Keep Trying to Find, part 4

[tamcranver]

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3



Frank didn’t know why he’d agreed to this. Well, he sort of did—Jamia had asked him if he wanted to come over for dinner with her parents, and he wasn’t about to turn her down. She’d been his best friend for years, and he had pretty much no idea whether or when he’d see her again after this summer, so when he’d gone over to the record store and she’d brought the idea up, it seemed obvious.

Of course, he hadn’t known at the time that he was going to get so freaked about it.

He didn’t really have a ton of nice clothes, but he’d tried to at least look presentable, finding a clean black tee-shirt and some jeans that…well, they were a little wrinkled, but at least they didn’t have dubious stains on them. Was he supposed to bring them something? A bottle of wine? No, wait, he was sixteen, there was no way they expected him to break the law to bring them booze. Flowers? What if they thought he was bringing them to Jamia? Shit, should he bring flowers for Jamia?

Wait. Wait. It wasn’t like he and Jamia were getting married or anything. They were just friends, and this was just a casual dinner with her family. No big deal.

He more or less psyched himself up enough to knock on the door, pasting a polite smile on his face.

Jamia opened the door and smiled somewhat wryly at him. “Hey,” she said.

He relaxed somewhat. He could totally do this. “Hey.”

Jamia shifted from foot to foot awkwardly and then said, as if she were forgetting something, “Oh! You should come in and meet my parents.” With an embarrassed wince, she added, “They might…okay, I talked about you a lot when a little kid, what with the whole running away with the aliens thing at the same time I was adopted. So if they’re weird, or they make stupid jokes or something, just ignore them, okay?”

“Okay,” said Frank, tensing up again. “Hey, you didn’t tell them….”

“Not since I was ten,” she said. “I haven’t mentioned it. I can keep a secret.”

Frank had never really doubted that, so he said, “I know.”

She smiled and said, “Well, come on, then,” gesturing for him to follow her into what he guessed was the living room.

Dr. and Mrs. Nestor were sitting on a couch, but they stood up and smiled when Frank and Jamia entered. “So this must be Frank,” said Mrs. Nestor, reaching out to shake his hand. Frank didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but she seemed a lot less intimidating than he’d feared—she had a Grateful Dead tee-shirt and long hair and a really nice smile.

“Yeah,” he said. “Hi. Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” she said, letting go of Frank’s hand so that her husband could grab it.

“We’ve heard a lot about you,” said Dr. Nestor. He had a really firm grip, considering that he wasn’t that big a guy. But he looked nice enough, too, with a sort of goofy hair cut and big glasses and a shirt with the bloody smiley face from Watchmen. He’d probably get along great with Mikey and Gerard; Frank only hoped that meant he’d get along okay with Frank.

“So, what’s the story?” asked Mrs. Nestor curiously. “Not to bring up old history or anything, but we heard about you and two other kids running away or something just a few weeks after we brought Jamia home, and then there was that story about you getting adopted, but it was like you vanished off the face of the earth! You don’t even know how many times Jamia had us call up the guys at the Smith Home for contact information for you.”

“Mom,” Jamia said, looking embarrassed. The look she gave Frank clearly said, I’m not explaining this one—you’re on your own.

“Ah. Well.” From their perspective, Frank could see that he came off looking kind of like an asshole who forgot about his friends. “I really did get adopted,” he said. “But, see, we kind of lived out in the middle of nowhere, and we didn’t have phones and computers and stuff.”

The Nestors’ eyebrows shot up. Great, thought Frank. I’ve officially managed to convince them that I’m a massive weirdo.“Is your family…religious or something?” asked Dr. Nestor, trying obviously not to be offensive.

Hah. He’d been living with the Amaltheans for six years, and he had yet to figure out what their religion actually was. He thought it had something to do with communing with nature or something, but when he asked specifically, nobody seemed to get what he was talking about. “No,” he said. “They’re just, uh.” He shot another look at Mrs. Nestor’s Grateful Dead shirt. “They’re kind of hippies. Like, into growing your own food and taking care of the environment and stuff.” It wasn’t even a lie—Brian was always talking about having respect for the planet, like “We didn’t come all the way here just so we could ruin someone else’s home.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Nestor. “That’s kind of cool.”

“Yeah,” said Frank, more confidently now. “They’re super cool.”

Dinner was actually not as bad as Frank had feared. Jamia must have told them that he didn’t eat meat, because the meal was penne with marinara sauce. Frank hadn’t had pasta in years, and whoever did the cooking in Jamia’s house made a mean marinara.

“Well, you’ve got a healthy appetite, don’t you?” asked Dr. Nestor, smiling wryly at Frank over his third helping.

“It’s really good,” Frank said around a mouthful of food. Under the table, Jamia kicked him.

Mrs. Nestor leaned forward on her elbows and said, “So, Frank. Are you still in high school?”

Ah. Frank put down his fork and tried to look responsible. “Um. No. I kind of…finished early.” And just in case they thought “finished early” was a euphemism for “dropping out,” he said, maybe a little defensively, “I didn’t drop out. It was, like, an alternative school, so whenever the teachers thought you’d learned everything you needed to, you could be done.”

“Hmm,” said Dr. Nestor. He didn’t look too surprised. “So, are you planning to go to college?”

Frank could feel himself squirming again. “Not really,” he said. “My friends—my adopted brothers, really—well, we have this band. So, I’m kind of hoping that’s what I can do for a living. I don’t think I’d be very good at college.”

