Angus sneered. “Simoni wants nothing to do with you anymore.”
Trenton nearly laughed. “Thanks for letting me know. I had no idea.”
“You’re a loser,” Angus said. “I would never have abandoned Simoni like that.”
“Guess it’s too bad that she didn’t ask you to the dance, then,” Trenton said, but his heart wasn’t really into the insult. The sad fact was that Angus was right. Trenton didn’t know how to fix things between him and Simoni.
“Come on,” Clyde said. “Let’s go.”
As they turned toward the orchard, Angus shoved Trenton in the back, making his sore ribs scream. “I’m assigned here every day now, and I know what you’re doing.”
Trenton froze but tried not to show his shock. “What are you talking about?”
“You think I don’t know what you’re up to?” Angus glared. “I know. And I’ll be watching you every day from now on.”
Trenton walked away, but he could feel Angus’s eyes on him.
Was he telling the truth? Did people really know that he was working on something? He thought he’d been careful. But if Angus knew, who else might?
As the morning went on, Trenton spotted Angus watching him pick cherries, Angus always in the distance, always watching. How much did he know? How much had he seen?
“He’s trying to steal your girl,” Clyde said. He seemed to be eating two cherries for every one he picked.
Trenton dropped a handful into his bucket. “What are you talking about?”
“Angus,” Clyde said, tossing a couple more cherries into his mouth. “He knows you want to get back with Simoni, so he’s trying to stop you.”
Was that what Angus had meant? Was it possible that he didn’t know anything about the dragon after all? Trenton felt a huge weight lift from his chest. He glanced toward Simoni, who was picking several rows away.
“I told her I’m sorry.”
Clyde gave him a pitying look. “That’s not enough. She worked on her dress for a whole week. She planned dinner with her friends. She even dyed a pair of shoes to match your suit. And you left her hanging.” He smiled sadly with juice-stained lips. “Girls don’t forgive that kind of thing. You may as well start looking for a new sweetie.”
Trenton set his filled bucket on a stack and grabbed a new one. “I broke two ribs, sprained my neck, and got a concussion. What was I supposed to do, drag myself to the dance?”
Clyde popped another handful of cherries into his mouth and chomped away, then spit the pits out one after the other. “My friend, if I’d had both of my legs cut off, I would have found a way to make it to see my girl that night. This was, like, a once-in-a-lifetime thing. She won’t get to go to a city ball again until she’s eighteen.”
Their instructor strolled toward them and snapped his fingers. “Less talking, more working. And stop eating the fruit. A good citizen works for the benefit of everyone. He does not take that which has not been assigned to him.”
“A good citizen is also hungry,” Clyde said to Trenton. “How can it not be lunchtime yet?”
Trenton clenched his jaw and concentrated on his work. How could Simoni blame him? It wasn’t his fault he’d been unconscious for the entire dance. You’d think she’d understand that. She wasn’t the only one ignoring him, either. He didn’t know if she’d told everyone to stay away from him, or if they were jealous that he scored the highest on his combined tests. Lately, no one but Clyde wanted anything to do with him.
“What would you do in my situation?” he asked Clyde, who was again sneaking cherries. “If you liked Simoni and you . . . you know, didn’t get to the dance?”
“You mean other than drown myself in the plankton tank for losing the cutest girl our age?”
Trenton grimaced. If he’d had any other friends he could go to for advice, he would have asked them. “Assuming the plankton tank wasn’t an option, what would you do?”
Clyde swished a cherry pit from one cheek to the other before spitting it at the nearest tree trunk and missing by a foot. “Hmm, tough one. If it were me, I’d probably find another girl. Preferably not one of Simoni’s friends. But you’re not exactly a hot commodity these days, so that might not work. I guess I’d suggest trying to talk to her.”
It was all Trenton could do to keep from hitting Clyde over the head with his bucket. “I’ve been trying to talk to her for two weeks. She won’t listen.”
“You should probably start with telling her the truth.” Clyde scratched his belly.
“What truth, that I’m an idiot? I think she knows that.”
“No, tell her what really happened that night.”
Trenton froze with his hand reaching toward a branch. “What do you mean?” Did Clyde somehow know about the dragon?
Clyde glanced at Trenton and quickly looked away. “How you really hurt yourself.”
“I fell out of the barn,” Trenton said. “What more could I tell her? That I’m a total klutz? I think she probably knows that already.”
Walking over until he and Trenton were only a few inches apart, Clyde whispered, “No one believes that story. Except maybe the doctors who patched you up.”
His gut cramped, and he felt like he was going to throw up. “Why not?”
Clyde looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Seriously? You were alone in the loft of a barn on a night two hours before a big dance and tripped over a bale of hay? Even I could have come up with a better story than that, and I’m the worst liar I know. Why didn’t you say you fell down the stairs of your apartment building or something?”
“My apartment’s on the first floor,” Trenton said. Not to mention the fact that after the crash, Kallista had barely managed to get him into the silo and down the ladder. They’d never have made it through the elevator without security asking questions.
“What really happened is none of my business. All I’m saying is this: if there’s one thing a girl hates more than a guy who stands her up for a formal dance, it’s a guy who lies about why he did it.”
