Being Nikki Read online

Chapter 9

  I STARED AT HIM. Great. I wasn’t going to tell him. I wasn’t going to tell him a thing. “I wasn’t crying,” I said, taking the mug from him. Oh, excellent response, Em! Score one for you. “Yeah, you were,” he said. He sat down on the other end of the couch, after first kicking off the Los Angeles Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Cosabella, who had made herself at home on the cushion between us, watched the individual sections of the paper fall to the parquet floor, with her ears perked in curiosity. “I mean, I guess you could try to say that your eyes were just watering with the cold. But it looked pretty obvious to me that you were crying. ” I stared at him speechlessly. What was there for me to say, after all? I was busted. I took a tiny sip of the hot tea and hoped to find inspiration in its mint flavor. Except…no. Nothing. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, of course,” Christopher went on. “But I don’t see what you’ve got to lose. I don’t know anybody you know, so it’s not like I’m going to tell anyone. ” I looked around the apartment, half afraid a paparazzo or even someone from Stark was going to pop out from behind a piece of furniture and snap my photo. Christopher had barely spoken three sentences to me since I’d come out of my coma and started attending Tribeca Alternative again. Why would they put transmitters in his home? Even Stark could see he was more interested in McKayla Donofrio than he was in me. What was their problem? “My dad’s at his weekend office hours right now,” Christopher said, seeming to read my thoughts—although not entirely correctly. “Last day before finals. All his students are panicked. ” “Oh,” I said. I wished he’d read my other thoughts. The ones where I wanted him to put down that coffee mug and kiss me. And realize that I was his old friend Em and not Nikki Howard. Although that might put a damper on the whole kissing scenario, since Christopher had never expressed the slightest interest in making out with me when I’d been alive. In my old body, I mean. “It’s just,” I said slowly. Why not tell him? Why not tell him I was his old friend Em, that I wasn’t dead after all? I couldn’t tell him verbally, because somewhere in this apartment was a listening device. But I could write the truth down, couldn’t I? Then destroy the evidence when I was through? Yeah, why not? Christopher wouldn’t tell anyone. Except his dad, of course. Who was such a conspiracy theorist that, when he found out his apartment was bugged—as he would, since I’d have to tell Christopher that’s why I was writing, instead of just telling him, my secret—he’d surely insist on going to every news organization in the country with the story. The Commander hated Stark almost as much as I did. There was no way Christopher would ever get him to keep quiet about what they’d done to me…or the fact that they’d bugged his apartment. And then Mom and Dad would be ruined, if not made to serve actual jail time, for breaking the contract they’d signed. Those millions of dollars they’d have to pay back for my surgery, legal fees, and fines? Even Nikki Howard didn’t have that much in her bank account…not that I’d have access to that money anymore, after the Commander went to CNN. No. Just no. I couldn’t tell Christopher the truth. Not now. And the way things were going? Maybe not ever. “It’s just,” I said again, stalling for time. What could I say? What? How about…well, some semblance of the truth, I guess? Just not the whole truth. “…I got some bad news today. ” “Really?” Christopher looked concerned. This was how he used to look when I’d tell him about a bad grade, or a fight with my sister, or my character losing a life on Journeyquest. That’s when I realized…What was I saying? I couldn’t tell him about what had just happened with my mom…that I was upset that I couldn’t go to Florida for winter break with my family. Because they weren’t supposed to be my family anymore. But I had to say something now that I’d blurted out the thing about getting some bad news. Only what? That I’m a Stark Angel? Oh, God, no…Christopher wouldn’t have the slightest bit of sympathy. Anything but that. But what else? “My mom’s missing,” I heard myself say. Oh. Great. Okay, yeah, so I didn’t mean to blurt out that. But it was too late to stuff the words back in my mouth now. Christopher stared at me, his blue eyes wide. “Your mom is missing?” he echoed. Only when the words were out of his mouth did it occur to me that possibly this was the part I shouldn’t have mentioned after all. Maybe leading with being a Stark Angel would have been better. “We’re not close,” I said lamely. “She’s, uh”—Wow. How do I get myself out of this one?