Chapter 9

            Jessie watched Will run off, but made no attempt to stop him.  As a cheerleader and member of the track team she could have run him down if she chose, even in her bare feet.  She didn't choose to, though; Will would need some time to work things out on his own.

            She couldn't blame him.  Tom was his brother and the last thing he wanted was for his brother to get into more trouble.  At the same time, the lives of billions was at stake.  Could they really weight one human life against all those billions of dogs, cats, and raccoons?

            "Are you sure we can't do it without Tom?" she asked.

            "Dr. Ruff is fairly certain."

            "How certain?  Ninety percent?  Seventy-five?  Fifty-fifty?"

            "I don't know."  Ricky Raccoon did his best to shake his head.  "It wasn't supposed to be this complicated.  I was supposed to make contact with Will Denton and he in turn would persuade his brother and you to join him.  No one said anything about detention centers."

            "I thought you soldiers were supposed to be prepared for anything."

            "How can anyone be prepared for this?"

            She had to admit the stuffed raccoon had a good point.  Certainly there was no way she could ever have prepared to have a stuffed cat come flying out of her closet, hissing and yowling like a banshee.  Nor could she have ever prepared for it opening up with some kind of bazooka to destroy her stereo and CD collection.  How she was going to explain that to Mom and Roger she didn't have any idea.  Not that she worried about explaining anything to Roger; that wimp was nothing more than a figurehead, his mother's yes-man.  At least until it came to precious little Megan, then he would have an opinion.  She was his real daughter after all, not a step-daughter, the fruit of someone else's loins.

            She snapped herself out of these bitter thoughts.  There was too much to do at the moment, foremost among those being to put on some decent clothes.  She didn't want to raid a juvenile prison and travel to another dimension in her nightgown.  "Wait here a second," she told Ricky.

            She decided to take the short way around by simply climbing in through her window.  It was easy enough to pry the screen off from the outside; she had done it at least a hundred times before to sneak in after curfew.  She slithered in through the window, dropping onto a convenient pile of clothes.  Since it was four in the morning, she didn't dare turn on the light as she dressed in her tracksuit.  The mirror lay in pieces on the ground, not that she was going to try doing her makeup in the dark anyway.  She did at least pull her hair back into a ponytail so as not to look like a complete slob.

            Looking around the room, she wondered if she should bring another outfit to change into later.  After all, it would be the first time she saw Tom in four years.  She wondered what prison life had done to him.  In the movies they usually worked out a lot to bulk up.  At least the macho ones did.  The sissy ones—She didn't want to think about that.  No matter how bad things got, Tom wouldn't turn queer, not even in jail.  She reminded herself that she would be the first girl he'd seen in four years who wasn't his mother, so it wouldn't matter what she looked like.

            Dropping back through the window, she rolled into a sitting position on the ground.  Ricky Raccoon hadn't moved throughout this, as if contemplating something.  "I think we're going to need her help," Ricky said.

            "Can't we just leave her in the closet?  What if she runs amok again?"

            "There's no one better to break into a prison than her."

            Jessie shrugged, her mother's house could attest to this.  "I suppose.  But really, isn't there any other way we can do this?  A way that doesn't involve breaking Tom out of the big house?  He's going to get into serious trouble."

            "My people are in serious trouble."

            "Well, at least can we give him the choice?  Let him decide if he wants to do it."

            Ricky considered this for a moment.  "I suppose that would be acceptable.  As a Creator I'm sure he'll make the right decision."

            Jessie didn't know about that.  Even before the convenience store robbery Tom had never been the most selfless individual.  She thought of all the times he had called her a "stupid girl" and loudly shouted down her ideas about the Bloc and pulled on her pigtails.  She only hoped that when presented with the evidence, he would do the right thing.  "Let's hope so."

            "What about Will Denton?"

            "Leave him to me.  In the meantime, you and Heather can put your heads together and see what you can come up with."  Jessie plucked the stuffed raccoon off the table, carrying him back towards the Denton house.  She still remembered which room belonged to Will and found the window screen as easy to pry off as hers.

            Heather came roaring out of the closet like the Tasmanian Devil in those old Looney Tunes cartoons.  She had the spike she had tried to stab Megan with out, brandishing at Jessie and Ricky.  "You aren't putting me back in there," she said.  "It stinks."  Jessie could only imagine the odor of a boy's closet from old gym socks and the like.

            "No one's putting you back in there—so long as you behave," Jessie said.  "Now, you two get to work.  I'm going to find our missing Creator."  Then she dove through the window and set off to find Will.

#

            At five in the morning, the park by city hall was virtually empty.  The only other occupants at the moment were a homeless woman with a shopping cart holding all her worldly goods and a squirrel going from tree to tree.  Will watched the squirrel until it disappeared into the higher branches of a tree.  As for the homeless woman, he tried to give her as much privacy as possible.

            When he first saw Jessie in her tracksuit running along the pathway, he assumed she was merely out for a morning jog.  She had probably forgotten about the incident with Heather and the near-destruction of her house.  She probably forgotten about him, just as she had for the last four years.  He didn't bother to wave as she approached, figuring she wouldn't see him; he was invisible to her.

            She came to a stop in front of him, her breathing still steady and hardly any sweat on her brow.  "There you are.  I thought you might have hitched a right to Billings," she said.

            "No.  I just wanted to be alone."

            Without asking, she sat next to him on the bench.  "Look, Will—"

            "Sure, now you know my name."

            "What are you talking about?"

            "You know."