Mrs. Nestor shrugged. “It’s not for everyone. I know that if my band had made it past 1975, I would have stuck with it.” She had a far-off, wistful look on her face that made Frank wonder what had happened, why she hadn’t just started another band.

“You had a band?” he asked.

She nodded. “Oh, yeah. We wanted to be the next Heart.”

“They were good,” said Dr. Nestor. “That’s actually how we met—at one of her bands’ shows.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah,” Mrs. Nestor said, reaching across the table to take her husband’s hand. “He hung out after the show just to tell me how much he liked my guitar solo.” She shook her head mock ruefully and said, “See, if he’d told me I was hot, I could have just blown him off, but he had to take the shortcut to my heart, and I haven’t managed to get rid of him yet.” They smiled at each other over the table.

That was kind of romantic. Jamia was right, her parents were cool.

Jamia herself didn’t look as though she agreed at the moment. “You guys! ” She turned to Frank, flushed with embarrassment. “Are you done eating?” At Frank’s nod, she said, “Frank and I are gonna go to my room, okay? I’ll wash the dishes later.”

“You better,” said Dr. Nestor. “I didn’t slave away over a hot stove all day just so I could spend all night scrubbing pots and pans.”

Mrs. Nestor snorted. “You’re so full of it.” She waved a hand in Frank and Jamia’s direction. “You kids have fun,” she said.

Frank followed Jamia upstairs into her room. It was cool, all black and green and purple, with band posters and magazine cutouts and glow-in-the-dark stars all over the walls. Jamia shut the door behind her; her door had a poster of the Munsters on it. “Sorry about my parents,” she said. “They get kind of mushy when they’ve had a couple glasses of wine.”

“I thought they were okay,” said Frank with a shrug. “I’m just glad they didn’t get on my case about the college thing. I didn’t want to be ‘bad influence boy’ again.”

They shared a grin. Frank’s first week at the Smith Home, he’d managed to convince Jamia to break into the kitchens with him so they could figure out how to make brownies. When Brendon and Spencer had found them, the smoke alarms blaring and a baking pan completely ruined by what Brendon had called ‘chocolate cement,’ Spencer had shaken his head and pointed at Frank, saying, “You! I swear to God, you’re like a superhero—Bad Influence Boy.”

Jamia’s grin faded and she said, “I really wish you’d been around when I first went to school here. It was kind of hard. None of the kids knew me, and nobody knew where I was coming from—you know, they all had these happy homes with family dinners and PTA meetings and, I don’t know, game nights and shit like that--and I just felt like this complete freak.”

“You felt like a complete freak?” asked Frank. “Everyone in my high school could read each other’s minds. They didn’t understand what a movie was, because apparently the aliens just broadcast entertainment into each other’s brains. Oh, and recite epic poetry. Like, a lot.”

“I had to explain to a girl in my fifth-grade class what a group home was, because she kept looking at me like she was going to cry for, like, a week. She thought I was from a workhouse like in Oliver Twist,” Jamia said with a challenging tilt to her chin.

“All the kids in my school spoke a different language,” Frank shot back. “I had to have Mikey translate for me until I figured the language out—and he didn’t speak it, either! He just read their minds and told me what they were trying to say!”

“Once, I couldn’t stay after school for a soccer game because we were going to go to my grandparents’ house, and the captain of my team was like, ‘Well, they’re not your real grandparents anyway, so why do you have to go?’”

“Kids changed their names all the time, because Amaltheans aren’t as attached to their names as we are, and every time something big happens, they change their names—so just when I’d get to know, like, Greg in my classes, he’d come to school one day and his name would be Virgil, and I’d be the only one who didn’t get it.”

Jamia was silent for a long time after that, before finally saying, “Okay, I think you win on ‘weird’ and I win on ‘shitty.’”

“I can accept that,” said Frank. And then, because he did feel bad that he hadn’t been there for her, he added, “Sorry. I mean, you know if I’d been around I would have kicked those kids’ asses.”

“Yeah,” said Jamia with a snort. “You probably would have.” She grinned, and said, “It’s so awesome that you’re back.”

Frank wholeheartedly agreed. “It sucks that we’re leaving tomorrow, though,” he said. “I mean, I can still probably get someone to drive me here while we’re still in the state, but after that….” After that, they could still use cell phones and e-mail, as long as they didn’t talk about alien stuff and as long as Frank was still outside the Republic, but it wasn’t going to be anywhere near enough, not after six years without getting to do any of the stuff that he and Jamia had always done together.

Jamia’s face fell a little, and she said, “Yeah,” exhaling loudly and sitting down on her bed.

“What really frosts my cookies, though,” Frank said, sitting down next to her, “is that this tour would be, like, the awesomest thing ever, except you won’t be there. I’ve been looking forward to it for a year, too.”

“Sorry to spoil your dreams there, buddy,” said Jamia drily. She made a face at him.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. It wasn’t like it was her fault, but it just sucked. It was a shame that…wait a minute. Frank felt a brilliant idea coming on. “Hey,” he said, “you think your parents would let you come on tour with us? I mean, I know they said you had to wait until graduation, but you wouldn’t be going alone or anything.”

Jamia raised a skeptical eyebrow in his direction. “Yeah right, like my parents are gonna let me ride around in an RV with five dudes all summer.”

“We’re neat!” Before Jamia could object, he admitted, “Okay, well, I’m actually a complete slob, and Mikey and Gerard have some killer B.O., but Bob and Ray are kind of neat.”

