UnStrung

by Neal Shusterman

  He watches as the patrol car’s wheels slowly roll past. On the other side of the eighteen-wheeler the second patrol car passes in the opposite direction. Maybe this is just a routine check, he thinks. Maybe they’re not looking for me. The more he thinks about it, the more he convinces himself that’s the case. They can’t know he’s gone yet. His father sleeps like a log, and his mother never checks on Connor during the night anymore.

  Still, the police cars circle.

  From his spot beneath the truck Connor sees the driver’s door of another eighteen-wheeler open. No—it’s not the driver’s door, it’s the door to the little bedroom behind the cab. A trucker emerges, stretches, and heads toward the truckstop bathrooms, leaving the door ajar.

  In the hairbreadth of a moment, Connor makes a decision and bolts from his hiding spot, racing across the lot to that truck. Loose gravel skids out from under his feet as he runs. He doesn’t know where the cop cars are anymore, but it doesn’t matter. He has committed himself to this course of action and he has to see it through. As he nears the door he sees headlights arcing around, about to turn toward him. He pulls open the door to the truck’s sleeper, hurls himself inside, and pulls the door closed behind him.

  He sits on a bed not much bigger than a cot, catching his breath. What’s his next move? The trucker will be back. Connor has about five minutes if he’s lucky, one minute if he’s not. He peers beneath the bed. There’s space down there where he can hide, but it’s blocked by two duffle bags full of clothes. He could pull them out, squeeze in, and pull the duffle bags back in front of him. The trucker would never know he’s there. But even before he can get the first duffle bag out, the door swings open. Connor just stands there, unable to react as the trucker reaches in to grab his jacket and sees him.

  “Whoa! Who are you? What the hell you doin’ in my truck?”

  A police car cruises slowly past behind him.

  “Please,” Connor says, his voice suddenly squeaky like it was before his voice changed. “Please, don’t tell anyone. I’ve got to get out of this place.” He reaches into his backpack, fumbling, and pulls out a wad of bills from his wallet. “You want money? I’ve got money. I’ll give you all I’ve got.”

  “I don’t want your money,” the trucker says.

  “All right, then, what?”

  Even in the dim light the trucker must see the panic in Connor’s eyes, but he doesn’t say a thing.

  “Please,” says Connor again. “I’ll do anything you

  want. . . .”

  The trucker looks at him in silence for a moment more. “Is that so?” he finally says. Then he steps inside and closes the door behind him.

  Connor shuts his eyes, not daring to consider what he’s just gotten himself into.

  The trucker sits beside him. “What’s your name?”

  “Connor.” Then he realizes a moment too late he should have given a fake name.

  The trucker scratches his beard stubble and thinks for a moment. “Let me show you something, Connor.” He reaches over Connor and grabs, of all things, a deck of cards from a little pouch hanging next to the bed. “Did ya ever see this?” The trucker takes the deck of cards in one hand and does a skillful one-handed shuffle. “Pretty good, huh?”

  Connor, not knowing what to say, just nods.

  “How about this?” Then the trucker takes a single card and with sleight of hand makes the card vanish into thin air. Then he reaches over and pulls the card right out of Connor’s shirt pocket. “You like that?”

  Connor lets out a nervous laugh.

  “Well, those tricks you just saw?” The trucker says, “I didn’t do ’em.”

  “I . . . don’t know what you mean.”

  The trucker rolls up his sleeve to reveal that the arm, which had done the tricks, had been grafted on at the elbow.

  “Ten years ago I fell asleep at the wheel,” the trucker tells him. “Big accident. I lost an arm, a kidney, and a few other things. I got new ones, though, and I pulled through.” He looks at his hands, and now Connor can see that the trick-card hand is a little different from the other one. The trucker’s other hand has thicker fingers, and the skin is a bit more olive in tone.

  “So,” says Connor, “you got dealt a new hand.”

