I tried to choose my words carefully, but I didn’t have anything but the sad truth. “You know we won’t be able to visit, Marcia.”
“I know,” Marcia admitted. “It does bother me… you know I would help you out, financially, if I could. But short of buying the damn plane tickets for you, which I won’t be able to afford very often… well, I’m far too aware of what your father is like with money.”
And she also knew it wasn’t her fault, of course. I tried again. “Surely there’s some arrangement that would work out. You could fly down with them and have them stay for longer periods…”
Marcia grimaced. “That wouldn’t benefit anyone, Aileen. Aside from how impossible it would be for them to have two separate schools, their lives completely cut in half… you know this system only stays in balance because I don’t leave them here long enough for him to really go off the rails.”
“So that’s it.” I knew I sounded sulky at that moment, and I didn’t care. I was eighteen, right? If my preferred method of responding to situations was to fly into a rage and stomp off into my room, that was appropriate.
“Not at all, Aileen. Like I said, you will both be encouraged to visit any time. Every other week if you can make that work. But your father has to figure out how to facilitate that on his own from now on. I can’t put my life on hold any more just because he keeps his in wilful disarray.”
She moved so I had to look her in the eyes. “I was hoping you would be on my side with this, Aileen. This might even be the jolt he needs to get things going again.”
“I don’t think so, Marcia.”
Marcia reached forward to touch my hair before she remembered who we were now. “That’s not like you, Aileen. You always manage to find the positive side of any situation.”
“I suppose that’s true,” I said, “but there isn’t one here. I just can’t believe Dad has it in him to be any different to how he is now.”
“And I can’t believe anyone with the talent your father has wouldn’t be able to do better.”
I shrugged. “Well, Marcia, I look forward to seeing you and my brothers every other year or so.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it hard before she said anything, as if her impulse response needed to be eaten in its entirety before she could move on. “I’m not going to tell your father today, because I don’t have all the answers to the questions he’s going to ask yet. I just wanted to give you a heads-up. Can you promise me you’ll make sure this stays between us for the moment?”
“I can’t promise it won’t get too awkward for me to keep to myself,” I said. “But I’m not going to intentionally reveal it. I’ll try as hard as I can to let you do it in your own way. But you’ve got to do it soon.”
Marcia sighed. “Thank you, Aileen. And… I really am sorry about everything.”
“You’re not the one who has anything to be sorry for,” I said, the words feeling reluctant even as I formed them.
Chapter Four
I got through the whole next morning without having to think about much, just sitting in class absorbing what we were being told and not letting myself think too much about any of the areas of my life that were sucking excessively.
Then over recess I went to the main office, as requested, to sort out the computer issue. Mr. Henderson the technical guy, who’d taught me for my computer class the year before, was waiting for me at reception. I considered it unlikely this was a good sign.
“Aileen, we’ve had some developments in the computer situation. You’ve been…” He grimaced. “Well, you’ve been entirely removed from our main system. Actually… you shouldn’t worry about this yet, because we’re still looking into it, but we have reason to believe you might have been expunged from the state databases as well. That, essentially, you no longer exist as a student.”
I grabbed onto the reception desk to hold myself up. “I’d hate to know at what point you think I should worry about this, Mr. Henderson.”
“Richard,” spoke up Mrs. Delaney at reception, “I am fairly certain this was not how you were supposed to talk to her about the issue.”
He ducked his head. “Maybe not. Sorry.” He took me into his office, but I had a feeling that was just so he could more privately tell me about how technically exciting the hack was.
I perked up again at, “The good thing is, we have our culprit already.” I barely held myself back from screaming out something that would make it obvious I already knew his identity. I didn’t want to have to answer some of the questions that would come up there… or possibly have Mr. Henderson also tell me my dad was a terrible person for having the audacity to patent his own work, and that I deserved to have my school accounts hacked for his sins. It seemed entirely possible.
“The one thing I haven’t worked out is Matt’s motive,” said Mr. Henderson. Wait, Matt? “I don’t know that he needs one to do it at all, of course… but to be specifically targeting you, it seems like there should be a reason for that.”
I had a feeling this was another thing where Mrs. Delaney would say he wasn’t supposed to care about that detail, but right now it suited me to be curious too. I assumed he was talking about Matt Ehrlich, who I’d got to know a bit in that computer class last year and who was pretty passionate about technology, to say the least.
Unlike plenty of my classmates, I’d never given Matt a hard time just for existing. He had absolutely no reason to mess with me. But he was the obvious choice for anyone with half a brain looking for a miscreant who had broken into a computer system.
I knew better than to try to sort this out myself. Messing with a government-related school database had to be against the law. If Matt was pinned for this…
“You’re right there’s someone behind this, Mr. Henderson,” I said, “but it’s not Matt. It’s Axel Bennett.”
Mr. Henderson gave me a look like I’d suddenly become a problem he needed to solve. “Matt already confessed, Aileen. I had a quiet word with him this morning and he spoke up before I even finished talking; there’s no doubt he is involved. The only thing he won’t tell me is why.”