Chapter 21

"JEN!"

I jumped off the couch, scattering clumps of gooey rice...

"Oh, whoa," Tina said. "It worked! I never thought it would actually work!"

Jen's eyes were closed, but the lids shuddered like a sleeper's in a frantic dream. I steadied her head between my hands.

"Jen? Can you hear me?"

She moaned, then her hands went to my arms, grasping them weakly. Her mouth moved, and I bent closer.

"I'm a tapanese jen-year-old," she said.

"Huh?"

"A Japanese ten-year-old, I mean."

Her eyes opened. She blinked.

"Hi, Hunter. Whoa. That was cool."

"That was not cool!" I said.

Jen giggled.

"Should I call 911?" Tina asked, her pet phone in hand. In the adrenaline rush of the moment, I noticed quite clearly that it had pink plastic ears on either side of the antenna.

"No, I'm fine." Jen pulled herself up into my arms until she was sitting again. Her grip on my shoulders felt weak and shaky.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I feel great, actually." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I've got it now. I know what's going on."

"Huh?"

"Just take me home. I'll tell you there."

Tina was freaked out, but the shock had definitely reset her to Tokyo time. She wouldn't be sleeping anytime soon. She and Jen apologized to each other four or five times ("Sorry I gave you a seizure!" "Sorry I drooled on your carpet") and then we left.

We walked toward Jen's house, her weight against me, the night looking very real and solid. After an evening of epilepsy-inducing flashes, the slow passage of car headlights and measured blinking of Don't Walk signs seemed as stately as a sunset.

"I feel like such a wimp."

"Don't be silly. It could've happened to anybody."

"Oh, yeah? I didn't see you getting all drooly and spastic."

"Well, I wasn't sitting as close as you were. And I was squinting."

"Cheater."

I shrugged, remembering that I had in fact looked away at the exact moment of paka-paka. "Anyway, maybe it's a good thing."

"What is?"

"Being a tapanese jen-year-old. Remember what Tina said: The effect works best on people whose brains aren't fully developed yet."

"Gee, thanks."

"What I mean is, maybe that's why you're an Innovator. Because you don't see things the same way as everybody else. You're like a kid. You rewire your own brain all the time. So a little paka-paka has more of a chance with you."

She stopped in front of her building, turning to face me, a broad smile on her lips.

"That's the coolest thing anyone's ever said to me."

"Well, it's just - "

She kissed me.

Her hands squeezed my shoulders, their strength suddenly returned, her lips firmly pressed to mine. Her tongue slid across my teeth before she pulled away. Passing headlights swept across us, and she turned her head away from them, as if suddenly shy. But the smile still waited on her lips.

"Remind me to say it again," I said.

"I will." Her hands joined across my back, pulling me closer.

After a while longer, we went inside.

When Jen opened the door to her apartment, we found her sister sitting at the kitchen table, a flour sifter in her hand giving off angry puffs of white. Her hair tied back, she wore a Yale sweatshirt with rolled-up sleeves and running pants, her hands white to the elbow. When she looked at us, I saw our black-tie finery spark a well-tended annoyance, possibly that of an older sister who works full-time and lives with a younger sister who doesn't work at all.

"Hi, Emily."

"Did I say you could borrow my dress?"

Jen sighed, her hand falling from mine. "No, that's why I left a note."

"Are you okay, Jen? You look like shit."

"Long night. But thanks for saying so."

Emily pursed her lips, looking at my torn sleeve, Jen's shorn head.

"Back to a buzz cut, huh? Where did you guys go, anyway?"

"A launch party."

"Are you drunk?"

"No, just tired. Hunter, this is Emily, my mother."

"Loco parentis. Nice to meet you, Hunter."

"Hi."

Jen pulled me toward her room. "See you later, Emily."

Emily's eyes narrowed. "Say hi on your way out, Hunter."

"Sorry about my sister," Jen said. "She hates it when I borrow her clothes. Which 1 frequently do."

I glanced at the door, expecting it to swing open at any moment. I could feel Emily's clock ticking away my time in Jen's room and wondered what exactly the rules were here. My heart was still beating from the kiss outside.

Jen followed my gaze. "Don't worry, I'll explain everything to Emily tomorrow."

"Explain what? How you needed her prom dress to solve a kidnapping?"

"Hmm. Maybe I'll just buy her a macaroon pan or something."

