Immoral Code Page 12

  She’d nodded. “Exactly.”

  The breeze had picked up, blowing in the sea-soaked air from the water. “What would’ve happened if you hadn’t kissed me?” I’d asked. “If you’d made one of the other decisions.”

  She’d taken a deep breath. “I’d have left for college in the fall regretting not being brave enough to kiss you.”

  I’d smiled, though she couldn’t see me. There was no version of any future in which I would’ve let Bellamy leave for MIT without telling her how I felt, even if it was a risk to our friendship, even if she hadn’t felt the same. I knew that now. And maybe she’d have argued that having it happen was what made me know, that every choice is the result of the series of choices made before it, but I believe that some things are inevitable, no matter the path that leads there. I believed that we were inevitable. “Then what?”

  “Then, I don’t know. The same as before?”

  “Except maybe in that future, five years from now, I’d come home for a visit at the same time as you. And I’d call you or send you a brain ping using the minicomputer embedded in my cerebral cortex”—she’d laughed and squeezed my hand inside my coat—“so we could meet up. I’d come to your door, five years older.”

  “And weighted down with Olympic medals.”

  I’d smiled. “Of course. Because I’ll wear them everywhere I go.”

  “I mean, why wouldn’t you?”

  “And you’d open the door to your mom’s apartment, wearing an MIT sweatshirt, hair up in a knot, five years more amazing, five years more brilliant, and say something like ‘Santiago! Why the hunchback?’ ”

  She’d giggled. “No, I’d say, ‘Hi, San, I missed you most.’ ” Then she’d turned her face to mine and, voice low, little more than a whisper, said, “But I won’t have to say that. We made the other choice.”

  Packing away the food and dousing the remaining coals before tucking ourselves into our sleeping bags in the tent, we’d decided to keep our night to ourselves, let it settle before we told the others, maybe till after Friday, maybe longer. It felt nice to keep this feeling, this change, only ours.

  In the car, she squeezed my hand and let go. Before my fingers lost the feel of hers, the front passenger door opened and Nari said, “Okay, team. We’re all checked in.”

  NARI

  Practice Makes Perfect

  “Um,” Reese said, stepping into the hotel room aka Heist Headquarters and our home for the next three days.

  “I’ll second that um,” Santiago said. He dumped his armload of cooler and garment bag onto the nearer of the two beds before slinging his backpack off onto the pile. The beds’ thin polyester comforters wore a faded floral print to match the walls’ faded wallpaper and the floor’s faded carpet, like the whole room was a picture with the saturation setting turned down low.

  “Welcome to two stars,” I said. I admit! I concede! The room was shit. Like, don’t go barefoot on the carpet, and sleep in your clothes shit. But, damn, do you have any idea how flipping expensive San Fran is? And my first-class, suave-criminal fantasy of a high-rise suite–slash–command center would’ve required a larger slip of morality than I figured Keag could handle, so. “At least I sprang for a private bathroom.”

  “Thanks?” Reese said. “Sure, I’ll go with ‘thanks.’ ”

  I elbowed her in the ribs. “Ingrate.”

  Bells and Keagan followed San into the room and dropped the rest of our gear onto the second bed. Its frame squeaked under the weight, less because it was a lot of weight and more because it was a shitty frame. Though also we had a lot of crap. Especially since, after finding an elusive nonmetered twenty-four-hour parking spot many blocks away, we’d vowed to make the trek back exactly once and hauled everything we needed plus some in from the car.

  “Good location,” Bells said, ever pragmatic.

  “Yep,” I said. “Walking distance to FI. Plus they didn’t make me leave a credit card to reserve the room. No extra fraud and/or identity theft needed.”

  “Perks,” Keag said. Well, muttered. He muttered it. The distinction felt important.

  “Well.” Reese closed the door, nose wrinkled against the room’s admittedly twisty smell. “Now what?”

  I opened my mouth to answer, but San beat me to it. “Practice,” he said. “No one does a perfect dive on the first try.”

