The Unwanteds

by Lisa McMann

  She stalked five paces, feeling a bit silly now, having no idea which direction might be correct, when she saw two dents in the grass. She charged forward as the dents moved, and then she reached out and grabbed an invisible something. But it got loose and Lani could hear Alex cackling as he reached the hard footpath, leaving her no more clues as to his whereabouts. She shrugged at Ms. Morning. “I guess I give up,” she said with a half grin.

  The audience roared its applause for the demonstrators as Samheed returned at a gallop, Lani clapping too, until she felt a gentle hand on her shoulder. She turned and didn’t see anyone.

  “You were great,” Alex whispered in her ear. Her hair smelled like mangos. He squeezed her shoulder, and not really knowing why, other than the adrenaline of the chase, or the fear of the guns, or the amazing feeling of being invisible in front of all these people, or perhaps it was the contrast of her bright blue eyes and her shiny black hair, but Alex, feeling suddenly quite daring, pulled Lani a little closer and pressed his lips against her smooth cheek.

  Lani froze. “What. Are you doing.”

  Alex chuckled softly as the audience began looking for him. “Gotta go,” he said.

  Lani blushed furiously as she felt Alex’s hand leave her shoulder. She turned around so her back was to the crowd and pretended to look for him. But all she could think about was that the boy with the kind brown eyes that she’d met on the Quill bus, the boy that she’d pelted with spells trying to get his attention, the boy who rarely noticed her whenever Meghan was around—that boy had just kissed her, right on the cheek.

  A moment later, as the crowd’s applause died down and Samheed had gone back to his seat, the sound of an aerosol spray could be heard. Soon Alex, who had now sprayed himself with visible spray, was in full view again. He sauntered back to his place next to Samheed, a goofy little grin on his lips as the audience clapped once again. He glanced sidelong at Lani, giving her a sly wink as he sat back down.

  Lani’s face grew hot again. She turned her attention to Ms. Morning and, trying very hard to resist touching the warm spot on her cheek, pretended quite convincingly to be enraptured by the rest of the demonstrations and lessons.

  A Glimpse of Quill

  At the end of class Alex, whose mind was now occupied with things other than Lani, slipped away from the others as they headed to lunch. He bounded up the marble staircase and stepped cautiously into the secret hallway, making sure no one was around. And then he crept down the hall toward Mr. Today’s office, knowing that the mage always had lunch with the students on Tuesdays.

  When he got to the place where the glass wall had been, he put his hands out, determined not to run into it again, but as he inched forward, it became apparent that the wall was not in place. “There’s a bonus,” Alex whispered under his breath.

  He slipped into the office, his ears tuned for any noise, and stared at the row of blackboards on the wall.

  The three on the left showed various parts of Artimé, flashing from one scene to another every ten seconds or so. Alex waited until he saw the dining room, and noted that Mr. Today was walking about cheerfully, stopping and chatting at each table.

  The remaining six blackboards showed moving views of Quill. Alex was horrified by how gray and desolate it looked—it was so much worse than he remembered. He watched each blackboard, intrigued. One blackboard showed repeating views of the four quadrants, where all the houses and farms stood. He strained to pick out his parents’ house from the vast expanse of rows and columns, but the picture changed too quickly for him to even come close to finding it.

  He moved on and watched the Quillitary grounds for a moment. Soldiers and officers walked about mechanically, their faces expressionless. Some of them worked on tanks and other vehicles, and others toiled in a windowless room filled with sheets of rusty metal and a few cutting tools. Still others painstakingly poured liquid from a dented tin pail into a vehicle’s engine, careful not to spill a precious drop.

  On the last two blackboards were flashing shots of government buildings and the palace of the High Priest Justine. Alex’s heart fluttered as he recognized the university grounds on one blackboard, and he waited anxiously for the scene to change, hoping against hope that he’d catch a glimpse of Aaron. Just to see him once, he thought. Just to know he’s okay.

