Chapter 12
August, 2002
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Janis melted down onto the desk, her head flopping onto the pile of homework in front of her. She needed a cigarette.
It wasn’t fair. Her feet hadn’t been on the desk. They were dangling off it. It was perfectly hygienic. But she’d argued with Mister Lopez about it, and that had been the impetus for sending her to detention. Was it not enough that she aced every math test without studying? Could he not cut her a little slack for raising the class average?
But here she was. Again. Among the other teens who’d talked back, or had been caught skipping school, or had simply forgotten to do their homework, probably for perfectly valid reasons. Detention was a total crock.
She too, didn’t always do her homework. She liked to keep her smarts on the down-low where possible. Besides, most school work was a snooze fest. What really interested her was something she couldn’t do from this classroom devoid of computers.
A tap came on her shoulder. Janis looked up to see another guy—a senior, he must have been. Broad shoulders, probably on the football team. Not that she cared even a little about sports.
“What?” she said flatly. She wasn’t particularly interested in chitchat.
“You’re Janis Calavicci, right?” the boy said.
“Who wants to know?”
“Name’s Brad Hayes.” He leaned in to her, whispering. “Word is, you can hack into any email account.”
Janis raised an eyebrow. “Where did you hear that?”
“Just through the grapevine. It’s true though, isn’t it? How would you like to make fifty bucks?”
“Not interested.”
Brad thought for a moment, before adding, “You ever tried shrooms?”
Janis perked up. “Can’t say I have…”
“A hundred bucks, and the trip of a lifetime. But it’s time sensitive—you gotta do it before Monday morning.” Janis could see a desperation in his eyes that suggested this wasn’t just for kicks.
“Hmm,” Janis said, sitting up. “Not that I’m agreeing necessarily, but… what exactly do you want me to do?”
Brad cupped a hand over her ear. “Kelly Martin snapped a photo of me… kissing Todd Wakefield. I managed to get a hold of the picture, but she already scanned it into her computer, and now she says she’s emailed it to my Dad’s work email. I need it deleted before he sees it.”
Janis raised her eyebrows. “Why didn’t you say so? I would have done that for free.”
Janis couldn’t stand Kelly Martin.
“A promise is a promise,” Brad whispered. “So you’ll do it?”
Janis nodded, grinning. “Leave it to me.”
* * *
Later that night, Janis logged into MSN Messenger, and opened a chat with Brad.
The photo is gone.
rly?
Gone from your Dad’s email. Gone from Kelly’s email. And, if I did everything right, it will soon be gone from Kelly’s computer, too.
ru srs? how???
I don’t make it a habit to talk openly about my methods. B-)
omg thank u xx
np
Now, I believe I was promised the trip of a lifetime?
meet me @ my place tomorrow 5pm ;-)
dont eat too much b4
You got it.
“Janis, are you still up? It’s past midnight…” Mom was peering at her through a crack in the bedroom door.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Janis retorted, rolling her eyes. “What do I need to be up for?”
Beth sighed. “Well, don’t be on there too much longer? I worry about how much time you spend on that computer.”
Janis smirked. If she knew what Janis did with a computer, she’d probably be more than just a little worried.
“It’s alright, I was just logging off,” she said, and closed out of the various programs she had open, where she had programmed the trojan that would be finding its way to Kelly’s computer the next time she opened her emails.
It was a good day’s hacking all around, really.
* * *
Janis knocked on Brad’s door, clutching her cell phone in one hand and a jacket in the other. She was nervous. She’d had no experience with psychedelics before, but she’d done a boatload of research about magic mushrooms in the past twelve hours or so. The only thing she didn’t know was what effect it would have on her.
When the door swung open, an older man stood there.
“Oh… Mister Hayes. Hello,” she said, making an assumption that proved correct.
“Oh, hi. Brad didn’t mention he was having a girl over,” said Owen Hayes, Brad’s father. He was built similarly to his son, except he was wider and a little shorter. Built like a brick, Janis thought. His demeanour, however, was surprisingly friendly.
“Oh,” Janis said awkwardly, “well, he did invite me.”
Owen raised his hands. “Hey, if he wants a girl over, I’m not going to get in the way.” He turned his head. “Brad!” he called out, then turned back to Janis, lowering his voice again. “What was your name?”
“Janis.”
Owen turned back again, shouting, “Janis is here!”
From somewhere deep in the house, a faint voice called back, “Coming!”
Owen stepped aside, gesturing for Janis to come in. She entered into the large living room.
“Listen,” Owen said, “I’ll happily stay out of your way, but if you—uh—get up to anything… make sure you use protection, okay? I keep some condoms in the medicine cabinet.”
Janis felt her cheeks flushing. Knowing what she knew, there wasn’t much likelihood of anything like that happening. Especially not with shrooms in the mix.
“Uhh, sure thing Mister Hayes.”
“Good. Stay safe.” He winked as Brad entered the room.
