How to Lead a Life of Crime

chapter TWENTY-EIGHT



INFESTATION





The dorm floors are deserted. It’s rankings day. Everyone is downstairs in the cafeteria, and I’m taking my time getting dressed. I could move faster now that my limbs have almost healed. But I’m in no rush. I don’t need to see the big screen to know that I’m no longer a Dux.

There’s a soft rap at my door. I slide it open to find Joi’s handsome Android waiting outside.

“Sorry to bother you, Flick. I would have slipped this under your door, but I wasn’t sure you were still in there.” Levi hands me a note.



Come up to the roof—and try to convince me not to push your ass off.



“Thank you,” I tell the Android. Then I flush the note down the toilet and take the elevator to the ninth floor.

I step out of the tower to find a girl coming toward me in a long, black sundress. Her wild hair is swept back by the cool morning wind, and the fabric of her dress clings to every curve of her body. If it weren’t for the fury in this girl’s eyes, I might have mistaken her for the one from my dreams. When she stops, there are less than six inches between us. I’m not sure if Joi intends to kill me or kiss me. I know which of the two I deserve.

“I thought you wanted me to find you.” She sounds hoarse. Like the words have been stuck in her throat for a month. Like she’s been forced to suffer in silence in a place where you’re not allowed to cry. “You left that Mandel course catalog in my room, and I thought you wanted me to know where you’d gone.”

“A trail of bread crumbs,” I mutter to myself. That’s what Peter Pan called it. When I was drunk, I must have dropped it—accidentally on purpose. I really have lost my mind.

“So I risked my ass to get into this place. And when I get here, I find out you’ve been screwing some evil bitch the whole time.”

“Joi, I’m sorry. I had to.”

“Stop right there.” I really think Joi might try to strangle me if I say any more. “You had to? What, was Mandel holding a gun to your head?”

“No.”

“Then tell me why you had to do it, Flick.”

I could play for pity. But I won’t. The truth is ugly, and I need to own up to it. “There was something I wanted. I thought Gwendolyn could help me get it.”

“What was it?”

“Mandel didn’t tell you?”

Joi crosses her arms and shakes her head.

“Revenge.”

My confession appears to have dampened her rage. She’s not quite homicidal. Just furious. “This all has something to do with Peter Pan, doesn’t it?”

It’s been so long since I thought about my original mission. “My father is a Mandel graduate. When I was growing up, his favorite form of exercise was beating me to a pulp. Peter Pan is my brother, Jude. He died trying to save me. I came here because Mandel told me he would help me punish my father. He has proof that my father killed Jude. But I had to sacrifice everything to get it. Starting with you.”

Joi turns away from me, walks up to the railing at the edge of the roof, and gazes out at the city.

“We shouldn’t be up here,” I tell her, though I don’t want to go. “It’s rankings day. You’ve been named Dux again. They’ll get suspicious if you’re not in the cafeteria to celebrate.”

Joi shakes her head and doesn’t look back at me. “No. That’s what other Duxes would have done. They don’t know what to expect from me.”

She’s right. She’s played her hand brilliantly. I join Joi at the edge, and when the wind shifts, I catch the scent of jasmine and cocoa butter.

“It’s beautiful up here,” she says. I nod, but my eyes are closed as I inhale. “You can see all the way to the harbor. We could watch the fireworks on the Fourth of July.”

That’s a month from now. We’ll be lucky if we both make it that long. “I’ve been trying to bring you here for the past three weeks. It’s the only place that’s not bugged. Mandel comes up to the roof when he doesn’t want his conversations recorded.”

“I know. You told me five or six times. But I didn’t want to talk to you. And even if I had, it was too risky. Mandel’s been tracking our movements since I got to the academy. Watching to see how much time we spend together. Plus, there always seemed to be someone else hanging out in the lounge. We would have been caught.”

“You think Mandel isn’t tracking us now?”

“If he’s monitoring my chip, he’ll see I’m downstairs in my room.”

“I don’t understand.”

Joi pivots and holds her left arm out straight. With her right hand, she guides my index finger to the site of her chip. I can feel the raised line of the incision that was made. I sense a square object tucked under the skin. But it’s not a chip.

