by Joe Shine
“This is it,” she confirmed.
I stepped inside the elevator and tapped for the nineteenth floor, hoping I was right about where room 1979 would be. There were apparently forty-two floors and I didn’t have time to be wrong. It was 7:58 a.m.
“How long will you have to wait until you’re linked?”
“No idea. Takes a while sometimes. They have to make it perfect, or time the match right, or something like that.” She shrugged, like, what can you do?
The elevator stopped on the sixteenth floor. She hesitated before getting out. “What are you doing here?” she asked again.
“Oh, uh, graduated early,” I admitted, which wasn’t a total lie. I wasn’t supposed to talk about my assignment to anyone. Not that I wanted to say the words “boy band” out loud if I didn’t have to. The shame was still too recent.
“Wow. You must be the youngest ever.” She stepped outside.
I shook my head. “Maybe, don’t know.”
“What’s here?” I called after her. “I mean on this floor?”
“Gun range.”
“Cool.”
She spun as the doors began to close. “Wanna grab dinner?” she asked.
“Sure.” Maybe I didn’t have to cook for myself after all.
“Cafeteria, say around eight?” she called out as the doors closed tight.
“Okay.”
Alone in an elevator . . . again. After two years of never being alone, except in my room, a new pattern was emerging.
The doors opened again, and I got out. The hallway on the nineteenth floor was deserted. A few lights here and there, but it was mostly dark. The first door was marked 1901. Whew. Yeah, I had a long way to go—but at least I was in the right place. I didn’t hear anything as I walked. I didn’t see anything either. No one used this floor as far as I could tell.
1925 . . . 1946 . . . 1972 . . . getting closer.
Was that music? Old-timey music that grandparents in movies listened to on record players? As I walked, the music got louder. I got more nervous with each step.
Room 1979.
I took a deep breath and composed myself before stepping inside. Okay, I admit it. I was fully expecting the cliché: wooden floors, walls of mirrors, and a stuffy, uppity instructor who may or may not have worn a unitard and a monocle. I hadn’t prepared myself for bare concrete floors, no mirrors, and a young girl—hardly older than me—in baggy jeans, Adidas Sambas, and a tank top.
“Hey,” she said with a crooked smile. She seemed cheery. Happy to see me, in fact. Her big eyes sparkled.
She had her brown hair in a loose ponytail, was dancer-fit, and had that crooked smile working for her. Do I have to say it? Yes, I was instantly crushing hard. What? I’m sixteen and for the past two years every girl I’ve known has worn yellow, blue, red, or black from head to toe, depending on their year, and was trained to kill. Seeing normal girls again was—this was only my second one. She was hot. Sue me. Like you’d be any different.
She walked over to me and said, “I’m Ariel, but you can call me Leggo.”
We shook hands as I asked, “Lego? Like the toy?”
She shook her head playfully and explained, “No, as in Leggo my Eggo. My last name’s Eggot. E-G-G-O-T, but the T is silent. It’s a lot better than Waffle, which some people did call me.”
I laughed, even though I didn’t have any idea what the hell she was talking about. But yes, I was flirting. Bit out of practice, though.
“I’m—”
“Bobby,” she said, cutting me off. “I know. And I know I’m not supposed to ask anything else either.” She raised up her hands for effect.
“What do you mean?”
“Part of my deal. I train you up, don’t ask why, keep my mouth shut forever, and they’ll wipe my record and won’t press charges for . . . never mind.”
“You can’t not explain now.” Knowing she was in trouble with the law only upped the hotness level.
She mimed locking her mouth with a key.
I was curious, to say the least. I also hoped someone had given her a sideways warning that if she breached the agreement, she wouldn’t see us in court, if you catch my drift. (Psssst, they’d kill her.)
Lovely awkward silence as we stared at each other.
“So, you wanna learn how to dance?” she asked me.
“That’s the dream,” I said flatly.
She just kept smiling. Didn’t bat an eyelash. If she was judging me at all, I couldn’t read it on her face. “Front and center,” she said, snapping her fingers and pointing at the middle of the room.
I walked to the middle and looked at her.
“Since you have zero formal training, we’ll start with the fundamentals: the box step.”
I’d done that one before. You put a box in front of you and then stepped up on it. We did them in football. I didn’t see any boxes in here, though.
“What are you looking for?” she asked me.
“A box.”
“Oh, honey,” she said sadly, and I didn’t understand why until she showed me the simple, basic step. It did not require the use of a box.
“Feet together. And left foot up. Right foot diagonal. Left joins right. Right foot back. Left diagonal back to the beginning, and the right joins it.” She did it three more times before asking, “Got it?”
Yeah, I’m not an idiot. But . . .
“Why is it called a box step?”
“Because it makes a box,” she replied, like I was the dumb one, and showed me the move one more time for good measure. “A box,” she said slowly, tracing the shape in the air when she was done.
“Uh, I’m no Will Hunting math genius, but boxes don’t have diagonals. That was two triangles. This would be a box step.”
I stepped forward, sideways, backward, and then sideways again.
“Box step,” I added, pointing at myself with mock pride before pointing at her and adding, “Double-triangle step.”
