Immoral Code Read online

Nari inhaled deeply through her nose and started talking.

  An hour later, the blueprints were marked with notes, and the tabletop was strewn with papers. “Aannndddd…” Keagan raised his hand behind his back and swung his arm over and down toward the table. “Break!”

  But no one even breathed a laugh. The mood was thundercloud gray, the kind that was tinged a little green and might turn into a tornado.

  “It’s so simple,” Santiago said.

  “Too simple,” I agreed. Yeah, there were the radios and a fake identity for the bank account all that skimmed money would go into first. I’d helped Bells and Nari set it up by, well, watching them do it. And suggesting names, though Penelope McTittles shockingly didn’t make the cut. There were also the fake IDs I’d designed, though they weren’t part of the plan. And San’s employee ID. But yeah. A wig, a bottle of fake blood, an employee ID, a malware-loaded flash drive, a wealth of knowledge about the inner workings of FI that we hoped we wouldn’t have to use, ourselves, and…that was pretty much it. “No ropes? No glass cutters or industrial magnets or infrared? I mean, we deserve a grappling hook! Prosthetics! A voice distorter at least!”

  Still no laughs, and Nari didn’t even smile. “Simple is good,” she said seriously. “The simpler it is, the fewer chances there’ll be to screw it up.”

  “And if we do?” Keag asked, wearing that weirdly flat expression he practiced these days while performing his okayness. “Screw up?”

  “Then”—Nari shrugged—“we improvise.”

  I glanced at Bellamy, waiting for her to fix the tension, even though Bells wasn’t exactly an emotional fixer, or at least, I don’t know, to say something, anything really. But she only frowned at the table, then abruptly stood up, walked back to her bedroom, and closed the door. Saying nothing, barely exchanging looks lest we twist that thundercloud into a funnel, the rest of us packed up the mess and left.

  Classic clock wipe to twenty-odd minutes later at my house, where my mom and dad both were at the same time for the first time in…I don’t even know. Weeks. At least three or four.

  I walked through the back door into the kitchen to find them sitting at the counter, talking, voices low. When they saw me, they stopped.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked my mom.

  “Reese—” my dad started.

  “I came by to see you. And to get a few more of my things.”

  “Like Dad’s dignity and my sense of stability? You already have those.”

  She sighed. “No. But thank you, as always, for the hyperbole, Reese. I’m here for the rest of my clothes and to talk with your dad about taking some of the furniture. I found an apartment.”

  I slipped my boots off and started across the kitchen toward the hall and my room, giving her a thumbs-up as I passed. “Rad.”

  “Reese,” my dad said. I stopped but didn’t turn. He moved past me. Squeezing my shoulder, he said, “Talk to your mom. And try to remember that we raised you with manners,” then left.

  Another of the things I didn’t get? His calm. I mean, my dad was almost always calm. A tranquil seafoam green. Infuriatingly calm, my mom had called it, screeched it, on several occasions. Like a fucking brick wall! Though I’m not sure if a brick wall is actually capable of being “calm.” Reticent? Stoic? Impassive? Sure. But calm?

  Maybe his guts were really an emotion pyre, a small, self-contained inferno devouring his anger and hurt, turning them to tiny piles of digestible ash. Or maybe he was mashing it all down inside and someday he’d snap.

  I preferred a more direct approach: obscenities and pillow screaming.

  “Reese,” my mom said behind me. “Please.”

  Please. Except the way she said it didn’t sound like an entreaty. More a demand.

  I took a deep breath, stretched a semimaniacal smile across my face, and turned. “Yes, mother dearest?”

  She sighed again. “Just how long are you planning to keep this up?”

  “Keep what up? Hating you?”

  She twisted on the stool to face me straight on, as I still stood halfway toward the hall. She’d curled her hair and pulled half back with a barrette I’d given her for Mother’s Day when I was fourteen. Subtle, Mom. Reeeal subtle. “I understand why you feel like you need to hate me.”

  I clenched my teeth and took a deep breath. Looking at my mom was like staring into a pit of the deepest black. But not black like a void. Black like the dark beyond the edge of the world, a dark lurking with beasts and ghouls.