“What is it?”

“A folded-up piece of foil that I found in the infirmary.”

“Where’s the chip?”

“Back in my room. I took it out the same day they inserted it. The nurse left the instrument tray in the sink. I stole the needle and thread and dumped the rest in the trash. Then I removed the chip while I was in the shower. Most of the time, I keep it in my pocket so Mandel doesn’t get suspicious.”

“But how did you know—”

“That I had to get it out of my arm? Did you even look at that course catalog? When I found it, I thought it was some kind of sick joke. But then you didn’t come back, and I realized how much trouble you were in. So when Mandel told me about the chip, it made perfect sense. He can’t let anyone leave this place. I knew what I was getting into when I came here, and I knew that I’d need to get out of it, too.”

Relief rushes through my system. “You can escape! The Dux is the only student allowed outside the academy, and if you don’t have a chip, you can disappear. They won’t be able to find you!”

Joi doesn’t seem to share my enthusiasm. “If it’s so easy, why haven’t you hit the road? I don’t see any chip in your arm either.”

When I take her hand, she tries to jerk it away. But I hold it firmly and guide one finger to the incision beneath my hairline. Then I let her go. “I have to stay.”

Joi shrugs. “Great, ’cause I’m staying too.”

“You can’t, Joi. There’s no way to save everyone here, but if you get out, you might be able to destroy the academy.”

“And what would happen to you?”

“Mandel told you. Only one of us can survive.”

“Is that why you let me take the Dux title?” Joi asks. “Are you planning to sacrifice yourself to spare me?”

The answer is yes. But that’s not what I’ll tell her, because it’s not nearly as noble as it sounds. I don’t want to be the one left behind. Not again. If Joi were dead, I wouldn’t make it out of here alive. I’ve suffered more than most, but that pain would be too much to bear. It’s hard enough standing this close to Joi without being able to touch her. If I’m ever sent to hell for the things I’ve done, this would be a suitable punishment.

“You’re what matters most to me. I guess I had to lose you before I could figure that out.”

“You haven’t lost me,” Joi admits grudgingly. “You’re a f—ing moron for hooking up with Gwendolyn, but you do have a few redeeming qualities. And you can thank Caleb for pointing them out. He’s been telling me stories—trying to make you look like a loser. I think that’s his strategy—divide and conquer. He said you and some guy named Lucas made a run for it. The kid was about to die. You were trying to help him escape, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And there was a girl named Aubrey. Caleb said you had a soft spot for her.”

“I tried to help her too. I didn’t do either of them much good.”

The fact that I failed doesn’t seem to faze her. “But you tried. So even though I’d love to kick your ass, I’m not going anywhere without you.”

I’m not exactly sure what it all means, but I suddenly want to kiss Joi so much I can barely breathe. She must have figured that out too, because she widens the space between us.

“I do have a couple of questions I need to ask if I’m even going to consider forgiving you,” she says. “How much did you know about the academy before you enrolled?”

I need to force my lungs to inhale. “I knew a bit, but my father always talked about this place like it was Mount Olympus. I grew up thinking that the people who went here were gods. Even when Mandel told me he was teaching kids to be crooks, I don’t know if I really understood what it all meant. It’s still hard to believe that the graduates are actually criminals.”

A minute passes before Joi speaks. I feel like I’m standing before a judge, waiting for the verdict that will decide my fate. “You’re a good guy, Flick. You want to believe that the world is fair and that everyone deserves the life that he gets. And some people do earn a place at the top. But others get lucky—and there are a whole lot of jerks out there who are willing to cheat.”

“You think I’m good?” I heard everything she said, but it was that very first sentence that stuck in my head. I start moving toward her once more. I know I shouldn’t. But I’m high on euphoria.

“Don’t push it, Flick,” Joi snaps. “You’re still a moron. And being good doesn’t make you special. Most people are good. Why do you think the Mandel alumni keep getting away with it? The rest of us just assume they play by the rules. We think they got where they are because they’re smarter or willing to work harder than everyone else.”