  While he saw many university students sitting rigidly at lunch, he didn’t see his brother. Disappointed, he turned to the palace and watched with slitted eyes as the scene showed the governors in a small meeting room, and then it flashed to the high priest herself, alone in her office. Alex scowled and turned back to the university blackboard, which now flashed from the cafeteria to an empty dormitory room to a classroom.

  Alex shook his head sadly. Not only did the scenes of Quill depress him, but they also made him feel like he was so close to actually seeing Aaron, which made the results more disappointing.

  Just as he was about to turn away and go down to lunch, he took one last look at the university blackboard. And there, in the once-empty dormitory room, was a dark-haired boy just entering. Alex’s heart leaped—was it him? Turn and look this way, he pleaded silently, but he knew instinctively, whether it was the way the boy slipped his jacket off, or the way he smoothed his Quillitary haircut just so, that it was Aaron.

  Alex tugged nervously at his shirt collar as he watched his brother turn and hang up his jacket, almost as if he were reaching right through the wall to Alex. He touched his shaking fingers to the blackboard and gazed at Aaron. “So serious,” Alex whispered.

  And then the scene flipped to the cafeteria again. Alex snapped his head up and glanced nervously at the clock, knowing he needed to get out of there before Mr. Today showed up. But he couldn’t go. Twenty seconds later the dormitory room scene returned, and now Aaron lay stretched out on his cot, staring at the ceiling, hands folded behind his head. To anyone else Aaron’s face might appear expressionless. But to Alex, Aaron’s face looked like a troubled sea.

  When the scene changed, Alex forced himself to go, leaving a little piece of himself there with his brother. He wandered down to the dining room completely preoccupied with thoughts of Aaron. Why him? Why was Mr. Today watching Aaron’s room, of all places? Could it possibly be a coincidence?

  Alex didn’t realize that he walked right past Ms. Octavia, who called out a greeting. And he didn’t notice Lani stealing glances his way, her eyes growing more hurt each moment that he didn’t acknowledge her. He also didn’t see Mr. Today watching him closely, a look of grave concern on the man’s face.

  Alex moved about quite unaware of anyone for the rest of that day. The only thing he was painfully aware of was the single question that pounded rhythmically in his head.

  How?

  How

  Meghan and Lani were already in the lounge, slouching on a long couch, their feet propped up on the coffee table, when Alex arrived. He had spent the past two days lost in thought, dying to know more about Aaron. He was having trouble sleeping, but when he did sleep, his dream was different. After being reminded of the stark hopelessness of Quill, he no longer wanted to go back at all. It would be safer, he thought, and wiser, to rescue Aaron and take him back to Artimé. And after a while Alex began to think that Mr. Today, who seemed to know a lot about everyone in Artimé, was probably watching Aaron because Aaron should have been an Unwanted too.

  Alex grunted a greeting to the girls and yawned, wildly tired. He plopped down on the couch across from them and closed his eyes, wondering if Mr. Today knew that Aaron had drawn pictures in the dirt too.

  It was another hot, dry summer in the quadrant when Alex and Aaron were ten. And that day was the kind where the dust clouded up at every step, hovered around your feet and covered your shoes and legs with a thin layer of grime no matter where you walked. But late that afternoon, as Alex and Aaron dug a hole in the tiny backyard in which to bury the week’s worth of unusable scraps, it began to rain. The cracked earth swallowed up the water, and both Alex and Aa
ron were secretly glad for it, because it not only gave their household extra water for the week, but it also made the digging easier.

  Alex had the shovel—he always did the hard part now, since he knew that he would be declared Unwanted. Aaron stood next to him, holding the bucket of scraps and pointing out the discrepancies in the way Alex was digging.

  “That’s not uniform size,” Aaron said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” grumbled Alex, and he lifted the heavy shovel out of the hole and set the blade in the mud. He leaned on the handle, taking a rest and letting the rain soften the hard ground.

  “It does matter,” Aaron said evenly.

  Alex watched the rivulets of rainwater roll across the not-quite-level square of dirt that was their backyard. He lifted up his shovel and noticed the dent it had left. And then, using the blade of the shovel in different directions, he made a triangle. And attached to the bottom of the triangle a rectangle. “Look,” he whispered. “It’s our house.”

