by Pat Schmatz
Surely there are gaps here — but probably not on the path. Probably off in those thickets of brush. Not that I want to find out. I wouldn’t have anywhere to go. I turn and head back.
The grove is cool and shady. I kick off my frods and put the komodo on watch, plant my feet in the middle, and breathe toward rock, but I can’t feel it. When I was eight and Korm told me to be a rock, at first I couldn’t do it. I think it really only took a couple of weeks, but I was a child, and it seemed like a million years before Korm was satisfied with my rock.
I had no patience. Korm had endless patience. It took months of study for me to move from rock to wind, and to fire, and to rain, and finally to begin my study of lizard. Lizard came quickly, because it’s true, what the school gov worker blatters on about — when I focus, I learn fast.
I just need to focus. I close my eyes and listen for Korm’s voice, but Korm is farther away than Sheila. I can’t seem to draw breath past the midway mark in my lungs. I can’t get deep.
My mind jitters around in circles. Crops, the Mealio, Machete’s office, Sully, Rasta, studies, Cleezies. I can’t find my razor-focus. That’s what Korm calls it, and she can always help me find it, but she’s not here. I lie down on the soft grass and watch the leaves against the sky.
Remember who you are. Kivali Sauria Kerwin. Does Sheila mean that I should focus on my lizard self? She used to make up bedtime stories about the saurians dropping me on her sidewalk. As far back as I can remember, she’s called me lizard names. I like to believe in the stories. At least they’re some kind of explanation.
Most people figure that since I’m fostered, I must be from the Blight Baby Nursery, but I’m not. Sheila has an ayvee of me from before I could walk, and I’ve seen it. Blight babies don’t get fostered out of the nursery until their second birthday so that everyone can be sure they’re certified healthy. And then there’s a big long waiting list — it’s hard to make babies, and even harder to get one if you don’t make it yourself. Like Sheila always says, it’s a miracle that they let her keep me.
I roll over and pick up the komodo and set it on my forehead.
“Lizard-dropped,” I say. “You and me.”
Since I was a tiny kidlet, I’ve been waiting for the lizard chitter and moan and shifting shadows to clear up and tell me exactly what to do. I thought that might be happening when I heard “Go to the fields” so clear in my head. I thought my Lizard Destiny was about to be revealed.
That night has already taken on a distant fantasy-flavor. Like Lizard Radio. It’s so real when you’re in it, and then later it’s something else. Something maybe dreamed or maybe coincidence or maybe nothing at all.
At home, there’s always Korm to make Lizard Radio real again. Here I have to do it myself. Maybe I haven’t focused enough. Maybe if I tune in right now, and remember who I am, the saurians will speak. I close my eyes and breathe deeply and get quiet.
All I see behind my eyelids is Sheila shifting her eyes to look into the cam. Remember who you are. I don’t remember learning to trance, but she’s told me the story almost as many times as the found-on-the-sidewalk one. She accidentally left the SayFree broadcast on one night when I was three. I dove under the kitchen table and started up a holler-waller loud enough to make the neighbors call in.
Sheila turned off the radio and came under the table with me. She thought that I was too young to learn her meditation technique, but she tried it anyway. Breathe in slow, two, three, hold; breathe out slow, two, three, four. Look at the shapes on the backs of your eyelids — see them there? Breathe in, two, three, and hold; breathe out, two, three, four. See them shift? Watch the show, two, three.
I immediately calmed down. Sheila said she’d never seen anyone trance so quickly and so completely. She said it was like I’d left and gone somewhere far away, leaving my breathing body behind. It scared her, and she jostled me back. When she asked me where I went, I told her that they talked to me.
“Who?” she asked.
“The lizards,” I answered.
“What did they say?”
“Secrets.”
That’s when Sheila started calling it Lizard Radio. I wish I could remember that first time myself. Maybe I knew lizard-speak back then, and I understood the secrets. Or maybe I said “secrets” because their whispery lizard language was secret from me, too.
