This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by Kevin Emerson
Cover art copyright © 2018 by Jennifer Heuer
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crown Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Crown and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Emerson, Kevin, author.
Title: Any second / Kevin Emerson.
Description: First edition. | New York : Crown Books for Young Readers, [2018] | Summary: Kidnapped, abused, and brainwashed for five years, Elian is stopped in his mission to bomb a mall by Maya, who has crippling anxiety, and neither one will ever be the same again.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018006932 | ISBN 978-0-553-53482-5 (hardback) | ISBN 978-0-553-53483-2 (glb) | ISBN 978-0-553-53484-9 (ebook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Emotional problems—Fiction. | Kidnapping—Fiction. | Brainwashing—Fiction. | Anxiety—Fiction. | Bombings—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.E5853 Any 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
Ebook ISBN 9780553534849
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
October
Chapter 1
Chapter 2: Maya
September
Chapter 3: Eli
Chapter 4: Maya
Chapter 5: Eli
Chapter 6: Maya
Chapter 7: Eli
Chapter 8: Maya
Chapter 9: Eli
Chapter 10: Maya
Chapter 11: Eli
Chapter 12: Maya
Chapter 13: Eli
Chapter 14: Maya
October
Chapter 15: Eli
Chapter 16: Maya
Chapter 17: Eli
Chapter 18: Maya
Chapter 19: Eli
Chapter 20: Maya
Chapter 21: Eli
Chapter 22: Maya
Chapter 23: Eli
Chapter 24: Maya
Chapter 25: Eli
Chapter 26: Maya
November
Chapter 27
Acknowledgments
About the Author
To everyone who reaches out instead of running
Gabriel says today is a good day to die.
He says the Barons have taken more than their share, that they profit from the blood of the innocent, that they have turned us into sheep and tricked us into accepting it. The Barons who control all the land and the money and the women.
They need to be sent a message.
“Tell me you are ready, Jacob.”
“I am ready.”
“Are you sure?” His hand rubs up and down my spine. “Because if you’re not, we’ll need to go home and keep working.”
Home is the red dark. Where the lessons are taught.
“I am sure.”
A long exhale. He kneels behind me, breath hot in my ear, the smell of the habanero sauce, the cigarettes and gasoline, on his clothes. “Do you know what?”
“What?”
Don’t move. We are standing by the railing, beside the food court at the mall. Blinding sunlight shines down through a domed glass roof and into the oval-shaped eyeholes of the mask I wear—but turning or squinting is weakness. Rubbing the sweat out of my eyes is weakness. Flinching when he touches me, shuddering because of what we’re here to do: all weakness. Proof that more lessons are needed.
With the spatula. The belt. Cannot go back. Cannot go back—
“I believe you,” he says.
Something wells up inside me, but crying would also be weakness. It is a good thing Gabriel has not delivered the food bowl for two days. Soiling yourself is an awful weakness.
“You have earned my trust,” Gabriel says. “You have endured such trials, and you have proven that you are ready to do the great work. You are ready to fulfill the Purpose.”
The Purpose. Finally.
His hands settle on my shoulders, causing a dull ache from the right one, dislocated…months ago? Years? Notches in the floor, made with the meal spoon each time the sliver of light appeared beneath the plywood that covered the window: 1,052 marks, but maybe I missed some days, or counted twice? Too hard to tell.
The only other light, that whole time, from a red bulb in a gooseneck lamp.
“Throughout history,” Gabriel says, “the greatest revolutions have been started by the smallest of acts. The sheep cannot rise up on their own. They must be given permission, shaken awake by a hero.”
A hero like Metal Marauder, the MechBot cards— No! Can’t think that. They were what made me miss the bus that day— Stop! Memory is weakness.
“But heroes are not just born,” Gabriel says. “They are made. You would never have woken up on your own, never been free, never been strong. You would never have been loved. You were weak and you would have always been weak.”
Trading the cards on the front steps of school, but then the groan of the bus leaving and I ran after it but the driver didn’t see me. It was sunny, so I decided to walk. Looking at the cards on the way. Never heard him coming—
“Your family was weak. All of them slaves to the Barons. But who freed you?”
His voice by my ear: “You have been chosen.” Grabbing me and shoving me into the car. Holding me down against the seat while I screamed into the cushion. Kicking the dashboard, the door, could I break the window—click-ding of the blinker, rev of the engine, pants soaked I wet myself—
“Jacob…” His grip tightens.