"She's already got one," I said. My head was spinning, exhaustion sinking in.

Jen sighed. "Emily also kind of hates it that I'm here at all. I mean, she doesn't mind living with me, but it annoys her that I got to come back to the city when I was sixteen. She didn't get this place until she was eighteen. She thinks I'm the spoiled one in the family."

I raised one eyebrow.

She swallowed. "That obvious, huh?"

I shrugged. Anyone who took risks like Jen did was definitely the spoiled one. For the last seventeen years someone had spent a lot of effort putting her back on the horse after she'd fallen off. Possibly a certain older sibling.

I glanced at the door again. "Maybe I should go."

"I guess." She flopped down on her bed. "But first let me tell you about my revelation. When I was spazzing out."

"You didn't see God, did you?"

"No, I saw Pikachu. But something hit me. I realized the obvious thing we've been missing out of all these clues."

"Which is?"

"Whoever the anti-client is, they know about a lot of stuff. But it's a certain kind of stuff: Wi-Fi, Japanese animation, launch parties, cool shoes, the latest magazines, and corporate branding."

"Yeah. That's the anti-client in a nutshell."

"So who does that sound like?"

I sat there for a moment, forcing my brain to work through exhaustion and paka-paka headache, trying to add up the pieces. The latest technology, the coolest-ever shoes, the party with the best gift bags, the secret mind-controlling effects of Japanese pop culture.

Then it came to me in a flash. Not in an epilepsy-inducing sequence of primary colors, but an old-fashioned monochrome flash of ordinary Hunter brain insight.

"That sounds like one of us."

"Yeah, Hunter. That's all your stuff, you and your cool pals, all put together into some kind of twisted marketing plan." "You mean...?"

"Yes. Somewhere in this city a cool hunter has gone haywire." She took my hand. "And it's up to us to stop them, or the world is doomed."

"Eh?"

"Sorry, I just had to say that." She smiled broadly. "I slay me."

Then she sighed, her eyes closed, and she tipped backward onto the pillow, suddenly and completely asleep, a princess from some skinhead fairytale in her scarlet dress and buzz cut.

I watched her steady breathing for a while, making sure no epileptic tremors visited her eyes or hands. But she slept as soundly as an exhausted ten-year-old. Finally I kissed her forehead, lingering for the vanilla scent of her hair.

Standing shakily, I went into the kitchen, where Emily sat at the table, still sifting flour.

"I guess I'm headed home. Nice to meet you, Emily."

She stopped sifting and sighed. "Sorry if I was kind of rude before, Hunter. I just get sick of playing mom sometimes."

I had a brief vision of what it would be like to have an Innovator in I the family: your little sister always acting like a weirdo, getting all the attention (negative and positive), stealing and reconstructing your toys and later on your clothes, and finally, unexpectedly, turning out much cooler than you. I guessed that could get annoying.

My own relationship with Jen was costing an average of just under a thousand dollars a day, so my shrug was sympathetic. "No problem."

Emily looked at her sister's closed door. "Is she okay?"

I nodded. "Just tired. It was a crazy party."

"So I gathered." Her eyes locked onto my purple hands and narrowed, but she said nothing.

I stuffed them into my pockets. "Yeah, crazy. But Jen's fine, or will be tomorrow."

"She better be, Hunter. Good night.

"Good night. Uh, nice to meet you.

"You already said that."

Walking home, I got a final burst of energy. My lips were buzzing from the kiss, from the taste of free Noble Savage, and from one simple realization: purple hands or not, anti-client or not, older sister or not, I was going to see Jen again tomorrow. She liked me. Liked me.

I even had my cell phone back. But with that thought, I saw again the last gesture of the woman on the museum steps. "Call me," she'd signaled.

How was I supposed to do that? I pulled out my phone.

Remembering that the bald guy had called my phone in the meteor room, I checked the incoming numbers. The call was listed and time stamped, but he'd blocked his ID.

Maybe they'd put something in the phone's memory while they'd had it. I scrolled through familiar names, looking for anything new.

When I reached Mandy's number, I stopped. They had her phone now, of course. If I wanted to find them, to find Mandy, I could always call.

My thumb hovered over the send button, but I was too exhausted. I! felt thin and transparent, like chewing gum stretched to breaking between teeth and fingers. The thought of another encounter with the anti-client was seizure-inducing.

So for the twentieth time that day I followed Jen's lead and went home and to bed.