“To look weak?”
“No, to look how I feel. To look like a human when everyone is going to want to make me a symbol.”
“But, April, you need to be a symbol. That’s what you’ve always wanted to be. This is a huge opportunity, maybe the biggest one you’ll ever have. You need to make an impression. It’s the president! You need to look good!”
“What do you want me to look like, a movie star in a hospital bed? A hero?” And then I was suddenly, actually angry, but I kept my voice low. “Like the Messiah or like Judas? Which one will sell more books, Jen?” I had never called her Jen before. I don’t know that anyone had.
Her face was unreadable for a fraction of a second before she spoke.
“Oh god, April, I’m so sorry, I honestly do forget sometimes how extremely savvy you can be. It’s not often that someone is a step ahead of me, but you’re absolutely right. You have every right to be angry with me, I hadn’t thought about it fully. I just wanted you to look good.”
Textbook Putnam. As soon as she’d understood she wasn’t going to win, she agreed with all the vigor and flattery she could muster.
“No, it’s all right,” I snapped. “It’s just been a stressful day.”
“Is there anyone you want to talk to before we get this show on the road?”
“Um, I actually have no idea what this show is going to be, so maybe someone to explain that to me?”
“Ah, yes, there will be a representative from the White House to go over all of that with you soon.”
And there was. Five minutes later a young woman in an extremely well-tailored suit told us all what to expect, how to behave properly and not make fools of ourselves and avoid having the Secret Service tackle anyone.
For ten terrifying, mostly silent, awful minutes after that, my parents, Andy, Jennifer, Maya, Miranda, Robin, and I twiddled our thumbs in my hospital room, waiting for word. A soft “ting” from Jennifer’s wrist signaled an incoming message. She looked at her watch and said, “She’s arrived.”
“Oh holy fuckballs,” my mom said. Everyone laughed. It was cute watching them all freak out. I was nervous, though, not about the president but about the cameras. I would have to be clever and also respectful and also somehow find a way to humanize myself. It was going to be a delicate balance and my brain was turning to mush.
I definitely had to pee, but it was too late for that.
Two guys with that “I am obviously a Secret Service agent” look about them came in and analyzed the room, not seeing people as people but as potential threats to be categorized and monitored. One of them left; the other stayed by the door.
Then came a small camera crew: one photographer, one videographer, and one sound guy with a boom mic. They crammed themselves into the far side of the room. Then the president walked in. I heard the shutter on Andy’s camera open. Good ol’ Andy.
She spent a bit of time schmoozing with my parents, with Andy and Robin and Miranda and Maya. They were all beaming. Then she came over to my bed.
“April, how are you feeling?”
“They say I should be able to go home shortly,” I replied, not sure if we were just going to replay our conversation from yesterday.
“You had a pretty close call there.”
I thought of several cute, clever things to say and discarded them all immediately in favor of, “Very. It’s so unreal, that someone would do something like this.” I was directing the conversation, a habit that was hugely difficult to break. But also one that the most powerful person in the world is used to dealing with.
“It’s nice that you have friends and family with you.” She gestured to the quiet line of bystanders. I felt immediately guilty and did my best to pretend I didn’t know why. “And know that the thoughts of the American people are with you as well.”
“Thank you, Madam President.” We shook hands again, and then the cameras were off.
“That’s it?” I said.
“That’s all they’ll need. Pretty ballsy trying to direct the conversation.”
“Habit! I’m sorry.”
She laughed. “Sorry to run so quickly, but it is a busy day, as you might imagine.”
“Of course,” I said, and then she began her good-byes, and in less than a minute she was gone.
* * *
—
There was a general buzz in the room after she left. Everyone was already putting together the stories they’d be telling about this moment for the rest of their lives. But also, the twenty-four hours was up, so Andy was busy poking the video live on his phone. It was public in seconds. The whole thing, my speech as I walked in the crowd, the one or two screams as Martin pushed through to get at me. The moment he smacked into me, his skin going a few shades darker as he turned into a glob. The camera crashing into him. Then there was about fifteen seconds of audio with no video footage, before the sounds of scuffling, yelling, and running all faded. And then me, on a stretcher saying, “Even on this most terrible of days, even when the worst of us are all we can think of, I am proud to be a human.”
