No Easy Way Out (15 page)

“You
don’t
have control.” Marco wondered why this was such a revelation.

“If we don’t provide the illusion of control, we’ll have anarchy. Your job is to help me project this illusion. And if you can no longer manage your job, I am going to have to relieve you of your card key and all privileges of non-compliance that up until now you have enjoyed.”

She will pry this card from my cold, dead fingers.

Marco shifted to sit taller. “You told me to throw a party, I threw a party. I did everything you asked.”

“Tonight, you make sure to go to the bathroom
before
the party. Let me know at our evening meeting where to deliver the keg.” She picked up the bagel and pointed him to the door. “And do a better job of working your mall assignment. I got a complaint report from your coworkers on construction that you were slacking off.”

Screw construction. Screw her and her job. Like Marco needed this crap in his life. But without the card key, he was a sitting duck like the rest of them, fodder for the medical center, another body on the ice.
Not a lot of options trapped here in Suck City
.

He had to problem solve. He’d completed an experimental party. What had he learned? Mike and Drew were a liability. Mike had control issues. Everyone had control issues. Marco would control their control issues. They were not invited to tonight’s event. He would provide his own security by not attending the party—no chance of facing a beat-down if he wasn’t there.

First job was to find out who got tossed from the party last time. That douche Ryan would be able to identify them. Marco would get them to sign on to this new party—he had to find a new spot for it, a bigger place, better decorations, decent music. Then those guys would spread the word. He just had to keep Mike from hearing about it. Which meant finding Mike.
So much plotting, so little time . . .

• • •

Lexi noticed several solutions to the problem of what to do with your mask while eating. Some wore it like a party hat on their heads, others like a necklace. She saw one guy with it balanced on his beard, just below his mouth. Another woman had hers on her forehead like a stunted horn. Lexi decided to go for the utterly original mask-on-ear look.

“Now that’s a fashion trend I see sweeping the runways this spring,” Maddie mused from across the picnic table.

“It’s a hat plus an earring,” Ginger chirped. “Very chic.” She pulled her mask necklace over her ear.

Lexi had never envisioned herself as a trendsetter, but here she was, blazing fashion trails. She’d never imagined herself with a boyfriend either, but she had another date for after Lights Out. The world of the mall was like another dimension, an opposite world, the mirror reverse of reality. And Lexi liked life in the mirror.

“So about this boy,” Maddie said, swallowing her mush.

“Where did you find him?” Ginger asked, leaning toward Lexi, elbows on the table.

“Why is he in our Home Store’s stockroom?” Maddie pointed her spoon at Lexi. “Are you hiding him? Does he have the flu?”

“I’m not hiding him,” Lexi said, half annoyed by the interrogation, half thrilled.

“So how does he get in?”

“I let him in,” Lexi lied.

“You bad girl!” Ginger squealed.

“Does he have friends?” Maddie was practically crawling across the table. “Would he like to share those friends with two eligible hotties?”

“Is he here?” Ginger looked around at the other tables. “Is that him?”

Lexi tried not to be insulted by the fact that the guy she picked looked like a loser. “No way,” she said. “Not in his dreams.”

“What about him?” Maddie pointed to a hulking guy who looked to be near thirty.

“Ew!” Lexi squealed. (
Squealed!
She was squealing! Who was this squealing person?) “He’s old. Gross.”

The game carried them through breakfast. After dropping their plates in the trash, Lexi followed Maddie and Ginger to start work as a clothing sorter back in the JCPenney, which was where women’s clothes were dumped. Men’s were in the Lord & Taylor, children’s in the HomeMart.

The first-floor stockroom was filled with piles of women’s clothing from all over the mall. There were fifty sorters assigned to women’s clothing, five supervisors (old ladies too frail to do any work), and two guards. The sorters were divided into three groups: nightgowns and lingerie, shoes, and all other, the latter being the largest group. Today, Lexi, Maddie, and Ginger were assigned to shoes.

“They want us to throw away a pair of seven-hundred-dollar Jimmy Choo heels?” Ginger said, clinging to the strappy pair like life itself. “I just can’t do it. They can’t make me do it.” She stuffed the shoes into the corner.