When I tune in now, it’s like I’m just on the brink of understanding. Like if I could move one twitch closer, I’d get it all. And somehow, even with the not-understanding, I understand it better than anything. It’s more than imagining, less than state standards. Fluid and ethereal, gentle and encompassing. It’s not that I actually see lizards, but I feel them and I hear them, and every lonely or sad or scared feeling disappears.
A chippie scrambles nearby. I open my eyes, and the komodo slides off my forehead into the grass. I can’t find the signal. I close my eyes again and try to make it happen, but that never works. It’s like staring at a pinpoint of light in the darkness — you can’t see it unless you turn and look sideways, because of the rods and cones and retina. Lizard Radio is like that. You have to listen sideways or it doesn’t work.
I put the komodo back in my pocket and breathe some more. Even without Lizard Radio, it feels good to breathe here in the grass with the oak leaves dancing overhead. Tomorrow, I’ll come back here and find the rock. Korm says that sometimes we go in with our minds, and sometimes we have to access the signal through our bodies. Tomorrow I’ll start with rock and find my focus, and I’ll tune in fully. Tomorrow.
THE NEXT DAY SULLY snags me right after Block Four, before I can slip off to the oak grove.
“Come with me,” she whispers.
We take the main path past our pies, and I think that she’s discovered the oak grove, too, but she stops abruptly just past Lacey’s turnoff. I run up on her heels and stutter-step back.
“Tonight.” She moves in so close our bodies almost touch, and whispers. “Leave the Quint right after mando Social. Meet at our pie.”
“What for?”
I whisper, too, although no one’s around.
“Gong destruction, maybe? Sabi from Thursdays called it. Very clandy. Stroll away from the Quint — casual — we’ll leave one by one so the guides don’t notice.”
I’ve met Sabi. She’s got icy eyes and spikes of static.
“We who?”
“You, me, Rasta, Tylee. A few others, I think.”
I don’t want to miss anything that Sully and Rasta and Tylee are in on, Sabi or no. I’ll stay on the edge and leave quick if things go to bad.
Nona is the first to leave the Quint that evening. She always leaves as soon as it’s allowed. She spends every second of free time zipped up in her slice. I leave a few seconds after, trail her down into Pieville, and circle our pie to stand outside Slice Twenty where no one can see me. I wait for the others, nervously fiddling with the komodo.
They show up one by one, and we gather in a quiet huddle. Me, Rasta, Sully, Tylee, Risa from Mondays, and Jyana from Thursdays. Sabi arrives last and walks past, waving at us to follow her.
We drop back to single file. I stay at the end, glancing occasionally over my shoulder. Sabi takes us on the narrow right fork to the little piney opening. After a lot of looking around and holding her finger shh to her lips, she signals us to sit, and everyone does.
“What do you think?” Sabi kneels, sitting on her heels so that she’s just a bit higher than the rest of us. “Good spot, right?”
“Good for what?” asks Jyana.
“A hangout spot.”
It’s nowhere near as good as the spot that I found, but I’m keeping the oak grove to myself.
“Beats the fike out of Social,” Sabi says. “They think if they force us into the same place every night, we’ll all make friends. No go.”
“That’s not very come-from-One-return-to-One of you, my friend,” says Sully.
“No. It’s all a big robot factory. I say we blow it open.”<
br />
Complete, total silence.
“You sure know how to put the fun in the social, Sabi.”
Sully breaks the tension, and a breath of nervous laughter moves around the circle.
“You want to go play whuck-chuck like a good little comrade?” asks Sabi. “They’re trying to drug and hypno us into total compliance, make us slaves to work in their fields. I say we revolt. Anyone with me?”
“Revolt with what?” asks Sully. “Our secateurs?”
“Ha.” I don’t believe in Sabi’s smile, but I take an easier breath. Sully is keeping things sane. “The secateur revolution. That’s funny, Sully. I’m just joking, you know. I wouldn’t mess with SayFree. Too powerful.”
“Joke about SayFree if you want, but my fam is better off.” Tylee never has a single spike of static, and she’s a little bit mad. “Everyone except the Blighters, and we’re all better off without them running free on the streets. What’s wrong with good behavior and safety? If you don’t like manual labor, you could’ve studied harder and gone to FinanceCamp or Techno or any of the others. It’s not slavery. Besides, everyone needs good food.”