  Okay, yeah, I like hyperbole.

  “But you have to stop doing this,” she said.

  “Doing what, exactly?”

  “Leaving whenever you feel like it, doing whatever you want. Acting as though you have no one to answer to and will suffer no consequences.”

  “I’m sorry, but this is beginning to sound like a lecture, and I’m not sure you’re qualified. Not since your moral high ground vanished down that Huge Cheater sinkhole.”

  “Hey.”

  “Are you denying it?”

  “No. Reese. But you have to stop—”

  “I have to stop?” I shook my head, disgusted, thinking of approximately 813 horrible things to say. Instead, I turned to go.

  “You have a room,” my mom called.

  I paused.

  “At my new apartment. You have a room there. I got you a bed. And a dresser. Something refurbished from a flea market, very colorful, mostly purple. I think you’ll like—”

  “No thanks,” I interrupted, thinking ice, thinking I’ll show you a brick wall. “Bye now. I have to pack.”

  KEAGAN

  Sunday, March 24

  5 Days

  I pulled into a parking spot at Bellamy’s apartment complex, killed the engine, collected our pizza from the passenger seat, and walked up the stairs to her apartment. Pepperoni, pineapple, and mushroom. Made wrong, clearly. Gross but also free. Perks of being a delivery boy. Is that PC? Pizza Delivery Young Man. Sexist? Pizza Delivery Young Person. Ageist? Pizza Delivery Human. There. Got it.

  I knocked once and Bells opened the door.

  “ ’Sup,” I said.

  “Hey.”

  She closed and locked the door behind me. It was elevenish. Her mom was still at work. I hadn’t been home. Mostly because near the end of my shift my mom had texted me emojis of a key, a door, that guy with his arms crossed in front of his face and chest like “NO,” and the couple side-kissing with the pink heart in between, which either meant “don’t forget to lock the door to keep the kissing neighbors out” or “we’re having special parent time,” so yeah….Ever washed a water bottle by pouring in a little hot water and dish soap and shaking it up till it foams all thick and spills out the top when you unscrew the cap? I needed that for the inside of my skull.

  Anyway, this was a thing we did, Bellamy and me. She was alone a lot. I was third-wheeled by my parents a lot. So I’d come here, bring pizza, and we’d be less alone/third-wheeled together.

  It was cool because as exceedingly cheesy as this sounds, she’s family. Sister? First cousin? In-law? Sure, in-law. Since I got her when I got Nari. They’d been friends forever when I came along, and we melded. It was similar with Reese, and of course Santiago and I are super tight, but Bells and me…It’s the latchkey kid/free-range parenting thing. The only child (Bellamy)/way older sibling (me, sister, age twenty-six) thing. We’ve both been on our own a lot of the time, so it just made sense for us to be on our own together for at least some of it.

  I set the pizza on the coffee table. Bells already had a game of Assassin’s Creed paused on the TV. “Going old-school?” I asked. She was playing the original. One we’d beat, I don’t even know, a long-ass time ago.

  She shrugged. “I like the world.”

  And that was Bells. Here’s what I think, the end. No justifications. No
qualifications. Just-this-is-it-ifications. Ha.

  I sat on the couch next to her, opened the pizza box, and handed her a slice, then took one for myself. She saved her game and offered me the controller, but I waved it off.

  “Pretty batshit, right? Feels extra real now.”

  Bellamy chewed a huge bite. Her brow creased. She swallowed. “ ‘Feels real’ is a misnomer. Unless you’re referring to philosophy. Reality is reality regardless your perception of it. In fact, humanity’s perception is so narrowed by the limitations of our mental and sensuous faculties that reality may be far more complex than our understanding of it.”

  That’s Bells, too. Hyperliteral. “You know what I mean.”

  “I do.”

  “So? All obfuscation aside.”

  She grinned. “Six points.”

  “Aw, come on! That was at least eight.”

  “Hard six. Any more would be cronyism.” She finished her slice, set her crust back in the box, and picked up another. “But yeah. Feels real. And a lot like anxiety.”