  “Precisely, Santos.” I held my hand up for a high five. He obliged. And we got to work. Reese organized the rest of our food into the ancient mini-fridge and atop the equally ancient microwave stacked on it. Bellamy arranged everyone’s bags into the tiny closet next to the bathroom. Keag and Santiago went searching for fresh food at a shop down the block. And I set up my computer and files of research on the room’s small desk, pulling it away from the wall so we could all crowd around. I did my thing, settling into my d0l0s skin, triple-checking that my IP was masked, and worming my way into Foster Innovations’ surveillance system. By the time the boys came back, I’d cracked it and had three video windows (main lobby, FI executive floor lobby, and one angle of the exec floor itself) open on my screen.

  “Gather round, gather round,” I said as San shut and locked the door behind him, “and let Operation Hole Up and Obsessively Prepare commence.”

  Turned out, after about four hours watching people walk through the lobby and halls of FI’s building while contemplating eventualities ranging from the plausible (Bellamy: “What if they lock the main doors to the Foster Innovations executive floor and San can’t even get inside?” To which San answered, “We’ll have to time it just right, so almost but not everyone is gone”) to the absurd (Reese: “What if one of the security guards hits a silent alarm and SWAT comes pouring into the lobby, aiming the sights of their weapons at me all at once like neon polka dots, and I have to do a triple backflip over their heads and out a shattered window to escape?” To which the rest of us groaned), we were all deliriously bored.

  By 6:42, when the last of the FI executives exited the twelfth-floor office suite (leaving the main doors, thankfully, unlocked behind her), a solid twenty-two minutes after Robert Foster left, the room and everything in it felt stale. Maybe it was the lingering campfire smoke in our hair, on our clothes. Or maybe it was the musty blankets on the beds, the dingy carpet, or the fact that the room’s windows didn’t open and the air conditioner set into the exterior wall pumped out what smelled like pre-breathed air. But everything felt dank.

  I stood up and moved away from the table to stretch. Keagan, who’d been sitting cross-legged on the bed to watch the screen over my shoulder, took my place in the room’s only chair. Bellamy and Santiago (San and Bells! Santiallamy! Belltiago! Please oh please, let it be for real! I mean, I didn’t know know. But there was closeness! And capital-L Looks!), sitting side by side on the other bed, watched him switch between windows. Reese, who’d been studying blueprints as we plotted San’s best possible route alongside the video feed, stood from her perch on one of the bedside tables we’d cleared off and dragged over. She cracked her neck and turned to kick the air-conditioning unit. Again. It hiccupped once, then continued its arrhythmic chugging. “Do you think they’ll charge us if I break a window? Isn’t this a fire hazard? Against some code or something?”

  “Yes, yes, and probably,” I answered, stretching up onto my toes with my arms above my head. I could smell campfire in my hair and was about to escape into the bathroom for a shower when Keagan huffed and shoved away from his seat in front of my computer.

  “What?” I asked.

  He shook his head and pretended to study our stockpile of food.

  “No. Say it.”

  “It’s just—” He shrugged, but it was fake. All pretense, no actual apathy. “They’re people. We keep saying ‘Foster Innovations.’ FI, FI, FI. But watching that—” He waved a hand at my computer. “They’re people. Employees. And not just Bells’s dad or the
other execs. They’re interns and guards and that guy at the front desk.”

  The four of us watched him. Well, three, since Bells was looking at the floor. “Meaning?” I asked.

  “We keep acting like this is a victimless crime. Or, well, one victim? Justice or whatever. I don’t even know. But then there’s Joe Whoever in accounting and Jane Whatsit at the bank. Real people. Who might get blamed or fired or…” He trailed off with another affected shrug.

  “Only if we get caught,” Reese said.

  “No. If the discrepancy gets caught,” I said. “Which it won’t. Because I know what I’m doing.”

  I waited for Keagan to challenge me. I almost wanted him to. Rip off the Band-Aid. Get this over with. But he didn’t. Instead he took a deep breath and smoothed the anger from his face, leaving a blankness where it’d been, then brushed past me into the bathroom, where a second later the fan came on and the shower started.

