Of course, she had also performed the usual monthly checks as required by the colony charter. The seals on the inner and outer air lock were tight; emergency generators were working; the nuclear generator checked out; all the portal seals felt fine; the recycling system and the air plants worked and looked healthy. She had run a complete diagnostic according to the manual, including the integrated computer control system. Everything was in tip-top shape, spic and span. At the end of the day, she had virtually collapsed into a dreamless sleep.

Today she had awoken feeling like she was made out of pure energy. The maintenance crew usually arrived at ten CST and stayed until right before supper. The seven chimes from the grandfather clock had roused her, which left her three hours to go over the rover and her spacesuit, and to make a final check on everything else. She held Lloyd up to her face and said, “Today’s the day!” He meowed curiously as she twirled out of bed and into the kitchen to fix breakfast and begin the tarts.

It is still dark outside, but then it is always dark outside. I don’t know why I say “still” as though I’d wake up to the sun, because that’s impossible. Most of the time, I know this, but every now and I wake up and half-expect it, and only then do I slowly remember that there will never be a sun.

Even if I did see it again, I know it wouldn’t be anything like my dreams. There it’s always warm, even when I am bundled up in winter clothing; and in dreams, I see my parents, James, and Brenda again. I hope I never stop dreaming of them, and I’m afraid of what it will mean if someday I do.

The stars remain my constant companions, and while they haven’t lost their lustre, their light seems fainter than before. I know in the back of my mind that they are suns, and that their warmth reaches other planets as it should, and that they can’t really be any dimmer. Still, I feel like they dislike me.

It’s the day, I know. Today is one-year anniversary of the founding of Adenia. That must be why they seem so distant and why I feel the way I do. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that an entire year has passed. Other times, it feels like I have always been here, because so many things have happened — great things and terrible things.

Still, I am fortunate. I am safe, warm, never hungry, have few demands placed upon me, and the beauty of the stars surrounds me. A League colony isn’t what I expected, but I was chosen to be here, and I am honored to be here. I will endure. My name is Sarah Monroe of Adenia, outside the Sirus system.

She put down her pen and closed the diary, thinking, remembering. It’s not that time itself passes quickly or slowly, she thought at last, just how we percieve it that makes it seem that way. Emotion that determines the speed of time, so all time is emotional time. She smiled to herself. Emotional time. That phrase was one of their inventions, she thought — hers and Jeffrey’s.

She glanced over at the grandfather clock at the far end of her bed. Its pendulem-driven tick-tock felt like a heartbeat to her, and the chimes on the hours ordered her days. It was nearly seven PM, time for the VR call with Jeffrey. Sarah dashed to the mirror and made sure she looked presentable.

“It’s not that important,” she thought, but it was expected. She knew she didn’t want to go on the VR call as Miss Disheveled, or catch Jeffrey in the middle of brushing his teeth. She blew her golden-brown hair out of her eyes and ran a brush through it quickly, examined her teeth, and smoothed out her brown-and-gold jumper. The clock began its first chime as she rushed out of her room and took a left down the curving hallway.

She smiled as the memory of Brenda’s voice cajoled her, “Watch out! Geez, you’re always running.” She couldn’t help herself. She lost herself in things and then had to run to get to the next thing. The clock ended its seventh chime just as she reached the communications room.

“Coming!” he yelled back down, hopping around on one foot, trying to get his shoe on. He threw the door open with his jacket half-way on, finally getting his foot in the shoe. He sat at the top of the stairs and laced up his shoes, put his arm in the other sleeve of his jacket and shrugged the backpack on. Then he shuffled down the stairs until he reached the last step. His mom stood a few steps away, looking at him with a mixture of exasperation and concern.

Brandon smiled like had everything together, took a step forward and ran straight into the wall. “Oww. Wow. Oww.” he said, putting his hand to his forehead.

“It sounds like you hit a stud,” said his mom.

His eyes scrunched up in pain, he replied, “Thanks, mom.”

She took him by the shoulders and held him at arm’s length, insisting that he look at her. “It’s just a bruise, mom.”

He blew his hair out of his eyes and looked at her, feeling embarrassed. “I’m ok. No concussion. Really.”

She looked him over carefully. “You haven’t been up early a single day this week!”

“I know, mom.” Brandon wished he was anywhere else.

“You’ve been distracted, too. Is there something I should know about?”

“No, mom.”

“Someone I should know about?”

“No, mom!” he said, more forcefully than he would have liked. Brandon fought down the blush that rose to his cheeks. “I’m gonna be late.”

She let him go and called out a “bye” as the door slammed shut. She thought for a moment and then picked up the phone.

Wednesday right at 12:40, I was ready to go. Cutler gave me detailed instructions and I wrote them all down. The last thing he said was, “Look for the house with the garage like a barn.” Just to be safe, I had double-checked the directions with my uncle, and they had all checked out.

It took me ten minutes, so I made it there in plenty of time. Cutler was right; the garage looked like a barn with its wood-like front door and with the windows outlined in red. I could almost imagine little shutters with X’s on them folding over them like barn doors. He didn’t mention something more obvious, though — the pieces of paper attached to various places. The mailbox had one, the garage door had one, a cluster of trees in the front yard had one. That, and there were four bikes leaned up against the far side of the garage. I parked mine with the rest and knocked on the front door.

Cutler’s mom greeted me. She stood about my height, had her long black hair tied back in a ponytail, and wore an apron. She was slender and if it wasn’t for the apron, I would have thought she was in high school.

“You must be Chris,” she said, smiling. “Come on in. J and the rest are out back on the porch.”

“Thanks,” I said, and cut through the family room to the porch.

I opened the porch door and stepped into a crowd of half-dressed-up people. Cutler was wearing a fake moustache and a red velvet tri-corner hat (I remembered the name from “Pirates In Space” that I saw last year) and a black t-shirt that read in pixelated letters, “Abort, Retry, or Fail?” He was standing nearest the door, and he shouted, “Chris has arrived!” as soon as I opened the door. I felt a little embarrassed by him making such a big deal over it, but I guess it was ok because it was my first time. “We’re still waiting for Madam S,” he added. “Come on and meet everybody. Oh, I’m Prince Zarithus.”

“Jeff is the mad wizard Graeca.” Jeff wore a drooping wizard’s hat and carried an intricately carved wand. Instinctively, I made some kind of protective sign and he gave me a strained vacant look. Then he smiled. “Glad you could make it, man.”

“Sherry is Princess Aroleine,” Cutler said, unfurling his hand to a short girl wearing a ruffled white dress and a sea-green t-shirt. “Chris is Prince Alabar.” She seemed to be about our age and had golden-brown hair; she was slightly pudgy, but that didn’t make her ugly. She held out her hand and like a gentleman, I leaned down as if to kiss it, nodding instead. Her hazel eyes watched me carefully. Cutler said, “She ranks high in the royal court,” and took me over to the next person.

Lew was sitting down which is why I hadn’t noticed him when I first came in. He stood up when we approached. He wore a black coat that looked like something a captain might wear, with gold stitching, and jeans. His hat was the same kind as Cutler’s. “Lew is Prince Viroch.”

“Lew?” I asked, surprised. He reached out his hand to mine and grasped it in a firm handshake.
“You two know each other?” Cutler asked.
I said, “Well, sorta.”
“Anyway, you are cousins,” Cutler explained.
“I will confer with you later,” Lew said. I nodded, but I wasn’t sure if he meant in the game or in real life.

“Danny is Pageboy Johannas,” said Cutler, introducing me to a skinny boy with disheveled reddish-brown hair. “This is Chris, Prince Alabar.”
“Glad to meet ya, milord,” he said with a clumsy bow.
“He knows everything because he runs messages to everyone,” said Cutler.

He then led me back by the porch door. “And next-to-last, but not least is Tamara, the Viscountess Sarah Jane Mortishire,” he said, unfurling his hands to a pale girl with stringy blonde hair and distant blue eyes. “SJ, meet Chris, Prince Alabar.”

She had clipped felt stars and seashells into her hair, which had taken a greenish tint from too much time in the pool. Her sky-blue t-shirt read “Star In Training” in rhinestones and she wore new sandals, but neither of those distracted me from her royal manners and expression. I bowed to her and she looked pleased, as though I had already learned my place.

Then it hit me. “Wait,” I said, “If you and Jeff run this, how are you playing?”
Jeff stretched out and said, “Cutler and I set it up and create the cards and all that stuff.”

“We write it, too,” bragged Cutler, obviously exaggerating his contribution.

“You mean that we Help write it,” said Jeff.

“Yes, exactly!”

Jeff gave him an over-the-top look of madness. “Anyways,” he continued, “it’s more of an outline than a hard-and-fast kind of thing. Madame S is the GM.”

“Is that her real name?” I asked.

Just then a boisterous voice announced, “She’s here!” The porch door opened and a tall, tanned woman with a black straw hat with a bell, and a long linen off-white dress entered. She carried a sheaf of papers loosely attached to a clipboard in her hands.

Everyone but me shouted out “Madame S!” She made a ridiculously-deep curtsy and asked, “How are the inhabitants of Frammel this afternoon?” Everyone yelled back different responses. She then turned to Jeff and Cutler to work out the details of the game.

After a few moments, she said, “Ok, places. If you don’t remember where you were last week, speak up now.” I watched as everyone scattered and then I said, “I don’t remember.” She squinted at me and fixed me with a stare like a teacher’s. “You must be Chris, or Prince Alabar.”

“Yes,” and seeing her mock frown I added humorously, “Yes, milady.”

“Jeff and John have filled you in, I surmise?”

“Yes.”

She reached down into a nearby box and threw me a cloak. “But they didn’t give you any outfitting tips, or tell you where to start, of course.” She held her hand to her forehead, as if the occurrence would make her faint. She looked at her sheaf of notes and said, “Prince Alabar, the Endless Woods. There’s a sign by the front. You’re on your way to the castle, hearing only rumors of discontent. Your part will be coming in a few minutes.”

I nodded and went to my position.

Up until today, I had never played a LARP, but I knew enough about it to not be lost. It wasn’t too difficult to pretend to be someone else, although I did feel silly from time to time. Wearing a purple cloak that doesn’t quite fit will do that to you, I thought.

I had made my way to the castle fairly quickly where I met Princess Aroleine and the Viscountess. They were discussing something I didn’t catch before the pageboy ushered me into court. They spoke guardedly about the affairs at the castle, and said only that Prince Viroch was due to return from a great quest today.

The prince had known I was coming, and after the formalities that the court required, drew me aside to urge me to dine with him that evening. Because he was my cousin, and a cousin with whom I was on good terms, I saw no reason to refuse. I asked him about a lack of royal greeting and he too spoke in guarded tones, saying only that the rumors I had heard were only the beginning. The Princess had arranged for my living quarters, I had told him. He seemed genuinely afraid then, but a message he received from the pageboy required him to be elsewhere immediately.

By the end of an hour and half, I was thoroughly immersed in the game and my character had met most of the other characters. It felt like it was ending too early, but Madame S told us that if we were looking forward to what happens next, it meant that the game was a good one.

“So what do you think? Awesome huh?” asked Cutler. He was out-of-breath, having participated in a duel with Prince Viroch (which is something that I saw, but my character didn’t).

“It really felt like I was somewhere else,” I said. “Why is it only once a week?”

He laughed. “Madame S!” He rolled his eyes. “Seriously, it’s the only day that she can do it. She has papers and stuff to grade. She’s the creative writing teacher at school.”

I was right — she was a teacher. Jeff called out, “Come on, Dr. Who starts in ten minutes!” Cutler said, “Oh yeah, we hang out afterwards and play video games and stuff.”

“Cool,” I said. I followed him into the house and found most of the others in the family room, before a large TV. The box of costumes was there and I tossed in the cape. Tamara was just leaving and Lew was folding up his jacket. He looked over at me with a serious expression, so I said, “Hold on, I gotta see something.”

I went to the door and he joined me. He didn’t say much, but he faked a smile. “Watch out for the popular girl,” he said. I asked him if he meant Tamara or Sherry, but he gave me a look that said I should have figured it out already. Then he left.

I went back to the family room a little uneasy. Thinking about it a few seconds more, I knew that he meant Tamara. Her character was snooty, but I had thought that was just her character, and not her. But even if she was that way in real life, I was only here for the summer. It wasn’t like she was in my school. What could she do?

I sat down and joined everyone in talking about the game. When they asked me about it, I said that it was great and I was looking forward to next week. For some reason Danny was giving whoever said “but” a high-five, so he was jumping all over the place. Then Dr. Who came on and Danny went with Jeff to play video games. The rest of us soaked up our weekly allowance of cheesy SF, and loved every minute of it.

During one of the commercials, Sherry said that Tamara couldn’t stop talking about the big party that her sister Brianne was going to throw over the summer. Her parents let her do it because their plans for a car had fallen through. “She said it’s going to be big even though officially it’s only for her sister’s friends. They even named it — the Anti-Boredom Crash.” Sherry twirled her finger, unexcitedly.

Cutler stretched out on the couch. “I’m going.”

“You would, J,” said Sherry.

“That’s right I would. Someone has to bring the geek.”

From the other room Jeff started chanting, “Bring the geek! Bring the geek!” Then Jeff and Sherry got Danny and lifted him above their heads like he was some kind of king and brought him to the center of the family room. Everyone joined in the chanting and either fanned him, fluffed his pillows, or fed him Cheetohs until the show started again.

I hadn’t forgotten about my pictures, so I told Cutler that I needed to get going. His mom overheard me; she said that she’d call her husband to pick them up on the way home. “Oh that’s ok,” I began, but she assured me that it was no problem. I didn’t want to put them through any trouble because I had just met them.

“Maybe he’s hiding something, like pictures of his girlfriend,” Madame S said, teasing me.

I laughed, suddenly realizing that I didn’t have any pictures of the people I’d met, not Uncle Kevin, not J, and not Kirandra. Maybe it showed on my face, because then Madame S said, “Ah hah!”

“Uhm, actually, I don’t have a girlfriend,” I said.

“Oh, a lot can change in a summer,” she said, mysteriously. Cutler’s mom agreed as if they shared a secret and then they promised to stop teasing me. I was grateful for that.

I played some video games and got killed a lot until Cutler’s dad showed up with my pictures, wrapped in discreet brown envelopes. I thanked him and said goodbye to everyone, getting on my bike, and making it home just in time for dinner.

Uncle Kevin tapped his watch. I knew from his smile that he was only faking being annoyed at me. “I’ve already ordered dinner,” he said. He pointed to a Donetello’s pizza magnet, a new addition to the fridge. “I thought I’d try the other pizza place for a change. We have one of their Everything in Italy specials on the way.”

I was so hungry that if he had ordered cookie dough I would have eaten it. I set the table and a few minutes later, the doorbell rang. “I’ve got it!” I called out, opening the door.

