JAMIE
While Tess Biedermann was trying to keep her monster cat from eating Mr. Stoop and Mr. Pinscher and Theo Biedermann was losing his head, Jaime Cruz remained blissfully unaware that anything had changed. Despite the commotion in the hallway and Mozart's Fortieth Symphony blasting inside his own apartment, he was fast asleep, big brown feet hanging over the edge of his twin bed. And he would have stayed asleep if his grandmother hadn't thrown open his bedroom door, waded through the piles of clothes and comic books, and given one big toe a hard pinch.
Jaime shot up. "WATCH OUT FOR THE ZOMBIES!"
His grandmother, who he called Mima because shewas like a mother to him, put her hands on her hips, raised one brow. "I am looking at a zombie right now." "Mima?" Jaime said, blinking away dream-images of the shambling undead.
"No," she said. "It's the secretary of state. I'm declaring your room a disaster area."
Jaime found his glasses on his nightstand and put them on. His grandmother came into focus—short and wiry, thick dark curls shot with silver, her expression the usual mixture of fondness and exasperation.
"What time is it?" he said.
"Time to admit to your long-suffering grandmother that you spent the entire night playing video games. Again."
"Not the entire night," Jaime said, yawning.
"Jaime," she began, pronouncing his name the Cuban way, the J curling like smoke from the back of her throat. In addition to her native Spanish, she spoke five other languages fluently and another three well enough to make polite conversation, and she could ask for the ladies' room or a cup of coffee in a dozen more.
"Mima, it's the first week of summer vacation," Jaime said. "Kids are allowed to stay up playing video games during summer vacation."
"Says who?"
"It's in the Bill of Rights."
"Not the one I read. After breakfast, you can clean up all these books and papers and junk. It's a fire hazard. I won't have a fire hazard in my building, let alone in my own apartment."
"Okay, Mima."
She turned to walk out, stopped, and picked up a drawing from Jaime's desk. He had a Lion-powered tablet his father had sent him but preferred draw-ing on paper. The tablet had a stylus and all sorts of fancy settings, but the smooth, pliable screen seemed so indifferent to his efforts. Paper soaked up the ink, drank it in as if it were thirsty for it.
"Is this a zombie fighter?" said Mima, inspecting the drawing.
"Yeah," said Jaime.
"Not bad. I like the sword. And these are some fancy boots he's wearing."
"See, I told you I wasn't playing games the whole night."
"No, you were drawing cartoons," she said, putting the sketch back on the desk.
"What's wrong with that?"
She looked at that Spider-Man movie poster over his bed—Miles Morales leaping from top of the Morningstarr Tower, shooting webs in both directions. "As long as you keep your grades up," she said, "there's nothing wrong with it."
Jaime didn't answer; he didn't need to. They had this conversation all the time. Jaime would stay up too late with his computer games and his drawings; Mima would worry he was wasting his brains on foolishness and more foolishness; Jaime would point out his straight As; Mima would say that foolishness always catches up to a person sooner or later. Usually, she would launch into a lecture about his mother and the groundbreaking work she had done so many years ago, and his father and all the sacrifices he'd made. But not today. Maybe because it was summer vacation. Maybe because she knew that his best friends, Dash Ursu and Eli Avasthi, were both already at camp and Jaime would be alone till school started again. Maybe she really did like the zombie fighter and his awesome boots.
"Come on, lazy boy. Get out of bed and I'll make you some eggs," Mima said, and swept from the room.
Jaime climbed from the bed, stretched. He fed his hamster-hogs, Napolean and Tyrone, both girls. Napolean curled up in his palm the way she always did, naked little elf feet sticking straight up. Her "quills" had been rendered filmy and fluffy by the genetic engineering, and she emitted little happy squeaks as he rubbed her soft belly. Tyrone, on the other hand, squealed indignantly when he tried to catch her. She took to her wheel and ran like she was trying to power the entire cage for lift-off to a more just universe. Tyrone was not to be messed with.
"That's right, Tyrone," said Jaime. "Don't let any-body get you down."
