Uma Khatri
World Literature Honors 2
Tompkins
24 April 2015
Crashed (Overdrive) and Burned
Beeeeeeep!
The front entrance access keypad to the building is glowing blue, the backlit series of numbers making it impossible for me to get a good read on how long it would take me to crack. I’m dressed in a cliché black outfit, not because I’m scared, but because color had never been my thing. Focus, I remind myself. I get to work, my code scrambler working to decipher how many numbers my fingers would have to punch in order to open the sliding doors that led to my redemption.
My phone beeped, making me flinch. I quickly got it from my pocket, looking at a text from Tree.
Get it done.
I ignored the rolling pulse my stomach made in response to the message, and shoved my phone back into the pocket of what I now considered way too tight jeans. As my fingers fly across the decoder that I held within my pocket, Tree’s voice echoes in my head.
The first time I met him was right after I was done with my sixth year of homeschooling. I ambled down to the park, my decoder a comforting weight in my right pocket. As I turned the corner, a young boy stood facing me. His feet were wide apart, his arms crossed, and his soft faced crossed into a loud scowl.
As I would come to find out later, the expression he held that day rarely changed.
He told me he had needed me for a job. Here he was, a boy who looked no older than seven years old, asking me to help him crack a code. I laughed in his face and walked away. But Tree ambled behind me, stopping me in my tracks with one sentence.
“It’s a paid job.”
And that’s how I got here. Doing Tree’s bidding at his call and risking my early acceptance to Duke. But what can I do? Tree’s got me wrapped around his finger with the amount of money that I earn for each job, and to be honest, I can’t spare much these days. Everything I have is going towards the wheelchair rails being installed at my house. College is the only way I’ll be able to get out of here.
So I do the jobs.
I jolt myself back into the present. My decoder beeps, showing me the seven-digit passcode that will get me into the building that Tree needs me to case. Only when I get in do I see the office that I am in.
Goldberg Extreme Enterprises. My breathing kicks up a notch, and I double check the office number that Tree has sent me, along with another semi-threatening text.
1792.
With that one number, my breath knocks out with a strangled noise, and I am slowly transported to a time in which I was happy.
A time that right now, seems like forever ago.
“Lucy, do you want to come to work with me?”, my half-sister Anna cooed, picking me up and twirling me around. “Yes!”, I giggled happily, excited to get out of that miserable house where there was nothing but silence. We got into Anna’s apple-green car. Her car smelled like watermelons.
“If you get lost, come to this office, okay?”, Anna lectured, as she loosely held my hand with one of hers and produced a pen with another. I looked down at my arm, and scrolled there in a flowery print, was a four-digit number.
“1-7-9-2”, I read slowly.
My hands tremble, the decoder that leaves my hand only when strictly necessary clatters to the floor.
I need to get out of here.
I can’t bail on the job Tree gave me to do. Yet the only job he gave me was the unlock the building, which he would later visit himself. I checked the clock. 7:51. Tree knows my level of expertise, as he had researched me in his computer lab before approaching me in the park. He may have been young, but there was a reason that the kid got his parents to buy him four government-standard software packages for each of his Apple computers.
He was crafty.
Tree would know what I was up to if I left now. My legs pulsed with the need to run, to hide from this place which had given me shelter when I had nowhere else to go. Tears pricked my eyes. Shameful, I think bitterly.
I have to stay, though. I owe it to Anna.
So I stay. I figure I have about four and a half minutes before security realizes I’ve breached the system. I take out my silver dusting paint from the pack hidden around my ankle, dusting the doorknob and the keypad inside the door. The paint masked the pulsing of the lights just as I slipped out, bringing me to the outside keypad where this had all started. I got to work, plugging in my red wire with the green one, raising the security level from a 2 to about a 4. Tree doesn’t know that I can better the security systems, just that I know how to breach them. Then I dusted off my fingerprints, re-jumbled my decoder, and got out of there.
Two and a half minutes ahead of schedule.
As I climbed into the apple-green car, my most trusted sidekick, I text Tree.
Can’t do it. Security level is a 4. Already spent 7 minutes. Can’t risk more.
I smile to myself, pop a watermelon jolly rancher in my mouth, and hum as I drive home.
Tree may be smart, but he’s only nine.
I’ve got a sister at home to take care of.