  Coward, I thought. Yeah, I know, real mature, Narioka Diane. But seriously. Like we were pushing an old lady over in the grocery store parking lot to take the money out of her purse while she cried. Like we were stealing Christmas gifts from an orphanage, then lighting their tree on fire. Okay, that was a tad over the top. But it wasn’t so freaking black-and-white!

  “Anyone hungry?” San asked. “I’m hungry.”

  Reese turned away from the air conditioner. “Smooth segue, Santiago. Also, yes.”

  “I’ll go look for ice,” I said, and ducked out into the hall.

  The hallway was dimly lit. The floorboards creaked, old wood beneath thin carpet. I walked toward the stairwell, then leaned against one of the floral-papered walls. I didn’t even know if this place had an ice machine. That, and I hadn’t brought the ice bucket. Was there an ice bucket? I probably should’ve just said, “Keag’s shit makes this room feel impossibly small, so I’m gonna check out the hall for a bit,” instead of the ice thing. That would’ve been more in keeping with Reese’s we’re-all-in-this-together, full-disclosure request.

  Except. Well. Were we?

  Keagan was like dead weight. Here, but not here. With us but against us. And because we’re a We, it felt like he was mostly my weight. Slack arms thrown over my shoulders. Limp body draped on my back. Waiting for me to drag him along. And I was getting tired of dragging.

  Because you know what? I’m amazing. (Yes, confidence is one of my strong suits.) All of this was. The whole Thing. And I’d done it. I wrote the codes. I did the phishing. I hacked into FI’s security system. And I was proud. Was it weird to feel proud about swimming deftly, elegantly, through this sea of moral grayness? Maybe. I guess I didn’t know. I knew the thing with Keagan sucked. But I also knew I didn’t feel guilty about the things he thought I should feel guilty about.

  The door to our room opened. Bellamy came out and walked toward me down the hall. Saying nothing, she leaned against the wall beside me, slid her arm around mine, and set her head on my shoulder. I rested my head against hers.

  And that was—is—why. Why I was proud instead of guilty. Why the reward so outweighed the risk. Robert Foster had stolen the opportunity of a lifetime from Bellamy, and I had zero qualms stealing it back.

  KEAGAN

  How Many Wrongs Does It Take to Make a Right?

  So there’s this thing called Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development. Lawrence Kohlberg was a psychologist who basically furthered this other, earlier psychologist’s theory of cognitive development by saying that moral reasoning, as in how you decide what’s right and wrong, has six stages of development. Or, really, three levels with two stages each. He did a bunch of studies and whatnot to prove and clarify his theory, but the nitty-gritty of it is that as you grow from a child to an adult, you (should) progress from the first, preconventional stages, the cause and effect, action and consequence, obedience and punishment stages, to the “I’ll do this for you, you do this for me” smaller group stage, to the conventional stages that consider things like society and laws and norms and the general consensus about right and wrong we all must (again, should) accept, semiregardless of consequences, because that’s how we all manage to semipeacefully and semiproductively coexist.

  Whew. Inhale.

  Anyway!

  All that mess is really just a buildup for this: I care. I care about being ethical and moral and right. Not right as in “I’m right, you’re wrong,” but as in Right versus Wrong. As in Good versus Evil. As in I want to be a six, six being the highest stage, where you move beyond the duality of right and wrong as society defines them and into a more abstract sort of reasoning. There’s debate about whether more than a few people are even capable of reaching stage six. But goodness is important to me. Like, really important. And not just in a don’t-go-to-jail way, but in a be-the-change way.

  Which I realize is complicated, right? Because helping Bellamy, I mean, breaking laws to help Bellamy, not myself or even Nari or my parents or something, could’ve been that exact sort of morality. But, then, that wasn’t taking into consideration everything else.

  For hours we watched everyday people doing their everyday things on those FI security camera feeds. And, like, they were all just people. As much as Nari or San or Reese or Bellamy or me. Each one of them—a pair coming back from lunch, some lady in workout clothes headed to the in-building gym, another rubbing her creased forehead while she paced the lobby alternately listening to and talking into her phone—was in the middle of their own universe.

