Rush
Kani was walking briskly. A careful kind of fast, not likely to attract attention, but not so slow as to be seen. She worked her way down to Bolton Village, stayed out of the streetlights, close to the buildings.
She looked at Stacey’s phone in her hand, took even breaths, closed her eyes, trying to think. When she opened them again, she still had no answer.
She searched through the memory banks, through all the names of people she didn’t know, back to the start again. She paused at number twenty-seven.
She pushed the call button, and put the handset to her ear. It rang twice before picking up with a noisy background.
“Hallo!” came a heavily-accented voice. “Wong Mushu Chicken Factory! Home of Magnificent Cheesecake! Can I take your order?”
She pulled the phone back, frowned at it.
“I…” she began.
“No, just kidding,” laughed the voice, accent gone. “I love that one. Every time I do the Italian accent I sound like a Nintendo game. Still funny, just not the same.”
Kani blinked.
“Who is this?” she asked.
“Who is this? Who are you?” he asked.
“It’s T—”
“Rhetorical question, sorry. Never… you know what? Hold on.”
The phone went dead. She took it away from her ear, checked it, and then slid it into her pocket. She kept walking, watching the strangers around her carefully.
The phone rang. She took it out, checked the number, and saw it was from “Wong Mushu Chicken Factory.” She answered.
“Hallo!” said the voice. “Wong Mushu Ch… yeah, it doesn’t work the other way around.”
Kani stopped walking looked around.
“I think I have the wrong number,” she said.
“Wong number! You made a funny!”
“It’s not funny,” she sighed.
“You’re boring. Why am I helping you?”
“Are you helping me?”
There was a long pause.
“I think I’m helping you. Tundra, right?”
Kani took a step into the shadows, a couple across the street watched her, frowned. She smiled at them, but they wouldn’t stop frowning.
“How do you know that?” she asked.
“You called me, didn’t you?”
“I… Where are you?” she asked, looking around, into the sky. The stars were out, bathed in a dark blue that felt so comforting, Kani couldn’t describe it.
“You ever heard of Monitor City?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“No one has,” he sighed. “But that’s where I am.”
“Is that a made-up place?”
He cleared his throat.
“Listen,” he said. “I don’t go making fun of you because you called yourself Tundra. I mean honestly, between the two of us, I’m the more grounded, I’d say.”
“What’s your name, anyway?”
“Kaso.”
Kani said nothing.
“Okay fine, I have a strange name too,” he said. “Anyway, you’re getting me off track here. I’m supposed to remind you about security. Do you remember security?”
Kani winced. She smiled into the air.
“Which part?” she asked.
“The part about not calling this number?”
“Ah. Right.”
The phone went dead again. She held it back, and it rang. She answered, put it to her ear carefully.
“Hello?”
“Sorry, wrong key.”
“Listen,” she said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I have a crisis here and I need some help. Can you help me, or is there someone else I can call?”
“You’re talking about Espey, aren’t you?”
“Who?”
“Espey. You’re dissing me to my face. Well, not my actual face, but virtually and anyway no. I’m what you’ve got. Now let’s go over the security protocols. What’s your emergency?”
Kani ducked into the doorway of a closed shop, peered around for security cameras. When it seemed safe, she whispered:
“There were police at my house.”
“Do you live at a donut shop?”
“No.”
“Just checking. Okay. What’s your Plan B?”
Kani leaned against the door and closed her eyes. The wind was picking up, and she was hungry and had never felt so tired in her life.
“I don’t have a Plan B,” she said, voice wavering.
“Nobody ever has a Plan B,” Kaso muttered. “It doesn’t matter how many times you tell them, nobody ever thinks they need one. And then here we are, sitting around in the night, wishing we had one. I have one, and I live in a bloody autonomous city state. I don’t need one.”
“Are you going to help me?”
“Hold on. I need you to do something first. There’s an Off License shop across the street, right?”
Kani looked over, saw the sign, nodded blankly.
“How did you—”
“Go in there, walk to the back of the store, and pick up two bottles of Screech.”
“I’m not old enough to—”
“I didn’t say drink them, I said pick them up.”
Kani nodded, ran across the street and ducked into the store. The clerk watched her with narrow eyes, chewing a long pepperoni stick that made the whole place reek like processed plastic meat. Kani slipped into the back, found the whisky aisle, and picked up two bottles.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Turn a bit to your left.”
She turned, paused.
“Why am I—”
“Ooo,” said Kaso appreciatively. “You’re quite the looker, aren’t ya?”
She put down the bottles, left the store, smiling to the clerk in as calm a way as she could. She snorted at her, went back to his magazine.
“So here’s my plan. Since you’re good looking — ooh la la—”
“Shut up.”
“— but with a poor, poor excuse for a personality, I’m going to suggest the following. You need to find yourself some cheap booze, get brain-smashingly drunk, and pass out in a public washroom somewhere.”
Kani stopped, looked at the phone, and then put it back to her ear.
“That’s not a plan.”
“It’s a great plan. Listen: nobody would know when you started, and it’s as good as an alibi. Honestly, the cops won’t be looking at any teenager for you-know-what if they can help it. Give them a reason to go elsewhere, and they will.”
Kani sighed.
“It’s not just that, though. There’s something else…”
“What?” asked Kaso. “What else?”
Kani couldn’t answer, though, because she was staring into the face of a very angry Erlenmeyer. He plucked the phone out of her hand and turned it off as Fantoni came up behind him.
“The money didn’t come through,” said Fantoni. “Time you saw what we do to failures in this biz…”