Still Point Read online

  “True,” I said.

  “You can handle anything. Your dad hasn’t figured that out yet. So show him.”

  I nodded. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”

  Justin’s mouth tightened. His eyes scanned mine for any hesitation, for any way inside. But he couldn’t find an opening. “Fine. You’re staying. What can I do to speed up your self-induced prison sentence?”

  I fidgeted with the leash in my hand. “I might need to do this one on my own.” I looked up at him, and his face was unreadable. “I’m tired of making other people responsible for my problems.”

  “Didn’t the DC teach you anything? You can’t do things by yourself,” he argued.

  “Well, there’s a slight problem.” I held up my wrist. “A little welcome-home gift. He guessed I’d cave in and run away.”

  Justin rubbed his fingers over the small bump that was starting to dissolve under my wrist. He had seen skin trackers before.

  “He’s not kidding around this time.”

  “Nope. He clipped my wings.”

  More people were opening doors and talking. Someone laughed. Justin’s fingers traced my skin, my wrist, all the way down to my fingertips.

  “They’ll grow back,” he said, tapping my fingernails.

  Justin’s hands slid around my waist, and he pulled my body so close to his that I almost gave in. He was the most important thing to me. But that’s also why I needed to stay. I was doing this for him as well, for us. His lips were inches from mine. His fingers were in my hair, and then he pulled my face into his hands.

  “They’re going to have the lights on soon,” he said, his eyes drinking me in. I hadn’t kissed him in weeks. I stood on my tiptoes and breathed him in, the soapy smell of skin and lotion. The lights above us started to flicker. We could hear emergency sirens in the distance. I wanted him to stay more than anything else. He added texture to something flat, flavor and color to something dull, heat to something lukewarm, and movement to something fixed so that it all melted and blurred inside of me and around me.

  “By the way, this was a very romantic gesture,” I told him. I closed my eyes and waited for him.

  His lips grazed mine, but it wasn’t a kiss. It was the teasing flitter of a kiss.

  “Come with me and I’ll promise to do a lot more,” he said, his voice low and raw. My heart tripped and clamored and I reached out for his shoulders, but he pulled away. He turned and walked down the street, leaving me with Baley and legs so wobbly I could hardly walk home.

  Chapter Seven

  Student ID #DS1029MF. Submit.

  I was done. I finished taking my last graduation exam to finish DS-4. A stadium of claps and whistles filled my room. Voices applauded me. A generic audience surrounded my walls, made up of friends and parents and teachers. They all waved and smiled and offered me digital high-fives. My pixelated image pumped her fists in the air.

  I sat at my bedroom desk and stared at the screen and waited for a feeling to take shape. Shouldn’t I be relieved? Excited? Proud? Instead, I was confused. What had I actually done? What memories had I made in this place, this school I had been a part of for more than ten years? Who were my friends? I could barely even remember one class from another. I’d never met one of my teachers. I’d never met a single student. I’d never gone to a real dance.

  All my social and professional profiles immediately switched to my new status. High School Graduate. A list of congrats flooded my screen. My yellow happiness meter shot straight up.

  Before I could second-guess myself, I was bombarded with advertisements.

  Take a virtual tour of Europe!

  More time on your hands? Learn to play an instrument in a week with these video tutorials.

  Apply for early college-entrance classes.

  Consider a digital internship.

  Take a break and relax at oceansidespa.com. You’ve earned it!

  Just out of curiosity, I clicked on the last advertisement.

  A sultry female voice oozed out of the speakers, cleansing the air.

  Take a virtual beach walk on our imagery sand belt. Exfoliate your feet with sand, pumice, and salt stones on our uniquely designed belt you simply attach to your walking machine. No people, no distractions, just peaceful radiance.

  I twisted a piece of pink hair around my finger and started to crack up. The voice continued to try to seduce me.