Standing in a dark red apron/overall combination was Danielle, with a pizza in one hand, and a bottle of Coke in the other. Her uniform was lightly dusted with dough, as if she had just stepped out of the kitchen.

“Hi,” she said, “Brain food for all the brains in residence.”

I smiled, a bit sarcastically. “It tastes great and it makes you smarter? Sounds like the perfect food,” I said.

“It is,” she said. “It’s amazing that some people don’t like it.”

Uncle Kevin walked over, showed his card, and paid for the food. “Danielle,” he said, eyeing her uniform in surprise, “they’ve got you doing deliveries now?”

“Not if I can help it,” she said, sighing slightly. “But they needed an extra driver and it was on my way home.” I felt suddenly envious that she could drive wherever she wanted to go.

“We certainly appreciate it,” he said, adding a generous tip.

“Don’t mention it,” she said, handing him the bottle of Coke. “Now this is on the house. The pizza looked so lonely.”

Uncle Kevin smiled. “Thanks! You can’t really have pizza without pop.”

“That’s right. Just don’t shake it up. Au revoire`!” she said as he shut the door.

As he put the plastic bottle on the table, Uncle Kevin thought out loud. “Do you think she already shook it up?”

“No way,” I said. Somehow, I couldn’t picture Danielle doing something like that. It would be like a TV comedy.

“Hmm,” he said, feeling the bottle and raising an eyebrow at me.

I squeezed the bottle, or tried to.

“You first,” he said, pulling his chair back.

I grimaced at him and turned the cap on the bottle slowly, listening to the gas escape.

Tristiana’s eyes lingered on the sign in the window that read “Everything half off!”. Then she walked over to Jennifer and pointed to the sign. “How much for the sign?”

Jennifer narrowed her eyes. She didn’t recognize her and she wasn’t in high school, but she couldn’t tell exactly how much older the customer was. “That’s not for sale.” Rule number one, she thought; stop trouble before it starts.

Tristiana feigned shock. “It says everything, and the sign is inside the store. Although I think I’d like it in a more lace — no, an off-white color. Red isn’t really my thing.”

Jennifer stood up tall and said curtly, “Excuse me, ma’am, but –” She couldn’t help but thinking that the sign would be better in off-white, too.

Undaunted, Tristiana continued. “Other stores sell their signs. You did know that, didn’t you?”

Jennifer looked surprised and then lifted a finger to her temple. Whoa. Why am I so lightheaded? “No, I didn’t know that.”

“Pluvious Canine just two stores down said that theirs was two-thirds off. Can you beat that?”

Jennifer’s mind raced in several directions at once. Was that the name of the store they just finished down there? No-one knew what it was; it had been a secret. And two-thirds off! How could they survive with those margins? Most importantly, why would they sell their sign if they were just opening?

“What if I used my DC card?” Without waiting for a response, Tristiana whipped out a glinting, glittering card with the store’s name on it.

Jennifer closed her eyes involuntarily and when she opened them again, she felt that a whole minute had passed. She found herself leaning against a mannequin for support and the only memory she had was a cold, cruel laugh ringing in her ears.

* * * * *

Written with letters pulled from newspapers and xeroxed several times, the flyer read,

“Westchester High Tournament of Intellect
#1 of a 3-issue limited series

The Inner Circle summons all hale and hearty ones
strong of mind and peculiar in interests to declare
and defend thy wits. Not attending is not an option!

Food, drink, internet, and dice shall be provided. B.Y.O.B!

Friday @ WHS Auditorium, 6PM-times unknown”

“Did you see this?” asked Dana, thrusting it under Jimmy’s nose.

Jimmy turned from his locker to look at her and said, “Uh, ohio.”

She blinked and then said, “Ohio. Well, did you see it?”

He rummaged around in his backpack and pulled out an identical note. “All of us got one. It’s held three times every school year.”

Dana mumbled something to try to cover up the fact that she had forgotten that. Jimmy loaded a few books into his backpack and shut the locker, spinning the combination lock. Together, they walked towards the library in the dawning day.

“But that’s this Friday,” Dana said after they had walked for a bit, hoping that she didn’t sound too nervous, or too whiny.

“Everyone knew it was it coming,” he chided her. “We talked about it last Friday.”

“When last Friday?” she huffed.

“Right after the lycanthrope fighter pilots discussion.” He felt her forehead. “You are watching Bikini Weekends again aren’t you? Symptoms of acute brain drain suspected.”

Dana held out her arm and stopped Jimmy from walking forward. Such an insult to her intellect could not go unchallenged! “Again? I am not a ditz!” She tossed her hair and then vowed, “I’m going to completely dominate this tournament! Dom-i-natus, from the Latin, meaning to rule over! There!” Jimmy politely applauded and thought to himself, “I need to brush up on my Latin.”

Dana clenched her fists. It was all Brandon’s fault! She had been so focussed on finding out what he was doing that she had forgotten everything else.

* * * * *

The rest of the day trudged on and eventually Westchester High gave up and begrudgingly released students from its confines.

“Man, I hate Wednesdays. They’re so long,” complained Brandon, walking with Brian out of school.

“I know what you mean. Glad it’s over!”

“And it’s also the homework day.”

“Isn’t every day homework day?” wondered Brian.

“Not like today. Wednesday is THE homework day. They really stick it to us. At least my teachers do.”

Brandon pulled his backpack up and let it drop back to its usual position. “Hmm. It does feel a little heavier than usual. Maybe you’re right.”

“So what are you doing tonight?” asked Brandon as they reached the bike rack.

“Nothing really. Why? I thought you had DMIC.”

“I got the evening off, so I was wondering if you wanted to shoot some hoops or something.”

“Sure yeah man, that sounds cool. Seven at the park?”

Brandon made a circle with his thumb and forefinger. “Right-o.”

By seven, dusk was almost night and Brandon was pedalling to the park. It was a pain now that Brian’s hoop was broken; he hoped that the lights were working at the park. It seemed so foreign, so odd for it to be a schoolnight and for him not to be at DMIC. He took in a sharp breath and wondered what everyone was doing at the conclave meeting. Then he breathed again and remembered that life used to be always like this, before the DMIC. He rounded the turn into the park and pedalled over to the basketball courts.

The empty court greeted him with two basketball goals raising their monocled eyes to the sky on spartan steel shoulders. Above, the stars spread out in a glittering expanse against the night sky. Brandon laid down his bike silently and noticed that the air had grown colder recently, as fall began its long, fatal dance with winter. Beneath the stars, on the empty court, he felt his finiteness creeping into his awareness. He made his way to the nearest goal and brushed his fingers absent-mindedly over the flaking paint and steel, wondering when Brian would show up.

A few minutes later, Brian rounded the bend and sent his bicycle wheels flying over the loose gravel that led into the park. Brandon stood there, back against a goal, eyes out-of-focus, looking into the sky. He didn’t seem to notice Brian until Brian laid down his bike.

“Hey man, you didn’t go to sleep or something did you?”

“Nah, I was just thinking,” Brandon said.

“I did all my thinking at school,” joked Brian. “Let’s shoot some hoops!” He headed over towards the shack that held the lights and flipped them on, then he shot the basketball over to Brandon.

* * * * *

Dana bicycled downtown, looking in various stores at random, in a helpless attempt to find where Brandon was spending his time. She had tried everything else and now it was down to this.

She had known Brandon since the 8th grade, but this had taken her by surprise. If there was one thing Brandon wasn’t, it was mysterious — at least until now. He was smart enough, but just distracted. Jimmy was like that, too. Maybe guys either had some kind of focusing problem or they weren’t distracted because they only thought about three things ever, like Brian did. Maybe he had advanced to four things since high school. She grinned. The exact number didn’t matter, but she knew he’d never talk with her about lycanthrope fighter pilots.

She took a turn down Woodlawn Avenue, and noted that the bank was still open on the right. Most of the other shops were closed. “Just one more,” she promised herself, “and then I’ll warp home for Oddworld!” She scanned the stores and slowed her pace. “First National Bank, T.J Harvey’s, Rizalla’s Cafe`, It’s All Venice To Me Imports, the Department of Minor Incompetence Correction.” She slammed on the brakes and turned back around to check out that last one, reading the small brass plaque beneath it: “Aim for the Stars! Tie Your Shoes!”

She burst out laughing and then after a few moments thought to herself, “This is always where someone opens a door and gets sucked into an alternate universe or gets eaten by a humongous reptile.” She reached into a side pocket on her backpack, rubbed her lucky 20-sider, and then reached for the door. It was locked. Locked? That never happens!

She couldn’t see inside through the tinted glass no matter how she scrunched up her eyes. Even the light provided by her collapsible lightsaber wasn’t enough. She took a long look at the sign again and then spun around to make sure it really read the same thing. Then she noticed the next store over, “Water Wheels of the World”, followed by “Astelle’s Investigations”, and then “Our Secret Cafe`”. She shook her head. It had to be some kind of joke. Besides even if it wasn’t, she couldn’t picture Brandon in some bizarrely-named place like one of those. It just wasn’t him!

When she reached the end of the street, she thought to herself, “This sucks like Cygnus X-1! I need to make it past the castle gate!” Then as she looked up into the night sky, she felt heat rise to her cheeks at the plan that came to her mind. She bit her lip and wondered aloud, “Could I pretend to like him?”

* * * * *

“Six up!” said Brian, after sinking a hoop within the half-circle of the court. Brandon took the ball and dribbled it back to the top of the key. “What are you doing for English?” Brian asked him.

“Oh I’m reading stuff mostly,” said Brandon with a grin.

“Get out! Me too,” he said lunging to the side and dribbling to the left side of the goal. Brandon stood a few feet away, arms crossed to prevent the shot.

“I haven’t got an idea for the paper yet. I’m thinking about doing a bio of one of the poets.” He shot and missed and Brandon went to get the ball.

“That sounds good, man. I think I’ll do like a poem or two and see how they fit in today. Mrs. Eldridge likes that application stuff.”

“That’s right,” said Brian, following his friend back to the top of the key. “Maybe I’ll do something else.”

“Nah, just relate-ize it, you know?”

“Right,” said Brian, adding a “Crud!” as Brandon whipped past him to take a shot and dropping the ball cleanly in the hoop. “Eight-six!” Catching his breath, he added, “You know, that sounds like eighty-six.”

“Yeah it does,” said Brandon. “Or it sounds like someone ate six.”

“Isn’t that a lot to eat?”

“I guess it’s not so much if it’s like six donut holes,” said Brandon.

“But if it was six cars, that’d be too much.”

“Yeah.”

They played for a few minutes without saying much, and Brandon took the lead, eleven to nine.

“I saw something pretty crazy the other day,” said Brian.

“Like what?”

“Lauren. She was talking to some other girls.”

“No way!” said Brandon, unbelieving.

“Yes way, man. I saw it with these two,” and he pointed to his eyes with two fingers while he dribbled the basketball with his other hand. “And I could have sworn that it was about clothes or shoes or something girly.”

“Really?”

Brian made a shot but Brandon blocked it and recovered the ball before it went out of bounds. Brandon took a three-point shot and made it, leaving Brian momentarily short for words.

“Come on, I’ve done it before,” Brandon reminded him.

“It’s been a while,” said Brian, returning with the ball. Brandon rolled his eyes.

“So anyways, did you ask her what it was about?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I just couldn’t find the right time.”

Brandon called a time-out. “That sounds weird.”

“It is weird.”

“No, I mean weird, like there’s something else going on weird.”

Brian ran his hand through his blonde hair to wipe the sweat off and said, “Where did you get that idea from?”

“From you. But don’t go do that. That would unsettle everything, you know?”

“I know.”

“Ok.” Brandon looked at his friend with his eyebrows raised, not sure if he was really telling the truth or not.

“Honest, man, I don’t have a thing for her!”

“Ok, ok!”

“But you, now, you have something going on.”

“I always have stuff going on.”

“No, not ordinary stuff! I don’t know, man, but you’ve been out-of-it lately.”

Brandon tried not to think about Wenchy at this particular moment, but her face kept appearing in his mind. “Well, I guess…”

“There’s no guessing about it! You are totally distracted. You have to be crushing on someone.”

“Well if I am,” said Brandon, more defensively than he wanted to, “it’s not anyone at school.”

Brian smirked. “That just means you met her in the neighborhood or at the library or the hobby store or somewhere.”

Brandon felt some confidence seep back into him. “Yeah, right. Like girls hang out in those places, and we know all the girls in the neighborhood.”

Brian looked at him. He was right, but he had every indication of someone in love. It didn’t add up.

“Ok,” said Brian at last. “Maybe you’re not, but you sure look like you are.”

“Whatever!” said Brandon, calling a time-in and charging with the ball.

They played two games of 21, each winning one game, before they called it a night. Afterwards, they sat on a bench nearby because it was warmer than the cold concrete court. They had started talking when the lights went off with a violent electrical snap. In the darkness, lit only by the stars, Brian said, “Guess the time’s up.”

“Yeah, guess so.” Brandon could help but think how ominous those words sounded. He didn’t get to see Brian as much after school and he knew that he’d been hanging with his jock friends more.

The trip back home was quiet and when they bade each other goodnight, Brandon felt even smaller and more isolated beneath the stars, surrounded only by the dark. He felt out-of-place somehow, not where he always was and yet, not what he was going to be, only, he had no idea what he was becoming. The porch lights of his house drew him in without protest.

* * * * *

The Complexitor was seated at the bar at Starry Nights, and had just slipped his phone back into his jeans. It was Wednesday night, not his usual night, and none of his business associates were around. A boring and repetitive industrial guitar song throbbed through the speakers like a headache. The words he had just texted to his cousin burned in his mind as if they were on fire — “No room. Bad idea. Can’t do it!” He looked suspiciously at a watery scotch and rearranged the three sunglasses that he wore. He was wondering if she would show, but those thoughts fled with a familiar poke between the shoulder blades and a coy giggle.

He looked over into the star-and-dagger eyes of Tristiana. “So you did it?”
“Of course I did,” she said.
“I doubt it,” he said.
“I knew you’d say that,” she replied, sitting down on the stool next to him, and then pulling out a silver phone from her too-cute purse. “Watch this.”

Her fingernails clattered across the phone and quickly located a series of video clips. In turn, the Complexitor watched her approach one junior member of the DMIC after another, though not a single one that he had seen the night of the football game. One by one, after Tristiana’s confusing web of words, their expressions shifted from intrigued to confused to momentary panic, and then to a slack-jawed expression of unconsciousness.

The Complexitor gritted his teeth. “These look authentic. I don’t quite understand how you did it, but you did. What do you want me to do?”

She smiled a brilliant, disturbing smile. “I want you to ask me out.”

The Complexitor recoiled so quickly that one of his sunglasses flew off and skidded down the bar.

“What?”

