Tabula Rasa Kristen Lippert Martin (22 page)

I’ve been summoned down to Ms. Janklow’s office. She’s the
 fairly useless guidance counselor whose only qualification seems to
 be that she can nod sympathetically.
“It’s Debby. Call me Debby,” she says. “I’m so sorry to have
 to ask you to come down here, but I’m wondering if there’s been
 some sort of mistake.”
“With what?” I ask. I honestly don’t know what she’s talking
 about. My grades are fine. Better than fine. I’ve even managed
 to keep them up since . . . since my mother died. That was three
 months ago. I do it because my mother would have wanted me to.
“Well, your tuition payment has . . . well . . . we haven’t
 received one this quarter.”
I look at her, confused, and I admit, somewhat annoyed, “I’m
 not sure how the scholarship works. I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Scholarship?” Ms. Janklow says. She has very nice skin. It’s
 creamy and peachy, or whatever that expression is.
“My scholarship. I don’t know how it works. I assumed the
 school took care of all that.”
“What scholarship?” she asks.
What scholarship? The one that allows me to go to this ritzy
 school that I hate, but I would never say that to my mother, because
 she broke her back just to pay for the stinking itchy wool uniform
I have to wear.
“You don’t have a scholarship that I’m aware of,” she tells me.
“Then how . . . I don’t understand. How could my mother
 afford to send me here?”
“I have no idea,” Ms. Janklow—Debby—says to me.
“Your tuition has been paid by check just like everyone else’s. Did
249

your . . . did your mother leave money in a trust fund? For your
 education?”
I want to burst out in mean, mocking laughter. A trust fund?
Me? If I had a trust fund, would I be living in a foster home with
 a woman who only seems to know how to cook three dishes, all of
 which feature ground beef and ketchup as a sauce?
This has been my life since my mother died: pulling myself out
 of bed every day, even though I don’t want to get up, don’t want
 to see the sun rise, because every day that passes puts more distance
 between me and my mother being alive.
“No, seriously,” I say. “My mother didn’t have any money.
That can’t be right.”
Ms. Janklow tells me again that my mother has been paying
 my tuition for years, and they’d hate to lose me as a student, since
I offer such a diverse perspective. Yeah, the poor, New York
Latina perspective. The girls in my neighborhood would get a
 kick out of that, right before kicking me to the ground and calling
 me “white girl.”
“Well, the problem is still the same,” Ms. Janklow says. “The
 tuition is not being paid. Do you have any idea who might have
 been funding your education? Perhaps you should talk to him or
 her about it. You obviously have some patron who’s been helping
 you . . . .”
An hour later I’m running up the stairs of my old apartment
 building. I need to talk to Mrs. Esteban. I know it may be a waste
 of my time; she’s been failing for a while, but I remember her com-
 ment, long ago, about me having green eyes. I think I must have
 put it out of my head the instant she said it, because I thought she
250

was just being mean and gossipy. But now . . . now that I know
 someone has been paying my way through school . . .
I take the steps to her apartment two, three at a time. Her
 daughter answers the door. She seems confused why I’d want to
 talk to her mother, but ushers me into their neat, shabby living
 room, where Mrs. Esteban is watching television and picking over
 a pan of rice looking for rocks and bits of twigs.
“She’ll spend the whole afternoon on it,” her daughter says,
 motioning to the bowl in her mother’s lap.
Poor Mrs. Esteban. She had such powerful arms, and now
 she’s little more than a child who must be kept busy. I haven’t seen
 her in nearly two years, but she knows me. I can tell because she
 makes a face like, What are you doing here? I guess she’ll never
 forget that kick in the ankle I gave her.
“Mrs. Esteban. Do you know who my mother worked for?
Long ago? I need to know.”
“Your . . . mother . . . que bonita,” she sighs. The side of
 her mouth droops slightly from her recent stroke. I ask her the ques-
 tion again, and she is annoyed with my impatience. She knows the
 answer. She starts waving her hand at me, her index finger and
 thumb pinched together.
Her daughter says, “That means she wants to write some-
 thing.”
I take a pencil and piece of paper from my backpack and give
 them to her. She makes her hand work very slowly. I’m hoping for
 a name, even just one. I watch as she writes the letters E C and
 then circles them clumsily.  
She smiles at me, and I try not to show my disappointment.  
251

E C. This is meaningless to me, but I thank her and stand to
 leave. Her daughter, drying her hands on a kitchen towel, looks
 over her mother’s shoulder to see what she’s written. “I’m sorry.
She tries. Don’t you, Mamá?” I’m almost to the door, about to
 leave, when I hear Mrs. Esteban’s daughter add, “Huh. That
 looks like the symbol at the top of Claymore Tower, doesn’t it?”
252