  The trucker laughs at that, then he becomes quiet for a moment, looking at his replacement hand. “These fingers here knew things the rest of me didn’t. Muscle memory, they call it. And there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t wonder what other incredible things that kid who owned this arm knew, before he was unwound . . . whoever he was.”

  The trucker stands up. “You’re lucky you came to me,” he says. “There are truckers out there who’ll take whatever you offer, then turn you in anyway.”

  “And you’re not like that?”

  “No, I’m not.” He puts out his hand—his other hand—and Connor shakes it. “Josias Aldridge,” he says. “I’m heading north from here. You can ride with me till morning.”

  Connor’s relief is so great, it takes the wind right out of him. He can’t even offer a thank-you.

  “That bed there’s not the most comfortable in the world,” says Aldridge, “but it does the job. Get yourself some rest. I just gotta go take a dump, and then we’ll be on our way.” Then he closes the door, and Connor listens to his footsteps heading off toward the bathroom. Connor finally lets his guard down and begins to feel his own exhaustion. The trucker didn’t give him a destination, just a direction, and that’s fine. North, south, east, west—it doesn’t matter as long as it’s away from here. As for his next move, well, first he’s got to get through this one before he can think about what comes next.

  A minute later Connor’s already beginning to doze when he hears the shout from outside.

  “We know you’re in there! Come out now and you won’t get hurt!”

  Connor’s heart sinks. Josias Aldridge has apparently pulled another sleight of hand. He’s made Connor appear for the police. Abracadabra. With his journey over before it even began, Connor swings the door open to see three Juvey-cops aiming weapons.

  But they’re not aiming at him.

  In fact, their backs are to him.

  Across the way, the cab door swings open of the truck he had hidden under just a few minutes before, and a kid comes out from behind the empty driver’s seat, his hands in the air. Connor recognizes him right away. It’s a kid he knows from school. Andy Jameson.

  My God, is Andy being unwound too?

  There’s a look of fear on Andy’s face, but beyond it is something worse. A look of utter defeat. That’s when Connor realizes his own folly. He’d been so surprised by this turn of events that he’s still just standing there, exposed for anyone to see. Well, the policemen don’t see him. But Andy does. He catches sight of Connor, holds his gaze, only for a moment . . .

  . . . and in that moment something remarkable happens.

  The look of despair on Andy’s face is suddenly replaced by a steely resolve bordering on triumph. He quickly looks away from Connor and takes a few steps before the police grab him—steps away from Connor, so that the police still have their backs to him.

  Andy had seen him and had not given him away! If Andy has nothing else after this day, at least he’ll have this small victory.

  Connor leans back into the shadows of the truck and slowly pulls the door closed. Outside, as the police take Andy away, Connor lies back down, and his tears come as sudden as a summer downpour. He’s not sure who he’s crying for—for Andy, for himself, for Ariana—and not knowing makes his tears flow all the more. Instead of wiping the tears away he lets them dry on his face like he used to when he was a little boy and the things he cried about were so insignificant that they’d be forgotten by morning.

  The trucker never comes to check on him. Instead Connor hears the engine start and feels the truck pulling out. The gentle motion of the road rocks him to sleep.

  •

  The ring of Connor’s cell phone wakes him out
of a deep sleep. He fights consciousness. He wants to go back to the dream he was having. It was about a place he was sure he had been to, although he couldn’t quite remember when. He was at a cabin on a beach with his parents, before his brother was born. Connor’s leg had fallen through a rotted board on the porch into spiderwebs so thick, they felt like cotton. Connor had screamed and screamed from the pain, and the fear of the giant spiders that he was convinced would eat his leg off. And yet, this was a good dream—a good memory—because his father was there to pull him free, and carry him inside, where they bandaged his leg and sat him by the fire with some kind of cider so flavorful, he could still taste it when he thought about it. His father told him a story that he can no longer remember, but that’s all right. It wasn’t the story but the tone of his voice that mattered, a gentle baritone rumble as calming as waves breaking on a shore. Little-boy-Connor drank his cider and leaned back against his mother pretending to fall asleep, but what he was really doing was trying to dissolve into the moment and make it last forever. In the dream he did dissolve. His whole being flowed into the cider cup, and his parents placed it gently on the table, close enough to the fire to keep it warm forever and always.

