A little kid of six or seven is playing with a tiny plastic pig in a Superman suit. The white cat is huddled under a chair, looking hot and unhappy.
“Here kitty.” But when I get close, she hisses at me. She still has my cool mom’s ring around her neck, tied with a lime green bow. I can’t imagine the ring isn’t intended for me. My fake mom knew I liked it. She knew it made me uncomfortable too, but I might as well look at it. What’s the harm of that?
I approach the cat again. This time she lets me, but her eyes are filled with scorn. Is it possible for a cat to roll her eyes? I could swear that’s what she just did. Still, she seems to know I need the ring. She allows me to take it, then trots back under the chairs.
I slip the ring on my hand and admire it as I did in my totally perfect house. My eyes are caught by the light reflecting in the stone and then suddenly I’m seeing images in the crystal. . . . It’s the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I let myself in the back door. My mom is on the phone. She’s begging some guy to let us keep the house. She sounds desperate—not like my mom at all. She has, I suddenly realize, lost her home too.
Now there’s a new image in the crystal. It’s December, and Maddy and I are staying up all night watching our favorite dinosaur cartoons. We are too old for this stuff, but we loved them when we were little, and now we watch when Maddy is depressed. We don’t watch when I’m depressed. I’m not allowed to get depressed when Maddy’s happy.
And then it’s January, and Maddy is coming into the multi-purpose room when I’m rehearsing for the talent show. I’m going to sing a solo, but Maddy doesn’t like this. She motions for me to come over. I excuse myself and go talk to her. She says Brendan is playing lacrosse and I need to go watch him practice because all her friends are there.
A tiny voice inside me says no. I’m not sure I even like Brendan. I always know what he’s going to say and it’s never very interesting. I want to be in the talent show. “C’mon, In—what’s important to you? I mean seriously . . .” Maddy says.
The tiny voice inside keeps telling me to say no to Maddy, but I can’t. I go with her, and Mrs. Mahoney cuts me out of the program. She only takes the kids who show up for practice. When the talent show comes, I don’t go.
And then Valentine’s Day and my mom is telling me her ring is missing. Mouse says Maddy took it.
Maddy would never steal anything. Mouse is a big fat liar.
Mom says I have to ask Maddy. I tell her forget it. No way. Mom says either I will ask Maddy or she will.
I won’t. She does.
Maddy practically stops talking to me. She acts as if I stink like three-day-old barf. How dare you is all she says to me for one whole week. And then suddenly she’s back acting like nothing ever happened. Later that day, I find an envelope in my backpack. Inside is the ring. Nothing else.
Now I see recent scenes in quick clips. Me being chosen for welcomer because of how well I sing. Me talking to the other welcomer girls—we are giggling and laughing—there’s no one girl who has more friends than anyone else. No one girl who decides what the rest of us will do. We are all friends. It’s so easy—so comfortable. Laird tells us what to do. All that’s missing is Maddy.
I grab that stupid cat and tie the ring right back to her stupid ribbon around her stupid neck.
Then I get up and begin to inspect the room. There are two doors. The big glass doors where the tram deposits people, and a smaller glass door at the back. I peer through the glass in the small door, but it’s smoky and I can’t see through. Of course it’s locked. No surprise there.
A girl who is about Finn’s age is watching me. She has freckles, serious blue eyes, and a head full of curls the color of cut mangos—a more yellowy red than Mouse’s paprika-colored hair. She smiles when she sees me test the door. “New people always do that,” she says.
“How do you get out of here?” I ask.
“I wish I knew. My name’s Skye,” she says, and waits for me to tell her mine, which I don’t feel like doing. But I hear my mom’s voice in my head. Just be polite whether you want to or not. “I’m India,” I say.
“Hi.” She smiles.
“I don’t get this place. How long do you have to stay here?” I ask.
“From what I’ve seen, we’re pretty much stuck. Everything’s stuck. Even my clock has stopped ticking. What about yours?”
