Fassbinder sighed. “I told Kasimir you’d be difficult.” He drew near to me. “You want your grandfather. Mr. Lessig wants information about Jonathan Jenkins. There have been suggestions made that Mr. Jenkins is a Resistance sympathizer. Especially after he took in the daughter of their founder.” He gave me the once-over. “Lessig gets the information, your grandfather lives. You refuse, your grandfather dies. Simple enough even for a low-tier sex-teen like you to understand, isn’t it?”
I jammed my fists in my pockets to keep from using them on Angelo Fassbinder’s face.
“I won’t spy on my friends,” I said.
“Really?” He took out his PAV, punched in some numbers, and threw a projection on the wall. “Bring him out,” he said to the projection.
I stared at the screen. At first it was just an empty room. A man entered pushing an older man in a transchair. The man in the chair had tubes running into his arms; his head was lolled over.
“Show me his face,” Fassbinder said.
The man pushing the chair grabbed the older man’s head by his hair and pulled him up so I could see his face.
“Pops! No!” I clapped my hand over my mouth, stifling a scream.
“Please”—Fassbinder rubbed his ear—“it’s not like he can hear you.” He turned off the projection. “Your grandfather is in reassimilation stage one-oh-one. Mr. Lessig has the power to stop the process. But you seem to think the cost too dear. Too bad for your ‘pops.’”
“I didn’t say that,” I said. The tears welled up inside me. I couldn’t make this choice. “I need time to think.”
“Maybe you should learn to think on your feet. But as I told Kasimir, in all fairness—and you can thank me for this later—you should have twenty-four hours to give him an answer. It’s classic film noir, isn’t it? Always give the poor sap time to squirm.” He tucked his PAV back in his pocket. “I’ll be in touch. Twenty. Four. Hours. Six p.m. tomorrow.” Straightening his jacket, he said, “Oh, I nearly forgot. If anything out of the ordinary happens—if the Jenkinses should happen suddenly to disappear, or if anything else suspicious happens—your grandfather’s a dead man. I’ll show myself out.”
I crumpled to the floor. What was I going to do? The Jenkinses had taken in Dee and me without hesitation. They’d treated us like family—they were family, practically all I had. Burying my face in my hands, all I could see was Pops’s limp form.
I couldn’t betray them—could I?
I don’t know how long I sat there, staring at the carpet. A rap on the door brought me back to reality.
Chris peeked in. “Your company gone?”
Before I could get a word out, a tear trickled down my face. Then another.
Chris came in and sat on the floor next to me. “This doesn’t look good. You want me to get Wei or Mom?”
I shook my head.
“Who was that guy?”
“Kasimir Lessig’s assistant.” I could barely get the words out.
“About your grandfather?”
That did it. I burst into tears. Chris took me in his arms, rocking me until I was cried out. I stayed there, my head against his chest, listening to the rise and fall of his breath, the beating of his heart.
“How can I help?” he asked softly, his arms holding me tight.
I turned my face to him, and the next thing I knew, my arms were around his neck and I was kissing him. And he was kissing me. Warmth seeped into me, and I felt myself floating somewhere outside of my head, in an ether that both surrounded and filled me with a sense of infinity and awe. Losing all sense of where I was, the unknown teemed with goodness and truth. I wanted to stay wherever I was forever. But reality intruded.
“Hey! You guys down there?” Wei called.
“Yeah.” Chris stood and helped me up. “We’ll be right there.”
At the door, he leaned down and whispered, “I’ll do anything to help you, Nina. Anything. Look, I know that you and Sal… Dammit, Nina. Do I have a chance with you?” I started to speak, but he put his finger on my lips. “Don’t answer yet. Let me think I do for at least a little while longer.”
After dinner, I got Wei alone in her room. Ignoring the major guilt I felt about kissing her brother while I was supposed to be in love with one of her best friends—who hadn’t contacted me in days—I figured life and death were more important than love. If I looked too closely, that seemed to be the story of my family’s life.
I took a deep breath, praying I wasn’t signing Pops’s death warrant. Several minutes later, I finished with, “That’s it. There is no way in hell I will betray you and your family.”
“Damn.” Wei stared at me for a good minute, before saying, “Did you tell Chris?”
“No, I wanted to tell you first. And, Wei, Brie called me earlier. She and Dorrie and Mag got the whole rescue plotted out for Joan. It’s set for Tuesday. But what are we going to do?” It was hard enough not to tell the Jenkinses about the rescue, and now this so-called deal from Lessig was making everything so much worse. “Pops—I can’t let him die. And I can’t give Lessig information about your dad. What do I do?”
“Correction. What do we do? It’s time for a meeting. A family meeting.”
“What about Dee? I can’t put her in danger.”
“Okay.” Wei pondered for a moment. “Not Dee. Let me get Mom up here. We need to tell her everything—even about Joan. Dad will go along with whatever she says.”
“And Chris?” I was already worked up, so any blushing went unnoticed.
“He’ll make his own decision. I’ll go get Mom.”
I hoped she was right. I’d already lost so much of my family. I couldn’t afford to lose them all, too.
“Nina, I respect your decision,” Mrs. Jenkins said. “A hard one to make, but I believe it is the right one.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll get ahold of the Sisterhood about the change in plans for tomorrow,” Wei said. “Don’t worry, it will work out.”
I tracked down Dee in the kitchen, helping Chris clean up. I glanced at the cook center clock. It was nine. There was something about nine o’clock on Sunday. Skivs! The interruption with my drawings! With everything that had happened, I’d almost forgotten.
“Do you ever watch Vacation Destinations of the Ultra-Riche?” I asked.
“I’ve been known to.” Chris smiled. “You planning on becoming ultra-rich? ’Cause you just had your Holiday vacation.”
“May I turn it on?” I asked.
“Sure. Something special going on?”
“Actually—yes.”
Wei came downstairs. “Mom’s having that conversation,” she said when everyone’s attention was on the FAV.
The wheels were in motion, and I was powerless to stop them. Might as well enjoy my artistic triumph. It could be the only one I’d ever have.
“You guys all watch this with me,” I said.
Dee, Chris, Wei, and I sat around the kitchen table watching as top-tier families traveled to the week’s themed resorts. This Sunday was tropical fantasy islands. Right in the middle of a mid-twentieth-century Hawaiian luau, the picture flickered. The next image was the first of my homeless series, with music I’d never heard before backing it.
“Nina!” Dee grabbed my arm. “Those are your pictures!”
“I know.”
Chris leaned over and whispered quietly in my ear. “You keep amazing me,” he said. “Like no one else.”
As we watched my sketches broadcast on the FAV, with the haunting music Dorrie’d chosen behind them, I wondered how amazed he’d be if he knew what I was planning.
XXXVIII