It was the best video we’d ever made by a pretty long stretch. And as federal agencies had already begun to indicate that Carl was responsible for Bellacourt’s death, it came at a good moment for me. The pictures of a concerned president bending over my hospital bed did good for me as well. We were right, more than right. This was the moment the Defenders lost the war. They couldn’t be perceived broadly as a legitimate movement when a little girl was lying in a hospital bed after someone tried to stab her in the back. It was all out there now.
Of course, that made them all the more desperate. Those who truly believed I was a traitor to my species weren’t going to stop believing it, and if the only way to take me down was a direct attack, that was their new tool.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Everything was pretty grand in the days after the attack. Which is an absolutely awful thing to say, but I had no responsibilities. Indeed, the less I did, the more I (and my ideas) were talked about. I had my own surrogates now, and they were out there preaching my message. I got to convalesce (though I wasn’t even that badly injured) while the Defenders lost every important argument they managed to get themselves into. Also, things were bound to get weird between Miranda and me even if I hadn’t almost been assassinated a few nights after we hooked up. But at least this way I could pretend like any weirdness was due to the tremendous weight of the knowledge that real people wanted me dead badly enough that they would actually try to get it done themselves.
There were a couple of sour points, of course. I couldn’t go back to my apartment and I had no idea what had happened to Carl’s hand. I’m sure there was a safe way to go back but I couldn’t. And a nice thing about being almost murdered is that people let you get away with irrationally refusing to ever return to your apartment. So I didn’t let anyone go there, and I didn’t go there myself. This way, no one would need to know that my bedroom windows had been shot out. At least, no one except the US government, which seemed to be letting me keep that secret for, I’m sure, their own reasons.
Andy had long since gotten a nice place in Rose Hill, bringing Jason along with him, I guess that made it easier to keep doing their podcast. After the hospital, I went to temporarily live in their guest bedroom. After about a week, when Robin found me a new place, I realized I had absolutely no desire to live on my own, so I just stayed at Andy’s. Moving in with my dorky best friend and his dorkier roommate wasn’t how I had planned to use my newfound, ludicrous wealth, but it worked.
The other big rough patch was that I had continued to utterly fail at solving the 767 Sequence. I was so frustrated that I resented falling asleep. But still, every night I circled the plane, I climbed the engines, I walked on the wings and tried to break the windows. I read everything I could find about airplanes. Ultimately, I knew the hexagons, which I’d painstakingly memorized and copied down to show Maya, were the code we needed to solve, and we just couldn’t crack it.
Maya handled me like the delicate flower I was. Even though I’d fucked up tremendously and done the exact thing she’d told me not to do (and hooked up with Miranda, which she still didn’t know about), she was nothing but nice. Basically, I knew the warning signs and was aware that, while things were going OK in this fight, I was headed into a bad brain place, seeing the catastrophe that was me through what I imagined as Maya’s perspective.
I felt like the only way to escape that was to make some kind of overture, like sending her flowers or writing a big long apology letter. Of course, all those things seemed deeply inadequate, so instead, I made a decision.
I went to Club Monaco and dropped $1,200 on a new jacket, shirt, and jeans and then back to Andy’s apartment to make a video. Here is the transcript:
Hello, everyone. I’ll be honest with you, I’m pretty messed up right now. I was not badly injured physically, but I, and I think many of us, are feeling psychologically injured right now. I have a couple of broken ribs and a dozen stitches. But dealing with the reality that someone would want . . . [Here I have to work through the emotions, and I’m not acting] . . . to kill me . . . and to succeed in killing so many others who did nothing besides show excitement and interest in our visitors . . . that is a far deeper wound.