Shards

2. What I Did On My Summer Vacation

2. What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Ben

My life flashed before my eyes.

More than anything, I regretted how little there was to flash.

“Brakes, brakes, BRAKES!”

In Mina’s defense, she did hit the brakes before she could knock over the stop sign, but not before she drove the front right wheel of my mom’s SUV up onto the curb. The car jolted to a stop, and, not for the first time since Mina had asked me to show her how to drive, I was glad I was wearing a seatbelt.

After a second’s consideration, she said, “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. You’re still learning,” I said.

“Not very quickly,” she grumbled.

She was having another one of her bad days. She was having them more frequently, days where I could tell she hadn’t slept and she was more on edge than usual. It had to be what happened to her in the Warehouse, some kind of post-traumatic stress. I still remembered yanking her from that pod, watching the tendrils that had burrowed beneath her skin, into her mind, trying to make Mina one of them, dissolving away in trails of green slime.

Splinters. The word brought up feelings of disgust and hatred. They made her this way. They broke her. I couldn’t fix her, not yet. That was bound to take a lot longer than the nearly-healed gash in her side and the burns on my legs. But at least I could try to make her feel better.

“Yeah, well nobody’s perfect. My mom’s been driving for more than twenty years and I’m still amazed they haven’t taken her license away,” I said. “You should’ve seen us driving up here. She tried to steer the U-Haul into a drive-through and ran down a guy dressed like a chili dog. Squashed him like a bug.”

Mina goggled at me for a moment, then said, “You made that up.”

“Replace ‘ran down a guy’ with ‘barely clipped a guy with her side view mirror,’ ‘squashed him like a bug’ with ‘ran over part of the sign he was carrying’ and ‘chili dog’ with ‘chili cheese dog’ and you’ve got it,” I said.

Much as she tried not to let it, I caught a hint of a smile sneak through.

“Maybe if we want to make it to Kevin’s on time and alive and without having to explain to your mother how you allowed an unlicensed driver to damage her SUV, you should drive,” she said.

“Fair enough,” I said. We got out and switched positions. Though the SUV made a terrible clunk when I reversed it off the curb, it still drove fine. So neither my mom nor Mina would kill me. Not today.

Not bad.

That just left the rest of Prospero, California, to look out for.

Back when Mom and I were just visiting, that was a stress I thought I could live with. Now that we were effectively imprisoned here for the rest of our lives, surrounded by Splinters, I hoped I could handle it. I was pretty sure I could handle it. Whether or not I actually could was something I’d yet to figure out.

The Splinters’ plan for us was working, so far. Shortly after our break-in at the Warehouse, they’d made a job offer to my mother. Nothing too flashy, a clerical position at town hall, but she jumped at the opportunity as a way of getting out of her rut in San Diego. They even lined up a nice, affordable little house for us that coincidentally happened to be right across the street from the Todd family.

I’m sure this was Mina’s father’s way of keeping an eye on me.

We made it to Kevin’s place a few minutes after I took over. Compulsively, I looked to the backseat. The bags of binders I’d so meticulously put together were still there. In them was everything we knew about Splinters; all of Mina’s notes and lists, the brief history of them we’d been able to put together, and a world map of other possible Splinter cities we had seen linked to the Warehouse. Spread out among the group, everyone would know everything.

Mina caught my hesitance. “There’s no reason to be nervous. Everyone here already knows of the existence of Splinters. You don’t have to win them over.”

“I’m not worried about winning them over. I’m worried about winning you over,” I said as I began to get out of the car.

“You know I know about Splinters,” she said, getting out and helping me gather up bags.

“You know that isn’t what I meant,” I said.

She said nothing. I took that as a yes.

The meeting was all my idea. Mina’s Network was a loose collection of individuals who knew about Splinters and helped her undermine their efforts. Until this point, Mina had kept all of the members on a need-to-know basis, distributing only scant bits of information as she saw fit. When it became clear we were facing the possibility of an all-out war with the Splinters, I argued that it would be a good idea to get everyone as prepared as possible to put up a unified front.

Eventually, I was able to talk her into at least this one get-together so I could meet everyone.

