* * *
Later I go back to my house to get more clothes. Mrs Rosenberg takes me, and Mike meets us there. He still looks tired, and I wonder if he’s getting as little sleep as I am. Mrs Rosenberg waits outside in the car with engine running and the heater on as Mike follows me into the house. “Now that you’re here, do you mind if I look through the house once more?” he says. “I’m keen to find out what your father was working on.”
“But how can you find it in this mess?” I make my way along the passage and pause at the bottom of the stairs. Mike follows me. “I mean, maybe they did find what they were looking for and then left the mess to cover it up. It’s not like I would know if anything of Dad’s was missing.”
Mike looks at me as he hesitates outside Dad’s study. “Do you remember anything your father might have said that could help me find this evidence? Something that didn’t make sense at the time? Just think, Jason.”
“I told you, he never talked about his work when he was home.” His insistence is beginning to annoy me.
I go up the stairs and into my bedroom to sort out clothes for school. I pull out trousers, tops, and jumper from the pile on the floor and get some clean socks and boxers from the drawers. I add my jacket to the pile, packing everything into a gym bag.
Mike is still in the study when I go past. I step inside.
“I’m going now,” I say.
“I’ll stay a while, Jason, and try to figure things out.”
“Whatever, just shut the door when you leave, it’ll lock behind you.”
“Thanks, Jason.” He looks distracted, on edge. I can see that he wants to find whatever he thinks Dad has hidden at home, but I’m not sure that he’ll find anything. Dad wouldn’t have brought home something he was investigating unless he had good reason.
Mrs Rosenberg is sitting in the warm car, and I climb in, grateful to be leaving the wrecked house and the chill that has invaded my empty home.
Back to School
I’m not sure that school is such a good idea, but I go anyway. The alternative is to stay at Ben’s house, staring at the walls and trying to read my book, or going out with the relatives and risking being with them when they burst into tears.
School is a better option.
At least I think so until I get there. I can hardly get in the gate, never mind the classroom. Everyone wants to ask me questions, talk to me, find out how I am, and the teacher has to rescue me from being mobbed. How embarrassing.
Once school starts it’s a little easier, but Mrs Fahey asks if I’m all right and keeps on asking me even after I say I’m fine. I try to concentrate on the work, try to catch up after two days away and sometimes I manage and sometimes I find myself gazing out of the window, thinking of my parents and battling to keep my tears from sliding down my cheeks.
At the day’s end Ben and I walk home, as we always do. He’s silent, which I appreciate because I don’t feel much like talking. We walk past my house and there’s a pile of mail in the mailbox, most of it looks like cards – sympathy cards, I suppose. I don’t want to open them.
“Why send them, there’s no one here,” I ask.
“They don’t know you’re at my place,” Ben says. “Shall we put them inside?”
I use my door key to open up the front door and Ben follows me inside. I stand for a moment in the passageway, feeling the eerie emptiness of the house, and the cold too – someone has turned off the boiler in the basement, to save power, I guess. Why heat an empty house? I close the door and head for Ben’s place.
Mrs Rosenberg has a chocolate cake waiting for us and I think I shouldn’t be eating this amount of cake, not unless I’m doing half marathons every day. Then I think I should have got my running gear from the house but I can’t bear to go back; besides, I don’t seem to be in the mood for running, which isn’t like me. I can’t seem to do any of the things I like to do, not even reading, which is what I’m trying to do in Ben’s room while he works on the computer, finalizing its resurrection. I realize that I’ve read the same page twice and can’t remember a single word.
“Right, here goes,” Ben says as he snaps on the power and the computer begins to whirr loudly.
“You think it’s going to work?” I ask as I lower the book.
“Hey, am I a genius at this or what? Have faith.”
The CPU makes a whole lot of noise that is almost deafening and I think the whole thing will blow up, but words flash across the screen and the Windows logo comes up as it works through the boot up.
“The noise will stop soon,” Ben says as he watches the screen.
The screen goes blue and the CPU makes more noise, then the icons come up, disappear and appear again, flickering a little as if they are uncertain of their presence.
