The Rebel Code

Chapter Two - Part Three

When I wake up, it's still dark outside, and I don't feel particularly rested. I rub the sleep out of my eyes and sit up, glancing at the digital clock on my nightstand. Ten-thirty. There's noise downstairs, movement. My first thought is that Mo is finally coming upstairs, but then I remember John. He must be home by now.

    Quietly, I creep back down the stairs as another summer storm has its way with the windows. The lights are off now, and Mo is still passed out on the couch, but there's a blanket over her shoulders and a pillow under her neck. A few more steps into the living room reveal that the master bedroom light is on and the door is cracked. I can hear John humming softly to himself as I tiptoe to the door and peek in.

    He sits there, still in the blue-and-white polo shirt he wears every day as a gym teacher, surrounded by his horde of tech. All the secret computers and signal-boosting devices that he can hide back in the wall at a moment's notice are out and active, and he's arguing with someone on a wireless earpiece. He sounds tired, but everyone's tired today, so I can't blame him. Finally, there's a lull in the conversation, and he looks up to see me standing there. He presses his mouth into a blink-and-you'll-miss-it smile that doesn't reach his eyes, and tells whoever it is he's talking to that he's turning in for the night and will get back on it in the morning. I don't know what "it" is.

    "Hey, kid," he says quietly.

"Hey," I respond, more out of habit than anything.

"Some day, huh?" he chuckles. He flips an almost invisible switch on the side of his desk, and the computer vanishes into a panel in the wall.

"Yeah."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No," I say. "I just wanted to see you."

The tears come before I even realize they're there, and any attempt I make to hide them just makes me feel ridiculous, so I stand there, a shivering, sobbing mess, in the dim light of the doorway. The next thing I know, I feel his chin on my head and one of his big arms around my shoulders, and I'm crying freely now, not scared to show it.

"It's okay," he whispers. "We're going to be okay."

"What's going to... happen to you now?" I sob, barely able to hiccup the words. "What does... this mean for... us? Do... do we have to move... again?"

"I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that doesn't happen," he says. "I promise. I wouldn't do that to you in your first year of high school, would I? C'mon, Jenny."

"I thought it was you," I gasp. "When I woke up and saw the lights outside, I thought they were coming for you."

He pulls me away for a second, hands on my shoulders, and smiles more sincerely this time. I desperately try to wipe my cheeks as he brushes a strand of my tangled, yellow hair out of my face.

"Jenny," he says, "that is not going to happen."

"But why wouldn't it? You saw what they did to Mr. Bosman, and we didn't even know he was one of us. Well, I didn't. He was so normal, and they just came and took him! What if we're next?"

John shakes his head. "Why would they do that? They got their freeboot, didn't they? They have to reason to suspect us. I've been their gym teacher for years now, and everyone knows that. You and Mo are just ordinary kids. It's not like we're living alone and hiding out with our curtains drawn. We're a perfectly normal family."

I give him a look—he knows what it means—because I know for a fact that no matter how long he's worked at the academy, no matter how long I've been a student, no matter how long we've been blending in with our little suburb, we don't look like a normal family. Sometimes I wonder if people really do buy the "single dad with two adopted daughters" thing, but it's the only story we've got. It's the only story that can reconcile my pale, sunburned cheeks and stringy, yellow hair with Mo's deep umber complexion and tight curls.