—“been missing awhile, and I only just found out because we don’t talk on a regular basis—” Then I realized maybe this wasn’t the most tactful thing to say, either. Christopher and his own mother weren’t close, due to his having chosen, when his parents were divorcing, to live with his father and not his mother. But this, he’d once confided to me, wasn’t because of any particular dislike of his mother or a surfeit of affection for his dad, but because his younger sister had chosen to live with their mother, and Christopher had felt it only fair that one child side with their father, who’d also sued for full custody. Which is how he’d ended up living in my building. “How long has she been missing?” he asked. He was absently petting Cosabella, who’d fallen asleep with her muzzle on his knee. “A couple of months,” I replied, a little surprised by the intensity of his interest. But then I guess it would be alarming to hear that someone’s mom was missing. If you were anyone except my agent, Rebecca, that is. “Maybe…three. ” Christopher got a faraway look in his blue eyes. “Right around the time of the accident,” he murmured as he stared off in the direction of the television. “It makes sense. ” My eyebrows went up. “Excuse me?” I asked. His gaze snapped back toward me. “Nothing,” he said. But it was clear it wasn’t nothing. “What have you done to try to find her?” he asked. “Has anyone filled out a missing person report?” “Um,” I said. “Yeah. I guess. ” “You guess?” Christopher looked confused. I couldn’t blame him. I was confused, too. What was going on, exactly? I was really starting to wonder if maybe grief over my death had sent Christopher around the bend. Chopping off all his hair the way he had—it used to be to his shoulders—wasn’t the only change I’d seen in him since I “died. ” He’d gotten too intense, spent too much time alone in the computer lab in school, not talking to anyone. Including me, despite my efforts to draw him out. “Well, my brother’s the one who’s looking into it, really,” I said. “All I’ve done is call my cell phone service provider,” I added. “To see if she called and maybe I missed it—” Christopher shook his head. “It could take months before they get back to you with that information. ” I looked at him and shrugged. “I know,” I said. “But what else can I do?” I hated feeling this helpless. Especially in front of Christopher. Back in my old body, I’d always made a point to do everything for myself in front of him, like if I showed the slightest female weakness, he might think less of me somehow. If there was a bug on the floor? I squashed it. If something was too high for me to reach on a shelf? I got a chair and climbed it. If the lid to the peanut butter jar was on too tight? I’d have gone all the way to my own apartment and asked my dad to open it before I’d have asked Christopher. But now…now I was wondering if this had been the wisest strategy. I mean, did you really get guys by acting like you didn’t need them? That had not been how I’d gotten Brandon to kiss me the other night. I’d asked him for help getting back to New York, and next thing I knew, we’d started making out, and he’d asked me to be his girlfriend. If I wanted to make out with Christopher, wouldn’t it have behooved me to act like I needed him? Just a little bit? And okay, I hate girls like that—the Whitney Robertsons of the world. But hey. Didn’t she have the hottest boyfriend in school (if you considered Polo-wearing, thick-necked jocks hot)? “McKayla Donofrio’s father is with the Office of the Attorney General,” Christopher offered, obviously trying to be helpful. “Maybe he could do something for your mom. ” McKayla Donofrio? How did Christopher know what her dad did for a living? Although knowing what a snob McKayla was, she’d probably bragged about it in class one day when I hadn�
�t been there. She bragged all the time about being a National Merit Scholar and head of Tribeca Alternative’s Business Club. She even bragged about being lactose intolerant. Having a father in the Office of the Attorney General would be only slightly less prestigious to a girl like McKayla. On the other hand, maybe Christopher and McKayla were dating. Hadn’t I caught her staring at him more and more often as the semester had gone on, especially since he’d cut his hair and started wearing more black (what was up with that, anyway)? And hadn’t I seen his gaze stray more than once in her direction? But then, I’d just thought he was staring blankly at whatever was in front of him out of abject boredom. There couldn’t be anything going on between the two of them. There could not. And yet… Suddenly, I felt like crying all over again. The thought of Christopher with McKayla, on top of everything else, was more than I could handle. And that’s exactly what I needed, someone from the Office of the Attorney General of the state of New York poking around in Nikki Howard’s business. Please. “Hey. ” Christopher reached out and laid a gentle hand on my shoulder. I was so startled—I’d been busy picturing the two of them at one of McKayla’s Business Club meetings, his fair head and her dark one bent over some kind of PowerPoint presentation together, I’d almost forgotten he was there—that I jumped. “Are you all right?” “I-I’m fine,” I said. My eyes were filled with tears again. I reached up hastily to wipe them away. “Just…allergies. Sorry. I should probably go…” I got up, wanting to leave before I had even less control over my tear ducts. I was turning into a total basket case. Also, allergies? In winter? Right. Brilliant, Em. “You’re really upset about this,” Christopher said, gazing up at me. He hadn’t fallen for the allergy excuse. “Aren’t you?” “Well,” I said, sniffling. Did I feel a twinge of guilt over the fact that he was mistaking my tears for concern over Nikki Howard’s missing mom, when they were, in fact, tears for him? Yeah. But so what? It was kind of hard to feel bad about it when he was gazing at me so worriedly with those bright blue eyes of his. “I mean, yeah. She’s my