He nodded.
“And you’re also going to find out why CLAD has photos of me and why they’re talking about me and abducting me off the street?”
“I’ll see what I can find out about that, too.”
I glanced at Rex and Claudia, then I said, “Okay. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Or the next day.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
Rex and I gave him our phone numbers.
Roberta lowered her window and banged her palm against the door. “Let’s go!”
Ogden’s face soured and he shook his head, just a little. “Talk soon,” he said as he walked around to the driver’s side and got in.
They drove off, and as we walked up to the car, Claudia said, “What the hell?”
I went over to look and saw that someone had scraped the words MIXIE FREAKS into the paint on the driver’s side door.
I let out a growl. “Jerks!”
Claudia shook her head and got in. I got in the passenger side and Rex got in the back.
As we drove off, Rex leaned forward and said, “Hey, I know Roberta isn’t the easiest person to deal with—”
“She’s the worst!” Claudia said, turning in her seat and abandoning any pretense that she was driving.
“She is the worst, Rex,” I said. “The whole time I was back at that Chimerica camp on Lonely Island, she kept calling me names and trying to start fights. I’m totally not surprised she’s with CLAD. Hell, she could be the one trying to frame me or set me up or whatever, with the pictures and all that, and the FBI coming to my door. Honestly, apart from Ogden, who I only just met, she’s the only person I know in CLAD. For all I know, she could have been the one who planted that bomb.”
He nodded, hearing me out. “I’m sorry, Jimi. I didn’t know about any of that,” he said when I was done. “But you also don’t know all the stuff she’s been through.”
“Okay, what’s she been through?” I asked.
Rex looked slightly sheepish. “I don’t know the details. I probably never will. But I do know she’s had a rough time. I know she’s been harassed a lot by the chimera-haters.”
Claudia snorted. “I’ve been harassed, too. But I don’t take it out on people who had nothing to do with it.”
Rex sat back. “I’m just saying.”
“I hear you,” I said. And I did. I could imagine that being Roberta was even less fun than being around her. Surely, she wasn’t consciously deciding to be the kind of person she was. Who would choose that?
Claudia snorted again and rolled her eye in disgust. “But who cares what made her the way she is? I mean, not really, but if she had a hard life or whatever and that made her a jerk, well that’s a shame, but she’s still a jerk!”
After a moment of awkward silence, Claudia restarted the conversation. “While we’re on the subject, how about the smell of that place?”
We talked about that, then, after we caught Rex up on everything he’d missed inside the fence, we recapped the rest of the evening, including the behavior of those three Plants at the end, and the bizarre way they moved and spoke all together.
Rex theorized that maybe it was like a flock behavior, that the Plants all arrived at the same conclusions or decisions because the same inputs were being processed with the same computing power.
When we got to Rex’s place, he got out and paused, like he was expecting me to get out with him.
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry. I’m going to crash at Claudia’s place tonight.”
Claudia leaned forward to look at him with a fake innocent grin, like she had somehow gotten one over on him.
“Oh,” he said, clearly disappointed. “Okay.”
At that moment, I was disappointed, too. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” I said.
“Yeah, definitely,” he said, but the smile that he forced totally undermined his sad eyes.
“You okay?” I said, leaning through the window.
“Yeah, of course,” he said. “It’s just, you know…” He smiled and blushed. “I’ll miss you.”
I might have blushed, as well, especially knowing that Claudia was witnessing all this. “I’ll miss you, too.”
I stuck my head out the window, and he crouched down to give me a nice long kiss.
“Okay, see ya, Rex,” Claudia said, her voice loud and bright.
He looked over my shoulder. “Good night, Claudia.”
As the car pulled away, Claudia turned to me, shaking her head. “You two are adorable together and all, but I think a few hours apart might be good for both of you.”
TWENTY-THREE
I’d been to Claudia’s house before, but not enough times that I was used to it. It was nice. Really nice.
It was perched on a hill overlooking the incredibly scenic Wissahickon Gorge, which followed the Wissahickon Creek through northwest Philadelphia, part of the city’s extensive park system. My dad used to take Kevin and me there when we were little, hiking or wading in the creek. Del and Leo, too. Occasionally, I’d glimpse one of the fancy houses right on the edge, and wonder who lived there. Now I knew.
These days, the creek alternated between drying up and flooding, brush fires were a constant worry, and the trees were losing the battle with the vines that were growing over everything, but it was still a really cool place to live. From the front, the house looked fantastic and modern, all angles and windows—big, but not ridiculous. But it was built into the hillside, so while it was two stories in the front, it was four in the back.
I could see the lights on through the trees, even before we turned down the driveway. Claudia parked on the circular part of the driveway, in front of the main entrance. The windows cast geometric designs across the ground in golden light.
As we stepped out of the car, I was hit by the heat and humidity, and the faint smell of smoke. I hadn’t realized how comfortable I’d been in the car. The night was still, but it wasn’t quiet: the woods around the house were alive with the buzzing and chirping and droning of a bazillion insects.
“Are you sure your folks are going to be cool with this?” I asked as we walked up the front steps.
“Absolutely,” Claudia replied. “My folks love you, but in all likelihood they’re both going to be distracted, doing their own things.”
“What are they working on these days?” Claudia’s parents worked harder than practically anyone I knew, except maybe my mom.
She started opening the front door but stopped. “The usual, mostly—business stuff for my dad and school stuff for my mom. She’s prepping for fall semester and working on a few journal articles.” She pushed the door closed for a second and screwed up her face. “But my dad’s still preoccupied with getting used to his Wellplant,” she said quietly, “and my mom is preoccupied with trying not to freak out about it.”
Before I could respond, she pulled the door open again and walked into the house. “I’m home,” she called out.
The climate control was luxurious. We walked through the front hall, past the great room and the wide stairs leading up to the second floor.
Her dad was in the cavernous family room. A single light in the corner dimly illuminated the high ceiling and far-flung corners. He was sitting in a rocking chair staring out the darkened windows.