“I don’t actually think cleanliness is going to be their main objection.” Jamia started ticking points off on her fingers. “One, they don’t know Bob and Ray. For all they know, they’re, like, pedophiles or something. Two, I’m supposed to be making money this summer so I can get myself a car for school this fall. Three, my parents want me to take this SAT prep course over the summer so I can get a good score on the test my first time and don’t have to keep taking it. Four, I’m not just gonna invite myself to stay with some dudes I don’t even know. You don’t even know if they’d let me come with you guys.”

“They totally would, okay,” Frank argued. He’d be able to convince them, he was pretty sure of it. “And I could get Bob and Ray to call your parents and introduce themselves. I mean, they’re like my uncles, so they’re kind of parental figures, right? And I don’t know, maybe they could get you a job doing merch or something so you could make a little money. And what do you need a prep course for—don’t you know all the answers already?” She still looked supremely skeptical, so Frank resorted to begging. “Come on, Jamia, wouldn’t it be awesome?”

She sighed. “It would be awesome. Totally awesome.” She stared off into space for a long moment, thoughtfully worrying her lower lip between her teeth, before breaking out into a small smile. “I don’t know. Maybe if I convinced them it was, like, job training. It practically is, right? ‘Cause that’s what I want to do, sell my own stuff, so watching the merch sales would be like interning. And I don’t know, I could probably study on the road if I brought my books, right?”

“You totally could,” Frank assured her. “I could even help quiz you and stuff.”

“Maybe,” said Jamia. “I’ll talk to my parents about it tomorrow, and you talk to Bob and Ray, okay?”

“Deal,” said Frank, satisfied. It still didn’t make up for having to leave her again at the end of the summer, but it was going to make the tour quite possibly the most awesome thing in the history of the world.

Jamia looked pretty satisfied herself. “Cool,” she said. And then, with a slightly sly-looking smile, “I guess if the aliens don’t have television, that means they don’t have video games, right?”

Frank shot a look over to the corner, where a TV and a fancy-looking video game console were set up, and then looked back at Jamia. “Right.”

“So, I mean, it wouldn’t be fun for either of us to play a game of Halo, right? Because you haven’t played in six years, and I’m kind of a Halo prodigy, so I’d beat you so badly it would just be sad.”

Frank narrowed his eyes. “Bring it on,” he said.

“Okay,” she said, fetching the controllers, “but just remember, there’s no crying in Halo.”

As it turned out, she did beat him ridiculously badly, but Frank was so happy to be playing video games, and playing video games with Jamia, that he didn’t mind too much. After that they played a round of Super Smash Brothers on Jamia’s old Nintendo 64, since he’d played it more recently and should have “a fighting chance,” as Jamia said. She beat him at that, too, but it was a lot closer, and Frank got in a couple of good blows with Mario’s hammer.

“Have to give you credit, Frank,” she said with a smirk at the end of yet another victorious round, “You put up a good fight.”

“Just wait until next time,” Frank vowed. “I’m spending the next twenty-four hours practicing on this thing, so when you manage to convince your parents to let you come with us, I can spend the rest of the summer schooling you in the ways of old-school gaming.”

She set down the controller and laughed. “Sure, whatever you say,” she said. Her smile grew softer, and she said, “It was fun playing with you like this. Totally reminded me of all those days in the lounge at the Home, remember?”

“Watching Animal Planet and fighting Bill for control of the TV,” Frank said, reminiscing.

“Yeah.” She was still smiling, but her face looked kind of serious. Frank suddenly became aware of how close she was sitting to him—he’d barely noticed it while they were playing, but now the proximity was making the hair on his arms stand up. “You know,” she said, “you’d think after all this time, I don’t know, we’d be totally different people and wouldn’t have anything to talk about and stuff, but…I mean, it’s not like you’re totally the same, and I know I’m not the same, but it feels the same, you know?”

He wouldn’t say he felt the same—he didn’t he’d ever been so conscious of how easy it would be to reach out and put a hand on her shoulder or arm, to see if the skin there was as soft as it looked. He actually felt kind of creepy, thinking about Jamia like she was some hot chick he didn’t even know and not—not his best friend, and the best kickball player at the Smith Home, and the main reason he’d only broken that asshole Paul’s arm once. So, yeah, that was different. But Jamia felt the same, the same awesome friend he’d known forever, and except for the whole pervy checking her out thing, hanging out with her now as great as it had been when they were kids, so he said, “Yeah. Totally.”

Jamia looked away then, looking almost embarrassed. “There’s one key difference between now and then, though,” she said. There was a hint of a pink flush rising up over the freckles on her nose.

“Oh, yeah?” Frank asked. He was amazed he got the words out, his throat was suddenly so dry. “What’s that?”

She half-shrugged, obviously trying to look nonchalant but kind of failing. “You grew up hot,” she said.

She seemed like maybe she was trying to pass it off as a joke, but it still made Frank feel simultaneously warm and fuzzy and like everything in his body had stopped working. “Well,” he said. “Likewise.” They managed to meet each other’s eyes, then, if only to smile awkwardly, and before Frank could help it, he blurted out, “Hey, you wanna kiss or something now?”

“Yeah, okay,” said Jamia, and she leaned forward to place her lips over Frank’s. It was warm, and soft, and wet, and better than anything ever. The only way this could end up sucking would be if Frank’s kissing was a huge disappointment to her, so he put a little effort into it, trying to work in some tongue without being too gross.

Lucky for him, she laughed into his mouth and stuck her own tongue in, and wow, she was even better at this than the psychic girls (and occasional guy) that Frank had made out with at the Republic.

He went home an hour later floating on a cloud of happiness.