  Stupid dreams. Even the good ones are bad, because they remind you how poorly reality measures up.

  His cell phone rings again, chasing away the last of the dream. Connor almost answers it. The sleeper room of the truck is so dark, he doesn’t realize at first that he’s not in his own bed. The only thing that saves him is that he can’t find his phone and he must turn on a light. When he finds a wall where his nightstand should be, he realizes that this isn’t his room. The phone rings again. That’s when it all comes back to him, and he remembers where he is. Connor finds his phone in his backpack. The phone ID says the call is from his father.

  So now his parents know he’s gone. Do they really think he’ll answer his phone? He waits until voicemail takes the call, then he turns off the power. His watch says 7:30 a.m. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes, trying to calculate how far they’ve come. The truck isn’t moving anymore, but they must have traveled at least two hundred miles while he slept. It’s a good start.

  There’s a knock on the door. “Come on out, kid. Your ride’s over.”

  Connor’s not complaining—it was outrageously generous of this truck driver to do what he did. Connor won’t ask any more of him. He swings open the door and steps out to thank the man, but it’s not Josias Aldridge at the door. Aldridge is a few yards away being handcuffed, and in front of Connor is a policeman: a Juvey-cop wearing a smile as big as all outdoors. Standing ten yards away is Connor’s father, still holding the cell phone he had just called from.

  “It’s over, son,” his father says.

  It makes Connor furious. I’m not your son! He wants to shout. I stopped being your son when you signed the unwind order! But the shock of the moment leaves him speechless.

  It had been so stupid of Connor to leave his cell phone on—that’s how they tracked him—and he wonders how many other kids are caught by their own blind trust of technology. Well, Connor’s not going the way Andy Jameson did. He quickly assesses the situation. The truck has been pulled over to the side of the interstate by two highway patrol cars and a Juvey-cop unit. Traffic barrels past at seventy miles per hour, oblivious to the little drama unfolding on the shoulder. Connor makes a split-second decision and bolts, pushing the officer against the truck and racing across the busy highway. Would they shoot an unarmed kid in the back, he wonders, or would they shoot him in the legs and spare his vital organs? As he races onto the interstate, cars swerve around him, but he keeps on going.

  “Connor, stop!” he hears his father yell. Then he hears a gun fire.

  He feels the impact, but not in his skin. The bullet embeds in his backpack. He doesn’t look behind him. Then, as he reaches the highway median, he hears another gunshot, and a small blue splotch appears on the center divider. They’re firing tranquilizer bullets. They’re not taking him out, they’re trying to take him down—and they’re much more likely to fire tranq bullets at will, than regular bullets.

  Connor climbs over the center divider, and finds himself in the path of a Cadillac that’s not stopping for anything. The car swerves to avoid him, and by sheer luck Connor’s momentum takes him just a few inches out of the Caddy’s path. Its side mirror smacks him painfully in the ribs before the car screeches to a halt, sending the acrid stench of burned rubber up his nostrils. Holding his aching side, Connor sees someone looking at him from an open window of the backseat. It’s another kid, dressed all in white. The kid is terrified.

  With the police already reaching the center divider, Connor looks into the eyes of this frightened kid, and knows what he has to do. It’s time for another split-second decision. He reaches through the window, pulls up the lock, and opens the door.

  1 • Starkey

  He’s fighting a nightmare when they come for him.

  A great flood is swallowing the world, and in the middle of it all, he’s being mauled by a bear. He’s more annoyed than terrified. As if the flood isn’t enough, his deep, dark mind has to send an angry grizzly to tear into him.

  Then he’s dragged feetfirst out of the jaws of death and drowning Armageddon.