“Hey, Janis!” Brad said. “Ready to get your ass kicked by—” Janis widened her eyes, “—me at Smash Bros?”
Janis chuckled. “Ah, you’re on! I’ll wipe the floor with you.” She cracked her knuckles, and Brad led her out to a detached room in the back of the lot, next to an in-ground pool.
“Well this is my sanctuary,” Brad said. “I’ve had many a trip back here.”
“I take it you have a good time?”
“Oh, hell yeah,” Brad grinned. “Ego death is something special, Janis. Just you wait.”
He prepared her some herbal tea, with enough aromatic spices to mask the taste of the mushrooms.
“Bottoms up,” he said, clinking mugs with her.
“Happy trails,” Janis said, and the both of them chugged the tea.
* * *
“Wait a sec,” Ian interjected, “how do we get from you doing mushrooms to you meeting Sam? Not that I’m not hanging on your every word, of course.”
Ian pointedly evaded Magic’s eyes.
“I’m getting to it,” Janis reassured them. “Believe me, the mushroom trip is basically the eye of the storm.”
“Well I can’t wait to hear this,” Jenn said, leaning forward, gazing with amusement at Janis. “Oh, and nice work sticking it to the homophobe.”
Janis winked. “She deserved it. I’ll give you one guess who she voted for in 2016.”
“Moving right along,” Magic said, gesturing for Janis to continue with her story. “You were about to tell us more about your illegal activities.”
“Hey, statute of limitations is long up,” Janis said. “But yes, it was quite the journey.”
* * *
Janis and Brad did, in fact, play some Super Smash Bros Melee until the two of them began to lose the ability to understand their controllers properly. The Nintendo would be on pause for the remainder of the evening.
Giggling, they lay back on Brad’s sofa bed.
“How are you feeling?” Brad murmured.
“Like half of me is off in space,” she replied. Her head was buzzing and she had a sensation of floating. And she couldn’t stop thinking about being on a planet that was spinning at a thousand miles an hour while simultaneously traversing its orbit of the sun at 67 times that speed. And she could almost feel it moving at that pace. “You?”
“I just feel thankful.”
“Of what?”
“You being in detention yesterday. Seeing you there, it was like fate.”
“Fate…?”
“You saved me from my Dad finding out I’m gay. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there. The one person that could help.”
“Oh.”
If he said any more, Janis didn’t notice. She had begun to drift away mentally to another place. A place where a series of coincidences and interventions and being in the right place at the right time changed everything.
Like she was ascending a tree, which branched out in an infinite fractal of possibilities.
The way time wove a path through the possibilities. The way cause and effect led back through an unbroken chain. The way she only existed through a series of unlikely occurrences that led to her own birth.
She traced it back through her life, this thread, and as she followed it, it began to disappear behind her. And, in a terrifying moment, she thought she was dead.
No, not dead. Unalive. Like the state of non-existence that came before conception. Like she hadn’t experienced life at all. Like she wasn’t meant to be.
Opening her eyes, she felt like she was suffocating, and managed to find her way out of the room and into the cool night, where millions of stars glittered above her in colours she hadn’t thought possible. But they weren’t for her; she wasn’t alive, and this beauty was only allowed for real people.
She fell to her knees, weeping with grief. Mourning a life she couldn’t have lived, because… because her parents never had her. She didn’t understand why she knew this for a fact, but it seemed as obvious to her now as one plus one.
What did that equal again?
As she sobbed, she became aware of a hand on her shoulder.
“Hey, are you alright…?”
She looked up, and the one standing there was—she couldn’t understand his face for a moment, as it seemed to morph before her eyes. But when she blinked, it crystallised.
Uncle Sam?
It was like a switch in her mind flipped. In that moment, she knew she was real. She was alive. But she also knew that it was only because of Uncle Sam Beckett, her father’s friend from work, who she hadn’t seen in seven years. He was the key. He was the only one keeping her alive.
“Do you need me to call your parents?”
She clutched his arm. “No… Sam… please don’t tell Dad…” she said, or at least hoped she was saying. She wasn’t at all sure whether she was speaking aloud, and if she was, she didn’t know if she was making sense. “Don’t tell Dad I’m on drugs, Sam…”
Sam was quiet for a moment, studying her. “Do you want to come into the house? I can get you some water.”
The only thing Janis could think right now was that she couldn’t let go of Sam, or else she might stop existing.
She nodded. She would accept water, or anything at all, as long as she could keep holding his arm. “Don’t tell Dad, Uncle Sam,” she said again, grasping his arm more tightly.
“Uncle…?” Sam mumbled, leading her into the house. “Why are you calling me that?”
But Janis didn’t know how to answer that question. The only thing in her head was the need to keep that grip on Sam so she wouldn’t disappear.
It was a long, harrowing few hours for Sam, Janis would later realise. But by the time Janis began to come to her senses, he had put two and two together.
“Janis… Calavicci?”