The Limit

by Kristen Landon

  “You know, I bet if you went and talked to her, you could work out whatever . . . problem you two are having.”

  “No. It’s not that. Not really. It’s just—if we were back home, Madeline and I would never choose each other as best friends.”

  Huh. Would Coop and I hang out together—out in the real world? Probably not. My main buds had been math and computer fanatics like Brennan and Lester. Coop wouldn’t go with the total muscle heads, but he’d definitely find a group of jocks to spend his hours with.

  Paige started sniffing big-time. “I just miss my family so much. I hate being stuck in here—unlike some people, like Madeline.”

  “And Jeffery,” I added.

  “Do you know what she’s doing right now? She’s having a spa day. Can you believe it? She turned our dance room into her own private spa, spending tons of money to have the lighting redone and furniture brought in. It’s totally irresponsible.” Her voice grew louder and faster. I’d never heard her speak so much, and she wasn’t even finished. “She brought in a masseuse, and a pricey hairstylist, plus another person to do her nails. It’s costing her an absurd amount of money, and she doesn’t even care.”

  She glanced over at me and bit her lip. I think she’d forgotten I was there. All these thoughts had been accumulating inside her like raindrops in a bucket. She just realized she’d dumped the whole thing over my head.

  “At least it will soon be over,” she said in that quiet voice I was more accustomed to hearing from her. “I won’t have to listen to her talk about it anymore, and I won’t have to keep telling her that I’m not interested in going in on it with her. Madeline has been working on this project for more than a month now. It takes a long time to get approval to bring outsiders up to the top floor, longer than getting approval to go outside.”

  “We need approval to go outside?” I shook my ankle bracelet at her and spoke with more sarcasm than was necessary. “I thought we were free to go anywhere we wanted.”

  She snapped her mouth shut, staring at my ankle, and sank deep into her chair.

  My foot came down. “Maybe Madeline and Jeffery have the right idea. What difference is it going to make how much we spend in here? Our parents certainly don’t care how far over the limit we are, so why should we?”

  Her voice dropped to an even quieter mouse-whispering level. “My parents care. I care.”

  “Your parents care? I don’t think so, or you wouldn’t be here.”

  “They couldn’t help it. My little brother . . . he’s always been really sick. . . . All the hospital bills . . . They couldn’t help it. My dad took on another job, and I came here. We’re all working hard so we can get back under the limit.”

  “Sure. That’s what they tell you, so you’ll go along quietly. They raise our families’ limits as soon as we come here. Perfect excuse for them to go shopping and pile up even more debt.”

  She shook her head, unbelieving. “Maybe your parents, but mine—”

  “What’s so different about yours? Huh? You think your parents love you more? They don’t! They’re all the same.”

  She blew out a disgusted breath as she pushed herself out of her chair. “You’ve been sitting in front of the TV too long. It’s scrambled your brains.”

  “It’s true,” I said, shooting myself in the head with a finger gun. “Total system meltdown. You’re going to have to reboot me, just like Coop. Reprogram my brain.”

  Reprogram my brain.

  Staring at the big blank screen in front of me, everything suddenly clicked into place, like sliding that last blue Rubik’s Cube square into position. “Oh. My. Gosh.”

  Lauren’s voice: My work is weird. I mean, I don’t even know how to do it. Still, I have to sit in my little chair and stare at the computer screen for four hours every day. It’s really stupid.

  Blond Gorilla Guard: It’s okay, Reginald, settle down. You’re fine now. Here, you need to look at your computer screen. Look right there. That’s right. Keep watching while I clean this up.

  The headaches. Seizures.

  They were doing something to us, sending some sort of electrowaves into our brains while we worked on our computers. They were reprogramming our brains without us even knowing about it.

  “Paige, wait! Don’t leave. I think I just figured something out.”

  “That you’re a rude jerk?” She folded her arms across her chest with a huff, but she did stop and turn toward me. “You’re not very bright for a Top Floor, are you? I figured that out weeks ago.”

