Sparrow's Story - A Girl Defiant

Chapter 24

Damon drives up to the house, but instead of turning off the engine, keeps it running. “I’m going to get the car washed. You need anything?”

“No, I’m fine.”

 Sparrow cruises through the house, checking where her brothers are. The Sportswall’s blaring in the media room, and the twins are motionless on the couch, a direct feed going from it to their brains.

Nate’s somewhere, but she’s not worried about him seeing her. 

The controls for the alarm system are by the front door and she gets down to work, reprogramming them. Dad bought a discontinued model so he got a great deal on the system, but it’s basically worthless, because Damon barely knows how to program it.  

Every door and window is wired so the system will ping if one of them’s opened. She flips open the control box and deprograms the window in her bedroom, and one of the doors to the backyard. And then, just in case, the door to the garage. 

Nate catches her as she closes the control box. “Hey, Sis.” He leans against the wall. “What’s happening?”

“Nothing much.”

He frowns at the floor. Nate’s never been a talker. Only Mom could get stuff out of him. “It sucks what Dad’s doing,” he says. 

“Tell me about it.” 

“You know he’s buying a wife.”

Her temperature drops thirty degrees.  “How do you know?”

“You’re not the only hacker in the family.”

“Who is she?”

“A senior at a school in Santa Monica. Her name’s Larissa.”

“Larissa. So that’s why the big rush to cash me in.”

Dad’s betrayed her in so many ways, but selling her to buy a girl her age hurts more than anything. 

Damon pulls into the driveway and Nate pushes off from the wall. “Don’t forget the motion detector light out back.” 

Damon comes in from the garage, and Sparrow hears him tell her brothers to go ahead and order pizza, because Dad’s working late.

When the pizza comes an hour later, Damon parks in front of the Sportswall with her brothers and a couple beers. College basketball’s on two screens, football’s on four, and soccer’s live in some country on the other side of the International Date Line. 

Sparrow slips out to the garage and climbs into the very back of the SUV. She feels  around for the access panel for the taillights. The plastic screw loosens with one turn, and the panel lifts out. 

She reaches behind a small steel box screwed to the frame. Her hand fits into the narrow opening and she scratches away at the duct tape. She can’t see what she’s doing and the tape doesn’t want to give. 

She’s almost there when the garage light flips on and she slides down to the floor. Her heart pounds while she listens to someone rattle around in the freezer. The freezer light goes off, and then a second later the garage light goes out.

That was close. She reaches back into the opening and freezes as she hears a click. The rear hatch lifts up and the light pins her like a bug.

Nate grins and bites into an ice cream bar. “Surprised?”

“God, I could kill you.”

“Need help?”

“Sure. I can’t get this thing loose.”

Nate hands her his ice cream and feels up in the crack. Then he pulls a folding knife out of his pants.  

“Jeez, Nate. Isn’t that a little serious for school?”

“I don’t flash it around.” He swipes it a couple times in the crack and a plastic sandwich bag with a fat roll of cash inside falls into his hand. “Here.”

She trades him the ice cream for the money and peels off a couple hundreds for him. “Severance pay from Mintbox.”

“Now I’ll have to get a real job.” 

She stuffs the roll in her pocket, and screws the panel back in place. 

Nate sits down beside her and they hang their legs out the back.  “My friends and I made a video. You wanna see?”

“Duh. Of course.” 

He taps his phone and goes to Rise Up, a site where students load protest videos.  

“When did you turn political?” she says. She’s never seen him think beyond the next soccer game or AP test. 

Nate shrugs off the question. “Here.” He and six of his gangly white and Asian  friends pose like a dance crew. “Andrew wrote the song.”

The gang raps and shows off their moves. Their song is hilarious and crude, and Nate and Sparrow laugh together through the whole thing. When it ends, she says,  “You realize, if the lieutenant governor of California could actually do that to himself, he’d be the biggest porn star ever.” 

Nate says something, but she doesn’t hear it, because she’s thinking that Nate’s leaving his jerk days behind and turning into a decent human being, and she won’t get to see it, because no matter what happens in the next couple of days, she’ll be thousands of miles away. 

The overhead light flips on and Nate turns off his phone. They turn around and see Damon trudging over to the car. “What are you two doing out here?” he says. 

Nate grins and waggles his ice cream stick in Damon’s face. “We’re tailgating.”

“Come on, get back in the house.”  

They follow him back inside, and Sparrow decides to write Nate a job recommendation. As  the ex-pres of Mintbox Tech she can say he’s always had her back.