“Time to break for lunch,” their instructor called.
Clyde covered his mouth and burped. “Funny. I’m not all that hungry anymore.”
“Disgusting,” Trenton said. He looked at Simoni and knew what to do. Clyde was a slob at times, but, in this case at least, he was also right. Trenton ran to catch up with Simoni. She’d surrounded herself with a group of girls, but he forced his way through anyway. “Clyde says you don’t believe that I fell from the barn loft.”
Simoni folded her arms and stared at him without a word. She didn’t have to talk; her expression said everything he needed to know. He tried to think of a creative story that could make everything right, but lies had gotten him into this situation, and it didn’t seem like they’d get him out of it.
“Can I talk to you privately?” he asked.
She narrowed her eyes, practically turning his blood to ice.
“Give me five minutes,” he pleaded. “If you don’t want anything to do with me after that, I won’t talk to you ever again.”
She turned to her friends. “Go on,” she told them. “I’ll catch up.”
Once they were alone, Trenton’s mind went blank. He shuffled his feet, trying to think of how he could possibly tell her everything that had really happened.
Simoni tilted her head. “You need five minutes to look at your shoes?”
There was no good way to explain what had happened.
“I really did have a concussion,” he said. “And obviously my ribs are broken.”
“This isn’t about that.”
Trenton looked up. “It isn’t?”
“It’s not even about missing the dance.” Simoni shook back her hair. “I heard that the food was terrible, and the band was worse—a bunch of old-people music.”
Trenton stood there, completely bewildered. If she wasn’t upset about the dance or his accident, then what?
Simoni stared at him; he felt as if her green eyes could dril
l right into his brain. “You’ve been lying to me.”
Trenton opened his mouth to contradict her, but she held out a hand.
“Not only about the dance—although that was a lie too. But about everything. You’ve been lying to me ever since we started training. Don’t you think I’ve noticed how often you ‘forget’ something and have to go back for it? How often you say you’ll stay behind to work a little longer? Nobody studies as much as you claim to, yet your parents wonder how you’re doing in school because you’re never home.”
And he thought he’d been so clever. Cold sweat dripped down his back. “I don’t know what to say.”
She smiled and shook her head. “Don’t say anything. You can keep your secrets. That’s fine. I won’t even ask what they are.” He started to relax—was it really going to be this easy? “Or you can keep me. But you can’t keep both.”
Trenton’s throat tightened and his eyes burned. Simoni was a good person, and he’d been a jerk to her. Telling her about the tube, the workshop, Kallista, the dragon—that wouldn’t be enough. She’d never believe him, not unless she saw it all herself.
But could he be sure she wouldn’t give him and his secret away? It all came down to one thing: did he believe he could confide in her or not?
“You want to know you can trust me,” he said. “I get that. But I need to know that I can trust you too.”
“Of course you can trust me.” Simoni stepped closer. “Don’t you know that by now?”
Trenton bit the skin on the back of his thumb. “If I’m going to show you what I’ve been doing, you have to swear to me you won’t tell—not anyone. If you decide you don’t want anything to do with me, I’ll understand. But I’m not the only one involved in this. You can’t tell a soul even if you never speak to me again.”
Simoni nodded. “I swear.”
“Okay,” Trenton said hesitantly. He hoped he was doing the right thing. If he was going to do it, it had to be now, before he changed his mind. “I’ll tell Clyde to cover for us while we’re gone. This could take a while.”
• • •
Losing Angus took some work, but Trenton knew the level well enough to evade anyone who hadn’t spent every day of the past six months there. When they reached the silo, he covered Simoni’s eyes with a blindfold made from a potato sack and led her up the ladder. If she really wanted to figure out where they were and then lead someone here, she probably could, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances.
“Where are we?” Simoni asked as they climbed out of the shaft. She hugged herself inside Trenton’s sweater. “It’s so cold.”
“Just a little farther.” Holding her hand, he led her to the courtyard in front of the foundry where he and Kallista had been repairing the dragon. It still had a few issues, but the metal was so strong and light that the damage from the crash hadn’t been nearly as catastrophic as they’d expected.
When they reached the melted gate, he had her stop while he started the generator and turned on the lights.
Simoni sniffed. “It doesn’t smell like we’re on level one anymore, but we didn’t go down the elevator.”
“Yeah, that’s the thing,” Trenton said. “This is going to be hard to believe, but a lot of what we’ve been taught our whole lives isn’t true. Level one really isn’t the first level. There are actually two levels above it.”
With her eyes still covered by the sack, Simoni turned toward him and Trenton hurried on.
“And you know how we’ve been told that we use slates because there isn’t enough paper? That’s a lie too. People used to have plenty of paper. There’s a whole room filled with books and paintings in City Hall.”
“How do you know any of those things?” Simoni asked carefully.
Trenton sighed. “It’s a long story, and I’ll tell it all if you want. But the thing you need to know is that I would never do anything to hurt you or anyone else. I’d never hurt the city. I’ve come to love food production, and I especially love working with you. But there’s also a part of me I can’t get rid of, a part that needs to know things. Needs to understand things.”