“Yep, mine’s stopped too. Why? Why are we here?” I ask.
“We were supposed to make a decision about whether or not to become a citizen of Falling Bird, but we couldn’t, so they stuck us in Passengers Waiting.”
I think about this. Do I want to be a welcomer? Suddenly this seems like a totally new question, something I’ve never really asked myself before.
It might not be too late to change my mind. What are the consequences of my decision, that’s what my mom would ask. My mom is not always wrong. She’s not always right either.
Skye nods as if she understands I need time to think about this. “Just be careful of the lady over there in the yellow hat—Phyllis,” she whispers, and then walks over to talk to the little boy with the superpig.
I go back to my corner, sit on the floor with my back to the wall, and try to turn on my wrist screen. “Maddy, please, I have to talk to you about something,” I whisper.
“Hey!” a woman shouts. “Where’d you get that?”
“What? What?” A man’s booming voice.
“Let me see.” The woman, Phyllis, dives for me, her stale milk breath in my face.
“Hey, let me!”
Other voices chime in. The shouts come from all around, closing in on me.
“You’re not supposed to have that. It creates longing.”
“How’d you get it?”
A bald man puts his greasy hand on my arm.
Even Skye and the singing dude are watching me now, but it isn’t me they’re interested in. It’s the wrist screen.
“It’s broken,” I tell them.
Phyllis’s worn brown eyes light up. “I can fix it,” she announces.
“If it’s broken, it’s no use to you,” the bald man says. “Why not give it to me.”
“They don’t break,” someone else says. “You just don’t know how to use it. I’ll show you.”
“Hey, me! Me!” Another guy pushes forward.
There are no officer dudes in this room. I’m on my own here. These people are going to jump me and take this last thing, this only thing I have left. They’re going to rip it off my arm.
“Maddy,” I whisper to the screen. “I so need you right now.”
But Maddy does not appear. The screen is blank as a closed eye.
Phyllis is now fighting off the others. “She said she’s giving it to me,” she cries.
“No I didn’t.” A voice rises inside me. A loud, sure voice. It’s not me acting like a good student or a cool girl or a good welcomer or the girl Brendan has a crush on or anybody’s sister. It isn’t the voice of my mother or Maddy or Laird either. It isn’t me pretending at all. It’s the voice of India Tompkins, exactly as I am. “Get the heck away from me!”
Instantly, the bickering stops, the room is silent. Everyone watches me.
“This is mine! Leave me alone!” I shove the bald man with the greasy hands back.
That is when the loudspeaker calls another number, another number that no one has, that no one will ever have. No one needs to check their small raffle numbers. The numbers mean nothing.
“Five-four-nine-one-eight-eight-nine-eight-one-six-oh-oh-oh-five-four-one,” the mechanical voice repeats.
“Hey.” Skye is next to me. She whispers in my ear, “That’s you.”
I look down at the ticket in my hand. Five-four-nine-one-eight-eight-nine-eight-one-six-oh-oh-oh-five- four-one, it says.
Skye nods. “Go on,” she tells me.
“Impossible!” a fat man bellows. “One number’s off. They like to fool with us that way.”
“No, it’s her number. I saw,” Skye i
nsists.
“It’s because of the screen,” somebody shouts.
What do you do when your number is called? I stare stupidly at my ticket.
Phyllis’s bulky shoulders shove in front of me. “You won’t need that now.” She grabs my wrist with her large man hands, works her fingers under the strap, and snaps the wrist screen off my arm.
But I am not a victim. I am not going to stay in Passengers Waiting. I am India Tompkins and I’m a fighter. I jump on her back like a mountain lion, kicking her under the arm so hard it surprises her and for a second she loosens her grip on the wrist screen. That second is all I need. I snatch it back and jerk my arm out of her reach. Skye, the singing dude, and the little boy with the superpig all cheer. Skye is holding the white cat. The cat looks different now, as if she’s finally content. That’s the last thing I notice when the smoked glass door slides open, and I walk through with the wrist screen in my hand.
