UnBound

by Neal Shusterman

“Next time,” she repeats.

  • • •

  The StaHo dining hall holds about three hundred wards, meaning they eat in shifts in the large room painted institutional green with puke-yellow accents. She and her fellow sixteen-year-olds sit their shifts at long tables lit by high windows and low bay fluorescents. Too much light in Brooklyn’s opinion. StaHo food doesn’t bear close inspection.

  At dinner Logan, one of her squad mates, slides onto the bench next to her. Logan is strong but bumble footed in relays and useless with nav tools. She drills him, and he gives her the latest news on food and clothing deliveries. For some reason he thinks she’s getting the better deal and should be grateful for it.

  “That shirt looks good on you,” he says. He’s sitting too close, and one of the dining room monitors frowns at Brooklyn, like it’s her fault.

  She hip checks him and jerks her head at the monitor still giving her the evil eye. Logan huffs and moves four inches away.

  “Heard tell of ice cream deliveries later tonight. Want to meet in the kitchen stairwell after lights-out?”

  Brooklyn shakes her head. “What are you, nuts? DormGuardians are on high alert after last week’s brawl. And there are no deliveries on Sunday.”

  Foiled in his attempt to get her alone, Logan squirms a bit. He skates by on his looks and any athletic ability that depends on strength. He’ll make a good boeuf because he follows orders and is quick to display muscle. Anything requiring thinking or elegance isn’t in his bivouac. Through years of inactivity, his brain is about the size of the ice-cream-shaped mashed potato lump on her plate.

  She likes that about him, though. Being around him is no strain. Since their squads were resorted last year and they ended up on the same one, it has become easier for her. Everyone likes Logan, and since he likes her, the rest of the boeufs accept her. She likes that about him too.

  “. . . and on top of that, you know how heavily new rankings get weighted.”

  Brooklyn chokes on her meat loaf and mash. “Huh? What new rankings?”

  Logan sighs. “The ones I’ve been talking about. Weren’t you listening?”

  Hardly ever. “Sorry. I got distracted thinking about how well you did rope climbing last Friday.”

  He brightens. “Yeah, major points on that, right? Kip thinks—”

  She couldn’t care less about what Kip thinks. “Tell me about the new rankings.”

  He scratches his head. “Right. Sarge says the whole school’s getting tested tomorrow. A real marathon. It’ll be weighted against our old metrics, so all our rankings could shift.”

  This has to be what she’d overheard in the headmaster’s office. Old rankings sent in today. Another round of testing to see what shakes out.

  “Do you know why?” she asks. She swallows and tries to act unconcerned, but it’s too late. She really has to work on her poker-face skills.

  “Calm down—the government is crazy about reports. We’re always getting tested, B.”

  She stiffens and then forces herself to relax. She’s told Logan not to call her B. Told him about fifty times. She doesn’t know why it’s okay for Thor to call her B but not Logan. Pick your battles, she reminds herself. And she does need the lug.

  “Yeah, you’re right.” She slides her tapioca pudding to him. He smiles happily and dives in.

  “All the squads are being tested?” she asks casually.

  “Our grade and higher.” Logan speaks around a mouth-glut of pudding. “Littler boeufs aren’t rated till thirteen and are pretty useless till fifteen.” He sounds proud of the fact that he’s reached a useful age, but too thick to remember it also means he’s ripe for unwinding.

  This unexpected testing has to be for a harvest camp list. Feeling sick, she looks around the dining hall. She needs to know where she’s ranked. She zeroes in where the deaf kids eat, napkin wads flying, fingers and elbows dancing, faces transforming with the silent stories they tell.

  Thor isn’t there.

  • • •

  After dinner she can’t shed Logan. It’s past time when teachers, administrators, and DormGuardians would have submitted their assessments. Thor knows the weighting algorithm StaHo uses for ranking the wards. All legal and absent of subjective malice. Right. Every staff member knows how to massage the data. And every staff member does.