He gripped her hand, hoping he could find a way to make her believe. “Remember that day I made the swing, trying to impress you?”
Simoni smiled a little. Trenton hoped that was a good sign. “That’s why you did it? To impress me?”
“You said you were bored, so I decided to build something you’d like. I know it was probably a dumb idea, now. But I didn’t then. After that whole mess, the chancellor was going to send me away for months of retraining, until they discovered that I wasn’t the cause of the power outage—it was a jam in the feeder belt of a power plant.” Trenton rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth, hoping he wasn’t making a huge mistake. “I found out that the thing jamming the belt was a part of something bigger. Something a lot bigger.”
He walked behind her and untied her blindfold. “Anyway, one thing led to another. One part fit another. And the next thing I knew, a friend and I had built . . . this.”
He pulled off the blindfold. Simoni looked up, her eyes growing wider and wider. She held her hands to her mouth. “What is it?”
Trenton tried to swallow, but a lump blocked his throat. “It’s a steam-powered dragon.”
“A dragon?” She stared up at it with wide eyes. “What’s that?”
“It’s a creature from old books,” Trenton said. “It’s a machine that actually walks and flies. Well, it flew once, but then the canvas on the wings tore. That was the night of the dance. I didn’t have a helmet, and I got hurt when it crashed.” Simoni continued to gape, and Trenton began to get nervous. “So, um, what do you think?”
She opened her mouth, closed it, shook her head, and then managed, “I thought you were seeing another girl.”
Trenton laughed. “I’m pretty sure this is a boy dragon.” He rubbed his palms on his shirt. “There is a girl, but not like that. We’re building this together.”
He studied her face, trying to gauge her reaction. “Are you still mad?”
“No,” Simoni said, taking his hand. “Not anymore. I’m glad you told me the truth. I just . . . I need to think for a while.”
“I totally understand,” Trenton said. “I helped build it, and it’s even hard for me to believe it’s real. But you’ll keep your promise not to tell anyone. Right?”
She looked over with an expression he couldn’t read. “You can trust me.”
33
The following weeks were the best Trenton could remember. With no more lies between him and Simoni, they’d never gotten along better. Angus was still a pest, but he was so focused on Simoni that Trenton had no problem losing him when he needed to get to the silo.
The dragon was coming along great too. The repairs were complete, and they’d finished the scales on the outside of the framework. Kallista was happier than he’d ever seen her.
The only thing missing were new wings. They’d searched every fabric shop in the city but found nothing strong enough to withstand the force of flight. Metal would be strong enough, but it was far too heavy and not flexible enough for the wing movement they needed.
On a Saturday morning, with nothing to do, he and Kallista were killing time.
She sat in the backseat of the dragon, shooting fire at random things. “Ladon’s bored. He wants to fly.”
Trenton looked up from the floor, where he’d been bleeding air bubbles out of the hydraulic system. “Ladon?”
“That’s his name.”
Trenton shut the bleeder valve and frowned. “Since when?”
“Every dragon needs a name.” Kallista leaned across the front seat to point the dragon’s head at an old metal chair and slapped the fire button. A stream of flame engulfed the chair, leaving nothing but a single leg sticking sideways out of the ruins. “You can’t just keep calling him dragon forever.”
“Sure, but why Ladon? Why not Deathfire or Windfury? Those are better names.”
“He doesn’t look like either of those,” Kallista said. “Deathfire would be for a mean dragon with beady eyes and flaring nostrils. Windfury has anger issues. Ladon was the dragon from Greek mythology who guarded the golden apples of immortality. Our dragon will guard us. He’s powerful, but he’s also smart, and kind.”
Trenton looked at the puddle of melted goo. “Not if you’re a chair.”
“The chair had beady eyes. Ladon didn’t trust him.”
Trenton opened his eyes wide, and they both laughed.
“So,” Kallista said. “How are you going to get him wings?”
“How am I?” Trenton climbed up the front leg of the dragon. With the coal powder burning, he had to be careful about staying well away from the furnace. Even when it was completely enclosed, the furnace’s the orange glow showed through the metal ribs.
He popped himself into the front seat and made the dragon move forward and backward in a little dragon dance. “Don thinks you should figure out what to use for wings. He says it’s only fair because I figured out about the turbines.”
Kallista waggled the tail back and forth in time to the dance. “His name is Ladon, not Don. And he says I put most of him together, so the least you can do is find the parts.”
Trenton tilted his head as if listening to something. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Kallista said. “Is Ladon telling you it’s time for lunch?”
“Shut off the turbines.”
She closed the air valve, and as the fire went out, the same growling sound came that he’d heard before.
“Sounds like an engine, maybe,” Trenton said. “Have you heard it before?”
Kallista shook her head. “It’s probably just wind echoing in the air ducts. We can hear it more clearly here because we’re closer to the top.”
Trenton wasn’t sure. It didn’t sound like the wind to him.
“I think we need to explore the top level,” Kallista said.
Trenton stopped listening for the sound. “I thought we agreed that going up there isn’t safe.”
Fires of Invention Page 21