CHAPTER 27
PERMANENT RESIDENT
A woman with blue gloves, thick shoulders, and short hair the color of white chocolate stands at the door. Mary Carol, her name badge reads. She checks my ticket, nods, and tells me to follow her down a long hall with corrugated aluminum walls and smooth, shiny, handle-less doors.
Where is she taking me?
I’m gripping my wrist screen so tightly my fingers ache from the effort. The band is broken, but while I’m walking I figure a way to fix it by poking another hole in the band with the buckle sprocket. It’s still loose, but at least it’s on now.
The doors are numbered with a strange series of letters and numbers I don’t understand. E-10K-28L, one says. E-8K-14L another. At G-19K-1L, the woman stops and pushes open the smooth metal door in the corrugated wall.
The room inside is sleek and silver with shiny walls and smooth handles inlaid into the metal. The woman slides her fingers in and clicks out a handle that flips down a seat from the wall. She moves to another handle and another seat falls out. When she has four seats, a table, a drawer full of soft drinks and another of peanuts, she invites me to sit down.
“Chuck wants to see you,” she explains, offering me a soft drink.
“Chuck? The taxi driver?” I ask. Somehow this seems like good news, as if Chuck is an old friend.
Mary Carol nods. “Everybody likes Chuck. We don’t want to lose him. Training is expensive and even after we’re done there’s no guarantee we’ll end up with an employee of Chuck’s caliber.” She sighs. “But he’s become a little too personally involved this time.”
She waits as if to measure my response.
“Involved with what?” I ask.
A pained smile darts across her lips. “Your family,” she explains. “We need you to let him know you decided fully of your own accord. In exchange, you will be restored to your welcomer position. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” she asks, watching me intently.
“I decided what of my own accord?”
“To come back.”
“I don’t feel the same way now,” I say cautiously, fishing for information.
She shrugs. “Now isn’t so important.”
“Why?”
She grinds her teeth. “Some decisions you don’t have a chance to make again, India. They time out.”
That’s what happened to my mom. She made a decision about the house and she couldn’t get out of it and then we ran out of time. I feel suddenly so sad for my mom. This must be how she felt.
Mary Carol watches me carefully. “But if you’re caught between the two . . . which was the decision General Operations made about you . . .”
At school I don’t like to ask questions. I’m afraid people will think I’m stupid. But I don’t care now. I have to understand this. “What does that mean?”
“We like things to run smoothly is all. When we have someone who doesn’t want to . . . settle down—a malcontent I guess you’d call it—we try to keep them away from the general population. Dissatisfaction is infectious. Of course there are pockets of discontent in every society . . . no city is perfect. But with you it was more that you didn’t seem sure you wanted to give up your passenger status.”
“So you put me in Passengers Waiting?”
“Yes,” she says. “Passenger status is a tumultuous time. During the downward motion euphoria, our citizens generate positive feelings for the passengers. But interaction much beyond that . . . seems to incite troubling feelings for our residents. Chuck is a perfect example.”
“He is?” The Chuckinator seemed pretty mellow to me. I’m having a hard time following this.
“The no passengers beyond this point ruling limits our exposure, which is better for everyone.”
“No passengers beyond this point,” I echo. “What does that mean?”
“It means that most of Falling Bird is off limits to you until you become a citizen with a permanent passport. That way our residents have some protection.”
“From us?”
She nods, scratching her short white hair with its pink scalp showing. “But we try to treat passengers fairly. We received a Form six-twenty-one on you. Contesting our ruling on your placement in Passengers Waiting. Ordinarily we might have ignored this, but since it came from Chuck—we all really like Chuck, you see?”
“Yes.”
“So we need to know . . . did you make this decision of your own free will?”