  If she has to wait one more minute to find Thor, she’ll scream. But Logan drags her to the playground. A basketball game has already started, and his best bud Kip shouts for him to join.

  “Come on, Brooklyn.” Logan tries to pull her onto the court. She notes the DormGuardians watching the game. If they hadn’t already turned in their numbers, she would have been tempted to impress them with her excellent sportsmanship behavior and passing skills. But unless they witness her killing someone, anything they report now is moot. Whatever nuggets of misery were in the DormGuardian’s reports, it all gets hurled into the computer along with tomorrow’s test results.

  She rotates her wrist and fakes a wince. “Sprained it yesterday. I’d best let it heal up for the testing tomorrow.” She prods him toward the court. “I’ll cheer you on from the bench.”

  She waits about five minutes. She shouts steady encouragement and advice for Logan and one loud hoot for Kip making a basket. Racing up and down the court, Logan forgets she exists. She eases off the yard and gallops up the back staircase to Thor’s room.

  He’s not there. She heads for the audio labs where the deaf kids hang out. Thor says it’s ironic, but she doesn’t get it. She taps Hera’s shoulder and asks where Thor is.

  Hera looks half-annoyed at the interruption, but in the same way Brooklyn’s relationship with Logan gains her acceptance with the squad, her friendship with Thor earns tolerance for her with the deaf. Maybe they make fun of her “English” (she resorts to spelling out words she should know) and for “signing like a boy” and her monotone fingering—but knowing their language makes her a member of their tribe—even if just an honorary one.

  Hera signs, He skipped tonight. Said he had to finish a project in the computer lab.

  Brooklyn should have thought of that herself. Breaking through some firewalls Thor can do safely from his own computer—but hacking through the trickier ones, he’d use a computer not traceable to him. Her fingers flashing her thanks, Brooklyn heads down the east staircase and to the computer lab.

  On a Sunday evening the computer lab is nearly empty except for a couple of younger kids brushing up on factory apps and Thor sitting at a back station, keeping an eye on the computer room attendant, who seems fairly disinterested and unobservant. When she slips in, he waves her over.

  You were right, he signs her. Twenty-one kids will be unwound, seven each from the academic, physical, and arts divisions.

  She tries to keep her hands from shaking as she signs back: Twenty-one is supposed to be a lucky number.

  Thor shakes his head. This is a very unlucky blackjack.

  His fingers fly with explanations on how he retrieved the data off the server, built matrices of the inputs, and applied his algorithm, but she doesn’t care. She waves her hand to stop him, then fixes her gaze on his dark eyes and signs, What’s my ranking?

  Revealing nothing in his eyes, he swivels the screen to her. A few names jump out at Brooklyn right away. Logan is safe. So is Risa, both a decent distance above the bloodred line of the cut, and Brooklyn finds herself aggravated that she saw Risa’s name before her own. Finally she finds herself. Brooklyn Ward SH23-49285. She’s safe! Three spots closer to the cut than Logan—but two farther than Risa. Brooklyn has escaped the Blackjack of Doom. She’d really have to screw up tomorrow’s testing to be put on the harvest camp bus!

  Brooklyn feels featherlight and laughs out loud. She beat out Piano Girl by two. It’s the first time since that life-altering ruckus with Risa when they were seven that she’s had the upper hand. She can’t remember ever feeling this powerful, this fierce, this good.

  • • •

  Testing
day dawns damp and cool. The latter seems a good omen. Heat saps you. Brooklyn makes her best times when the temps are low. Out on the field her sarge looks them over, sneering at some, his gaze passing over others indifferently. He growls at Logan to “Move left” for no reason. Maybe Logan was a fraction of an inch too close to her again. She misses his warmth as he shifts away.

  Then she realizes that the sarge is nervous, and so is the lieutenant. Do they know about the StaHo unwinding cuts? They must. She scans the bleachers for the scorekeepers and freezes when she sees adult boeufs in the stands. She sees a major in khakis, his oak clusters glinting off his shoulders in the weak sunlight. Why are they here?

