SiSU: - Homeland - Cory Doctorow

Homeland
traffic in SoMa, and Darryl showed off his encyclopedic knowledge of the alleyways of the
neighborhood to beat it, popping out on Market Street from an alleyway that was so narrow
we scraped up a couple of plastic recycling wheelie-bins on our way out. He was in Hayes
Valley a few minutes later, pulling up in front of Ange's house. I knew she didn't have any
classes that afternoon, but she hadn't answered her phone when I called her. I thumped
on her door.
She came down in track pants and the T-shirt she'd slept in the night before, her eyes
swollen and red. She folded her arms when she saw me and glared. “Get dressed, okay?”
I said. “You can be pissed at me later. Get dressed.” She looked over my shoulder at
Darryl, who waved at her. Van gave a half-assed, unenthusiastic wave, too.
“You're kidding me,” she said.
“Get dressed,” I said. “It's happening.”
She gave me a long, searching look. I looked back at her, thinking, Come on, Ange, argue
later, do this now before I lose my nerve. My heart was fluttering in my chest like a pigeon
trapped in a store, beating against the windows and trying to break out.
She turned on her heel and disappeared into the house. I heard her run up the stairs to
her room. A minute later, her little sister, Tina, appeared in the hallway. “You remember
when I told you if you broke her heart I'd pull your scrotum over your head?” She was two
years younger than Ange, and tall and skinny where Ange was short and curvy, but they
were unmistakably sisters, with nearly the same voice and facial expressions.
“I remember, Tina. Can we save the scrotal reconfiguration for later? We're kind of into
something more important than me or Ange or any of us.”
She cocked her head. “I'll think about it.”
Ange came pelting down the stairs, toothpaste on the corner of her mouth. She was
wearing a long electric-blue raincoat I loved and hand-painted Keds and huge, squarish
Japanese pants she'd sewn herself from a pattern, all clothes that had been strewn on the
floor of her room the last time I'd been in it, a hundred years ago, the night before.
“Tina, enough with the scrotums, already,” Ange said as she reached us. Tina made an
exaggerated, monkey-like face at her and then gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Come on,”
Ange said to me, whisking past me toward Darryl's car, hesitating for a second before
yanking open the back door and sliding into the seat next to Van. I brought up the rear and
got into the passenger seat, checking out whether Van and Ange were ready to kill each
other while trying to look like I wasn't checking it out at all.
Inside the car, the tension was as thick as the fog on a wet night on Twin Peaks.
“You know where Jolu's office is, right?” I said to Darryl.
“We're going to see Jolu?” Ange said.
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