“I don’t care if you call it the loosey-goosey,” she argued. “Just show me you can do it.”
I did it three times. It was easy, and I made sure I had the most bored look I could muster while I did it. When I was done, I raised my palms and said, “Happy? Don’t you want to see what I’ve got in my arsenal of moves first so we don’t waste time on this crap?”
“No,” she answered flatly. “I don’t need to see, and I don’t care.”
“But I’m, like, a dancing servant.”
“You mean, savant?”
“Huh? I’m a dancing Rain Man.”
I started to roll my shoulders and move around a bit. She quickly held up her hand for me to stop.
“At best, you can party dance. Works at a kegger but not at an audition. You need to memorize routines, learn timing, and respond to basic dance terms.”
“Maybe down the road, but for an audition? I need to wow them. Can you teach me how to moonwalk?”
“You want to know how to moonwalk?”
“Yeah. I mean, I go into an audition and do a double-triangle step? Come on. But I go and nail a killer moonwalk? A make-MJ-proud kinda walk? They’ll offer me the gig right then and there.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding, clearly thinking about something. “I mean, it’s your call, but this was what I thought you should do.”
She flipped on some techno and did a short but crazy awesome routine. There was flipping, popping, and some nasty cool stuff on the ground I didn’t even know was dancing.
“That was awesome!” I yelled when she finished.
“You want to be able to do all that at an audition?” she asked, cutely flipping a loose strand of hair behind her ear. It was adorable.
I nodded.
“Starts with mastering the box step.” She smiled, then corrected herself when I raised my eyebrows.
“Sorry, double-triangle step.”
I groaned.
“But I get it. We should have some fun and warm up first.” She pulled out her phone and turned on some kind of dance music. She bounced for a few seconds before starting to dance. “Come on, Bobby, let’s go. Get out here.”
Dance on command for real in front of a cute girl like this? Uh, no.
“What, you’re embarrassed?” she called out in the middle of her handstand.
“No!” Yes.
She did some sexy slide-walking thing toward me until her face was inches from mine. Dang, she was cute! She kept rocking back and forth to the beat. Our bodies brushed up against each other. Ripples of attraction pulsed through me.
“It’s just dancing. It’s supposed to be fun,” she whispered flirtatiously.
She slowly backed away, motioning seductively with her fingers to follow her.
Reluctantly I joined in, feeling pretty stupid at first, but before I knew it, I wasn’t nervous anymore and being embarrassed wasn’t even on my radar. This was fun! I started with some old classics, but to try to impress my new crush, I worked in some more elaborate spin flips and kicks I’d learned in my martial arts training. It worked. Leggo was impressed.
For the first time in over two years of being under the lock and key of the Man, I finally felt free.
Chapter 12
Becoming Bobby Sky
Mornings were for dancing with Leggo and my afternoons, for singing with a dude named Brance. Not Vance. Brance. He was very particular about that.
It was strange at first. I went straight from learning to hunt, protect, fight, and kill to learning to breakdance, disco, waltz, and vogue. Instead of learning to torture someone into singing soprano, I was learning to actually do it with my voice on key.
That’s how I spent my days, but evenings were mine. Now, I’d never actually been told this, but it was fairly obvious that I was expected to go to the gym at night to keep in shape and not get too rusty when it came to being a Shadow—you know, my real job. Tonight, a week into my new life as Bobby, I’d decided to take the night off. My first one since, well, ever.
There was a ding the moment before Claire’s face appeared on the cracked screen by the door. With her blonde hair so tightly pulled back, she almost looked bald.
I’d been alone in my own apartment, so I was only wearing a pair of shorts.
“Whoa! Pervert alert,” I joked as I got up to look at her.
“Put some clothes on,” she said, looking away.
“Not gonna happen. You’re the one creeping on me.”
“It’s part of my job.”
“Riiiiiiiight,” I mocked as I stood up, raised my arms, and slowly began to spin. “Drink it in. It’s okay to like it. You’re only human. No shame in these feelings.”
“Are you done yet?” she asked, trying to sound annoyed.
“Are you? Never woulda took you for a Peeping Tom, but . . .”
“Jane.”
“What?”
“I’m a woman, so I would be a Peeping Jane,” she corrected.
“So you’ve researched your disease. Guilty conscience.”
She didn’t acknowledge me and chose to go with the silent treatment. Two could play this game. I gave her another turn, granted her the luxury of a “Zeus with the lightning” pose while I “yawned,” and then pretended to “knock” an apple off the table so I had to bend over to pick it up. No reaction. Nada.
“Fine, I’m done. What?” I finally asked, taking a big chomp out of the apple.
“You’re to go to the gym immediately and swim two miles in under an hour. After that, a man named Luka will approach you to grapple and spar as he sees fit for as long as he sees fit. Go now.”
This was my veg night. I had not planned on this. I spat out the apple.
“But I just had cereal . . . with milk,” I offered as my excuse.
“The real world doesn’t wait for your digestive tract.”
“Can I put clothes on first?” I asked.
“I’ve been begging you to do that since we began. Yes, but no dillydallying.”
