Jek/Hyde

Moving stealthily through the kitchen, I pull a fork from the drying rack and dip it into the simmering pot.

“Lulu?” My mom’s voice comes from the living room. “You better not be touching that pot before it’s done.”

“I’m not,” I call back, then shove a chunk of meat in my mouth.

“And you’re late,” my mom continues. “You promised to fix my computer right after school.”

With a sigh, I drop my fork in the sink and follow her voice into the living room. A couple of lamps are lit, but as usual the room is dominated by the bluish glow emanating from the large-screen TV that perpetually plays Spanish-language sports and news, thanks to a satellite hookup. My uncle is pretty much always lying on the couch in front of it under a pile of wool blankets—he says it helps distract him from his joint pain.

He’s lying there now, watching a soccer game with the sound off, while my mom occupies her usual spot in the recliner, her laptop on her lap. She passes it off to me before I can even sit down in the remaining seat—a stiff-backed chair that no one likes. Sometimes I wish I’d hidden my interest in computers from the family so they wouldn’t badger me all the time for help with theirs, but just like Jek’s circumstances fostered his love of chemistry, I have my family to thank for my talent—mostly because every laptop, phone and tablet I’ve ever owned has been a hand-me-down or a thrift-shop find. They’ve always been junked up with spyware when I got them, or hopelessly out-of-date. I had no choice but to teach myself how to fix them up.

“I bet you burned yourself,” Mom mutters as I poke gently at the blistered roof of my mouth with my tongue. “You never learn.”

“What’s wrong with it this time?” I say, ignoring the dig.

“Keeps freezing,” she says. “I have to shut down the whole thing, and I lose my place.”

She gets up to tend to the pot in the kitchen, and I start in on the usual troubleshooting steps even though I’m almost positive she’s let her hard drive get cluttered with malware again.

“Remind me why you play this game,” I call out to her as I work. It’s the most boring game I’ve ever seen: your character has to do all these real-life things like go shopping and plant vegetables and pay taxes, but my mom’s obsessed with it for some reason. “You have to do all these things in real life, so why would you do them in your free time?”

“It’s more fun when it’s someone else’s life,” she calls back.

“Plus,” my uncle Carlos says, “when she screws up in the game, she can just start the level over.” He giggles. “Can’t do that in real life.”

“I heard that,” Mom yells from the kitchen, and Carlos rolls his eyes and returns his attention to the soccer match. He used to be a big soccer player and thought about going pro, though you’d never know it to look at him now. He decided to stay here and put his energy into the family business instead, working his way up from farm labor to running his own feed store. But now he can’t do much. He’s lost so much weight that his skin sags off him, and he feels dizzy whenever he stands up. I remember how he used to pick me up and throw me in the air when I was a little girl. Now he gets winded just walking to the refrigerator. We all know it’s because of the chemicals he worked with every day, but he won’t talk about it. Doesn’t want to admit that the business he built with his own hands is slowly killing him, and the rest of the family, too.

“Where were you all afternoon?” Mom nags, coming back from the kitchen and standing behind my chair to watch my progress with her computer. “You’re always going out after school, when you know it’s the only time I get to see you.”

Mom used to clean for people like Puloma when I was a kid, but a few years ago she took a job cleaning the offices and labs for London Chem. It means she has to work nights, but the pay’s better and it’s steady. And the most important part is it keeps her away from the farm chemicals. Ever since Uncle Carlos got sick, Mom has lived in terror of all the products used on the crops around here.

“I was out with Jek,” I tell her, bracing for her disapproving grunt before she even makes it.

“Always with that boy.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I say, bristling.

She strokes a hand along my hair in what’s meant to be a soothing motion. “Lulu, sweetie, I’ve known Jek since he was a little boy, just like you, and you know I care about him too...but you’re growing up now, and boys like that are only going to get you into trouble.”

I crane around to look at her. “What do you mean, trouble?”

She sighs and leans against the chair back. “I’m not saying he’d ever try to hurt you, but things are different for him. He can do whatever he wants and the world will give him all the second chances he needs. His mother indulges him, his teachers and everyone else. He can afford to screw around. You have to stay focused and work, mija.”

“You’re wrong about him,” I say, even though I know there’s no winning this argument with her. This is more about her own life experiences than anything to do with Jek or me. Just because she made some bad choices, she thinks I’m destined to go down the same path. “No one I know is harder working than Jek.”

Mom scoffs. “Because he plays around in his little laboratory? That’s not work, that’s fun. Work is what you do because you have to, not because you want to. Jek knows nothing about that.”

“Neither does Lulu,” Carlos comments idly, not taking his eyes off the screen. “Why don’t you make her work? She could be useful at the store, but you keep her here like a little princess.”

