No Safety in Numbers (6 page)

L
exi lay motionless under the table. If she didn’t move, maybe it wouldn’t be morning. It would still be last night.

How weird to think that the best night of her life would be when she was trapped in the CommerceDome with a bunch of strangers. Then again, Ginger wasn’t a stranger anymore. Last night, Lexi felt the same connection with her that she had gaming with Darren. It was like they were one brain moving the avatars on the screen, as they worked on turning their clip into a short film. For hours. They didn’t even notice how long they’d been working until Dad brought over two slices of pizza.

When the announcement was made that they were all being held overnight, of course Ginger called her mom, but she got right off and was like, “What’s next?” and began sliding through the keyframes they’d already finished.

Later, once it was dark and everyone else was asleep,
Lexi offered to show Ginger her own movie—not even Darren had seen her movie. As it played, Lexi watched Ginger. Once it was over, Ginger said it was as good as any Pixar film, and Lexi knew from her reactions while it’d played that she meant it.

“Hey, you up?”

Ginger knelt beside Lexi’s camp under the computer. Ginger had slept across the aisle under the iPad display. The night before, two security guards had come around with blankets and pillows pilfered from the various home stores in the mall. Lexi ended up with a rainbow-colored comforter coated with unicorns, and Ginger’s was a weird green color with an old-lady flower pattern.

“I barely slept, I was so uncomfortable,” Ginger continued. “When the lights came on, I was sort of still in a dream—has that ever happened to you?—and I had completely forgotten where I was, so I sat straight up and whacked my head into the table.” She rubbed her forehead for emphasis.

Lexi shuffled into a sit. Her brain began scratching together an appropriate response. Talking was so different from texting—one had to string words together so quickly in real life. Maybe she should suggest breakfast? She glanced around to see where her dad was. Maybe they could go to the Pancake Palace?

“There’s going to be a run on the bathrooms,” Ginger said, rummaging under her comforter. She pulled out her purse and began picking through its contents. She extracted a small packet of breath-freshening wafers and slipped one into her mouth. She turned to Lexi. “Want one?”

“Thanks,” Lexi muttered. She nearly gagged on the explosion of mint.

Ginger pulled out her phone and began flicking through her texts. Should Lexi get out her phone too? Should they compare texts?

As if rescuing her from her own brain, the Senator’s voice boomed over the mall loudspeaker: “Patrons of the Shops at Stonecliff, I regret to inform you that the security situation remains ongoing. Federal officials have been brought in to assist in the investigation. Given the nature of the investigation, we cannot allow any individual to leave the mall at this time. You may, however, leave the stores and move freely around the mall. The parking level remains closed. If you require access to the parking level, please consult with a customer service representative at the first-floor kiosk opposite the Borderlands Cantina. Please do not attempt to exit the mall. We are working to resolve this situation as quickly as possible.”

Ginger sucked in her breath. “Oh my god, Maddie totally kissed a senior last night!” She pushed Lexi’s shoulder like Lexi should be shocked. At school, Maddie always seemed to be hanging off some boy. It was no surprise to Lexi that Maddie had locked lips with one while unsupervised for an entire night.

“You want to get a bagel?” Lexi said.

Ginger was furiously texting, fingers flying over the little keys. “Huh?” she said. “Bagel?” She finished typing, then looked up. “I’d love to,” she said, “but Maddie wants me to meet these guys at Abercrombie.” She dug a tiny tub of sparkly pink lip gloss out of her bag and slid some across her lips with her pinky, then stood and
straightened her sweater over her jeans. Ginger had the perfect body—no gargantuan boobs or butt ballooned off her lithe ballerina frame. She ran her fingers through her hair, flipping her head first one way, then the other as she glowered at her reflection in the store’s glass wall.

“All right,” she said, finally standing still. She locked eyes with Lexi. “Do I look okay? Like okay enough to meet a senior?” Her eyebrows were arched in a hopeful expression.

Part of Lexi wanted to slap Ginger—the girl who’d thrilled at morphing a cloud across a CG sky had been completely subsumed by this boy-obsessed bubblehead. But the other part won control. “You look great,” she said.

Apparently, Lexi had provided the correct response: Ginger stooped to give her a quick hug. “I had such a great time last night!” she said, and began walking to the door.

“I’ll see you later?” Lexi asked. But Ginger was already in the hallway. She didn’t look back.

Lexi sank down onto her comforter. Of course Ginger left the instant she could. What else had Lexi expected? Their friendship had been a one-night-only event, a product of circumstance.

Lexi hunted around in her messenger bag for her phone. Its battery was low; it had been buzzing all night with texts. All from Darren. She opened the first message:
You still at CommerceDome? On news.
The second:
Mall lockdown? What’s happening?
The next twenty were all in the same vein.
Is it the zombie apocalypse? Anyone resorting to cannibalism?

Strangely, Darren’s texts made her feel worse. Not one of them expressed interest in whether she herself was
okay. These could have been texts sent to anyone. And for a moment, a vast emptiness opened inside Lexi, a sucking need so strong she felt she might disappear inside it.

No. She would not fall apart in this rainbow-unicorn cave. Darren was just being his funny self. If he weren’t worried, he wouldn’t have texted in the first place.

She tried to call him and got an all-circuits-are-busy message. So she sent a text that could go through as soon as some bandwidth opened up.
Still here, trapped. But had full access to computer and new BXE Fillion card so was all gud. Will find out whazzup.

Lexi heard tromping footsteps and turned to see the Senator barrel in from the hall. The sight of her converted all Lexi’s sadness to rage. This entire situation was the Senator’s fault.

Dad stood, his head and shoulders rising above the shelf he’d been hidden behind, and hugged the Senator. She practically fell into his arms. She looked bad, wiped out. And not from the usual committee politics.