She smiled again and leaned in closer. “I said, ‘I want you to Ask Me Out.’”

The Complexitor began to sweat and his beady eyes scanned the area for some sort of social system that he could manipulate into complex behavior.

“No you don’t,” she said, placing her manicured nails on either side of his head. She stood up and loudly declared, “But we had a deal!”

The Complexitor felt the knot in his stomach mushroom instantly into a familiar ill feeling. He had moved here to get away from his ex-wife and now this? “Ok, ok,” he found himself saying. “Where — where would you like to go?”

“Mediterranean cuisine is delish!”

He hadn’t thought this way in years. Where was that place Roberts liked? “How about the Sicilian Station for lunch, uhm, tomorrow?”

She turned her back to him. “On such short notice? What kind of girl do you think I am?”

Others were still watching. He cursed, silently, and then offered, “How about Friday, then, for dinner?”

She spun back around. “Yes, that’s perfect! See you then. Seven PM.” She winked at him with the star eye and then sashayed off into the lace-colored dance floor lights.

It had been two days and he still didn’t have any answers. He ran the situation over and over through his mind, without a single satisfying result. How had it all gone wrong? He had analyzed the game for several days, and planned for nearly a week. He had the best information available on the DMIC. He had taken all his vitamins. He was, as his cousin said, “juiced”. It couldn’t fail and yet somehow, it did.

The DMIC was simply stronger than he had anticipated, probably by a factor of two or more. What’s worse, Roberts had told him that they were aggressively recruiting high school students. He took another sip. He hated to contemplate the possibility, but maybe he needed a partner. The idea seemed comforting at first, but before he could follow it any further, the embarassment of defeat returned with a vengeance. Maybe their recruits were responsible for their success? That could have been the mitigating factor — no, it had to have been. Very well. He would take care of that. He would defeat the DMIC by taking out their new recruits. He would clip the new buds.

That evening, he decided to go out to the local watering hole for those involved in the incompetence trade — Starry Nights. It was an industrial club that didn’t make it, and from the outside, it still looked that way. The parking lot was littered with trash, weeds grew through the cracked asphalt, and a “For Sale” sign was staked outside. The building itself featured impenetrable black glass all around, and was plastered with glow-in-the-dark stickers of planets, comets, stars, and other astronomical objects. The two double-glass entrance doors featured spiral galaxies — one spinning clockwise, the other counter-clockwise. Above the doors, written in a fluid, futuristic cursive letters was the name of club itself. When the Complexitor arrived, he took a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket and followed the byzantine instructions written down. After a series of knocks and wiping sounds made by dragging his fingers across glass, the doors jangled and opened. He quickly stepped inside.

* * *

Brandon swung open the door to the DMIC lounge. HIM sat in his usual position with a dainty cup of tea between his two meaty, oversized hands, oblivious to the chaos around him. Veero hovered just below the ceiling, fading in and out, while Wenchy and O-Man stood just below her, hurling insults at one another. O-Man was dressed in a white T-shirt with jarring blue letters superimposed on red letters which read simply “No”, shimmery green pants that featured water droplets falling into a lake in a holographic pattern, and his usual goggle-glasses. Velvet Katherine laid on the sofa, chin propped up on one elbow, smiling.

“No, what’s important here is assigning blame! Whose fault is it?” asked Wenchy.

“Yours,” said O-Man. “You’re supposed to be a tomboy. You fumbled the ball!”

“I didn’t want to get my dress snagged on the couch! You should’ve thrown it TO me instead of to my Side Of The Room.”

Velvet Katherine noticed Brandon and in reply, stretched out her hand and curled three fingers in slowly. HIM nodded as he lifted the teacup to his lips.

Velvet Katherine said drolly, “Welcome to the asylum.”

“What’s going on?” Brandon asked.

She idly pointed to a foam football that was wedged in the oak cabinet where Veero’s control circuitry was housed. HIM put down the empty cup and stated, “Arena football gone bad. They jarred her controls.”

“Oh,” said Brandon. He took a seat on the couch facing away from him, slightly amused and slightly confused. “Are they going to fix her?”

“Someday,” sighed HIM. “It’s not hard, but it’s the principle that’s at stake.”

“And the pride,” added Velvet Katherine.

“Are we still having a meeting?”

“Of course,” darted Velvet Katherine. “The children just need to get it out of their systems.”

O-Man and Wenchy continued arguing; Velvet Katherine raised her voice and repeated herself.

Wenchy was about to slap O-Man and he was lunging for a cushion on HIM’s sofa when what Katherine had said registered. Wenchy looked over at Brandon, blushed slightly, and composed herself. O-Man grumbled and headed over to the oak cabinet. When his back was turned, Wenchy stuck out her tongue at him. Brandon rolled his eyes.

An uncomfortable silence filled the room until Veero popped off with, “I was right here! Right here!” She sighed and slumped over, floating down to HIM’s sofa. She adjusted her glasses and looked over at him, smirking. “Tagging hair isn’t a real tackle!” HIM quickly looked away.

O-Man shut the oak cabinet and then stood before the coffee table as Wenchy sat down beside Brandon. He rifled through some notes that he pulled out of his green pants. “Ok, conclave meeting this Wednesday. Six PM sharp. I’ll drive.”

Everyone but Brandon protested. O-Man grinned, feigning hurt. “Just making sure that you’re awake.”

Wenchy jabbed Brandon in the ribs, her voice low and secretive. “Do you remember what the conclave is?”

Brandon blinked. “Uhm, I know it’s a level higher up than the chapter.”

Wenchy pointed to him and then unfurled an imaginary book with her hands.

O-Man continued, “More on that later. Here’s the status on the McCallahan Lake project. We’ve verified that there are no other sources of incompetence in the area and our surveillance has indicated that none are forthcoming. The maintenance work is not large enough for Farley to subcontract.”

“On the other hand, the system isn’t being maintained poorly enough to get the attention of county water management. So far, it’s just minor disturbances like low water pressure and occasional disruptions to service. It may be a year before trouble hits, but when it does hit, it will be big.”

“If it’s a big deal, we don’t handle it anymore, right?” asked Brandon.

“True,” said O-Man. “But what if something becomes a big deal because we didn’t stop it? That’s major bad and Bernie would find out for sure.”

“Bernie! Grr!” said Veero.

“We also have a tendency to lose funding in those situations,” noted Velvet Katherine, almost nonchalantly.

“And if that’s not bad enough, all the other chapters laugh at us,” added Wenchy. “So while it might seem like a good idea, it really isn’t.” She turned to look at O-Man. “By the way, why didn’t you use the roach motel defense?”

O-Man shrugged. “We ran through several scenarios and only the mobile truck repair looked possible. Even that was only an outside chance because one of the guys is a gonzo truck mechanic — it’s the only thing he cares about.”

“What else did you find out?” asked Velvet Katherine.

O-Man scanned through his notes. “There’s an election coming up for the county commission. Our next plan of attack is to publicize the sorry state of the drainage system. We’re gonna take photos and send them to various bloggers.”

Wenchy nodded. “The harpoon strategy.”

“The next thing is to fill in Brandon in on what happened behind the scenes last Friday.” He gestured to Wenchy, who took his place before the table. She smiled at him and he sat down, folding his arms as if bracing for impact.

“Here’s the official rundown,” she began. “It was mostly a success — grade B. We managed to foil the Complexitor. The background to this is that while you,” and here she looked at Brandon, “and the other junior members were executing the visual component of Operation Flash Fire, we were tracking the Complexitor. We had him penned in and he didn’t even know it!”

Velvet Katherine looked at Wenchy with a “stay on course” sort of look.

“Ahem. Well, after the visual component took its toll, he tried to make a direct play. Jackie interrupted him and then O-Man and Velvet Katherine brought him to heel. It would have been a perfect ending, too, but he got away. More to the point, O-Man let him get away.”

“But no-one’s ever put a Wankel engine in a DeLorian! What would you say to that question?” he asked, spreading his arms wide.

Velvet Katherine replied curtly, “No-one in this room knows what you mean.”

O-Man protested, “You were there, too!”

“We always leave the dirty work to you,” she replied.

“It seems,” interrupted HIM, “that we all have something to learn from this.”

The room fell instantly still. After a few painfully quiet moments, Velvet Katherine spoke. “Point taken. Wenchy?”

Wenchy bit her lip in a way that Brandon thought was irresistably cute. “I will make suspect apprehension a part of strategy.” She adjusted her glasses. “Now about that conclave meeting.” O-Man got back up before the table and they launched into the particulars.

The rest of the discussion was a blur to Brandon, because for the first time, he had thought that Wenchy was cute. The times before he had felt nervous or fragile around her, and he hadn’t wanted that dream to end, and he had felt this glow inside that wasn’t entirely a joy in conquering algebra, but until a few moments ago, it hadn’t all added up. Now it had. She was cute — even when she was snapping her fingers before his eyes.

“Earth to LM. Study time.”

He blinked and realized that the discussion was over. “Oh sorry. I guess I spaced out.”

She led the way into the office. “I noticed! But don’t worry — there’s no test on that stuff. In fact, you’ll have the day off.”

He followed her inside. “I will?”

“Yes. You’re still being trained. A few more weeks and then you’ll be able to attend off-site functions.” She saw his disappointed look. “Hey, it’s for your good as well as ours. Life goes better with training!”

She cleared off the whiteboard and changed the subject. “So how has algebra been treating you? How did studying go this weekend?”

“It went alright,” he said. “I studied for about an hour and a half.”

“Hmm,” she said, picking up a ruler and pointing it at him. “Are you sure that’s enough?”

“Uh, not entirely. But it’s more than I was doing before.”

“Good, good,” she said.

“I’ve been using the techniques.”

“Even better!” Inwardly, she smiled. She had told him to imagine that the problems were important and that his answers mattered. “Make up a story to go with it. In the real world, after all, no-one drops a random math problem in your lap! There’s always a reason why you have to solve it.”

“They’ve been working out really well.” His eyes met her for a moment too long and he had to look away. She looked at him strangely. “Oh no,” she thought. “Not again!” With a familiar pit in her stomach, she realized that this meant a call to his mom. She hurriedly switched the subject.

“And the class itself?”

“Oh. We’re getting to the end of the section on points and lines and Mrs. Turner always has a test at the end of a section. She said it’ll be this Friday.”

“Ah, test prep. I’ve got you covered.” She laid out a laminated sheet before him, that discussed four different methods to study and retain information. Each section had a few steps with fun things mixed between to make studying memorable.

After giving him a minute or so to look it over, she announced, “Algebra is not the only class, though. Our sources tell us that Biology and Physics are having you for breakfast — or at least brunch.”

Brandon wasn’t sure he got that one. “Yeah. I don’t understand biology. Physics is a little easier, though.”

She nodded. “Physics is O-Man’s department,” she said. “Veero’s interested in biology.”

Brandon blinked.

“That and alt rock,” Wenchy added, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for an AI/hologram system to have interests.

“We’ll get you started with them after this. But one more thing,” she added. “Don’t forget to study even classes that you’re great in. You’ve gotta keep brushing your teeth even if you didn’t have cavaties last time!” She added, “Now let’s go see what Veero is doing.”

* * * * *

The Complexitor’s eyes took a moment to adjust to the inside of the failed nightclub. Fanning out in a concave half-circle hugging the windows sat a handful of wooden circular tables, surrounded by clusters of chairs. The chairs were stacked one upside down on top of the other, as if the club had not yet opened. Further in, an empty black dance floor stretched from one end of the club to the other, and above, stage-like track lighting bathed the area in an antisceptic smoky-white glow. Further in stood the bar, and he could make out several people sitting there, some conversing with the bartender, others conversing with one another. Off to the side of the bar were comfortable-looking square lounge chairs clumped around low tables. The faint odor of cigars and the unpleasant smell of cheap draft beer came to his nostrils. The music pulsed annoyingly in the background — some sort of nondescript and out-of-date rave material. He really didn’t care for music; it was distracting and as a result, he never bothered to learn much about it except as a way to group similarly annoying things together. The only reason he knew it was rave was because of his cousin. He grit his teeth and made his way to the bar.

The bartender gave him the usual desultory nod as a welcome. He ambled over to tables and noticed a few familiar faces. “Mr. C!” called out one, while others waved him over. He pulled out a comfortable chair and settled in.

Around the table sat his compatriots in the incompetence industry. They weren’t friends, and they weren’t acquaintances, and they didn’t come to drink; they simply talked about various aspects of the business and shared their personal stories. He supposed that “business associates” was the best way to describe them. That was the word that his primary information source, Roberts, used.

A slender man dressed in a neon orange jumpsuit with black goggles and a perpetual grin on his face sat directly opposite the Complexitor. He was Number Four, a representative of the Orange Brigade. Lambda was there also, a young man with a purple flat-top and various Greek symbols down his cargo shorts. He sat with one leg on the floor and the other leg resting on top, bouncing his foot to the beat. His shirt was a picture of suspenders made to look as though he were wearing them. He seemed relaxed and balanced, which was very unusual for him. The last person at the table was Roberts, who wore a long, tan trenchcoat that he seemed to disappear into, leaving only his head to peek out, a head that was covered with short, fine bristles of white hair in patches. Behind gold-rimmed glasses, his eyes were electric blue, piercing, and calculating.

“So howzit?” asked Lambda.

“Could be worse,” said the Complexitor. Roberts raised an eyebrow, and then waved for the bartender.

“Yes. It could be. And that’s our job!” said Number Four, happily, as though he were hopped up on happy pills.

“They were just discussing math,” said Lambda, frowning non-seriously at Roberts. “You got here just in time, man!”

“Probabilities, to be precise,” said Roberts.

The Complexitor laughed. “I bet that you were taking odds on Lambda making it the whole evening without an incident.”

“Ding ding ding!” said Lambda. “The truth is, I’ve gone the whole day without a single accidental act of incompetence! That’s why your words can’t touch me!”

“He’s refining his unability! You go!” said Number Four. The Complexitor sighed. He didn’t like to think of their talents as inverted abilities, and that was a big reason why he didn’t join the Orange brigade — the getup was another.

Roberts said, “I told him that it would be no problem for him to continue that streak the rest of this evening. However, my estimates of that are quite low.”

“Whatever,” said Lambda, bouncing his foot to the beat.

“So how’s everyone else doing?” asked the Complexitor, nodding to the bartender as he passed out another glass for everyone.

“I can’t complain,” said Roberts. “The information trade is booming.”

“Things are smashing in orange land!” said Number Four. “This last mission we caused fifty acts of incompetence at our latest flash breakdance session. Granted, they were fifty acts of bad dancing, but they occurred all within a few minutes of each other, which put a dent in the local competence grid, for certain!” And that was another reason, thought the Complexitor. Staging acts which encouraged mass incompetence was mindless and had no lasting effect. He was convinced that the competence grid was something that existed only in their orange minds.

