***** BETTERTOWN *****
WHERE
EVERYONE IS RICH!!!
Come to an informational meeting at the meeting hall in Bettertown
5:30 P.M. Tuesday night
See a multimedia presentation about
THE TOWN OF THE FUTURE
*****BETTERTOWN*****
PAID FOR BY KING MAX I OF BETTERTOWN
The first thing that struck me was the appeal to the lower class—the people who didn’t have much money to spend. Kidsboro did sort of have a lower class, though there weren’t too many people in it. These were the people who had trouble finding work for themselves. They didn’t have their own businesses, or if they did, their businesses weren’t very profitable. These people either had to work for someone else, or they had to get by on small incomes.
Kidsboro had had an economic boom the summer before, with new businesses springing up everywhere, but these businesses could employ only a few. Scott was one of the people who didn’t have a real job. He ran a detective agency, but he had only investigated two cases since we’d started Kidsboro eleven months earlier. Other jobs had come and gone, but Scott usually had no money. He also made poor choices about spending what money he did have. I guess you could say he was part of the Kidsboro lower class.
But how would Max eliminate the lower class? What did he mean by saying that everyone would be rich? That was impossible. How in the world did he think he would get people to believe this?
Something told me that I needed to show up at this meeting.
Obviously, I didn’t want anyone to see me at the meeting. Max would think I was spying and change his presentation. I wanted to hear it just as it was, with no editing. I looked at the advertisement again, and noticed that It was going to be a multimedia presentation. I had seen Max’s computer presentations before, and the lights were always turned off. I figured I would wait until the lights were down, and then sneak in and watch from the back. I would sneak out before the lights went back up.
I went in just as someone turned the lights down, and I peered around the room. I couldn’t make out many of the faces, but I could see silhouettes … lots of them. The place was packed! Max moved to his computer and began typing things in. His presentation began.
A thundering boom! shook the whole building, and everybody jumped in their seats. It was followed by embarrassed laughter. Fireworks filled the screen, and red, white, and blue letters swooped down from the upper right and, with majestic fanfare, spelled out “BETTERTOWN.” Max’s voice echoed, saying, “Bettertown. The town of the future.”
Very impressive.
After a lot more of the echoing stuff, a short video came on. On-screen, Edward, a boy from Odyssey Middle School, came out of his Bettertown creek-view house. Edward was a loner. He didn’t have many friends at school. In fact, he sat alone at lunch every day. I always thought it was kind of sad, and that if I ever had the same lunch period he did, I would sit next to him.
But here he was in Max’s video. I couldn’t believe Max got him to do it. Edward didn’t seem to be the dramatic type.
Then Valerie Swanson came on-screen. Valerie was Nelson’s sister and a citizen of Kidsboro, though not a very loyal one. It didn’t surprise me that she was doing a video for Max. Valerie will be a shoo-in for the football team’s annual “Most Beautiful Girls” poll when she gets to high school. She’ll probably take the top spot as a freshman and hold onto it until she graduates. She flipped her long, brown hair away from her face as she turned toward Edward. Max must have paid her an awful lot to get her to be in this video with him.
Edward awkwardly looked past the camera, as if a director was behind it urging him to say his line. He cleared his throat and began, “Hi, Honey.”
“Hi, Sweetie,” Valerie said, and they patted each other on the back.
This was beyond unrealistic. This was science fiction. Edward and Valerie?
A girl I didn’t recognize came on-screen looking surprised. “Joe? Is that you?”
Edward looked surprised that someone called him “Joe.” His name was, in fact, Edward. Edward glanced toward the director again, and then said to the girl, “Yes. Is that you,Marcia?”
“Yes. I can’t believe it. Are you and Grace together?”
Valerie smiled and flipped her hair back again. “That’s right, Marcia. Joe and I are a couple.” That line alone had probably cost Max 30 bucks.
“Wow, Joe,” Marcia said. “You used to be such a geek. What happened?”