Lexi had never understood high heels. They were painful—she’d worn a pair to a bat mitzvah of some work friend of her mother’s and had gone barefoot after an hour. Life was so much nicer in a pair of sneakers. Maybe not sexier, but more comfortable.

Maddie had a pair of stacked stripper heels strapped to her feet. “Is this a good look for me?” she said, finger to chin as she admired her feet. She had her sweats bunched around her knees and had tied off the front of her turtleneck through the neck to bare her midriff.

“It’s a winner for sure,” Lexi said, throwing a ballet flat at her.

Ginger began tugging at her T-shirt. “I think we can start a trend,” she said, pulling the hem of her shirt through the neck hole. “What do you say, Lex?”

Lexi threw the other flat from the pair at Ginger. “I would rather catch the flu than that trend.”

“For shame!” came an old lady’s voice from around the corner. She appeared shortly thereafter, waving a finger at them. “I will not have any joking about our terrible predicament. Now get those shirts back on right and put on your rationed shoes, then get the sorted pairs out to the registration area before the lunch break.”

Maddie and Ginger could barely control their laughter as they straightened their shirts and retied their sneakers.

“Like I’m parting with these babies,” Maddie said, sliding the stacked heels into the corner where Ginger had stowed the Jimmy Choos.

Once the three of them had moved several stacks of approved shoes out to the registration area, Maddie and Ginger signaled for Lexi to sneak one of the pairs they’d siphoned into their corner under her sweatshirt and follow them. They led her into a dark section of the stock area, where the unsorted clothes were left until needed, then through a door and into the loading area. A corrugated metal door filled most of one wall. An almost magnetic pull tugged on Lexi, whispering,
Outside . . .

“Ta-da!” Ginger said, waving her arms at the other walls.

Ginger and Maddie had hung slinky dresses, tube tops, and mini skirts around like decorations. All the items were expensive-looking. They dumped their haul of impractical, uncomfortable, ridiculously high and strappy heels on a table above which hung a strapless green velvet cocktail dress.

Lexi could not believe the amount of stuff they had stolen. “You guys are going to get in trouble,” she said.

Maddie looked at her like she’d grown hooves. “Why? They want us to throw the stuff out and we’re simply rescuing these trifles from the Dumpster.”

“But what if someone found out? Like the other people in the mall who like Jimmy Choos or whatever?”

“How would they find out?” Maddie asked, stepping toward Lexi. “You’re not thinking of enlightening anyone about our little stock here?”

“No,” Lexi blurted. “I mean, of course I wouldn’t tell on you.” She felt like she did the time she stole her mother’s lipstick to write on the wall. The offense was written everywhere in red and yet still, her mother questioned her, like she was hoping to catch her daughter in a lie.

Ginger intervened. “She gets that this isn’t stealing, Mad. Lay off.”

Maddie backed off. “So long as we’re all cool with things,” she said, “why don’t we try some goodies on?”

Ginger clapped her hands, then tugged off her tee. “I’ve been dying to try the Alice and Olivia!”

Lexi could not stop feeling like the loser in the room. “Isn’t that old lady going to wonder where we went?”

“Who, Betty?” Maddie asked, sliding a shimmery black dress over her head. “That old bag wouldn’t know if a year passed between checking on us. Yesterday, she asked me three times in as many minutes how soon until lunch.”

Lexi tried to relax, be cool, but she felt like any second her mother would bust through the door and catch her. Should she tell Maddie and Ginger about the bodies on the ice? Would knowing that they were all on the edge of death get them to follow the rules?

But did you really need to follow
all
the rules to keep things from falling apart? The new mall order would not crumble over a couple of hidden prom dresses.

And so when Ginger pressed a blue dress into Lexi’s chest and begged her to try it, that she would look “so amazing” in that color, Lexi took off her clothes and put the thing on. It didn’t fit, but what did that matter? Ginger told her she looked gorgeous and even Maddie gave the outfit a nod of approval.

“We’ll have to find some things in your size,” Maddie said.

Lexi said thanks and tried to look grateful.

S
hay counted five kids and two teachers missing. And that was without really knowing anyone.