“How about you, Complexitor?” asked Roberts. “How did your operation turn out?”

The Complexitor took a deep breath. “Not so well. In fact, it was a total bust.”

The others leaned in a little closer. Good news was good, but bad news was even better. “Things started off well — no obvious signs of a resistance,” he said, feeling like a police officer reading a report. “It wasn’t until the second quarter that I realized how much we had underestimated them.”

“No way!” said Number Four with a downturned thumb.

The Complexitor continued, “They knew about the my sensitivity,” he said, tapping the outermost of his three sunglasses, “and they exploited it to its full potential.”

“It’s almost like they knew more about you than you knew about them,” said Lambda.

“I know,” said the Complexitor, looking at Roberts. “After that, I tried to influence the game head-on, but my official source dried up, and then I met Jackie.”

“Jackie? Interesting,” said Roberts.

“I’ll spare you the rest,” the Complexitor continued with an annoyed glance at Roberts, “but I managed to evade capture. They were far stronger than we expected, by a factor of at least two.”

Number Four let out a low whistle. “I can’t find an upside to all that, and that’s depressing! Who were you fighting?”

Under his breath, the Complexitor said, “The DMIC.”

Lambda and Number Four looked at each other for a moment and then burst out laughing.

The Complexitor quaffed his scotch and looked off into the distance. “Go on, laugh. It’s not like I went in there blind.”

Lambda said, “I’m sorry, man, I just can’t help it. Geez. The DMIC? Aren’t they like the place where garbagemen go who can’t get into garbage school?”

“No,” said Number Four, slapping his knee. “That’s where the garbage goes that can’t make it as garbage!” Lambda kept laughing but looked at him strangely.

That’s another reason, the Complexitor said to himself. Their jokes don’t make sense.

Even Roberts let a little grin tug his lips upward.

The Complexitor looked at them each dully in turn. “I appreciate all your support.”

Lambda stopped laughing and said at last, “Sorry man. I know it’s gotta sting.” He laughed a little more, recovered his composure, and then asked, “So what’s your followup?”

“I don’t have anything definite. I will be reevaluating my information sources, though,” the Complexitor stated.

Roberts took a sip of his drink. “Probabilities, probabilities. All our information is extrapolated from what my sources know to what might be, and even what they know might be wrong. What we’ve learned is that our estimates of the DMIC — as improbable as this might be — are low. This is good knowledge to have.”

“You should have joined us!” chirruped Number Four.

The Complexitor leaned back in his chair and felt a playful, almost tender poke. He turned and looked up straight into the eyes of Tristiana.

With the smoky-white lights behind her, she seemed like an angel stepping forth from the clouds, at first. Two off-white wings protruded from her shoulder blades, reaching half-way down her back, ending in sharp pinions — a nice sewing job, he admitted. Her hair was a long, black affair that fanned out over her forehead slightly and then splayed down to where her wings began. A silver star had its center as her left eye, and a dagger had its center as her right. Her gossamer-like top seemed to ripple in some breeze, while spiderweb-textured black gloves ran from her fingers to her elbows, tapering into translucence. Her ruffled black dress was cut in sharp lines as if it had been cut from paper that bled glittering silver gel. Her shoes were off-white slippers with tiny silver-outlined wings behind the heel, a star on the left toe, and a dagger on the right. High cheekbones gifted her with an elevated air, but her eyes focussed on him like he were prey and her smile was twisted in a grin of uncertain sanity.

The Complexitor knew about her and had seen her around, but their paths had never crossed. He knew she wasn’t an emissary or a messenger-girl. She curled a finger and beckoned him aside. He got up and nodded to the table, with the remaining occupants each looking some degree of stunned.

Once at the bar, she said, “I hear you’ve been having a little — trouble.” Her voice matched her appearance — lines alternatingly silky-sweet and huskily mad.

“Word gets around,” he said, looking at an empty glass beside him.

“I can help, you know.”

“How?”

She sat down beside him and playfully imitated his sitting position, laying her head on her arms, and then her arms on the bar. She then lifted her head, turned it sideways to wink at him with the star eye. “Now I can’t tell you all that! But I can mystify!” She swirled her hands higher and higher as if coaxing a balloon into flight. “If I can mystify three junior members of the DMIC” — and she held out three fingers — “then you have to do something for me.”

He laughed. “If you can do that, be my guest.”

She stood up sharply and pushed the bar stool under the table. In a voice like a game show host, she announced, “It’s — a — deal!”

The Complexitor could feel the eyes of strangers on him. Applause broke out from various sections of the bar and she bowed to each in turn.

She stood up and turned to face him, grabbing his nose between her thumb and forefinger. She whispered, “Prepare to meet your doom! Be here Wednesday. I’ll be waiting.” She laughed selfishly and sashayed away, wings flapping slightly as she went.

* * * *

Tuesday morning, Lauren took the long way to homeroom — down the main hall, down the B wing, and then up K. She scanned the right side of the hall and found Danielle, hanging out with two of her friends. “Ugh, I hate acting like this, but here goes nothing!” she thought, slowing her pace and waving hi to Danielle.

Danielle was a short, brown-haired girl, whom most would describe as cute. She was friendly, wore her hair in a ponytail, and smiled more than most. She knew Lauren from second-period English, but they didn’t talk much.

“Hi Lauren. Forget your homework?”

Lauren forced herself into an artificially happy smile and made her voice perky. She said, “No, I got it all done. Just barely, though!”

Danielle’s other two friends were freshmen that Lauren didn’t know, but they knew about her. When she joined them, they each backed up a few feet.

“Me too,” said Danielle. “I wish we would get through the Odyssey already! Blech!”

Lauren fought back the urge to swing her backpack around and knock them all out. The adventure stuff was the only poetry worth reading! Her anger vanished instantly when she realized that Dana would agree. “That’s weird. I wonder what she would say if I asked her about it.” Instead she just nodded.

Then Danielle introduced her to the other two girls — Anna, and Charlotte. In a moment, Lauren could tell that she picked the perfect day to talk to Danielle. All three of them wore sharp clothes, color-coordinated well, and had hairstyles that fit them to a tee.

Before they could get back to their conversation, Lauren said quietly, “Actually, I need to ask a question.”

Anna and Charlotte looked at each other and quickly thrust their hands in their pockets, fumbling for their lunch money.

Lauren sighed. “No, that’s not it. I need some advice.”

Danielle smiled, her eyes twinkling. “Lauren Mitchell needs advice?”

“Yes,” said Lauren, looking off into space, and down at her shoes. “I have to go to a wedding, and I don’t know how I should look.”

Danielle smiled even larger. “So what kind of advice do you need?”

Lauren stumbled with the word. “F-f-f-fashion advice.”

The three girls looked at her in shock.

“Yes, fashion advice! I need it! Tell me everything you know!” The way she said it, it sounded like a threat, but she was blushing and had pulled her cap down over her eyes. The girls laughed and took a few steps closer. In no time, they were all discussing what a good wedding outfit would be for someone who didn’t have to be in the wedding itself. They even gave her ideas for hairstyles, after Lauren had reluctantly removed her MOPAR cap.

Just then, a skinny kid with a rumpled brown jacket and a T-shirt that read, “It’s not me, it’s YOU,” passed by the group of girls. He stopped and looked at them. “Lauren?” He saw a tall, blonde girl standing on tip-toes, with her long, straight hair falling about her shoulders, but she wore a t-shirt sporting a cartoonish funny car, and clutched a cap like a safety blanket. “No way!”

She stormed out of the group and towered over him. “Forget what you just saw, Eddie. One more thing.”

“What’s that?” His voice quavered as fear shot through every muscle.

“Start running.”

He bolted down the hall, skidded left around the corner and kept going. Brian was headed towards his locker in the same hallway when he saw Eddie speeding away from him. He paused and looked sidelong down K wing. There, he saw Lauren all smiles, putting her cap on, leaving a group of girls that she had been talking to. He had a sudden, strange, feeling that he had just seen something he wasn’t supposed to have seen. He ducked back in the hall and turned around to take the long way to homeroom.

* * * * *

“Do you have it?” He turned around to face a rasta hat-wearing redhead girl carrying a black backpack completely covered with buttons. She wore a black tie-dyed t-shirt with a silver whirpool that reached from the edges to the center. He blinked and looked away, becoming dizzy after just a few seconds looking at.

“Uh, not here,” he said, stepping out of the flow of traffic leaving class. “But I can get it for you.” There was something about her that made him nervous. Maybe it was knowing that she was a higher-level geek than he was. Maybe it was the fact that she was cute. Maybe it was both.

Dana was in no mood for pleasantries. She wanted her lightsaber back and she wanted it now. “Ok, let’s go get it.” They went to his locker and after fumbling with a few books, he pulled it out and handed it over. She held it up and examined it several different ways. “Not even a scratch. Excellent!”

“I even put new batteries in it,” he said, getting the last of his books into his backpack.

She pressed the ‘on’ button and a brilliant red glow instantly outlined the clear center column. She swung it around a few times, completely oblivious to the stares of the other students as they passed by. “Excellent plus two!” she said, turning it back off and then collapsing it down to its usual size.

He shut his locker and turned to her and said, “Thanks for letting me borrow it. That was really cool of you.” Before she could zing him about returning it late or notice his expression, she caught a glimpse of Brandon from the corner of her eye.

“Later!” She ran off down the hall, light saber in hand, as stealthily as she could.

He looked after her and said to himself, “She’s so cool.”

* * * * *

Lunchtime was filled with strange energy, as if you could feel the relationships between people reconfigure, buckle, and sway. Brian knew that something was up the moment he saw Brandon. He had seemed a little strange on the ride to school, but by now, he was completely different — out of it and way too happy.

“What’s up with you?” Brian asked.

“Me? Oh. Nothing,” said Brandon, whose dreamy and out-of-focus eyes, were slowly refocusing. “Did I forget to zip up or something?”

Brian laughed. “No, man. It’s your eyes. You look out of it.”

“Oh.” He smiled.

Lauren sat down and noticed that Brian looked more serious than usual. Brandon gave him a sidelong glance and knew what that expression meant — he was thinking of something to say, or trying to avoid saying something. Lauren looked over at Dana and Jimmy, who joined the table with their lunches. “Oh yeah,” said Brandon as he went to go get his, and Brian fumbled around with his brown bag.

Lauren waited for a break in the conversation and then asked Dana if her class had read the Odyssey yet in English.

“We read it a few weeks ago, and no, you can’t have my notes,” said Dana, crossing her arms defiantly.

Jimmy took out a worn paperback titled, “Hyperdrive in Your Backyard, Cheap and Easy” and crouched behind it.

“That’s not it,” said Lauren, thinking to herself, “Didn’t I just do this?” She continued, “What’s your favorite part?”

Dana blinked, nervously looked around the table for someone to help her out. Was it a trick? Why was Lauren asking her something so geeky?

Dana smiled and pulled her rasta hat down over one eye. “The end. You’re not there yet, but there’s lots of blood.” She leered at Lauren. Lauren leered back. “You mean you didn’t like the monsters at all? What about the adventure?”

“Of course I liked those parts too.” Jimmy elbowed her and said softly, “How many Cyclops sketches did you make, anyways?”

Dana turned beet red and took his book. “Traitor!”

Lauren adjusted her cap in a way that Brian noticed as being more girly than usual. He blinked. Then she chomped a french fry in half, and he looked relieved.

“I just thought it was cool,” she said, “the way that Odysseus is going from place to place, like it’s some kind of naval road trip, you know?”

Dana looked at Lauren with a piercing gaze for several moments and then, after deciding that she wasn’t using a Jedi mind trick, she said guardedly, “That was cool.” Jimmy’s book fell from her hand and he caught it before it hit the cafeteria floor. “And it was poetry. I didn’t think you could do that with poetry.”

“Me either,” agreed Lauren.

Brandon looked from Dana back to Lauren to Dana. “Wow. I think this is the first time you have ever agreed on anything important.”

“Maybe so,” said Lauren, a little hurriedly. “But don’t get used to it. I still won’t play those stupid card games.”

“Like we’d let you!” replied Dana. Jimmy rolled his eyes and Brian excused himself.

Lauren took a few bites and then asked Brandon if he noticed anything about Brian.

Brandon thought hard about what to say next. He didn’t want to give away Brian’s thought process, but he didn’t want to lie, either. “Yeah. I think he’s thinking about something.”

“Uh oh,” said Lauren. “Hope he doesn’t hurt himself. Then again, what’s up with you?” She pushed him playfully.

Brandon just shrugged. “I’m just a little out of it today. Hey, it happens.”

Dana had noticed that, too; he did look like he had a vision of something; his eyes had this far off look, kind of like Legolas — she stopped herself. She still had to figure out what he was doing. It was time to expand the area of coverage. She grinned to herself. If her cellphone still worked, she would have sent herself a text to add to her mission calendar.

On the other side of town, the Complexitor pulled the buzzing phone out of his cargo shorts. He flipped it open and read the text message. He grit his teeth and replied as quickly as his large fingers would allow — “I can’t. Bad idea. No room here.” He pressed “Send” and put the phone back. What was his cousin thinking?

* * * * *

That night at the mall, Tristiana stood in the narrow hall outside the women’s bathroom in the mall. She looked like any other young mall denizen, with a little bit more flair for the gothic; her star and dagger symbols still surrounded her eyes, and on her white tennis shoes, she had painted a matching star and dagger on the corresponding shoe. She held up a backlit compact mirror and leaned against the wall. Etched around the inside of the compact in electric pink were the words, “Faedar 3.0″. In place of a mirror was an LCD, showing the mall divided into a green grid with several green dots clustered nearby. She smiled, licked her lips and shut the compact, slipping it into her overly-cute black purse.

This was the night, she thought. She would mystify three members of the DMIC and then the Complexitor — she giggled to herself and stepped out into the mall.

I found a scribbled note attached to the fridge. We were going to a barbeque this evening at the Randall’s across the street. They had a bike that Uncle Kevin would talk to them about. “Great,” I said aloud, “except all that’s eight hours away.” The microwave clock seemed to mock me, with neon-red digits reading 9:05.

I spent most of the day just laying around watching TV and eating junk food. When dusk showed up, Uncle Kevin and I got ready and headed across the street to the Randall’s. We brought soda pop and a few bags of chips which I hadn’t touched the whole day. Of course, the skull-and-crossbone notes stuck to them had helped.

We all gathered in the Randall’s backyard, which was spacious without being gigantic, with a back patio to fit. Two tables and plenty of white lawn chairs were scattered across it. The cooker stood in the middle, giving off the delicious smell of barbeque. Someone had set up a game of croquet on the lawn, but there weren’t enough people to play yet.

