Nothing but Trouble Page 5

  Maggie felt the same way: that she and Lena fit together. They were different from each other—there was no denying that—but they both had a spark of curiosity that was decidedly lacking in Odawahaka.

  And they liked to break rules.

  All her life, Maggie had felt she didn’t fit in, especially with her father’s voice pointing out the many ways she was different. Maybe that was why she often felt alone, even when she was hanging out with Allie and Emily. It was kind of isolating to feel that the person you were most closely attuned to was someone who had died before you were even born.

  Maggie didn’t mind being different.

  But it might be nice to be different with Lena.

  “Okay,” said Lena. “You’ve explained the how—and beautifully, I might add. Now I want to know why. But first I want another Moxie.”

  Lena linked arms with Maggie (which was a little awkward because of the extreme difference in their heights), and they walked downstairs, bumping the whole way, which just made them laugh all the harder. Maggie handed Lena a soda, slightly worried that her grandfather would notice that two bottles were gone. They wandered out to the front porch in search of a cooling breeze in the late afternoon and sat on the porch swing. Maggie pulled her feet up, but Lena’s long legs were perfect for pushing the swing slowly back and forth. It was still blazingly hot, and Maggie knotted her hair on top of her head with a pencil and one of Grandpop’s “scratching sticks.”

  “So. Why?” asked Lena, taking a sip of her soda. “Why did you do that amazing hack?”

  “Just because,” said Maggie. She was using her fingers to rake stray curls off her face, hoping her sweat would make them stick to the sides of her head. A fly buzzed and landed. Buzzed and landed. “Hacking is one of those just-because things. You do it to see if you can do it. And then once you know you can do it, you move on to the next hack. It’s a puzzle. A game. There’s no reason. Hackito, ergo sum. I hack, therefore I am.” Her dad had written that in one of his notebooks.

  “Ye-e-e-s,” said Lena. “But there could be a reason. That hack today made a lot of people happy.”

  “And someone incredibly unhappy!” said Maggie. They both laughed, thinking of Principal Shute and his baseball bat.

  “Seriously,” said Lena. “He’s kind of wacko, don’t you think? Stretched a little tight? Ready to snap?”

  “My dad would say, ‘A few too many coils in his spring.’” She had read that phrase a few times in her father’s notebooks.

  “Exactly. So maybe we should loosen him a bit?” said Lena. “Wait. I’m going to burp.” They sat in silence for ten seconds. “False alarm.”

  But alarms were going off in Maggie’s head. We? Was Lena suggesting the two of them hack together? Where did that come from?

  Is she serious? asked Maggie’s father.

  When Maggie had told Lena the details of that morning’s epic hack, she hadn’t considered that she was opening a door to hacking. She hadn’t intended to invite Lena into that part of her life. Maggie had always hacked with her father. The notebooks hidden in the box under her bed were filled with his instructions, detailed diagrams, follow-up notes, and running commentary. (Use thick rope. Thin rope frays when dragged over the edge of a building. . . . Never forget duct tape. It will save your life. And most important: All Tech Men carry batteries.) They were a team, Maggie and her father, and Maggie didn’t feel alone when she was hacking with him.

  Lena tapped the top of her Moxie bottle with her palm, making that eerie deep-well sound. “Clearly Principal Shute can’t stand fun of any kind,” she said. “So if our goal is to bring fun to Oda M, thereby driving Principal Shute a little crazy—”

  Hang on! shouted her dad.

  “Wait!” said Maggie. “I never said—” She grew flustered. Hacking was the one thing on earth that belonged to her and her dad. She couldn’t lose that. She absolutely couldn’t. In horror, she realized that tears were starting to sting her eyes.

  “Oh no! What did I do?” asked Lena, putting her soda on the table. “I’m so sorry. I’m making you cry. I didn’t mean to, Maggie. Whatever I said, I take it right back. A hundred times.”

  Maggie wiped her nose with the edge of her T-shirt. (Duct tape was useless in a situation like this.) “No. It’s stupid! I don’t even know why I’m crying. It’s just that, in my head . . . This is really hard to explain, and you’re probably going to think I’m completely crazy. But in my head . . . I hack with my dad.”

  Lena nodded. “And I just barged in,” she said. “Like a giant turtle.”

  Maggie laughed. “I never cry,” she said, which was mostly true. She worked hard to keep the really sad stuff out of her mind.