Kevin made it clear that he was providing his parents’ backyard for the meeting strictly as a friend and not as a Network member. His claim of neutrality didn’t set the best tone for our purposes, but it was the safest place we had.

We had just started up the walkway to his house when we heard it. A god-awful squeal of metal and gears mixed with what sounded like a machine-g*n coughing. An ancient sedan that looked to be held together by rust and duct-tape rounded the corner, followed by a cloud of blue, black, and white that occasionally belched out of the tailpipe. Whoever was driving was doing a rather remarkable job, considering that the driver’s compartment was murky with white smoke.

“Ah. They’re here,” Mina said. The car lurched to a stop within inches of my mom’s SUV. Then it jolted forward, tapping the bumper hard enough to rock the vehicle back and forth. I winced as I jogged back to the cars.

A tall boy with shoulder-length black hair and an old army jacket stepped out of the driver’s seat, looking first at the van, then at Mina. His red-rimmed eyes and easy smile reminded me uncomfortably of Billy.

“Hey, Mina, hey…” he said, snapping his fingers.

“Ben,” I said.

“Yeah, Ben, cool. This your car?” the boy asked.

“No, my mom’s,” I said.

“Well, s**t,” he said. He looked at my mom’s SUV appraisingly. “I think you’re fine, really. Barely kissed ya. I know a guy who could buff it out if there’s any real—”

“I’ll be fine,” I muttered. “I don’t really think—”

“Wait, you’re the Eagle Scout, right?” he asked, that easy smile disappearing astonishingly fast.

“I never made it that far,” I corrected. This didn’t improve his mood. He looked to Mina.

“How can you trust this guy? You do know that the Scouts in all their forms are the earliest levels of indoctrination into the New World Order’s personal strike force? This guy could be—”

The passenger door opened, nearly falling off and letting out a wall of white smoke. A cheerfully placating voice called from within, “Oh come on, Greg, that’s no way to make friends now, is it?”

Out of the passenger side came what was easily the most patriotic Goth girl I had ever seen, wearing a black tank-top cut high enough to show her stars-and-stripes belly-button stud and a tight black micro-skirt that would have left little to the imagination if she were still sitting. Her skin was even paler than Mina’s, probably helped along by a fair amount of white makeup, and her dyed black hair was streaked with bright red and blue to match her lipstick. She smiled a broad, toothy smile when she saw Mina and me.

“Don’tcha worry ’bout Greg there, Ben,” she said, striding over to me and hopping slightly to put a friendly peck on my cheek. “He gets grumpy and super paranoid when he’s high, but he’s a big teddy bear, I swear!”

“I prefer the term ‘aware,’ Jules,” Greg clarified as he reached through where there should have been a rear passenger window and pulled out a grocery bag of snacks.

Greg Nguyen and Julie Kaplan.

Mina had warned me they were a bit eccentric.

She almost smiled as she approached them, refraining from rolling her eyes as she too received a red and blue kiss on the cheek.

“Are Billy and Aldo already here?” Julie asked, pulling a stylized, almost antique umbrella from the passenger seat and opening it to shade herself from the sun.

I looked at Mina. “You didn’t tell them?”

“Tell us what?” Greg asked.

“I thought that was what this meeting was for,” Mina said.

“But this was something pretty important; you could’ve gotten it out of the way first,” I said, irritated.

“Tell us what? Are Billy and Aldo okay?” Julie asked.

I looked to Mina, she looked to me. Neither of us wanted to say it right away.

“Aldo’s fine,” Mina said.

“Billy’s more complicated,” I clarified. They both looked confused. “We’ll explain it when we get inside.”

“I can’t believe we’re doing this here. This is enemy territory,” Greg said as they followed us up the walkway to Kevin’s house.

Mina tried to change the topic. “So did you have a good Fourth of July, Julie?”

“Why is this enemy territory?” I asked.

“Yeah!” Julie said brightly, twirling a red section of her hair. “But I’m really looking forward to Halloween. More my colors.”

“Kevin’s a part of the Prospero machine, his dad’s got his fingers everywhere,” Greg said.

