Skyler
“Skyler?”
“Hey. We’re getting close.”
Oh… yeah, I guess so.
God… it’s been almost seven years now, hasn’t it? It’s weird, I can still clearly remember the moment we first met.
The book I was reading before you walked into my room…
The exact time on my alarm clock…
The huge clutter on my desk…
And the look on your face…
I wish I could still see it. It’s been… too long.
If only I was closer, I could…
But we are closer now. And now I can wake up… every day… and see…
“Hey.”
Yeah… that’s… a nice face to wake up to…
“I don’t want to slap you, but I will if that’s what it takes.”
Shit.
I took a deep breath and sat back up. “Dammit. I wasn’t even tired when we left.”
Robyn smirked. “Wasn’t it you who said that sleeping in a car is impossible? Because it’s so loud and shaky?”
“Yeah… It’s been a long year.”
“Obviously.”
1:28. I rubbed my eyes and looked at the front of the car. Karan was driving, Aiden in the passenger seat. I recognized the road we were on. Right. Supply run first.
“This is a big-ass neighborhood you got here,” Robyn commented.
“What? You’ve been in a neighborhood before, right?”
“Not since at least 2019. I enjoy the company of parking garages more than houses.”
“Well, in both cases you’re surrounded by hundreds of poor people’s homes. So send your thanks and your trespassing tickets to the City of Cleveland.”
“Goddamn, you woke up on fire today. I’m impressed.”
“Had to get it from somewhere. Just wish you were around more often this past year.”
“Yeah, me too. But unfortunately, duty calls when there’s a pandemic running loose and the world is falling apart. Nothing I can control, much as I wish I could march up to the steps of Congress with a crowbar and kick the shit out of half the Democratic party.”
“Jeez, I must have missed the part when you turned political.”
“Whoa, be careful saying that out loud, a Republican senator might hear you and take away the city’s ballot drop boxes.”
“Holy shit, we’re both on fire today.”
She lightly punched my arm. “That’s how it’s done. It’s been too fucking long, man.”
The last time I saw Robyn was on January 8th when the whole militia gathered following the Capitol riot, and even then, we barely had the opportunity to talk. We used to work together all the time before 2020 happened, but now… I don’t know. Her job in Cleveland ended and she was stationed back in Columbus to do better things. I’m not bitter about it, though. I know there’s obviously important shit to do there. I guess I just can’t stop myself from being selfish. Nobody that’s stationed in Cleveland is anybody that I know. It’s been a lonely year.
As we approached the intersection where our house lies, I leaned up to Karan to point him to the driveway behind the house.
“Damn, that’s smart,” he said. If only you could tell Brice that. He pulled into the tiny lot and turned the car off. “Alright, you can go scrounging for all your stuff and check if that bird is still alive. Me and Aiden will join you in a minute.”
“So you can talk about your big secret?” I said while opening the door.
“Just go.”
Robyn and I stepped out of the car and grabbed the four cardboard boxes out of the trunk, each one named for each respective owner, except for Adrian.
“Just to clarify, you also don’t know anything about that secret, right?” I asked Robyn as she closed the trunk.
“I don’t think I’d be here if I did.”
“Did you know there was a secret?”
We started down the sidewalk. “Hell no, we’re supposed to be above petty shit like that. ‘Absolute mutual trust is crucial to the militia’s survival,’ Brice always tells us. Everybody knows everybody’s dirty secret, every traumatic memory, literally every detail of their life story. Even sexuality and gender identity shit, which has actually been a thing since the militia’s formation in the 60s, if you can believe it. It’s kind of an unspoken rule here. But this shit with Aiden? God, he’s been with us for more than a decade, whatever it is he’s keeping secret had to have happened after he joined. And I don’t like any of it.”
“You’re saying something happened with him while he was on the job that he’s kept a secret?”
“Maybe, maybe not. And you’re not holding me to anything.”
“Of course not.”
I turned right into the front yard between the house and the shrubbery lining the sidewalk, surprising Robyn.
“Oh shit, this is your place?” she said, following behind me.
“Wha—? Oh my God, that’s right, you’ve never seen our house before. Yeah, we bought the place in May last year. We were planning on moving long before the pandemic, but once it did happen and the housing market suddenly boomed, we figured it was a good time.”
