Ivory has a different opinion. “I’d be happy to work with Matt, but he’s not the problem. He’s only here because of Jett, and Jett doesn’t belong.”
“This is a place of wellness,” Magnus says firmly, “which is something everyone deserves.”
“I agree,” his second-in-command counters, “which is why Jett Baranov has to go. I have nothing against him personally, but he undermines our entire mission here. He brings in meat”—Ivory indicates me—“and other people eat it. He makes trouble with the pedal boats and suddenly the Karrigan and Bucholz boys are involved. He burglarizes the welcome center and recovers his phone when he knows it’s forbidden.”
“That only proves how much Jett needs what we offer at the Oasis,” Magnus argues.
“Not when his presence makes it impossible for us to offer it,” Ivory insists. “There’s a harmony here that comes from everyone buying into our methods and our rules. Jett Baranov is a disrupter. He could spoil it for everyone.”
Disrupter. People used that word to describe Vladimir Baranov when he first started Fuego and revolutionized the tech universe. To hear Jett called that gives me a jolt. “Now just a minute!” As mad as I am at the kid, I have to speak up for him. “You’re talking about a twelve-year-old.”
“A twelve-year-old who commands hundreds of thousands of dollars of buying power to turn this place upside down practically overnight.”
Magnus raises both hands. “Enough,” he says in that soft yet commanding tone of his. “The boy stays, of course. I understand the unique challenge he presents. But we’ll win him over. He will be whole. You’ll see.”
I can’t help thinking, This entire place could be a hole when Jett gets through with it—as in a smoking crater.
That’s what happens when you underestimate a Baranov.
I’m still bathed in sweat and limp as a rag when I finally drag myself back to the cottage. When I step inside I’m surprised to find Jett slumped on the couch, staring off into space. On second inspection, I realize that’s not true. He’s actually staring at the empty spot on the wall where the TV would be if we had one.
“I thought all the kids were zip-lining today,” I tell him.
“I was going to go,” he drawls in reply, “but then I made a list of all the things I’d rather do and this was on it. Along with being torn to pieces by mountain lions and dumpster diving behind a nuclear plant.”
“Only a billionaire’s son could compare zip-lining to being mauled to death,” I can’t resist commenting. “Sorry the entertainment options aren’t up to your expectations.”
“I don’t accept your apology.”
“But it isn’t all gloom and doom, Luke Skywalker,” I go on. “Your hovercraft arrived today.”
So help me, he actually looks excited for a moment. Then reality sets in and his face falls. “You sent it back.”
“What were you going to do with it?” I demand. “Fill it with kids and try a prison break?”
“It was only a mini,” he says, like that makes it okay. “Maximum two riders. Anything bigger wouldn’t have been practical.”
“Practical?” I choke. Could there be anyone alive who understands the meaning of the word less than Jett?
It’s all I can do to hold myself back from going absolutely ballistic at the kid. And it’s not because his dad is my boss that I don’t do it. Mr. B authorized me to be stricter with Jett. Actually, he ordered me to. In a way, that’s the problem.
I like Jett. I honestly do. And I know this is a crazy thing to say about the son of one of the richest humans in history, but I feel sorry for him.
Sure, he’s surrounded by unimaginable wealth. Yet on some level, he has to understand that nothing he accomplishes in his life will ever compare with what his father has built.
His parents don’t have any time for the poor kid. His father’s every nanosecond is taken up with Fuego, and his mother is always half a world away with Orthodontists Without Borders. If the nannies and au pairs of Silicon Valley had a union hall, Jett’s picture would be on the dartboard in the break room. And for good reason—he’s gone through dozens of them. It all led up to that fateful holiday party when I got the brilliant idea to catch the boss’s eye by befriending his son, who was snatching strands of tinsel from the tree and using them to spell out bad words in the frosting of the cake.
And catch his eye I did. The fix I’m in is 100 percent of my own making. I’m the best coder at Fuego, but those skills are a dime a dozen compared with the ability to keep Jett out of trouble.
Well—I picture the ruined pedal boat hung up on the wrong side of the river—mostly out of trouble.
“Anyway, I hope you’ve learned your lesson,” I tell him. “Talk about chaos! Magnus wouldn’t give me access to my laptop until I explained what was probably going to show up on his doorstep if I didn’t cancel all the sales! Do you know what a hassle it was to track down everything you ordered and void it all?”
He looks at me, eyes lively. “How do you know you caught everything?”
That brings me up short. “Are you saying there’s another hovercraft coming? Or maybe a B-52?”
Jett just grins, walks into his own room, and sits on his bed, adjusting the blanket so that it hangs to the floor.
Looking back on it, I should have remembered. I should have thought to check what was under there. But then things got crazy.
How was I supposed to know?
7
Grace Atwater
Berry picking is one of my favorite things to do at the Oasis. The woods around here are like an all-you-can-eat buffet. I love strawberries and raspberries, but wild ones are ten times more delicious. The wild strawberries at the Oasis are small, and the natural sugar in them is so concentrated that you get an intense flavor explosion that’s better than any candy. If we pick a lot, we take our baskets into the kitchen. They make the most amazing pies and shortcakes.
“Not that I’ve ever tasted one,” Tyrell complains. “They’ve all got gluten in them.”
“We’ll talk to Evangeline,” I promise him. “Sometimes you can make pie crust out of potato flour.”
“Forget it,” he says mournfully. “If I’m eating potatoes, it had better be french fries.”
“You know Magnus doesn’t believe in fried foods,” I chide him gently.
“Everybody should believe in french fries,” he insists.
Poor Tyrell. But to tell the truth, I’m getting kind of sick of hearing about his allergies. I lost a lot of my sympathy for him back at Jett’s cottage when he helped himself to some of that barbecue. Why anybody would eat something with a name like “pulled pork” is a mystery to me.
Anyway, we’re making our way through the woods, avoiding the main trails, which are picked over, berry-wise. I have to confess that we’re eating as much as we’re picking, but our baskets are pretty full. Even though he’s a sad sack, Tyrell admits that the strawberries are delicious.
Then—jackpot—we stumble on a stand of bushes that are totally hung with blackberries. We’re harvesting like crazy when a ray of sunlight breaks through the trees and I get a good look at my berry-picking partner. He has so many hives that they’ve grown together to make his entire face and neck purple.