Dead Air, Michelle Schusterman [mobile ebook reader .TXT] 📗

suddenly decided she wanted to go be a famous photographer, and she had to do it alone. So she ditched us and moved to Cincinnati. She’s taken off twice before, by the way, but she always came home after a few weeks. This time she came back to town in June without even telling me, and now all of a sudden she’s marrying some guy who has a daughter. Gee, saying that out loud helped a ton. I feel so much better now.”

Oscar leaned forward in his seat, his expression earnest. “My dad used to own a chain of cafés. When I was nine, he got audited and they found out he had some sort of embezzlement thing going on. He basically stole a ton of money from his own employees. During the trial, his name was all over the headlines of the local newspapers every day, and they made him sound like a supervillain with all these stupid nicknames. And we have the same name. He was sentenced to ten years in prison, and I got called ‘Bettencrook’ for most of fifth grade.” Oscar threw his hands up in the air, eyes wide in mock surprise. “Magic! Talking about it fixed everything.”

We both started laughing. It was that uncontrollable kind of laughter, where your chest starts to really ache but you can’t stop. A minute later, the door slid open.

“Everything okay back here?” Mi Jin asked.

I nodded, wiping my eyes. “Great.”

“We just solved all our problems,” Oscar added.

Mi Jin looked amused. “Glad to hear it, but could you guys keep it down a little? We’re going to start filming again—we’re just a few minutes from the city. And be careful with the preciouses,” she added sternly, gesturing to the comics strewn on the floor before sliding the door shut again.

I reached down to pick up Avengers. “Do you at least get to visit your dad?”

“Yeah.” Oscar grabbed his comic, too. “But I haven’t since I got expelled. Don’t really want to have that conversation.”

“I don’t blame you,” I said, flipping back to my spot. “All of that happened when you were nine, and kids at your school were still giving you a hard time about it in eighth grade? Lame.”

“What?”

“That’s why you got expelled, right?” I glanced at him. “Lidia said you were bullied—wasn’t it because of what happened with your dad?”

Oscar’s smile vanished. “No, it wasn’t about that. I, um . . . got in a fight with Mark.”

Frowning, I remembered my first conversation with Oscar.

I had a friend named Mark, too.

Had? What, is he dead or something?

“Oh. What, um . . .” I trailed off as Oscar buried his head in his comic. Whatever had happened, obviously he didn’t want to talk about it. So I closed my mouth and went back to reading. I was curious, but we’d already talked enough. And after all, I hadn’t told him about the Thing.

Some stuff just hurt too much to say out loud.

Talking about not talking about our problems actually did help in one way—all the tension between Oscar and me had pretty much disappeared. It was like we’d bonded over our mutual agreement to shove our feelings down and not talk about them, ever. Roland would probably have a lot to say about how unhealthy that was, but I didn’t care. Telling someone about the Thing wouldn’t make any difference at this point. The Thing was officially indestructible.

“Why do we have to completely unload?” Mi Jin grumbled, crawling back into the van. “Can’t we leave some of this stuff in here?”

“Can’t lock it,” Jess said, grabbing a stack of tripods. “It’s a prison van—two lock systems. The exterior lock keeps people in, the interior lock keeps people out. The guy I bought it from said the interior lock has been broken for a few years, so we can’t stop anyone from getting in. That’s why it was so cheap.”

She headed back inside, followed by Sam, who was loaded down with several equipment bags. The drive through Brussels had been amazing—I’d never seen such opulent buildings, with arches and turrets and intricate carvings all lit up and golden against the purplish-blue sky. We’d passed some of the fanciest, most castle-like hotels I’d ever seen.

Our hotel was not one of them.

“Looks like my college dorm,” Mi Jin joked when she noticed my expression. “Only with smaller rooms.”

I grinned, taking the bag she was holding out. When I stepped away from the van, Oscar pulled me aside.

“What?” I asked, but he just shook his head. I watched as he checked to make sure Mi Jin was all the way inside the van. Then he grabbed the handle to the sliding door and pulled hard. The door slammed shut, and through the barred window, we saw Mi Jin spin around.

“Hey!” She tugged on the door, her expression confused. “What are you doing?”

“Exterior locks!” Oscar said. “Just wanted to test them out.”

Mi Jin grabbed the bars, and made a face like she was screaming. Laughing, I pulled the Elapse out of my pocket. “Do that again!”

A minute later, Dad came out of the hotel and found us in the middle of a photo shoot, with Mi Jin smashing her face between the bars, and Oscar pretending to pick the lock.

“That’s enough,” Dad said mildly, pulling the door open. Mi Jin hopped out, looking pleased.

“Send me those, okay?”

“Sure!” I flipped through the photos on my viewfinder. Several of them were pretty funny-looking. Hopefully the P2P fans would think so, too. I turned off the Elapse, and it promptly turned on again. “What the . . .”

WARNING! High Voltage

I frowned, holding the camera closer to my eyes. I’d almost forgotten the other time I’d seen this message—in Crimptown, right before I’d tried to take the photo of Sonja. But it didn’t make sense. It wasn’t like a camera could shock you.

“There’s an Internet café over there,” Oscar said.

“Huh?”

Oscar pointed across the street. “You could post those on your blog.”

“Oh,” I said. “How’d you know I was thinking about posting these?”

“Why do you