“Damn. It’s too bad we won’t be able to hang here all the time thanks to all this Eclipse garbage. This looks nicer than my family’s apartment in Silicon Valley.”
“I don’t know about that.”
I dropped my two boxes at the doorstep and reached under the ledge of the final step, feeling for the buttons.
“What’s under there?”
“Tiny keypad. It’s a safer hiding place for a house key than under a doormat, however inconvenient it is.”
2… 4…
“Did some security company help install that, or did Graham do it?”
“Graham. Apparently YouTube can teach you how to do anything.”
8… 2… 4… The key dropped down into my hand and I bounced back up. “Bingo.” I unlocked the door and flung it open, dramatically presenting it to Robyn. Then the alarm went off.
“Oh shit! You’re more decked out with security shit than I thought!”
I threw my boxes ahead onto the stairs and smacked the alarm control pad by the door to turn it off. After that awkward introduction, I finally ushered her to the living room, sporting our signature 40-inch TV, sectional couch, Roundtable, and… King!
I abruptly bolted across the room to his cage sitting by the window. He was sitting comfortably on his perch, his food still a quarter full and the water feeder almost empty. Thank God I kept it full all week. I pulled out his water bottle and rushed past Robyn to the kitchen.
“No fucking way dude, you actually got a bird? How did that happen?”
“It flew into our window the night the Solaris job ended,” I said while filling up the bottle in the sink. “Finn and I managed to keep it alive in a shoebox.”
“A shoebox. Alright, I guess that makes sense. You don’t want it dying of a heart attack with a bunch of grubby human hands fondling it.”
I turned the sink off and capped the water bottle. “You should have been there when he escaped. According to Finn, he and Graham were running circles around the house for almost 20 minutes chasing him, and Finn even had to tackle him to get him contained again.” I walked back to the living room and plugged the bottle into the cage.
“That’s a cool fucking bird to suddenly fly into your window. What’s his name?”
“King. Bird names are difficult, that was just the one that seemed most appropriate.”
“Nah, King is a pretty kickass name for a… plump little walnut like that.” I looked at her confused. “I meant that as a compliment. Any animal that’s small and squishy gets an A+ in my book.” Robyn tossed her boxes in front of the couch and walked up to admire King, currently sipping at his water feeder.
“I’m glad you enjoy him. The others didn’t think keeping him was a good idea.”
“Seriously? This man is fucking adorable. If you had him in the old Parma house….”
“In the Parma house, he would have died from that gas leak. I’m glad we ditched that place.”
“But there was so much space! He would have loved it!”
“Maybe, but we didn’t. Plus, all the echoing in the 25-foot tall kitchen would have freaked him the fuck out. If you can fall and break your legs from anywhere in your house, you probably shouldn’t have that house anymore.”
“But you could have set up a bunch of perches and swings and shit on all of the walls. Tell me that doesn’t sound delightful.”
“And if we need to reach him?”
“You… raise a fair point.”
I backed away from the cage. “Come on, we still have a house to pack up.”
“Alright. Where are we starting?”
“My room is as good a place to begin as any, just so Karan and Aiden don’t go rooting through my shit.” I grabbed my labeled box and led Robyn upstairs. “Welcome to my… humble home.” I opened the door.
My room is hardly much to look at. I’ve only designed it with the bare minimum needed to function as a bedroom, most of it crammed in the back. My bed sits in the corner against the closet door with my dresser to the side of it, and my computer desk is squeezed between the foot of the bed and the wall it faces just beside a minifridge, leaving everything I need within arms reach when I don’t want to get out of bed. As for the front end of the room roughly eight feet away from my bed, there’s my TV against the wall, four rolls of wallpaper in the corner that I never got around to using, and a single line of shelving that stores all my memorabilia from old jobs. I stopped adding to it a few months after we moved.
Robyn peeked her head in. “Huh. Don’t like leaving your bed much, I assume?”
“You see right through me.”
She walked in the middle of the giant empty space between my bed and the TV. “Plenty of sleeping bag room. I like it.”
“God, you’re such a middle schooler. I thought about putting a couch against the wall, but getting it up here sounds like a bitch and a half. And this room is supposed to be for surveilling outside, so a couch that faces away from the windows is kind of… dumb.”