There’s no point in continuing my quest for a kiss. I lean my head against the iron bars and peer down at the sidewalk below. A group of tiny tourists have gathered outside our building. I can’t see their faces, but I’m sure they’re all awestruck. They’ve been told that this is a place where dreams come true.

“All those good people down there never bother to ask any questions. Like my father always said—there are no victims, only volunteers.”

“That’s just another way of saying we all deserve what we get. Did it ever occur to you that your father might be an a*shole?”

I can’t help but laugh. “Yes. But that doesn’t mean he was wrong.”

My smile fades. Joi is not finding me very amusing right now. “What would your father say about the kids in the colony? Are they volunteers too? If that’s the way your dad taught you to look at the world, it may have been the worst thing he ever did. Remember the morning Mandel made me Dux? We were standing outside the cafeteria and I asked what you saw. You started talking about the three groups at the academy. You gave them cute little labels, but what you described were winners, pawns, and losers.”

“So what did you see?”

“I saw a handful of bad seeds and a bunch of kids who’ve been told that they have to cheat to survive. And the more I think about all the brainwashed students that the Mandels have sent out into the world, the more it scares the shit out of me.”

I never told Joi about Mandel’s grand theory. I didn’t want to frighten her any more than I needed to, but it’s starting to look like she’s figured out a lot of it on her own.

“Why does it scare you?” I ask.

“Because I love this country, and they’re doing their best to destroy it.”

“You really believe a few hundred Mandel alumni could destroy a whole country?”

“How many cheaters does it take to change a game, Flick? Think about all the athletes who pump themselves up with steroids. It probably started with one jerk who decided he could break the rules. He got away with it, and some other a*shole figured he might not get caught either. Now everyone’s cheating—even the ones who don’t want to. Because they know they’ll never have a chance of winning anything unless they’re doping too.”

“You’re saying regular people will turn into criminals just so they can compete with the Mandel crowd?”

“Sure—if it’s impossible to get ahead by playing fair. Let’s say you’re a politician, and you want to run an honest campaign. But your opponent is getting millions of dollars from all the crooked businessmen who want to buy her vote. At some point you’re going to realize you can’t win—unless you promise favors to a bunch of scumbags too. Or what if you run some manufacturing company, and you really want to obey all the laws. But your competition is selling the same product at half the price. They can do it because they save millions by illegally dumping their toxic waste right into the ocean. Are you going to go out of business—or start breaking the law too? See how it works?”

“Mandel told me about your research. He said you linked the alumni to all kinds of crimes.”

“Yeah, and all I had to work with was your course catalog and a list of graduates I’d gotten off Google. When I started out, I didn’t really expect to uncover much. But every time I opened the New York Times, I’d find so much stuff that I finally had to focus on a single big scheme. Have you ever heard of a drug called Exceletrex?”

The name rings a bell, but I can’t figure out why.

“Most people haven’t. It’s not on the market yet. It was invented by a pharmaceutical company in Illinois.

Now I remember. Exceletrex is the product from Mr. Martin’s class. The one the congressman thought was dangerous. “Wait—Exceletrex is a drug?”

“A medication. It’s supposed to treat behavioral problems like ADD. They say it helps kids focus, which really means it makes them easier to manipulate. If Exceletrex ends up replacing old drugs like Adderall and Ritalin, it will be worth billions and billions of dollars. Anyway, about four years ago, the pharmaceutical company that invented it was bought by a group of investors. Every single one of them is a Mandel alum.

“It usually takes about ten years of testing to prove that a new drug is safe enough to be sold. But after the Mandel people took over, Exceletrex got the green light from the government in record time. It was scheduled to be launched this fall, just in time for ‘back to school’ season. But then all sorts of information started leaking out of the company. There were rumors online that a lot of really bad test results had been swept under the carpet. But every time a website posted one of the rumors, the whole website would mysteriously disappear. I kept finding stuff on the Internet, and the next day it was gone. Want to guess who was responsible?”

“Mandel alumni?”