Stuffed into a duffel bag and hauled inside, into the dark, always the red dark—
NO. I push it back. Make it silent. It is weakness, and it only makes things worse. Swallow. Lock the doors. Answer the question.
“You did.”
“That’s right. The Purpose led me to you, like a lost prophet to an oasis.”
Did the Purpose make me miss the bus? Did it make Mom say I couldn’t have a phone until I was older? Did it make me decide to walk home instead of going to the office and calling her, make me think about how it was only a mile, how my sister walked twice that far every day through an even rougher part of town?
STOP IT!
“I rescued you from that sleeping lie,” Gabriel says. “Billions of people live and die without meaning, their lives forgotten before they are gone, but not you. Through death…”
“I will live forever.”
It is true. Must be true.
Gabriel’s grip relaxes. “You will be more than just a life. You will be an eternal symbol to all, and the sheep will say your name on their waking lips, and what?”
“They will remember.”
&n
bsp; “Correct. And on the other side, what awaits you?”
“Light and peace.”
The mall is so loud around us. So many voices all mixing with laughs and shouts and scuffs of shoes and the shuffling of plastic bags. So much more noise than just the furnace, and the mice, and a heartbeat in the red dark.
“The sheep are begging for it,” Gabriel says. “Go ahead, take a look, one last time.”
I let my eyes rise up from the floor, see them walking by: groups of teens, couples, parents and their children, in and out of all the glossy stores, standing in line for food.
“See how they smile, how they prattle and laugh. They will never know how we have sacrificed for them. But how could they? Kept dumb, hooked on the drug of capitalism, dulled by the Excess, gorged on sugar, fat, advertising, sex: the tools of compliance. And if they haven’t been brainwashed yet they’re desperately trying to fake it. No one wants to show their real selves, and the women show too much”—he pauses—“strutting around like prostitutes and yet always withholding. So sad. We pity them. But are they innocent?”
“Innocence is ignorance.”
“And the ignorant are complicit. But not you. You are no longer one of the sheep, are you?”
I shake my head and look back down at the floor.
“Tell me what you are.”
“I am a wolf.”
“Yes,” Gabriel says. “All the darkness and pain you’ve endured has revealed to you this world’s wicked truth. You are the only one who sees clearly. Who knows the Purpose. You know it even more clearly than I do now. And you are the only one who can save us. God waits for his true soldiers with open arms.”
His words make everything tighter. We’re close now. Closer than ever before. Breathing is so hard. It has been too hard for too long, and this is the only way out. I know it.
“My mother?”
“Even now she waits for you in paradise.”
“And my sister?”
“Yes, her suffering will end, her sin finally cleansed too. But shh…” Gabriel rubs his fingers in a V shape up and down the back of my neck. The knitted fabric of his gloves so familiar. “You are so very special to me,” he says. “You will never know how much.”
I nod. Blink in the brilliant light. The air smells like chocolate and salt and perfume. So different from the smell of the pail after two or three days. The shame of it…
If I do this, I will never have to go back there.
His hand moves up to my head. My scalp still burns from the bleaching last night. An all-American blond, Gabriel said as he dunked my head into the bowl, over and over. He ruffles my hair, then slides both hands up under my puffy jacket. Checking the connections.
“Everything is set,” he says. “Tell me you are ready.”
“I’m ready.” The words come out hoarse and I freeze. Even now, even with the chemical bottles strapped to my chest, I still expect him to turn me around and march me back down the escalator, across the parking lot, to the spot behind the line of dumpsters where no one can see what he keeps in the trunk.
But he doesn’t.
This is really it.
“Now press down.”
Fear grips me, convulsions in my abdomen, needle stabs in my feet. I turn so that I can see the small device in my palm, but the mask slips on my sweat, the eye holes sliding out of line. I shake my head, but that only makes it worse—
“Here.” Gabriel straightens the mask and tightens the elastic. His fingers are shaking. “Remember, don’t take this off, no matter what. The mask is a symbol, but it is also so the Barons’ cameras cannot capture your identity. If they know who you are, they will make excuses—blame your family, your skin, the lead in your water. They can always find a way to blame a person. What they truly fear is an idea. Besides, no one here will think twice when they see a blond boy in a plastic wolf’s mask, five days before Halloween.”
My hand starts to shake….Come on, you have to.
I put my thumb over the small silver button. Press down and squeeze as hard as I can.
“Good.” Gabriel sighs and shudders against me. I’ve felt this excitement on him before. Nights when he came into the red dark, overcome with the Purpose. I’d beg him to take it out on me instead of my sister. Sometimes he did, and afterward we would cry together. But many times he suffered the glory with her instead, and made me listen through the ceiling.
