L.J. is an assassin waiting to complete a job. While hiding out, she encounters a boy named Harper who is also interested in environmental causes. When L.J.'s target drives by and crashes his vehicle after she uses a device to disable it, Harper engages the target in a debate about littering. As the target becomes aggressive with Harper, L.J. sees an opportunity to complete her assassination. The summary hints that L.J. may kill the target while his attention is focused on Harper.

1. Miles1
Lavender : An assassin’s tale
L.J. slapped a mosquito on her arm, leaving a tiny murder scene in her wake. Bug
bits and smeared blood covered her forearm and she wondered aloud how she hoped it
was all her blood. Hopefully, her mosquito was the chaste kind and not the slutty type at
all to flit from person to person. She pulled a wet wipe from her bag and wiped away the
mess. L.J. was never without wet wipes. Not that she was a clean freak, just that one just
never knew what kinds of messes the day would bring and in her line of work it paid to
be prepared.
She took a deep breath and adjusted the sound level on her audio player. Classic
Rock. A 20th century band, almost no one she knew had ever heard of. Electric guitars
and snare drums, an drugged out lead singer with enough angst to make your face pucker
like you’d sucked on a lemon sensor or realized the taste on your tongue is sweat, but its
not your own. Yes, she liked that kind of music. Not at all what passes for an audiocast
these days full of melodic synthesizers and modified nature manipulations.
Her favorite song was up next. Even though she could hop from track to track, she
never did. Felt it was cheating. She cracked open the last peanut and placed the shell in
the cellophane bag with the others, maybe a quarter pound, or 20 peanuts worth, and
sealed it. She was still crunching on the nut when she dropped the bag and pounded it
with the heel of her foot to the beat of the song. She even belted out the bridge about
someone named Chicken Little to an audience of crickets. When she was done she picked
up the bag and shoved it into the pocket of her skirt, squatting back into the honeysuckle

2. Miles2
brush so passersby wouldn’t notice her when she finished. Not that anyone would have
noticed her from that distance.
You see, L.J. was meticulous. This spot, a tiny 3x5 space beneath two major
hoverpasses, one going north and the other east, was almost impossible to see if you were
flying past, not that you would have any reason to look down if you were. And even if
you did look down, all you would notice is a sea of fast food containers, partially
dissolved soda containers and the occasional baby shoe. Who knows how those things
find themselves down there?
Not only was there almost no way she could be seen by the naked eye, she was
also invisible to the sattelites, traffic being so congested this time of year because of the
Carpetbagging season. Carpetbaggers is what Southerners called opportunistic
Northerners who moved down South during the Reconstruction era after the first Civil
War. Now, the term still referred to Northerners, but only because they swarmed into the
city like locusts each winter, at least those that had money did. The rest were left behind
to brave the sub-zero temperatures in the cities that still had public warming stations and
mass transit able to withstand the cold. A few cities tried to hold out, the Green Party
lobbying hard to keep public spending down, but a few frigid winters, and few hundred
thousand dead changed their tune. There are a few holdouts. Some say the expense was
too much for the small towns, a few more cynical, of which L.J. was a member, figured it
was easy population control. Probably saved a few Senators from the awful job of
arguing for condoms in middle school or a one-child policy, both career killers.

3. Miles3
A shrill ring interrupted her second-favorite song on the album. Time to walk. L.J.
stood to her full height and grabbed the trash bag that had been resting beside her and
began to walk. She peered up into the late afternoon sun and found the blinking security
orb, hovering about thirty feet in the air, nestled in the cloudless blue of the dying day.
She promptly stuck her tongue and gave it the finger. The machine stopped for one, two
and then three seconds to take her picture before zooming off.
The pictures, that later, detectives would inspect and then disregard, were of L.J.
in a cargo skirt, knee socks and an all-weather military jacket with a large patch that read
“Eco-Rebel” on the right breast pocket. She’d pulled her waist length-braided hair into a
ponytail in an attempt to look girlish. It worked. This was the exact uniform of radical
12th and 13th year students who hoped to join the Green Party at University. These kids
were nerds and trust-fund brats that got their kicks planning demonstrations and made a
point of asking waitstaff if their receipts were printed on recycled paper, but most
importantly, they were also known to take pictures of the license plates of litterers on
hover passes.
L.J. dropped her bag and held up her fake camera, pretending to take pictures of
passing vehicles. She was playing the part. This was what she was good at. No, the best
at. Hiding in plain sight.
She picked up the bag and scooped a Styrofoam container full of half-eaten hot
wings inside with her dustpan/broom combo. Five more minutes until the security orb
flies back to take her picture again. A countdown flashed in her sunglasses.