When Jamia’s parents dropped him off in the parking lot, the concert was over, but the kids were still obviously having a good time out by the stage. Frank made his way though a bunch of kids in MSI tee-shirts to the RV, where Mikey and Gerard were sitting on the couch, talking very seriously about something.

“Hey, dudes,” he said. He walked over to the fridge and pulled out a Coke. “What’s up?” He popped open his soda and took a long swig, trying not to look like he was thinking of frivolous things like making out with Jamia.

“Frank?” Mikey said, looking away from Gerard with a worried expression. “Um. Am I creepy?”

Frank spit out his Coke. “What?”

“Am I creepy?” Mikey sighed loudly and looked at his lap, where he was tapping his long fingers on his knees. “Like, do I weird people out?”

Frank wanted to laugh so badly it was crazy. But it wasn’t a joke question; Mikey looked genuinely anxious about it and Gerard looked protectively indignant, so Frank clamped down on the giggle that threatened to escape.

“Of course you’re not creepy,” Gerard said stoutly. “Tell him, Frank.”

This was tricky territory, here; Mikey was gonna know if he lied. Instead of giving an answer either way, he said, “Why do you ask?”

“There was this girl,” said Mikey, looking mournful. “Her name’s Alicia, okay, she’s the bass tech for Brand New. And she was getting tee-shirts this morning for the merch table, and I…I mean, I wanted to help her, but she kept thinking, ‘God, I hope that guy doesn’t bother me,’ so I stayed out of her way. I just kind of, you know, stood around in case she needed any help. But then, um, she wanted me to go away because I was creeping her out. So I did.”

Jesus. Frank loved Gerard and Mikey, he’d fucking kill for them, and they’d never seriously creeped him out, ever, but they were pretty much gigantic weirdos. “Let me get this straight,” he said carefully. “You just stood around…watching her.”

Mikey nodded.

“You didn’t say anything to her?”

“I wanted to apologize for creeping her out, but I thought that might make me seem even more creepy.” It sounded more like a question than a statement.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said Frank, shaking his head. “Okay, Mikey, I know it’s weird for you, the whole talking out loud thing, but we’re not psychic. How the hell’s Alicia supposed to know you’re not some freaky stalker or something if you don’t actually say anything to her?”

“Yeah, but….” Mikey chewed on his lower lip. “I mean, if I tell her I didn’t mean to creep her out, I was just staying out of her way, then it’s like she knows that I know what she was thinking, and then…isn’t that even weirder?”

Frank sighed. Gerard, who was looking at him curiously, leaned closer, as if he thought Frank was going to say something deep and wise. That was because Gerard was a total moron. “First off,” said Frank, “you don’t have to be psychic to know that standing around staring at people freaks them out. Because seriously, it just does. And second, dude, you gotta stop reading people’s minds when they don’t know about it. I mean, I’m used to it, and I still think it’s kind of weird.”

Mikey made a face. “I don’t mean to. I can’t really help it, though—you think really loud.”

“Well, try. We’re supposed to be incognito, and you always act even weirder when you forget to talk out loud because you’re reading everybody’s mind.”

“Plus,” Gerard broke in, “the whole privacy thing.” Mikey turned and looked at him with a betrayed expression, and Gerard shrugged. “What?” he said. “I don’t have any secrets from you guys, at least not ones I’d care if you figured out, but I wouldn’t like it if everyone here could tell everything about us just by hanging out with us, you know? They’re not family.” Mikey scowled at him, clearly saying something telepathically, and Gerard stuck out his tongue at him and said, “Dude, don’t even go there. I was the one who had to convince everyone that you knew how to talk and we weren’t about to go on a killing spree. I had to be the normal one.”

Frank took a moment to contemplate how horribly, horribly shitty Gerard would have been at being the normal anything before saying, “Hey, man, that’s what I’m talking about. Privacy, and stuff. Don’t even bullshit me, I know that’s why Uncle Brian taught you guys that mental shield stuff.”

Mikey sighed, clearly defeated. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll try, okay? But…” He looked from Gerard to Frank and back again, and Frank didn’t think he’d seen Mikey look that freaked out in years. “I mean, Alicia. How do I…I don’t know, get her to think I’m not a creep?”

Jesus. Mikey totally had a crush. Frank leaned back in surprise. He supposed he should have seen it earlier, but Mikey’d never really had problems with girls before. While Frank was busy trying to convince them that, yeah, getting to second base could be fun even if only one of you could telepathically tell the other what felt good, Mikey’d been in his element. There weren’t a lot of girls at Wolf Mountain, but Frank was fairly sure Mikey’d still had a pretty active social life. It hadn’t even occurred to him that Mikey might have the kind of crush that made him nervous and unsure of himself. “Wow,” he said. “You really like this girl, huh?”

Mikey rolled his eyes. “Well, yeah,” he said. “Did you see her when they were setting up for the show last night? She’s so….” He waved his hand around vaguely. “Like, cool, you know? Like she really knows what’s going on, and stuff. That’s hot,” he said with a shrug.

“Sure,” said Frank, though he couldn’t remember paying that much attention when not-Bob-or-Ray techs were setting up. “Okay, well, first off, I’d apologize for creeping her out the next time you run into her.”

Mikey nodded intently, and Gerard leaned forward and put his chin in his hands, gazing at Frank like he was sitting in class and Frank was the teacher. Frank stifled a laugh before saying, “Then—and, okay, this is key—you have to give her some space.” Frank had learned that the hard way trying to get Kate to go to the annual Festival of Youth with him two years back. “And for the love of God, don’t stand around and stare at her again,” he added, just in case it wasn’t totally clear.

