Page 104 of Trip Me Up

37

SAM

“Doing all right, Sam?”

Kyle’s voice startled me out of my zombie gaze. I whipped my head to face him at his desk. Was he trying to look at my screen, or was I being paranoid? Probably paranoia, considering I’d hardly slept for the past nine nights; still, I swiveled my screen a degree or two away from him.

“Fine. Just tired, you know?” I tried to smile at him, but I couldn’t feel my face. Every part of me was numb.

“CASE, right? How are those modifications going? Need any help?”

Thatwoke me up. “No, I’m fine.” Maybe hewasspying on me. Had Martell asked him to keep an eye on me? My heart raced. Or Paul Swift? Was Kyle wearing a new pair of sneakers? Air Jordans? I sniffed. It was hard to tell over the smell of rotted baseboards and rusty metal desks, but I thought I caught the scent of new leather. I turned my screen a little more.

“Okay.” He ducked his head. “I know it’s a lot of pressure.”

He didn’t know the half of it. As furiously as I’d coded to get CASE 2.0 online, I couldn’t squeeze six months of work into ten days. Martell would be livid when I had no new novels to show Paul Swift at the demo the next day. Plus, CASE 2.0 still couldn’t reliably create scientific papers.

I couldn’t let Paul Swift—or anyone—get their hands on CASE 1.0. Not if I wanted people like Niall and Qiana and even Heidi to keep their jobs, to keep making stories that people—kids like Hero in Chicago and those teenagers at the con in Florida who’d cosplayed Nieven and Greva—loved. Hell, books that I loved.

What if Martell followed through with his threat? I shuddered. With no Ph.D., my postdoc was vaporware. I’d have to move back home with Mother and Charles. She’d keep throwing Winfords at me. And what was worse, Kyle or the SwifTech programmers would pick up CASE 1.0 right where I’d left off.

My plan sucked, and I knew it. But there was nothing else to do. I laid my spinning head on my desk. I’d rest just for a minute, and then I’d start again.

“Sam!”

I lifted my head from my keyboard and blinked. Jackson stood in the doorway.

Jackson had never come to my office before. I rubbed my eyes. Nope, not a hallucination.

“Nice look, Samwise. I especially like the keyboard print on your cheek. You’ve got a little drool, right there.” He pointed at the corner of his mouth, just inside the edge of his beard.

With the back of my hand, I swiped at the moisture.

“Jackson Jones?” Kyle’s chair scraped back, and he bounded forward, his hand outstretched.

Jackson shook it. “That’s me. You must be Kyle.”

“Yeah. Kyle Anderson. Sam’s officemate. It’s…it’s an honor to meet you at last.” Kyle pumped Jackson’s hand up and down.

One side of Jackson’s mouth kicked up in a half-smile as he gingerly removed his hand from Kyle’s. Thank God I’d never mentioned our one-night fling.

“Come on, Sam,” Jackson said. “We’re going to lunch.”

“Lunch?”

“You know, food you eat at midday? Though it looks like you haven’t had many lunches lately. Let’s go, Sam. See you around, Kyle.”

In the hallway, I asked, “What are you doing here?”

“I came to check on you. You didn’t answer my calls or texts. Mother said you told her off?”

I jogged to keep up with his long strides. “I—yeah,” I mumbled.

“Good for you. By the way, you look like shit.”

“Thanks. Jerk.”

“It’s true. And you and I are always honest with each other.”

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