  “I cry all the time,” said Lena. “I cry when I hear a sad story. I cry if I find a dead squirrel. Last week, I cried when we were out of milk.” She straightened up. “But the hacking thing. That’s all yours. And your dad’s. Message received!”

  “No,” said Maggie. “That’s the thing. I think that’s the thing that’s making me cry.” And she felt the tears start to come again. Lena wiggled closer to her on the swing. “I think . . . I think it would be really . . . fun . . . to hack with you.”

  And that’s when Lena burped. One of the longest, loudest burps Maggie had ever heard in her life. It was prodigious.

  “Excuse me!” said Lena. “Didn’t see that coming!”

  Maggie stared at her, stunned. “What did you just say?” It was what her father always said, what he had written dozens of times in his notebooks.

  “I said, ‘Excuse me!’” said Lena. “I’m rude, but I’m not usually that rude!”

  Maggie felt a strange shiver run up her spine. It was as though her father had spoken out loud—but through someone else. And she was pretty sure he was saying it was okay.

  Lena picked up the bottle of soda and stared at it. “Clearly, what this girl needs is a little less Moxie!”

  “You know what Mrs. Dornbusch would say to that?” asked Maggie. Both girls shouted: “I. Don’t. Care!”

  “I know what let’s do!” said Lena, jumping up from the porch swing. “Let’s go around town and take pictures of all the best places in Odawahaka. You can be my tour guide.”

  “There are no ‘best places’ in Odawahaka!” said Maggie. Lena looked at her expectantly. “No, I’m serious. There is absolutely nothing to see or do in this town.”

  But in the end, Lena convinced her to walk around, and as they walked, they came across the World War II tank on Main Street and the 1775 Friends Meetinghouse on South Street and the old steam engines and railroad cars on Pine Street and the deserted, once elegant Opera House on the corner of 4th and Mill. They were able to find four different cars that displayed the Moxie bumper sticker. And finally, they ended up down by the river, where the slow-moving water flowed by, as it had for millions of years. At each place they stopped, Lena took a picture of Maggie. And in each picture, Maggie was smiling.

  NINE

  AFTER SAYING GOOD-BYE TO LENA, MAGGIE climbed the hill until she reached her house at the very top of 3rd Street where it intersected with North on the edge of town. Standing outside the metal gate, she could see the whole of Odawahaka spread out like a tablecloth. There was the black-capped bell tower of St. John’s Church. And there was the bridge that carried people across the river and away from the town. Maggie’s grandfather liked to say that if the brake on his wheelchair ever gave way, he’d find himself halfway to hell in a hurry.

  The light was just starting to dim, and Maggie wondered if her mother was home and had already fed Grandpop his dinner or if that chore would fall to her, as it often did. She stopped for a minute to look up at the purple darkness of the hill that loomed over the town, and then across the street and down a little ways to her favorite house in Odawahaka.

  The house was broad, with a clean wooden porch that reached comfortably from one end to the other. The wooden clapboards were olive green, and the shutters that neatly framed each six-pane
d window were a deeper green. The trim was a creamy white that made Maggie think of buttermilk. It was one of the oldest houses in town, but it looked fresh and lovely, as if it had just been dressed for a party. When she was little, Maggie called it the Golden House.

  She thought of the hundreds of times she’d been inside that house, and how long it had been since she had last set foot even in the yard. Almost five years, but she still remembered the butler’s pantry off the kitchen, the lace curtains in the living room, the smell of chicken roasting in the oven, and the pitcher of pink lemonade that was set on a special tea cart every afternoon in the summer. You could take as many glasses as you wanted. You didn’t even have to ask. And Maggie remembered Kayla’s mother calling her “sweetheart” and “honey.” Until she didn’t.

  Maggie pushed open the chain-link gate that fenced in her own small yard, noticing that her mother’s car was parked in the narrow, concrete-covered space alongside the house. When she walked in, Grandpop was already on the warpath.

  “I don’t want macaroni again,” he complained. “And it doesn’t matter what fancy name you give it. It’s still macaroni, and I’m sick of it. I swear, I’ll start speaking Italian at this rate!”

  Maggie could hear the creak of his wheelchair as he strained against it. By the end of the day, his body ached and his mood was fast heading south. She heard the bang of a casserole dish in the oven, and her mother said something in response that Maggie couldn’t make out.