“Apologize, space, no staring. Got it,” said Mikey.

“And seriously,” Frank added, “stop reading people’s minds. If you ever actually get this girl to go out with you, you want her to be able to trust you, right?” Mikey nodded. “Right, so don’t be in her brain all the time. You gotta respect each other’s space, you know?”

Based on the face he made, the concept of “space” was still clearly a little murky to Mikey, but he said, “Right,” and stood up. “Okay. Here goes.”

“Good luck,” Gerard said, giving Mikey the telepathic conversation look and smiling hugely. Frank knew from talking to them that Gerard wasn’t so good at sending words, so Frank’s best guess that he was sending reassurance.

“Hey,” he said. “You’ll be great, okay? You’re totally awesome—just don’t scare her away before she can see it, all right?”

Mikey smiled, small but warm, and said, “Thanks, Frank. You’re a stand-up guy,” before stepping outside and disappearing.

Frank settled in deeper on the couch, still grinning, when something occurred to him—Mikey had to be over the moon over this girl, because he hadn’t even commented on the thing with Jamia. Frank flushed just thinking about it. It was probably a good thing he was taking the time to instill some guidelines about boundaries, because there was some stuff you just didn’t want even your best friend in the world to see.

Right on cue, Gerard flopped down next to him and said, “Hey, you seem…happier than usual. Is it Jamia?”

“Fuck, Gerard!” Frank said, unable to keep from bursting into a laugh.

“What?” Gerard said. “Dude, I’m not even reading your mind, seriously. You’re like, glowing or something.”

“Seriously?”

Gerard nodded earnestly. “I mean, I always heard that expression applied to pregnant women, which, okay, whatever, but sometimes when people are really happy, or really anything, they just kind of radiate it, you know?”

Frank thought about Jamia’s face after that first kiss, bright and excited and beautiful, and said, “Yeah, I think I know what you mean.” He shrugged. “So. Um, you know how I went to her house for dinner?”

“Yeah?”

“So, I met her parents and stuff, and we hung out in her room, and it was like….” Frank didn’t even know why he was bothering to try to find words, Gerard probably already knew what he meant, but he really wanted to be able to capture that feeling out loud. “It was like all that time apart didn’t mean anything, you know? We still knew each other, deep down, and we could still talk about anything, and we were just…is it gonna sound really stupid if I say we were really together?”

Gerard shrugged. “If that’s how you felt, it doesn’t sound stupid to me.”

Frank leaned his head on Gerard’s shoulder for a second, because seriously, had he lucked out with adopted brothers or what? Then he sat up again to say, “So. You’ve seen Jamia, right, you know she’s fucking gorgeous, but I didn’t want to be the skeezy guy friend, you know, so I didn’t say anything. But then….” He felt a warm glow of happiness in his chest just thinking about it. “Well, she said I was hot, and I said she was hot, too, and then we made out and stuff.”

“Wow,” Gerard breathed. “That’s so cool. It’s like, destiny or something—you knew each other when you were kids and now you meet again. Shit, Frank, that’s amazing.”

Frank giggled. Destiny, for crying out loud. Gerard was such a dork, but in this instance, a little part of Frank thought he might be right. “Yeah,” he said.

Gerard squirmed a little bit in his seat. “It’s so cool, that Mikey’s found this girl he likes, and now you and Jamia hooked up.”

“You do know that ‘hooked up’ means ‘had sex,’ right?”

“It does?” Gerard said with a frown. “Oh. Well, you know what I mean.” He flailed an arm to one side in a huge, vague gesture.

“Yeah.” Frank scooted closer to him on the couch. Gerard twitched again, away from Frank and then back again, and Frank put an arm around his shoulders. Gerard was warm and stinky, which was pretty much par for the course, but he wasn’t usually this jumpy, at least not around Frank. “What’s up with you?” he asked.

Gerard twisted his mouth into a perplexed little knot before saying, “Um. Okay, I think I maybe found somebody, too.”

“Lyn-Z, huh?” Gerard completely failed at hiding his massive, massive crush, and Lyn-Z actually seemed to like him, too.

“Yeah,” said Gerard.

He didn’t say any more, but his smile was huge and bright and happy in a way that Frank hadn’t seen since Helena had died. It made him feel good, kind of settled and relieved, to see it. “Hey,” he said. “Good for you, man.”

“Thanks,” he said. And then, “Hey, Frank, you’d tell me if I were doing anything creepy, right?”

Frank thought about Kate again and said, “Dude, I’m not exactly the authority on not being creepy.” Gerard looked like he was about to object, so Frank hurriedly added, “But yeah, sure, if I think you’re being creepy, or weirder than usual, I’ll let you know.” And then, because he knew Gerard would be pleased he’d asked, and because he really didn’t want to fuck things up with Jamia, he added, “And you’d do the same for me, right?”

Gerard beamed. “Of course! You won’t be able to shut me up!”

Frank couldn’t help it. “I can’t shut you up now.”

“Oh, fuck you,” said Gerard, leaning over to give Frank a half-hearted noogie.

Dude, thought Frank, fuck money and power and shit, this right here was happiness.

**

Jarvis Cocker felt ready to crawl out of his skin. They’d spent fourteen years on this planet, trying to blend in, keeping their eyes and minds open, and now that it was finally paying off, they had to sit around the office while fucking Maja Ivarsson decided whether they had a case or not?”

“Fuck this,” he said for the dozenth time to Brian. “Let’s wipe her mind and have done with this. I’m ready to chuck this FBI gig, anyway.”