  This package includes a heated massage mattress, mailed directly to your home. The taxels on the mattress bend and flex to your contours, giving you a full-body, facial, or foot massage. No making appointments, no hassle. Let the massage mattress come to you. Or check out our listing of self-adhesive stone, oil, and clay massage options.

  I watched an image of a woman lying peacefully on a beige mattress with the sea rolling in the background.

  Our software package includes yoga tutorials, oils, meditation workshops, aromatherapy room scents, and twenty-four different wall-screen décor options to fill your house with relaxing scenes and music. And remember, relaxing is eating well. We have a list of menu choices: fruit smoothies, organic veggie trays, and ready-to-eat pasta salads. Check out our incredible five-course dinners, all freeze-dried for your easy preparation.

  “What are you looking at?” My dad’s voice cut through the room and made me jump in my chair. I looked up to see him standing in the doorway.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.” He walked all the way in. “You looked a little frazzled,” he said.

  I glanced back at my wall screen. “I was stuck inside a virtual horror movie,” I said. “What is that?” I pointed to a piece of paper in his hands.

  “This was just sent to me,” he said. “Congratulations.”

  I looked down at the high school diploma he handed me. I received an honorary diploma for a perfect grade point average. The diploma was decorated with three horizontal stripes across the top: gold for highest grade standings, green for best test-score comparisons, and royal blue for highest college-placement exam grades. I looked at the three bright colors, my academic-achievement rainbow. Underneath was my name, Madeline Rose Freeman, and my digital school code number: DS1029MF. On the bottom of the certificate my father’s signature was emblazoned in gold writing, just like it was on all DS graduate diplomas. I ran my finger over my dad’s autograph. It didn’t even look like a name, just a scrawl.

  “You printed it out for me?” I asked.

  “I thought you would prefer a hard copy, since you don’t really use your wall screens anymore.”

  I looked around my room and nodded. In the past few days I had “broadened” my bedroom horizons, just like I’d attempted to do in the DC. I used my canvas program to paint screens into a mural that stretched across my entire room. One wall was a beach scene, one a desert, one a forest, and one reminded me of the city skyline view from Justin’s apartment in L.A. The ceiling was a mixture of night and day skies, stars and sun, clouds and rain. Over the entire ceiling and walls was a trail of footprints, in different colors, stepping across every surface.

  “There’s a virtual graduation ceremony next month,” he said, and my catatonic look told him I wasn’t remotely interested. “They have quarterly ceremonies, if you want to attend another time,” he added, as if timing were the problem.

  “That’s okay.”

  “It looks like you’ll have your choice of online colleges,” he said, and sat down on the edge of my bed. “Have you thought about where you want to enroll?”

  I blew a loud, sputtering breath out of my lips.

  “Maddie, this is a huge accomplishment. You have too much going for you to quit school. You can make an impact.”

  I turned my chair to face him. “Can I?” I asked him.

  He frowned at me. “You don’t want to continue?”

  “I want to go to school, but not DS. I’m not going back until it’s a face-to-face program.”

  His face hardened. “Well, that’s not an option right now.”
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  “Not right now,” I pressed. “But what about next year? Maybe some classes could become available if certain ‘facilitators’ were open to the idea.” My dad stood up and headed to the door.

  “You need to let this go,” he said. “There are some amazing online electives available. At least try them before you quit.” He turned to me. “Why are you so adamantly against this?”

  “Because I want to be human,” I said, my voice rising. “Is that so much to ask for? I’m so tired of having to try to remind people to act human. It’s like reminding a river to flow. It should just be natural. But you’re making it so hard. You’re not giving people a chance.”

  “I don’t have time for a DS debate right now,” he said. “I have a plane to catch.” He walked out of my room, and I followed him down the stairs. I talked to his back.

  “I want my first college class to be face-to-face. And I want to study computer law. I want to make sure that no program ever gets so huge and corrupt that it takes over our culture. I want to make sure nothing like DS becomes a law again. I want to make that a law.”

