My Year Zero Read online

  I shrugged at her. My heart was going fast and I felt light-headed. Some of the people shoving through the doorways were yelling, one girl screaming. I wasn’t eager to join them.

  The kid held the metal box in front of his face like he could see into it and then waved it around again. I could almost read the writing on the side. It was printed; clear words that should make sense.

  “They’re after me,” he said. “They’ve implanted me with the drones, I know it. Can you see them? Come here and tell me if you can see them. I know you can. They’ll get you too. You can’t run. They’ll get you!”

  I remembered where I’d seen his face. It was in a photo of the robotics team.

  The security guard came up next to me. Brown shirt and khakis, walkie-talkie in her hand, dark hair back in a tight braid. “Come with me,” she said.

  “He’s on the robotics team,” I told her.

  Her wide eyes and raised brows suggested either that she had no patience for me or thought I was as crazy as he was. I couldn’t tell which.

  “That might not be a bomb,” I said. “It looks like a hard drive. See the printing on the white side?”

  She blinked at me a few times and called across the room to him, “Son, is that a hard drive?”

  “They’re in my data,” he yelled back. “They want what I’ve got. It’s all here. Can you copy it? You have to save it for me.”

  He lunged across the room and shoved it at her, but she didn’t take it.

  “What kind of drive is that?” I asked.

  He pulled away, pressed it to his chest, looked hurt. “You’re testing me. It’s a Western Digital two terabyte SATA drive. You think I’d trust my data to anything else? This is cutting edge, this is over the edge, beyond the edge, this is the future times a million, that’s why they want it. They need this tech. You have to take me out of here. They’re going to find me.”

  With the drive this close, I could read the words “Western Digital” along the side. He was right. How could he be ranting about drones and at the same time know exactly what he had in his hand? Did crazy work like that? Part of the world in focus and another part wildly out of control?

  Sirens outside. He glanced back at the open window. A light dusting of snow, lifted up from the ground and blew onto the radiator where it fizzled.

  “Oh man, the drones are here. They’re in me. They gave me away. Shit, help me hide.”

  He ran across the room and shoved himself into the closet with the napkins and ketchup.

  “You should evacuate with the other students,” the guard told me.

  Two cops were pushing their way in through the crowded cafeteria doors as I reached them. They passed me and I heard the guard tell them, “We think he might be holding a computer hard drive.”

  More than half of the doors from the hallway outside the cafeteria were closed like they were supposed to be in lockdown mode. Further down the hall, doors were still open. Everyone with lockers away from the cafeteria was told they could get their coats and go home or wait in the far classrooms for buses. We were two periods from the end of the day.

  I found Jenny and Sierra in one of the big classrooms at the far end of the school. They were standing by a window that faced the parking lot with all the cop cars. One of the clone girls that always follows Jenny around was with them. I didn’t remember her name.

  When she saw me, Jenny ran over and fake hugged me: the kind where your arms go around the other person but there’s no real contact. The clone girl patted my shoulder. She was very pale with limp, wheat-blond hair, as if when they copied Jenny they turned the exposure up too high. Sierra stayed where she was by the window, turned to watch us.

  “Weren’t you scared?” Jenny asked me.

  “I guess so,” I said. I felt shaky now, ripples in my hands and my legs. Wasn’t that how scared felt?

  “What do you mean you guess?” she asked, voice rising. “You stood there staring at him. Did you know he was going to do that?”

  “Of course not. But everyone was going through the doors at the same time and, I don’t know. Isn’t it good to not panic?”

  I went over to the window to see if they’d brought the kid out yet. Jenny followed, rolling her eyes at me. She said, “When there’s a bomb you’re supposed to panic. You’re really weird sometimes.”

  She’d told me that before. Half the time it was because I didn’t agree that a guy she liked was cute, so I ignored it. Yeah, I didn’t cry at sad movies, but that’s because crying makes you appear weak. And I didn’t gush over new clothes or groan when we got extra homework, because why bother. If that made me weird, I guess I was.