“Dude, a couch for your room is a fantastic idea, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Having any piece of furniture to yourself sounds like fucking heaven.”
“Yeah, but… whatever. We’re getting off track here.” I dropped my box next to Robyn.
“Of course. What do you plan on taking with you?”
“Well, my first thought this morning was my damn bed sheets, but… I think we can bring some of my memorabilia shit as well, just to have it.”
“Memorabilia?” She looked at the shelf behind her. “Holy shit! You’re still doing this?”
“Sort of. I haven’t kept up with it much recently, but… it’s there.”
Robyn grabbed the plastic apple off the shelf. “This was… Oh! You took this when you trashed that dipshit Russian millionaire’s house, right?”
I smiled. “Yup, that’s the one. That was probably the most fun I’ve ever had on one of our jobs. I never told anybody, but I intercepted their electric and water bills shortly after we were done with them to see how much damage I did.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Robyn’s ears perked up. “And?”
I chuckled thinking back on it. “I fucked them up.”
“Let’s just hope they didn’t get too stock market-savvy after the pandemic hit, the whole family could be billionaires by now.”
“They weren’t that rich.”
“What if they sold their house?” I immediately burst out laughing. “Nevermind, scratch that thought.”
“I flooded their basement with tap water, Robyn. You gave me the hatchet that destroyed their electrical panel.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’ve made your point.” She tossed the apple in my box and grabbed my Bitcoin token. “Is this a Bitcoin token? Where’d you get it?”
“It was a gift from some crypto-bro when I met him in Michigan. Graham talked to him a bunch last year and somehow convinced him in just a week to lend us over $2 million worth of Bitcoin to start up some independent crypto bank. Graham unsurprisingly got the money in the form of a yacht purchase, and then he bailed. It was the easiest money we’ve ever gotten.”
“Wait, so you own a yacht now?”
“Nope, he sold it immediately. We bought this house with most of the cash.”
“Dammit, do you know how fucking fantastic a free yacht vacation could have been with that thing?”
“We have bills to pay, Robyn.”
“You’re also vigilante millionaires. You would buy a mansion on the east coast instantly if you didn’t have to stay anonymous all the time.”
“Maybe. I don’t know what I’d do with it, though. That seems like a lot of responsibility.”
“That’s why you hire poor people to keep it in order. Every millionaire knows this.” She dropped the token in the box. “Man. $2 million in a week from one guy. You could make a whole cottage industry of scamming crypto bros just by using Graham, and you’d be set for life.”
“Well, we would, but unfortunately that guy made a point after the fact to blacklist our faces in the crypto community. So, it’s safe to say that we’re not going to be interacting with them anytime soon.”
“As the saying goes, never fuck with rich white people lest you fuck with the full wrath of their police departments.”
I snorted. “Okay, we can relive nostalgia a little bit later. We’re doing a supply run right now.” I kicked the box underneath the shelf and tossed in more of my souvenirs. Robyn grabbed the last two, lightly gasping before getting back under control and dropping them in the box. We moved to my bedsheets next. We tore them all off the bed in seconds and started making our best effort to fold them.
“So, do you ever let King fly around the house?” Robyn asked.
“I’ve only had him for three weeks and he’s smaller than my hand, I think he still needs time before we let him loose on the house again.”
“Reasonable, but still boring.”
“I guess I can count on King replacing me sometime in the next month?”
“Perhaps, unless we get carpet-bombed by Eclipse.” Robyn must have sensed me deflating at the thought of Eclipse again. “Sorry. I have a… thing with poorly timed dark humor.”
“I think that’s what psychologists like to call a coping mechanism.”
“‘Cope.’ That’s always been a funny word.” Robyn finished folding the top sheet and moved to the box to put it inside, but suddenly stopped. “Should we put your souvenirs on top of the sheets?”
“...Yeah. Sandwich them.”
Robyn dumped the box out on the floor, stuffed the folded sheet, and swept everything back in. I finished folding the fitted sheet and placed it on top.
“Nice,” Robyn said. “What next? Want your pillows?”
“I can live with what’s at the base. Pillows are pillows.”
“Or are they?” I shrugged. “What about your clothes? I’ve still got that suitcase of shit you left at my old apartment if that’ll do better than what you’ve got.”