            "No I don't.  What do you mean?"

            "Yeah, I suppose you wouldn't know."

            "What are you grumbling about?"

            "I don't know, maybe that the last four years you've acted like I don't exist.  And then when you do act like I exist you call me a spaz.  Now you're trying to be all buddy-buddy."

            "I didn't act like you didn't exist.  You ran away from me."

            "Why shouldn't I?  You started hanging out with all sorts of other people, with your girlfriends.  You might as well hung a sign saying, 'No Boys Allowed.'"

            "Oh, so I can't have any friends who are girls?  I was supposed to play with stuffed toys with you in the backyard forever?"

            "What was wrong with that?  We used to have fun."  Jessie looked down at the ground.  Will felt the heat drain from his face.  "You didn't like it?  Then why did you keep playing?"

            "I don't know.  You and Tom were my friends.  It wasn't easy for me to come to a new town and meet people.  You two seemed to have such fun with it, I guess I just wanted to go belong."

            "Some Creator you are."

            "Will, please, we don't have time for this now.  There are lives at stake."

            "They don't need you.  Or Tom.  I can handle it."

            "How?"

            "I don't know.  I'll think of something."

            "You can't do it alone."

            "Why not?  I'm the only one who gives a damn about it.  You and Tom forgot about it."

            Jessie threw up her hands in frustration.  "Fine, I forgot about it.  I forgot about you too.  Are you happy now?"

            "No."

            "It doesn't change anything.  You're the one who made me start caring again.  You can't just cut me out of it now."  She shook her head.  "But we know this isn't about me.  It's about Tom.  I know you don't want him to get involved—"

            "You don't know anything!"  Will leapt from the bench to stomp away.  Jessie followed after him, easily keeping up.  "Stop following me!"

            "We have to talk about this, Will.  Don't you think Tom deserves to know what's going on?  He created the Bloc as much as you did.  Those are his creations as much as yours that are dying.  We have to tell him."

            "Why?  So we can break him out of juvie?  Then he'll wind up in prison.  An adult prison, who knows for how long this time?  You might as well stick a gun to Mom's head and pull the trigger."

            "But shouldn't it be his decision?  You're making the choice for him and that's not fair."

            "So what?  Life isn't fair."

            Jessie glared at him for a moment and then stamped her foot.  "Fine.  You want to stay here and feel sorry for yourself, then you go ahead.  We don't need you.  We'll get in their ourselves and let him decide."

            "You can't—"

            "Oh no?  Watch me."  With that she took off running back towards home.  The hardness of her voice, matched by that of her face, told him all he needed to know.  She would go to Stratford to find Tom with or without Will's help.

            "Wait up!" he shouted and then ran after her.

#

            He didn't catch up to her until he reached the corner of their block and that was only because she let him.  "I didn't think you'd ever make it," she said.  "You're in?"

            "Do I really have a choice?"

            She smiled at this.  "Not really."

            They convened a strategy session on Jessie's patio.  Ricky had calmed Heather enough so that her plastic eyes only glared at Will and Jessie; how she managed this Will had no idea.  For the moment, though, Ricky refused to give back her mini-bazooka or plasma thrower as he called it.  She still had that metal spike on her wrist if she got upset.

            Despite all the electronic gear Ricky carried on his belt, he couldn't access any computer networks in this dimension.  So they had to use a rock to represent the Stratford facility with broken twigs making up the fence.  Will used pebbles for himself, Jessie, and the toys.

            The main problem besides this rudimentary map was that Will hadn't gone to Stratford in two years.  And even then he hadn't paid much attention to things like guard positions and rotations.  He hadn't anticipating ever having to break his brother out of the place.

            "I think there's a watchtower there," he said, pointing to the northwest corner of the fence, "and another one there."

            "What kind of weapons do they carry?" Heather asked.  Will imagined she was looking forward to taking on a few "meatbags."

            "I didn't really get a good look at that.  Pistols probably.  Maybe machine-guns."

            "More than enough to blow the stuffing out of you," Jessie said.  Will didn't know at what point she had become the de facto leader of the group.  He supposed as a cheerleader and track team captain she was used to taking charge.  "We can't go in there with guns blazing or else people are going to get hurt."

            "So?"

            Jessie glared down at the stuffed cat she had ostensibly given life.  "Look, if you want our help you have to do things our way.  We're the mission commanders.  You got that, soldier?"

            "Yes."

            "Yes what?"

            "Yes, sir."

            "Good.  Now, Will, do you think it will be too hard for you to get access?"

            "Me?"

            "Well, you are his brother.  Or do you need an escort?"

            "Um, well, I don't know.  Mom and I always used to go together."

            Jessie looked back at the Denton house and then at Will.  "You think you can do a little playacting?" she asked.

            "What do you mean?"

            "When you get to the gate, tell them you're mom's sick and it's a matter of life and death that you speak to your brother."

            "What if they call home to check on her?"

            "Then we're busted and Heather gets her wish."  They both looked down at the ground; Will didn't want to think about he carnage Heather could wreak on Stratford with that plasma thrower of hers, not to mention that spike on her wrist.

            "If they do let me inside, then what?"

            "Then we'll create a distraction, so you can get Tom out of there."

            Will thought it over.  It sounded like a good enough plan, or at least the best they were likely to come up with on such short notice.  He only hoped he would be able to reach Tom—and Tom decided to stay where he was, in relative safety.  "One more thing?" he asked.  "How are we going to get there?"

            "Leave that to me," Jessie said.  Will knew better than to argue.