As soon as her bag was full, Meeka said, “Hate to run.”
Cole still didn’t look up, but he blew her a kiss. “Thanks, meerkat. I was almost out of undies. Will you be back later?”
“Sure,” Meeka said, which was the most unsure “sure” in history. Then we were gone.
The cheap springs snapped the trailer’s door shut like a mousetrap we’d barely escaped. When we reached the car, Meeka heaved the bag into the back of her BMW X5. Then she put her hands on my cheeks and said, “Be thankful for your privilege.”
That was the last time I was inside the trailer.
The last time I was even near the trailer was the night we did it.
And now we’re going back.
LOGAN
THE TRAILER STILL GLOWS and hums. It makes my head throb even more than it already did. If someone has been here since Cole stepped out, they haven’t changed anything noticeable. It’s exactly like it always was. When we enter, it’s into chattering and flashing chaos.
Cole didn’t believe in screensavers. Something about the barrage of images and text was like caffeine to him. I have no idea how much he slept, but it couldn’t have been much. I can’t say what specific games or sites he liked best, but I know he loved the infinity of stuff. He needed the world constantly shooting at him, going at light speed.
Screens are packed with messages, like platoons of ants marching across bright flat deserts. Speakers chatter softly. A game is on pause, the image of an explosion blooming. A video clip is playing on a loop, his favorite one, showing that shrill kid singing “Walk Like a Man.” Thankfully, that one is muted. The stink in here is worse than ever—it’s as bad as roadkill—and we all wince when we first enter and catch a whiff.
“Should we dump the trash?” Grayson asks. “Anyone comes in here and they’ll know he’s been gone a long time. No one can live with a stink like this.”
“You’d be surprised,” Meeka grumbles as she stands in the doorway. It’s obvious she doesn’t want to step any farther inside, and I can’t blame her.
“Don’t worry about the smell,” Holly says. “The important thing is that we touch as little as possible. They’ll always have ways of knowing the last time Cole was here. Evidence we can’t cover up. That’s ultimately unimportant. The important thing is to make sure the police never know we were here. Keep your hands to yourself. Unless absolutely necessary.”
We’ve taken precautions. Gloves, hats that the girls can tuck their hair up into, dust masks. We know our fingerprints and DNA are probably already in the trailer, because we’ve all been in the trailer before, but we don’t want to leave anything fresh.
And yet I worry about osmosis. There’s so much to see in here that I can’t help but wonder about what’s uploading to my brain. Maybe I’m filling my subconscious with images that will implicate me. The half-solved Rubik’s Cube on the oven? The rubber horse head mask draped over the back of the computer chair? Maybe they mean something. If I end up being questioned about Cole’s disappearance, I might let something slip that seems inconsequential, but will place me in this very trailer after Cole left it. I should probably close my eyes, but then I might fall asleep on my feet and crash into a web of computer cables.
I hate this place so much.
Grayson points and says, “There. That thing.”
The trailer is a perpetual mess, but there’s one corner of a table that’s pristine. Set in that pristine corner is a red cube. Though everything else is dusty and grimy, it shines, radiates even. There’s a blinking blue light and a few buttons on the front, and a few cords running out the back. Cole called this thing his Heart.
We’d discussed the Heart while we were walking the quarter mile to the trailer from the abandoned lumber mill where we parked our cars. We’d all noticed the Heart before, during our various visits to the trailer. We weren’t sure if it was a small server, some sort of computer or gaming console, or a hard drive. It was difficult to say because there were no labels on it, and while Cole had always been quick to point it out and brag about how important it was to him, he had also been unwilling to tell us what it actually did.
That was typical. He liked to taunt and troll. And we all assumed the same thing: The Heart contained secrets—Cole’s secrets—whether they were in the form of programs he used or files he created or downloaded. Now I’m thinking it contains my secrets too, that the stuff from my cloud ended up there. It would explain why Cole was always drawing my attention to it. He was mocking me, keeping his treachery in plain sight. Gotchya! He had me dead to rights and he probably figured there was nothing I could do about it.
Only problem was, I did do something. We all did.
But someone else did something too. The big questions are: Who did something, and what exactly did they do?
“The Heart is still here,” Holly says. “That’s good, right?”
Meeka nods, takes a deep breath through her mask, and finally leaves her post by the door, making a beeline to the table. “He would’ve boned this thing if he could’ve. I tell you, the way he looked at it . . . he never looked at me that way.”
“That’s exactly how he always left it?” Holly asks. “Confirm to me that nothing’s been stolen.”
“Nothing’s been stolen,” Meeka says as she reaches forward to touch it. “Yet.”
Holly lunges and pushes Meeka’s hand down. “Please!” she says, and her mask goes cockeyed, revealing half of her snarling mouth. “No touching.”
“Chill,” Meeka says as she pulls her hand back. “I don’t know if forensics people can tell old DNA from new DNA, but there’s so much of me in here already that it shouldn’t matter if I touch anything. And why should it matter if I move anything? The trailer is a sty.”
All true, but Holly still insists. “No touching. That’s what we agreed on.”
“Well, at least we can breathe easier,” Meeka says. “Because no one has stolen Cole’s Heart.”
She laughs a little, but it doesn’t seem to be at her own joke. It’s a nervous laughter, flavored with a hint of relief. I don’t want to throw water on that relief, but someone has to state the obvious.
“Do I have to remind you all that no one had to physically take anything to access whatever information is on there?”
“That’s right!” Grayson replies, as if this were the most mind-blowing revelation. “They could’ve hacked the shit out of it!”
Holly rolls her eyes and says, “Everyone loves to talk about ‘hacking,’ but do you know the first thing about it? Do you really think it’s as simple as saying ‘Hey, I’mma hack that guy’ and then start tapping a few keys and you’re in? How do we even know that device is networked? If it was so important to Cole, then leaving it vulnerable to exterior threats seems pretty damn stupid.”