“I’ll tell you what happened, Tara … I mean, Marcia,” Edward said. “I became a citizen of Bettertown.”
“Really?” Marcia said. “So did I.” Then she went on about how she had been broke, hungry, and lying in the gutter when Max Darby came along and told her about Bettertown. Now she had a house with a balcony, she was continuing her education at the Bettertown Community School (to be a juggler, maybe?), and she felt like she had a future.
Then Edward smiled at Valerie and said, “I used to be the laughingstock of my school. But now, I’m the envy. In fact, I’ve got the entire eighth-grade class coming over for a barbecue tomorrow. I’m so thankful for Bettertown.”
Then they both looked into the camera, and, with big cheesy smiles, they said in unison, “Thanks, King Max.”
Finally, the real message of the presentation came on: the explanation of how Bettertown would work, how there were no social classes, and how everyone was equal.
Max’s voice narrated, accompanied by words flying onto the screen in different colors and fonts.
The gist of It was this: Everyone would get a free house. The house would be owned by the city, but no one would pay rent. Everyone would work in Bettertown—whether at the bakery, the recreation center, the school, or wherever—for the exact same wage. No one received more for doing a harder or more complicated job. This way, there would be no class system, no low-income people, and everyone would be a team.
At the end of the presentation, a magnificent shot of the creek filled the background, and the flag of Bettertown—five red stick figures holding hands as a show of unity, with a green star above them (probably representing Max, though he didn’t say it)—dissolved up into the foreground. The music stopped.
I quickly stood up and reached for the door. Nobody had seen me. But before I could get out, the lights came back on, and I saw a few of the people inside. And just before I closed the door, I saw something I couldn’t believe. Sitting in the front of the meeting room, with a pen and paper … was Scott.
4
BETRAYAL
I WANTED TO GIVE Scott the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was there for the same reason I was there—to find out what Max was up to. Maybe he was just curious. But he had seemed awfully guilty when I’d found that brochure in his clubhouse. And why would he have a pen and paper with him, apparently taking notes?
I met Nelson at Whit’s End, and I told him about the meeting. He called Eugene Meltsner over. Eugene was a college student and Odyssey’s resident genius. Nelson and I told him about Bettertown’s economic system.
“That’s communism,” Eugene said, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “Or at least a rudimentary version of it. It is based on the notion that there’s no such thing as personal property. Everything is owned by the government, and everyone is paid exactly what they need, no more, no less. It’s Marxism.”
I had heard of communism before, but all that I remembered was that it was a bad thing, as if people who were communists were evil.
“There’s nothing wrong with communism in theory,” Eugene said. “Its goal is to create a society in which the working class operates the government. But it also limits freedom. Citizens cannot own anything or start their own businesses. It opens itself up to corruption because the government officials control everything, and they can become power-hungry and start ruling for their own benefit, as opposed to the people’s.”
Nelson and I both raised our eyebrows. Max was the government,
and if there was ever a leader who was capable of corruption, It was him. Bettertown and its people were doomed.
“Scott was at the meeting,” I told them.
“Why? To spy?” Nelson asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t know he was going to be there. But he took notes, like he was interested in it.”
“In becoming a citizen?”
“I don’t know.”
“You gotta talk to him.”
A special edition of the Chronicle reported that 17 people had applied for citizenship in Bettertown. I was surprised at the high number, so I went to Jill to find out who they were. She said that Max wouldn’t give her specific names. I wondered how many of the 17 were Kidsborians who were defecting.
The traffic in Kidsborow as high, but It was mainly because tourists were heading through to get to Bettertown. I stopped at Sid’s Bakery, and he was visibly miffed by the potential customers who passed by his store without even a whiff. Signs in front of his bakery advertised muffins. Prices had been slashed twice, from five tokens to four tokens to two tokens. Sid had a marker at the ready when I came up; apparently ready to make the muffins two for a token.