4. Miles4
A breeze rustled by bringing the sweet smell of honeysuckle along with the stench
of dog shit into her nose. She shivered and zipped her jacket up to the neck. Two minutes.
After this last pass she would be able to crouch back down into her blind spot, and
with any luck the mark will be by within twenty minutes and in thirty she’d be home.
Home, with heated floors and the leftover fried pickles Pap had made to go with lunch.
Her mouth watered at the thought and a smile erupted across her face as she reached into
her backpack and pulled out a still warm thermos of boiled peanuts. She’d asked Pap,
specifically, to make a batch just for her. No small request given the cost of peanuts these
days, and green peanuts at that.
She sucked the salty brine from the soft shell and pried the soft meat from the
inside. Delicious. These shells, however, were kept inside the thermos. No evidence.
Pap’s mantra trilled inside her head. That’s what she kept telling Idris. “It’s all about the
details,” she’d argue. Anyone can kill. Child soldiers in Toronto are as deadly as anyone
and some of them are barely nine years old, or so she’d read. She’d never actually been
outside of Atlanta, but the argument was sound. She also pointed out that killing was as
common as farting, anyone could do it. It didn’t require planning or intellect, bravery or
grace, but assassination, that was an art.
She licked her lips and made sure to paint them with a good coating of peanut
brine before closing the container and putting it back into her backpack. She didn’t think
she’d have to kiss the mark, but it was better to be prepared.
Details.

5. Miles5
She’d made it back to her blind spot and was just about to crouch down again
when she heard a branch pop. If she’d had a heart, it would have skipped a beat. Not that
she didn’t have a heart, it was technically a heart, just not a human one. Well, maybe,
human isn’t the best word to use. Maybe she can explain it best, as the story goes when
she makes a new friend and after quite some time explains how she’s different from other
girls. It is good to note that this has only happened one time in her entire life and said
friend is dead now.
“It’s the pinnacle of modern medicine. The only one in existence, at least that’s
what Pap says. I used to be a trust fund baby, the daughter of a judge. I was part of the
first real crime wave that sweeped the country during the first hard winter. Tons of girls
went missing, but miracles of miracles, my kidnappers just wanted cash. Too bad for me
he refused to pay. Bastard was a true Whig to his core, he decided to dig in and refuse to
negotiate with the terrorists. Imagine his shock when they blew my chest out on a live
webcast with a double barrel shotgun.”
“Old school,” the friend said.
“Yup.”
“I think I remember that,” the friend said.
“It was kind of hard to miss. I’m not blonde, but I’m still pretty cute.”
The friend winked.
What everyone did miss before the telescreen went blank was the mix of
confusion and slight horror when the gunmen realized that the bullets weren’t the blanks

6. Miles6
that he’d ordered his second-in-command to load that morning. They had no intention of
killing L.J. on live television, but the move turned out to be a win-win when the gang’s
reputation for ferocity spread like wildfire. After immediately releaving the second-in-
command of his duty, permanently. L.J. was put on cryogenic grade ice, while the doctor
was called in. As the doctor was tied up in some legal troubles, L.J. remained on ice for
quite some time.
By the time the doctor got around to her, the judge had been murdered in an
unrelated event (these are dark times) and Pap had quite a time putting Humpty Dumpty
back together again. Lucky for L.J. he was a brilliant doctor. Unlucky for him, he had a
gambling problem and was constantly in the gang’s debt.
But every cloud has a silver lining. The doctor did some of his best work in the
unrestricted and unregulated world of underground operations and L.J.’s heart truly was a
marvel of modern medicine.
The snap was followed by a rustle of bushes and the crunch of gravel in the
distance. A minute later a boy emerged. He immediately locked eyes with L.J. and
smiled.
“Shit!” she muttered under her breath.
He was wearing combat boots, tattered jeans and a jacket almost identical to hers.
She cursed herself, while simultaneously lamenting the superior choice of combat boots
to her sneakers. There are few things more problematic than a poseur coming face to face
with a true acolyte.

