Zoey and Margo are sitting comfortably on the roof of what looks like a residential home, but with no windows, no front door, and a steel roof. At roughly midnight, the barely visible low maintenance landscape seems to still evoke an industrial feel.
Margo, eating her fries, was quick to catch Zoey, mid-bite of her sandwich with, “You do know that Chick-fil-A is a Christian-owned company, right?”
Zoey gave her a sideways glace, seemingly skeptical, put her sandwich down and began eating Margo’s fries. “They make good food. I don’t care.” Chewing while she spoke, “they’re not going to convert me with food, that’s for sure. Why couldn’t your mom learn that lesson? Plus, your parents let you watch the Simpsons, Seinfeld, and play Mortal Kombat. You’re not exactly winning me over with your consistency either.”
“I don’t know. I think it’s two-fold: they wanted me to be able to operate in the modern world without necessarily adopting populist values. They wanted me to fit, but not necessarily conform. Plus, they were always pointing out the failed value systems in popular media as bad examples…Look I don’t want to argue religion all day.”
“You brought it up.”
“I know, let’s change the subject.”
“To what?”
“How about what the hell we’re doing up here to begin with?”
“I wanted to see if we could get up here, one. And two, I wanted to see if we’d get attention.”
“Well, we’ve been up here four hours. So, it looks like nobody cares. What’s so significant about this place anyways?”
“This fake house belongs to the MWRA…the Water Authority. It’s a pump station, disguised to deter vandals. They don’t make these any more because they tend to attract more curious people than they deter. The whole area is alarmed and we weren’t trying to evade any of it. And we’re still here and nobody’s come to get us.”
Margo, looking a bit frightened and confused. “You jackass, you mean you took me to a place intentionally trying to get us arrested?”
“I found this in my car yesterday…” Zoey holding her phone up to Margo with a picture. “That connects to a wireless microphone behind the driver’s side pillar cover that’s over the air bag curtain. And that part is the cellular transmitter. Two months ago, I found a similar device…” Pointing to another picture, she continued, “that used the car’s Bluetooth microphone…and that one had a short-range FM transmitter…so like a car driving next to you could tune into the microphone on their radio and listen in on your car. And then that disappeared. And then, six months before that I found a GPS transmitter in the rear wheel-well. I drove the car out and took a route that spelled Eat Me when the route was viewed on a map. That device disappeared the next day.”
Margo, “so what are you telling me then?”
Zoey, “I guess that I’m only half crazy.”
Margo, furrowing her brow asked her, “And which half is more heavily weighted?”
Zoey, with a chuckle, “Come on, leave that shit and follow me out of here before they decide to reign in the leash.”
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