  “Well, that’s not my fault, now is it?” replied her grandfather.

  “Dad,” Maggie’s mother’s weary voice said. “I’m just too tired to get into it.” There was the sound of ice in a glass, and then the steady glug, glug of something being poured from a bottle and the bottle being set down hard on the countertop. Then Maggie heard the pop of a soda can and the fizz and splash of the soda being poured over the ice.

  “Too tired, too tired,” said Maggie’s grandfather. “If I had a nickel for every time you said that, Janey . . .”

  “We’d be eating nickels for dinner,” said Maggie’s mother, taking a long swallow of her drink. “And then you’d complain that you’re sick of eating nickels and would I please make a nice macaroni dish for a change.”

  “Very funny. Now, your mother was—”

  “Yes. We all remember,” said Maggie’s mother. “Mom was an amazing cook. Could make a banquet out of shoe leather and nails.” Maggie walked into the kitchen. Her mother stopped short, then added more softly, “And we all miss her. Right, Boo?” Maggie’s mother looked at Maggie, then sat down heavily at the kitchen table and took another long drink.

  Maggie didn’t say anything. She’d been so young when Grandmom had died that it was hard to be sure of any of her memories.

  Grandpop jerked his chair around, maneuvering in the tight space. “Call me when dinner’s ready,” he said, wheeling himself into the living room. They heard the TV blaze to life as one of Grandpop’s favorite reality shows came on.

  “How was school?” her mother asked, but Maggie could tell that her thoughts were a thousand miles away.

  “Fine. How was school for you?” Maggie’s mother taught biology at a small community college an hour away. Grandpop claimed her salary was hardly worth what she spent on gas to get to and from work.

  “Dandy,” she said, fishing ice out of her drink. “They assigned me another class, but they’re not giving me more money to teach it.” She raised her glass. “All hail Academia!”

  Maggie filled a glass with water and drank it down. All that walking with Lena had left her feeling dehydrated and empty. Dried up like the husk of a fly. “Mom?” she asked, looking out the window. “Were you a suck-up?”

  “What? What kind of a thing is that to ask?” Her mother refilled her glass.

  “I just wondered what kind of a kid you were when you were my age.”

  Her mother looked at her suspiciously. “I was a good student. Diligent. Some things didn’t come easily to me, and I had to work hard in those subjects. And I followed the rules. I didn’t take shortcuts and I didn’t cause trouble. Maybe that’s what you mean by ‘suck-up.’”

  “But you were smart. You graduated the top of your class,” said Maggie.

  “I was a certain kind of smart. You’ll understand when you’re older.”

  “You were the Golden Girl,” whispered Maggie. “Everyone in town says so.”

  “Maybe that’s how it looked to them,” said Maggie’s mother, swirling the ice in her drink before taking another gulp. “But it didn’t come easy. Not like it does for you.”

  “Or Dad?” Maggie stopped breathing. Silence held the room captive. Her mother stared down into her drink. In the quiet, Maggie could hear a piece of ice melt and then fall.

  “Everything was easy for him,” said her mother. “He made it all look like a game.”

  “Did he—”

  “Maggie!” said her mother, standing up. “I have hours of grading to do, and an early faculty meeting in the morning.”

  Maggie knew only the bare outline of her father’s story. Her parents had married right after college and were living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her father had plans to get his PhD in electrical engineering, and Maggie’s mother had just finished her master’s degree in biology. They were the best of the best. Their whole future lay in front of them, with the happy news of a baby on the way. And then the car accident that killed Maggie’s father, and the setting of the story shifted to Odawahaka, where Maggie’s life began.

  Maggie thought of Mrs. Dornbusch’s comment about her mother. What a waste. She would never understand that part of the story, but she knew with all the certainty of her heart that she was not going to end up like her mother.

  “We could still leave,” said Maggie quietly. Then with more urgency, “Go back East. You could get a better job. I would . . .” She wasn’t even quite sure how to finish that sentence. Be happy? Belong? Be closer to Dad, who was buried in a cemetery next to a river like the one that ran through their town? Or at least that’s how Maggie always imagined it. That somehow the Susquehanna met up with the Charles, and there was a way to get from here to there. Even though the maps proved her wrong.