“No shit, really? I haven’t thought about that in years, how much stuff was in there?”
“Probably enough to last a week. Or two if you aren’t changing your outfit every single day.”
“I still don’t. That should do well.”
“Now….” Robyn side-eyed me with a hint of smug sarcasm. “What about your closet?”
“What about it?”
She eerily crept up to the front of my bed, reached over the frame to the closet door, and slid it open. She immediately gasped after looking inside. “Our old box TV! You fucking kept it?”
“Yep. Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I still pop in old DVDs of Friends episodes we used to make fun of in college.”
Robyn fell back on my mattress. “Oh my God, college. That feels like a lifetime ago now.”
“Hopefully a time like that isn’t a lifetime away.”
“A-fucking-men.” She stood back up and glared at the TV. Her eyes trailed below the table it’s sat on to the drawers full of old DVDs we collected in the early 2010s. That reminder of our college days was clearly making her sentimental. “You ever think about retirement? Just… putting this whole life away and settling down?”
“Yeah, actually. As we’ve racked up so much money in recent years, I’ve thought about taking out a chunk of it and probably moving away to some island micronation. But at my ripe age, I would need millions of dollars to last until I’m old, and we don’t have that now, much less after this is over.”
“Well, the bank does. If you ever want your career to go out with a bang, you know where to look.”
I snorted. “As if. I may have a death wish, but I’m not getting on the bad side of anyone who can report me to the police and/or have me sunk to the bottom of the Pacific ocean.”
“Lame. But let’s get back to this. Are you taking the TV with you? There’s room.”
“Why not?”
I reached behind my dresser to unplug the TV while Robyn crawled onto the bed to pick it up. She wrapped her arms around and hauled it out of the closet, almost slamming it into the headboard. She was about to set it in the box before pausing once again.
“We probably shouldn’t set the TV on all your souvenirs.” She emptied out the box once again, carefully lowered the TV inside, and re-added the bedsheets and souvenirs as they were. “I’m glad I left Cleveland before having to help you guys move all your shit to Lakewood, this is stupid.”
I chuckled. “Get over it, princess.”
We fit a few DVDs in the side of the box and heaved it onto the couch downstairs, just in time for Karan and Aiden to finally come inside. The presence of Aiden made the setting much more awkward since his whole scene at the base, and the rest of the supply run was mostly quiet. Most of what Percy and Finn needed was left at their hotel in Cincinnati which all got picked up after leaving Eclipse, so all they really needed was extra clothes and bathroom supplies. In addition, Percy wanted the potted cactus she’s been growing since Summer, and Finn wanted a small and mysterious wooden chest of shit he collects on his walks. Adrian brought everything to the hotel, negating the need for his own box. As for Graham, he wanted all of his old notes and evidence he kept from the Solaris job, which was all tucked away in a single filing cabinet that took almost five minutes to find. We all agreed to abstain from our old technology to keep Eclipse from (possibly) tracking it.
2:01. All four boxes were filled up and sitting in the living room. Robyn, Karan, and Aiden took the other peoples’ boxes while I sat King’s cage on mine and carried it to the car.
“Ready to meet up with your high school buddy?” Robyn asked while closing the trunk.
“Sure. I just hope he’s home from school by then.”
“You can always break in. There’s a bunch of windows there, right?”
“The street is under surveillance, and you don’t know how houses work.”
Robyn sighed and looked up to the sky. “Goddammit, Marie Van Brittan Brown. You could have done something useful for society when you invented security cameras.” She flipped off the heavens, and we climbed into the car.
---
2:46. Over half an hour ago, I was dropped off at the same intersection where I waited for Korey last month. All of the schools nearby get out at around 2:25 plus-minus five to ten minutes. I’ve been sitting against a tree by the sidewalk since then, reading the news on my phone or peeling bark from sticks on the ground. “Bannon Indicted on Contempt Charges Over House’s Capitol Riot Inquiry.” “Democrats’ Bill Would Deny For-Profit College Students Extra Aid.” “Menace Enters the Republican Mainstream.” Great, the world is still falling apart. How fun.
A school bus should be passing through here any minute. Just in case, I’ve kept facing down the sidewalk to watch from a barely-discernible distance if any car pulled into their driveway. Twenty minutes after school should have ended, and there’s been nothing.
