Watching her pack was impressive. She was ruthless about it all. It was also freaky — it made me realize that the next day, I was going to go away. Maybe for a long time. Maybe forever.
“Do I bring my Xbox?” she asked. “I’ve got a ton of stuff on the hard-drive, notes and sketches and email. I wouldn’t want it to fall into the wrong hands.”
“It’s all encrypted,” I said. “That’s standard with ParanoidXbox. But leave the Xbox behind, there’ll be plenty of them in LA. Just create a Pirate Party account and email an image of your hard-drive to yourself. I’m going to do the same when I get home.”
She did so, and queued up the email. It was going to take a couple hours for all the data to squeeze through her neighbor’s WiFi network and wing its way to Sweden.
Then she closed the flap on the bag and tightened the compression straps. She had something the size of a soccer-ball slung over her back now, and I stared admiringly at it. She could walk down the street with that under her shoulder and no one would look twice — she looked like she was on her way to school.
“One more thing,” she said, and went to her bedside table and took out the condoms. She took the strips of rubbers out of the box and opened the bag and stuck them inside, then gave me a slap on the ass.
“Now what?” I said.
“Now we go to your place and do your stuff. It’s time I met your parents, no?”
She left the bag amid the piles of clothes and junk all over the floor. She was ready to turn her back on all of it, walk away, just to be with me. Just to support the cause. It made me feel brave, too.
Mom was already home when I got there. She had her laptop open on the kitchen table and was answering email while talking into a headset connected to it, helping some poor Yorkshireman and his family acclimate to living in Louisiana.
I came through the door and Ange followed, grinning like mad, but holding my hand so tight I could feel the bones grinding together. I didn’t know what she was so worried about. It wasn’t like she was going to end up spending a lot of time hanging around with my parents after this, even if it went badly.
Mom hung up on the Yorkshireman when we got in.
“Hello, Marcus,” she said, giving me a kiss on the cheek. “And who is this?”
“Mom, meet Ange. Ange, this is my Mom, Lillian.” Mom stood up and gave Ange a hug.
“It’s very good to meet you, darling,” she said, looking her over from top to bottom. Ange looked pretty acceptable, I think. She dressed well, and low-key, and you could tell how smart she was just by looking at her.
“A pleasure to meet you, Mrs Yallow,” she said. She sounded very confident and self-assured. Much better than I had when I’d met her mom.
“It’s Lillian, love,” she said. She was taking in every detail. “Are you staying for dinner?”
“I’d love that,” she said.
“Do you eat meat?” Mom’s pretty acclimated to living in California.
“I eat anything that doesn’t eat me first,” she said.
“She’s a hot-sauce junkie,” I said. “You could serve her old tires and she’d eat ‘em if she could smother them in salsa.”
Ange socked me gently in the shoulder.
“I was going to order Thai,” Mom said. “I’ll add a couple of their five-chili dishes to the order.”
Ange thanked her politely and Mom bustled around the kitchen, getting us glasses of juice and a plate of biscuits and asking three times if we wanted any tea. I squirmed a little.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said. “We’re going to go upstairs for a while.”
Mom’s eyes narrowed for a second, then she smiled again. “Of course,” she said. “Your father will be home in an hour, we’ll eat then.”
I had my vampire stuff all stashed in the back of my closet. I let Ange sort through it while I went through my clothes. I was only going as far as LA. They had stores there, all the clothing I could need. I just needed to get together three or four favorite tees and a favorite pair of jeans, a tube of deodorant, a roll of dental floss.
“Money!” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “I was going to clean out my bank account on the way home at an ATM. I’ve got maybe five hundred saved up.”
“Really?”
“What am I going to spend it on?” she said. “Ever since the Xnet, I haven’t had to even pay any service charges.”
“I think I’ve got three hundred or so.”
“Well, there you go. Grab it on the way to Civic Center in the morning.”
I had a big book-bag I used when I was hauling lots of gear around town. It was less conspicuous than my camping pack. Ange went through my piles mercilessly and culled them down to her favorites.
Once it was packed and under my bed, we both sat down.
“We’re going to have to get up really early tomorrow,” she said.
“Yeah, big day.”