The Randalls were an older couple, I’d guess in their fifties. They were retired and their children had grown up and moved away. I felt like they pressed me for too much information, but soon other people showed up and I got used to it as everyone else asked me the same questions. It soon dawned on me that there wasn’t anyone there my age. Two couples were in their thirties, another couple around Uncle Kevin’s age brought their eight-year-olds, and Mr. Gene showed up with his walking stick. I played croquet with the eight-year-olds and their parents until the barbeque was ready. Then it was every man for himself, because the aroma of barbeque had made us all hungry.

The chips went really well with the barbeque. They had all kinds of different sauces, but I stayed away from the stuff marked with three x’s. I had just polished off my third plate and was on my way for a fourth when I bumped into a tall blonde girl. She turned to look over her shoulder and said, “Watch it, bub.” Her voice was playful and yet reprimanding. “I’m sorry,” I said, turning to look at her. “I was looking at the food.”

She stood slightly taller than me and was dressed in off-white cotton pants that tied at her ankles, an artsy checkboard top with a name scrawled in red cursive across that I didn’t dare spend much time looking at to figure out what it said. Her blonde hair was feathered and hung down slightly over one of her eyes. Her eyes were sky-blue and I knew, instantly, that she was older than me, smart, and probably in college.

She thought for a moment and then said, “Why? The food’s not that great-looking.” Her voice had this kind of unserious, sly tone to it.

I grinned as I filled my plate. “Ok, you win. The food isn’t supermodel material, but it sure tastes good.” I went to stand away from the cooker and a moment later, she joined me. “So who are you?” she asked. “I haven’t seen you around before.”

I reached out a hand and then thought better of it. “I’m Chris. Kevin Blythe is my uncle, erm, my cousin. I’m here for the summer.”

She looked down at her hand and thought better of it, too. “I’m Danielle. Danielle Carter. Freshman at Kent State. Nice to meet you.”

I felt a little awed by her, somehow, so I didn’t want to admit I was only a junior. I made a joke out of it instead. “I’m in MacPherson High. Junior. Out-of-state.” Brian’s dad was a college professor back home, so I knew something about all the lingo.

She smiled. “So what do you think of my alma mater?” she asked, unfolding her hands and spreading them wide. “Pretty small, huh?”

“It is smaller than where I’m from,” I said, “but I like it so far.” She was smirking, so I added, “I guess it would be different if I grew up here, though.”

“Uh huh. It is.”

“So is there anything to do around here?”

She stood on her tiptoes for a moment. “You mean besides the library? Not really.”

I couldn’t tell if she was being completely sarcastic on that one, so I decided to find out. “That’s not much. I bet the university library blows it away, though.”

“It does, actually. It’s five stories tall, holds over thirteen-thousand books, and has one of the only remaining copies of — hey, are you laughing at me?”

I blinked, dumbfounded. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. Then it hit me — maybe she was pushing me. Still, all I could manage was, “Uhm. No. Actually that’s pretty cool.”

“Mmhmm. You bet it is. I have a part-time job there during school.”

“And in the summer you go to backyard barbeques?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Believe it or not, for the main event I throw pizza dough.”

Then I laughed. “Really? That doesn’t sound intellectual at all.”

“It’s not.” She sighed. “But it pays for college and sometimes I like to rest my brain. I don’t want to burn it out, you know. I might end up like Old Man Simmons.”

I nodded.

“Frankie’s?” I asked. She shook her head.

“The other pizza place — Donatello’s.”

“I haven’t been there yet,” I said. “I’ll have to check it out.”

“You should,” she said, a small smile playing at her lips. “Even though it’s not intellectual.”

I was about to ask her why she thought I was intellectual when Uncle Kevin showed up with the Randalls. A strange uncomfortable silence fell over us all. Danielle looked aggressively bored. Uncle Kevin cleared his throat and said at last, “So everyone under thirty found each other, huh?”

“It wasn’t too hard,” I said, smiling, and trying to lighten the mood.

“True,” said Danielle, with an edge in her voice.

Mr. Randall shifted his warm grey eyes over to me. “Let’s go see that bike.”

Somehow, at that moment, having a bike didn’t seem as cool as it did just an hour before. “Sure,” I said, half-heartedly. By the time we had reached the garage, I was able to collect my thoughts. Was I trying to impress her or something? We were both smart and probably didn’t fit in, but she only talked to me because I was the only person there close to her age. So what did that mean? I took a deep breath. It meant nothing at all.

The bike was a dusty, dirty mountain bike that had belonged to a family friend a few years ago. The bike still worked and most importantly, it wasn’t pink, but black. Mr. Randall offered to let me borrow it for the summer and I agreed without hesitation. After that, we went home for the evening.

* * * * *

Monday’s job was cleaning out the gutters. Uncle Kevin had this weird hook-like tool that was part of a collapsible pole. The hook was an attachment, and there was also a brush, but he had lost the other one. I climbed out the second story windows and sat on the gables, raking out the leaves, pine needles, and the congested crud that had accumulated in the gutters. I wondered when he had last cleaned these? Ten years ago? That job took most of the morning and part of the afternoon.

I also had this long flexible metal wire-like tool that was called a “snake”. Uncle Kevin had told me to thread it up the drainpipes to make sure that they were clear. That took almost an hour because I kept running into things like pinecones and twigs that had been crushed together. But I kept at it and by three, I was done — and exhausted.

Work seemed to pass fairly quickly because I was thinking about Sunday and anticipating checking out Tarrant again on my bike. Sunday was felt like a dream. I hadn’t been to church since last Christmas and it seemed like that was more about Christmas than about church. I didn’t know any of the songs or any of the phrases I was supposed to say, but I did recognize a few people from the barbeque yesterday. Kira and Cutler weren’t there, though. The sermon was interesting. I didn’t agree with everything, but I felt like I was on the edge of something something bigger than myself, something good, really important — and then it was time to go. Most people didn’t look like they had got it and that made me wonder why they went; but some people seemed to shine. I felt small and didn’t think that anyone would understand what I felt. Uncle Kevin didn’t talk much about it, either. I thought a little bit more and somehow I knew that Kira would definitely understand it.

After lunch, I had gone to explore the town. Uncle Kevin told me that most of the stores would be closed on Sunday, but I didn’t mind that (except for the camera store). When we had gone to TOGAC, he took a right from the driveway down to Main Street, and most of the traffic seemed to go that way, too, so I followed suit. Main Street was a wide, two-lane street with a handful of cars every minute or so. Tall oak trees hung over the sidewalks on both sides which gave me plenty of shade, a good thing at one o’clock in the summer. Between the trees other roads branched upwards past old, elegant houses. I took a right and headed into town.

It didn’t take me long to notice the first sign of business — a side-street that led to several warehouses. A small marquee close to the ground listed the businesses, and sure enough, there was Kira’s: Old World Antiques warehouse. I kept pedalling and passed a church on my right with a high white steeple, and then after that, a Hyvee grocery store.

The road split like a claw, into three roads, with one going right, one straight and one diagonally between the two. I went down the diagonal road and found Edwards Photo Hut, closed of course. The store looked like it been built in the 50′s and then remodeled to look even more like a store from back then. The outside walls were painted alternating white and light stripes; double-glass doors opened from the front, and a low flat roof jutted out over the edges of the walls. A simple sign that looked like an old billboard sat on the roof, shouting “Edwards Photo Hut!” There was a drive-through on the side near me, but the windows were tinted, so I couldn’t really see anything inside. Strangely, I felt like I was being watched, so I got back on the bike and kept going.

It turned out that everything in Tarrant was close to everything else. Once I reached the end of the diagonal road, I was downtown. Within a few blocks, I found Frankie’s, city hall, the library, a McDonald’s, the sub shop, and a few unusual stores, a candle shop, a used book store that specialized in military history, and Kira’s antique shop. Its windows were wide like the other stores and I could see all sorts of things inside — even the astrolabe. On the next block over, I found a dark red wooden building with Italian cursive script arching over the door: Donatello’s, the pizza place where Danielle worked.

I cycled back and took a break in the park at the center of town. It was orderly, with stone pathways from each cardinal direction leading through a ring of shrubs, then flowers, and then at the center, simple grass. A few feet from the grasses in the absolute center of the park stood a covered stone pavillion, which housed a lifelike statue of Anthony Tarrant, the town’s founder. A small plaque talked about his role in as an early American mapmaker.

Down the other direction were the elementary/junior high and the high school. Another road sign indicated that Cranston was that way as well. I went just far enough to find the bowling alley and a laundromat, and then I headed back to the town square.

Sitting in the shade of the pavillion, I watched the clouds skate by, covering me with passing shade. I had just explored my own new world and had a mental map of all the places I had only heard of. I couldn’t wait to explore them all. It was getting close to dusk, though, so I decided to go on home. Where was that lake that Kira was talking about, though? I’d ask her about it next time we met.

That was yesterday, and yesterday I decided where I would explore first. I was going to go back to town and get my photos developed. I left a note for Uncle Kevin, picked up the film cannisters, and headed to town.

There was a little more traffic today than yesterday, so I had to pay attention to the stoplights this time. In a few minutes, I was at Edward’s Photo Hut. An “Open” sign was hung diagonally across the door along with a set of tiny bells, so I was in luck.

Inside, it was like the camera shop at the mall, only with a better selection and funky 50′s pictures (of telephone booths crammed with people, space-age cars, and women with tall hairdos) between the displays. They carried a good selection of 35 mm cameras along with the newer digital cameras, printers, and the usual accessories. The lenses and cameras were displayed on grey carpet with spotlights mounted beneath them and track lighting above so you could get a good look at everything. A door led to a darkroom that you could rent by the hour and the mirror in the bathroom was framed by a smiling guy taking a photo of you. It was a funky, but cool place.

In the back a single cash register sat atop a glass display case, and a guy about my own age leaned forward over it. He had black hair like a mop, black-rimmed glasses, seemed to be both laid-back and methodical. He flipped through a photography magazine, analyzing each page, and yet had greeted me when I came in and followed me with his eyes ever since.

I spent a few minutes looking around and then I noticed a sign for developing film and the prices. I felt like my wallet instantly shrunk. That was half of the money mom gave me for the summer! I was about to ask him about the prices when he asked, “You’re Chris, right?”

“Right.” I looked at him closely. No, he wasn’t familiar at all. “Who are you?”

“I’m Jeff. I do LARP with Cutler.”

“Oh ok. I was wondering how you knew me.”

“He told me he’d invited you and what you look like. Do you know who you’re going to play?” He asked, laying aside the magazine.

“No,” I admitted. “Cutler hasn’t told me a whole lot about it yet.”

“Typical J. He never plans.” He shook his head to move some strands of hair out of his eyes. “J and I run it together, so we were thinking you could be one of the princes, distantly related to the current king.” He then told me the whole backstory of the game, which involved court intrigue and diplomacy with foreign nations as well as ocassional large-scale battles. The king had vanished and succession to the throne was up in the air. It sounded fine to me; as long as my character wasn’t the comic relief, I was ok with it.

I asked him to develop my film and handed over two rolls along with half the money in my wallet. He gave me a sidelong glance. “Are you ok? It looks like you have money separation anxiety.”

I grinned. “It was a little more than I’m used to.”

“Yeah,” he said, “sometimes things are a little more expensive out here in the sticks.”

He said that it’d be ready by Wednesday afternoon; before I went I asked him if anyone was here yesterday. I said that I stopped by when I was looking around town and felt like someone was watching me.

He arched his eyebrow and said quietly, “That’s strange.”

“Yeah. It was really strange.”

He didn’t say anything else, and I got the feeling like he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, so I just waved by and said I’d see him Wednesday.

“Thanks! Come again!” he said in a loud, businesslike voice.

The door shut behind me with the jingle of little bells. Now I had two reasons to look forward to Wednesday!

Wenchy looked around the room. “Let’s go through our roles one more time, shall we?” Her voice struck a characteristic semi-serious tone.

“O-Man, you’ve got the ground attack and the sweep operations.” He saluted her.

“HIM, you’ve got driving duty, clean-up, and wardrobe detail.” HIM responded laconically, “Check.”

Wenchy narrowed her eyes at him. “Hey now. Someone has to do those things.”

HIM said, “No-one ever changes clothes during one of our missions. Wardrobe detail is boring.”

Wenchy replied, “You have to do Something. We just can’t risk you going outside. You’d cause a riot with all the teenage girls in attendance.”

“Ok, ok, I’ll handle it.”

O-Man kept the grin on his face from becoming a huge smile. It was humorous, somehow, to hear HIM complain.

“I’ll do communications, strategy, and of course, food acquisition. O-Man, front and center! Four hot dogs, chips, and drinks.” She waved a wad of dollar bills at him.

He grumbled. “What, you don’t like the color of money?” she asked him. Everyone rolled their eyes. “There’s enough there for you.”

O-Man took the money and said, “I’ll be back with the food.” He opened the door, closed his jacket, and promptly disappeared. The door swung shut by itself.

* * * * *

Every breath that Brandon took seemed to be charged with excitement. No one thing was responsible for how he felt, but rather a whole host of things. He was fifteen; he was with friends; his school’s football team was playing in the first game of the season, trying to beat their arch-rivals; his band was in the stands, playing rousing music and taunting the cheerleaders; it was early autumn; the oddly-invigorating aroma of hot dogs and cigarettes was in the air; and so many others were there, just like him, sharing in this night. He couldn’t describe it exactly, because the words were just out reach, but he knew it was memorable. Together with Brian and Lauren, he felt invincible.

They had good seats along the middle of the field in the seventh row. Lauren had made sure their seats were just above the walkway separating the lowest section from the middle, so it was easy for them to jump out of the seats and dance around when the situation called for it. They were also close enough (at least Lauren was, with her softball-toned arm) to pelt the opposing team with objects, if the situation called for it.

First quarter lurched from one unsteady moment to the next, with moments of dramatic tension and desperate plays counterbalanced with odd breaks in the action. The first oddity was when one of the Sharks kicked the ball after the Eagle’s quarterback had dropped it. The referee blew the whistle and the loudspeakers rumbled, “Aborted drop kick. Change of possession.” About half the people in the stands were asking each other what a drop kick even was. Five minutes raced by, with the Eagles threatening to score on the Shark’s ten yard line. Moments dripped by in slow-motion as they tried for three downs to make a touchdown. When they went for the final pass, it was blocked by Shark #37, but then the Eagle’s cornerback kicked the ball into the end zone. The referee blew the whistle and awarded two points to the Eagles. “Touchback. Two points!” The loudspeaker blared. Most people knew what a touchback was, but it wasn’t something that you saw every day, at least not that way. Then a spate of odd penalties hobbled the Sharks as they barely reached the fifty-yard line. Even the referees disagreed on what the calls should be.

“Man,” said Brian aloud. “I didn’t realize that football was so complicated. I’m glad that I play basketball!”

Lauren made a fist. “Freaking refs!”