“That’s what I thought at first. But it wasn’t alumni. It was Mandel students. I asked Leila if she recognized the word Exceletrex. She said they have all the low-ranking technology majors working on the ‘project.’ They hack any sites that post rumors about the drug.”

“What kind of rumors are they anyway?”

“That Exceletrex causes long-term brain damage. Take the pills for a few years and by the time you’re forty, your brain’s turned to mush. I guess it’s so bad that three of the scientists who’d studied the drug convinced a congressman to open an investigation. . . .”

“Glenn Sheehan. ‘The voice of the people.’”

Joi nods. “Yeah, but then he suddenly called it off. So one of the scientists announced he was going to hold his own press conference. He committed suicide two days before it was scheduled.”

“They killed him.”

“Yep. That’s how big this is. For a while I thought the Exceletrex investors were the only ones behind it. Then I realized that there were lawyers and politicians and a bunch of major Wall Street guys involved too. I bet half of the academy’s graduates have had a hand in the operation. When the drug comes out, they’ll all make a fortune. And as soon as doctors start passing out prescriptions, millions of kids are going to end up with brain damage.”

I’m standing in the sunshine, but I suddenly feel a chill. “They may have already started passing out pills.”

“What do you mean?”

The first time I visited the academy, Mandel said he’d been searching for a way to make the tracking chips unnecessary. A pharmaceutical that would keep the “less disciplined students” in line. That’s why my father warned me not to take any medication while I was here.

“Mandel told me that the predators are easier to manipulate when they’re on medication. I think they’ve been giving Exceletrex to some of the students at the academy. Gwendolyn. Maybe Leila too. Who knows how many others.”

Joi grimaces. “That makes sense. The scientists who worked for the company claim that batches of the product often disappeared from the lab.”

“Were any of the scientists named Arthur Klein?”

“How do you know?”

“Mr. Martin sent me out to steal Arthur Klein’s iPhone. The alumni must have been looking for dirt on him.”

“Klein was the first whistle-blower. He decided to go public after his six-year-old son died of a brain tumor. He said he couldn’t stand back and let other kids come to harm.”

I close my eyes and let my forehead rest against the fence’s iron bars. “Oh God, please tell me that Arthur Klein wasn’t the guy the alumni killed.”

“He wasn’t. As far as I know, Klein was still alive when I checked in at the academy. The man who was murdered was one of Klein’s colleagues. When I figured out the connection between the dead guy and the alumni, I decided I had enough information to blackmail Mandel. So I took him my research and demanded a spot at the academy. I don’t think he was impressed that I’d managed to piece it all together. I think he was amazed that I’d even bothered to look.”

How do I tell her that the situation is even worse than she thinks? “That’s not what got you into the academy, Joi. Mandel doesn’t give a damn about your research skills. You’re here because of your father. Mandel spoke to him.”

Something I just said strikes her as funny. “That’s perfect. I mentioned his name as a joke. All that work on Exceletrex, and I only got in because I’m connected? I’m surprised my father even remembers who I am. I wish I could have heard what he said.”

“It doesn’t matter. Mandel’s only interested in your DNA. He believes there’s a mutant gene that makes some people psychopaths or sociopaths. And he’s convinced that you and I both inherited the gene from our fathers.”

“He thinks we’re psychopaths?” Joi laughs even harder. I really want her to stop.

“No. He calls us hybrids. He thinks we have the gene, but it hasn’t been switched on. He’s trying to turn us into predators.”

“Predators?”

I explain Mandel’s theory. I start with the idea that the human race split into two distinct species—the predators and their prey. Then I tell her about the role that hybrids play and Mandel’s search for the “switch” that will transform people like us into ruthless killers. By the time I get to his vision of turning the academy into a factory for manufacturing super-predators, Joi’s smile has turned into a scowl.

“What do you think about Mandel’s little theory?” she demands.

“I’m not totally convinced that the predator gene exists,” I admit. “But I do believe there are predators. Nine of the top twelve students here are psychopaths. All you have to do is look in their eyes to know it. And I think the Mandel Academy has been doing a very good job of turning the other kids into sociopaths. I’m pretty sure no one graduates from this school without being some kind of predator.”

