Molly McGill

5 years ago

“I can’t go to school today,” Zach said, thumping the breakfast table. “It’s October 17th: 8th grade zombie switchout day!”

“Is this #creepypasta?” I asked.

“No, Mom — you don’t even know what creepypasta *is*.”

Which was true, but I still made him go to school.

Zach didn’t speak on the way to school. Not to whine, not to complain about the radio station. When he stepped from my car to the curb, his jaw was clenched.

On 8th grade zombie switchout day, everyone said, one kid stays home and a zombie goes to school in their place. Zach walked directly to his locker, watching the eyes of every passing kid.

Reggie said the eyes were the only way to tell. The replacement zombie wouldn’t be the movie type, all moaning and drooling with arms sticking straight forward. It would just go from class to class not raising its hand, not participating at all.

Until it bit.

Mr. Sanford’s Communications class crawled along as usual. Zach tried to judge if anybody who usually talked wasn’t talking. Kaylee Nichols and her awesome red ponytail were focused forward, on Sanford, instead of whispering to Andrea Atkins.

That was suspicious.

On the way out, Zach left a four-person gap between himself and Kaylee.

World Geography was a blast, Mrs. Zalewski waving her pointer stick and tangenting away on street foods she’d tried overseas. Zach got so into it he almost forgot about 8th grade zombie switchout day.

Finn Rutledge tapped his arm. “Do you have an extra penc—”

“Argh!” Zach cried.

Everybody looked.

Mrs. Zalewski broke off raving about some deep-fried spicy potato thing. “Mr. McGill, where’s the ghost?”

Zach, his heart gradually sinking out of his throat and back into his chest, took a second look at Finn’s eyes.

“Er, I’m good,” he said.

Zach got through 3rd hour, 4th hour, lunch. Lunch was nerve-wracking, all those chomping mouths and bright bursts of laughter. Zach sat with Ed and Nagaru, their chairs scooted to the far end of the back-left-corner table.

“D’you think it’s legit?” Nagaru asked.

“Definitely,” Zach said. “Remember Ava Shrewsbury last year? She never came back after October 17th.”

Ed said she could’ve moved.

“On October 18th — on *exactly* October 18th?” Zach said. “Yeah, right.”

Every clique had their own response. The volleyball girls kept lurching at boys and faking bites. The gamers sat with linked forearms. The VSCOs were telling everybody it was stupid and they should focus on “real issues.”

In passing period before 5th, Zach splashed water on his face in the bathroom.

He told himself, staring into the mirror, “There are *five hundred* 8th graders in this school. It’s more likely you’ll get freaking … bodyslammed by wrestlers.”

He walked out to the hall, pinched his eyes closed and back open, and headed for Spanish.

“Hi Zach!” called a pert voice.

Zach turned, and there was Kaylee Nichols. She was smiling, that awesomely awesome smile, but he knew better. He checked her eyes.

Blue. The whites were white — no red spiderwebs.

“Kaylee, hey.” Zach hitched his backpack over one shoulder. “How lame was Sanford today?”

Kaylee took a slow, swerving step toward him.

“We thought maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe the real Mr. Sanford is *dead*.” She woozled her eyes. “It is 8th grade zombie switchout day.”

Zach felt a frost on the nape of his neck. “We?”

He followed Kaylee’s gaze over his shoulder, and just did glimpse Andrea Atkins — or Andrea Atkins’ replacement — before the bite.

#thirdChance #microMcGill ...

Molly McGill

5 years ago

I boarded Janet Ewing’s Metro car and took the seat beside her.

“Pardon me,” I said as our hips brushed.

She gave back a ghost of a smile, then looked to her phone.

So did I.

It was sleek, dark blue with mirror surfaces like half the phones you see. It could’ve been a Samsung or Motorola or Nokia or LG. But it wasn’t.

It was a Huawei. A fan of peacock-like tailfeathers made up the logo, which I’d seen in newspaper articles and nowhere else — until now.

The phone was also, if Janet’s husband Art Ewing was correct, an intelligence-gathering mechanism of the Chinese government.

“Mine’s out of batteries,” I volunteered, frowning toward my purse.

The aerospace executive frowned back politely, then — again — returned to her own phone.

The ride to Falls Church, the site of her office, was just twenty-two minutes. Janet was phone-busy for the first twelve, scanning left to right repeatedly in a way that suggested reading a document.

I couldn’t be sure. A privacy film made the pixels unreadable from the side.

Art Ewing was @quaidRafferty’s contact. As we sped through the silver Metro tunnel toward Virginia, I considered the information we’d been given by Art. He believed his wife to be an agent of China, wittingly or unwittingly.

Her group included many Chinese personnel. She’d been to Beijing for a conference last month and returned with a new phone.

Why a Huawei? Why, when the US government suspected the devices of being compromised?

I’d spoken up in the briefing to suggest she might just be a technophile. Or think the blowback against Huawei phones was a smokescreen by Washington, a ploy to deny the Chinese market share.

Quaid had said he believed in Art. They used to see each other in Democratic fundraising circles.

Two stops from Falls Church, Janet Ewing growled at her phone and thrust it into the side of her satchel bag.

“Bad?” I said. “Don’t tell me they canceled Jane the Virgin.”

Janet chuckled. “No. The badness applies exclusively to me.”

“Job?”

“Every large-distro email, there’s always one.” Her eyes fluttered shut. “One jerk who’s gotta show off his tailfeathers.”