Brian rolled his eyes in a particularly infuriating way and said, “I know it’s difficult, but if you could just think about this for a moment without flying off the handle, you’d realize that we’ve had leads before that seemed this promising—on paper, at least—but didn’t amount to anything. What if this one turns out to be another of Campbell’s hallucinations? You do remember how difficult it was to get ourselves into the FBI to begin with, don’t you?”

Of course he did—he was the one who’d had to carefully investigate the records humans left for themselves, on computers, in photographs, in birth certificates and credit card statements, and he was the one who’d had to construct lives for himself and Brian that would allow them access to the best alien-hunting resources the dollar could buy. But a hunt that dragged on for fourteen years without any sign that they were on the right track was a hunt that lost its urgency and its interest, and Jarvis was more than ready to do something else with himself. And if this turned out to be one of Campbell’s hallucinations, well, getting themselves back into the FBI would be the least of their problems.“We’ve never had a lead this promising,” he said. “And we’re wasting time.”

“God,” said Brian, “and you’re supposed to be the technology expert. This isn’t the Dark Ages—why don’t you do a little tracking on your computer?”

As if he hadn’t done that the very hour that Viglione and Palmer had sent him their information. There was no use telling Brian this, though, since he already knew it. Jarvis sighed. “I suppose I could call up Patrick Stump and—what’s Wentz’s attorney’s name? Hurley?—and lean on them a bit, see if they know anything about where our little scions are now.”

“There’s the spirit,” said Brian smugly.

Jarvis sighed and reached across his desk to grab the phone. He supposed he ought to be grateful that Hurley and Stump’s obvious forgeries made it clear that something was fishy about Gerard and Mikey Minnellis’ “adoption” by Helena Rush; they hadn’t bothered to construct an identity for Helena Rush beyond a birth certificate and a social security number, so there was no reason for a careful observer to believe that Ms. Rush actually existed. Amateurs.

The phone rang three times before a pleasant male voice on the other end said, “Hello?”

“Yes, hi, is this Patrick Stump?”

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“Special Agent Cocker with the FBI. You were a witness for the adoption of Michael and Gerard Minnelli and Frank Iero by Helena Rush, June of 2008?”

“Um. Yeah.” Stump sounded suspicious, now. Well, it would have been too much to hope for that the man was completely stupid.

It occurred to Jarvis that, even if Stump himself had no idea where Helena’s grandsons were, there was a chance he was still in contact with the men who had helped them escape the first time—Bob Bryar’s information was still on a report filed by Sheriff Travis McCoy six years ago. He quickly scribbled on a Post-It “TRACE STUMP’S OUTGOING CALLS--FIND SERVICE PROVIDER?” before saying, “We’ve come across some irregularities with Ms. Rush’s record, and we wondered if you still had any contact information for her.”

There was a shuffling sound in the background. “Um, I’m afraid I don’t right now,” said Stump in a cool, professional voice. “If I come across it, though, I’ll send it your way. Is this a good number to reach you with?”

Ah, Stump was angling for his cell number. Well, he’d already known Wentz’ team had someone good with computers on it; this just confirmed it. “This number’s fine,” said Jarvis. “We’d appreciate your help.”

“No problem,” Stump said, hanging up.

Heh. A few more calls like this, and Stump and his people would be panicking; if they had a way to reach Bryar or Schechter, or, God willing, Helena Rush, they would, if only because they and the Minnelli boys would be the only witnesses who could clear Pete Wentz and his cronies from the charge of illegal forging of official documentation.

“Any progress?” asked Brian, smirking. He did that far too often for someone whose only claim to fame was being the Emperor’s fucking lap dog. But then, Molko wasn’t ashamed of that, he was fucking proud of it.

“You’re fucking right I’m proud,” Brian said. His smirk was gone, now. “I haven’t got a problem serving the Emperor to the absolute best of my ability. Have you?”

Jarvis winced. God, the fucker was going to make the entire office think they were spies for…whatever countries on Earth still had an emperor. “Of course I don’t,” he said, because next thing you know, Brian would be writing him up as a traitor. “I came here with you, didn’t I?” He’d given up quite a bit to do it, too, although it didn’t do any good thinking about that, now.

“Um. Am I interrupting anything?”

Jarvis swiveled around in his chair. It was the Australian guy, Lee—he’d had to stop thinking of him as “the new guy” since Knowles joined. Although technically, Knowles was a woman, which Jarvis gathered made more of a difference here than it would back home, so maybe she could be “the new girl” and he could still call Lee “the new guy.” “What do you want, Lee?”

“Brought you this,” said Lee with a grin, extending a signed memo from Ivarsson. “She’s okayed your mission.”

“Our ‘mission?’” said Brian snidely. “Aren’t you sweet.” He took the memo, read it over swiftly, and shoved it into the pocket of his jacket.

Lee looked nonplused, but he waved gamely as he turned to leave. “Best of luck,” he said earnestly before vanishing down the hall to his and Knowles’ office.

Brian stood up and grinned at Jarvis, his earlier anger apparently forgotten. “The chase is on,” he said. “Let’s report back, and we can be on the road.”

“Yes!” Jarvis pounded on his desk with exhilaration and said, “Where are we starting?”

“Oh, I thought we might start with Bob Bryar. Campbell said one of the aliens’ “associates” was called Bob, and he drove a recreational vehicle. I seem to recall that Bryar and a recreational vehicle were involved the last time we had a lead on this little bunch. According to the website of a band called the Used, they’re on tour and Bob Bryar is serving as their drum tech.”