  “Stop or I’ll report you.”

  “What’s the sense in that?” Alex said logically. “I’m already Unwanted.”

  Aaron frowned, and then looked at the mud drawing, tilting his head this way and that. “What? I don’t see.…”

  “Not a real house,” Alex sighed. “Don’t you see that it looks like our house?”

  The rain muted the edges of the drawing as Aaron shook his head, puzzled.

  Alex glanced over his shoulder. There was no one in sight. He grabbed the food scraps bucket, picked out a chicken bone, and pushed the shovel toward Aaron. “Here, hold this. Now watch.” Aaron took the shovel as Alex sank to his haunches and made a triangle with a rectangle attached to the bottom. “See?”

  Aaron shifted his eyes uneasily. “It’s …,” he said, but it was like he was thinking so hard about what he was seeing in the mud, and how he shouldn’t be thinking about it at all, that he couldn’t think and speak at the same time. He dropped down to his haunches too, almost as if being smaller would protect him. The shovel’s handle rested along his damp neck and the collar of his now rain-soaked shirt.

  Alex glanced sidelong at his brother. He twirled the bone between his fingers, and then held it out loosely in the palm of his hand toward Aaron. The rain splashed on his forearm, shattering the air.

  Slowly Aaron peered over his shoulder this way and that, then slipped his hand over the once-innocent chicken bone, which now held the power to decide his future and his fate. And shakily he lowered it to the mud. With a light hand he tried to copy Alex’s house, which had now melted and was gone.

  Alex watched him for a moment, trying to keep from breathing too hard in excitement and fear, and then dumped the bucket of scraps in the hole and began to push the mud back over it with his shoe to fill it.

  Aaron, entranced, wiped the mud clean with his left hand and drew another house with his right. This one had almost begun to look like something when the boys heard the squelch of footsteps behind them.

  “Boys,” said the deep, cold voice of Mr. Stowe. The man stepped forward as Aaron wildly tossed the bone toward the hole and turned on his haunches to face his father, the shovel in his hand.

  Alex stared at the bone, which had landed near his feet, and stopped pushing the mud into the hole, knowing that hiding the evidence wouldn’t help his case at all. He turned around slowly, the empty bucket swinging in his hand as hard drops of rain pounded against it.

  Mr. Stowe stared hard at the ground, where Aaron’s house was slowly melting away. He looked at Aaron, then at Alex, then back to Aaron again. “Alex,” he said to Aaron, “give your brother the shovel and come with me,” he said in a horribly quiet voice.

  Aaron’s eyes grew wild, and then he controlled himself. He handed the shovel to Alex and followed his father to the house.

  “And Aaron,” Mr. Stowe said, not realizing he was actually talking to Alex, “finish up your brother’s work.”

  What Mr. Stowe didn’t see as he walked into the house was the leap of hope and the pleading glance to play along that Aaron shot to Alex over his shoulder. Nor did he see the returned look of disbelief, followed by a cool shrug of indifference from Alex, the already Unwanted. Alex turned his back on his brother, and, using the shovel as he always did, he slowly, methodically, filled in the hole.

  It was the slurping of the ice cream malts through straws that woke Alex. He opened his eyes, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling, trying to figure out where he was.

  “Have a nice nap?” Meghan grinned.

  Alex sat up and shook the sleep from his brain. “Yeah,” he said, “actually, I did. I haven’t been sleeping very well the last few nights.” He rubbed his eyes. “Where’s Sam?”

  Meghan shrugged. “Library, maybe?”

  Lani stared at the wall and didn’t say anything at all.

  “Lani?” Alex said. “Are you okay?”

  Lani stared at the wall and said even less than nothing, if that were possible.

  Meghan raised her eyebrow. “Hmm,” she said. “What’d you do now, Alex?”

  “I swear, I—nothing!”

  Lani slurped on the dregs of her milk shake. Loudly.

  Meghan looked back and forth between the two and slowly, uneasily, got up from the couch. “I’m … going to go find out where Samheed is,” she said carefully. “I’ll be right back.” She hurried over to Earl, glancing back occasionally over her shoulder.