mother. ” Oooh, nice one, Em. Laying it on kind of thick, are you? “Look. ” Christopher seemed to come to some kind of decision in his head. “Before you go…just let me try something. ” He got up—jostling Cosabella, who sighed and curled up into a ball—and crossed the living room, heading down the hall. I realized he was heading toward his bedroom. What was going on? “Uh. Christopher?” I called after him when a few minutes passed, and he didn’t reappear. Clearly, he wasn’t just getting me an umbrella. “In here,” he called back. “It’s okay. Come on in. ” I followed the sound of his voice, wondering what on earth he was up to, since getting me an umbrella shouldn’t have taken that long. I found myself freezing in his bedroom doorway, however. “All of this would be a lot easier,” Christopher was muttering, from the chair in front of his desktop, “if we could crack their firewall—” But I was barely listening. That’s because sitting there on top of Christopher’s messy bookshelf, which was sagging in the middle because there were so many hardbacks piled onto it, was a framed photo of… Me. Not McKayla Donofrio. Not Nikki Howard. Me. Emerson Watts. It was the photo they’d used at my memorial service. It wasn’t very flattering, in my opinion. It was a school photo, the one I’d told Mom not to even bother buying, because in the proof, one of my teeth was doing this weird snaggle thing (I always thought I’d have time to get that fixed one day. No such luck). She’d gone ahead and bought it, anyway, because…well, of what happened. And now a copy of it was sitting in Christopher’s bedroom, on such prominent display that you couldn’t go anywhere, really, without feeling like it was looking at you. “Hey, Felix. ” Christopher, ignoring me, was speaking into his computer. A squeaky young male voice came on over the speakers, and I saw Christopher’s fourteen-year-old cousin, Felix, the one who was under house arrest in Brooklyn for some kind of computer-hacking crime, on Christopher’s monitor. “Didn’t you just leave here?” Felix wanted to know. “What’d you do, forget something?” “I got my friend Nikki here,” Christopher said. “Her mother is missing. Can you run her Soc and see if anything comes up?” “A girl?” Felix’s voice rose an octave. “You got a girl in your room?” “Yeah, I got a girl in my room,” Christopher said in a calm voice. He didn’t blush or anything, the way he might have in the old days. This, to me, was only clearer proof there was something going on between him and McKayla. But then…what was with the picture of me? To tell the truth, I couldn’t believe the way he was…well, taking charge. That just wasn’t Christopher. Christopher was Doritos and the Discovery Channel, not ordering people around and Skyping his cousin to consult about “running” a missing woman’s Social Security number. This change in him was kind of freaking me out. In a good way. Except for the photo of the old me, and the McKayla part. “Can you help her?” Christopher asked his cousin. “Of course I can help her,” Felix said. He sounded like a kid. Which wasn’t that unusual, since I could see from the monitor that that’s what he was…skinny neck, tufted black hair, pimples, and all. “Let me see her. ” “You don’t need to see her,” Christopher said. “I want to see her,” Felix said. “I have to sit cooped up in here all day by myself. If you’ve got a girl in your room, I want to see one. ” “You can’t—” Christopher began. I took a quick step so that I was viewable in the lens of the camera on Christopher’s monitor. “Hi, Felix,” I said, just to shut him up. Felix let out an expletive and abruptly disappeared from view. “Chris,” he whispered from somewhere off camera. “That’s Nikki Howard. You didn’t tell me the girl in your room was Nikki Howard. ” “Well,” Christopher said, sounding faintly amused. “The girl in my room is Nikki Howard. ” “How,” Felix wanted to know, from wherever he was hiding, “did you get Nikki Howard to come into your room?” Christopher looked over at me. He was smiling a little. “She basically followed me here,” he joked. I couldn’t help smiling a little back at him. If he was doing all this to make me stop crying, it was working. Wow. I should have tried a few tears on Christopher years ago. I probably could have gotten him to change the channel all those times he’d insisted on watching those boring episodes of Top Gear. “Do you think you can help her, Felix, or not?” “Of course I can help her. ” Felix reappeared on the computer monitor. He’d combed his stick-uppy black hair and put on a different shirt. “Hey, there, Nikki,” he said in a much deeper tone of voice. “How you doing?” “Uh,” I said, laughing a little, in spite of my unease about the situation. “I’m fine. ” “Great. That’s great,” Felix said. “So, just give me your mom’s Social Security number, and we can get down to business. ” I glanced at Christopher. “The police already checked this stuff out, I think—” “The police!” Felix’s scorn was explosive. “You think they have the resources I do, even though they did take away my Wi-Fi connection and now I have to piggyback off my neighbor’s? Trust me, unless she’s dead or living off the grid, I’ll find her. Just cough up the digits, babe. ” Christopher gave him a warning wag of his finger, and Felix apologized. “Sorry, I mean, Miss Howard. ” “I don’t actually have that number on me,” I explained. Then, seeing Felix’s look of dejection, I