Page 5

Eleven Years Ago, June

“I’m sorry I don’t have better news,” my mother’s doctor said.

The slanted afternoon light through the window caught in Dr. Weisman’s blond bob, illuminating it like a halo.

“Six months,” my mom echoed softly.

Death hovered in the corners of the room as I squeezed her cool hand, forcing back tears. “Is there anything we can do?” I asked.

The doctor’s eyes were full of compassion as she leaned her elbows on her desk. “There is an experimental new treatment—”

“Yes,” I said immediately, glancing at my mom’s gaunt profile.

“Experimental, meaning it hasn’t been proven,” she said carefully, her face solemn. “And it also isn’t covered by insurance.”

“But it could save her?” I asked.

Dr. Weisman shook her head, focusing on my mom. “It might give you more time.”

“A year?” I asked. “Ten years?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s at a hospital in Naples, but I could refer you. They’ll have to determine whether you’re a good candidate.”

“Okay,” I said. I knew my mom was a good candidate; she was only forty-nine, and she’d beat this hellish diagnosis once before. If an experimental treatment could work for anyone, it could work for her. “Thank you.”

“Wait,” my mom said, patting my hand. “How much does it cost?”

The doctor slid a folder across the desk and I grabbed it, rifling through the pages until I located the printout of the costs on the very last page. My heart sank. “Each treatment is $146,000?” I asked, incredulous.

“I know it’s a lot,” Dr. Weisman said.

“How many would my mom need?” I asked.

“The treatments are in monthly cycles,” Dr. Weisman said. “Often, to start, treatment is recommended on an ongoing basis.”

“It’s okay,” my mom said with a bitter smile. “We don’t have that kind of money.”

A sob escaped my throat. “It’s not okay, Mom.”

She looked at me, her eyes unnaturally wide without their lashes. “Maybe it’s just my time, honey.”

“No,” I said, shooting to my feet. “Send us the referral. I’ll find the money.”

—

“What did your dad say?” Tyson asked that evening, taking a pull on the joint that burned between his fingers.

We were on the covered porch of his parents’ giant hacienda-style house at the far edge of the suburbs, overlooking their pool and the orange groves beyond as the sinking sun turned the sky tangerine.

“Dad said he couldn’t afford to help.” I took the joint from Tyson and inhaled deeply, hoping the marijuana might numb the mixture of despair and panic that had been coursing through me since the meeting with my mom’s doctor. “He has three children with his new wife.”

I could count on one hand the number of times I’d met my half-siblings. It was a sore point.

“I thought his family was rich or something,” Tyson said.

I shook my head. “His parents have some money, but most of it is tied up in real estate.”

My dad was Swiss and lived in Geneva, where we’d lived until my parents divorced when I was ten and my mom and I moved back to Florida, where she was from.

Because he wasn’t American, he wasn’t subject to American child support laws, but his parents did buy a house for us to live in—the house my mom still lived in—which was why we couldn’t refinance or sell it to pay for her treatment. It belonged to them, not to us.

“You could do one of those GoFundMe’s,” Tyson suggested.

I snorted. “Are you kidding me? My mom would rather die. Literally.”

I got up and went to the railing, silently watching the sun melt into the horizon.

Only Ian’s trailer marred the pastoral view.

Originally intended to be a caretaker’s home, it sat on the far side of a small pond behind the house, out of sight from the street but fully visible from our vantage point.

“There are other ways to get the money,” Tyson said, casting a glance at me through the smoke that hung in the humid air. “You have a very specific set of skills.”

“I’m not Liam Neeson, and this isn’t a movie,” I said.

“I’m not saying that it’s what you want to do, or what you should do.” He sucked on the joint, studying the beat-up Toyota Corolla bumping along the gravel road to Ian’s trailer. “But you’re so talented. It’s what I would do, if I were you.”

It was true I was good at hacking. Very good, my skill born out of an early obsession with gaming that had led me down the rabbit hole during the endless days spent in my mother’s hospital room after her first diagnosis, shortly after we moved back to the States.

Some kids might have lost themselves in books or movies, but I had more of an engineering brain and loved the puzzle of computers, the black-and-white cause and effect.

Humans were mercurial, computers were predictable; life was messy, but the digital landscape was infinitely organized—which was comforting when you were a child in a strange land with your mother wasting away in a hospital bed.

But even though I could use my skills to steal the money for my mother’s treatments—and I could, I knew I could—it wasn’t an option I was willing to consider.

“Even if I was okay with that, Mom wouldn’t be,” I said.

“And not just because of the morality. She cares more about my future than her own. She’d never let me risk going to jail for her. ”

“How is it any different than hacking into a government database to wipe my DUI?” he asked.

I winced, thinking how dumb I’d been to agree to do that our senior year in high school. “I was stupider then,” I said. “And she didn’t know about that. Plus, the government is notoriously disorganized.”

“Well,” he said, pulling me into his lap, “I think we’ve found our target.”

“I am not stealing from the government!” I protested, swatting his chest.

“Doesn’t have to be the government,” he said, watching as the Corolla parked between the pond and Ian’s trailer. “Any big company will do. You know Cody is working for American Drugs now.” He nuzzled my neck. “He’s always had a thing for you. He thinks I don’t know, but I know.”

I didn’t try to deny it.

Where Tyson was fire, his older brother Cody was earth. Solid, reliable, prone to getting stepped on. He wasn’t as magnetic as Tyson, but he was a good guy, and I liked him. Everyone liked him. He was likable. Unfortunately, next to his brother, he fell into shadow.

In front of Ian’s trailer, a girl emerged from the Corolla. We were too far away to make out her features, but she was slim with short dark hair, and looked to be about our age.

“Looks like Ian’s getting laid,” Tyson commented.

I recoiled. “How do you know she’s going over there to sleep with him?”

“True, she could be buying drugs. But this is the third time this week I’ve seen her over there, and the other two times, her car was there all night. So either she has a drug problem, or he’s getting laid.”

Or both. “Why do your parents let him live there?”

“They like having somebody there to watch the place when they’re out of town. They don’t know about the drugs. And this weed is pretty good, so I’m not gonna tell them. I’m sure he’d rather be hacking into a drug company if he had the opportunity.”

“Ha-ha,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s not for lack of skill, that’s for sure. He was smarter than any of us.”

“Remember that program he designed to bypass the pay option on the vending machine outside of Mr. Gutierrez’s room so that it was free?”

I nodded. “He had so much potential. What happened to him?”

“I think it’s pretty obvious,” he said, drawing on the joint. “Drugs can really fuck shit up.” He grinned, holding the roach out to me. “Want the last hit?”

Yeah, Tyson was definitely missing a sensitivity chip. I waved the joint away, the pleasant light-headedness threatening to turn on me with all this talk of Ian.

“Cody’s coming into town this weekend,” he went on. “I’ll talk to him about it.”

“No,” I said, rising to go to the railing. “Even if I wanted to be a criminal, it’s not like you snap your fingers and money is in your account. You’d have to come up with a plan, a program…”

“Now you’re thinking,” he said.

“I’m not,” I said, staring down at the reflection of the sky in the pool.

But I was.