by Andrea White
Zert was glad this man was on a tele-screen. He wouldn’t want to be in the same room with him.
“Bezert Cage. I’m Lawyer Freeze. Your court-appointed lawyer.”
Oh no. “Save. Next,” Zert said.
Roal Vimen, Cribbie’s older brother, popped up on the screen. He had on a black T-shirt with the logo “Flade Street Holo-theater.” Roal worked for Dan the Growl, the holo-theater’s bouncer, as his assistant. Unlike Cribbie, who was broad and round, Roal had a slight build and a weasel-like face.
“You’ve probably heard,” Roal said, talking fast. “Cribbie’s in bad shape. We’re at the Mobile Health Clinic—over on M street. I’ll let ya know.” The screen went black.
“Next,” Zert said tersely.
Snow Blakely’s photo pulsed. Her reddish-brown hair was clipped short and curled around her head. I’ve missed you, Snow.
Then a group message from Snow popped up.
Snow’s mother taught at St. Lulu’s, and earlier that year, Snow had taken it upon herself to send out a notice concerning the death of their classmate Jayle Papetus, a girl Zert barely knew.
Each square of the message board contained a photo of a kid in the seventh grade at St. Lulu’s. Snow had marked Jayle’s photo with an X.
Holding his breath, Zert scanned the squares to find Cribbie. His gaze swept the row of Vs. He gasped when he spotted a black X. Oh no! It covered Cribbie’s photo. Snow had to be wrong.
“Next.”
Roal’s narrow face appeared on the screen. A patch of wiry hair thatched his mouth. His eyes were swollen and red. “He didn’t make it, Zert.”
Zert dropped the I-ring on the couch. Cribbie, Mr. Fearless, the toughest guy in their whole class and his best friend, was dead. He felt the tears well up inside of him. He wouldn’t cry. Thirteen-year-olds didn’t cry. He was too tough to cry.
He had no idea how much time had passed when his father entered the room and bustled over to him. “Did you reach him?” He held out his hand to collect the I-ring.
Zert shook his head. He didn’t trust himself to speak.
But his father seemed to take in the situation at a glance. “I was afraid of this,” he said.
“You’re not always right! You just think you are!” Zert shouted.
His father’s face tightened. But when he spoke, his tone was mild. “I’m so sorry, son.”
Zert looked away. Cribbie would never play zoink ball again; he’d never wage another trash war.
His father grabbed Zert’s right hand. He squeezed it hard—too hard—as he stared down at it.
Zert followed his father’s gaze. One of his freckles looked iffy. It was raised and too pink—a baby blister. “What is it?” he gasped.
This was probably how it had started for Cribbie. One blister, no bigger than an ant, and the next thing he knew, his body was covered in them, even his tongue. Then the blisters swelled up into welts, and when they erupted into boils, as quickly as that, his friend was dying. He felt small and helpless. It was so … unfair.
His father dropped his hand. His worried eyes searched Zert’s. “The vaccine is effective even after exposure, so long as you don’t have any bursting boils.”
Zert would still have a chance if he got the vaccine before the disease progressed.
He looked down at the iffy freckle again. It could be a mosquito bite. But it could also be a blister. “OK, Dad. Let’s go.” He felt his throat catch. Cribbie!
His father nodded. “But I want to make sure you understand one more thing.” Standing in the middle of the room with his hands loosely clenched, his father looked like he did when he had pushed his mother’s ashes into the g-pipe, sending them to the sky cemetery upstairs.
“What’s that?” Zert asked.
“This is permanent,” his father said.
Like death.
10
A SAD WIND
Everything had to be just right: the store quiet and him standing in the middle of the room with Okar’s cage on one side and Chub’s on the other. He couldn’t look directly at the counter but kind of sideways. He had to concentrate hard.
Then Zert could imagine that his mom had just stepped out of their apartment.
I’ll be back soon, honey.
Flowers Cage was a wind that blew past and left him sad.