Mom straightens up and turns on him. “That’s different. Lulu’s job is going to school, and I am not letting you talk her into going to work at that store of yours. She needs to stay focused on her studies so she can go to college and get a good job.”

I’ve heard this fight a million times, but at least it’s distracted Mom enough that I can finish up the virus check and escape to my room, leaving the continuing discussion behind.

My room at least is clean and calm, even if Mom is always hassling me about the mess. It’s not really messy—my bed is made and my laundry pile is manageable. What Mom hates are the old computers, phones and tablets stacked on every surface, many of them with their cases forced open so their electronic guts spill out. It may not be pretty, but it’s the best way for me to learn how all these parts work. Or don’t work, as the case may be—at least a few of these projects of mine will probably never be anything but doorstops. Still, you never know if you don’t try.

I move my latest project—overclocking the CPU of an old flip phone—from the bed and throw myself down on it, brooding over how wrong Mom is about Jek. He isn’t like the other London Chem kids, who only care about drinking and sex and who’s throwing the next kegger. Jek’s family may have money, but he’s always been marked as different, and no one will let him forget it. As one of the only black kids in town, he’s had to hold himself to a higher standard.

But as I lie there listening to the argument in the other room, my thoughts turn back to Hyde. If anyone would be a bad influence, it’s him. Something isn’t right about his friendship with Jek. For as long as I’ve known him, Jek has been private and hard to get close to—his friends have all had to earn his trust over the course of years. It’s not like him to become so close to someone so quickly. And even good friends don’t share banking info. Since Jek is aware of what Hyde did, at least I can be sure it wasn’t theft or hacking...but that doesn’t necessarily mean the money was freely given. What could Hyde have possibly said to convince Jek to front him this cash? Did he tell Jek, “I just assaulted a girl and I need to buy her silence?” Jek would never support something like that, I’m sure of it. Not even for a friend.

So maybe they aren’t friends, then. Maybe there’s some other reason Jek is helping him out...not out of friendship, but fear. Based on what Maia and Camila have told me, not to mention my own conversation with him, Hyde seems like the type who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. It’s possible he is controlling Jek somehow. Threatening him. But how? Threatening to hurt him or someone he loves? Or using some secret knowledge against him? I don’t know what Jek might be hiding, but I know better than most that everyone has their secrets.

I was only nine years old when the whispers started. I didn’t think anything of it at first, and even once I started to suspect they were whispering about me, I dismissed the idea as paranoia. What could anyone possibly have to say about me? Turns out it wasn’t about me—not exactly. It was my mom. Somehow the gossip had trickled down from the adult world to the schoolyard that my mom was having an affair with a client—a married man whose house she cleaned. One of the London Chem scientists.

I still don’t really know if the rumors were true, or exactly how far things went between my mom and this man. I don’t even know who it was—somehow the gossip never touched him, and as far as I can tell, he never paid any price. All I know is that shortly after that, my mom stopped cleaning for a while and spent most of a month on the couch, in a deep depression. We never talked about why, and I don’t want to know any more details than I’ve already heard. Ever since the day Jessie Holbrook finally said to my face what everyone in town had been saying behind my back, I’ve tried to shut my ears to any and all gossip that comes my way.

But I may have to abandon that policy now if I’m going to help Jek with whatever trouble he’s in. I know he told me to stay out of his business, but technically I’m not looking for information on him—it’s Hyde I’m after. A guy like that must have a mile-long list of things he’s hiding. If I could find something on Hyde—something illegal or immoral from his past that would destroy him if it became public—maybe that would neutralize his control over Jek and he’d be forced to back off.

* * *

These ideas comfort me enough to let me fall asleep, but by the next morning, they mostly feel silly. Identity theft, blackmail, threats...it all sounds a little far-fetched. The honest truth could just be that Jek’s changing. That he isn’t the same boy I grew up idolizing, sweet and brilliant and good-natured. I don’t want to believe that he would so easily slip into a friendship with someone like Hyde, but maybe I don’t know him as well as I think I do. Maybe I’ve been hanging on to a version of Jek he’s left behind.

I’ve just about convinced myself to let everything go when Jek texts me Friday afternoon.

9 pm. My place.

It’s like there’s a competition between the boys in this town to see who can send the shortest texts. I want to text back a million questions—what’s at 9:00 p.m.? What are we doing? Does he want to confide in me? Apologize for our little fight the other day? Are we just going to watch a movie and pretend nothing happened? Or does he have some other plan?

Instead, I call Camila to consult with her.

“Oh, my God,” she exclaims when I’ve described his message to her. “It’s finally happening!”

“What’s happening? The message says practically nothing.”