The delicious smell of eggs and peppers wafted down the hall and into his room, so he put Napolean back in the cage. He pulled on his favorite painter's pants and a Mister Terrific T-shirt, washed up, and slouched toward the kitchen. The short hallway was lined floor to ceiling with photographs of his whole family, his grand-parents when they were young, long before his granddad passed. But mostly the pictures were of his parents—his mom splashing in the surf with her brother and sister on a beach in Trinidad, his father running on a soccer field in college, his mom again working in her first laboratory. As he did every morning, Jaime paused in front of his favorite, a picture of his mother holding a chubby little boy on her lap, both of them laughing, bright silver smiles in happy brown faces. She looked so young in the picture, too young for the chubby little boy to be hers, but she'd been thirty-two and a doctor when the photo was taken. It was the last photo his father ever took of his mother. It seemed impossible that a woman whose smile was so radiant had died just a few weeks later and that the little boy was now as tall as she was then.
"If this food gets cold, I will be forced to feed it to your Franken-rodents," Mima called.
He touched the frame of the photo once, then tore his eyes away from the picture. "Coming."
Jaime sat at the table just as Mima scooped some eggs, onions, and peppers onto his plate. "What's up for you today, Mima?"
Mima exchanged Mozart's Fortieth for Tito Puente's "Oye Como Va." She waved her spatula to the beat. "Oh, Mr. Perlmutter complained that the moldings around his window need to be caulked, that the Morningstarr seal is coming loose again. And the Hornshaws have a leaking bathroom sink. And the Ms. Gomezes are having trouble with the air-conditioning."
Mima had been the building manager of 354 W. 73rd Street for more than thirty years. Delicate as she looked, she could snake a drain, plaster a ceiling, replace a lock, refinish a floor, rewire a washing machine, unclog a toilet, get out a juice stain, install a ceiling fan, oper-ate a jigsaw, douse a kitchen fire, program a cable box, and probably survive in the wild with only a nail file and a thimble. Jaime's dad said he got his mechanical aptitude from Mima and not Jaime's grandfather, who could barely operate a toaster without injuring himself.
Jaime took a bite of the eggs. His dad would be in Sudan for three months, working to start up a new solar power plant. The money was too good to pass up, he'd said. But Jaime couldn't help wishing he'd passed it up anyway.
"Did Dad call this morning?"
"No," said Mima, "but you know how busy he gets." "He's always busy," Jaime muttered.
"Your father has sacrificed a lot for you, mi vida." Jaime nodded and shoveled more eggs into his mouth so he wouldn't get another lecture on hard work, sacrifice, respecting one's elders, and cleaning one's plate after one's grandmother toils over the stove to feed you, lazy boy. Besides, he was starving. He was halfway through a second helping of eggs when he finally heard the voices outside in the hallway, a sort of hum that got louder and louder, cutting into Tito's drums. Mima must have heard the hum, too, because she turned off the music. By the time she did, however, the voices had gone quiet.
"Cricket and Otto?" Jaime said.
"Those two have worn their mother out," Mima said. "She stays inside her apartment, slumped in front of the TV like one of your zombies. And this is why I didn't want that TV."
Jaime didn't bother explaining that zombies wouldn't exactly appreciate TV. He took one last bite of eggs and went to the door. He opened it to find a man so short that Jaime looked straight over the top of his head before even registering anyone was there. The man thrust a packet of papers past Jaime to his grandmother, who had come to the door. "Have a nice day," the man said, his voice toneless as the whine of an insect.
Mima took the papers and said, "What are these?" but the man was already whirring away.
Jaime stepped into the hall. At one end of the pas-sage, an impossibly, unreasonably, insanely tall man waited at the elevator. He nodded at Jaime as if in greeting, but Jaime had never seen him before. The little man reached his companion. The elevator opened and the two stepped inside, turning around to face Jaime. The pair of them seemed like something out of a comic book, one so stretched out and hollow cheeked and mole specked, the other so punched down and razor burned and lizard lipped. Jaime itched to draw them. As the elevator doors closed, the little man waggled his fingers.
Bye-bye.
"Did you hear?"
Jaime turned his head toward the other end of the hallway. Tess Biedermann stood in front of her open apartment door, her hand tugging at the leash of her ginormous spotted cat, her face greenish and crumpled like a tissue.
Jaime didn't know Tess well, but he knew her well enough to know that it would take something awful to make her look like that.
His own throat felt strangely tight when he said, "Hear what?"
Jaime sat on the Biedermanns' couch, chewing on some sort of pastry that Mr. Biedermann called a blintz, which sounded more like something that happened to you rather than something you ate. That guy? Oh, yeah, he was totally blintzed. Look at him. He's just a zombie now.