7. Miles7
“Hey!” the boy said to her in a voice that rumbled. He walked towards her,
enthusiasm plain on his face. He hadn’t expected to find anyone down here, especially so
close to curfew, and definitely not a cute girl. Jackpot!
“Uh, hey,” L.J. replied. She was thinking fast now. Every scenario running like
lightning through her brain, her synthetic heart revving slightly faster than it should,
sounding much like the wings of a hummingbird.
“What are you doing out here? Are you with the Dunwoody chapter?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I haven’t even introduced myself. I’m Harper.” He stuck out his beefy
hand for her to shake.
She gripped it like Pap had shown her to do, like a man, but Harper’s grip was
soft, gentle. It was then that she decided to disregard all the scenarios where Harper
ended up dead. That got rid of at least 80% of her ideas. The time flashed in her
sunglasses. 5:55 pm. The mark should be flying past in 5 minutes. She had 5 minutes to
get rid of this douche, no matter how cute he was.
“Harper is it? My name is…Love,” she pulled her hand back and affected a
practiced boughie air. “This is kind of my territory, so….”
“Really? I’ve never seen you here before. Me and a buddy of mine come down
here at least once a week.” It wasn’t puzzlement that was gliding across his face, more
like confused wonder, as if L.J. were some rare bird, long thought extinct that just flew in
and perched herself on his trash heap.
Shit!, she thought. What were the odds?

8. Miles8
“Well, I’ve never seen you either,” she said and then smiled, mirroring his facial
expression. It was a tried and true manipulation technique, mirroring. She rifled through
her mental files and while antagonism felt much more comfortable to her, the outcomes
were too varied and too unpredictable. Besides, Harper was a big guy, and though deadly,
she was no fool. The boy stood about 6ft 2 with broad shoulders and an even broader
grin. He looked more like a linebacker than a neurotic eco-freak.
2 minutes.
“Well, maybe we can share,” she offered.
“Green!” he replied in the common eco-freak vernacular. She followed behind
him, cleaning up debris and keeping a keen eye on the sky for her mark. Harper was a
talker, a great relief to L.J., because she was not.
A full five minutes passed before the mark came into sight, a yellow-green late
model Venus. The color made the vehicle look like a ball of snot floating in the air. Hard
to miss.
“There!” she yelled and pointed her camera, which was not a camera at the
vehicle and snapped. “They threw a KFC bag!” she lied.
A second later the lights on the snot ball dimmed and the pneumatic thrusters
came to life in a roar as the vehicle lurched and sank out of the sky like a lead ball, barely
missing two MARTA hovers carrying commuters home in the afternoon rush. Sand,
twigs, and the smell of burnt fiberglass mixed with a flower that Harper couldn’t place
rushed into Harper’s nose. L.J. was standing in front of him looking as if she expected

9. Miles9
this to happen, and of course she had. Harper being the exception, everything had gone to
plan. Now came the hard part.
The snot ball skidded to a stop 50 feet ahead of the two. L.J. slipped her hand into
the pocket with the cellophane bag and opened it. Harper dashed in front of her and she
followed, matching his pace. Up ahead the hover door opens with pop of compressed air,
sounding like a large kernel of popcorn who’d just met his breaking point.
The mark gets out, freshly dressed and writhing with anger.
“Son of a b---“ he roars and steps awkwardly around the car as if the ground is
made of bubble gum that he’s afraid will get stuck to his shoes.
“You alright man?” Harper asks slowing his jog to a walk.
The mark looks at his potential good Samaritan as if he’s walking, talking turd.
Still, he replies, “I don’t know what happened,” in a slow and irritated tone.
“Well, I know what happened.”
The mark cocks his head to one side. L.J., suddenly very nervous, gets the urge to
pee, but says nothing. If she had known that he had any idea that her camera was a
targeted EMP device she would have killed him on the spot, taken the switch blade out of
her other pocket and slit his throat in broad daylight. Messy yes, but quiet and effective.
“Karma.”
“Karma?” the mark barks.