Brandon had gone from excitement to confusion to a cold sweat. He’d already heard several people wondering aloud about how little they knew about football, while others had been bragging about their knowledge, and he suspected that they were just covering up their own ignorance. Ordinarily all that wouldn’t have bothered him, but their commentary paralleled what was happening on the field below. Strange situations followed one after another, and the incompetence of players, coaches, and referees became hard to ignore as the game dragged on. He knew that it was no run of bad luck, either. Their incompetence was being brought out by artificial means. What happened when the incompetence reached a critical state? He had no idea. Would the DMIC’s cure be worse than the problem? That worried him just as much.

“Brandon. Psst. Brandon.” He looked over at the people sitting next to him and in the nearby rows, but he didn’t see anyone. But that voice — it sounded familiar. It was a raspy, like a hard rock singer’s voice.

“Who’s that?” asked Lauren, looking around.

Then it hit him — it was O-Man. But why couldn’t he see him? Never mind; he remembered that Wenchy told him that he’d be hard to spot. “Just someone I know outside of school,” Brandon said quickly. “Give me a sec.”

He walked down to one of the main walkways that lead to an entrance. As he left the row, he looked beside him and O-Man was standing there, denim jacket spread apart with bright orange reflective tape peeking out from under his arms.

“Good move, kid,” he said, giving Brandon a thumbs-up. Brandon looked at him and asked, “Wenchy said that you’d be hard to spot, but you were totally invisible!”

O-Man rummaged through his pockets. “Pretty cool, isn’t it? Here.” He pushed several long strips of reflective white tape into Brandon’s hand. “Use these.”

“How?”

“That’s up to you. Just make sure other people can see it.”

“Uh, ok.” Brandon’s mind whirled. “Is this part of the mission?” He tried to choose his words carefully.

“Yes,” said O-Man. “HE is sensitive to light, remember? Enough light, especially distracting light like these produce, will send him running like the cockroach he is!”

“Is that all I have to do?” Brandon asked.

“Yup. And if you see some kind of disturbance later on, don’t worry. We have the situation under control.”

Brandon didn’t feel particularly reassured by that, but he nodded, and O-Man took three steps and then disappeared.

He made his way back to the stands and found Brian and Lauren doing one of their famous side-to-side dances. Brandon joined right in, dangling the reflective strips from his free hand.

“So what was all that about?” asked Brian when the dance was done.

“He had some reflective things,” said Brandon, “He said they’re good for football games.” He shrugged.

“Rock on!” said Lauren, excitedly taking a few. “We saw some flashes around the stadium when you were gone and was wondering what was up.”

Really? Brandon thought. Brian nodded. “Look at the band, man.” He pointed over to where the trombone section had hung reflective strips from their instruments so that they flashed whenever they were playing.

“Hoo-yeah!” yelled Lauren, taking two of the strips and twirling them around. Brandon and Brian joined in, and Brandon once again felt the excitement and that sense of timeless invincibility return.

* * * * *

The Complexitor stood halfway between one cluster of lights and another, at the juncture where their coverage was the weakest. After looking around carefully, he trudged up several rows, and located a seat perfectly hidden in the shadows: row thirty-one, seat thirty-six B.

He fiddled with his orange and white scarf nervously until the game began, and then he placed his fingers on his temples and stared in the direction of the home team. He could sense the innate complexity of what has happening down below — 55 players, five referees, four coaches — all he had to do was to introduce one anomaly, one unexpected variable. Just a little bit more complexity and incompetence would bloom like toadstools after rain.

The ball spun out of the quarterback’s hands and whether it was slippery grass or whether it just seemed like a good idea, number 45 from the Sharks decided to kick the ball. When it landed out of bounds, the referee made a call that sent shocks of confusion through both teams and half the stadium: “Aborted drop kick. Change of possession.”

Behind three different pairs of sunglasses, the Complexitor smiled.

* * * * *

“Status,” said Wenchy into the microphone.

“Fenris at quadrant one, check,” replied a whispered, distracted female voice.

“Jennifer at two. Ready,” replied another female voice, this one self-assured and just a bit haughty.

“Moe three! Ready to rev!” This voice was jubilant, male, and had a scratchy about-to-break kind of quality that placed its owner right in the throes of puberty.

“Edward ready at four.” The lower-pitched, somber voice brought to mind smoking jackets and tea time at distant gazeboes.

“Jack here. Waiting on you.” Brash and cocky, Jack’s voice oozed debonair refinement.

Wenchy paused a moment and then announced, “Operation White Light is a go!” The momentary static was broken by five nearly-simultaneous responses. Wenchy turned her eyes toward the incompetence and complexity meters, both of which were a series of amber peaks lurching dangerously towards red.

Reclining in a chair, HIM glanced over the latest issue of Hairstyles of the Stars at the meters and raised an eyebrow disapprovingly. “We waited too long,” he said.

“That’s exactly what we want him to think,” Wenchy replied. “We want him to get overconfident and then desperate. It’s his first mission and he won’t want to lose.”

“We’re sure that he’s operating alone?”

“Sure as sushi.”

HIM returned to reading his magazine and sighed deeply.

* * * * *

The Complexitor cursed under his breath. “No side effects? Right.” He noticed a lot more flashes than usual. He had become accustomed to a few streaks of light as a side-effect of the mental enhancers, but not to this extent. It couldn’t be a migraine, either, because his temples felt fine. Still, there they were — flashes of light spreading across the stadium in on-again-off-again patterns. Then the truth came to him like an unwelcome visitor. Could it really be them?

He hadn’t expected any response at all; this widely-dispersed attack brimming with competence floored him. Minutes ticked by and the flashes grew more numerous and arrhythmic, each spinning off into its own pulsing constellation of activity. Concentration was impossible.

In the meanwhile, the football game fell into a rhythm of hard-fought yard gains punctuated by dramatic passes. The crowds on both sides grew enthusiastic and the bands challenged one another across the stadium.

The Complexitor felt his stomach sour as he tottered down the steps. Desperately, he waved to the referee that he had bought off, but all he got was a disputed play. He forced his eyes into slits and stumble-ran his way towards the Eagles sideline, muttering statistical formulas aloud.

Jackie sat in the top row of the lowest section on the Eagles’ side, directly above the fifty yard line. Her straight black hair framed her face, sliding back and up slightly just below her ears. Her eyes were a mysterious dark blue, and her outfit was an upscale take on outfitting apparel — a purplish, nearly maroon top with cream-accented utility pockets, and a matching clingy skirt out of the same linen. A thin black belt with a single gold clasp matched her fashionable black boots. Finally, she wore a straw bonnet the same color as her clothes, slanted across her brow. All in all, she radiated elegant mystery.

Jackie’s gaze followed the Complexitor as he made his way towards the field. She whispered into a walkie-talkie, slipped it into a pocket, and casually met up with him. As if by accident, she stretched and sent one of his sunglasses careening. “Oh my,” she said, “I’m so sorry!” He paused in the middle of his statistical incantation, shocked. Jackie pressed a boot faux-delicately onto the sunglasses as she walked forward. “Oops! There I go again!” She turned and looked at him with a smile as cold as steel.

His eyes shot wide open as he fumbled for the handrail and hurried down the stairs. Could she be part of them too? His intelligence didn’t mention anyone that stylish. Stupid! He turned his thoughts back to that formula and let it spill from his lips as he took the stairs down to the field. He put all his energy into it, hoping to pull off one final, decisive maneuver. He’d have to be close to the coaches in order for it to work, but between those maddening sparkling lights, the stadium floodlights, and the roar of the crowd, he knew he didn’t have long to pull it off.

A gate barred the way to the field and just beyond it stood a security guard and Frank, the referee that he paid off. The security guard had his arms crossed and regarded him with a suspicious eye.

Frank said aloud, “That man is a troublemaker.” The Complexitor stared at him and started to shake in rage. “Oh really?” asked Jackie, who stood at the top of the stairs. He looked from Frank to Jackie, fidgeting and sweating. Weakly, he muttered, “There’s been some kind of mistake,” and then he bolted towards the nearest exit, surprisingly quickly.

Jackie trailed him down the walkway that separated seating areas, and then up the stairs towards the exit. She took the steps two at a time, almost catching up to him when he groaned, and lunged to the side like he had hit a refrigerator. “O-Man!” shouted Jackie, “Are you hurt?” A figure lying on the ground opened up his denim jacket and then she could see him give a weak thumbs-down. Jackie nodded and leaped over him to catch the lip on the wall of the exit tunnel, standing precariously on one foot.

The tunnel was clear except for a surly, grungy girl, her back up against the wall near the exit. She looked derisively at the hefty man running towards her and while continuing to sip from her Slurpee, inched her foot forward just enough to cause him to trip and land on his face.

With that done, she grinned imperiously and tossed her brownish ringlets. Jackie jumped down and O-Man quickly joined her, as they put a foot on each of the Complexitor’s arms. The surly girl took a sleek walkie-talkie out of her jeans and pressed the button. “Complexitor stopped. VK out.”

Jackie blinked. O-Man took in a sudden breath. “Velvet Katherine?” asked Jackie.

“Yes, ’tis I,” she replied. The contrast between her disguise and her cultured, aristocratic voice could not have been more striking.

“It’s been ages!”

“It hasn’t been That long,” replied Velvet Katherine with a smile.

The Complexitor groaned beneath their feet. They both looked down and stepped away from him, looking to O-Man to handle him.

“Yes, yes, I’ll take care of it,” he said. Jackie smiled and within a few moments, they were trading information on sales events, new store openings, and all the juicy tidbits of clothing acquisition.

Maybe it was because the distracting lights were far off, the parking lot lights were not near enough, or because O-Man was having trouble locating something to tie up the Complexitor, but when the question came, he was completely caught off guard.

“I’ve got a question for you,” wheezed the Complexitor.

“What is it?” asked O-Man, irritably.

“What do you think about putting a Wankel engine in a DeLorean?”

O-Man’s jaw almost hit the floor. Could such a thing even be done? It would be massively complicated. His mind spun. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I think that might be a bit out of my league.” The walkie-talkies buzzed like angry bees, but Jackie and Velvet Katherine were too caught up in their conversation, and O-Man was holding on to a fraying rope of competence.

The Complexitor pulled himself to his feet. “Don’t forget that it’ll have to use unleaded gas, too.”

O-Man nodded. “That’s right. It would have to. Wait a minute.” He spun around, but the Complexitor was already halfway down the tunnel. Before anyone could react, he reached the exit and vanished into the night.

* * * * *

Back inside the stadium, the football game rolled on through halftime and blessedly smooth halftime shows, a desperate third quarter, and a tight fourth quarter. At ten thirty PM, the final score was Sharks 31, Eagles 24.

Not much later, Lauren pulled up in her driveway, and brought her half-painted Camaro to a stop. When she opened the front door, she noted that the foyer lights were on, and her mom was cross-stitching in the family room.

“Hi mom,” she called out after shutting the door. “I made it.” Her mother looked up with a calm careworn expression.

“Twenty minutes to spare. How was the game?”

“Great! We stomped them!”

“How were Brian and Brandon?”

“Crazy like always,” she replied. “Brian dared me to do victory doughnuts in the parking lot after the game. I didn’t, though.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Good for you.” Then after a pause, she continued, “He’s the taller one, right?”

“Mom,” Lauren complained in a sing-songy version of the word, heading off into the kitchen.

“You still don’t have anyone to accompany you to the wedding,” she called.

“I know.” Lauren had a granola bar in her hand and peeked into the family room from the kitchen. Her mother caught her gaze with a familiar concerned expression. “I don’t want you to be looked down on.”

Lauren sighed. “I know mom.” She wandered into the kitchen and looked out through a small window into the deep night, thinking.

So far, just about anything had happened. In three days, I had gone to see my uncle, halfway across the country, found out that I’d be working most of the summer, met Kirandra, her mom, Shira, Culter and Steve, gone to see TOGAC, and had taken tons of pictures. I ate some cereal, a little overwhelmed by it all.

Today was sweeping the driveway, mopping the floors, and vacuuming. It was easy and boring, but hard to mess up. It gave me some time to think and I started wondering what would happen next. Would Kirandra come by today? How about Culter? Why did I have to wait for them, anyways? I needed a bike, or a moped, or something. I wanted to see more of Tarrant and I needed to get the film in my camera developed, too.

As I mopped the hall, I realized that part of the reason I came here had turned out completely opposite of what I had expected. I had thought of Uncle Kevin’s as a way to give my parents the time that they needed, but also as a place to get away from it all. But I wasn’t just relaxing all by myself; I was slowly becoming a part of something else, even if it was just for a little while. That seemed strange — being part of something that was temporary? I shook my head and focused back on the vacuuming.

* * * * *

I was just finishing up dusting when three quick knocks came from the front door. I didn’t know much about dusting and it must have shown. When I opened the door, Kirandra was holding a strange adjustable disc and staring at me with curious eyes.

“What happened?” she asked.

I looked down at the dust blotches on my clothes and colored. “Uhm. Well nothing much. I’ve been dusting.”

“Oh. I think you need special clothes for that.”

I laughed. “I don’t think an apron is my style.” On a sudden impulse, I added, “Maybe a cowboy hat would work better.”

She grinned and then reached out and tapped me on the arm. A small cloud of dust escaped into the air.

“Guess I need to get cleaned up. You want to come in?”

She nodded and took a look around the kitchen with the piles of paper everywhere as I went upstairs to do something about my clothes. When I came back down, she said, “Your uncle doesn’t cook much does he?”

I sighed. “What gave it away?”

“The refrigerator.” She pointed to all the magnets from all the pizza, fast food, delivery, and drive-thru restaurants in town. I guess that would do it, wouldn’t it?

“I haven’t had ordinary food since I got here,” I admitted. “It’s not bad, don’t get me wrong, but…” I let the sentence trail off, shrugging.

Kirandra said, “Maybe you can come for dinner.” I was speechless for a moment, caught between surprise and that glowing feeling that I had felt before. She offered, “Mom always makes extra when Uncle Thomas is in town.”

I found my voice. “Sounds great. Let me leave a note.”

The rumble of a diesel engine came in through the front door, announcing the fact that Uncle Kevin had arrived. I told him of my plans for the evening when he walked in. He told me that I couldn’t go.

“Why not?” I asked, more surprised than defiant.

Uncle Kevin looked from me to Kirandra. “Could you excuse us a minute?”

She nodded and went to wait outside on the porch. “I thought mom said I should be eating healthier,” I reminded him.

He scratched his stubble. “Ok, but after this we need to talk. Be back by eleven.”

“Ok,” I said and joined Kirandra on her way home.

We walked in silence for what felt like an eternity. It seemed like we both felt the same kind of frustration with adults, but didn’t know how to say it. The fading sun glinted off what she was carrying, and so I asked her about it.

