The cursor blinked for a long time.
God didn’t answer.
2 THE VINDICATORS
Charlie’s mom died when he was almost seventeen, after a long battle with cancer that left the rest of his small family—Dad, Charlie, that’s it—ragged. Picturing his dad alone in that master bedroom, pressing his face into Mom’s old pillow, it was too much to bear. So when Charlie came downstairs, dressed for school, and noticed his dad was cooking, something he hadn’t done in a long time—bacon and eggs sizzling on the stove—Charlie couldn’t believe it. A stack of pancakes was ready, soaked with butter.
Charlie’s dad used to cook. He was an accountant, but his passion had always been cooking. He’d make huge dinners and delicious breakfasts while Mom played with Charlie or read curled up in an overstuffed chair. When she got sick, all that had stopped.
But now, nearly a year after her death, Dad was hovering over the stove, the smell of pancakes and bacon wafting through the house.
“Hungry?” Dad asked. It was jovial, but cautiously so. Almost as if he were trying on a new shirt for the first time and didn’t know whether people would laugh.
Charlie realized he felt torn. Deep down, there was something—a burst of hope. Charlie’s father had fallen apart over the last couple years. He’d tried to shield Charlie from everything. The lab tests, the surgeries, the chemo, the false hopes. It worked for a while, but then his dad had broken down, and his mom was too weak, and no one was left but Charlie to hold her hair while she puked or to bring her cool washcloths for her forehead. As he reflected on that, the old anger surged and stamped out the hope, and a voice in his head said, Why does he get to feel better when I still feel like I’m in a billion pieces scattered on the floor?
“No,” Charlie said, walking to the door and grabbing his backpack off the hook. “Not hungry.” He felt awful as soon as he said it, but also a little powerful, in a world where he had no power left, not to save his mom, not to do anything.
When he saw the smile drop a little on his dad’s face, still there but not real now, just fake for Charlie’s benefit, his heart broke again, but it was too late to fix it, so he left.
* * *
Charlie parked in the student lot and passed the cliques of jocks and rich kids hanging out, passed the gym, where students congregated like cattle packed into a pen before first period, and headed to the basement to the Tech Lab, where his real friends were, the small group of bright misfits who called themselves the Vindicators.
The Tech Lab was a treasure trove for young gamers and gearheads: sixteen networked computers they could play on at lunch, a 3-D printer, a robotics station, a circuit lab. Charlie had kick-started their group one day freshman year when he noticed the same three students were showing up at lunch to play vintage Bolo with each other—Vanhi, Kenny, Alex. He invited them over to his house to watch Blade Runner and play a little Cyberpunk. After another all-night marathon of polyhedral dice and tabletop gaming at Kenny’s house, they pulled their first prank, putting the anatomy skeleton in the cafeteria with a sign that read I ATE THE FOOD. Bleary-eyed and laughing at 7:00 A.M., someone said, “We need a name.” With zero hours of sleep, this made a lot of sense to everyone, even if it was ridiculous. They didn’t care.
“What should it be?” Kenny asked.
“Something tight, we’re a tight group,” Charlie said.
“Something fierce,” Vanhi said. “We watch each other’s backs.” Her name meant “fire” in Hindi, and that was appropriate, because she was full of a burning intellect, and charm, and goodness. She stood up to bullies and didn’t take shit from anyone. She was fierce.
“It’s us against the world,” Kenny added. “One for all, and all for one.”
Kenny was the most tightly wound of the group. He was a state-ranked cellist and vice editor of the school paper. His parents were both doctors. They told him being black was a gift, and the gift was he’d always have to work twice as hard for the same respect. No pressure. The Vindicators were his little secret from his parents, from his church—it was his escape valve.
“The Disrupters,” Alex said.
“Too dark,” Charlie answered.
“The Terminators!” Kenny tried.
“Jesus, we’re not murderers.” Vanhi laughed.
Charlie snapped his fingers. “The Vindicators.”
It fit. They swore on it.
Only Peter transcended their social status. He’d come sophomore year, with his blond hair and sparkling blue eyes, after getting expelled from St. Luke’s, an exclusive private school in Austin. The FBI had busted him for hacking into phone companies and creating free cell accounts for his friends. With his good looks and money, Peter could’ve been elite, rolling with the high caste in khakis and salmon shirts. He was naturally athletic and ran track, so he was okay with the jocks, too. His dark side also made him popular with the burners and Goths, yet he chose to hang out in the computer lab, and while the other Vindicators wouldn’t admit it out loud, it secretly delighted them. That great enigma, Peter Quine, chose us!
“Where’s Alex?” Charlie asked, setting his bag on the table. But he knew what the answer would be.
“He’s not here,” Vanhi said.
“Again,” Kenny added.
“Maybe he’s got new friends,” Peter said not unkindly. Only Peter could imagine friendships outside the safe space of the Vindicators.
“I saw him sitting by himself by the portables the other day,” Charlie said.
“Hmm,” Vanhi said. “I don’t like it.”
Alex Dinh had always been an odd duck, with a flop of hair over his eyes and a goofy grin that seemed mischievous and yet halfway in another world, daydreaming. In middle school, he hung out by himself, telling people he was from Mars. By freshman year, he’d grown out of that into a lanky, soft-spoken kid who lit up when pulling pranks. They’d all been affable goofs back then, the tricksters the teachers liked because they were smart and good-natured at heart. But as time went on, Alex had gone down a different path, so slowly they barely noticed at first. Once, when they were leaving a convenience store, a security guard came running out after them. They were baffled when he told them to empty their pockets—theft wasn’t exactly in the Vindicators’ repertoire—but sure enough, Alex had slipped a deck of cards into his back pocket on the way out, for no reason at all. He spent the night in jail over $2.08. The whole experience had just made him squirrelier, as if jail had suited him.
“Give him some space,” Kenny said. “Maybe he just needs some time alone.”
“You don’t want him in the group anymore,” Vanhi snapped.
“I didn’t say that.” But then Kenny complained, “He nearly got us all arrested.”
“That’s when he needs us most,” Vanhi shot back. “Charlie, what do you think?”
Charlie looked at them, but no words came out. He shrugged.
A moment later, the door to the Tech Lab swung open, and Alex came in. He looked tired, with circles under his eyes and his hair a little more tussled than usual. The conversation came to a dead stop, and everyone was looking at him.