  I took a bite of pizza. I one-hundred-percent hated this idea. Start to finish, hated it. I thought it was pretty much the worst idea ever. Not worse than, like, taking that krokodil drug that basically makes its users’ skin rot off, or getting a face tattoo or something. But still. This was…bad. This was asking for it.

  And, for the record, I am not a shit friend to Bells for thinking that. It has been suggested that I “think it’s okay for Bellamy to settle,” or that I’m “just scared of doing something big.” But, for the record, breaking umpteen laws with severity varying from misdemeanors to CLASS-A FELONIES LIKE GRAND THEFT WITH A SPRINKLING OF MAJOR CYBERCRIMES and ending up in PRISON is just a smidge worse than “settling,” which wasn’t at all what I suggested in the first place, Nari.

  Whew.

  Okay.

  No, you know what? Not okay. Because I know all about loaded language. My parents are talkers, the sharing type, the oversharing type, and not just on subjects that’ll make the average person’s skin catch on fire with embarrassment. They talk about other stuff, too. Like the patriarchy. And everyday sexism. And how capitalism is basically a massive scheme for transferring wealth from the bottom up under the guise of consumer choice and emotional manipulation designed to make you crave shit you don’t and will never need, meanwhile poisoning our populations with food stuffed with chemicals and polluting our planet to the brink of being unlivable.

  Also, feelings.

  I get it. I’m the only one of us without a plan. No art or space or diving or world domination for me. And I guess I’ve always been okay with that? Or haven’t thought about it too much? At least, I’ve never thought of it as a flaw. I’m eighteen. I don’t know what I want to do for the next fifty years of my life. Is that wrong?

  But then Nari says stuff about settling. And that I’m afraid of big things. Which makes it sound like not having a passion like the rest of them means I don’t get it. That I’m not qualified. To be a part of the conversation? To know what’s right or wrong? Both? I’m not sure.

  But anyway. Anxiety. Bells felt anxious, which was about five steps shy of the all-out dread I thought we should all be feeling. I took another bite of pizza. The “free” of it didn’t cancel out the “gross” so much on the second mouthful. “Have you tried calling again?”

  She sighed. “No.” And slouched deeper into the couch. Her expression grew terribly, heartbreakingly sad, but it did not sway me. Could not sway me. I would not be swayed!

  Okay, I swayed a little. Hey, I’d been there. I’d watched her face after the line went dead and she’d oh-so-slowly dropped her hand holding her phone into her lap. I am not heartless! I care! Very much, actually. But—

  “Do you think he deserves it?” I asked.

  Bellamy crossed her arms and rested her head on the couch’s backrest, looking at the ceiling. Her glasses reflected the game menu on the TV. I waited, wondering what Bells’s thought process looked like. Would it be one of those trippy artistic renderings of firing neurons? The black webbed with a network of glowing brain cells, a bunch of neon-lit thoughts racing about like they always did but, like, times a hundred?

  Finally, she said, “Do you think I do?”

  “Do I think you think he deserves it?”

  “No. Do you think I deserve MIT?”

  “Of course.”

  She looked at me. “Really?”

  Ouch. “You know—” I stopped myself and took a deep breath. That hurt. That she’d even thought to ask a question like that. Like my answer would ever be no. But. I shook it off. Tried to shake it off. Because this wasn’t about my hurt. “Yes, Bellamy. Of course you deserve MIT. But come on!” I dropped my half-eaten pizza slice back into the box. “I feel like I’m going crazy here. You’re supposed to be logical! How am I the only one against this?”

  “This is logical.”

  “It so is not.”

  She pursed her lips, and with her arms still crossed over her chest, tight and stiff, she seemed frigid. No, not frigid. The opposite. Like heat. Like compression. Something that gets hotter the tighter you squeeze it. “Yes,” she said. “He deserves it. Not only to pay. But for us to take it.”

  I shook my head. “You sound like Nari.”

  She snorted. “You sound like that’s a bad thing.”

  I shrugged, trying to seem all nonchalant, which meant I probably looked like I had an itch somewhere private. Especially since I was covering for what I really wanted to do, what I’d really wanted to do for weeks, which was to grab each one of my friends by the shoulders and give ’em a good shake. Or just scream in their faces, “WHAT THE HELL ARE WE THINKING?!”