  “You’re right. I am a jerk. I’m sorry. Maybe your parents aren’t like mine, but listen. I think I just realized what they’re doing to us in here.”

  “Who’s doing what to whom?”

  “The FDRA. Miss Smoot. Everyone here. To us kids.”

  “What do you mean?” Her arms fell out of that tight cross, and her fingers twisted together.

  “I’m not sure of the details, but I’ve got the general idea.” I jumped to my feet and started pacing in small circles. “I’ve got to find out. It’d be on their computer, but I don’t know if I can access it fast enough.” The band around my ankle suddenly felt ten times as heavy. The security guards had most likely started watching my computer activity extra closely after my blanking-out-the-monitors trick. Once they realized I was hacking again, they’d shut me down fast. I couldn’t do this alone. I grabbed Paige by the wrist and pulled her out the rec room door. “Come on, let’s go find Coop and Jeffery. We need help.”

  “BUT WHAT IF WE FIND SOMETHING incriminating?” Jeffery asked. Paige and I sat cross-legged on the floor with him in a corner of the gym. At the moment it was the best place for a private meeting. Madeline’s spa filled up the dance room. Kia and Isaac were still dinging and pinging on their pinball machine in the rec room. The pool room was too humid, and the cubicles were too exposed.

  “We’ll figure how to get a copy of it to outside authorities once we do,” I said.

  “No. I mean, what happens to us? Will things change around here? Will we have to move out of the workhouse?”

  Oh, yeah. Jeffery didn’t want to go home. Ever.

  “To be honest, I don’t know.” I ran the tip of my finger back and forth on the glossy wood floor in front of me. “I don’t know what we’re going to find for sure, and I don’t know what it will mean. I do know this—I’d rather find out the truth about what is going on around here, no matter what the consequences are.”

  “I guess,” he said, not sounding very convinced. Just how bad had his home life been?

  “Jeffery.” Paige’s soft voice came out a lot more confident than usual. “Do you remember about three months ago—when Miss Smoot sent us an e-mail telling us we were no longer allowed to order any meals from Lily Gardens Chinese Restaurant?”

  “She never did tell us why,” said Jeffery with a grumble.

  Paige giggled. “Maybe she got a bad fortune cookie from them.”

  “They took the link off the workhouse home page and put up blocks.” Jeffery explained to me. He twitched his eyebrows. “I got through anyway. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. I ordered Lily Gardens food every day for a week.”

  “I remember seeing fresh cartons of untouched Chinese food in the rec room at lunch and dinnertime,” she said. “You probably would have ordered it for breakfast if they’d been open that early.”

  “Yeah.” His eyes were focused on something outside the circle the three of us made. His smile flattened out. “The receptionist finally caught on to where the food deliveries were coming from and blocked them from being brought up.”

  “That’s not the point.” Paige’s voice grew even stronger. “Obviously you don’t even like Chinese food, but you kept ordering it just because Miss Smoot told you not to.”

  Now I could see where this was going. Keep at it, Paige. You’re almost there.

  He let out a small grunt, and his smile came back. “Yeah. It was sort of like a dare.”

  “This is the same thing,
” said Paige, “but much more important than Lily Gardens Restaurant. This has to do with right and wrong. It’s a dare too. A challenge. We’re the good guys on a dangerous mission to stop the bad guys.”

  “Kind of like a game.” He sat up straight, his eyes bright. “And you want me to play it with you?”

  “We’re begging you to play,” I said.

  “Okay. I’m in. What’s the plan?”

  I popped Paige softly on her thigh with the side of my fist, and she did the same back to me in our own silent Yes!

  I scooted in to make a tighter circle. “I need some help figuring out the details, but here’s what I thought we could do . . .”