“Black is a much better color,” Mina said a bit louder.

“Kevin saved our lives,” I said.

“It is, but we really gotta do some proper shopping for you one of these days,” Julie said.

“And that absolves him how?” Greg asked when we reached the front door.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call Kevin Brundle one of my favorite people, but he was a good guy, and Mina believed in him. Hearing Greg trash him put me on the defensive.

Thankfully, seeing this argument about to explode, Julie pressed the doorbell.

“Please be presentable, love?” she pleaded.

“I am presentable,” Greg sulked.

“Not now you’re not,” she said.

He forced an almost cartoonishly wide smile. She nodded her approval.

I looked to Mina. She simply confirmed, “This is normal.”

Haley opened the front door seconds later. Seeing her, healthy, mostly happy, and mostly smiling made any bad feelings I had go away. She had had some unsteady days after we brought her out of the Warehouse, rehabilitating her and telling her everything that had happened. She had an even harder time pretending that she remembered everything since her “return,” but she was a good actress.

At least we were still friends.

“Hey guys,” she said, giving Mina and me warm hugs. Mina resisted only slightly. Looking to the others, Haley kept smiling. “Is this everybody?”

“Yes,” Mina said.

“Cool,” Haley said. “Aldo’s upstairs taking out all the bugs and cameras you guys planted.”

“You bugged the Brundle house?” Greg asked with a raised eyebrow. “Nice.”

Haley looked at our bags of food. “Please tell me somebody brought meat. Kevin’s got the grill going and has about six different kinds of tofu browning as we speak.”

“We’ve got you covered,” I said, pointing to the bags Mina carried, showing off some packages of frozen burger patties.

“Thank God,” she said. “Get those to Kevin before he decides to put up a fight?”

“Sure,” Mina said, leading Greg and Julie to the backyard. I was about to follow when Haley gently grabbed me by the wrist.

“Can I talk to you for a sec?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said.

She looked back and forth nervously, clearly wanting to talk but unable to put words to her thoughts. I asked, “Have you been doing all right?”

She tried to laugh it off. “Yeah, sure. Between my mom wondering if I’m bipolar and the others from the theater being pissed at me for dropping out of Alexei Smith’s terrible play at the last second and not dropping out of the troupe completely so I can spy on him, I’m just dandy.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t have to, but I want to. Mina says he’s one of the key Splinters in town, and I want to make him pay for what happened to me. It’s just so hard when I have to make up for the months where my body wasn’t mine. I have to constantly fight to remember what memories are mine and what were hers. I have to remember how to walk again. I’m just so angry all the time.” she said.

“It’s all right to be angry,” I said.

“But I never used to be! I was happy. I liked being happy, and now I barely remember what that’s like anymore. I don’t know if I’d even be able to do this if it weren’t for you and Mina,” she said.

I made to put my arm around her shoulders.

She dodged away, then looked up at me, ashamed.

“Oh God, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” she said. “It’s not you, I swear.”

“It’s okay,” I said, trying not to sound too hurt.

“No, it’s not, I don’t have any problem touching you… I mean, I don’t have any problem with you touching me…” she paused, laughing angrily as she stomped on the floor. “This isn’t coming out right. It’s just, you used to do that to her, and when you do that, I remember how she used to feel when you did that. It made her more excited than anyone should be.”

“Okay, note to self: do not put arm around Haley’s shoulders,” I joked.

She smiled back at me. “Thanks. I mean it’s really sweet. Just give me some time to not be weird about it?”

“Of course,” I said. “So is there some approved physical act of comfort I can do as a friend?”

“Hugs are okay,” she said. In response to this, I wrapped her in a bear hug, lifting her off her feet and spinning her around. She laughed. I laughed. It felt good.

“Better?” I asked.

“A little, thanks,” she said as she looked into my eyes fondly.

That moment right there, alone in the foyer of Kevin’s house, felt pretty close to perfect.

It might have even ranked perfect had Aldo Kessler not chosen the next moment to walk down the stairs beside us, shielding his eyes exaggeratedly with one hand.

“I saw nothing, continue doing whatever it is you were doing,” Aldo said as he walked to the backyard, smiling a bit smugly.