Mima, as blintzed as Jaime was by the news that their building had been sold right out from under them, was doing what she always did when she was stressed: cleaning. She'd found an ancient hand vacuum shaped like an anteater and methodically removed the cat hair from every piece of furniture in the Biedermanns' living room. When she was done with the furniture, she followed Mr. Biedermann around making odd gestures in the air behind him, as if she were trying to figure out how to vacuum his pants without being rude.
But then, Mima wasn't the only one behaving oddly. The Biedermanns' apartment was packed with people— all of them blintzed out of their minds. It was as if the entire population of 354 W. 73rd Street had decided that a police detective like Mrs. Biedermann would surely be able to rescue them from this disaster. She could call in some favors, help them fight city hall, and they wouldn't be forced from their home.
So, Mrs. Biedermann was making calls. From the look on her face, she didn't seem to be getting the answers she wanted, but she kept calling. Mr. Bieder-mann had put up a big pot of coffee and was passing out cups. Mr. and Mrs. Adeyemi huddled with Mr. and Mrs. Yang and Ms. and Ms. Gomez. The Hornshaws talked to Mr. and Mrs. Moran while the Morans' daughter, Cricket, darted through the apartment on her tricycle. Her little brother, Otto, demonstrated a blur of "karate" moves on top of the coffee table until his father plucked him off it. Under the coffee table, the giant spotted cat sprawled on what looked like a pile of laundry. Mr. Perlmutter, who had lived approximately a thousand years so far and didn't seem too happy about it, brandished his walker at no one in particular. Tess Biedermann went around the room, asking various adults if they should band together and sue the city. The adults did what adults usually do to kids during a crisis: they ignored her.
Most fascinating to Jaime was Theo Biedermann, who was stomping through a huge, sprawling Lego castle like a slow-motion Godzilla destroying a fictional Tokyo. He'd reel back his foot and send it through a wall. Reel it back again and knock out a tower. Kind of horrifying, kind of awesome. Even Otto stopped wriggling in his father's arms to watch the blocks flying in every direction.
Watching Theo got a lot less awesome and way more horrifying when Mr. Moran pointed at the blocks and said, "That's exactly what Slant will do to this building. Knock it down to the ground. He'll build condos that cost millions apiece and we'll all end up in Staten Island."
"Try Idaho," said Tess Biedermann, who elbowed her way into the conversation.
"Are you sure there's nothing we can do?" said Mrs. Hornshaw.
"The detective is making some calls."
Mr. Moran said, "She's not going to be able to do any-thing. The city owns the building; the city can sell it."
Mrs. Yang said, "We're nothing to any of them." The taller Ms. Gomez agreed. "We're bugs." Otto yelled, "I'M NOT A BUG I'M A NINJA!"
"But I thought this place was a historical landmark," said Mrs. Adeyemi. "I thought it was protected."
"The motion never passed. Who do you think is on that board?" said Mr. Yang.
Mr. Moran nodded. "Bajillionaires."
Theo paused midstomp. "There is no such number as 'bajillion,'" he said, and then brought his foot down. Blocks sprayed up.
"Can't we sue?" said Tess, "I mean, if we all band together . . ."
Mrs. Biedermann laid her phone on the kitchen counter. It hadn't even made a sound, but everyone stopped talking. Theo Biedermann stopped stomping. Cricket zoomed around the room on her trike till her dad caught her.
"Well," Mrs. Biedermann began. And that's all she had to say for every face in the room to fall.
"What?" said Tess. "Well, what?" "I'm sorry," said Mrs. Biedermann.
"You're sorry," spit Mr. Perlmutter. He brandished his walker again, then hobbled out the door.
The rest of the people took a last sip of coffee, a last bite of blintz. Mrs. Moran took ahold of the trike while Mr. Moran gathered one kid under each big pink arm.
Cricket, dangling in her father's grasp, looked at Jaime. "Your hair looks like little worms."
"Be nice, Cricket," said her mother wearily.
"My hair is little worms," Jaime told Cricket. "They dance when no one is looking."
"Mommy, I want hair worms that dance when people are looking. I want famous hair."
"Sure you do," her mother said, patting her own short and tidy black 'fro.
"I'M A NINJA!" shouted Otto.