Jarvis considered strangling Brian for a long minute. “You couldn’t have told me they were traveling with Bryar before I called Stump? The whole point of that was to find out where they were—Stump might alert them to us, and if you already knew where they were, it wasn’t worth the risk at all.”

Brian shrugged. “Kept you occupied, didn’t it?”

So much for serving the Emperor to the best of his ability, Jarvis thought savagely as he and Brian made their way out of the office to find a spot where they could contact their immediate superiors. Stupid fucker. Fuck him and his fucking mental shields. It would serve him right if the grandsons escaped back to wherever the hell the rest of the splitters were hiding.

It was actually quite difficult to find a place in the city where one could find the privacy required to contact a space ship, so they drove out past the city limits, north on the old highway, where the houses were few and far between and probably filled with crackpots anyway, to judge from their choice in lawn decorations.

Jarvis kept the communicator in his car as a general rule. It looked like an mp3 player, but no human who stole it would be able to turn it on, and it emitted a low-level signal that hummed in the back of Jarvis’ mind all the time, so he always knew where it was. These things were a dime a dozen on any outpost or colony planet in the Empire, but they were pretty hard to get a hold of here.

“Well,” said Brian impatiently, leaning forward over the dashboard and scanning the horizon anxiously, “are you going to call them, or am I going to have to do it?” Brian always got pissy when they had to call Commander Monáe. Jarvis’ personal theory was that he was the same mix of intimidated and jealous Jarvis himself had had when it came to younger people with better careers than him. Back in the days when he’d still had a career, of course.

“Relax, Brian,” he said, and he closed his eyes. After weeks of carefully making sure he used his hands to turn on everything, there was something rather freeing about using the communicator to scan the skies for Monáe’s ship and to dial her receptor codes, all without lifting a finger.

Ditto’s face appeared in his mind. “Cocker!” she said delightedly. “Haven’t heard from you in a while.”

“Well, it’s a slow business sometimes,” Jarvis said. “Lovely outfit.” Ditto was in many ways a kindred spirit, and her creative sense of style was no exception; today she was wearing a tunic cut in the style of the Imperial Arm’s uniform but in an iridescent shade of what would be called “rose” or something of the sort on Earth.

“Why, thanks,” said Ditto. “You’re looking sharp yourself. Did you make that?”

Jarvis imagined the lapel of his jacket, made of a soft fabric he’d found at a local craft store. “I did,” he said, pleased she’d noticed. “I don’t suppose Commander Monáe’s available to talk? We actually have a bit of good news for her.”

Ditto raised her eyebrows. “Well, that’s a refreshing change. I’ll call her.”

A moment later, Monáe appeared, her hair styled, her tunic utterly smooth, her face impassive—every inch the Imperial Commander. That was the thing about Monáe, though; she had the most thoroughly complicated system of mental shields of anyone Jarvis had ever met, so if Monáe had a less official side, she’d certainly never shown it to him. “Molko. Cocker,” she said, nodding to each of them in turn.

“Commander Monáe,” said Brian respectfully. “We’ve got a lead on the False Empress’s grandsons, and on Brian Schechter. One of our informers told us that they teleported into the woods with another boy, and apparently they’re travelling with a musical group.”

Monáe raised her eyebrows. “Forgive me if I’m wrong, but aren’t quite a few of your ‘informers’…mistaken, shall we say?”

“Well, apparently we got a pretty good description of Schechter from this joker,” Jarvis broke in, “and the names of the boys he was traveling with match up with some names from a previous case our agency’s dealt with. The reason no one followed up on that case was that Schechter mind-wiped the agents on the job.”

“Hmm,” said Monáe, sounding overly-cheerful about it. That was never a good sign. “That does sound promising. And it only took you…how many years was it on Earth? Fifteen?”

“Fourteen,” said Jarvis. Let Monáe get angry. What could she do to him? He’d already lost his family, his home planet, any chance of advancement in his career. The worst she could do was stick him with Brian for another fifteen years on another fruitless chase. Well, or she could kill him, but that didn’t look so bad in comparison.

“Thank you,” she said dryly. “Well. It’s been a decade on the homeworld since the traitors escaped. In the grand scheme of things, not a long time, perhaps, but for one who, in the old days, was said to be the best tracker in the Empire….”

If Monáe thought she was going to get under his skin by wounding his professional pride, she had another think coming. Sure, in the beginning, he’d been frustrated with himself and thanking his lucky stars he’d broken his bond with Candida and the lads, lest he have to face their shame at his failure. But honestly, the longer he stayed, the less he cared. This had clearly been the Emperor’s way of getting rid of him for being too popular and for his perhaps ill-advised jokes about the Emperor’s paranoia. Of course, it also had the added side benefit of possibly capturing rebels and pretenders to the throne. Well, fuck it, Jarvis didn’t care about any of it anymore.

Monáe narrowed her eyes at him. “Careful,” she said, her voice smooth. “You’re treading awfully close to treason yourself, Cocker.”

“He didn’t mean it,” Brian interjected. “He’s just—it’s been fourteen years, commander. Anyone would get tired.”

“Yes, tired,” said Monáe coolly. “I’ve been floating around this…this bizarre anomaly of a planet for five years, waiting for any sign, any at all, that they’re here, so we can finally wipe out the last of the Resistance and maybe even expand the Empire to a new galaxy. And yet all I get is report after report of failure. Yes, you could say it makes me tired. This was supposed to be my opportunity to prove myself.” Her expression hardened, and Jarvis felt one part of her shields come down, radiating irritation and impatience. “Do you know how many commanders there are in the Imperial Arm?”