  I told her, “It wasn’t a bomb. It was only a hard drive.”

  “He was totally mental, though,” the clone girl said. “Like schizo or bipolar and completely off his meds.”

  Sierra straightened up, seeming inches taller than the clone girl, even though she wasn’t. “Not cool,” she said. “I have a friend who’s bipolar. It’s not like that.”

  “He’s crazy,” the girl insisted. She pointed toward the parking lot.

  The cops were leading the kid out to the squad car, his hands cuffed behind his back. He kept shouting. The wind carried hints of his words across the parking lot and through the glass of the window. I heard “drones” a few more times. He tried to run when they reached the car and they had to wrestle him into the back.

  We stayed silent until the car drove away. School was optional for the rest of the day. Half of the students were already gone. With break a few days away, we’d take any excuse to leave.

  Jenny and her clone left me and Sierra standing by the window.

  “What are you doing next?” I asked, feeling more nervous about asking that than facing the kid with the wild hard drive.

  Sierra shrugged. “I guess I’ll catch the bus back to my aunt’s.”

  “When they let me back to my locker to get my coat, I can drive you back.”

  “You have a car?”

  “Yeah,” I told her.

  “That’d be super sweet.” She glanced out the window again and back to me. “You were very coolheaded in there.”

  I didn’t know how to tell her that cool had nothing to do with it. I didn’t react to a lot of stuff. Sometimes I’d get scared or angry for no reason and other times when I should have been completely freaked out, I didn’t feel it. My father was an attorney and he taught me and my brother to make logical arguments as soon as we could talk. I figured it came from that; I could see things logically and not get all wrapped up in them.

  “I’m afraid of centipedes,” I said and wanted to kick myself because of how stupid it sounded.

  But Sierra laughed and the whole inside of my torso dissolved into jittery static.

  “So if he’d come in waving a centipede?” she asked.

  “I’d have been the first one out the doors,” I told her. “I’m just not afraid of hard drives. Did you get to eat?”

  “I started to but it was terrible. I haven’t had a school lunch in a year and I can’t say that I miss them in the least. How long do you have until they spring you from this place?”

  “What, until I graduate?”

  She nodded. Her eyes were super blue. Winter sky cobalt blue when it’s too cold for clouds.

  “I’m a junior,” I told her. “Though I’ll have enough credit to graduate next winter. You know, there’s a pizza place not far. If I can get to my locker…”

  “I’d love to,” she said.

  * * *

  Sierra didn’t disappear before I got back. She followed me out of the building to the parking lot and the car my father got me a few months ago for my sixteenth birthday: a carbide gray Subaru Legacy. The name was ironic since I was so not his legacy, that was my brother Isaac. I was his failure.

  “This is yours?” Sierra asked when she got in.

  I braced myself in case this was the start of one of those stinging Jews-with-money comments and said, “Um, mos
tly. We got it used and technically it belongs to my father, but it’s mine to drive.”

  She nodded and didn’t say ‘must be nice’ or the stupider things that started with ‘you people…’

  I drove along Superior Street to Sammy’s Pizza. It was filling up with out-of-school kids, but we got one of the little black tables against the wall and decided to split a cheese pizza with extra cheese. Sierra contemplated the black and white tile, the metal stools, the gooseberry green wall color, the overall mashup of kitsch and modern. I couldn’t tell if she thought it was cool or ancient.

  Did it count as a date if you met a girl by accident and ended up getting pizza because of a bomb scare?

  I wanted it to count as a date. I’d come out as lesbian about five seconds into the first time I kissed a boy. To be fair, I kissed him a few more times and kissed another boy, all in all pretty boring. Like Jell-O. Not the texture of the kiss, but the way that when I see Jell-O on a table at a buffet, I’m not drawn to it. I might take some if there’s nothing else sweet, but most of the time I’ll skip dessert. It’s hardly worth the effort it takes to eat it.