  “What’s with the brass?” she asks Logan, her voice low, her lips barely moving.

  Logan’s eyes flick to the clutch of uniforms. “Don’t know, don’t care. Ready to put on a show?”

  Brooklyn debates telling him about the headmaster’s list, then figures it’s kinder to keep quiet.

  “Yeah.” Her whisper is predatory, and she squints her eyes dangerously. “I’m ready.”

  Some of the squads are sent to the shooting range, but her squad is up for the fitness test first. The 2/2/2: two minutes of push-ups, two minutes of sit-ups, then a two-mile run on the track. She wishes she could be shooting first, having qualified for a marksmanship badge last year. It would give her an early lead in the rankings, and a nice psychological bump is always a good thing.

  When it comes to running, Brooklyn is not the fastest on the squad, nor is she the slowest. She is a distance runner, because she knows how to pace herself for the long haul. It’s the way she lives her life. The way she survives. “Slow and steady wins the race,” the old adage goes. But Brooklyn is never expected to win, just to show. For her it’s “slow and steady takes third place.” That’s always been good enough to keep her whole. At least until now. Right now she’s made the cut on the headmaster’s list—but she’s still too close for comfort.

  She pushes hard through the push-ups, but with sixty-three, only takes fourth place. Even though she about splits her gut, her fifty-nine sit-ups only get her a fifth place. Then, while glaring at the scoreboard, she catches sight of Risa in the stands with her usual pack of friends

  What is Piano Girl doing here? Why isn’t she practicing for her own testing this afternoon?

  Risa laughs at something her friends say, and hot shame courses through Brooklyn. Is she talking about her? Making fun of her? Did she see that Brooklyn only made fourth and fifth rankings?

  As if Risa could feel Brooklyn staring at her across the field, she meets her angry look. But then, that far away, she wouldn’t be able to see the expression on Brooklyn’s face. Brooklyn tries to put Piano Girl out of her mind, but now she’s wedged in like a song you can’t stop playing in your head. A distraction that Brooklyn definitely doesn’t need.

  As they line up on the track for the two-mile run, she sees the major staring at her from the stands as well. She meets his gaze for a moment, before leaning in to the starting stance. Nervously she checks the light on the transponder clipped to her belt. Still showing green, still streaming biometrics. At the sarge’s whistle, she leaps forward.

  On the first lap she’s last in the pack. She fights her desire to glance into the stands, where the major—and Risa—will be watching. Beginning in last doesn’t matter; all that matters is where you finish.

  On the second lap, halfway through the two-mile run, a good portion of her squad is flagging. She passes one, then two of her teammates.

  She finishes the third lap in the middle of the runners. Then, in the last lap, she kicks into high gear. She catches up to Logan, who’s not doing well. Beet red and sucking air like a beached walrus, he weaves as he runs. Sweat pours off him. He doesn’t notice when she passes him.

  Then Risa intrudes on her thoughts again, and it infuriates Brooklyn—but she realizes it’s a fury she can use. She will not allow Miss Perfect to see Brooklyn be an also-ran in this race.

  Brooklyn powers past the next three in her squad. Now there are only two more in front of her. When she reaches Kip, he shoots her an astonished look. Then his jaw clenches. They run side by side, Kip straining as much as she is, refusing to be bested by a girl. And then a miracle. Kip goes down! Almost shaken by her good luck, she crosses the finish line just four strides behind the boy in the number one spot.

  Second. She placed second in her squad! She immediately looks for Risa in the stands, but her eyes are bleary, and she can’t find her. Did she leave? Did she not see her place second? Trying to catch her breath, Brooklyn manages a smile at Logan, who almost fells her with his congratulatory shoulder slug. She peers over his shoulder to look for the major, but he also seems to have disappeared.

  “Fifteen minutes,” Logan crows. “You did it in fifteen minutes!”