In the animated photo of his parents’ wedding, she looked impossibly young. In the photo of his fourth birthday party, there was a shadow over half of her face. He could only see one green eye and the upward swing of her smile. It wasn’t the way he wanted to remember her.
Now, when he tried to paint a picture of her in his mind, he could only see pieces. Her milky white teeth. Her skinny legs. The green fabric of her favorite shirt. Although he had given up trying to fit these bits into a full-sized image, tonight he could sense her presence. She was going to come through the door any minute. What do you want for dinner? She’d fix a hot meal. No chips for dinner like usual.
If he tuned everything else out, he could still hear the songs that she played on the Music Mixer while she worked behind the counter. “If I get a vacation, I’ll take it in my freezer. Do you want my love baked, boiled, or fried?”
The feeling sat lightly on his shoulder. It was a warm, cold, happy, sad, silent feeling, and it smelled like flowers and pickles. But if he tried to hold on to it, it disappeared.
His father came in. “What are you doing standing in the dark, son?”
“Remembering,” Zert said.
His father’s face softened. “You need to get to bed. We have a big day tomorrow,” he said after a few moments.
“Dad, are you sure this is the right thing to do?” Zert asked, still looking around. If they left the store, he’d have to leave the mom-feeling behind, too.
His father sighed. “Zert, you are more precious to me than life. This is the best idea that I have.”
Chub began howling.
His father paused. “Can I see your right hand?” he asked.
Zert stared down at the iffy spot. He was pretty sure it hadn’t grown. “It’s OK, Dad.”
“I tried, but they wouldn’t let us leave tonight,” his father said. “Hopefully …” He didn’t finish his sentence.
Zert rolled over in bed. As he opened his eyes, he sensed that today was special—maybe a holiday even.
“Zert, are you awake?” his father’s voice clipped his daydream short. “Let’s get going. We have a lot to do.”
Then it all came back to him. Today was the opposite of a holiday. Today, he and his father had an appointment with … a doctor. A shrink. He couldn’t even smile at his own joke.
He stared down at the iffy spot. Nothing had changed overnight. It had been a long night as he tossed and turned.
He pulled on his favorite jeans and then used eenie, meenie, miney, mo, catch Chub by the toe to pick a blue T-shirt, the T-shirt he would wear when he shrunk. When he was ready, he picked up his backpack and took one last look around his room before heading down the hall.
He found his father waiting in the living room. “Are you OK?” he asked Zert.
Zert looked down at both his hands again. “Yeah. Maybe the bump is an insect bite, Dad.”
“We can’t take any chances,” his father said as he moved closer. He scanned Zert’s hands and arms, then noticed Zert’s backpack. “Dr. Brown said you can’t bring anything,” he said, but not in a sharp tone.
Zert dropped his backpack to the floor. Nothing he really cared about could fit in his backpack anyway. Chub. The holo-imagetube. The purple couch his mom bought. His whole room. Life as he knew it.
His father picked up his wedding day photo from the desk. “I’m going to keep him safe, Flowers,” he said to the photo before slipping it into his front pocket.
Last night’s bag of chips sat on the couch. Zert reached for the bag and pressed a handful in his mouth. Maybe they would be his last chips. But he had forgotten to seal the bag, and the chips were soft, not crunchy. Yuck.
“We’re leaving in five minutes,” his father said before walking out of the living room.
When Zert went into the store, he found Uncle Marin sitting at the table, talking into his I-ring.
He stuffed the bag of chips into his back pocket and headed over to Chub’s cage.
Usually, Chub howled when she heard him coming and raked the bars with her tiny claws. But this morning, the cage was empty.
“Zert, stay away from Chub’s cage!” his father called out suddenly. Zert could hear his father’s footsteps hurrying toward the store.
“Where is she?” Zert demanded.
His father burst into the room, then stood there when he saw Zert. His eyes darted around the store. He was popping his knuckles. “Brew came for her and Okar early this morning,” he said quietly.
