They promised with all solemnity. I let them talk me into napping, but made them swear to rouse me once an hour. I’d have to tickle Masha’s phone and I wanted to know as soon as Zeb got back in touch with me.
The rendezvous was on a BART car, which made me nervous. They’re full of cameras. But Zeb knew what he was doing. He had me meet him in the last car of a certain train departing from Powell Street Station, at a time when that car was filled with the press of bodies. He sidled up to me in the crowd, and the good commuters of San Francisco cleared a space for him, the hollow that always surrounds homeless people.
“Nice to see you again,” he muttered, facing into the doorway. Looking into the dark glass, I could see that there was no one close enough to eavesdrop — not without some kind of high-efficiency mic rig, and if they knew enough to show up here with one of those, we were dead anyway.
“You too, brother,” I said. “I’m — I’m sorry, you know?”
“Shut up. Don’t be sorry. You were braver than I am. Are you ready to go underground now? Ready to disappear?”
“About that.”
“Yes?”
“That’s not the plan.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Listen, OK? I have — I have pictures, video. Stuff that really proves something.” I reached into my pocket and tickled Masha’s phone. I’d bought a charger for it in Union Square on the way down, and had stopped and plugged it in at a cafe for long enough to get the battery up to four out of five bars. “I need to get it to Barbara Stratford, the woman from the Guardian. But they’re going to be watching her — watching to see if I show up.”
“You don’t think that they’ll be watching for me, too? If your plan involves me going within a mile of that woman’s home or office —”
“I want you to get Van to come and meet me. Did Darryl ever tell you about Van? The girl —”
“He told me. Yes, he told me. You don’t think they’ll be watching her? All of you who were arrested?”
“I think they will. I don’t think they’ll be watching her as hard. And Van has totally clean hands. She never cooperated with any of my —” I swallowed. “With my projects. So they might be a little more relaxed about her. If she calls the Bay Guardian to make an appointment to explain why I’m just full of crap, maybe they’ll let her keep it.”
He stared at the door for a long time.
“You know what happens when they catch us again.” It wasn’t a question.
I nodded.
“Are you sure? Some of the people that were on Treasure Island with us got taken away in helicopters. They got taken offshore. There are countries where America can outsource its torture. Countries where you will rot forever. Countries where you wish they would just get it over with, have you dig a trench and then shoot you in the back of the head as you stand over it.”
I swallowed and nodded.
“Is it worth the risk? We can go underground for a long, long time here. Someday we might get our country back. We can wait it out.”
I shook my head. “You can’t get anything done by doing nothing. It’s our country. They’ve taken it from us. The terrorists who attack us are still free — but we’re not. I can’t go underground for a year, ten years, my whole life, waiting for freedom to be handed to me. Freedom is something you have to take for yourself.”
That afternoon, Van left school as usual, sitting in the back of the bus with a tight knot of her friends, laughing and joking the way she always did. The other riders on the bus took special note of her, she was so loud, and besides, she was wearing that stupid, giant floppy hat, something that looked like a piece out of a school play about Renaissance sword fighters. At one point they all huddled together, then turned away to look out the back of the bus, pointing and giggling. The girl who wore the hat now was the same height as Van, and from behind, it could be her.
No one paid any attention to the mousy little Asian girl who got off a few stops before the BART. She was dressed in a plain old school uniform, and looking down shyly as she stepped off. Besides, at that moment, the loud Korean girl let out a whoop and her friends followed along, laughing so loudly that even the bus driver slowed down, twisted in his seat and gave them a dirty look.
Van hurried away down the street with her head down, her hair tied back and dropped down the collar of her out-of-style bubble jacket. She had slipped lifts into her shoes that made her two wobbly, awkward inches taller, and had taken her contacts out and put on her least-favored glasses, with huge lenses that took up half her face. Although I’d been waiting in the bus-shelter for her and knew when to expect her, I hardly recognized her. I got up and walked along behind her, across the street, trailing by half a block.
The people who passed me looked away as quickly as possible. I looked like a homeless kid, with a grubby cardboard sign, street-grimy overcoat, huge, overstuffed knapsack with duct-tape over its rips. No one wants to look at a street-kid, because if you meet his eye, he might ask you for some spare change. I’d walked around Oakland all afternoon and the only person who’d spoken to me was a Jehovah’s Witness and a Scientologist, both trying to convert me. It felt gross, like being hit on by a pervert.
Van followed the directions I’d written down carefully. Zeb had passed them to her the same way he’d given me the note outside school — bumping into her as she waited for the bus, apologizing profusely. I’d written the note plainly and simply, just laying it out for her: I know you don’t approve. I understand. But this is it, this is the most important favor I’ve ever asked of you. Please. Please.
She’d come. I knew she would. We had a lot of history, Van and I. She didn’t like what had happened to the world, either. Besides, an evil, chuckling voice in my head had pointed out, she was under suspicion now that Barbara’s article was out.
We walked like that for six or seven blocks, looking at who was near us, what cars went past. Zeb told me about five-person trails, where five different undercovers traded off duties following you, making it nearly impossible to spot them. You had to go somewhere totally desolate, where anyone at all would stand out like a sore thumb.
The overpass for the 880 was just a few blocks from the Coliseum BART station, and even with all the circling Van did, it didn’t take long to reach it. The noise from overhead was nearly deafening. No one else was around, not that I could tell. I’d visited the site before I suggested it to Van in the note, taking care to check for places where someone could hide. There weren’t any.
Once she stopped at the appointed place, I moved quickly to catch up to her. She blinked owlishly at me from behind her glasses.
“Marcus,” she breathed, and tears swam in her eyes. I found that I was crying too. I’d make a really rotten fugitive. Too sentimental.
She hugged me so hard I couldn’t breathe. I hugged her back even harder.
Then she kissed me.
Not on the cheek, not like a sister. Full on the lips, a hot, wet, steamy kiss that seemed to go on forever. I was so overcome with emotion —
No, that’s bull. I knew exactly what I was doing. I kissed her back.
Then I stopped and pulled away, nearly shoved her away. “Van,” I gasped.
“Oops,” she said.
“Van,” I said again.
“Sorry,” she said. “I —”
Something occurred to me just then, something I guess I should have seen a long, long time before.
“You like me, don’t you?”
She nodded miserably. “For years,” she said.
Oh, God. Darryl, all these years, so in love with her, and the whole time she was looking at me, secretly wanting me. And then I ended up with Ange. Ange said that she’d always fought with Van. And I was running around, getting into so much trouble.