  One forty-one a.m. A perfectly random time. No one would suspect. If everything went as planned, Jeffery would leave his room in exactly five minutes. I hoped he’d remembered to set his alarm. I didn’t end up needing mine. I couldn’t sleep. Coop had been out of it the entire evening, after his head-banging diving accident, so we’d been forced to move ahead without him.

  Paige met me at the door to the hallway. Her whole body shivered.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “Did you bring the lighter?”

  “Of course.”

  After my last escape Honey Lady had ordered a search of my room and cubicle and confiscated the lighter. She’d made a new rule that the girls had to keep their butane candle lighters in their bedrooms—stashed in a spot inaccessible to me. She’d never counted on me turning Paige into a rebel.

  “You don’t have to do this.” I said. “After we set off the smoke detector, you can sneak back to your room. I can cause a distraction by myself.”

  She hesitated for a second then shook her head. “I’m all right. Let’s stick with this plan. It’s the most believable.”

  I breathed in deeply and nodded. “Let’s go.”

  The instant we walked into the hallway to the stairs, we heard the ding of the elevator arriving on the top floor.

  Crud. Had they noticed me moving around so quickly because of my ankle monitor? I thought it only gave the alarm when I took my first step off the top floor. The guards had probably picked us up on the video monitors because no other kids in the entire workhouse were moving around. But getting caught right now didn’t fit with the plan. It was too early. I thought we’d have a minute or two before a guard got to us. We couldn’t let him catch us yet. Jeffery hadn’t even left his room.

  Paige and I didn’t have time to set off the smoke detector before the elevator door opened. The only thing we could do was dart back into the cubicle room. We couldn’t get caught here, though. Jeffery needed to be alone. I just hoped I was right about my ankle monitor not showing a blip on their screen while I was on the top floor. Otherwise we’d be shut down before we started.

  “Come on,” I whispered to Paige as we stared at the dark work area. The two of us slipped inside Jeffery’s cubicle—just because it wasn’t the first or second one. Either of those would have been too obvious.

  Please let there be only one guard on duty this late at night. I hadn’t looked that far into the guard schedule back on my first day at the workhouse when I’d hacked into it. If an extra guard was watching our every movement, we wouldn’t be hiding long.

  The door from the stair hall made a click as the guard entered the work area. Jeffery had stored a big pile of boxes in his cubicle. Paige and I silently slid some of them in front of us. We stopped breathing and ducked even closer to the ground when a shaft of light shined around the corner. The beam hit the boxes and the wall above our heads, but we remained undetected. We breathed slowly and softly as the guard moved on to Coop’s cubicle.

  Seconds zoomed by. Jeffery was going to walk out here any moment now and crash right into the guard. Come on. Hurry and finish your inspection and get off this floor!

  Finally we heard the door to the elevator hall open and close. We remained hidden for several more minutes, just to make sure the guard had really left. Shoving the boxes aside, we pushed ourselves to our feet and hurried toward the stairs.

  Where was Jeffery? He should have been out here ages ago. If I had to take the time to go wake him up, the guard would make it back downstairs to the monitoring room and see us before we got where we needed to go.

  Jeffery came out of the boys’ hallway right as Paige and I ran past it. He must have noticed the guard and waited in his room to avoid him. I should’ve had more faith in the little guy. He was no dummy.

  We gave each other knowing nods and headed in different directions.

  “You can do it, Jeffery.” It was too dark to see for sure, but I could just imagine the worried look on his face. He’d been assigned the job as hacker tonight, searching the workhouse’s files and getting us the cold hard facts we needed. We hadn’t had a choice, even though both of us would have loved for me to be the one doing the online breaking and entering. The ankle monitor made the decision. We needed every adult in the building to barrel down on me and leave Jeffery alone to mess with the files. He was unsure, but I knew he could get in and get the info we wanted. He had some amateur hacking abilities—he’d been able to order the forbidden Chinese food—and I’d worked with him for more than two hours before lights-out, showing him tricks on some “safe” small-business and personal sites. I’d also written out what I already knew about hacking into the workhouse site from my previous break-ins. With that head start, he should be good to go—that is, if our assumption was right. Paige had said she was almost positive the computers in the cubicle room did not shut down at lights-out like our bedroom computers. If they did, we had no hope. We were also hoping that—if the guard noticed computer activity at all—he’d be much less alarmed, and slower to take a closer look, when he realized Jeffery was logged in and not me.