“So where’s this homework?” Ben asks as the cursor hovers over the icons.
“In Word.” I put down the book and get up from the bed. I stand behind Ben expecting him to open Word and find my homework, but instead he’s clicking on icons and opening one thing after another. “What are you doing?” I ask him.
“Trying to find what the thieves were looking for.”
“There might not have been anything in there for them to thieve,” I say. “Just get my homework out.”
“What’s this?” Ben asks as he clicks on something on the task bar at the bottom of the screen. It’s a file named “Speed”. A pop-up box appears that says This file is password protected. Please enter password. “Do you know what this is?”
I shake my head.
“It’s something your dad created. Any idea what the password is?”
“Not a clue.”
Ben grinned at me. “Well, you want me to figure it out?”
“After you print out my homework,” I say. I show him where it is and he prints me out a hard copy. It’s not complete yet, but at least I have something to work on if the computer dies – or someone smashes it up again; anything’s possible.
Gran phones later and tells me that Dad is doing okay but is still on life support. She can’t tell me when he’ll come off it, or when he’ll wake up.
“Your mother’s funeral is on Friday,” she says. “We’re working on the order of service – do you want to say anything?”
“No.” I know I won’t be able to say a thing without bursting into tears. “Have you heard from Mike or the police about who did this?”
“No, I guess they will contact us if they find out. Mike wants to talk to you about something but he’ll have to wait until after the funeral.”
“I already told him everything I know – which is nothing.”
“He just wants to find whoever did it, so we need to help him.”
“I know,” I say and put down the phone.
Ben is still working on solving the password when I get back into the bedroom. He asks for my dad’s birthdate, car registration number, favorite color, favorite car until my head aches with the questions. I get tired of the continuous beeps as each attempt fails and the questions remind me of Dad who’s lying in Harborview Hospital. I pick up my book and start to read, but after a few paragraphs I haven’t taken in a single word. Ben gives up asking me questions and goes to one of his other computers.
“Given up?’ I ask.
“No way,” Ben says. “I’m going to ask the others.”
I’m having visions of aliens. “Others?”
“Yes, the other hackers. They’ll figure it out.”
I roll my eyes at him and return to the book that I’m not reading.
Intruder
I need my running gear. I’m in the track team and there is a run in the afternoon, after school. I’m keen to do it, even if it rains. When I run, my head clears and my thoughts flow freely. I have some of my greatest ideas when I run. I haven’t run since the weekend and my head feels clogged.
“I need to stop off at my house and get my kit,” I tell Ben on the way to school.
The house feels abandoned as I go in. The mess i
s still disturbing, even though I’ve seen it a few times now.
“Wait here,” I tell Ben as I go up the stairs and into my room.
As I hunt around for my gear a sound from my parents’ room halts me. What is Ben doing? I leave my bedroom and walk into my parents’ room. “Ben, what …” but my words die in my throat when I see that it is not Ben in the room, but a man. I can see little more than his eyes as he has a hoodie over his head and a bandana over the lower half of his face. I open my mouth to shout out – what? He’s bigger than me and there’s only Ben downstairs. But I don’t get any sound out at all because he swings around, raising his leg in a roundhouse kick that catches me square in the stomach. I can do little more than collapse to the ground while gasping for air. The man leaps over me and takes off down the stairs. I hear Ben cry out and wonder if he’s also been attacked, but for the moment I can’t move so I remain on the floor, curled around my aching stomach.
“Jase?” Ben calls out.
“Here,” I croak.
“Who the hell was that?” he says as he comes through the door. “What did he do?”
“Kicked me,” I say and push myself up into a sitting position.
He gets out his cellphone. “Shall I call an ambulance?”
“No, I guess you’d best call Mike.”
Mike comes round so fast I reckon he was waiting in the next street. He bursts in, all anger and concern. “I told you not to come back here unless I was with you.”
I’m sitting on the bed now, my head spinning a little, and I’m feeling nauseous but otherwise okay, I think.
“Did you get a good look at his face?”