CHAPTER 31
 don’t need to remember any more. I know now as I
I  knew then. That’s what sent me off on my mission. My
 late-night raids. My desire to bring him down and embar-
 rass him—to do whatever I could to make him look bad.
My mother always had a dark grace about her; she seemed
 to bear the weight of a hundred lives. She was beautiful.
He must have taken advantage of her. Pretty maids are
 like prey. There can be no other explanation.  
The man who builds all the tall buildings.
Erskine Claymore.
I’ve somehow managed to keep myself balanced in
 the elevator all this time. The air in the car is close and
 warm—so filled with my panic that it feels crowded. My
fingers are slippery with sweat as I work the emergency
 key clockwise. The car slides a few more inches, the metal
 screeching like a subway car coming to a stop. Finally I can
 turn the key no farther.  
253

I put my fingertips between the two doors and push
 as slowly and carefully as I can, a centimeter at a time.
The car groans. I keep the pressure steady. I’m stuck three-
 quarters of the way between floors. The car starts to slip,
 little by little, so slowly I’m not sure at first that it’s even
 moving. Then I can see it’s moving faster, and I know I
 don’t have much time. I throw all my weight forward as I
 kick my legs out, and am able to just squeeze through the
 opening and pull my arms out before the car gives a last
 screech and descends with a horrific crash. It only falls one
 level, but the counterweight comes down on top of the car,
 crushing it.
I sit in the hallway and look around, trying to  figure
 out where I am.  I need to rest. I think I’ll have time.
Hopefully, they’ll assume that I didn’t make it out, that I
 fell to the bottom of the shaft.
Like a lot of my hopes, though, it doesn’t work out that
 way.
The other elevator car is coming down. I watch the
 numbers above the doorway until I see the LL light up.
I stand up and take out the last grenade.
Wait.
Wait.
I twist it. Pull my arm back.
Wait.
Wait.
I hear the bell ring. The doors are about to open.
Wait.
Wait.
254

I throw the grenade and then run down the corridor,
 toward the tunnel that may be an escape or a trap—or
 maybe it doesn’t exist at all. The first few doors I try turn
 out to be closets, but then I fling one open and face a black,
 musty void. I walk in and pull the door shut behind me.
I have no idea how long the tunnel is, so I keep walking
 blindly. About twenty yards later, my hands touch cool,
 smooth metal. I find the knob, turn it, and pull. It doesn’t
 budge.
Panic explodes in my chest like fireworks, but I remem-
 ber the burn charges. I use one to melt through the lock,  
 and, a moment later, burst out of the tunnel like I’m emerg-
 ing from a tomb.
It takes me a few minutes, but I find my way back to
 the swank waiting area where I’d found the laptop com-
 puter. The passcard gets me in, but I use it with a sense
 of fatality. What difference does it make if I give myself
 away now or ten minutes from now? They’ll find me
 eventually.
I untie the battery from around my waist and drag it
 behind me like a child’s pull toy, running down the hall-
 way, trying to match the route I took earlier. I think I’m
 going the right way.
As I round the corner a shot rings out. The bullet just
 misses my head. I slip and fall, landing on my back, and
 scramble sideways like a crab, trying to find cover. The
 shot has come from near the rec lounge.
I peek around the corner and see Oscar. He’s standing
 at the end of the hallway, blood streaming down his head.
255

It looks like he’s clawed the metal inserts out of his skull.
He’s got a gun in his hand.
I call out, trying to sound amused. “What’s goin’ on?
You almost shot me.”
“It don’t matter, mija. I shoot you, they shoot me. We all
 get shot eventually.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll get shot another time. I’ve got things
 to do right now.”
His laugh is a funny, strained heh heh heh. I take another
 look at him. He’s walking toward me, shaking the gun like
 a maraca. I see that street swagger I’ve seen from so many
 boys, so many times in my neighborhood, especially when
 they first get home from jail. So much energy wasted on
 trying not to look afraid.
“No matter what you do, they kill you, you know what
I’m sayin’? You can’t get away from it, so why try?”
“Are you supposed to be up and walking around? You
 were injured.”
“Doctor Man, he told me to stay still, but I can’t, you
 know? I can’t. Rich Kid, he tried to stop me, but he can’t.
I need to get up and move around, you know?”
Doctor Man. Rich Kid. I assume he’s talking about
Elmer and Thomas. I watch as he does a little dance step.
“Where are they, Oscar? Doctor Man and Rich Kid?”
“Aren’t you listening?” he shouts at me. He sounds far
 away, but then suddenly he’s there, next to me. I feel the
 warm, hard gun muzzle touching my temple. “He tried to
 stop me, and I shot him.” He lowers the gun and pushes the
256