  “Maggie,” pleaded her mother, and the strain and exhaustion made her voice rise. “You have no idea how big the world is. For every hometown girl who’s the Smart One, there are thousands more. You just get lost in them. It’s better to stay home.” She brushed an invisible crumb off the table. “Where it’s safe.”

  “But we could—”

  “Enough.” Her mother tucked the bottle under her arm, then picked up her worn leather satchel stuffed with student lab reports. “I’ve got grading to do. Can you take the casserole out of the oven when the timer goes off and serve it to Grandpop?” She walked out of the kitchen, brushing past Maggie but not slowing down, even to drop a kiss on her head.

  Grading papers, thought Maggie. Right.

  All the shine had worn off the afternoon. What did it matter that there was a new girl in town? It was the same Odawahaka, and Maggie wasn’t going anywhere soon. What would really change?

  Maggie checked the timer, then went upstairs to her own room, carefully closing the door behind her. In her mother’s bedroom, she could hear the TV turned on low. Maggie knelt down and pulled the hidden box out from under her bed.

  The box was roughly the size of a small suitcase and had been repaired so many times over the years that it was made more of duct tape than cardboard. Maggie pulled off the lid and removed the twenty spiral-bound notebooks that took up most of the space inside. The top notebook had a flimsy, worn black cover. Scratched into the surface, as if with the cap of a cheap ballpoint pen, were the words The Hacker’s Bible. Maggie turned to the first page. In her father’s neat, mechanical writing were the Ten Commandments:

  1.BE ORIGINAL. IF YOU CAN’T BE ORIGINAL, JUST STAY HOME AND WATCH TV.

  2.BE SAFE. IF YOU GET HURT, YOU’VE FAILED.

  3.DON’T DESTROY ANY
THING THAT DOESN’T BELONG TO YOU. DESTRUCTION = FAILURE.

  4.NEVER STEAL. IF YOU NEED TO BORROW SOMETHING, LEAVE A NOTE BEHIND THAT EXPLAINS WHEN AND HOW YOU WILL RETURN THE BORROWED ITEM.

  5.DON’T BRAG. HACKING IS MEANT TO BE ANONYMOUS; NO ONE SHOULD EVER KNOW WHO PULLED OFF A HACK.

  6.NEVER HACK ALONE. IT ISN’T SAFE. (SEE SECOND COMMANDMENT)

  7.DON’T GET CAUGHT. BUT IF YOU DO GET CAUGHT, DON’T EMBARRASS YOURSELF BY DENIAL.

  8.LEAVE DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS FOR HOW TO DISASSEMBLE A HACK SAFELY, AND LEAVE A SITE IN BETTER SHAPE THAN YOU FOUND IT.

  9.DURING SETUP, DON’T RAISE OR DROP THINGS FROM HIGH PLACES WITHOUT GROUND SUPERVISION. THIS INCLUDES CARS, DESKS, BORROWED UNIVERSITY PROPERTY, TOOLS, TOILETS, AND FELLOW HACKERS.

  10.SHARE YOUR KNOWLEDGE WITH OTHERS. AND DON’T WASTE YOUR LIFE WATCHING TV.

  The rest of the notebooks were crammed with Maggie’s father’s notes on every hack he and his hacking crew (the Gamma Gamma Heys) had executed at MIT. There was the time the Gamma Gamma Heys completely wallpapered over the door to the new president’s office so that he couldn’t find it on his first day of work. There was the time they put a twenty-foot model of the Starship Enterprise in the lobby of Building 10. There was the time they created a life-size replica of an MIT dorm room (complete with a bed, a desk, a working lamp, and an alarm clock that couldn’t be turned off) and positioned it on the frozen Charles River. And then there was the police car perched atop the Great Dome. Each hack more impossible to figure out than the last.

  But in these notebooks were the complete instructions, down to the gauge of the wire, the thickness of the rip cord, the recipe for the heat-resistant glue. There were even notes on how to make small quantities of proto–rocket fuel.

  The margins were filled with her father’s comments. He was hypercritical of anyone who couldn’t keep up with him (Never let Griggs near a fuse box again), hard on himself (stupid, stupid, stupid), and always exploring new possibilities (Series-connected? Test tomorrow using house blender). He liked to joke. In one margin, he had doodled a picture of himself with his wild and curly hair on fire. The caption read, Where there’s smoke, there’s Tech Men hacking.