“Serious, you’re so serious,” says Sabi. “I just think we need to break loose a bit now and then. Isn’t anyone else tired of doing what we’re told all the time?”
“Me, I am,” says Sully. “I don’t know if I can handle this three-month-sing-along song.”
“I’m a little tired of the big group thing, too,” says Jyana. “I’ve been leaving the Quint early the past two nights just to get away from that guy Rory. He sits by me in the Mealio, in Cleezies, and the Quint, everywhere.”
“So meet here whenever you feel like ditching the sing-along song,” says Sabi. “And we don’t tell anyone else about it, right?”
I meet Rasta’s eyes. Strong alliance. We’ll talk about this later.
“I’m good with that.” Sully leans back and stretches out. “Check the sky. Pretty.”
I lean back, too, propping on my elbows and tipping my face up to the purpling sky.
“We should play ha-ha,” says Risa. “Any of you ever play that?”
“Oh, yeah, we did that on one of our school trips,” says Tylee. “It was hilarious. I mean, it’s just a kidlet game, but still. Here, Risa.”
She lies down and pats her stomach. Risa pillows her head there.
“Come on, Sully.”
Sully puts her head on Risa’s stomach, and looks at me with her eyebrows raised, so I lie down, too. We end up in a zig of bodies zagging across the clearing, and Tylee teaches us the game, which is basically trying to say the correct number of has while your head bounces around on someone else’s stomach.
“Ha,” says Tylee.
“Ha-ha,” says Risa.
Silence.
“Sully! Say ha-ha-ha!”
“Too much like a sing-along song.”
“Fine, be that way. Ha-ha-ha-ha, Lizard.”
I don’t do it, either, but Rasta does, and her raspy baby crow ha-ha sets Sully off. Sully’s laugh jounces my head, and I laugh, and that makes Rasta’s head move, and she laughs harder. A current of breath and laughter runs from one body to the next, leaping from skin to skin, connecting us in a head-bouncing zigzag.
I can’t quit laughing. Nothing is all that funny, but the tension release turns into a physical thing, and everyone is laughing and I’m part of it and tears start leaking out, and my head keeps bouncing on Sully’s stomach until she groans and says, “Stop, it’s killing me.”
The laughs slowly die down, just a giggle and bounce here and there. The sky hushes and dims around us. Darkening treetops are etched against the sky, and the pine needles are soft beneath us.
“Are those chirpy things really frogs?” asks Risa.
“Yes,” says Tylee. “Little green ones.”
“Star pop!” Jyana points up. “Wish.”
Sully touches my forehead, brushes her fingers over my brow. My heart chunka-thunks.
“Never get to see anything like this sky in Twa.” Sully speaks casually as her fingers set every nerve in my body on high alert. “Is there even a name for that color?”
She strokes my ear, and her touch zooms into my chest, my belly, and my biz. I can’t move, and I can barely lie still — I have no idea what to do. Should I pet Rasta’s head? Is everyone else doing this?
The air is perfectly still, not a breath of wind. Sully softly massages my ear, and that area she’s touching, that explosion of nerves and pleasure, becomes the only thing in my world. She gently rubs up to the tip, and I close my eyes, trying to steady my breath so that no one will hear it shaking.
Suddenly, my head slides off Sully’s stomach with a bump. I open my eyes to a powerful flash of leddie beam coming toward us on the dusky path. The leddie stops and shines over us like a spotlight.
“You’re all on culpa. Anyone who isn’t sliced in the next five ticks is looking for an expul.”
LACEY AND THE LIGHT turn abruptly and leave. We scramble to our feet. Nobody has a leddie, so we follow the distant bob of Lacey’s along the narrow path, single file. The curfew gong rings. Lacey turns to her own slice without another word, and we continue into Pieville.
Sully and I stop at our pie as the others go on, and Rasta stops with us. Tylee doesn’t. She can’t get back to her slice fast enough. The three of us huddle on the empty Slice Twenty side.