  After setting off the smoke detector and quickly fanning away the whiffs to make it stop beeping, Paige and I took the stairs down to the fourth floor and walked into the dark, quiet cubicle area. We took a deep breath. We’d made it. Come on up and get us, guard. Now’s the time. I checked my ankle monitor. The normal, constant yellow light on the side had changed to a bright blue light flashing in hypertime. The longer we could distract the guard, though, the more time we gave Jeffery.

  Paige and I looked at each other in the dim glow of the security lights. My heart thumped at what we were about to do. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

  “Here?” I asked Paige.

  “Okay. But . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she stared at her shoes.

  “But what?”

  “It’s just . . .” She lifted her head and crinkled her nose. “It doesn’t seem very natural. You know?”

  “Oh.” I gulped. “What would seem natural?”

  “The rec room?” she said with a single-shoulder lift.

  “Okay.” My voice came out with a squeak. Maybe the guard would catch us before we got there.

  Whose idea had this distraction been anyway? Oh, yeah. Mine. I was excited at the time I thought it up. Stupid.

  We edged our way into the rec room.

  “Should we turn on the lights?” I asked.

  “We could, but . . .”

  “It wouldn’t seem natural,” I finished for her. “Why go to all the trouble to sneak down here and then blow it by turning on the lights? It’s too dark, though.” The rec room didn’t have safety lighting like the halls. “The guard needs to be able to see us. We have to turn on something.”

  “What about the television?” asked Paige.

  “That might work.” I turned on the big screen—not nearly as big or new as ours on the top floor—and flipped it to a music video channel. A television set can give off an amazing amount of light in a dark room. Should do the trick. Time to move on with the plan.

  I shot Paige a glance. She looked away fast and sat down on the sofa, balancing so close to the edge of the cushion, I thought she’d slip off. Her hands made a tight knot in her lap.

  I sat down next to
her—but not too close. You can come now, guard. Anytime. We had to give him something to concentrate on when he got here.

  “Okay,” I said. “Ready?”

  Paige nodded, but leaned away from me.

  I sucked in a deep breath. “Okay.”

  I raised my arm and moved it behind her back, not exactly sure what I was supposed to do with it. I let my hand drop onto her shoulder. Her cheeks turned pink. Mine were probably a deep, dark red.

  She closed her eyes and whispered, “It’s just the plan. The plan, the plan.” She didn’t seem to be talking to me. I think she was trying to pump herself up.

  “He’ll be here any second,” I said in a low voice. Where was he, anyway? Had he taken a pit stop in the restroom on his way back to the monitoring room? Soon, though. The second he heard the alarm set off by my ankle monitor he’d fly up here and stop us. It just had to look as if we’d sneaked down to the fourth floor to make out. I didn’t know why anyone would go to a different floor to do that, but we hoped the guard would be too upset to think that part through.

  I moved close, stretching out with my lips. She leaned in toward me.

  Wait a minute. Wasn’t I supposed to close my eyes or something? If I did, I wouldn’t know where her mouth was. How did people do this? I’d just have to keep my eyes open.

  And then our lips touched. Pop! Just like that it was over and we pulled back. Where was the guard? He hadn’t made it in time. Oh, well. I leaned toward Paige again. Guess we’d have to keep kissing.

  A bright light flashed in my eyes. I sprang at least three feet down the sofa away from Paige.

  “Whoa, dude! What are you . . . ? Oh, man, bro, oh, man!” Bursts of laughter came out with Coop’s words.

  I jumped to my feet. “What are you doing here?”