added quickly, “But I guess I can get it—” “Great!” Felix perked right up. “As soon as you do, text me! Or maybe you could come over, actually. My mom makes really good chili—” Christopher reached out and switched the monitor off. Felix disappeared in a poof. “He’s kind of a freak,” Christopher explained. “But he really does know what he’s doing, believe it or not. That’s why the judge gave him six months instead of just a slap on the wrist. My dad sends me over there every Sunday to try to be a good influence on Felix, but I think it’s the other way around. Anyway, you can just give the number to me when you get it. And I’ll make sure he gets it. ” “Uh, thanks,” I said, glancing up at my picture, which was leering toothily down at us. I glanced hastily away from it. “This is really nice of you. ” Christopher shrugged. “You can make it up to me, actua
lly. I mean, if you want to. ” I could? All sorts of ideas how I could make it up to him went through my head. The tongue trick, even though I still didn’t know what it was, sprang foremost to mind, which was disturbing. I had to go sink down on Christopher’s tightly made bed (the Commander believed a tidy bed was a sign of a tidy mind) before my knees gave out from under me. “Oh?” I managed to squeak out, when I could finally speak. “Yeah,” Christopher said. “So. Just how loyal are you to your boss, anyway?” This was such an unexpected question, I blurted, “Who?” without thinking. “Your boss,” Christopher said again. “Robert Stark. How much do you like him?” Taken completely aback, I stammered, “W-why?” “You work for a company that reported three hundred billion dollars in sales last year, most of the profit of which went to line your boss’s pocket. I’m just wondering,” Christopher said calmly, “how you feel about him. ” I was so transfixed by the blueness of Christopher’s eyes, I heard myself saying, before I could stop myself, “He wants me to parade around in a ten-million-dollar bra made out of diamonds, on national television. How do you think I feel about him?” Christopher smiled. When he smiled, something strange happened to my insides. It was like they turned to liquid. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say. ” And then he told me what he planned to do. And what he needed from me. And my world, which had already been upside down, flipped over one more time. “Felix and I have been trying to find a wormhole to get us into Stark’s corporate mainframe for ages,” he said. “But we haven’t been able to. Their firewall is that good. So instead of a back door, I think we’re going to have to try going in through the front door. ” Christopher had stopped smiling and regarded me seriously. “Do you think you could get us a user name and password for someone who works at Stark Enterprises? Someone high up would be best, but at this point we’ll take anyone…” I just stared at him. This was what he wanted from me? was all I could think. A lousy user name and password? It so figured. Why was I even surprised? I mean, the guy had a picture of a dead girl on his bookshelf. Not a small one, either, but an eight-by-ten glossy, with eyes that followed you everywhere you went. Great. Now I was starting to get jealous of myself. I stood up. Then I walked over to Christopher’s bedroom window. To his surprise, I leaned over and yanked it open, letting in a blast of cold air, as well as the steady patter of the sleet and loud traffic sounds from Bleecker Street, below. The acoustic interference, I hoped, would make it hard for anyone listening to our conversation to hear what we were saying. “What are you doing?” he asked me curiously. He had to raise his voice a little to be heard over the traffic. I waved my hand around my head. “Did it ever occur to you,” I asked, “that they could be listening?” Christopher stared at me. “Who could?” “Stark,” I whispered. My heart gave a little thump as I said it. Not so much because of the thought of Stark listening to us, but because Christopher was looking at me…really looking at me, like he was actually seeing me for the first time. Only, of course, he wasn’t. Christopher laughed. “Stark? Here? Are you serious?” I was dead serious. But, I couldn’t tell him that. Especially not now. “Christopher, you shouldn’t underestimate them,” I said instead. “They…they know things. ” He laughed some more. “You’re paranoid. ” “Maybe,” I said, going back to my perch on his bed. “Maybe you should try being a little paranoid, too. What you’re talking about…it’s crazy. I mean…what are you guys going to do once you get into their system?” He looked surprised. “Take it down,” he said in a What else? tone of voice. Take it down. Like it should be so obvious. Also like it would be that easy. Like he was Robin Hood, and Stark Enterprises was a coach full of gold he was going to rob. “Isn’t that a little…childish?” I pushed some of my hair behind my ears as I tried to figure out how to phrase what I was going to say next without offending him. “I mean, okay, yeah, so their system goes down for a few hours. You’ll make some Stark cell phone owners mad, whatever. Maybe you’ll get on Google News. But…what’s the point? Just to show you can? Your computer is bigger than their computer? Big deal. ” “No, no,” Christopher interrupted, shaking his head. “You don’t understand. I mean, the point is to take it down. To take Stark Enterprises down. Forever. ”