“What do you mean? You’ve hooked him! It’s a date.”

“A date?” I repeat dubiously. “Come on, Camila. When a boy wants a date, he uses complete sentences. In my experience, a message like this is a request for a hookup.”

“Well, what’s so bad about that?” says Camila, not disagreeing. “Don’t you want to hook up with him? Why waste everyone’s time with dinner and some boring movie?”

“You’re such a romantic,” I tell her flatly.

“Hey, I’m a pragmatist,” she replies, unbothered. “No shame in that.”

“I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem like Jek. I can’t see him suddenly treating me like a booty call.”

“Lulu, if you’re waiting for him to show up on your doorstep with a dozen roses and a rented limo...”

“Nothing like that!” I insist. “I’ve just never known him to be into this kind of stuff. Not with me, not with anyone. To be honest, I think he might be completely asexual.”

“Well,” she says, “only one way to find out for sure.”

“Mmm? What’s that?”

“Show up tonight at his place. 9:00 p.m.”

She has a point. With Camila’s advice in mind, I stow away all the questions I still have and text Jek back. He wants brevity, two can play at that game.

K.

CHAPTER 6

An icy, crystalline mist slicks the pavement that night as I head over to Jek’s house just after nine. I knock on his door, still wondering what he wants, why he invited me, when a thought suddenly filters up from my unconscious: I don’t know if Jek ever got his phone back. He must have, right? There’s no way Jek’s been walking around for days without his phone and not noticing. Hyde said he was going to return it, and he must have done so. Besides, why would Hyde steal someone’s phone and use it to invite people to the real owner’s address? That doesn’t make sense.

I’ve almost 100 percent convinced myself of this logic, but I’m just enough unsure that a little thrill pulses through me as I wait for the door to open. The thought that Hyde might be the one who texted me—that he’s the one who wanted to meet me here—settles in the back of my mind. What will I do if the door opens and it’s not Jek waiting for me, but Hyde?

The door opens.

It’s not Jek.

“Hey, Lulu!”

Before I can respond or react, long arms are flung enthusiastically around my neck. “Long time no see. Glad you could make it.”

It’s Lane. Lane’s been friends with Jek almost as long as I have, so I’ve been friends with him awhile, too. He’s tall and wiry with rosy cheeks that make him look perpetually cheerful, which he basically is—a great big puppy, in human form. Even though I still think of him more as Jek’s friend than mine, I’ve always liked him.

I greet Lane with slightly more reserve than he showed to me, then head to Jek’s bedroom to drop off my coat with the others, taking stock of the scene as I return to the main room. Jek’s apartment feels cozy and familiar to me, but to a stranger it would probably seem a bit odd. His aesthetic is a weird mix of druggie burnout and mad scientist, with walls covered with a mix of hip-hop posters, black light-sensitive abstractions and gently undulating mandala tapestries. The furniture consists mostly of hand-me-downs from his mom’s old place, which were already threadbare and falling apart when we were kids. And where the apartment’s freestanding kitchen once was is the most high-tech laboratory you could probably find outside of a legitimately funded lab. Unlike the comfortable decrepitude visible throughout the rest of the place, Jek’s workspace is meticulously clean and well-ordered, with his test tubes and pipettes lined up in gleaming rows, and a centrifuge and sterilizer tucked away into neat corners. His ongoing experiments and sensitive chemicals are carefully labeled according to his own unfathomable system and stored in a locked glass-front cabinet. And in the center of it all, Jek’s pride and joy: the strange, sleek machines his mother light-fingered from London Chem’s retired equipment storage for Jek’s personal use.

Tonight, a handful of people are milling around the sitting area of Jek’s apartment and a few more are in his kitchen/lab. Of course. Not a date. Not an apology or a confession. And not a movie sleepover, like when we were little. It’s Friday night, and Jek is hosting a party.

I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve been to quite a few of these gatherings in the past, though I’ve skipped out on the last couple. They’re not parties like the kegger I went to with Camila, where half the school shows up to get wasted and trash someone’s house. Jek’s parties are much smaller, never more than twenty people, with the music low and unobtrusive and an emphasis on shared experience.

These little get-togethers, which Jek calls his clinical trials, are really just his way of testing out whatever new compound he’s been working on. I remember when we were kids and his trials were more innocent. In early elementary school it was pretty basic stuff—baking soda volcanoes and the like. As he got older, though, it wasn’t enough for Jek to repeat experiments people had been doing for years. He wanted to do “real” science, like his mom and the other researchers at London Chem. He wanted to develop new compounds for the betterment of mankind. He worked on cleaning agents at first, sometimes with mixed results. Like the concoction he created to remove rust—it worked perfectly, except for the fact that it ate right through the metal.

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