Preeti had run off the second Shay checked her in with Alison at the information desk in Baxter’s. Preeti’s “class” did in fact contain her two friends from before the riots, before she’d come down with the flu. Preeti had seen the girls in the children’s book section—Preeti’s class was old enough to actually try to teach them something—and they’d met, grabbing hands and squealing as if this was an average day at their regular school.

How could Preeti be so normal? How was anyone pretending that life was not simply a waiting game to see who dropped next?

Take Kris, for example. Lunch was late, so he was leading a game of duck-duck-goose. Duck-duck-freaking-goose. The kids loved him like a god and jumped on him every chance they got. “Goose” would topple into Kris’s lap and he would cry out like he was shocked by the attack, then start tickling. Everyone ended up laughing—the ducks and the geese. Shay made a good show of merriment, laughing the best “I’m having a good time” laugh she could muster. But Kris, he was really laughing. He actually was having a good time. What was his damage?

Duck-duck-goose ended and Kris waved for Shay to help him collect one of the art bins Alison had spent the night putting together. “We’ll make masks,” Kris said, holding up a Popsicle stick and paper plate.

“A mask to wear over our masks,” Shay said, hefting a tray of paints and brushes.

“Decorating their face masks!” Kris exclaimed, missing her sarcasm entirely. “I love it. We’ll get stickers and do it after lunch.”

After they’d set down the materials and gotten the kids started gluing sticks to their plates, Shay asked—no, begged, “Tell me. Please. How do you do it? How can you stay so happy when we’re missing five kids—five, just in one day?”

Kris knelt back on his haunches, then sat and propped his arms behind him. “It’s a choice,” he said. “The way I see it, you can look at this as a giant suckfest of death or you can decide to make the best of things and live. Why not stay positive?”

Shay looked at him like he’d just peeled off his skin to reveal the alien hide beneath.

Kris elbowed her. “Don’t look at me like I’m insane,” he said. “It’s not like I’m not scared or sad or kicking myself for coming here that fateful Saturday, but that’s all stuff I can’t change. What I can change is how I react to it, and I choose to stay positive.” He shuffled over to a girl who was having trouble with the glue and getting it in her hair. When he returned, Shay was still gawking.

He mimicked her look back to her. “I sound that nuts? Let me try again.

“My mom died of cancer a couple years ago, just as I was graduating from Tisch. I was really pissed about that. I would look at what was happening to her—she was young, really young, like in her forties—and I felt all this rage at god, the universe, everything. My dad became a wreck, stopped going to work. The law firm ended up giving him an extended leave of absence, but he’s never gone back. My mom, though, she was like a saint.

“One day I said to her, Aren’t you freaking pissed off? And she said, Oh, I’m pissed. This sucks—she said
sucks
—but I don’t want to spend my last days angry.” He picked a dust bunny from his jeans and flicked it into the air. “That was before things got really bad. By the end, she was miserable and cursing everything, but before, she chose something else.”

Another kid screamed for Kris and he went trotting over to the rescue. Shay felt around inside herself, looking for that energy necessary to break orbit from the emptiness, to choose life, and found nothing.

• • •

To keep from getting crap from the other construction people, Marco had to party plan during meal and bathroom breaks. He’d scrawled some ideas on toilet paper, only to have the sheets dissolve in a deluge while helping some old guy repair a busted faucet on the second floor. This was the kind of crap day he was enjoying.

He’d decided to host this party in the IMAX theater. It was separate from the other theaters, which were being used by the school during the day for child placation and in the evenings for general entertainment of the masses, and he’d confirmed with a guy on security that the IMAX was abandoned. “No one can get the computers to work right,” the guy had explained. Apparently, the projectionist was resting peacefully on the rink.

The IMAX was relatively soundproof, and it was huge. The place also had speakers. Surely a computer genius such as he could get at least the audio portion of the system running. And it had lights on dimmers—
party lighting scheme, check
. The only issue was getting people in there unnoticed.