  And say Nari was wrong. Say she made some mistake and the “discrepancy” was found out. Not even the how. Not even that we did it. Just that it was there. What if one of those people we watched going about their own business, totally unaware, ended up being seen as responsible? What if they lost their job? What if it looked like they did it? Not just that they were negligent but culpable. What if they were charged?

  It was so self-centered to forget that, so selfish to not care.

  And that was only when we cast the net wide. But what about a little net? What about just, like, the five of us? What about the very real possibility that this could completely ruin all of our lives, right? RIGHT?

  But nope. Couldn’t talk about that, could we? Couldn’t even brush up against it. Because then it was all “Keagan doesn’t think Bells is worth it!” and “Keag’s too naive to see the nuance.” The freaking nuance. Like this wasn’t all some batshit Machiavellian ends-justify-the-means, narrow-minded, wish-fulfillment disaster waiting to happen but rather an adventure! The right thing to do. And I was just a wah-wah wet-blanket whatever.

  Okay. Deep breath.

  But really. Of course Bellamy’s worth it! But I also thought, nay believed, way deep down inside my squishy pink heart, that there was. Another. Damn. Way.

  There was. There were.

  Ways like calling Robert Foster again. Or Bells deferring for a year and trying again after she’s eighteen and on her own. Or disowning Foster or him disowning her or something, cutting each and every legal tie. Or, like, freaking contacting MIT and, I don’t know, explaining the extenuating circumstances? Life is messy! Shit happens! People understand!

  But, they kept telling me, none of that was the point.

  To which I should’ve said, When does the point stop being justice and start being revenge?

  Ugh.

  Wholeheartedly, ugh. I even said it out loud in the shower. Some days, like today and yesterday and the day before and, okay, yeah, most of the days between today and that day at Bellamy’s when Nari introduced us to this grand scheme, I felt like the odd man out. And not because I was the solitary “Um, how about no?” among four emphatic yeses. But because I was the only one who, apparently, didn’t get it. Because I was the only one who didn’t have some epic Thing I’d do anything for.

  Until all of this, I hadn’t really felt it. But now it was like I was missing the extra limb all my friends had. San
had his diving appendage. Bellamy her astronaut one. Reese her art. Nari’s was coding and ruling the universe. While there was me, Keagan, with the average number of protuberances (seven points), the standard number of bodily accessories. Bodily accessories? Yeah, that’s totally on the brink of gross.

  Anyway. There I was, feeling like an acceptably average, reasonably complete person, albeit one with rather extraordinary friends, friends I’m so wildly proud of by the way, when here came this Thing drawing a line between us. On one side were the special people, the ones with goals and hopes and plans, with dreams they’d claw and scratch and write illegal code for. While on the other side was me. Basic, undecided me. Me, who thinks about a life spent working for someone ordinary, doing something ordinary, and feels…honestly? Pretty okay with it. But even feeling “pretty okay” started to feel “less than okay.” Like I should want more even though I really don’t. Like not wanting more meant there was something wrong with me. Like I was deficient.

  Which, again, ugh, because I know my friends don’t think that about me. At least, I didn’t think they did. But knowing that didn’t make me feel it less.

  Wow, I mouthed, and turned off the shower. Enough of that. I grabbed a towel from the stack, dried off, and re-dressed in my camping clothes because in my hurry to avoid finishing the conversation I’d started with Nari, I’d forgotten to grab new ones.

  Out in the room, San and Reese were making sandwiches for dinner. Bellamy and Nari weren’t there. Santiago, spreading mayo on slices of bread, looked up and asked, “Mustard?”

  “As in ‘did the shower cut the—’?”

  He rolled his eyes and went back to spreading. “That one’s too inane even for me to appreciate.”

  “Cutting the mustard?” Reese asked.

  He nodded.

  “Like a seed? Or the spread?” She cocked her head to the side. “Can you cut either of those things?”