“Really? I bet your friend Ella could make it out without letting Mandel screw with her head.”

“She’s the exception.”

“She can’t be the only one. But tell me this—why do you call the rest of them predators?”

Joi seems to be hung up on the word. “That’s Mandel’s term for them. Some people are predators. Some people are prey. It fits. My father used to say that there are only two kinds of people—the weak and the strong. It’s the same idea.”

Joi’s looking at me like I’ve lost my mind.

“What?” I ask.

“You’re quoting him again,” she points out. “Your dad and the nutcase who runs this school have got you totally brainwashed.”

“You think I’m brainwashed? Are you joking? I’d love to kill both of them!”

“So why do you still believe everything that they’ve told you?! Your father said there are only two kinds of people—and you think it’s true. Mandel told you all the alumni are predators—and you totally buy it. So what kind of predators are we talking about? Mighty lions? Noble tigers?”

“I’ve always thought of them as wolves,” I admit, trying not to sound too defensive.

Joi sighs. “You mentioned ‘the law of the jungle’ the other day. You said Mandel believes in it. Did you ever read The Jungle Book? That’s where the phrase comes from.”

“I know,” I snap.

“But you obviously don’t know what it means. In the book it says, The strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack. That’s the real law of the jungle.”

“So what?”

“So these a*sholes aren’t wolves. Mandel calls them predators because that makes them sound more impressive. But real wolves fight for each other. And they only kill in order to eat. They take what they need—and don’t take any more. Maybe Mandel’s right. Maybe there are two kinds of humans. But I’m not buying his self-serving predator crap.”

“Then what label would you prefer?” I shoot back. It’s not that I disagree with her. I’m just not used to losing debates.

“Try parasites. I mean, think about it! They don’t care about anything—not even each other. All they do is feed. They’ll take as much as they can get, and they never get enough. They just eat and eat and eat.”

I start to argue before I know what to say. My mouth slams shut while my brain recalibrates everything I’ve ever seen, heard, or believed.

“They’ve fooled us into thinking they deserve what they have because they’re the smartest and the strongest,” Joi continues. “But they’re just a bunch of bloodsuckers. You want to know why all the kids in my colony are weak? They’re weak because Mandel’s parasites have been eating them alive.”

I’m about to ask what she means when I remember Tina, the blond girl back at Joi’s colony. The one who was shoved out onto the streets after her dad lost his job. This school has taught me how to seize control of companies and fire men just like her father. Other kids at the academy have been taught to take their homes, drain their bank accounts, up their credit card fees, deny them insurance, sell them drugs that ease their misery but rot their brains, and pass laws to keep them from getting back on their feet. Every day at the academy is a feast. We’ve been eating people like Tina’s father—slurp by slurp and bite by bite.

“I’m going to stop Mandel,” I announce.

“What a coincidence,” Joi says. “Me too.”

“You got a plan?” I ask.

“I have a few ideas,” she says. “But I wouldn’t call them a plan just yet.”

“Well, that’s a lot more than I have.”

“Then this should all turn out splendidly,” Joi quips.

I reach out and take hold of one of the fence’s iron bars. It’s grown warm in the sun. Breakfast will be over soon. Our time is running out.

“Just in case . . .” I have to stop for a moment. “Just in case this doesn’t turn out well, can I ask you a few things while I still have the chance?”

“Shoot,” Joi says.

“What’s your last name?”

Joi grins despite herself. “Ferhatovi´c.”

It takes me a few tries before I manage to pronounce it right.

“And where do you come from?”

“I lived in Bosnia with my mother until I was fourteen. When she died, I came to the United States.”

“Do you have any idea how much I love you?”

“Yes,” Joi says. “Just as much as I love you.”

Then she frowns and kicks the fence with the toe of her shoe. She’ll probably forgive me, and someday she may even forget how badly I hurt her. But I never will.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

Joi studies my face. “Then you can kiss me. On one condition.”

“Anything.”

“I’d like you to escort me to the next alumni gathering.”

“When is it?”

“Tomorrow night,” she says. “At Mandel’s house.”