  My dad turned to face me at the bottom of the stairs. My mom was standing in the foyer next to his luggage, ready to see him off. She stared between us, an ache in her eyes.

  “You can’t start a new school program in less than a year,” my dad informed me. “DS took me six years to design.”

  I wasn’t going to give up. “We can start small. One community at a time. My friends have designs in mind. They have lists of teachers willing to lead classes. It’s already in place, Dad. We could start a local university this fall.”

  He opened his mouth to comment but was interrupted by a call on his phone. He checked the screen and cleared his throat.

  “I’m going out of town this week,” he said. “When I get back, we’ll talk. I promise.” The ease of a smile curled on his lips. “You need to work on your patience. You’ve been home for barely a week.”

  I considered his offer. “You promise you’ll help us?”

  He thought about this. “Yes, Maddie. But sometimes help comes in ways you don’t expect. It can feel like a dead end. But maybe it’s just pushing you in a different direction?”

  I sighed. I felt like I was throwing words at my father like darts, hoping they would stick, but they always bounced off the surface. Or missed entirely.

  I passed him without saying goodbye and headed into the kitchen. I opened cupboards and slammed them. I lived inside a mansion and felt like I had the confinements of a crawlspace. My mom stood in the doorway. She knew I was still mentally fighting with my father.

  “He’s in a difficult position right now, Maddie. We need to try to support him.”

  I turned to her. “But you’ve said yourself you don’t agree with what he’s doing.”

  “I don’t agree with where the system is headed, but I agree with what it’s founded on. Your father has the best of intentions.”

  “So do psychopaths.”

  “Madeline Rose—”

  “I’m sorry.” I sat down at the table and raked my hands through my hair. I had only been home a week, and I was already sick from living in so much stillness. I was about to fly out of my skin.

  I watched my mom order groceries on our wall screen, lacing her fingers in the air to add products to her online shopping bag. There was something so elegant about the way her fingers moved and spun, like she was composing a song. Advertisements popped up all over the screen while she worked, featuring new products. The advertisements constantly changed depending on what she was ordering.

  “Will you lift your feet for a second?” she asked. “I need to clean the floors.”

  I kicked up my feet and rested them on top of the chair next to me. She flipped a switch above the sink. Small spray ducts in our floor lifted and shot a soft, warm mist across the fake wood. After a minute, a fan turned on, emitting a low purr along the floor panels and blowing the mist into tiny swirls. The water shut off and the fans turned on high, exuding a hot gust of air across the floor that sounded like the old-fashioned vacuum cleaner my mom used when I was little. A couple of seconds later the fans turned off and I set my feet down on a warm, shiny clean floor.

  “Where’s Dad going?” I asked.

  “Portland,” my mom said. “More issues about the DC cases. They have to do a lot of the interviewing face-to-face, for legal reasons. That’s all he tells me.”

  I rubbed my thumb over the tiny spot on my wrist where the tracker hid. Why would he take a plane to Portland? It’s barely an hour train ride. I walked upstairs and changed into my running clothes. I passed my mom on the way down to the basement, and she smiled, no doubt happy that I was finally using my running machine.

  I ran until all the angry energy drifted out of my body, until all the hard heaviness in my mind melted and drifted out of my pores. I hadn’t run in months, but I had no problem finishing a seven-mile track. It’s easy to find the energy to run when you feel like you’re always being chased. I grabbed a towel off a stack in the workout room and wiped the sweat off my face and neck.

  Before I went back upstairs, I walked into our storage room, the only unfurnished space in the house. The cement floors made the entire room feel cold. The light snapped on and I walked past a few boxes until I came to the computer monitor in the corner that controlled the electricity running through our house. It ran on a separate network than our home computers ran on, so I assumed my father wouldn’t track it. I scanned my finger along the keypad and sat down. The computer only offered access to the energy networks that our house used, so I couldn’t do any website searches for tracking software, but it was still worth a try.