Haley and I shared a nervous laugh. I said, “This is going to be interesting.”

***

Though it came with a brief lecture on the horrible conditions of factory farms and the health benefits of vegetarianism, Kevin gamely cooked the hot dogs and hamburgers we’d brought. It would have been a pretty nice barbeque had we not spent most of the time recounting the story of what had really happened over the summer. It was a long, tiring process, made more difficult by Mina’s uncharacteristic reluctance to help tell the story.

I understood she wasn’t wild about full disclosure, but usually, once a decision was made, she was only too ready to take the lead whether she liked it or not.

Not today.

She would pipe in whenever I got something wrong, or if there was some important detail she thought I’d missed, or if I prompted her, but for the most part the story was mine to tell.

“Poor Billy,” Julie said after I’d finished. “He was one of the good ones.”

“One of the good Splinters,” Aldo clarified. “He was trying to set us up all along.”

“Maybe, but he was still our friend, I think,” Julie said.

“If you’re really going to split hairs, he was actually just trying to set up Ben and Mina. The rest of us were pretty clear,” Greg replied.

“If his plan had succeeded, Prospero would be Splinter City right now,” I said. “He was setting us all up.”

“According to her Splinter dad,” Greg said, pointing at Mina. “Maybe Billy really was helping you all along. Maybe he really helped you defeat some Splinter plot we can’t see yet.”

“He was setting us up,” Haley said. “She knew it. She was being led along, thinking that capturing Ben and Mina meant she was going to help lead in a new era of Splinter dominance over mankind.”

“Like they don’t have that already?” Greg said, flipping to the page of his binder with the world map of Splinter locations. “Thebes. Rome. Baghdad. Jerusalem. This is some serious Chariots of the Gods s**t, man. Like the Eagle Scout said, they’ve been here from the start, molding us into their own little puppets, just waiting for their moment to take over.”

“Doubtful, love,” Julie said as she flipped to the same page in her binder. “Look at this distribution. If they wanted to take us over by now, they coulda done that already, easy. The fact that we’re not all slaves or Splinters ourselves means they’re either incapable of taking us over, or they just don’t want to, and goin’ by what Haley and Mina’ve said about bein’ taken by their pods, I don’t think it’s ’cause they’re incapable. They’re probably just, like, tourists.”

“Body-snatching tourists,” Greg clarified.

They were odd, but they were observant. I was beginning to see why Mina kept Greg and Julie close.

“Really, though, can we trust this information? Can we trust you?” Greg asked, flipping through the pages.

“Hey,” I protested.

“Don’t feel special, Eagle Scout. I don’t trust any free information; it doesn’t stay free for long, and it’s rarely true,” Greg said. “I mean, look at it from our point of view. You guys were here over the summer, we weren’t. You could’ve all been taken over and are just setting us up to be drawn in next to your web of drones.”

“Then why aren’t we all jumping you now?” Haley asked, irritated.

Greg shook his head. “Don’t ask me to explain how a Splinter’s mind works. You should be able to do that better than anyone.”

Haley got out of her chair, her fists balled. If Aldo hadn’t spoken up, I’m sure things would have gotten ugly fast.

“Throwing around accusations like this isn’t going to get us anywhere. Now I’m as much a fan of feeding Greg’s paranoia as anyone, but he does have a point. Where do we go with it from here?” Aldo asked.

“High school,” Mina said simply.

I looked to her, grateful. This was her show; she had to lead it. She still looked tired, unsteady, but she began to speak firmly. She was in her element.

“Unquestionably, Prospero High School is the most dangerous place in this entire town. Splinters want to lead long, full lives and, as such, take the youngest forms possible. We will be surrounded every moment of every day by potential enemies. But we do have an advantage now that we have never had before. We know there is dissension within the Splinters’ ranks. It is possible we will be able to turn this conflict to our favor.”

“Any ideas on how to do that yet?” Greg asked.

“Not yet. As soon as I’ve come up with any ideas, I will keep you… informed,” Mina said, vaguely. This caught me off guard. We’d discussed a few plans so far on how to pin down the movements and members of the Splinter Council itself so we could get a closer look at their relationship with the dissidents. I didn’t know why she was holding back.