  Maybe you love Jell-O, I’m not saying it’s across the board the worst dessert ever (that award goes to unripe fruit), I’m saying it’s not my thing. Sierra, on the other hand, I could thoroughly get used to watching her eat pizza.

  “I hope he’s okay,” I said. “What do you think happens if the cops have to take you away like that?”

  “They lock you up in the psych ward for a while,” Sierra answered, super matter-of-fact.

  I looked at her and she shrugged like “what?” I wanted to ask how she knew that, but it didn’t seem polite.

  “I don’t think it was bipolar, though,” she said. “Blake’s never like that. She’s my best friend. She’s deeply cool. She has a character in the story I write with a bunch of other people. Do you write?”

  “A little. I mostly draw.”

  I’d managed to get a bite of hot pizza into my mouth and was trying to figure out a graceful way to chew and swallow. Most of the time I knew how to function like a normal human being, honest.

  “What?” she asked.

  I swallowed and gulped some water.

  “Mostly comics,” I said. “Not the superhero kind. Do you read manga?”

  “Not really. Should I?” she asked and took another bite of her pizza slice, as if talking then chewing was an easy skill to master.

  “Uh, yeah, everybody should.”

  She laughed. “Will you lend me some?”

  I reached into my backpack for Nakamura Asumiko’s “Adolte and Adarte” and slid it across the table to her. She flipped through it.

  “I’ll mail it back to you when I’m done. Do you like science fiction?”

  I nodded, hoping she’d look away so I could swallow. The bite of pizza seemed so small when it took it, but it was expanding in my mouth.

  “You should join us, the story group. We only have one illustrator.”

  She glanced down, riffling the edge of the manga, and I gulped down the mass of pizza.

  “What’s the story about?” I asked.

  It could have been a grinding tragedy about garbage collectors on Mars and I’d have said yes.

  Nobody here wrote group stories. Almost nobody here wrote stories as far as I knew. Most of the students were either obsessed with grades so they could get out of here for college, or obsessed with drinking and hooking up. My father considered my comics and my illustrations to be a kid thing that I’d grow out of when I finally decided if I wanted to be an architect or a corporate marketing goon.

  “Our story takes place in this galaxy that’s ruled by four old gods but there’s this race of Illudari—like high elves—who are fighting to replace the old gods with their own leaders, the kings and queens of the galaxy.”

  “The Queen of Rogues?” I asked.

  “That’s who I am. In the current story, she’s actually allied with one of the old gods, Lord Stone, to go against the most powerful of all the old gods. But some of the other kings and queens are upset so there’s fighting between them.”

  “How do you write it?”

  “There are a bunch of different ways you can submit your posts, or write in the group document we have going. Dustin, he’s Lord Stone, he compiles it all with the art and puts it on the official site. And we talk about it when we’re together or on chat—about where the story is going next so you kind of know what to write. Your pizza’s getting cold.”

  I managed a few more bites as she told me about the story background because she peered across the restaurant while she talked. I could only half listen. When I listened too much or looked at her, I started to feel all full of static again and forgot how to eat.

  When we’d eaten half the pizza and boxed the rest, she gave me directions to her aunt’s house. It was a normal-sized house on the west side of town, where we used to live. I parked by the curb and wasn’t sure what to do next.

  Sierra took my hand off the wheel. She ran her thumb along the edge of my index finger, burning and tickling my skin.

  “Ink,” she said.

  I nodded because I usually had ink on my hands and with her touching me, I couldn’t figure out how to form words.

  “Give me your address for the comic and your email. I’ll have Dustin send you an invite to the story.”

  I wasn’t going to pull away from her touch, but she let go, so I reached into the backseat and got my bag. I tore a sheet of paper out of my notebook and wrote down what she wanted.

  She folded the paper and said, “Thanks!”

  She was out of the car and moving up the shoveled, stone walk to the house, the bottom half of her dress seeming out of place between leather jacket and boots. She let herself in and shut the door. After I’d put the car in drive, I realized that I had none of her information: no email, no phone number. I didn’t even know her last name.

