Yeah, that doesn’t bode well.
I choose the handicapped parking spot front and center. Nine minutes at least are added while lowering the ramp, getting Matt’s wheelchair onto it, and reloading the mechanism back into the van so that we can lock it. Like with babies, it is definitely frowned upon to leave paralyzed people in the back of your car, but I wouldn’t say I don’t think about it.
Matt shuts up a bit when he gets inside. Maybe the coffee smell is enough to sober him up. But actually I think that Neville’s is the type of place he’d go if he were in that other life, the one in which he isn’t broken. As for me, I’m already at home around the tattooed, bespectacled, and tight-shirt-wearing patrons who take notes in their paperback copies of Tolstoy and listen to vinyl records, and I bet Matt doesn’t expect this either.
I find the coffeehouse gang in the back corner. My gait slows when I see Ringo. It was just a song, I try to tell myself. It doesn’t mean that I am Anna.
Except I’m pretty sure it does. And the singer still has feelings for Anna. Does that mean Ringo has feelings for me?
It’s awkward enough, after the way we last left things, that we now stop short of hugging, and I’m full of a mixture of gratitude and longing for that. Instead, Ringo introduces himself to Matt. “Hi.” Unlike Jeremy, Ringo’s too smart to extend a hand. “You must be Lake’s brother.”
He’s wearing a denim shirt unbuttoned over a soft heather-colored T-shirt, a pair of sunglasses hanging from the neckline. Is it just me, or does he look particularly handsome and not at all fragile today? I glance away to stop thinking about it.
“Pleasure,” Matt says lingering only a moment more than necessary over Ringo’s mismatched face and purpled skin.
I breathe a sigh of relief. “Matt,” I say, since my brother is either too high or too dismissive to offer the name on his own. “His name is Matt.”
I slide in next to Margaret, who has yet to look up from her computer. “Ringo tells me you wanted to talk?” she says.
My palms are sweating. My knee jiggles. “More like I need a favor.” I wince at the word.
“Ah.” She punctuates with the space bar. “Are we talking party, all in say aye or may the odds be ever in your…?”
I wince. “More like The Godfather, calling in a…favor, that is. A very big one.”
“Hand it over.” Still she doesn’t look at me, but she does flash a quick grin. Her glasses reflect her laptop screen. The rest of Ringo’s friends—my friends, are they my friends too?—seem to give us space, but I cast a nervous smile over at Kai, who offers me a thumbs-up.
“Shit.” Matt curses, too loudly. “My buzz is wearing off.” He glances around at all of us, wearing a look of total disappointment. “Is it supposed to be so fleeting?”
“Matt,” I hiss. Then, when I realize that there’s no way to hide his state, given what he’s just said, I add, “No one who does drugs uses the word fleeting.”
“Guess it’ll just have to be this once, then,” he grumbles.
Ringo rubs his neck and gives me a What can you do? look.
I slide Will’s computer onto the table next to Margaret’s laptop. She keeps typing with one hand while simultaneously opening the screen to Will’s computer. I tell her the password and she makes a grunting noise in response as if this information is completely unnecessary. She’s already hooking a cord between the two machines.
“What are you doing?” I ask, peering over her shoulder.
“Downloading some software to this computer. It only takes a second.”
My heartbeat thumps. “Will someone be able to tell that it’s been, like, tampered with?”
“Done,” she says, and untethers Will’s computer. “Not unless they really know what they’re looking for.” She stops typing for the first time. “Don’t worry, you’re good.” She scoots her chair over and then strikes a few keys on Will’s keyboard. The blank screen fills with several boxes, each containing typeface too small for me to read. Margaret scans them.
“So, how’s school going?” I ask, trying to make conversation, since that seems preferable to all of us watching her hack into my dead boyfriend’s computer.
“Okay, I guess.” She clicks on one of the screen boxes and scrolls through its contents. “Working on my thesis on resurrection ethics in Asia. Mongolia, China, Indonesia, mainly. The computer skills are coming in handy too. Lets me do a lot of the graphing, charts, quantitative analysis–type stuff. I get some good gigs that way. Professors are always wanting people who are good with computers and then, hello, fellowship recommendations.”
Matt scoffs. Loudly. “You think you can learn about resurrections in a classroom? So you can, what, sit there in your ivory tower and judge people?”
For the first time, she stops typing. She frowns at him. “I think I can keep an open mind so that I can learn something,” she says, and then she picks back up again.
Ringo leans into my ear. “Did we do something to offend him?”
I don’t say anything. I only have room in my head for the one thing and that’s for whatever Margaret’s going to find in that computer. I’m counting down in my head, but I don’t know to what.
“Okay, what am I searching for?” Margaret asks. Her fingers hover, poised for action.
“A ChatterJaw account. A conversation that went private about a month ago.”
Margaret lets out a low whistle, but types in whatever it is she needs to type in. A string of subject lines populates the screen. “Anything else to narrow it?”
I chew the inside of my cheek hard, like it’s a piece of ice. “Penny,” I say.
Five taps. Enter. The list collapses.
“So,” Margaret says, folding her arms across her chest, visibly annoyed, “I have to ask: Is Penny the mystery user on the thread?” Margaret had never been able to break through the encryption used by the ISP until she had Will’s actual computer to work from. Now I know why.
I nod. “I think so…yeah.”
She shakes her head. “Well, I have to hand it to her, this girl seriously knew her firewalls.” It wasn’t Penny, it was her protective techie father, Simon, but I keep my mouth shut because I don’t think Margaret would consider this any consolation. “You want to do the honors?” Margaret asks me. She rolls to the side and I take her place.
The surroundings of the coffee shop disappear. From this moment on, it is me and the computer. Tunnel vision. I lick my lips. My fingers dance in the air over the trackpad. This is the last second that I can turn back. I won’t be able to un-see it. If this changes anything—and maybe it won’t—I won’t get a do-over.
But…I have to know.
I open the messages like I’m leaping off the high-dive platform. Headfirst and into deep water.
At 9:01 p.m., the conversation goes private:
Twenty Questions
How about we start with five?
Less ambitious, but fine, five
Boy or girl?
Lady ;)
When I’m alone I ____________________.
Worry less
Another poem?
I told you, they’re not poems
Now you’re just being difficult