10. Miles10
Harper nods slowly, satisfyingly. He’d never actually come face to face with an
unabashed litterer and he was all too happy to get a chance to recite the speech he’d
prepared just in case the opportunity every presented itself.
“You treat this planet like your own personal wastebasket. Frankly, sir, this world
can’t afford you. Who do you think you are---“
Harper went on about the cost of personal responsibility and an astonishingly
eloquent explanation of the leading theories on the causes of the first hard winter.
Surprisingly, the mark didn’t interrupt, but L.J. could see the man reaching his breaking
point.
The countdown behind her sunglasses began again. Five minutes until the security
orb flies past again. Just five minutes.
“Are you even speaking to me?” the mark asks, hissing through his glossy
veneers.
At first Harper’s confused, maybe the man was hard of hearing. He sincerely
hoped not, because the best parts of his speech had already been delivered.
“Do you know who I am? I could make your peat mossed brain melt with the
things I’m capable of. You should be kissing my feet—“
The mark went on about how grand he was, as is the want of pompous men who
are used to power. Harper was unamused, and probably due to his size, not the least bit
intimidated. He plucked a literature card from his back pocket and handed out to the man
between two calloused fingers.

11. Miles11
The mark took three large strides toward Harper and smacked it away. They were
so close that Harper could smell that afternoon’s cigar on the mark’s breath, and the mark
could see the hearing aid in Harper’s ear, flesh colored and barely visible, a symbol of his
low financial status. Only the poorest of the poor couldn’t afford light aural surgery. A
look of interest and then disgust crossed the marks face in the blink of an eye. If it were
even possible, the tiny device made the mark hate Harper that much more.
Sensing the thick fog of testosterone wafting off the two men, L.J. took the
opportunity to finish the job she’d come here for.
“Hey, Trash Man!” she yelled. The mark, who had completely disregarded the
girl in knee socks, looked in her direction.
As soon as she had his attention she threw the cellophane bag full of peanut shells
into the open carriage of the hover car.
“Pick up your trash, Trash Man!” She picked up an empty box of Double Sour
Skittles and hurled it into the cab.
2 minutes.
At this the mark abandoned Harper and came barreling in her direction. Harper
grabbed his arm. The mark, unaccustomed to being touched, hurled a punch wildly in
Harper’s direction. He missed.
L.J. called down from the edge of the kudzu, already hidden from sight. “Leave
him! Security orb!”

12. Miles12
Harper didn’t bother to look over his shoulder he just released his grip and
followed L.J. into the brush.
The mark, reasonably flush, and madder than a stuck hog was about to give chase
as well, but it was then, that luck would have it that his pneumatic thrusters powered on
and Beethoven’s 5th symphony erupted into the dying day. He also remembered exactly
who he was and who was he to go traipsing through the trees after petty criminals. He’d
call the police chief in the morning and have him pull the security tapes. It would be easy
to put the kids in a hard labor camp for a while. He’d done it before. So what if he didn’t
have on his classes and had a better chance of picking out his dead grandmother from the
line up. The security orb dropped into sight and hovered directly two feet from his face.
“Are you in need of assistance?” the robotic voice asked.
“No.”
“Identify yourself,” the orb asked. The mark gave his name and social security
number. The orb was silent while it checked the databases for verification.
“Return to your vehicle and lower your volume.”
The mark walked back to his hovercar, visibly exhausted. He remembered that he
was late for a drink with his financial advisor. He was glad of the appointment. After this,
he thought, he would need one.
L.J. and Harper crouched down in the kudzu, knee to knee. They remained like
that until the orb and the hovercar were far out of sight.
L.J. breathed a sigh of relief and smiled. Harper smiled back at her.