I at least got to enjoy my view of the area. I could barely see any of the greenery in the darkness last time I was down here. But in the afternoon, the near-black grass and foliage were now glowing green in the clouded sunlight, and patches of that sunlight beamed through the covering provided by the trees. It’s one of the first times I’ve been able to enjoy nature in years.
“Judge Ends Conservatorship Overseeing Britney Spears’s Life and Finances.” Fucking finally. Now people will stop talking about it.
I spent a couple minutes reading that article, routinely glancing at the driveway. The article finished. I looked up and down the intersection for any sign of a school bus. Dozens of cars passed through, not one of them taller than six feet. I rechecked the time.
2:59. Are you fucking kidding me? What am I even waiting on Cameron for? We have barely 24 hours left to get the money, I don’t have time for this shit. I jumped off the grass and marched down the sidewalk.
After a three-minute walk past a dozen other rich people’s houses, I saw the familiar Arizona shrubbery and blocky black-and-white mansion. No security cameras were visible along the nearby street poles, so theoretically… But Graham said there are no camera blind spots here. Right.
I looked down the driveway on the right side of the house, leading around behind it. Fuck, what if his parents are here? I shouldn’t even be doing this in broad daylight.
The back of the house is out of view of the city’s security cameras. I could sneak in through there… unless I’m caught by the house’s security cameras.
I wanted to punch something. I did not come here prepared. I started walking down the driveway to figure something out away from the city’s view before peaking my eyes through one of the second-floor windows. The back of Cameron’s head was peaking up next to it, a balcony just to the left. Now I wanted to break something.
Swearing under my breath, I snatched the velcro gloves I stole from Graham’s desk out of my pockets and slid them on. I stuck a hand against the brick wall and tried to pull it off. I had to kick back against the wall to get the velcro unstuck. Perfect.
I jumped and slapped my right hand on the wall, then kicked my way up to stick the other hand higher. My shoes had very little traction, so the one arm on the wall was doing most of the heavy lifting. I tore my right glove off the bricks and began dragging myself further up the wall, which proved much more difficult the second time. My left arm was trembling as it lifted my entire body up with little help from my feet, and I had almost kicked it loose before sticking my right hand as high as I could reach. I let myself ragdoll for a moment and dangled my legs in the air, but the right glove started losing its grip. I quickly tried tearing my left hand loose, taking much more effort as the whole arm was sore, and stuck it slightly below my right hand.
Only a few feet off the ground and almost in arm’s reach of the balcony railing. I made one last feeble attempt to drag my body up, my feet scraping at the wall to gain traction. I got high enough where my shoulders were level with the railing and proceeded to try pulling my left glove off the wall. It didn’t work well since I was also trying to hold my body in the air with that hand. I gave up and slipped my hand out of the glove, using just enough energy to hold me up so I could grab the railing. I pulled as close to the foothold-less balcony as I could until I wrapped my arm over it, then slipped my right hand out of the glove and shot it to the railing. Once again, with burning arms, I powerlifted my body up and threw a leg over, rolling over the side and falling on the balcony flat on my back.
I kicked back against the wall until reaching a standing position and flung my defunct hand against the door window. Cameron, sitting on the quarter-circle couch, turned his head to me and pounced to the door.
“Skyler!” he bubbled while opening it.
“Cameron. You remembered my name?”
“You remembered mine.”
“I waited down the street for more than half an hour waiting for you to show up after school, and you never did.”
“I have early release. I’ve been here for over an hour.” I sighed. Of fucking course.
After an awkward pause, he said, “No one’s home right now, come in. It’s better than sitting in the cold.” Right, Weather said it’s supposed to be 40 degrees. I hadn’t noticed.
I pulled the gloves off of the wall outside and entered the living room once again, looking exactly the same as it did three weeks ago. The kitchen was still a clutter of food supplies and paperwork, but the vibe now was “there’s nowhere else to put all of it,” whereas last time, it looked like a drunken mess. Linda’s laptop still sat under the same office chair plugged into the server a floor below. What’s the server being used for now?
“So,” said Cameron, “what brings you here today after… three weeks? I’m sure someone of your caliber wouldn’t climb up my porch at 3 PM just to say hi.”