“It’s an astrolabe,” she said. “Brass and steel. Made in Cordoba, Spain, in sixteen ninety-five. Sailors used it to measure the position of stars and planets to help them figure out their location at sea.”

“How does it work?” I asked.

She held it up to her eye in one fluid motion, adjusted the outside circle, which had markings along the side.

“Wow,” I said. “Looks like you practiced.”

“I did,” she said proudly. She added quietly, “It’s embarrassing when customers ask you about antiques and you don’t know anything about them.”

I hadn’t thought about that before. It struck me again how strange it was that her parents trusted her to carry these things home.

“I always thought antiques were too expensive to just carry around like this,” I said.

“If you don’t want to ride in the car, you have to carry something home and help with the bookkeeping,” she explained, quoting her mom. “It gets pretty crowded in the van and sometimes I like being alone.” She gave me a curious half-smile and quickly turned away.

I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, but back home, Brian had told me the same kind of thing. Sometimes you just wanted to get away. In another minute or so, we were at her house.

“I’m home! Chris came!” she announced, opening the unlocked front door.

Inside, the house looked to be about the same age as my uncle’s house. The color of light brown wood seemed to be everywhere, from the floors to the stairs to the doors, making the house seem natural, like it had all been carved from one giant block of wood. To our right, a staircase lead up to the second floor. I saw a tall figure near the top descend a few stairs, hesitate, and then retrace its steps. I was about to ask Kirandra who that was when we reached the kitchen.

The kitchen was crazily busy. Kirandra’s mom seemed to be doing ten things at once, from checking the temperature of the chicken to pulling rolls out of the oven, to stirring a vegetable medley, to dispatching Shy. Shy ran around, a blur of blonde hair, doing whatever her mom needed done. Most of those things didn’t involve the food directly, I noticed. Drawers were open, revealing all kinds of cutlery as well as several cabinet doors, half-hiding bowls and plates. Shy was busy running back and forth from the dining room just to the right and the kitchen, setting the table.

After we all said hello, Shy giggling, and Kirandra frowning at her, Kirandra asked, “Where’s Uncle Thomas?” she asked.

“Out on the back porch, star gazing,” replied her mom.

“Boring!” added Shy.

“Ok. I’ll be right back,” she told me, and opened a door at the far end of the room and made her way downstairs.

Watching all the cooking activity made me feel a bit out of place, so I offered to help. “No, don’t be silly,” her mom told me. “You’re a guest. Now regular guests…” she said, smiling at me. I laughed, kind of nervously.

It didn’t take long for Kirandra and her dad to finish business in the basement. In a minute or two, they were upstairs and helped finish up the preparations for dinner.

“There,” said Kirandra’s mom, turning off the oven and shutting the microwave door with a resounding bam-click. Kirandra, her dad, and Shy applauded and she bowed. I could see where Shy got it from, I thought. “Shy, do the honors, please.” Shy ran to the far end of the dining room, where tall double-doors set with tall wood-latticed windows opened on to the back porch. She opened one and pulled Uncle Thomas inside. Then she ran out of the kitchen and upstairs.

Uncle Thomas was a large man who looked about the size of a football player, although he was just big, not muscular. He seemed vaguely Italian with a black curly hair and a ready grin. He wore a vest that had no hope of reaching across his stomach, over a purple-velvet shirt. His dark eyes twinkled and I thought that he was probably one of those guys who could play Santa Claus and the kids would love him.

At first I thought that he might hug me and I didn’t know if I could survive a bear hug, but he just shook my hand. Shy got back and following her was a tall teenage guy who wore glasses and wore a dour expression on his face. I didn’t get the feeling that he was unhappy to see me, just that he was usually that way.

“Lew, Kirandra’s friend Chris is here for supper,” said Kirandra’s mom. Lew looked over at me and muttered a “hi”. “Hi,” I said back, and that was the end of the conversation. Kirandra’s mom and dad looked at each other and then we all sat down, said the blessing, and began eating.

Dinner was kind of like eating in the school cafeteria with my friends, not the quiet and serious dinners I had with my family. I really didn’t know what to expect, but when I looked back on it later, it really only made sense. Everyone had table manners but that didn’t stop them from teasing each other or telling jokes. You didn’t chew with your mouth open, but it was OK to stick your tongue out at someone. I just went with the flow and tried not to stick out too much.

I had to answer a lot of questions about myself, which I figured was coming, so I was ready for that. The rest of the conversations ranged all over the map from how the family business was doing, to where Uncle Thomas had been, to who was going to clean up the garage tomorrow.

Out of the blue, Shy announced in a sing-songy tone, “I know what’s in the satchel.”

Uncle Thomas was in the middle of lifting a forkful of mashed potatoes to his mouth. Shy crossed her arms and looked at him defiantly. He smiled and kept eating.

“I know what’s inside,” she said, “and why he’s never shown anyone.”

“Really?” asked Uncle Thomas, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “In that case, you should tell. I’m afraid that the jig is up.” He grinned ear to ear.

Shy took a deep breath and announced, “Nasty mags!”

It was like she had sucked every sound out of the room with those words. Every eye was on her and she swelled up with pride.

Lew put down his fork and said, “What do you mean by ‘nasty mags’?”

Shy stared at him angrily. “You know what I mean!” Lew looked over at Kirandra.

Kirandra added, “No, we don’t. Nasty like squished frogs?”

“Yes!” replied Shira.

“Nasty like toilet bowls?” asked Lew.

“Yes!”

“Nasty like your room?” asked her mom.

“Yes! I mean — hey!”

Everyone broke out in laughter and Shy turned red-faced in an instant. “You’re so mean!” she said, to no-one in particular.

Dinner finished up and I made sure to compliment her mom on the cooking. I did enjoy it and it was the polite thing to do, I thought. Everyone helped clean off the table except for her mom, so she didn’t have to worry about putting anything away. I had talked about photography a little bit and Kirandra said that could come in handy in their business. I agreed, thinking that they could set up a web site or advertise on line if they wanted to.

Then her dad mentioned that she had some chores to finish up around the house. She didn’t argue but agreed a little reluctantly.

On my way home, I did a lot of thinking. Their home life was definitely more than I was used to, with six people talking and all the different personalities. They did seem a little weird, with art being everywhere, but it was a kind of weird I liked. I guess it made them stand out a bit. Kirandra and I hadn’t talked much besides at dinner, but I did say that I’d stop by tomorrow. Did I even have tomorrow off? Wouldn’t that be funny, I thought wryly, if I didn’t?

There weren’t too many streetlights along the sidewalk back to Uncle Kevin’s house, and so the darkness up above and the stars shone through. Being in a strange town wasn’t so different from being a sailor out of sight of land, I thought. I lifted my hands to the sky and made a circle like the astrolabe that Kirandra carried home. Pretending to adjust it a bit, I brought the Big Dipper into focus.

* * * * *

The next morning Uncle Kevin whipped up breakfast, which was a change for the better. It turned out that he could actually cook, at least if cooking bacon, eggs, and toast was real cooking. He assured me that it counted; I had my doubts.

I asked him about it and he said, “When I talked to your mom, she was concerned that you weren’t eating right.”

I nodded. “That sounds like my mom.”

“She was nicer than that, but that was the point. She also thought that I let you run wild.” He sat down and buttered his toast.

“Really?”

“I told her that I didn’t, but when she asked about curfews, I really didn’t have an answer. So I thought we should work out the details.”

“Fair enough,” I said, hoping that things wouldn’t become too draconian. I didn’t think they would, but I didn’t know what his limits were, nor what buttons of his my mom could push. She could be sneaky when she wanted to be.

“Ok, you get Saturday and Sunday off, and just work down the list at an easy pace. There’s no deadlines or anything like that. If you want to take half a day, let me know first.”

“Sounds good,” I said between mouthfuls of eggs.

“You can go anywhere in town; outside of town, ask first.”

“Ok.”

“Curfew is midnight. And oh yeah, church on Sundays.”

I had forgotten about that last one. It was something that I did whenever I visited, but I never really thought about it until I was there. Summer days, sunlight streaming in through the windows, and an old-fashioned church with a balcony overlooking the pews below popped into my mind. I didn’t remember too much about what was said, but I did remember the fancy clothes and a sense of belonging. My family went to church a few times a year and it was like a ritual more than something emotional.

“Ok, sounds fine,” I said. I had come out pretty good, with no major roadblocks — wait. How was I going to get around? Kirandra’s house wasn’t too far, but it was still a few minutes away just walking.

I asked him about that and he said that the neighbors across the street, the Randalls, probably had an old one that I could use. I hoped that it wasn’t pink.

The rest of the morning I just lazed around and watched cartoons. Kirandra said to drop by after lunch. She said that her and Cutler usually hung out and he’d probably stop by sooner or later. It still caught me off guard when I was half-way there, Cutler came roaring by on his bike.

He slammed on the brakes and spun the a quarter circle so that it blocked my path. He looked relieved, rather than assured. “Whoa, it worked this time! Hey Chris. Where are you going?”

He wore the same cap he did the other day, but today had on a black t-shirt divided into four quadrants, each showing a line or two of code. Written above them all were words in white — “The World’s Shortest Program”. Glancing at one of the quadrants which read, “10: Goto 10″, I knew it was the truth.

“I’m going to the evil almost-goth girl’s house,” I said with a grin.

He pretended to be shocked, but then furrowed his brow. “It’s too late, then. She has you in her clutches!”

“Yes,” I said. “This is my last week on earth, I’m sure of it.”

Cutler laughed and we talked about computers until we got to Kirandra’s house. She came out and we moved to under a large tree that gave a lot of shade.

I found out that no-one had their learner’s permit yet, so we had to use bikes or walk. Having someone else take us was too much of a pain and could be embarrassing besides. Just then, we heard two car doors slam, one right after the other.

“Are your folks going somewhere?” asked Cutler, looking at Kirandra.

“No, I don’t think so,” said Kirandra. “Maybe it was the next house over.”

We resumed talking and Cutler interrupted again. “Hey Kira, your van is moving.”

We looked over. The van rolled back a few feet and then stopped. Kirandra shrugged. “Maybe my dad is moving the van. He does that sometimes.”

I knew my folks always started the car when they moved it, but her driveway did have a slight incline, so maybe they didn’t need to.

We had only barely started talking when Cutler interrupted for the third time. “Kira, your van is moving down the street.”

The look in her eyes was something between, “Why are you obsessed with my van?” and “Uh oh”. We all turned to look and it was true. What’s worse was that it looked like no-one was driving it.

Kirandra said, “This is bad.” Then in a louder voice, she yelled out, “Shy!” We all took off after the van as it picked up speed rolling down the street. One of the side doors opened and a short girl in brown pigtails rolled out, catching her breath.

“Merry?” asked Kirandra. “Are you ok?” The little girl was shaking her head “yes”, then “no” and then kept saying, “It was going too fast,” over and over. Kirandra sat her down on the curb. Cutler and I took back off after the van. We had just about reached it when it reached a streetlamp. A low “thud” followed by an “Ow!” reached our ears when Kirandra caught back up to us. Not knowing what else to do, I examined the van where it hit the streetlamp. The front bumper was dented pretty badly.

Kirandra opened the driver’s side door and found a confused Shy looking back at her. “It doesn’t work the same,” she said. “It’s all Merry’s fault! When she left, I couldn’t do the brakes anymore!” Kirandra pulled her sister out of the van, taking her arm in a death grip.

“You’re not hurt?” she asked Shy. Shy shook her head.

“It’s not bad,” I said. “Just the front bumper.” Everyone looked relieved.

Kirandra turned her attention back to Shy, with a fierce gaze. “Why did you do it?”

Shy immediately sensed that she was in trouble. “Lew said I could!”

“Ok,” said Kirandra quietly. “Get in the passenger’s seat.” Kirandra followed her in and took the wheel. Cutler and I pushed the car backwards and after a bit of trial and error, we got the car turned around and back up the street. A minute or so after that, we had it back in the driveway, although facing the other way from before. Kirandra put on the emergency brake, Cutler flexed his muscles, and I just laughed.

Lew was standing on the front porch, his face ashy-white. Kirandra was marching Shy up the steps when her gaze met his. “I thought they would keep it in the driveway.” Kirandra looked at him, pushed Shy inside and a few minutes later, returned.

“How long?” asked Cutler. Kirandra seemed to snap out of her worried look and said, surprised, “How long what?”

“Cutler thinks Shy will be grounded for two weeks. I thought one month,” I offered, with a smile.

She held up a hand with four fingers outstretched. “Four months?” asked Cutler, shocked.

Kirandra bopped him on the head. “Four weeks, geek-boy.”

“Cool,” I said, and then added quickly, “Well not for her, I mean.”

Cutler replied, “Ok then, almost-goth girl.”

We eventually got back around to what we were talking about before. “So what is there to do here?” I asked.

“There’s a few lakes for fishing, bowling, a movie theatre –” begun Kirandra.

“Most places you can get to on your bike,” said Cutler, “but some places, like the rock formations are pretty far. We also have RPGS,” said Cutler. “You know, role-playing games.” He wriggled his eyebrows mysteriously.

“I know. Brian back home plays a few.”

“Then there’s the Apple festival in Cranston, the next town over. That’s the end of the month,” said Kirandra.

I thought about everything they said. The rock formations sounded pretty interesting, but too far away for now. I wanted to see what was nearby first. “I’ve never been fishing,” I said.

“You’re not even that good of a fisherman,” replied Cutler. She hit him again.

“Anyways, what do you know about LARPing?” Cutler asked me.

“Well, not much besides what it stands for,” I said.

“Impressive!” he said. “You want to do some? We’ve got a regular thing going.”

“When is it?”

“After lunch, Wednesday.”

“What about your uncle?” asked Kirandra.

“I’m going to get some time off,” I replied.

Kirandra looked at me sympathetically. Cutler rolled his eyes. I knew he thought my uncle was way too strict. I didn’t feel that he was, but maybe he was compared to Cutler’s folks.

If today was any sign, the week ahead would be interesting. I was looking forward to it, even if doing so meant being part of something that wouldn’t last.

She flipped her honey-brown hair and said, “Why else? To meet your mom.” She wore a long white dress that grew transparent around her ankles, where it was met by stockings of a similar hue and matching pumps. Her hair was done up in a style Brandon didn’t recognize, but it used a circlet of hair across the back of her head, leaving the rest to dance just above her shoulders.

It made perfect sense. His mom hadn’t met anyone from the DMIC. Why didn’t they all come together, though? He felt nervous. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll come the first week, then O-Man, then HIM, then Velvet Katherine, and then Veero. Oh yeah. Then Jackie will show up.”

“Who is Jackie?” he thought. He was about to ask when his mom greeted them at the door, wearing a dusting apron that he had never seen before. It was a lacy faded yellow linen with an acorn in the center. His mom nodded and Wenchy grinned. Then his mom put her hand on her own head and lifted it off. Wenchy did the same, and they exchanged heads.

