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“She’s been through a lot.”
“Yeah? Did she survive growing up in the foster-care system?”
“No.”
“Has she been hunted and shot by government assassins?”
“No.”
“Can she tunnel data over DNS and ICMP packets so she can exfiltrate it without detection?”
“Not that I’m awa—”
“Then I’m not impressed. I mean, look at her life. Look at hergear. MacBook Pro, iPhone—she’s running a fucking Brother scanner-printer from Staples. She’s sobasic. And her social media, making all these, like, literary allusions, like, ‘Look how educated I am.’”
“What are you talking about, Joey? What’s going on?”
“I’m just sick of it. How much everyone cares so much about some people when they’re not even worth it and not at all about others.”
“You don’t know what anyone’s worth.” The door was closed, but Evan made sure to keep his voice down. “You’re a sixteen-year-old girl. Not a moral authority.”
“No? Who is, then? The assholes running everything? Politicians? Luke Devine? The president? Tell me, X. Who’s doing such an excellent job with the moral stewardship of the world that I don’t have to worry my pretty little head about it?”
“Joey. Her brother’s throat was slit. That’s all I care about. The rest is just words.”
“No,” Joey said. “Fuck that. You know how many ofmyfriends died? Foster siblings? Drug use, domestic abuse, shot by cops. And I didn’t get to boo-hoo all over social media and have the fucking president of the United States get involved three minutes later.”
“That’s not how it—”
“Up there in Richville, when something happens tothem, it’s an outrage. All of a sudden it’s, like, what? Life might not be fair forus?Wemight be powerless?Ourkids might not be safe? And then the whole world comes crashing to a halt and pays attentiontothemand forgets about everyone else. It’s been three days since you got captured, and I almost could’ve never seen you again, and now you’re only paying attention to—”
She caught herself. She was breathing hard, emotion brimming, threatening to break, and he knew she was mortified for what she’d revealed.
“No,” Evan said. “I’m not. I won’t.”
“You will,” Joey said. “Everyone always does.”
Her anger had burned off. There was nothing left but a lifetime of heartbreak, of being reacquainted time and again with her own insignificance. He knew that pain himself, knew it deep down where he could pretend to forget it most of the time.
He sensed that what he said to her next could matter more than anything he’d ever told her.
A piercing screech sounded from downstairs.
The alarm.
The house had been breached.
ARES drawn, he hurtled toward the door. “Damn it,” he said. “Joey. I have to go. I’ll call you back.”
“Sure,” she said, and hung up.
33
Inefficient Idiocy
Bundled in her bathrobe, Deborah stood in the hallway of the ground floor, staring up at the hockey puck of the smoke detector in the ceiling and looking shockingly unalarmed.
She lifted an eyebrow archly. “Evan No-Last-Name,” she said, “we have to stop meeting like this.”
