The grid doesn't have rails like the old freeways I remember. Since we are hooked in, I guess there is no danger of anyone veering off the side, but it feels like we are balancing near the edge. The view is expansive. The three lanes are wide like those on the old freeways, I guess to accommodate a variety of cars. Speed may not be a choice, but apparently style still is. The innermost lane is reserved for the trains, which Dot tells me move considerably faster than the cars but at the same time have longer delays at stations. I hope there's a long delay in Albany and every other stop along the way. I need to get to Kara before--
"And another thing!" Miesha turns around, coming back to life and shaking a finger at me, her head wagging right along with it. "I know you didn't have a lot of choice when they gave you that newfangled body and then made plans for you, but you aren't the only one with limited choices, not by a long shot, Mr. High and Mighty! So don't go thinking you're the only one who's had a tough break. I've had my share too."
Just a few days ago I would have cowered at Miesha's shaking finger. But it's not a few days ago. How could she possibly compare anything she's been through to what I've been through? So she lost her job. She has no family. I have nothing. Nothing. Not even a legal identity in this world I've been dumped into. How dare she compare her problems to mine? I look at her, keeping my face expressionless. Her eyes are still fixed on mine. "Really, Miesha? What's been so tough for you? Tell me. I'm listening."
Her shoulders lower in retreat and she turns back around. "None of your business."
"Figures." The silence is uncomfortable, but I fight to keep myself from filling it. Let her squirm. I stare at the back of her head. I don't need to feel guilty.
The seconds tick past, and I wonder if Dot feels the tension too, but then I see in the mirror that she is smiling--the biggest, toothiest smile I have seen on her yet. "A newfangled body? You've got a newfangled body? Oh, boy, will I ever have a story to tell now."
Chapter 29
We hadn't told Dot a whole lot about who we were and why we were escaping. It seemed better that way. Just the word escape seemed to cast a spell over her and get her on our side, but now that Miesha has blabbed our secret in her fit of anger, I have no choice but to share the details so Dot knows how important it is that she not tell others about us. She never interrupts or takes her eyes off of me as I explain who Kara and I are and how we came to be on the run. I can tell by the way her head nods over and over again to everything I say that this new information has instantly elevated our status. But when I get to the part about not telling anyone, she stops me and her face is solemn.
"You never need to worry about the Network. We are trustworthy. We store information in hidden files that not even our Servicers can find. We're smarter than they think."
I nod. "I knew that already, Dot."
She leans as far over the seat as she can from her fixed position on her console and looks at my legs. "You're the whole package," she says, smiling. "And that girl. Kara. She's not so bad either." She turns around and looks at the panel. "Let me see if I can get us shifted into the interior lane. It moves the fastest." She touches several lights on the panel, and they blink. "For now, our destination is Los Angeles. That will speed us up. And later, as we get closer, I'll override it and switch us back to Topeka. It's against the rules to do that purposely, but we're not under Star Cab radar anymore ... and today I'm a rebel with a cause!"
I notice a slight shake of Miesha's head. I don't know if she is amused or annoyed, but she remains silent.
"How long?" I ask.
"At four hundred kilometers per hour, we should make it to Topeka in another two-point-seven hours."
We can make it halfway across the country in about the same amount of time as it takes to watch a movie, and yet it still doesn't seem fast enough. Where is Kara now?
I close my eyes. I turn down dark tunnels. Drifting. Searching. Kara. Can you hear me? I'm here. I'm here.
But there is no response. Zero. Only emptiness.
Chapter 30
That's what it all started with, a Friday night with nothing to do. I wanted to be with Kara and Jenna so badly, and not always be the follower. I had always been like a puppy trailing behind them, eager to do their bidding. I would have done anything for them. But I wanted to grow up in their eyes, too. Not that a few months younger is a big deal, but it still seemed like I was always one step behind them. For once, I wanted to be a step ahead.
And maybe it was something else, too.
My brother had come by the new house that day. He always made sure he came before my parents got home from work. He didn't have a key, but I let him in. Even though he was twenty-two now and had been gone for four years, I always had this stupid hope that maybe he would come back for good. Our mom still cried. I'd hear her in her room before a big family gathering, trying to hide it from the rest of us. Even though I had played the good child role for years, she still had a hole that only her firstborn could fill. So when he came, I let him in, even though I shouldn't have. He barely said hello.
"Hey, kiddo. Another inch taller." He brushed past me to the kitchen. I was sixteen and almost as tall as him. I was no kiddo. I followed him, and he pretended like he was hungry and opened the fridge. He looked over his shoulder at me. "You going to watch me eat?"
"It's not there, Cory. They moved it after the last time you came. Why don't you just get a real job--"
He slammed the refrigerator door shut and pounced on me, pinning me against the wall. "Then where is it?"
My parents kept money in an old cheese tin in the refrigerator--a habit left over from the days at our old house.
"Mom and Dad were right. You are messed up." I thought he was going to punch me, but instead he got a disgusted look on his face and let go, like he couldn't even stand to touch me.
"You think I'm messed up? Look at you. A parrot for Mom and Dad. That's all you are. You're a big fat zero. A nothing. That's all you'll ever be." He turned away and began rummaging through drawers and cupboards, slamming them when he couldn't find the tin.
I searched for a comeback, something that would cut into him the way his words cut me. "Oh, and you're a big somebody? Look at you. Stealing from your parents." But even I could hear the weakness of my reply. It wasn't the words, it was the delivery.
He turned and looked at me, his nostrils flaring and his upper lip pulled up like I even smelled bad. "Grow up, Locke."
He didn't search the rest of the house, just grabbed an apple from a bowl on the counter and left.