“If I kill the mall manager,” Dotty said, “will you support my insanity defense?”

“The man’s a troll,” Arthur said. “No one would even question you.”

For a moment, Lexi felt some sympathy for her mother. But then she recalled her mission—Darren (her real friend; her only friend) needed to know what was going on. Lexi could stand talking to her mother to help Darren.

Dad caught Lexi staring and waved her over. “Maybe now we can finally catch some of that quality family time?” he said. “Anyone as hungry for pancakes as I am?”

He smiled at the Senator, who reached a hand out to
wipe something from Lexi’s cheek. Lexi flinched away from her touch.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to pass,” the Senator said, frowning. “But you guys have fun.”

Dad grimaced. “You have to eat,” he said.

“I will,” the Senator answered.

Lexi had never known the Senator to miss breakfast. The woman was a breakfast nut—“Most important meal of the day!” was a favorite tagline.

“What’s going on in the parking garage?” Lexi asked. “And don’t say nothing because I have never heard you neg a pancake invitation before.”

The Senator dropped her hand onto Lexi’s shoulder. “Nothing you need to worry about,” she said. “Have fun at breakfast.” She kissed Lexi’s head and made for the door.

“HAVE FUN”??? A kiss on the head? I’m not a freaking child!

Dad watched the Senator as she wove her way into the herd in the hall. “Guess it’s just you and me, kiddo.”

Lexi glared at her mother—the Senator was lying through her perfectly whitened teeth. She had to find out what was really going on.

“Sorry, but Ginger asked me to meet her at Abercrombie,” she said, her tongue tripping over the lie.

Her dad’s eyes lit up. “The girl from Irvington? From last night?”

Arthur was way too excited. Like it was so unusual for Lexi to meet a friend somewhere. Like Ginger was so great.

“Have fun,” he said, too quickly. “If you need me, I’ll be in line at the Pancake Palace along with the rest of the
mall.” He waved at the crowd forming in front of the restaurant down the hall.

Lexi exited the store and followed where the Senator had gone. It didn’t take long to locate her. She moved with purpose while everyone else in the crowd rambled aimlessly across the carpet. Lexi guessed her mother was the only person who had anywhere to be.

There were huge lines outside all of the restaurants, each monitored by a security guard. If the security situation was so serious, where were the real police? Why leave crowd control to the hack mall brigade?

The Senator turned down a corridor toward the exits. Lexi hid behind a mall directory and watched where her mother went. Temporary walls had been erected around a store near the end of the hall, blocking it from view. Lexi checked the map and saw that it was a PaperClips. Or had been a PaperClips. She dashed down the hallway.

There were few people in this area of the mall. Between the blocked exits and walled-off PaperClips, there was little else down this corridor but a Domestic Decor, and the only people in there were a couple of boys shooting zombies on the Xbox display. Lexi had beaten every level of that game—she could have pwned them right and proper. But she had other things on her mind.

There were no guards at the flimsy wall erected around the PaperClips. It was made from sheets of thin pressboard, the stuff Lexi had seen kids make ramps out of for their bikes, covered in white paper with the words “Guess what’s coming to Stonecliff?” printed in a stylish blue font. A door had been cut into the boards, and
Lexi peered through the doorknob hole drilled into it.

The PaperClips entrance was covered over with sheets of clear plastic. When the sheets flapped, she could see her mother near the cash registers. She was talking to a short guy in a bad suit—
the mall manager?
Other people in uniforms (mall security and what had to be maintenance guys) moved crates of paper and boxes of pens away from the center of the room. Why were they messing with the PaperClips?
I thought the security problem was in the garage…

Lexi pulled on the door hole. To her surprise, the door opened—there was no lock. Her mother was trying to make this overnight transformation look as inconspicuous as possible.
Nothing to see here, folks! Just a complete redesign of a PaperClips in the middle of a mall crisis. Not strange at all.

Lexi slipped through the door and pulled it closed behind her. No one seemed to notice. She crept to the store entrance. When the plastic flapped, she ducked inside and hid behind a display of markers and crayons.

“So they’re sure it’s not a dirty bomb, but that’s about it?” the mall manager asked.

Lexi’s heart skipped a beat.
Did he just say
BOMB?!?!?!?! She held her breath so she wouldn’t miss a word.

“That’s what they’re telling me,” the Senator said. Her phone rang; she answered, then whispered to the manager, “They’re here.”

The manager followed her to the back wall of the store and through the stockroom doors.

Lexi could not get to the stockroom doors without being
seen. The guards were still clearing the main floor, pushing the displays against the permanent shelving along the interior walls. She’d have to make a run for it across the open floor.

But then the doors opened and a person in a space suit—not space suit, but some creepy blue plastic hazmat suit with a giant enclosed hood—pushed a cart loaded with machines and boxes into the room. Behind him, Lexi saw that the loading dock’s door had been covered over with overlapping thick plastic strips, and beyond that was a giant tunnel of plastic. Several more hazmat-suited people walked up the tunnel and pushed through the plastic with other carts piled with machines and boxes.

Lexi ducked back behind her display. This was like some bad science fiction movie. Or the opening of that video game where you knew you were facing the zombie apocalypse when the evil government scientists showed up to quarantine the city.

“We’ll place the triage area over here,” a muffled voice said.
Must be the hazmat person.
Lexi froze. The voice sounded far too close for her comfort. “We’ll need another wall across there to hide the observation and diagnostic units.”

“The PaperClips representative said their insurance required someone at FEMA to sign off on all the paperwork.”
Nasal whine—has to be the mall troll.

“I think we should curtain the windows.” Lexi recognized her mother’s voice. “To keep the people from panicking.”

The muffled voice laughed—at least, Lexi thought it
laughed. “If you think curtains will help, we’ll bring them in.”