“I think we’ll be okay,” whispers Sully. “The gong never rang until we were on our way back, so technically, we weren’t doing anything wrong. We were on free time, and nobody said that we couldn’t be in the woods during free time.”
“Nothing wrong except Sabi wanting to overthrow the gov,” says Rasta.
“Sabi’s a semiautomatic,” says Sully. “No one but us was there to hear it, though. Unless . . .”
She tips her head toward Nona’s slice. Rasta nods and backs away. Sully softly shoulder-bumps me as she passes. I stand still and listen to the zip-zip of her door. And to the tree-frog chirp and mosquito whine. And to my own pounding heart.
I wake up Friday filled with dread. Fiking Sabi is going to land me with some horrible foster who will make me T and won’t let me listen to Lizard Radio. And then I’ll end up in Blight, and it’ll be full of cold-eyed staticky Sabi types with nobody to stop them and no escape. You can bet that there aren’t any gaps in those biosensor boundaries.
I’m so shaken, I don’t even notice that my komodo is missing until the next morning when I roll over and look at the shelf. The acorn from the grove is there, but the komodo is gone. Then I remember that I dropped my coveralls and slid into bed without putting it on guard. I check my pockets, and it’s not there, either.
I pull the coveralls on in a panic and hurry back along the narrow path. Everything shines deep green in the slant of morning sun, a-sparkle with tiny glistening drops. By the time I get to the little open space, my pant legs are soaking wet. The komodo greets me from a patch of rusty pine needles. One front leg raised like always.
I throw myself on the ground next to it. I touch the spot between its eyes and then hold it in my fist, rolling onto my back. My pulse picks up with the memory of Sully’s fingers last night. That feeling spreads through my body again. Time for a bit of jazz-off. I can barely breathe. What if Sully was right here again, right now? With her hand in my hair? What if —
The wake-up gong rings me into the real-time day. I stand and kiss the komodo. So relieved that I found it there waiting for me. I hurry back to my slice and set the komodo on the shelf, next to the acorn. No more pocket-carrying, not here. The coverall pockets are too loose, and I crawl around on the ground all day.
“Stay here.” I touch the tip of its nose. “You’ll be safer.”
I run up to CounCircle, feeling half-naked and fidgety without the familiar metal shape in my pocket. Plus, I’m still undone by the echo of Sully’s fingers on my ear and the stew of trouble Sabi put us in.
As we file from CounCircle into the Mealio, we meet
eyes, shrug shoulders. Nobody’s said anything to anyone about our culpa. We’re on tiptoe, heads down and mouths shut. Everything stays unnervingly normal all day. During free moments, we agree to lay low in our slices. We show up everywhere exactly on time. After Cleezies, I’m on my way out the door when Lacey puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Meet at my slice in ten ticks,” she says. “Ms. Mischetti’s order.”
Sully jogs up next to me.
“Here we go.”
My nerves are already exploding, and Sully’s voice touches shivers up and down my spine. She is not like anyone I’ve ever met. I glance down at her fingers, and ear tingles shoot all the way to my toes.
“Culpa at the worst,” she says. “She can’t expul all seven of us. It’d ruin her cert percentage.”
We half-trot down the steep part of the path. Maybe we’ll be okay. Like Sully said last night, we didn’t actually break any rules.
“Maybe she’ll make an example out of me,” she says.
“Why you? It wasn’t your idea.”
“She’ll probably think it was, and that might not be a bad thing. Boot me now. Save us all a lot of trouble.”
“Why would you say that?”
I don’t mean to get shrill, but she’s scaring me. There’s none of that jokey-Sully I’m-a-bad-influence thing in her eyes.
“My own da says I’m bound for Blight. He’d know if anyone does. I’m cut from his cloth, and that’s not a fabric you’d want lying around your camp.”
“If Sabi got us expulled, I’ll kill her.” Tylee comes up behind us. “I never should have gone. I knew it was a bad idea.”
Rasta is right behind Tylee, so I’m left uneasy and unknowing about the fabric of Sully’s da. The four of us head back to Lacey’s slice together. As we pass my slice, I give the komodo a secret, silent nod. I wish it were with me.