The IMAX, unlike the bowling alley, would require people to cross a fire stairwell, not run from one side of the main hallway to the other. This meant he had to find a way to bust open one of the magnetic doors permanently, or he had to station himself at the door and let people through all night, which, given his decision to make himself scarce at the actual event, was not an option. Which was why he was eating his lunch in front of the first-floor fire exit door near the bathrooms.

“You know, there are tables in the courtyard.”

Marco glanced over his shoulder and spotted the senator’s kid approaching.
Were we supposed to meet?
He had to play things cool.

He cleared his throat, pulled something witty from the creative void. “But out there, you don’t have the luscious aroma of the johns to accompany the delicious stink of the meal.”

She smiled. It was weird, having a girl flirt with him.

Lexi looked around where he was sitting, perhaps thinking he was hiding something. “You’re all alone?” she asked. “No girlfriend?”

Marco was confused until he recalled having told her about his having a girl who was a friend. “Just needed to think,” he said.

“I get that,” she said, sitting next to him.

Clearly she did not get it if she was sitting with him. “I’m kind of in the middle of something,” he said. He had twenty minutes to figure out how to bust the door lock, find Ryan for the names of the rejected guys, and locate Mike and Drew to ensure they never found out about the party.

She fidgeted with her sneaker. “Maybe I could help?”

Marco did not want to drive the girl away permanently, so there was no sarcasm bomb dropping allowed. He decided to take her up on the offer. He pointed to the door. “I was wondering if it was possible to permanently unlock one of these doors,” he said. “In case I lose my card and we have a date.”

He had not fully understood the phrase
Her face lit up
until he watched the change that came over Lexi’s as he spoke.

“Oh, yeah,” she mumbled, blush visible even on her dark cheeks. “I mean, sure, I think I could try, I mean, it’s a mag lock.” She stood and trotted to the door, poked at the mechanism between the door and the frame, then pushed the door open. “Just unscrew this,” she said, pointing to a metal panel on the door. “Assuming you can open the door, which deactivates the lock, you’ll have like thirty seconds or something to unscrew the panel from the door before the alarm sounds. Once the panel is off, you place it so it touches the magnet, which is this box attached to the door frame. That will engage the lock, trick the system into thinking the door is sealed, and the alarm won’t sound. Meanwhile, the door will swing free.” She let the door close. “The screws are on the face of the panel. It shouldn’t be hard to get it off the door if you use a screw gun.”

It was so simple, it was genius. He wanted to kiss her. Literally. He had an image in his head of actually touching his lips to hers. It was bizarre. It was unnerving. He began sweating in unfortunate places.

“Thanks,” he managed.

Lexi hugged her arms over her chest. “If that solves your problem, do you want to finish your lunch with me?” She fidgeted with her sleeve, shrugged slightly.

Marco couldn’t come up with a reason why not. Lexi ran to grab her plate from where she’d left it, then they found seats at a small, plastic table.

“I had hoped survival rations would be less depressing,” Marco said, running his spoon through the stuff.

“They’re not called enjoyment rations,” Lexi said, swallowing a mouthful. “It’s the bare minimum—eat only what you need to survive.”

“
Spaceballs
?”

Lexi smiled warmly. “A fellow dork?”

“Was I hiding it that well?” Marco was actually surprised his dorkiness was news.

She took another bite. “You seemed pretty cool to me.”

Marco was utterly speechless. This girl thought he was cool.

“I mean, until now,” she said. “Now the dork is just coming off you in waves.”

“Alas, I’m only Bruce Wayne without my suit of cool.”

“Bruce Wayne is still pretty good.”

Marco wasn’t sure if they were flirting or talking about Batman.

“How are things in the boys’ dorm?” Lexi continued. “The JCPenney is a sorority nightmare. Last night, the bathroom on my floor was mobbed by six girls in the middle of a who’s-got-the-better-boobs competition.”

“It’s Lord and Taylor of the Flies over there,” he said.

“Someone nailed a pig’s head to the wall?”

“If there were a pig,” Marco replied, “I’m sure some guy would decapitate it.”

They were chatting, talking, like people did on television. Marco was even enjoying himself. It wasn’t until ten minutes later that he happened to notice the time and realized he had a mere five minutes left to complete two necessary tasks. He shoveled the last bites of his meal into his mouth.

