Page 12 of Jinxed
I wait for any sign of life. A light. Movement. A hum. But there’s nothing. Frustrated, I pull open the drawer closest to me and dig around for my multimeter. I attach the probes to various parts of the baku but, despite it being pluggedin, I can see no sign of any response. My shoulders slump with disappointment. It’s such a shame. To have something so beautiful go to waste. I pull the leash from the mains, and sigh.
Then an idea strikes me. It’s a bit of a wild one – there’s no reason why it should work. But bakus are not designed to be charged from the mains. They’re designed to work with people. I have a brand new leashhooked around my ear, ready and waiting. Maybe...
I lift the end of the cat’s leash and hook it up to mine.
As it syncs, my nose begins to tingle, and I sneeze.
At almost the exact same time, the baku’s whiskers judder, the first sign of potential electronic life.
‘Jinx!’ I say to it, laughing. I think all the work is turning me slightly mad.
When nothing else happens for a good few minutes,I wonder if I imagined the juddering whiskers. I poke and prod at it, staring at it, willing it to make another move. But nothing happens.
Eventually, my eyes feel as if they are going to drop out of my head. I slump over my desk, the events of the day hitting me like a punch bag. Slam, rejection. Kapow, forced to buy the beetle. Suckerpunch, humiliated by Carter. Knock-out blow: stopped by thoseterrifying Moncha guards.
And then the final kick while I’m down: seeing Tobias’s eagle baku in action and knowing I’llneverown a baku that cool.
Knowing they’ll be at Profectus but not me.
Thatthey’llbe living my dream.
I know I have to let it go. But not before I let one single final thought dominate my brain, my throat, my stomach.
It’s not fair.
I don’t even make it to the camp bedbefore I’m fast asleep.
AFAINT BEEPING ROUSES ME. IT TAKES A good few seconds to orient myself, and my neck cricks in protest at being moved. I paw for my phone on the desk to check the time, but it’s not there.
I blinkseveral times, my body awakening to the world. No phone. No phone because I smashed the screen. No replacement phone because I bought myself a baku. But I haven’t leashed it yet, so it can’t function as my clock.
The beeping grows louder, echoing around the basement, and – when it’s accompanied by loud metallic bangs – I recognize it: the garbage trucks have arrived. And that means I’ve sleptthe whole night in the locker.
Crap. Mom is not going to be happy. I quickly pack up my things, unleashing the broken baku and shoving it into a box before throwing it under the desk. Linus is fully charged and a quick selfie proves that his camera and display projector screen are fully functioning. Perfect. His clock read-out shows me that it’s 7:37 a.m. Dammit.
I grab my dirty cutlery (I don’twant to encourage pests into my locker – especially not if I’m falling asleep down there) and lock up the locker, balancing the armloads of stuff with the skill of a juggler. Then I race to the elevator.
When I get upstairs to our unit, my heart is pounding in my chest. ‘Mom, I’m so sorry – I lost track of time.’
But when I enter the kitchen, it’s not Mom I see, but Zora. She’s perched on astool in the kitchen. ‘Oh, hey! I was just about to come down and get you,’ she says, slurping down a bowl of cereal. ‘How’s Linus?’
‘He’s all good! Back to normal, I think.’
‘Yay!’ she squeals. I place Linus down on the counter and he scurries over to Zora. She lays down her palm and he leaps on to it, rushing up her arm to the leash on her ear, making delighted squeaking sounds. ‘I missedyou too!’ says Zora.
I bite down on my bottom lip. It’s strange to see Zora so... giddy and emotional. The connection she’s developed with Linus – even though she’s only had him for a couple of days – seems so deep. I always knew that people developed attachments to their bakus, but I didn’t think it would happen that instantly. I feel guilty for leaving mine packaged up in his box.
‘Oh,here’s your phone back,’ says Zora.
‘Thanks!’ I say. I instantly relax when my phone hits my palm, tension I didn’t realize I was holding in my shoulders releasing. It’s crazy to have such a visceral reaction to a phone, but there you go. Maybe it’s not so different with a baku after all.
‘What’s your beetle’s unique ID and I’ll store it with Linus in my Favourite contacts,’ says Zora.
‘Oh,I haven’t leashed him yet,’ I say. My fingers fly across the cracked screen of my phone, checking updates from social media across different platforms.
‘You still haven’t leashed your baku? La-cey...’I know that tone of voice from Mom. Sometimes she acts as if I’m an alien creature who’s landed in her living room, as opposed to her own flesh and blood. She just doesn’t get what that baku representsto me: failure.
I keep on scrolling.