“What?” Zert looked over at Okar’s cage and found it empty too. “But you didn’t even let me say good-bye.” He stepped closer to Chub’s empty cage. Her blue bowl and black blanket were the two loneliest-looking things on this planet.
“Stand back,” his father said. “Someday you’ll understand.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t even let me say good-bye!” Zert cried.
“Jack, tell him about—” Uncle Marin said. He was standing near the door to the street, as if raring to go.
His father interrupted, “Let me handle this, Marin.”
“OK. I’ll meet you out front.” Uncle Marin walked out the door, triggering the store’s greeting. It was broken, and sometimes it rang not only when people came in but also when they walked out of the store. This was another thing Zert would miss.
“Tell me what?” Zert asked. Marin closed the front door behind him.
“Chub has Superpox,” his father said to Zert, looking down.
“What!”
“This morning,” his father said, swallowing slowly. “I found her sick. Her face was … covered in red boils.”
“But how? The store has been closed.”
“I know,” his father said. But there was something he wasn’t saying.
Zert’s stomach tightened. He had opened the door. Chub had sniffed Cribbie’s glow ball. He had exposed his pet to danger.
He had cradled Chub in his arms last night. It could already be too late for him. Shrink or die.
An itch arose in the center of his back. Superpox wasn’t always predictable. He wanted to rip his T-shirt off and ask his dad to check. But what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. At least, not yet.
He rushed over to his father and folded his arms around him.
11
THE PUZZLE OF BRIGHT RED LIPS
Glade smiled with her red lips up at Uncle Marin, who was a head taller. “Promise me, Marin, that you’ll stay safe.” She brushed his bangs back from his forehead. She wasn’t wearing an O-mask. Even though she was pretty young, she was one of the lucky vaccinated ones.
Uncle Marin and Glade were standing together underneath Roach Cowboy, the tall sign for Cage & Sons that his great-grandfather had installed decades ago. The roach’s wings were raised as if it were about to fly off into the gray day. A red cowboy hat shaded its face, leaving the roach’s mysterious smile barely visible. The enormous figure—designed to be seen from blocks away—had brought in many customers over the years. Low City DC was infested with roaches, and everybody—even drug dealers—hated them.
His father stood in the doorway. “Ready, Marin?” he called.
“Glade is going with us to the taxi-pad,” Uncle Marin said.
Zert rolled his eyes at his father.
“Lead on,” his father said, ignoring him.
Uncle Marin looped his arm in Glade’s, and the pair stepped onto the moving sidewalk with their heads bent together, whispering.
Zert followed his father outside, breathing in the stinky, thick, beautiful air. Like Glade, he didn’t wear an O-mask. He had convinced his father that a mask was pointless. If things went according to plan, he’d be vaccinated against Superpox in a few hours. If not, well, a mask was too little, too late.
The iffy-looking spot on his right hand hadn’t changed. The bubble on top was still tiny. But his back itched furiously. The itch was in the dead center, and he couldn’t get a good scratch. Cribbie. Chub. Zert’s throat tightened.
Except for several dozen lifters rolling down the street toward the financial district and a few individuals wearing privacy hoods, Flade Street was deserted. The traffic flew overhead in the network of red, purple, green, and blue highways. And the gaseous tubes leading to and from the Up City were clogged with lifters transporting people to work.
No Superpox upstairs. Only the vaccinated lived and worked in the upper cities.
As they crossed the street, the beautiful green holostatues of liberty held up their torches like blazing suns. Good-bye, he mouthed to them as the moving sidewalk carried him past.
The giant poster for “Dream Hat,” the latest blockbuster product from Far Out Toys, showed a hazy photograph of white clouds. “A camera for your dreams. Be the first one on your block to own one.”
Zert wiped the sweat off his forehead. If only he were dreaming.
The sign for Eco-Hotel, the site of the lifter taxi stand, loomed in the distance. Each of the hotel’s expensive rooms was based on a vanished ecosystem: a rain forest, a coral reef, a mountain valley, a redwood forest.