“I have to go,” he said.

“Oh,” Lexi said, dropping her spoon. The smile evaporated.

“I mean, I don’t want to go, but I have to do something.” He was now observing the polar opposite of a face lighting up—a face shutting down. “Tonight. I’ll see you tonight, right? In your office?”

“Oh, okay,” she said, face brightening. “Right, the lock.”

“Exactly,” he said. “So I’ll see you then.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Great.”

“Good.” He grabbed his plate and walked away to shut off the verbal diarrhea erupting from his lips.

• • •

It had taken all morning, but Ryan had managed to scrounge some Pepto tablets from a drawer under the checkout counter of Victoria’s Secret. He’d run into the store to avoid a patrol of guards, but once inside, he’d taken a moment for himself. All the sexy stuff was gone, but there were still pictures all over the walls of half-naked chicks. He wasn’t a pervert or anything, but still, seeing a picture like that, all air-brushed and whatever, got a guy going. He wondered if it was too early to visit Shay. He wondered if she wore stuff like these models had on—not here obviously, but like at home.

He had to focus.

There was still a line of people waiting for the showers when he got to the pavilion, but they were all women this time, and there was now an old lady handing out the towels and soap. It would look weird if he loped down the stairs now—the only reason a normal mall person had to go to the garage was to shower. So crap. How to get to Jack?

He stood near a crowd of guys loitering around the central fountain and tried to think of a plan. In that moment, Ryan wished that he were more like Marco—though he’d be damned if he’d ever admit that fact out loud. Marco was a thinker. He planned things.

“Dude, you hear about the party last night?”

Ryan turned his attention to the guy standing behind his right shoulder.

“Some guys got a hold of a keg and ran a party in the bowling alley.”

“You think it’s on again tonight?”

“Hell if I’m not checking it out.”

Mike and Drew would have to move back to the parking garage—no way they’d stay anywhere people were going to start haunting on a regular basis. So now he had to figure out a way to get to Jack, then get back up to the third floor, then get Mike and Drew back to the garage, all without stupid Marco, who seemed to drift in and out of existence.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Speak of the devil . . .
Marco appeared in front of him, brow knit like he actually gave a crap if Ryan got caught.

“I had to get some medicine,” Ryan replied coolly, not letting Marco’s asshole tone get him riled. “For my kids.”

“That entire thing you have going is a mistake.”

“Like your party idea was so stellar.”

Marco smirked. “About that,” he said. “You kicked some people out? Can you tell me who they were? Maybe pick them out in the lunch crowd?”

The guy had to be smoking something. Like Ryan remembered— “Him.” No joke, the tool who’d picked a fight with Drew was hitting on a hot girl by the soda machine.

Marco’s smirk became a scowl—it was like his face could only express varying degrees of pissed off. “Awesome. Thank you.” He began to walk away.

“Wait!” Ryan said. He had the planning expert right in front of him! “I have to get to the basement, then up to the bowling alley to tell Mike and Drew to clear out. Those guys by the fountain said they were planning on checking it out tonight. They think there’ll be another party.” From the strange look that flashed across Marco’s face, Ryan sensed the guy had not stopped whatever weird projects he was running behind Mike’s back. “Is there going to be another party?”

Marco waved Ryan away like he was a bug. “No, whatever, I’ll talk to Mike. And if it will get you off my back, I’ll let you into the service halls.” He walked toward a hallway, then disappeared down it. Ryan followed.

Taco slid his card through the reader and pushed open the door. “First right, through the door, down the stairs.”

“Thanks,” Ryan said.

Marco didn’t respond, just grunted and speed-walked back toward the central fountain.

What was the guy’s deal? He
was
helpful—or, really, his card was helpful. But still. Something was off with him. He was running some kind of play behind Mike’s back. And Ryan would find out what the hell it was.

• • •

Lexi could not have felt better if John Lasseter himself had called and told her he was using one of her CG shorts at the beginning of the next Pixar film. She’d actually had the balls to talk to Marco in public. And he’d responded! And then had lunch with her! That was totally another date. They were dating! And he was meeting her later that night!