I rushed to get into a shirt and my shoes. I’d expected her to “hang up,” but she stayed on-screen watching me, making sure I hurried.
“Bobby,” she called as I was rushing out.
“Yeah?”
“Next time, don’t presume you can take a night off.”
The screen went black.
Choreography, I’d assumed, would be my downfall, but once it dawned on Leggo that she could use my background in martial arts to her advantage, it was easy. She computed dancing to learning new fight combinations, which I was darn good at. Right hook, left jab, straight jump kick translated well to right step, left spin, leap.
Singing, well, I knew I had some real talent, but no one was going to hear me and think an angel had fallen from heaven. The main hurdle was that apparently, real singers can “read sheet music” or something like that. I could mimic a song pretty good if I heard it, but my mind was not made to read notes. It just wasn’t. I struggled. Lucky for me, I had plenty of time to work on it.
I’m also guilty of not trying as hard as I could at it because I didn’t want to be there. Singing meant being with Brance, who was nice enough, but I really only wanted to spend time with Leggo. At first, I thought that if I sucked enough at singing, they’d let me focus more on the dancing, that is, spend more time with Leggo. It didn’t happen. If anything, it went the other way. I got more “Brance” time. And it was probably for good reason, too, because every minute I spent with Leggo made the crush worse. The pull to see her was getting black-hole strong.
(All you C students, feel free to ask your smart classmates to explain that one to you.)
The morning my dance alarm didn’t go off was one of the most depressing mornings of my life. I ran up to room 1979 anyway. It was empty. Deserted. No trace of anyone having used it in years.
While I stood in the bare room remembering our last lesson, I slapped my forehead. How’d I miss it? Yesterday we’d tossed the choreography, which I’d mastered, out the window and just danced. Had fun. It’d been hot, sweaty, and at times a bit dirty, but in a mostly harmless way. At one point, I pulled her body to mine and when our faces were inches away from each other, I looked at her. Really looked at her. Whoa. What a rush. Before I could do something stupid, like try to kiss her, she’d quickly pulled away to dance on her own. All I could do was watch.
I’d forgotten what feelings like that could do to you. How they could make you feel on cloud nine one second and then crappy the next.
Then I realized something else. As depressing as never seeing my Leggo again was, my alarm not going off could mean only one thing: it was go time.
I headed back to my room double time and tapped the cracked screen next to the door to bring up my schedule for the day. There was nothing. Not a thing on my calendar. Huh.
RING!
The sudden burst of noise and the flashing indicator from the screen made me jump. I quickly tapped it to answer it, causing another crack to spread across it, and a soldiery-looking guy’s face was there.
“Yeah?” I asked, trying to hide how excited I was.
He cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Sky.”
God, that terrible name.
“Your escort will arrive at 2 p.m.”
The screen went blank. It was happening. It was finally, actually, truly happening. I was getting out of here. Like out-of-here out of here. Like real world, real people out of here. Like . . . okay, you get it. I’ll stop. Even the lameness of being in a boy band couldn’t weigh me down. Hutch and this place were finally breaking up. I was moving on. Oh, hi, FATE Center, we need to talk. It is you, not me. We’re totally over. Peace out in . . . I looked at my watch.
. . . five hours? How could it o
nly be 9 a.m.? What am I supposed to do now?
Before I’d stopped feeling pain, they’d literally tortured me here—tying me to a chair, using butane torch, razor blades, the works—but the next five hours were worse than any torture I’d gotten. The time dragged on and on like nothing before. I swear it even went backward at one point. Like, I honestly believed someone had snuck into my room and turned back the clocks. Ugh. TV was boring. Music was annoying. Even training didn’t work.
And then, as time is known for doing, it snuck up on me. Suddenly it was time to go. Right at 2 p.m. there was a knock at my door.
It was Claire. I hadn’t seen her since she appeared in the screen on my “night off,” but from the neck up she looked exactly the same. Actually, she looked exactly the same as when I’d first met her at Blake’s bizarro cottage by the sea: business suit, heels, and a tight blonde ponytail. I wondered if she even owned other styles.
“Hey,” I said casually.
“Ready?” she asked, meeting my casualness.
“Uh, heck, yes. Please, God, get me outta here.”
She laughed. “Come on.”
I followed her to the elevators.
“What’s your last name?” I blurted out as the doors closed. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe this brief time in the apartment, this sort-of taste of sort-of freedom, had empowered me.
“Why do you want to know?” she asked. At least she was still smiling.
“So I know who to send my first autographed picture to,” I joked. “I just want to know,” I admitted.
“Claire Marsh,” she said.
“Claire Marsh, the future Mrs. Bobby Sky.”
She laughed. “This picture better sweep me off my feet.”
I nodded. “Consider yourself swept.”
The doors opened a second later, but I paused. We were back at the cottage. But it was stormy—there was actual rain falling. Hard. A true thunderstorm: flashes of lightning, deafening thunder, the whole deal. I couldn’t move. Not because I was afraid. This wasn’t right. We were kept in the dark about the process of being linked, for the most part. Still, I knew that linking had to occur in a controlled lab. This was not a lab. This was . . . wrong.