“Did you taste those donuts over there?” he asked.
“No.”
“They’re dry and way too sweet. Whoever bakes those things needs to take it easy on the sugar.”
“Your customers will figure it out at some point, Sid.”
“I’m practically giving these muffins away. I’m making no profit. I sent a spy over there an hour ago, and he hasn’t come back yet. He’s probably sampling their cream puffs—which, by the way, are much too flaky.”
“Well, Sid, you’ve been the only bakery business around since we started. Now you have some competition. Maybe this’ll force you to work a little harder. Present a better product. Advertise a little.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what. I’m not going down without a fight.”
“That’s the spirit!”
As I passed Le Bakeria, I got a few whiffs of something, and I was tempted to try whatever it was that smelled so good. But I couldn’t do that to Sid. I noticed that there was a fan running behind the counter. Mind you, it was early December and about 40 degrees out, so the fan wasn’t there for cooling purposes. It was there to send the smell wafting out to the masses, and it seemed to be working. People were being drawn like bees to pollen. Sid was going to have to do something special to get his customers back, though I didn’t doubt for a second that Sid’s food was better than anything they served at Le Bakeria.
I noticed a number of Kidsborians there, and when they saw me looking at them, a few ducked out of sight. Apparently, they didn’t want to explain their presence in Bettertown.
But then I saw something that bothered me much more than that. I passed the recreation area, and there, resetting the bowling pins, was Scott. He didn’t see me; he was busy trying to keep up with the bowlers, running from lane to lane, setting the pins back up after they were knocked down. Sweat was running down his face despite the 40 degree temperature, and he looked a little flustered.
I stood there watching, not wanting him to see me, but knowing that at some point there had to be a confrontation. Max came up from behind me.
“Good kid,” he said, seeing the direction of my gaze. “Hard worker. Must be tough for you to lose him.” He smiled at me, knowing how much this dug in. He left to go annoy someone else.
I walked around aimlessly for a few minutes, and then headed for the housing district. Sure enough, there was a mailbox in front of one of the houses that read “Sanchez,” Scott’s last name. I heard footsteps and turned. Scott froze, seeing that I had noticed the mailbox and knowing there was no rational explanation he could give for it. We stared at each other for a few moments, and then I couldn’t help but speak.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m just … I decided to … I live here,” he said, looking at his shoes.
“Why?”
“I figured I needed a change of scenery. I mean, I like Kidsboro and all, but …” his eyes fixed on his house. “Well, I’ve only got a 10-minute break, I have to get back to work.”
“What? Setting up bowling pins?”
He looked surprised and a little embarrassed that I already knew about his new profession. “Look, it’s a job. At least I’m doing something. A lot more than I was doing over there,” he said as he pointed across the creek.
“But Scott, you’re working for Max. Don’t you know he’s gonna burn you?”
“He hasn’t burned me yet. So far, he’s given me a job, a living wage, and a house with electricity—none of which I had in Kidsboro.”
“But you’ve got friends over there.”
“I’ve got friends here. We had a rally yesterday, and we’re a team. It’s a family. I like these people.”
He was making too much sense, so I resorted to a lower blow. “How could you turn on us like this? You’re a charter member of Kidsboro.”
“Oh, and that’s really taken me far in 11 months,” he said sarcastically. “You know what, Ryan?” He stepped toward me and pointed in my face. “You have no right to say that. You have no idea what it’s like to be me. You’re the may or. You’re the leader of the whole place. You have a job. You make a difference. Me? I’m the town fool. I have a detective agency that no one goes to, even if by some miracle they actually have a case to be solved. No one respects me there, Ryan. But here? Here, I’m a part of something. They need me. In Kidsboro, I go on vacation for two weeks and no one even knows I’m gone.”
“You’re on the city council in Kidsboro! You count for 20 percent of the vote.”
