UnBound - Neal Shusterman Page 0,80
shame. I don’t think you’re low-cortical. I think you’re deep-cortical.”
“If I do an interview with you, others won’t see it that way.”
“So if I’m not here to set up an interview, why am I here?”
“I want you to find my brother.”
Hayden takes a deep breath.
“I want you to put out a plea to your listeners. You got a lot of them—they’ll listen to you.”
“Grace—Divan Umarov’s plane hit a mountain. The debris field stretched for miles—there were no survivors. . . .”
“I know—but I got a feeling. . . .”
“A theory?”
“No!” she says, frustrated. “I ain’t got enough to have a theory. All I got is a feeling and I can’t let it go. They didn’t find any part of him. And if there’s no proof he’s dead . . .”
“Grace, there are lots of people who are dead with no proof.”
“I know that! And I know I can’t let it go. You got listeners. I’ll put pictures of him up online. You just gotta get your listeners to look.”
“From what Connor said, half his face was gone, and the black market guy promised him a new one. Even if he survived the crash, and is alive, what good will a picture do? He won’t look the same.”
“Why can’t you do it? Connor would want you to do it, wouldn’t he? He would want it!”
“He would tell you exactly what I’m telling you now.”
Grace’s face gets red like a child about to throw a tantrum. “Get out of here. I don’t want to talk to you no more. You’re just like everyone else, sayin’ Argie’s dead, when I know in my heart that he’s not. He’s not!”
Hayden stands up. “Grace, I’m sorry.”
“Just go. Take some cookies with you, or else I’ll eat them and I already ate too many.”
And although it goes against all his instincts, Hayden says, “Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll put an all-points bulletin out on Argent—but on one condition.”
“What.”
He’s about to ask for an interview. It’s what he wants. His listeners will love it. But he’s not going to blackmail her. It’s not his style. Besides, he can do a whole show about her without even having to have her there. And he does love to hear himself talk. So, instead of asking for an interview, he says, “On the one condition . . . that you invite me to your next party. I’ll even bring my own tuxedo.”
Grace smiles. “And bring a date,” she says. “A girl or a boy, I don’t care.”
Hayden chuckles. “Maybe both,” he says. “One on each arm. They can go dance while I schmooze.”
• • •
He does the public plea just as he promised. Argent Skinner—oddball unexpected hero who helped save the Akron AWOL from being sold for parts on the black market. Has anyone seen him? His sister has pictures up on her website. He looked like this. Might not look like that anymore. Might look only half like this. Then Hayden opens up his show to callers. His producer always hurls him the most bizarro ones. Good for ratings. One guy talks about the black market and says he knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a girl who escaped from the Burmese Dah Zey. And that she has four arms. Go figure. Another caller says that Argent Skinner is really just an anagram of the Stark Green Inn in Stark, New Hampshire, so that must be where he’s hiding. When faced with the fact that the Stark Green Inn was in existence long before Argent Skinner was born, the caller suggests some form of time travel. It’s all very amusing and entertaining, but, as Hayden suspected, this train leads to various suburbs of nowhere.
It’s the other things that Grace talked about that stick in Hayden’s mind, however, and, in his spare time he does some hacking. He doesn’t have the skills that Jeevan does, wherever he is these days, but Hayden can bludgeon his way through a firewall in a pinch. What he finds is a particular picture on a school website. The American School of Marseille, perched on a hill above the sunny Mediterranean Sea. The picture is of a lacrosse team, everyone smiling after a big win, or pretending to smile after a big loss, one can never be quite sure. In the back row is a kid tagged as Lucas Saltries. There is a familiar look about him. His smile. His eyebrows. But the proof of this particular pudding isn’t in some vague