  Instead I said, “Yeah, well, maybe this time it is. Maybe she’s wrong. Maybe we all are.”

  Bellamy stared ahead.

  Bells isn’t much for metaphors, but I’m fine with them. And this, her looking forward, determined to only see one thing, or to not see something, like, you know, me, was a metaphor. I’d been waiting. Biding my time. Which…whatever. I figured one of them would have to see sense and then I’d have backup. San, maybe. He’s usually pretty reasonable, and I wasn’t sure if his parents’ refusing to support his Olympics plans was finally getting to him or if his being on board was more about his feelings for Bellamy, but I figured if he saw sense, then Bells would. Or vice versa. Then Reese might even, too. It wasn’t like she’d do the thing anyway for shits and giggles and an adrenaline rush when Bells actively didn’t want her to. Obviously, Bellamy was the linchpin. If she pulled out, the plan fell apart. Even Nari would have to respect that, wouldn’t she?

  But, well.

  Bells leaned forward and picked up the controller off the coffee table. “Can we just…” When I didn’t take it right away, she waved it around at me, not meeting my eye. “Please?”

  I ignored it. Since that’s what we did now, apparently. Ignore the things that didn’t mesh with this grand idiot plan. Like reality. And consequences. And me. Until I couldn’t stand it anymore, took the controller, and started a new game.

  NARI

  Bon Voyage

  The sun was shining! The birds were singing! It was Monday, four days till we did The Thing on Friday, and the clouds had parted and a beam of ethereal light had descended from the heavens upon Keagan’s car, to the chorus of a perfectly harmonized hosanna!

  Okay, no, that’s not what happened. What really happened was a little bit of fog and overcast sky that’d hopefully clear off by midmorning and Keag and me standing in my driveway as my dad triple-checked that his car’s tires had proper pressure, including the spare, and that the jack—as well as the windshield wipers, blinkers, headlights, taillights, door locks, seat adjusters, floor mats—worked properly.

  Keagan watched as my dad unpacked all his carefully packed camping equipment so he could get into the compa
rtment beneath the floor in the back. I stood close to him and grabbed his hand.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey.”

  When I squeezed, he squeezed back, even though things had been weird. Horrible weird. Tense weird. I knew he didn’t approve (to make it a feather, a wisp, i.e., put it lightly) of all this, but I knew that was only because he didn’t get it. Or didn’t want to get it. I’m not calling Keagan naive. He isn’t. Not with Paisley and Brent for parents. But he still expects the best from people. He still believed that if we waited it out, Bellamy’d get some magic and inevitable windfall, that it’d all just Work Out.

  It was a symptom. That’s how I thought of it. (Yes, thought, past tense.) Keagan’s expectations of goodness and decency were a reflection of his goodness and decency and of his “distaste for confrontation.” I’d say he hates it, but Keag doesn’t like the word “hate,” so.

  For example, when that shitbag Barret says sexist and aphobic (yes, aphobic, because it still is regardless of his not knowing Reese is acearo) garbage to or about Reese, Keag’s all “when they go low, we go high.” Which, thanks to the White Allocishet Patriarchy, is pretty easy for him to say, right? I mean, bullshit stinks way less when it’s being chucked at someone else instead of at you. But I’m more like, “Maybe I’ll zip into my d0l0s skin and MAKE HIS LIFE A LIVING HELL.” So, happy medium? I call him a fucker to his face.

  More generally, Keagan legit believes that putting good out gets good back. That positivity and tolerance and optimism will each give you literal returns. Vibes, energy, whatever. That deserving will eventually equal receiving. Which is lovely! Delightful! And also not how life works! Sometimes you have to demand the goodness you deserve. Sometimes if you want something, you have to go and get it for yourself.

  My dad, satisfied that Keag’s car would not spontaneously disintegrate, started reloading the gear in back. Keagan walked over to help but ended up just handing my dad various items—sleeping bags, tent, camp stove, cooler—as he called for them, fitting it all together like a game of Dad Tetris. When he finished, he shut the hatchback and offered Keagan his hand for a firm shake, then came over to give me a hug. “Be safe and have a fabulous time, sweetheart.”