I glanced at the digital clock on the scrolling Metro display. Three minutes to Janet’s stop.

She kept her eyes closed and reclined against the hard-plastic seat. Her satchel pocket was unsnapped. I saw keys, an inhaler, a travel packet of Kleenex.

And the Huawei phone.

In my right palm, @durwoodOakJones’s dime-sized SIM scraper was ready. All I needed to do was slide my hand inside the pocket, allow it to make contact with the case, and the gizmo would do the rest — download the full contents of her phone.

I kept the scraper in my palm.

#thirdChance #microMcGill ...

Molly McGill

5 years ago

Sir Nigel Fothergill looked down his aquiline nose at me. Would his disdain be less if he knew I was an operative trying to save his life?

“Dry.” He poked my cake. It shed a few dust motes. “Did you add *any* buttermilk?”

Ignoring the heat flooding my face—and the awful lay of this World Chef Amateurs apron—I looked to my left, at the other two bakers. @quaidRafferty’s source said the killer would strike in this round: desserts.

Jean-Luc had baked a berry-topped tart with ancho chile-caramel filling. Anne’s creation seemed a cross between an oversized eclair and marble rye.

Sir Fothergill, after his signature massive bite, pushed aside my cake.

Jean-Luc’s was next. He stepped forward behind his tart. Together with his tight black jeans, they made — I’ll be honest — a scrumptious whole. He looked Fothergill directly in the eye.

#psych wise, sustained eye contact indicates truthfulness, but doesn’t guarantee it. I’d been peeking at his preparation throughout the round and saw nothing untoward.

“Impressive presentation,” the judge said. “I do hope the taste exceeds the mouthful of spongy naught Miss McGill fed me.”

I began having second thoughts about going through with the mission.

In my earring mic, @durwoodOakJones said, “Moll.”

I snapped to. Anne was squirming on one heel, looking anywhere but at Fothergill. She’d been a dervish in her kitchenette, rolling out (and re-rolling) dough, pounding it with the flat of her fist, her face and collar dusted with flour.

I’d thought things would improve with her loaf in the oven, but every two minutes came an “Ugh” or “If it just—if I had only…” or “No no no!”

I caught her eye now. Her lips shrank to a pea.

What was she feeling toward me? Shame?

Camaraderie?

What would a killer feel?

Sir Fothergill was cutting into the tart now, balancing the bite on his sterling silver fork.

I from Anne to Jean-Luc, and back.

Durwood in my ear: “He’s about to eat.”

I mentally answered, *I know.*

Anne was a wreck, squeezing the tails of her apron, hinging back her neck and wincing at the ceiling.

Too much a wreck?

Jean-Luc was … what? Good looking. I glanced inadvertently down his backside and saw — in his tight jeans — a bump.

There in the back pocket. Shaped like a vial.

“Sir Fothergill!” I said. “Don’t touch that tart!”

He looked up with a withering glare. I didn’t know if he’d stop the fork on the strength of my words alone. Durwood and @quaidRafferty would be roaring in from offstage — but they wouldn’t be in time.

#thirdChance #microMcGill ...

Molly McGill

5 years ago

Pamela Steiner introduced herself over the phone as a retired third-grade teacher, then said a tree was about to destroy her kitchen.

“You mean, imminently?” I asked.

“Yes,” Mrs. Steiner said. “I picked you out of the Yellow Pages because it looks like you’re local.”

I asked Granny to keep an eye on the kids and drove over. Pamela Steiner was right—about me being local (7 minutes away) and about that tree.

A towering half-dead maple, whose trunk sat in the neighbors’ yard, sagged perilously over a vinyl privacy fence. One branch in particular—thick, spiraling—creaked and groaned.

“It’s not windy,” I observed. “Why is it rocking like that?”

Mrs. Steiner sighed. “Zipline.”

I hiked upstairs to look for myself. Six or seven boys were taking turns zooming down a cable strung between the half-dead maple and a second tree on the opposite side of the yard.

The mom was drinking iced tea on the deck.

A bigger kid hopped onto the zipline seat, and Pamela’s Sword of Damocles branch—I swear—bowed another 5 degrees toward her roof.

I shouted through the screen, “Excuse me, Miss? That tree’s about to impose a redecorating project on your neighbor’s kitchen—perhaps your son and his friends ought to play something else.”

The mom’s head snapped about looking for the voice before finding me.

The bigger kid dismounted and tugged the zipline. “We don’t wanna play something else!”

His buddies cheered.

I glanced to the mom, thinking she’d shut this down now. If Zach ever talked like that to a stranger in *my* presence, I’d be dragging him someplace by the earlobe.

But she said, “They wanna zipline.”

I stormed downstairs, through the kitchen, out the door. Pamela Steiner called after me, “I’ve explained before about the overhang but she always—”

I was already gone. If Pamela disapproved of my actions and refused to pay later, fine. McGill Investigators had been stiffed before and we’d be stiffed again.

I entered the boys’ backyard by the side fence door. There were loppers leaning against a bag of mulch.

“Hey!” nine voices yelled as I severed the zipline at its midpoint.

I whirled on them with the loppers.

Mom was off the deck, setting her iced tea on a birdbath.

I spoke first. “Look—I don’t care if you’re trying to be Cool Mom, or you only fight the big battles, or if that tea of yours has a kicker in it. Doesn’t matter. There’s a retired schoolteacher across that fence.”

And I handed back her loppers and left.

#microMcGill #thirdChance ...