“Can I say something?” Kevin asked. Normally one with an opinion on everything, I was surprised he’d been quiet throughout the entire meeting thus far.

“Please,” I said.

He stood up and smiled, nervously clapping his hands together once.

“I’ve no love for the Splinters. In fact, it seems they’ve done everything possible over the years to destroy my family. They took my brother. They’ve twice had people think I was a murderer,” he said, looking at Haley. “They’ve done terrible things to this town, to all of us in one way or another. We’ve got every reason to be angry with them. But let me ask you, is it really necessary that we fight them?”

He raised his hands almost immediately to try and quiet the six voices of argument, my own included, that came up in the wake of his question.

“Please, please, hear me out,” he said.

“So says the son of a collaborator,” Greg said. For the first time, Julie did not look like she wanted Greg to shut up.

“My father and I have many disagreements. The Splinter issue is key among them,” Kevin explained. “What I want you to consider is the scale of this problem. This isn’t a Prospero issue. This isn’t even just an American issue. This is something that encompasses the entire planet. This is not a fight that can be won by a half dozen kids with a few cameras and improvised flamethrowers. This cannot be won through violence. The only way this fight can truly be won is through raising awareness of the problem. Let people know what is going on, people on the outside. Fighting it here, like you’re suggesting, is only going to end in sadness and death.”

He looked at us, so earnest, so kind. “You’re good people. You’ve got good lives ahead of you. Don’t end them here, not like this.”

Haley stood to speak against him. “We can’t do that. If this were about saving the rainforest, or cleaning the air, I’d agree with you. But this is different. They’re stealing our lives. They took me out of my bed, in the middle of the night. I was hooked into one of their pods for three months. They violated me on every level, and you want me to back down? No way. That is not going to happen. If you want to be a coward, be my guest. But I am going to fight this, on my own if I have to.”

“You won’t have to,” I said, hoping for Mina to back me up. She didn’t, instead looking at Haley as if she were concerned for her.

Kevin looked utterly defeated.

***

The meeting broke up pretty fast after that.

I honestly didn’t know if we had accomplished anything.

Aldo and Haley were with us. Kevin was not, though he still wanted to be our friend. Greg and Julie were believers, but I could also see why Mina called them Network “casuals.”

So, basically, we were right where we started.

Mina and I were the last to leave. We helped clean up, gathering up the two binders that had been left behind, by whom I couldn’t tell.

Kevin walked us to my mom’s SUV, looking sad, but still holding onto that faint optimistic smile of his.

As Mina loaded things into the back of the SUV, he pulled me off to the side and said, “Be careful, brother. Keep an eye out for them, and keep a level head; you might be the only one who can keep them safe.”

“You could, too,” I said. “If you were with us.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, brother, I’m just not up to it.”

I wouldn’t call him a coward, it wasn’t the right word. I did, however, feel sorry for him.

I got in the car with Mina and began to drive us home. I didn’t even know where to begin.

“Did it go as well as you had hoped?” she asked.

I tried not to laugh. “No, it didn’t. I was expecting some help from you,” I said.

“You were doing a perfectly adequate job,” she said.

I continued. “I was also expecting some honesty. Why didn’t you tell them about the plans?”

“The plans aren’t ready. I don’t want to say anything unless I am certain it will work,” she said.

“We told them we were going to be completely honest with them,” I said.

“No, you told them that. I’m sorry Ben, I really am, but I don’t think I can promise them that. Not yet, maybe not ever,” she said.

“What about me?” I asked. “Do I get complete honesty yet?”

She looked at me for a long time with that cold, appraising look she always took on when considering something very grave.

Finally, she said, “I would trust you with the whole truth more than anyone I know.”

That didn’t answer my question, and she knew it. Still, I knew it was all I was going to get out of her, so I let it pass. A faint trace of a smile crossed her face. It was hard not to smile back when she did that.

“Come on, let’s get you an energy drink,” I said, transforming that trace of a smile into a full-blown grin. It was enough to let me hope that things were looking up.