to do it to save you the trouble of downloading what you need from The Pirate Bay, but then you’d do it, and you shouldn’t unless you have a good reason, and you don’t. I did.
My main thing back then was outing the bullies at my school. Once in a while I’d leak stuff about phishing scams. Presently my focus was tracking down Arachnomorph before he struck again. I admit it: I was crushing on Nicole. Not that I expected she would like me back, not romantically anyway, but that was fine. Sometimes a crush is better when it’s a one-way, as long as you keep quiet about it and don’t freak the girl out with creepy leering or unsolicited corny texts or whatever.
I typed “www.njclarion.com.” They were running what I had been leaking since the night before, the two emails Arachnomorph sent to Marks, the ones I had scooped from that poorly guarded brandywine_hollows_hs.nj.edu server. The link was near the bottom of the Local News section, the eighth click