  I couldn’t get out of the car and go ask. I hated myself, but I couldn’t. My heart pounded and some (smarter, tougher) part of my brain was yelling at me to run up the front walk, ring the bell and ask. The slower, dopey, well-behaved part of my brain drove us away from the house.

  I got home and sat for a while in the garage rubbing my thumb against the side of my index finger (it didn’t feel the same, not even close) and wondering if I’d ever hear from her again.

  Chapter Three

  After two weeks, I gave up on hearing from Sierra. Then something would remind me—ink splatters on a page or the gap in my library where that one manga was missing—and I’d go back to hoping that she’d email me.

  You would think that once you shared a bomb scare with someone, they’d get in touch with you. I guess the Twin Cities was that much cooler than Duluth, so when she got home she wasn’t curious about a random comic geek up north.

  The cycle went on: remembering, hoping, giving up. The sun came up and went down again too soon. Snow fell white and turned brown. Days happened, and weeks and months.

  And then she emailed!

  She wrote: So sorry! Busy with work/school/holidays/family/bullshit! I still have your comic, haven’t forgotten. Talked to Dustin this weekend. He’ll add you to the story. Watch for an email with details! Can you forgive me?

  I read it a half-dozen times and typed a casual reply: Hi, how are you?

  No, that sounded stupid. I deleted it and started again: Hey, good to hear from you.

  Too eager. Delete, try again: Hi, I thought you’d forgotten…

  Omg, too needy!

  I sent back: Hey, thanks. No worries about the manga, send it whenever. I’ll watch for the invite. Sounds cool.

  That also sounded daft, but whatever, I had to send a reply. I stared at my laptop like anything would happen right away. It didn’t. I put on my iPod and went to clean the bathroom in an attempt to distract myself and because it was on the chores list for tomorrow.

  When I was done, I tried to do homework but I was checking my email every th
ree-point-four seconds. After long minutes, two messages pinged into my inbox, almost at the same time. I opened Sierra’s first:

  Oh! I’m glad you’re not mad. It was so fun to meet you. I wish I’d had you draw me something that I could show Dustin. You’re going to like everyone on the story. They’re all amazing. I can’t wait for you to read it.

  She gave me her chat info, I put it in and saw her pop up as online. What should I say? I’d already opened the email to her with “Hey” and that was my usual start. Might as well stick with the classic.

  I wrote: Hey, this is Lauren.

  Her reply showed up in seconds: Hi! Did you get the invite?

  Yeah, but I haven’t read it yet.

  Sierra said: You need to pick a character and set up a page for them. The craziest things have been happening in my family. I’m sorry I didn’t email you. I forgot where I put the paper and it was in the pocket of that dress. I never wear that dress. I had to go searching through everything to find it.

  She went looking for my info! That had to mean something, right? Like not only did she remember me but she liked me enough to go out of her way.

  I asked: Is your family okay?

  Sierra wrote: My sister got fired again and everyone is freaking out. They think it’s her boyfriend, like she’s not the bad influence. I should probably go totally lesbian so they won’t panic about me.

  Had she meant “totally go lesbian”—like she wasn’t now but could go there—or actually the way she typed it, like she was already partway there and could maybe go the rest of the way? Please let it be the latter. I figured coming out was the fastest way to see.

  I said: That’s my plan.

  Lesbian or not panicking?

  Both.

  Sierra replied: Cool! You can give me tips. About lesbians. I don’t panic.

  My heart stopped or was teleported out of my chest and was replaced with pressurized helium. The cursor and I blinked at each other. The cursor seemed as befuddled as me.

  I typed: You should probably start by kissing girls. See if you like it.

  As soon as I sent that, I thought it sounded too flirty, but Sierra replied: Oh, I’ve kissed girls before. I was sort of dating one but then I met Dustin and we clicked.