“A lot,” said Jarvis with a shrug. Hell, if Monáe had actually expected a career advancement over this assignment, she was a lot more optimistic than Jarvis was. It would certainly explain her pissiness now, though.

“Some four billion, Commander,” said Brian, shooting Jarvis a nasty look.

Monáe nodded. “And do you know how many are from the colonies? From my homeworld, Acindia? I’m fairly sure you don’t, so I’ll go ahead and tell you. About ten per cent of the commanders are from the outer colonies, though we make up about ninety per cent of the imperial population. Most of those come from the big industrial worlds. Nine hundred and eighty-six come from Acindia.” Her expression grew even colder. “That’s a mere fraction of a per cent. I’m sure, since you’re both from the homeworld and threw your careers away failing to stop the damned Uprising in the first place, you have absolutely no conception of what I had to do to get this position. How many necks I had to step on.” She gave them a sweet smile. “If I find that once again, you’ve given me a false lead and I’m forced to report yet another failure to the Admiral or the Emperor, I assure you, I would have absolutely no moral qualms about stepping on your necks.”

Fuck. Jarvis believed her, too.

“Well. Happy hunting!” she said with another bright smile, and with that she vanished from Jarvis’ mind, leaving behind an after-image as bright as when you stared into the sun. Suns. Fuck, he was getting way too assimilated.

Ditto reappeared, staring incredulously at Jarvis and Brian. “Wow,” she said. “Your good news certainly put the commander in a good mood.”

“Well, I’m sure she’ll be in a better one once we bring the leaders of the Resistance to her,” said Brian determinedly. “We’ll be able wipe out their whole damned hideout.”

“What a thought,” said Ditto, shaking her head. “What’ll we all do with ourselves, then?”

It was a good question, thought Jarvis. One worth thinking about.

*

Monáe settled into the seat in her private quarters. She rarely had the time to meditate onboard—her duties kept her far too busy, and besides, even in her quarters, the necessary privacy was a precious and rare commodity. She hoped, however, that given the rather unexciting routine of the last few months or so, her crew would be able to handle themselves well enough to spare her for a couple of hours.

“Commander?”

She sighed. Apparently not. “Enter,” she said, shifting the chamber open, and she stood to meet whoever it was at the portal. She hoped that it wasn’t Ensign Pope having trouble with the hydroponics again. Try as she might, she had never quite been able to project an aura of “I know nothing about either botany or engineering, so please don’t ask me about either.”

It wasn’t Ensign Pope, though. It was Lieutenant Ditto, whose businesslike expression melted into one of somewhat anxious inquiry as the portal slid shut behind her. “Janelle?” she asked, switching to mind-speech. “What did Cocker and Molko have to say?”

Ditto must have closed off the command corridor, to be addressing Monáe by that name. Taking on an Earthish professional name was one thing; their mission to this planet was a significant event that a name change would really be expected, and half the crew had taken on business names from Earthish satellite transmissions. Having an Earthish familiar name, though, was the kind of gesture that might undermine her authority with the crew, the kind of thing she shared only with her second. “They say they’ve found the pretenders to the throne,” she said. “For real, this time, Beth.”

Beth exhaled loudly. “Fuck,” she said, an idiom she’d obviously gotten from Cocker. “I thought it must have been something like that. Molko seemed more determined than usual. D’you think they’ll catch them?”

“It’ll be the end of them if they don’t,” said Janelle. “The Emperor’s getting impatient. They might be spared death, but they’ll probably be exiled.”

“Right,” Beth said softly. Janelle knew that she and Cocker were friends, and she extended a tendril of sympathy. Accepting it, Beth said, “But they wouldn’t even have told you if they didn’t think they really had the heirs in sight this time.”

“Probably not.”

“This is it, then,” said Beth. “Our big moment.”

Beth was from Arkania, another colonial planet almost criminally underrepresented in the Arm, and like Janelle, she had had to battle unimaginable odds to reach her current rank. It was one of the things that had first drawn Janelle to her, to seek out her company and later her support as first lieutenant. They had long been waiting for the event that would make the years of training and political maneuvering worth it—the moment in which they could accomplish something that would fill their planets with pride. And Beth was right. If this wasn’t their last opportunity to make their names, it was certainly the first they’d seen, and one that would have to be handled very carefully. “It might be,” Janelle said. “It really might be, especially if the heirs can lead us to the rest of the rebels, and I’m sure they can. I’ll have to inform the Emperor of their report.”

Beth nodded seriously. “Of course. And I’ll have to contact our friends on the border planets. They’ll want to hear, of course, when we have the rebels in custody. “

“Of course,” Janelle echoed. She met Beth’s eyes and couldn’t help but grin, seeing her own excitement reflected in Beth. It was one of the great mysteries, the force that brought such spirits together as hers and Beth’s, but she was grateful every day for it, and for the fantastic luxury of having someone on board with whom she could be wholly herself. Of course, she couldn’t show her exhilaration to the crew. They already resented having to serve under her on this dead-end mission; drawing attention to her youth wouldn’t be at all helpful. Attempting to school her features into a placid, commanding mask, she said, “Clearly, we’ll need to meditate on this. Our wits will have to be at their sharpest.” Gesturing towards the seat on the far side of the room. “Would you care to perform a meal ritual with me?”

Beth wiped her own expression clean of laughter and excitement, but her eyes were still dancing with amusement. “I’d be honored, Commander.”


Part 5