"You're just a dumb baby," said Cricket to her brother, who had Cricket's bronze skin but limp hair. "You're not famous at all."
Jaime sat on that couch, feeling like a dumb baby, not famous at all. Slant, Inc., had offered everyone relocation money, but not nearly enough to keep everyone in this borough, let alone this neighborhood. And who would find Mima another job? She loved this building. She loved the goofy elevator and the old windows and the ancient plumbing and the plaster that always needed fixing. For Mima, there would never be another building like this one. She had stopped following Mr. Biedermann around and was now standing alone in the middle of the room, frowning at the vacuum as if it had failed her.
Plus. Plus.
His mom had lived here.
Mrs. Biedermann scooped up her phone and made another call. "Ronnie? Yeah, it's me. Great, thanks. You? Glad to hear it."
"Mom, I just need to talk to you for a minute," Tess Biedermann said. "If we could—"
Her mother held up a hand, kept talking. "Listen, your sister's a real estate agent, right? She any good? Be honest! Okay. Can I have her name and number? Something's come up and we might have to find a new place. Yeah, I know. I'll explain later. I have a pen, go ahead."
Tess Biedermann finally gave up. She slumped on the couch next to Jaime, the two of them watching Theo knock down the last wall standing. Tess said, "He never does stuff like that."
"Like what?"
"Never freaks out. Never messes things up."
"Oh," said Jaime. He didn't know what else to say. Everything was already messed up.
The Biedermanns' apartment emptied out. Mr. Biedermann gathered the plates and coffee cups. Mima put the little vacuum back wherever she'd found it. Jaime stood to follow her out, but she said, "Why don't you stay with your friends? I have some calls to make, too."
Friends? He'd gone to grammar school with the twins and knew them a little. But they were like a set of salt and pepper shakers; they didn't seem to need any-one else. Jaime wasn't sure what he needed. He wanted to crawl under the coffee table and curl up with the cat till the whole thing was over, but what kind of chicken did that? He should march his famous hair to the mayor's office and stage some sort of protest. Make speeches or chain himself to a radiator or go on a hunger strike or all three. Something. Something.
Mrs. Biedermann covered the phone. "Tess? Did you sort Grandpa's mail yet?"
"What? No. Who cares about—"
"Why don't you bring it upstairs and put the new batch with the rest?"
"But—"
Mrs. Biedermann's eyes landed on Jaime. "Maybe Jaime wants to go with you. And the cat. And your brother, before he decides to start kicking our furniture out the window."
"What does it matter?" Tess grumbled. But she whistled for Nine. The cat crept out from under the coffee table and Tess slipped her into a harness.
"Come on, Theo," Tess said. "Mom wants to get rid of us."
Mr. Biedermann put a stack of plates in the sink with a rattle. "Tess, you know that's not what your mother meant."
Tess didn't answer. She marched toward the door. Turned. Glared. At both of them. "Are you guys just going to stand there, or are you coming with me?"
Theo blinked, focused on Jaime for the first time since Jaime had arrived in the apartment. "Well? What do you think?"
"I think you look a little blintzed to me," Jaime said. Theo smiled, a tiny smile that disappeared as fast as it had appeared. "We're all a little blintzed." He stepped over the destruction and followed Tess out of the apartment.
"Thanks, Mr. and Mrs. Biedermann," Jaime said, though he wasn't sure what he was thanking them for, really.
Mrs. Biedermann waved, continued her phone call. "Bye, Jaime," said Mr. Biedermann absently. "Hope you'll come by again."
"Sure," Jaime said, the word thick on his tongue. "We have a whole month."
In the hallway, as Jaime was shutting the Biedermanns' door behind him, he noticed something white and crumpled on the floor. He picked it up. An envelope with a gold seal and what looked like teeth marks. How upset had Mima been that she'd missed a piece of trash littering up her building? That she didn't stop and pick it up? That none of the other tenants had?
He turned the envelope over, smoothed it out. The words TRUST NO ONE TRUST NO ONE TRUST NO ONE screamed at him. "Now you tell me," he muttered.
"Jaime?" Tess called. She was holding the elevator with a stiff arm and a furious expression, wispy tendrils of hair standing out in a corona all around her head. She reminded him of Tyrone the hamster-hog trying to power her way to a more just universe.
Don't let anybody get you down.
Jaime folded the envelope and slipped it into a pocket. "Coming."