He pushed the cool button on his T-shirt to activate the micro-fans in the fabric as he stepped off the sidewalk and joined his father in the short line for taxi-lifters.
The older model taxi-lifters with huge propellers and obvious air vents weren’t used any longer to fly to the Up Cities but for across-town transport. Although the shiny faces of robots manned most, a few humans sat behind the automated dashboards, scowling over their com-devices or drinking their morning vita-coffees.
“Marin?” his father called over his shoulder as they moved up in the line.
A few yards away, tears rolled down Glade’s cheeks, and probably not from the air pollution. Uncle Marin leaned over and whispered into her ear. She clapped her hand over her mouth and grinned.
Uncle Marin grinned back, and his foreboard lit up. That broken exclamation point at the end was embarrassing.
Uncle Marin hugged Glade, then ambled over to them.
“I’ll talk to you soon,” Glade shouted after him.
Uncle Marin waved but didn’t answer.
Zert was confused. A thumb-sized Uncle Marin wouldn’t be able to work an I-ring, even with his feet.
“Should we go robotic?” his father asked when Uncle Marin joined them.
“Sure,” Uncle Marin said.
His father preferred human drivers. But robotic was probably safer for top-secret Mission Thumb.
His father climbed into the back seat of a beat-up old model, and Zert followed. He banged his ankles on the bicycle pedals crammed underneath his seat. Most lifters offered exercise equipment, and this economy model was no exception.
The taxi’s weather system blew out freezing air, and he turned off the fans in his shirt. He was drenched with sweat, and not because of the heat.
Uncle Marin settled into the passenger’s seat next to the driver.
Like all service bots, the driver had a silly smile and wide, exaggerated eyes. His body, functional but not realistic, was a “Tin-Man” design with no faux clothing.
Uncle Marin recited the address and fed the dashboard with a credit chip.
The radiation meter on the control panel flashed yellow, indicating only a low level of threat today.
Churning dust, the lifter sucked up air to gather force for the takeoff. It began to rise, wobbling slightly.
Zert didn’t get to travel in taxi-lifters often, and he wanted to enjoy himself. But he also knew this could be his last ever ride in a lifter. Worse, his back had started itching again. He had no way of checking to see whether it had erupted into a field of blisters. He didn’t want to ask his father.
Blis
ters, then welts, then boils, then pus, then … He thought of Chub. He thought of Cribbie. He leaned his head against the window and sighed.
The taxi-lifter exited the blue high-highway and began circling. Once they got below the pollution clouds, an ordinary suburban neighborhood came into view, with g-pipe portals flashing in the sun and vivid green Instant Trees dotting the fake grass yards.
The lifter’s wheels clanked as they lowered for landing in front of a midsized gray house with a darker gray roof. An oak tree with uplifted branches grew in the front yard. Its leaves were green and yellow, not like an Instant Tree, whose leaves were of identical size and color. A series of sprinklers sprayed water onto the trunk.
“This is it?” Zert said incredulously. “I thought we were going to an office building … a hospital …”
“A lab … with guards,” his father said, looking around. “I did too. But think about it. What better disguise than an ordinary house? It makes sense.”
“Thank you for riding with Auto-lift,” said a voice from the screen. Magnets clicked. The doors slid open.
After the chill of the taxi, the outdoor air seemed to pant with heat. Zert followed his father and uncle out of the lifter into a neighborhood that was eerily still and quiet. They stepped onto the moving sidewalk to be transported to the front of the house.
As the taxi-lifter took off, tiny tornadoes of dust spun around Zert. When he opened his eyes, the lifter had nearly reached the blue high-highway in the sky.
Uncle Marin pointed at the back of the house as they drew near. “See that docked lifter attached to the back of the house? Project Rosie never stays in one place for long.”
Zert rubbed his eyes to get rid of some of the dust. As he did, a roach scampered by. He tried to stomp the roach with his foot.
“Zert, stop playing around,” his father called to him. He and Uncle Marin were already standing on the front porch.
Squish. Zert’s shoe came down on the roach.
“Zert,” his father scolded.