barrel into my chest. “Right. In. The. Heart.”
I put my hand in my pocket and grab hold of the syringe
Jenner gave me. I face Oscar, like this is all a big joke
 between the two of us. I make myself relax and push the
 gun away from my head, smiling and shaking my head
 back and forth.
“We don’t have time for messing around, Oscar. Come
 on. Let’s get out of here.”
He slaps my cheek lightly and pulls me close to him,
 pressing his forehead to mine. I feel the gun against the
 back of my head as he hugs me roughly.
“Chica, you all right.”
I stare at him at close range. The whites of his eyes are
 dotted with small, reddish hemorrhages. I puff my chest
 out like a bird trying to look bigger.
“Thanks, Oscar. Come on. We need to get out of here.”
I try to peel his arm away and take a step back, but he
 tightens his grip on me. Then he spins me around and puts
 me in a headlock. He flexes his bicep into my throat.
“What you doing here?” he says. His lips are touching
 my ear. “What you in for, huh?”
“I don’t know, man,” I say. “I don’t wanna know.”
“Yeah. I know what you mean. Except . . . suddenly it’s
 coming back to me. I keep seeing all these people’s faces
 staring at me, and they want to know why I did it to them,
 why I put them in the ground. And I don’t know. I can’t
 remember why. They’re all around me, all the time. I can’t
 get away from them.”
257

I pull the syringe out of my pocket and put my thumb
 on the end of it, ready to push the button.  
“Did you shoot Rich Kid, Oscar? Is he all right?”
He lets go of me but starts circling around, keeping his
 face inches from mine.
“Oh, ho! Now I see what’s going on!” He slaps me hard
 on the back. “You like him, don’t you? You got a thing for
Rich Kid, eh?” He grabs my ear and tugs on it, pulling me
 over to one side. “You from the hood? ’Cause I look at you
 and I think you got some white girl in you.”
“I’ll tell you who I am: I’m Angel.”
He pushes the gun into my cheek so far I feel it against
 my teeth. That’s when I reach up behind him, stick him in
 the neck with the syringe, and hit the plunger. He reacts
 to the shock of the injection by bobbling the gun. I hear it
 clatter onto the floor as he loses his balance and steps back-
 ward. He immediately recovers and grabs me by the throat
 with both hands, slamming me into the wall.
“What did you do to me?”
I can’t breathe. He’s pinching off my windpipe, his fin-
 gernails digging into my skin. This sedative I just used on
 him—either it wasn’t enough or it’ll be too late for me
 when it takes effect. Because I’m done. He’s staring right
 in my face, his teeth gritted, trying to hurt me as bad as
 he can.
A few seconds later, my vision becomes an endless tun-
 nel, and I slide to the floor.
258

CHAPTER 32
 verything is black. The air is gone. I hear something,
Ethough—a voice. I don’t know who it belongs to.
Maybe it’s just the echo of a voice that called out to me
 long ago. It’s been reverberating in the air, looking for me
 all this time. It’s telling me to hang on.
Oscar falls to his knees and his grip loosens. I’m able
 to pull free and push him away. I watch as his eyes go
 glassy and his mouth hangs open. A small bit of saliva gath-
 ers on his lower lip and he falls forward, one hand still
 pressed to the wall. I take out the other syringe now, the
 one Jenner told me that he needed, and seeing as I’ve just
 gotten another taste of his psycho-killer side, I’m inclined
 to believe her. I give him a shot in the arm even though I’m
 sorely tempted to put it right into his eyeball.
He falls over.
I tell myself to calm down. I need to get to Thomas. I
259

give Oscar a kick, and his limp body rocks forward, before
 rolling over.
I grab the power cord and kick Oscar’s gun along in
 front of me as I run down the hallway to the rec lounge.
I’m so tired I can hardly keep moving. When I finally
 arrive, I find Thomas sitting up, Elmer cradled in his lap.
Thomas’s hand, sticky with blood, is pressed to Elmer’s
 chest. I drop the battery and cord and skid on my knees
 across the smooth floor. Elmer is still alive. Barely.
He tries to speak to me. There’s a question in his eyes,
 and I answer it. “You did good, soldier. Everything’s going
 to be all right.”
Seconds later he’s gone. I take him from Thomas’s lap,
 lay him on the floor, and cover his face with my jacket.
Thomas shouts, “I’m going to kill that crazy—”
“You can kill him when he wakes up.”
“He’s asleep somewhere?”
“He is now. I found that medicine locker and got a
 syringe full of sedatives from one of the nurses.”
I leave out the rest of the details.
“Did you get your pill?”
“Yes.”
“You’re lying.”
“How can you tell?”
“I can read people. It’s what makes me a good hacker. I
 can put things together, figure out what people might do,
 how they might hide their secrets and where. More than
 anything else, I hack into people’s heads.”
260