  It was the only reason I’d agreed to my dad’s latest spyware tactics. If the tracker really ran on a twin signal, then I could watch him just as easily as he could watch me. I hoped that one of these energy grids could detect it.

  Our house had constant access to a weather radar in order for the solar cells in the outdoor house paint to predict weekly energy amounts. I found the weather page and searched for GPS scanning software. When the page opened, I scanned my wrist against a panel on the keypad and the network picked up the signal. A radar map appeared on the screen and illuminated longitudinal directions. I tapped the directions, and sure enough, it located my house in Corvallis. I reversed the output and the machine came back with a new coordinate. I smiled and tapped the location.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said out loud.

  I looked around for streets I knew in Portland, but nothing looked familiar. I scanned the area and looked for the Willamette or Columbia River, or one of the bridges downtown, but nothing familiar appeared. I zoomed in and started to recognize some of the landmarks, but the computer claimed I was looking at the Hollywood River. I zoomed in closer and recognized streets in Los Angeles. I found my dad’s location right on the coast, a few blocks from the LADC, the detention center I’d been sentenced to for six months.

  I narrowed my eyes at the yellow, blinking dot, like a tiny, betraying heartbeat. I could feel my pulse in my wrist, as if all of my blood was flowing to that tracker. What was my dad doing in Los Angeles? And why would he lie about it? He’d always been secretive, but now he was even lying to my mom.

  My heart felt like it had slipped down my stair of ribs and collided with my stomach.

  What if he really was the enemy?

  The doorbell rang while my mom and I were watching TV on the loveseat. She jumped with surprise while I calmly pulled a throw blanket off my lap and sat up.

  “It’s a bell, Mom, not an alarm,” I said.

  “Why does that always happen when you’re home?” she asked. She scanned the wall screen for security, and it showed a video of our front door, where Becky stood, nervously turning a ring on her finger.

  “Hi, Becky,” my mom said into the wall speaker. Becky looked up at the video camera.

  “Hi, Mrs. Freeman. Is Maddie home?”

  I stood up, wondering why my mom didn’t jus
t answer the door. “Let’s be old-fashioned and invite her in.”

  “But your father—” My mom cut herself off and nodded. We walked into the foyer and I held Baley back while my mom opened the door for Becky. She walked in, her teeth prying at her bottom lip. Try to play it cool, Captain Obvious, I wanted to tell her.

  My mom looked at the digital clock over the door. It was past dinnertime. “What are you doing out?” she asked.

  “I stopped by. T-to a-apologize,” Becky stammered. “For what happened at the benefit.” My mom glanced at me, and I just shrugged.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” my mom said.

  Becky picked at the ends of her long, brown hair. “Yeah, well, I feel bad about the way my mom reacted. She didn’t have to blame Maddie.”

  My mom looked at her skeptically, but she nodded. “Your mother and I have grown apart. And that’s okay. It doesn’t make either of us a bad person. People just outgrow each other.”

  Becky nodded and there were a couple of seconds of silence. I raised my eyebrows at her, a subtle hint that she needed to say something.

  “You came all the way over here just to apologize?” I helped out.

  “Yes. I mean, sort of. Not really.” She cleared her throat. She took awkward communication to a whole new dimension. “I wanted to invite Maddie out with me tonight, if it’s okay with you.”

  My mom looked between Becky and me. She started to shake her head, but Becky kept going.

  “It’s just to a movie,” Becky assured her. She reminded my mom about the movie club she’d joined. “I meet with a few other girls face-to-face. Now that my brother’s moved out, it’s the only way I can interact with people my age.” She handed my mom a card with a few numbers written on it. “You can echat the other parents if you want; they all know about it. Tonight they’re showing a romance marathon.” She smiled.

  My mom took the card but kept her eyes on Becky. “Does your mother know you’re inviting Madeline?” she asked.