Teasers & Previews
Tristiana smiled sweetly as the Complexitor leaned in to hear her. “He’s listening to me,” she exulted in her thoughts, “and I didn’t even have to mystify him!” She had thought about their similarities for some time, and so the words rolled off her lips like a slick marketing presentation.
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The Complexitor’s plans for revenge on the DMIC had take a back burner to more domestic concerns the past week, namely, what to wear for his — he could barely think the word — date on Friday.
Friday sent its electric wires to bus stops and breakfast tables, to car rides and sidewalks, gathering students to Westchester High, breathless with the oncoming weekend. Some looked forward to dates; others to time spent away from parents; others to band or football; but only a select few in the school’s hallways looked forward to karaoke night at the DMIC headquarters.
“Brandon!” his mom yelled up the stairs, “Brandon! It’s Thursday! That means school!”
“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.
D’Cardi’s was an upscale women’s clothing store with an Italian flair. The store featured signs in Italian and English, murals of the countryside and ancient churches and villas along the walls, and of course, the strands of opera at a gentle volume; mingled together with the fashionable leather coats, bags, belts, and earth-toned jewelry, the store exuded a sophisticated class that made it perfectly at home as a mall highlight. Jennifer Tabarone worked there, one of the junior members of the DMIC. Tuesday nights were slow nights and she was idly scanning the CD rack for something interesting. She had just come across a tenor described as the Pavarotti of Gregorian chant when Tristiana walked into the store.
The Complexitor sat at home in his favorite lounge chair before a wide-screen TV, drinking a perfectly chilled microbrew beer. The camera followed a tiny white ball as various golfers tried to hit it into a hole impossibly far away. He wasn’t watching. He was sulking.
O-Man stood against the door leading out of the concession stand, one hand in his jacket pocket, the other spinning a socket wrench the wrong way by the socket end. Wenchy sat behind a laptop with a large screen with headphones tossed to one side and a microphone on the other. Her outfit — an elegant off-white dress — seemed strangely out of place amid all the communications equipment. In the back, HIM stretched out in a nice leather chair, looking distinctively bored.
Wenchy looked around the room. “Let’s go through our roles one more time, shall we?” Her voice struck a characteristic semi-serious tone.
“So why do you want to come to my house?” Brandon asked Wenchy.
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.”
“So how did it go?” asked Brian.
Brandon and his best friend, Brian, rode their bikes to school. They pedalled hard because the sky was grey-to-black and the wind was beginning to pick up.
“How did what go?” asked Brandon with a smile.
“C’mon, man. Don’t tell me you’re not even allowed to talk that much!”
Brandon had forgotten to email Jimmy last night, so he’d have to do what he had never done before — get to school early — and talk to him. He figured if he knew how Veero worked then at least something would make sense. He sucked in a sudden breath. He still needed to make up a codename, too.
Everyone knew that the geeks got to school before dawn and that they controlled the library. They also asked you fiendishly difficult questions if you started harassing them, so that even very dense people ran away screaming that their brains were melting. Their star running back had spent a week on the bench muttering about cosines once because of that. If they gave him trouble, he’d say, “I’m looking for Jimmy,” in his best tough-guy movie accent. Geeks respected fake accents, didn’t they?