  “Up! Now! Let’s go!”

  He opens his eyes to a brightly lit bedroom that ought to be dark. Two Juvey-cops manhandle him, grabbing his arms, preventing him from fighting back long before he’s awake enough to try.

  “No! Stop! What is this?”

  Handcuffs. First his right wrist, then his left.

  “On your feet!”

  They yank him to his feet as if he’s resisting—which he would, if he were more awake.

  “Leave me alone! What’s going on?”

  But in an instant he’s awake enough to know exactly what’s going on. It’s a kidnapping. But you can’t call it kidnapping when transfer papers have been signed in triplicate.

  “Verbally confirm that you are Mason Michael Starkey.”

  There are two officers. One is short and muscular, the other tall and muscular. Probably military boeufs before they took jobs as Juvey-rounders. It takes a special heartless breed to be a Juvey-cop, but to specialize as a rounder you probably need to be soulless as well. The fact that he’s being rounded for unwinding shocks and terrifies Starkey, but he refuses to show it, because he knows Juvey-rounders get off on other people’s fear.

  The short one, who is clearly the mouthpiece of this duo, gets in his face and repeats, “Verbally confirm that you are Mason Michael Starkey!”

  “And why should I do that?”

  “Kid,” says the other rounder, “this can go down easy or hard, but either way it’s going down.” The second cop is more soft spoken with a pair of lips that clearly aren’t his. In fact, they look like they came from a girl. “The drill’s not so hard, so just get with the program.”

  He talks as if Starkey should have known they were coming, but what Unwind ever really knows? Every Unwind believes in their heart of hearts that it won’t happen to them—that their parents, no matter how strained things get, will be smart enough not to fall for the net ads, TV commercials, and billboards that say things like “Unwinding: the sensible solution.” But who is he kidding? Even without the constant media blitz, Starkey’s been a potential candidate for unwinding since the moment he arrived on the doorstep. Perhaps he should be surprised that his parents waited so long.

  Now the mouthpiece gets deep in his personal space. “For the last time, verbally confirm that you are—”

  “Yeah, yeah, Mason Michael Starkey. Now get out of my face, your breath stinks.”

  With his identity verbally confirmed, Lady-Lips pulls out a form in triplicate: white, yellow, and pink.

  “So is this how you do it?” Starkey asks, his voice beginning to quaver. “You arrest me? What’s my crime? Being sixteen? Or maybe it’s just being here at all.”

  “Quiet-or-we-tranq-you,” says Mouthpie
ce, like it’s all one word.

  A part of Starkey wants to be tranq’d—just go to sleep and if he’s lucky, never wake up. That way he won’t have to face the utter humiliation of being torn from his life in the middle of the night. But no, he wants to see his parents’ faces. Or, more to the point, he wants them to see his face, and if he’s tranq’d, they get off easy. They won’t have to look him in the eye.

  Lady-Lips holds the unwind order in front of him and begins to read the infamous Paragraph Nine, the “Negation Clause.”

  “Mason Michael Starkey, by the signing of this order, your parents and/or legal guardians have retroactively terminated your tenure, backdated to six days postconception, leaving you in violation of Existential Code 390. In light of this, you are hereby remanded to the California Juvenile Authority for summary division, also known as unwinding.”

  “Blah, blah, blah.”

  “Any rights previously granted to you by the county, state, or federal government as a citizen thereof are now officially and permanently revoked.” He folds the unwind order and shoves it into his pocket.

  “Congratulations, Mr. Starkey,” says Mouthpiece. “You no longer exist.”

  “Then why are you talking to me?”

  “We won’t be for much longer.” They tug him toward the door.

  “Can I at least put on shoes?”

  They let him go but stay on their guard.

  Starkey takes his sweet time tying his shoes. Then they pull him out of his room and down the stairs. The Juvey-cops have heavy boots that intimidate the wood of the steps. The three of them sound like a herd of cattle as they go down.