Oddly enough, not a single drop of blood was lost in the transaction, but the sight caused Brandon to trip and hit the floor just over the threshold. The room spun and everyone’s words melded together in what sounded strangely like, “Detention.”

Brandon awoke.

He rolled over and checked the clock, the numbers providing a reassuring anchor to the real world. “Another dream that makes no sense,” he thought, although he could still see Wenchy clearly when he closed his eyes.

* * * * *

It was finally Friday; the school was filled with a slowly-growing contagious energy mixed in equal parts with a sensation of time running in slow motion. Just about everyone except the geeks anticipated the first game of the year that evening. Only the geeks were unfazed by the pre-game momentum, but even they counted the hours until the weekend. Probably the only person in the school who wasn’t thinking about the weekend in any way was Dana. She had Brandon in her sites.

She knew where he finished third period and had followed him unseen since then. Nothing suspicious so far, she thought. But I’m sure he just wants me to think that. You can’t fool rogue/assassins. Especially twentieth-level ones.

He passed by a hall and then doubled back and picked up speed. She dodged between uncaring seniors and followed at a distance. He was making a beeline for a dusty side door. He’s going to get away! She fumbled with her backpack and found her camera. It was actually an old cellphone that didn’t work, except for the camera. She spread her fingers over the back and parted them slightly, while using her thumb to snap a few pictures. To the untrained eye, it looked like she was just fumbling with her outlawed cellphone, hardly an eye-raising event in Westchester High.

Brandon reached out to the door and pulled it open. Man do I have to pee, he thought. I’ll go this way because there’s a bathroom right inside. He blinked at the reflection in the glass and then hurried inside. What was that? It looked like a tie-dyed t-shirt.

Dana dropped her backpack to hide her face and counted to ten. Once Brandon was out of sight, she hurried towards the door and threw it open, ready with her pseudo-cell phone.

The empty hallway, the low hum of the water fountain’s cooler, and the boy’s sign on the bathroom door all mocked her, especially the last. That was the one place no girl could go, on threat of losing all of your girl points. Dana didn’t dare; she wondered if Lauren could get away with it. Maybe that was how tomboys were made? Girls who had lost all their girl points and now lived on in quiet agony, in some strange double-life?

Her mind ratcheted back to the situation at hand. She knew he was hiding from her. There’s no way he just needed to go. She shook her pseudo-phone at the bathroom and scurried away before the bell rang. She still had lunch and then sixth period.

At lunch, she was quieter than usual. Jimmy rolled her eyes at her, knowing that she was waiting for Brandon to drop some morsel of information. Then she would pounce and pepper him with questions about third period. However, no such opportunity arose. Jimmy tried to bait her into a conversation about Garman Star cards, but she wasn’t falling for that. Everyone was talking about the game or reading and she felt like screaming in frustration. This tactic always works in anime`s, she shouted inside her mind.

* * * * *

Sixth period was Algebra and Brandon knew something was wrong when a girl leaving the class before drew a line quickly under her throat. That meant only one thing: a pop quiz.

Sure enough, half-way through the class, Mrs. Turner told them to close their books and to get out a sheet of paper. She eyed them all with a satisfied smirk. “This is to test how well you’ve been paying attention. There will be ten questions on this week’s lessons.”

Brandon had been applying, or at least, trying to apply the lessons that Wenchy had taught him. He wasn’t at all sure about them, but he figured that he’d know if they worked soon enough. Mrs. Turner’s brusque voice shattered his thoughts. “Begin!”

He looked up at the blackboard to find it decorated with her usual cryptic handwriting. He squinted and went to work.

She took up the quizzes and told them to get busy on the problems at the end of the chapter. “I want you to think about this over the weekend,” she informed them, again smirking. “That’s why I’m going to grade them now.”

Brandon sighed and looked across the room. No-one was really happy about it, although the people in the front row looked less dispirited than everyone else. When Mrs. Turner returned the quizzes at the end of the class, Brandon was shocked to see written on his paper “85% — B”. A rush of victory-inspired adrenaline hit him like a flash fire. While most people trudged out of class, he walked out with his head held high. “For once, for once, I got it right in the here and now,” he thought to himself. He wasn’t sure what he really meant by that, but it sounded good.

Outside in the hall, Dana took her books from her locker very slowly, and then took them in and out of her backpack. When Mrs. Turner’s class let out,
she scanned the crowd for Brandon. There he was! Wait, was that really him? He had the same shirt on, same haircut, so yes, it was him. But he looked different somehow. Someone jostled her as the class next door let out and that refocused her thoughts on the mission. He was half-way down the hall already and so she had to walk quickly without looking like she was running. She found the tall people in the mass of teenagers and dodged from one to another as she closed on Brandon. He took the hallway towards the gym and she rounded the corner, only to run straight into Missy, the relationship and advice queen.

Missy stood about five foot five, which made her taller than Dana, and when she wore platform shoes like she did today, she was a whole head taller. She seemed almost too cute, with blonde curls, carefully heated into shape, pitying blue eyes, and lips that were nearly always pursed, as she pondered the relationship travails of the entire school.

“I never thought I’d see this day,” Missy said, looking down at Dana. “And you’re so obvious, too!”

“I’m what?” Dana asked, for a moment trying to get past the girl, when it hit her who it was and how miserable her life could become.

“Really, now. Stop trying to deny it!” She looked down the hall at Brandon. “Hmm. Not a bad choice, but it wouldn’t be my choice, of course.”

Dana blinked. “No way. You think I –”

“Have the hots for him?” suggested Missy, finishing her sentence. “I don’t have to. You’re following him and hiding from him, and you’re using your cellphone to take pictures of him. You’re hopeless, even for a geek.”

Dana blushed and tried to get the cellphone into her backpack. Where was that expandable lightsaber when she needed it? Never lend your weapons to newbies, she reminded herself. Wait, why was she even blushing? He did look different, somehow, more interesting — but that wasn’t it, she told herself. She had gotten caught and by Missy at that.

“Oooh,” said Missy. “How cute! A geek in love. I have just the advice too. I wrote it two weeks ago, in response to ‘Sleepless in Science Class’. Don’t worry about letting him know you exist. Don’t get desperate, either. All you really have to do is show up and be yourself. He’ll see you for who you are and the rest is happily ever after!”

Dana looked up at her. “That’s terrible advice! No guy would ever figure that out! Besides, I’m not interested in him. N. O. T. Not. I just — uhm — have to know what he’s up to.”

Missy blinked and smiled at her as if she had completely contradicted herself.

Dana looked down the hallway. Brandon was gone. She bunched up her fists and said, “May you be tormented by tiny dragons who hate your hair and have nacho breath!” She stomped off.

Missy laughed. Geeks were such fun, even if she only understood half of what they said.

* * * * *

Four o’clock came none too soon, and finally the school day was over. Brandon walked down the hall overflowing with students on their way towards bikes, busses, and for the fortunate, cars. He had avoided thinking about the DMIC for most of the day, but he didn’t have school to distract him anymore.

“You probably won’t have to do anything, but when we get involved, you never know. We could always use a gopher.” Those were Wenchy’s words. They weren’t as improbable as what came next.

He had asked, “How will I know?”

“O-Man will find you. You’ll have to look very carefully, because he’ll blend in.”

Brandon still couldn’t believe it. How could that guy blend in anywhere? Then he remembered the incident in the garage. Was it something like that?

Brian’s voice shook him away from his thoughts. “You ready to roll?”

“Yeah.” Then on a sudden impulse he added, “Race ya.”

Brian arched his eyebrows. “You’re on!”

They walked over to the bike rack, and unlocked their bikes. Brian stood up on his bike and asked, “Count of pee?”

Brandon laughed out loud. “We haven’t done that since eighth grade. You sure?”

“Sure, man! It’s Friday!”

Brandon took a deep breath. Brian did some crazy stuff from time to time, but not as often as Lauren. He thought she had some kind of adrenaline imbalance or something. Brandon gave a thumbs up as he clambered on to his bike too and stood up.

They both crouched down and stood up with each number in the countdown, nearly shouting, “One…two…pee!” Then they tore off down the sidewalk, pedalling as fast as they could go, dodging wannabe-popular people, elementary schoolers, and the occasional road hazard.

Seven minutes later, Brandon pulled into his driveway, the triumphant winner of the race. “I’m home!” he announced, throwing open the front door.

“Hi,” his mom called out. “Do you have DMIC today?”

He shivered unconsciously. She made it sound like some kind of weird disease. “Not exactly,” he said, heading into the kitchen. “I might have to do some stuff at the game, but probably not.”

She was in the pantry, pulling out a loaf of french bread for dinner. “How’s the studying part of it going?”

“Hold on a minute.” He dropped his backpack on the table and rifled through it. Finding his Algebra folder, he pulled out the quiz with a dramatic flourish.

Her eyes scanned the top page and then she met his triumphant smile with one of warm surprise. “That’s pretty good. I’m impressed.”

“Mrs. Turner’s questions were boring, though. Wenchy’s are way more interesting.” He immediately clapped a hand over his mouth and fought the blush that crept over his cheeks.

His mom looked at him askance before retrieving a cutting knife for the bread. “They do talk to me, you know, and I do know all of their names.”

“Oh yeah. I guess I’m a little paranoid about telling anyone anything specific.”

“Uh huh.” He never knew what she meant when she said that, so he just let it drop. “So what are we having for dinner?”

* * * * *

The Westchester High School stadium was a utilitarian concrete stadium, not too large, and not too small for a bustling high school. The floodlights were on and the parking lot had started to fill up an hour before the game began, with clusters of people milling about the stadium. The football players were stretching on the field and the band had gathered by the entranceway, ready to put on the pre-game show.

Brian was hanging out with two of his jock friends, waiting for Brandon and Lauren to show up. They had both decided to try out for the basketball team. Tim, a lanky guy with dark curly hair teased Brian. “You should try out too. Don’t worry. You can’t be so good that everyone else will quit in shame.”

Brian laughed. “That’s not it, man.”

His other friend, Steven, who stood about the same height as Brian, but with a thicker chest and crimson flattop said, “Maybe he thinks that Coach Jones doesn’t like him.”

They both looked at him and said together, “Coach Jones doesn’t like anyone!”

“I know!”

“Whatever,” said Brian, smiling. “I just like basketball. I never said I was like superstar good at it.”

Just then another group of guys walked by. One of them looked vaguely like Mafia hired muscle: broad-shouldered, dark-eyed, and not too bright. Another guy with a muscle shirt accompanied him, flexing his thick arms with obvious dragon temporary tattoos. A scrawny kid tagged along, hidden beneath a scruffy red hoodie and wearing a t-shirt that read, “You’re the Loser!”

“That’s because you don’t have the drive,” said the Mafia-esque guy.

Brian looked over at him and then shrugged. “Nope, guess not. But I can still beat you at twenty-one.”

“So? I can beat you at one-on-one.” After thinking for a moment, he added, “And at Horse.”

The scrawny guy said in a low voice, “Hey Tony, only middle-schoolers play that.” The other guy looked at Brian and made tough-guy faces while flexing his muscles.

Brian’s friends laughed under their breaths. Tony turned to look at them when a sing-songy female voice called out from across the parking lot, “Ooh Tony!” He leered at her and then looked back at them. “Later dweebs.”

“Can you really?” asked Tim.

“Yup. He’s so chicken now he won’t even try, though,” said Brian.

“Weird.”

“Yeah.”

They stood and talked for a few more minutes until Brian showed up, and Lauren right behind him. Tim and Steven said they were going to hang out with some guys on the basketball team. “That’s cool,” said Brian. “I’ll catch you guys Tuesday.” They went over to the far gate to find the guys from the team.

“What’s Tuesday?” asked Brandon.

“We’re going to shoot some hoops down at the park. Wanna come?”

Brandon shrugged and pretended to think about it. “Maybe next time.”

Lauren butted in. “Who cares about Tuesday? Let’s make some eagle soup! Whoo yah! Let’s get seats close enough so that we can throw things at the other team!”

Brandon laughed and they followed her to the near gate to get their tickets.

* * * * *

At still another gate, O-Man snapped his fingers so that the ticket girl would pay attention. She blinked. “Where did you come from?” she asked, dazed.

O-Man sighed and said, “Just over there. One ticket for the game.” She looked sidelong at him and gave him a ticket in exchange for his dollars.

As he walked away, she craned her neck to follow him and then said to the girl opposite her, “Did you see that? That guy just disappeared!” The girl next to her yawned. “I didn’t even realize you were talking to a guy.”

“He wasn’t a guy like our age,” she said.

“Can I buy a ticket, please?” asked an irate mom at her window, waving a handful of bills.

“Oops. Yes. Coming right up, m’am.”

As he walked into the stadium, he checked his pockets once again. Cell phone? Check. Emergency key on the ring of keys? Check. Adjustable wrench? Check. He examined his jacket, by pulling his arms back and stretching for a moment. Sure enough, the bright orange flaps inside showed and would easily reveal his location to anyone nearby. He was set.

After scouting out his seat, he ventured down to the concession area. The concession stands were permanent structures housed in concrete and built into the stadium themselves. Only two were open, and the one at the far right had the metal shutters pulled down. O-Man walked to the far right stand and then to its right entrance and knocked. A deep, masculine voice called out from inside, “What’s the password?” O-Man asked, “What’s the password?” The door opened, and a mass of computers, maps, and snacks greeted him — that, and HIM and Wenchy. O-Man stole inside and took off his jacket. Wenchy and HIM blinked.

“Where’s Katey?” he asked. Wenchy gave him a sour look and cleared her throat.

“Katherine is keeping an eye on the visitor’s end zone. Good thing I don’t have the comms on, isn’t it?”

O-Man grinned nervously.

* * * * *

A man wearing a bulky black leather jacket and a scarf in orange and white that fell to his navel walked up to the ticket booth. He wore three pairs of sunglasses, each smaller than the last, and fiddled with the keys in his pocket, the pencil in his jacket pocket, or his scarf. His fingers were nervous and sweaty while his small beady eyes constantly scanned the area as if he expected ninjas to jump out of the darkness and carry him away. At the ticket booth, he presented his money and said, “One adult. Where’s the darkest part of the stadium?” The teenager inside the booth stared back at him. “I’m sensitive to light.”

The teenager thought hard and then replied, “That’d probably be the bathroom, I guess.” The man growled at him and snatched the ticket out of his hand.

The man twirled his scarf back and forth around his fingers. The setup was ideal, he thought, except for all those lights. A complex game that few people understood completely but inspired passion was the focal point. Because it was a school sponsored event, the school administration added another set of rules, and then the city added another layer still. The attendees were volatile youth, protective parents, and easily-swayed referees. He rubbed his hands together in glee. It was a perfect night for complexity.