Jackson Ford - The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with Her Mind

“For your coffee? None of them. You can have a toenail clipping.”

“I think I snorted a toenail clipping once. It’s not as bad as you would think.”

“That’s amazing.”

“Yeah, I know. You would not believe what the coke has been cut with by the time it gets to Mexico.”

“No, I mean it’s amazing you’re still able to speak, with all the horrible things you’ve done to your brain.”

“You break my heart. You want coffee or not?”

Coffee . Jesus, yes. It’ll help replace some of the energy I lost with my chair stunt, although it’s going to take one monster of a takeout and a long nap before I get it all back.

There’s a rap on my window. It’s Paul, making the wind-down gesture with his hand. He does not look happy.

I hit the button, lowering the window. “You rang?”

“Annie told me about what you did.”

Scratch that. He’s not unhappy. He’s furious. It’s not explosive, like Annie; he’s doing a very good job of holding it back. But the tightness of his shoulders, the narrowed eyes and thin-set lips give it away.

“Dude,” I say. “Come on. Can I just—”

“It was reckless. It was irresponsible.” He actually ticks these off on his fingers. “You put both your lives in danger. You acted without consulting me…”

“Next time I’m falling out a skyscraper, I’ll be sure to call you up to discuss our options.” I give him a thumbs up. “Go team.”

“Now you just—”

“ Paul ,” Carlos says. “Maybe we do this inside? Get some coffee and talk, huh?”

Paul exhales. Collects himself. After a long moment he gives a brisk a nod. “Yes. All right. Good idea.” Then he turns on his heel and makes his way into the house.

“Why you gotta be such a dick to him?” Carlos says.

“ I’m a dick to him ?”

“Yeah. Paul can’t help the fact that he has…” He snaps his fingers. “ Palo por el culo . You know? Stick in his ass? That how you say it?”

I snort. “Yup.”

“He’s born that way,” Carlos continues. “You should be more considerate, man.”

My laugh tastes bitter. Didn’t I just save us? Pull us out the fire? I admit, I screwed up with the construction elevator, but I couldn’t see another way out of that room. It wasn’t what you’d call safe, but it was also the only option that didn’t get us arrested, or shot.

Carlos pops the door, then looks over his shoulder at me. “You OK? For real?”

I roll my neck, wincing. “Sure. What’s a job without a little bit of whiplash?”

“You gotta be careful, man. You leave that shit too long without fixing it, it sticks around.”

“I’m fine. Besides, tonight wasn’t nearly as bad as Long Beach.”

“You just fell like eighty floors. How was it not as bad as the Long Beach job?”

“They had dogs in Long Beach, Carlos.”

He rolls his eyes. “Again with this. Just because you’re not good with animals…”

“No, I’m perfectly fine with animals. I love animals. As long as they don’t want to eat me.”

“It was one dog, and it was like half a foot long.”

“You didn’t see it. It was motivated . Give me an eighty-floor drop over that any day.”

“Not sure Annie would agree with you.”

He grimaces, realising he’s hit a soft spot. I don’t mind too much. Carlos and I give each other shit, but he always makes me feel better. No matter how gnarly things get, talking to him always helps. Maybe it’s because he knows what it’s like to go through hell and come out on the other side OK. More or less.

He grew up poor in Tecomán, in Colima State. From what he tells me, it makes the worst block in LA look like paradise. His old man used to be a racing driver, and the one thing he made sure his son could do from like age ten was drive. Turns out, Carlos was pretty good at it—good enough to attract the attention of the local Zeta gang.

From age sixteen, he was the guy waiting outside while the Zetas knocked over businesses or held meetings with corrupt officials or swung machetes. He would probably still be doing that now if the cops hadn’t decided to strike back at the gang and tried to get him to roll on them. Faced with either life in prison or a machete swing of his own, Carlos skipped across the border. He ended up on Tanner’s radar, somehow, and now he’s here.

He’s probably the only person in China Shop who I’d actually choose to hang out with. He and I have spent many, many nights at bars around Venice Beach, knocking back beers and talking shit, him telling me endless stories about his rotating cast of boyfriends and hook-ups. He really doesn’t want to go back to Mexico—not even if he had a new identity. Mexican laws are slowly swinging towards legalisation of gay marriage, but it’s still the kind of thing that you have to keep quiet. At least in LA, he told me, he can date whoever the hell he wants.

“See you inside, Teags,” he says.

“Yeah. Go make my coffee, bitch.”

His eyes widen. “ Bitch? ” He puts a hand on his chest. “You call me bitch? I, who am descended from Aztec kings?”

“Only one sugar this time, sweetie. Thanks.”

“I am a man.” He makes his voice tremble. “Not some simple kitchen servant you can order around. You play with my emotions, señorita. I have dignity …”

“You have a job making coffee, that’s what you have.”

He leans in suddenly, conspirational, grinning. “If you still got that toenail, we could always—”

“ Ugh . Get out.”

He goes, laughing, closing the van door behind him. In the silence that follows I have to fight off the temptation to just close my eyes and go to sleep right there. I’m hurting a lot more than I’d expect, and it’s not just the whiplash. I always feel it the day after I push my ability—a pain that ranges from aching muscles to full-on migraine—but I can’t remember feeling this sore so soon after. I must have hit it a little harder than I thought.

Using my PK burns energy, but no one has managed to figure out how that energy makes it from my body across the room to whatever I’m lifting. I’ve been stuck inside particle chambers and hooked up to ECGs and dosed with low-level radiation, and the scientists doing it still couldn’t get a decent working theory together. My parents might have known, once—after all, they were the ones who made me, fucking with my genetic code in ways that had never been done before. But they’re gone, along with all their research.

God, I need that coffee.

It’s always amazed me that Tanner, who has access to all sorts of bottomless black budgets and off-the-books accounts, couldn’t give us a half-decent office to work in. The front part of the house is a spacious open-plan kitchen and living room, which has been converted into a workspace. Paul is the only one with an actual desk, a cheap Ikea number over by the window, covered in piles of drifting paper. A corkboard with faded invoices hangs on the wall next to it. Faded invoices and a photograph of a kid in a soccer uniform—Paul’s son, Cole.

There’s a whiteboard against the opposite wall, its surface smudged and dirty. The view from the window is breathtaking: a line of plastic garbage bins against the opposite wall of Brooks Court, next to a very rarely spotted power junction box covered with graffiti. There’s a poster plastered on the wall, a mess of lurid orange and green advertising a club night from three months ago. I’ve often wondered who put it up there and why they chose that spot—if they were specifically trying to target us, or were just high and had to meet their poster quota.

I pull off the ridiculous tie, dumping it on the counter. The surface is always sticky, no matter how much we clean it. The kitchen is sparse: there’s a microwave and a coffee machine perched on top of it, a tiny bar fridge underneath. Carlos is rummaging in the cupboards, the machine already set up for grinding.