13. Miles13
“That was awesome!” Harper whispered.
“I guess it was,” she replied.
“This is cause for a celebration. Do you want to get a drink?”
L.J.’s smile vanished. Harper was a loose end, and the only cure for loose ends is
to cut them. She rifled through possible scenarios in her head and then plastered a
practiced smile on her face.
“Sure, but I’m not 21.”
“So, neither am I” Harper replied.
The coffee bar was packed with carpetbaggers on their way back home and
college students celebrating the coming end of the semester.
Without her sunglasses Harper could see L.J.’s eyes clearly. They were a
brownish green that she always thought looked like pond water, but in the right light, and
the light definitely was right, they looked as if they had vivid specks of purple. They were
the same eyes of an ancestor on her mother’s side who had been hanged for poisoning her
Master. L.J. would have loved to have known that.
Harper thought they were beautiful, almost as beautiful as her lips, which just
happened to be painted bright red, well not just red, but Summer tomato red, Spring
poppy red. Poppy’s were Harper’s mother’s favorite flower. A fact he would dwell on
later, while he dreamt of her, before the forgetting. So red and plump, they made Harper
think they might leak juice or nectar if he kissed her hard enough.

14. Miles14
“What are you staring at?” L.J. asked.
“Nothing, well not nothing. Uh, nevermind,” Harper replied. L.J. thought he was
surprisingly shy to be so big. She imagined he must have been a small boy who hit his
growth spurt late. It was the only explanation for the personality quirk.
“Spoons please, not the plastic stirrers,” L.J. asked the waitress. The girl replied
with an irritated and snidely sarcastic smile.
L.J. turned their table comlink to the news station and hit the closed caption
button.
It was nice to be around people. In her line of work, mingling and maintaining
relationships was anathema.
“So what’s your major?” asked Harper.
L.J. smoothly lied and let Harper take the lead in the conversation again.
When the waitress brought the spoons L.J. nonchalantly brought the blue pill of
her backpack and crushed it, placing the crumbles in her hot tea and stirring it.
“What’s that?” Harper asked.
“Allergies. The honeysuckle is murder.”
Hiding in plain sight.
Harper never gave the pill a second thought and when the newscast switched to
breaking news he truly put it out of his mind.

15. Miles15
Like all true revolutionaries, the news was Harper’s drug, and he promptly turned
the closed captions off as the tiny woman in a red blazer spoke soberly.
“We have gotten confirmation that State Supreme Court Judge Lance Tanaka has
died. As some of you may note, Judge Tanaka has been long thought to be the swing vote
on current bench, which was scheduled to vote on the legality of controversial population
control measures that…”
As he watched, he didn’t even notice L.J. switching coffee cups.
L.J. silenced the woman. “Politics,” she muttered and placed a hand over
Harper’s. It was baby soft and warm from holding the tea cups.
Harper, who had a habit of babbling when he was nervous, went on a truly
impressive tirade about the social ineptitude of the current generation and how no subject
should be controversial. L.J. largely agreed and encouraged him with slight touches of the
hand, winning smiles and nods of the head. Her support was so successful that he didn’t
notice the red woman commentating on how the Judge had died of a severe allergic
reaction to peanuts and while classified as an accident, two students were wanted for
questioning. L.J., however, did not miss this event.
Her instincts told her to cut her loose ends entirely, but something in the way
Harper smiled at her, the way he laughed with his whole chest and made himself look
like a teddy bear. He was genuinely a good person. An innocent bystander.
Pap had told her there was no such things as innocent bystanders only marks and
people with rotten luck. Maybe he was wrong. This time she’d make an exception.

16. Miles16
“Are you listening?” Harper asked.
“Oh, yes, of course. What did you say?” she asked cheerfully.
“Is Love your real name?”
She frowned. “Why would you ask that?”
“Just wondering,” he replied.
She gave fed him another lie and waited for the Dreamatol to take effect, black
market of course, a Pap specialty. No one, save Pap, knew her real name. Most people in
her circle didn’t want to know. The less they knew the better. Best not to make any real
connections, you know social ineptitude and all.
Slowly his eyes closed and she leaned down to his ear, the one with the hearing
aid and whispered. “ My name is Lavendar.”
Later, when he woke up and couldn’t remember a thing he could still smell the
faint note of a flower. A flower he never could place.