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wut?
aaargh!fine!
He dialed.
“You’re, like, the most annoying uncle-person ever!” The hint of amusement in her voice undercut the sharp tone. “What do youwant?”
“I’m in the Hamptons. Ten miles from Luke Devine.”
“And?”
“I’m gonna need backup. Start figuring out his network at Tartarus. The encryption will be intense.”
“Intense encryption? I’m shuddering in my Adidas slides. Is that all? I mean, I don’t want to keep you. I need to make sure I honor your hard boundaries.”
“Joey.”
Silence. Then, “Did Ruby Seabrook travel with you to the Hamptons? I mean, since your famous hard boundaries don’t seem to apply to her?”
“She stayed with her folks in the safe house. She was pretty rattled after I took her to the dump site where they found her brother’s body.”
A long pause. He could hear her breathing. “Damn it, X. I’m not mad at her.Obviously.”
“Who are you mad at?”
A much longer pause.
“Josephine,” he said softly.
“I’m mad at my mom and dad for being useless children who should never’ve had a baby. I’m mad at my maunt for dying. I’m mad at the foster parents who treated me like shit, and I’m mad at the otherasaltantes culeroswho abused me just because I was there and small and had the right anatomy. I’m mad at the Program and the fucking world that doesn’t give a shit about people like me, and I’m mad at how unfair it is and how hard it is at the bottomand how no one up top bothers to notice untiltheirperfect lives feel threatened. If you haveany kindof money in this country? Life is so easy. I mean, easy compared tothe entire historical record of the species.It’s safe. There’s food. You can say what you want, do what you want, buy stupid shit for cheap. You don’t get raped by Huns or die of a bladder infection ’cuz there’re no antibiotics or get eaten by pterodactyls—”
“I’m pretty sure there weren’t pterodactyls—”
“—so s-t-f-u and enjoy it. Don’t act like you’re beset with inequities and the suffering of the world pains you endlessly. Justdon’t. ’Cuz if you’re at the bottom? Shitisreally hard. And we don’t care what everyone up therefeels. We don’t. We just want them to do something to help or quit taking up all the oxygen.”
She was breathing hard from the rant, and Evan wasn’t sure if she was done. She was out there alone with the pain cracked from its hiding places, and it was everywhere, all around her. She was in the belly of it, and there was no getting out. It would digest her until it was through with her or she with it.
“Big words,” Evan finally said, “from a trust-funder.”
“Yeah, X,” she said, a smile in her voice. “But weearnedthat shit.”
He laughed.
She giggled along with him. He didn’t laugh often, and she delighted when she was the cause of it.
“Remember what your maunt used to tell you?” he said.“‘Tiene dos trabajos. Enojarse y contentarse.’”
“Don’t use the language of my people against me. And your accent.Gawd. Ear rape.”
“Apologies.”
“Maybe …”
Evan said, “What?”
“Maybe you start your life thinking it’s all some big thing that’s just for you and no one else gets how special you are and if only the world could just see through how fucked up you are, everything would be great, right? Then: It never happens. You never get to be perfect, like Katy Perry.”
“Who?”