“Yeah… duty still calls, unfortunately.”
“About Solaris, I assume? I saw you were one of the names my mom was sending around to her business… friends.”
“Inadvertently, yes. Your mom’s business ‘friends’ have been a real pain in the ass lately, and we’re trying to get rid of them.”
“Wow, seriously? What happened?”
“I’m not here to go into specifics, and I probably shouldn’t anyway now that this place has power. Let’s just say Solaris has friends in high places.”
“Jesus. I’m learning more about my parents than I bargained for from this relationship. So, is this some secret cabal of millionaires that’s troubling with you?”
“I wish I had a definitive answer for that. I don’t really understand it either. But I’m still here for a reason.”
“Yeah. Lucky I’ve only got seven more months in school, and then I can get the hell out of here. But until then….”
“What have your parents even been doing since Solaris shut down?”
Cameron leaned back against the couch. “Couldn’t tell you that either. I only know what I overhear.”
“Would they still have records from Solaris, then?”
“Oh, so that’s what you’re looking for.” He started walking away. “Follow me.”
He led me to the staircase going down next to the kitchen, the same path I followed to the office with the forged paperwork. Upon entering it again, the first thing I noticed was the simple fact that it looked nothing like it did last time. The room was finally transformed into an actual office, sporting a new computer desk with three monitors, a minifridge, a grey couch facing a 40-inch TV, an entire marble countertop with an oven, microwave, and coffee maker, plus a wall of bookshelves by the computer desk. All it needed was a twin-size bed and nightstand, and it could easily pass as a bedroom.
“This is the hole my mom essentially lives in now. Leaves and enters from that door there, comes upstairs to swap fridges with her drinks, then goes to bed on the other side of the house. I see her even less than before but still hear her all the time. It was pretty surreal seeing life at home change in front of me as a result of what you did. I woke up the morning after not even sure if you really existed, and then… my parents kind of spiraled into chaos.”
“Would you have done anything differently now?”
“Like called the police? Of course I wouldn’t have done that, I didn’t know who you were.”
“Normally, that’s a pretty good reason for people to call the police.”
“Then I guess you’re lucky you found me instead.” He walked into the center of the room. “Anywho, if it’s records you’re looking for, your best starting point would be that small empty desk next to the main one. I think that’s where the old Solaris stuff used to be kept.”
“Yeah. I remember.”
“Remember? You went down here too?”
I knelt down at the desk and opened the drawer the client files were kept in. Everything is still where it was, including the papers I planted in K-8 Math Tutors’ file. Fourteen folders were sitting in front of theirs, all but one appearing to be for the businesses that helped us bankrupt Solaris.
“What good are old files like that anyway?” Cameron continued.
I pulled out the file for CLE Clothing Co., which was relatively small.
“What is that for? Do you know them?”
I dumped out the two dozen sheets of paper on the floor and sifted through them.
“Are they involved in this somehow? Part of your ‘friends in high places?’”
The contract agreement… details of the donation… employee information… company revenue…
“No, wait, you said you worked with another business to help bring them down, right?”
The paperwork ended without any details of the company’s finances. A sticky note was plastered on the back of the final page.
“What’s even in there?”
No… no, no, no.
“Skyler.”
“Fuck!” I yelled out loud. I swept aside the paperwork and snatched out another file. Once again, only two dozen pages.
“What the hell are you doing?”
I dumped out the file and rooted through the papers, showing the same information. I reached the last page in seconds and flipped it over to find the same sticky note. FUCK!
I hovered over the cabinet, dug into another file of our business partners, and tore out the last sheet of paper. Same thing.
Soon enough, I had rooted through all 14 files of the businesses following K-8 Math Tutors. All of them the same size, all containing the same information, all with the same sticky note attached to the back.
I slammed the cabinet shut and yelled, “Fucking dammit!”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“It’s the files, they don’t… we were supposed to… shit, just hang on.”
I grabbed my phone from my pocket and speed-dialed Graham.
“Hey,” he said upon answering. “Don’t suppose you’re calling because Linda’s kid tied you up in the basement and you’re trying to escape?”
“If only. We have another problem, though.”
“No shortage of those these days. Did you find the files, at least?”
“Yes. I did.”
“...And?”