  “Lani, I—”

  Lani sat up and faced Alex, silencing him with her glare. She breathed evenly three or four deep breaths, her eyes flaring. Finally she spoke. “You don’t just kiss a girl on the cheek and then ignore her for three days.”

  Alex’s jaw dropped. He flushed bright red.

  “Don’t do it again.”

  “Uhh …” Alex whispered an oath under his breath and put his burning face in his hands, trying to think of something to say. Finally he sighed deeply, looked up, and gave Lani a helpless look.

  “I said, don’t do it again.” Lani’s voice was growing louder.

  “Okay! Okay, I won’t. I’m … sorry. I’m … wait a second.” He tipped his head to the side. “You mean, don’t … you know. The first thing? Or don’t, um, ignore you?”

  Meghan sidled back over to them, clearing her throat loudly as she approached.

  Lani rolled her eyes at Alex and smiled brightly at Meghan. “Is Samheed coming down tonight?”

  “Maybe later, he said. He’s working on some art project in the library with Will Blair.” Both girls sneered at the mention of Will’s name.

  Alex sat very still, not quite sure if he was allowed to speak. And not needing to, as it turned out, since Meghan and Lani were both suddenly quite chatty.

  “So, what’s he working on?”

  “It’s some sort of drawing thing. Threety, I think he called it? Alex, you know what threety is?”

  Alex cleared his throat. “Uh, what?”

  Lani tilted her head. “Do you mean 3-D? Like, three-dimensional?”

  “Yeah, that’s it, I think. It’s like he’s trying to draw a closet door on the wall of his room, but it would be a 3-D doorway that led to a room you could actually go in and out of. He was thinking of it as a defensive spell—a place to hide, I guess.”

  “How would you keep others from coming in it once you’re inside, though?” Alex asked, intrigued.

  “That’s what I was wondering,” Meghan said. “Only Mr. Today can do that.”

  Lani whipped her hair behind her ear and rummaged through her book bag. “Hold on a minute,” she said. “I know I read something …”

  Alex thought Lani’s ear was just about perfect. He thought about how he’d whispered into that very same ear right before he’d kissed her, and he blushed again.

  Meghan, eyeing Alex, rolled her eyes. Ahh, now I know what’s going on, she thought. Geez. She coughed lightly. “I’m still trying to figure out how Simber and Florence got into the theater that one time. They’re way too big to fit in the tube, and t
hat’s the only way in there.”

  Lani pulled out a book. “Oh, that’s not too tough, Meg. I wondered the same thing. In fact Alex could probably make that happen better than either of us or Samheed.”

  “Who, me?”

  “You’re the artist, Alex.” Lani said. She smiled; all traces of the earlier fire in her eyes were now extinguished.

  “I don’t see how that gets Simber and Florence to fit in the tube,” he said. “What, did Ms. Octavia sketch 3-D pictures of them and put the picture in the tube?”

  “No,” Lani said, her eyes dancing now as she paged through her book. “No, it’s much simpler than that.”

  Meghan sat up, intrigued.

  Alex’s brain started churning, trying desperately to come up with the answer before Lani read it, as if they were playing a game of trivia. “Let me guess,” he said. “Hold on—I’m thinking.” He squinched his eyes shut, picturing what elements were needed. “Okay …,” he said.

  “Well?” Lani jiggled the book on her lap, her finger holding the place.

  “She drew a bigger tube in 3-D.” Alex said.

  Lani blinked. “No.” Lani watched Alex’s shoulders fall in defeat, thinking about it. “But I think that would work too,” she said thoughtfully. “Good one, Al.”

  Meghan frowned. “Well, what did she do, then?”

  Lani smiled. “Picture the theater. Back where Simber and Florence were standing. What was right behind them? I’ll give you a hint—there’s something the theater has that this lounge doesn’t have.”

  Alex looked up. “Doors,” he said, puzzling. “Huge ones. But nobody ever uses them—they’re just painted on for aesthetics, right?”

  Meghan blinked.

  Alex tapped his chin.

  “Oooh,” they said together. Lani grinned.