Never again. Melissa, I will save you. I promise.
“Now, Jacob, my son, you must do it exactly like we planned. Go swiftly and without fear. Take a deep breath when you pass beneath the sign, and then hold that air inside you. Don’t stop walking, and no matter what, don’t take your finger off the button until you get to the middle of the room. The Purpose must be clear.”
“I know.”
“As soon as you reach the spot, do not hesitate. Even for a second. Just release your thumb, and your work on this Earth will be done and you will see your sister’s smiling face. All you have to do is let go.”
He makes a sound through his lips like wind blowing, like me blowing away from everything, to paradise.
It is all I can do to keep still. Legs trembling. Muscles screaming, but I won’t show weakness.
This is the only way.
I know it. I know it.
Gabriel’s body presses against my back, his cheek against my neck, and his voice lowers to a whisper. “I love you, Jacob. I love you so much. You have been such a gift to me.” It sounds like he might be crying.
“I love you too,” I say, have to say, but I do, I love him. He saved me. From the lie.
What lie?
“Fate brought us together and finally, today, we will finish the work we were meant to do.”
Yes. Dizzy. Spots in my vision.
“Now…” With a deep breath he pushes me forward. “Go.”
And so I do.
One foot. Then the next. Finger clamped down on the trigger. Away from the railing, away from Gabriel, and as his hand loses touch, a great tremor storms through me and I nearly collapse, or turn back—but no, no, no, I will keep going.
It is fifty-three steps from Gabriel to the spot: out of the hot sun, across the shimmering tile, and into the lair of one of the Barons’ outposts: the Department of Licensing office. We studied maps and photos on a computer. Came here and observed the habits of mall security, the crowd patterns at different times and on different days. Gabriel says today is a Thursday. It is late afternoon. This is the moment, and I am counting down now as the people blur around me.
Forty-seven…forty-six…forty-five…
I know he is watching me as I go, and I try to remember the instructions. Don’t look back; keep your gaze straight in front of you; don’t make eye contact; walk fast but not too fast. Just another consumer, part of the privileged, a Baron-in-training with a smartphone and a credit card in your slave-made jeans, on your way to meet up with friends.
Forty-one…forty…thirty-nine…
Slipping unnoticed through the crowd, everyone walking along with their heads down, their faces trapped in the light of their screens. Personal soul suckers, Gabriel says. Self-mutilation.
The smack of the plastic bat, the slap of the three-foot piece of garden hose—
Thirty-six…thirty-five…thirty-four…
The inside of the plastic is wet from my breathing. The cool damp pressing against my upper lip and my chin. My scalp still itching.
Melissa had hair like midnight water. Did he bleach her hair too?
She didn’t call me Jacob.
“Your name is Jacob,” Gabriel says, still in my head. Will always be in my head until my mission is complete.
Twenty-four…twenty-three…twenty-two…
Wasn’t there a different name? Didn’t they—
But I am almost
to the entrance. The Purpose spreading through me. The glorious tingle, Gabriel says. The sweaty palms, the queasy stomach, the pounding heart. Signs of being truly awake, of withdrawal from the Barons’ drugs, free and open to the universe.
Fifteen…fourteen…thirteen…
More spots in my eyes.
The Purpose. The Purpose.
I pass beneath the sign. Its big green letters read: DOL Express!
I inhale as deep as I can.
“Hold it like a protest,” Gabriel says. “Savor it as you walk to the middle….”
I walk to the middle.
“As you set yourself free.”
I will be free.
At peace.
Mom will be there.
Melissa will be there.
This is the only way out.
Three…two…one…
“As you stop…”
I stop. Oh God.
“Know that I love you, son.”
There are sheep sitting in chairs looking at their phones. Sheep at counters talking to others behind bulletproof glass. There is a sign that says NOW SERVING: 4.
I hold out my hand. Thumb aching, muscles desperate to release…
It will finally be over.
“All you have to do is let go.”
I look at the trigger, my whole body trembling around this last breath. There is a slight sound of sloshing from the chemical bottles. Does anyone hear it? Just a sideways glance from a nearby old lady, then back to her phone.
One…
“Let go,” Gabriel says in my ear, in my mind, in the red dark, on the street.
Hesitation is weakness.
Okay, okay…
The cold trigger, the red wire that runs up my sleeve and down to my waist. Attached to my skin with duct tape, ripped off so forcefully when I didn’t sit still enough.
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