“I’ll tell you what. You can have my 20 percent. You pretty much had it any way.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, come on, Ryan. You know that whatever you voted, I voted the same. And if I didn’t, you let me hear about it.”
“What?”
“I mean, you always made it sound like you were just reasoning with me, but really you expected me to vote with you. You controlled me, and that’s probably the problem here too. You’ve lost your control, and you’re mad.”
I was flabbergasted. “What in the world are you talking about, Scott?”
“Are you just jealous that I have a nicer house than you, Ryan? You don’t think I deserve it?”
“Scott—”
“Or maybe you’re having trouble dealing with the fact that there may be something over here that’s better than Kidsboro. Well, for me there’s no choice. In Bettertown, I’m equal with everybody else. In Kidsboro, I’m a pitiful, poor boy with a failed business and a lucky connection in city council.”
He slowly dropped his finger and let out a few exasperated breaths. I caught a glimpse of a smile, like he was proud of himself for standing up to me. His resolve shocked me, and I could do nothing but drop my shoulders—and my defenses.
“Well, Scott,” I said, stiffening my upper lip. “I hope you’re very happy here.” I walked past him.
Scott’s feelings about Kidsboro troubled me. I ’t realized that there were people in our town who were unhappy. And I’d had no idea that one of the unhappy people was my best friend. On my way back into town, I noticed Mark, the owner of the miniature golf course, playing on his own course. Well, at least he appeared to be playing, but in actuality, he was firing his shots into trees outside the course boundaries. No one else was around.
“Why would anybody play here?” he asked before he even looked at me. “There’s a bowling alley over there—and darts, and archery and … fun. There’s fun over there. And here? We’ve got a guy knocking golf balls into trees with a putter.”
I told him the novelty of Bettertown would wear off, and I believed that was true, but at this point, its downfall couldn’t come fast enough for me.
Usually I met with Mr. Whittaker once a week to give him an update on what was happening in Kidsboro. I wanted to meet with him this week and l
et him know how many problems he had caused, but I could never say that to Mr. Whittaker. Instead, I decided to avoid it completely and not meet with him at all. I went to Whit’s End and was glad that he wasn’t in the front. Connie Kendall was behind the counter.
“Mr. Whittaker’s not here?” I asked.
“No, he’s in the back. You want me to go get him?” Connie asked.
“No, could you just give him a message?”
“He’s right in the back. I can get him.”
“No, just a message, please. Tell him I won’t be able to meet with him today.”
“Well … okay, Ryan.”
“Thanks.”
I called a city council meeting to figure out what we were going to do. Pride in our town had been lost. Suddenly, no one had any reason to go to Kidsboro. We had to do something.
We started with a damage report. “We’ve lost six people,” Jill said. This meant six Kidsborians had left and joined Bettertown. So 11 of the 17 new citizens were from elsewhere. We decided to wait to fill up those empty houses, since none of us believed that Bettertown would stand for long. At least, that’s what we hoped.
“Since Bettertown’s grand opening a week ago, Kidsboro businesses are down in profits by 65 percent,” Nelson continued with the bad news. “Sid’s Bakery has taken the biggest hit.”
“The crime rate’s about the same,” Alice said proudly, as if Kidsboro had crime, much less a rate to keep track of.
We briefly discussed the ramifications of losing one member of the city council, and we decided we had to fill the spot. Since having a voting group of four members would result in a lot of ties, we needed a tie-breaker. But this was not first on our agenda. We had to come up with away to drum up new interest in our city.
“Let’s have a ‘Pride in Kidsboro’ day,” Jill declared. “Like a Fourth of July thing, where everybody celebrates the country.”
“That sounds great,” I said. “Tell us more.” The rest of the council members sat up in their chairs and took notice. Jill began slowly, giving us her ideas, then Nelson added a few of his own, and, as if new life had been breathed into us, it became an incredible brainstorming session with fresh and exciting things to add to our celebration.
The Fight for Kidsboro Page 19