My hands are shaking. I remember the path with the light that suddenly appeared. It was so enticing. But I wanted it too. I did. Was it my own free will? This isn’t a black-and-white answer. Should I lie about this? What would my mom do? What would Maddy do? Maddy would lie, that’s for sure.
“Yes, I chose,” I whisper.
“All right then.” Mary Carol nods encouragingly and pushes a button on the wall.
“Yes?” the voice asks.
“Send him in,” Mary Carol requests.
A moment later the door slides open and a security dude with ears shaped like pork chops appears. Boris, it says on his cloud patch. Behind him is Chuck outfitted in an all-white flight suit.
Chuck smiles at me, though he is so nervous the smile is more of a tic.
“India?” Mary Carol asks pointedly. “Tell him what you told me.”
I stare at him, suddenly so cold I’m shivering. He’ll know if I gave the right answer. “I decided,” I croak, scanning his eyes for a response.
Mary Carol nods her head like I should go on. “You decided what, India?”
“To stay here,” I say. I feel a little more like myself saying this. It’s as if speaking these words gives me back a flicker of the power I felt fighting for my screen in the waiting room. I’m not a victim. I told the truth just as I saw it, even if it will get me in trouble.
Boris motions for Mary Carol to step outside, to talk about something. Mary Carol shakes her head. I’m guessing leaving me alone with Chuck is against regulations.
“Oh for goodness’ sake, Mary Carol. Chuck will come too,” Boris says.
Mary Carol nods reluctantly, and the three of them leave me alone in the chrome-plated room.
When they come back, Mary Carol is smiling. “Congratulations, India. You’ve earned your welcomer job back,” she announces.
“Okay, you did your bit, Chucko, time to go.” Boris flaps his hand at the Chuckinator.
Chuck nods, but there’s something he wants to tell me. His eyes contain a whole conversation he can’t express. “Mouse wanted me to give you this.” He hands me my dad’s old brown wallet—now Bing’s.
Bing’s wallet is always with Bing. Bing is always with Mouse. It’s not possible that this wallet is here with me and Mouse is not. If she’s given me Bing’s wallet, she’s given me Bing.
Nobody could make her do that. She had to want to herself.
I want to open the wallet, but not in front of them. I slip it into my pocket as I overhear Mary Carol whisper to Boris, “You checked it, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Thanks,
” I tell Chuck, as if this is no big deal.
He nods, his eyes on me. This time he allows Boris to hustle him outside.
Mary Carol snaps the chairs back up into the wall, closes the soda drawer and the snack drawer. The room is a sleek silver rectangle again—with no trace of the way it was with us in it. “All righty then,” she says, holding the door open for me.
CHAPTER 28
BOOM
On the other side of the doggy door, my eyes adjust slowly to the dark tunnel light. The colors are different here: every shade of brown, but no bright colors, nothing vibrant.
The passageway is expertly dug and surprisingly clean, though it’s made of dirt. There’s a sheen to the tunnel walls, a deep brown glow—as if the dirt has been polished. Not much space down here though. The tunnel is just dog-size—no way for us to move through except on our hands and knees, which is hard on Mouse since she can’t use one of her arms.
When we get some distance from the tunnel dogs— far enough that it feels safe to whisper—we stop and regroup.
Mouse watches me as I pull out my clock. “We can’t leave without the dog, no matter what time it is,” Mouse insists. “Chuck said.”
“He didn’t say we had to. He said it would be helpful.”
“We can’t leave the dog,” Mouse says, stubbornly.
We have to go back, figure out a way to avoid Francine and Manny, persuade a dog to come with us, and find India and the black box all in five hours and nineteen minutes. How is this possible?
“Remember the time Henry ran away, Mouse? Remember how we got her back?” I ask.
“She followed you.”
“She was running toward TO Boulevard and I ran the other direction. She turned around and began chasing after me, remember?”
“You think the blue-eyed dog will follow us?”
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