"You're burning them?" I cried. "They should be in a museum!"
She nodded sadly. "You got that right. But thanks to you two, our security's been compromised. We got to do this quick and dirty."
A match went down onto the pile, and the smell of burning gasoline rushed at us.
"No!" I cried.
Then a wave of heat forced us back, fire spreading across the pile like the sweep of a hand. Shoe-box lids popped off, carried up by the superheated air, revealing beautiful forms inside. The elegant lines warped and twisted, reflective panels glittering for a few seconds in the blaze before they blackened. The smell of burning plastic and canvas followed, forcing acid tears from my eyes.
Jen tried to shout something but only managed to cough into a clenched fist.
The pyre turned greedy, sucking the air around us into itself. Bits of paper rolled past my feet, drawn toward the blaze by the column of smoke climbing out of the courtyard. Sickeningly, I realized that the thick, black cloud overhead was the shoes, transmuted from something beautiful and original into shapeless smoke. I was breathing the dream shoes into my lungs, choking on them.
Mwadi Wickersham shouted orders into her cell phone as the last few boxes were thrown onto the fire before my eyes. I was forced back farther by the heat, helpless to prevent the conflagration. The shoes were going, going… gone.
Chapter 33
THEY LEFT US THERE.
"Wish we could work together, but you two are a risky proposition," Mwadi said, pulling herself up into the open maw of the truck.
"We didn't mean to lead them to you." Jen's face was blackened by smoke, streaked by tears. "We were just playing them for information."
"They wound up playing you."
"We'll be more careful next time, I swear."
Wickersham nodded. "You better be careful. The purple heads will be keeping their eyes on you. You're their only link to us. And that makes you useless for future operations."
"But we know the territory, like you said."
"Exactly, and the purple heads know you do. If you keep looking for us, you'll bring them straight to my doorstep."
"But—"
"Just forget we exist, Jen James. Pretend this never happened." She smiled. "If you're good, I'll put you on our mailing list."
Mwadi stamped her skate once against the metal bed of the truck, a sovereign, final sound, and it jerked forward, rumbling in a slow circle around the blackened pile, then out of the courtyard and down the alley.
Jen followed for a few steps, as if to plead her case again, but didn't say anything. She stood silent until the sound of the truck had faded to nothing.
When it was gone, she turned and faced the pile.
"There must be something left."
"What?"
"Pieces, clues." She strode forward to the blackened edge, teeth gritted, her feet kicking ash into the air. "Maybe we can find a sample of the canvas, or an eyelet, or one of those laces."
I almost smiled. With everything in ashes, Jen had returned to her roots: shoelaces.
She dropped to her knees in the smoking pyre, pushing her hands through the ruin, face averted from the heat still coming off the smoking plastic.
"Jen…"
"We might even find a whole shoe in here. When houses burn down, they always find weird stuff the fire didn't—" She lost the rest of her words, coughing from the smoke and ash she'd raised. Her hands went to her face, leaving solid black streaks on her cheeks. She gained control of her breathing, then spat out something black.
"Jen, are you crazy?"
She looked up at me, clearly wondering why I wasn't down there with her.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm looking for the damn shoes, Hunter. That's what we've been doing all along!"
I shook my head. "I was looking for Mandy."
She spread her blackened hands. "Well, she turned out to be fine. She's probably up for a promotion. You want to give up now? Just because Mwadi Wickersham tells us to?"
I sighed and walked into the pile, feeling the warmth of the ashes through the soles of my shoes. The sun had gone down, and the remaining light in the courtyard came from the still-glowing core of the fire. I knelt next to Jen.
"Give what up?"
"Looking."
"For what? The shoes are gone."
She shook her head, as hard and angry as a twelve-year-old forced to move to New Jersey. Like the answer couldn't be expressed in words, and only an idiot would think it could. She was looking for lost cool, the hardest thing to find.
I spoke softly. Jen, maybe it's better this way.
"Better?"
"I mean, do you really want to work for those guys? Carrying out the grand plans of the Jammers? Spending every minute of your life thinking you've got to change the world?"
She glared at me, eyes flashing. "Yeah, that's exactly what I want."
"Really?"
"That's what I've always wanted." She dug into the ash again, raising a black haze that settled over us, forcing me to turn away, eyes shut. "I mean, what do you want to do, Hunter? Go back to watching advertisements for money? Hang out in focus groups and debate whether leg warmers are coming back? Poach the latest shoelaces? Just watch instead of making something happen?"
"I don't just watch."
"No, you take pictures and sell them, theorize and read a lot. But you don't do anything."
My eyes opened wide.
"I don't do anything?" I sure felt like I'd been doing things, at least for the last two days. Since I'd met Jen.
"No, you don't. You watch. You analyze. You follow. That's the part of the pyramid you like the best: the outside, looking in. But you're afraid to change anything."
I swallowed, the taste of smoke in my mouth like burned toast. No denials came to my lips because frankly, she was right. I'd followed her every step of the way here. Whenever I would have given up, she'd provided the next step. Just as cool hunters have always done, I'd latched onto Jen's initiative, her dogged pursuit of the weird and terrifying.
And in the end, I hadn't even managed the one thing I am good at: watching. I hadn't noticed us being followed and had let Jen be used by a bunch of stupid purple heads, leaving her with nothing but ashes.
I remembered sending the picture of her laces to Mandy—selling Jen out the very first time I'd met her. I was nothing but a fraud. As I'd found out from the moment we'd left Minnesota, there wasn't anything cool about me.
I didn't belong with the Jammers or deserve to be with Jen.
"Okay. I'll get out of your way." I stood up.
"Hunter…"
"No, I really want to get out of your way." I'd never heard my voice so harsh or felt the lump in my stomach so hard.
I walked away, and even before I reached the alley, I heard her back at work, picking through the pile.
Chapter 34
"DID YOU WASH YOUR HANDS?"
"Yes, I washed my hands."
My father looked up at me, for once finding*my tone more disturbing than this morning's terrifying graph.
"Oh, sorry. Of course you did."
Victory. If only I could have smiled. After so many years of trying, I had finally managed exactly the right robotic voice. Toneless, soulless, empty. I knew Dad would never ask me again if I'd washed my hands.
My anger at Jen, and at myself, had faded on the way home the night before, turning to something hard and cold by the time I'd gone to bed. This morning I was a dead thing.