  “And four seconds.” She tries to act casual, but she can’t help smiling big. It’s her new personal best, and she’s sorry that she’s missing Thor’s reaction to the streamed data back at the StaHo complex.

  That’s when she sees Kip and the sarge huddled on the grass in the center of the track. Sarge looks unhappy, and Kip’s clutching his ankle. So what? Toughen up, dude. Competition sharpens a soldier. Pain makes you stronger.

  The shooting range is a long trek, at the very edge of the StaHo grounds, nearly half a mile away. She heads toward it with the rest of her squad. Thirsty, she inhales a third of her canteen and then pours a third over her head. It feels good dribbling down her neck.

  She doesn’t notice the clot of boeufs in front of her slowing down or the ones behind her speeding up till someone shoves her into the muscle-bound guy ahead of her. His name is Dex, but everyone calls him Pecs for obvious reasons. She bounces off him and lands on her butt. He turns, reaches down, grabs her shirt, and jerks her to her feet so fast, her head is spinning.

  “What gives?” he snarls.

  She pries his fingers off her shirt. “Nothing, man. Someone pushed me.” She turns around, but no one is there. She looks for Logan—maybe he saw who had pushed her—but he’s nowhere to be found. Half a dozen boeufs are now looking at her—mostly guys. Not a friendly face in the crowd.

  She spreads her hands. “Forget it. Let’s get to the firing range.”

  “Someone pushed you?” Pecs says. “You mean like this?”

  He plants a big hand on her chest and shoves her. She lands on her ass again. Remembering Tuesday’s fight and the note in her file about it, she can’t take another black mark. Especially now.

  Staying on the pavement, she tries an ingratiating smile. “Yep, exactly like that. You all go on ahead. I’ll wait here for Logan.”

  She hopes mentioning Logan’s name will appease them, but it doesn’t. Two boeufs haul her to her feet. She balls her hands into fists and then grabs her canteen, strangling it instead of Pecs. They won’t make her angry. They won’t. . . .

  Pecs sneers. “You think you can trip Kip and get away with it?”

  That catches her off guard. “I didn’t trip him. He just fell.”

  Pecs steps closer till she smells his stinking breath. “Kip says you did. You saying he lied?”

  She feels rage from the others crash over her. She freezes. Then Pecs slowly unscrews his canteen and takes a mouthful. She doesn’t expect what he does next.

  He spits at her. Right in her face. In shock, she stands in front of him, the water dribbling down her face and shirt. It doesn’t feel good. It reminds her of when . . .

  She wipes the spray from her face with the sleeve of her T-shirt, her fury rising. She can’t control herself. Her canteen is still in her hand, and so she whacks Pecs in the nose with it. He roars and reaches for her, but years of dirty fighting have honed her skills. She ducks under his hands and knees him in the groin.

  “What’s going on?” Sarge yells.

  The lieutenant and Sarge are now standing next to her. Pecs is paddling weakly on the ground, moaning. Most of the squad melts away from the scene.<
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  The horror of getting caught creeps over her. First she swipes at her face; the grossness of Pec’s spit almost seems worse.

  “He spat on me,” Brooklyn says. The two men look down at Pecs. His nose is bleeding from where her canteen hit it, and his hands cup his groin.

  “Get a medic,” the sarge growls. Someone races back to the track.

  The lieutenant studies her expressionlessly. “You’re the one that started the fight last week?”

  She could argue that it’s never her who starts it, but she knows what the headmaster wrote in the report.

  “Yes,” she says. “But I didn’t start this.”

  The lieutenant nods at Sarge. “I don’t want her with the others. Walk her to the firing range. Now.”

  Sarge grabs her arm and frog-marches her all the way to the shooting range behind the others, blistering her ears with commentary for the full time it takes to get there.

  He releases her near the cart. Her weapons locker is the only one left on the cart’s bed. One of the plebes—a younger member of the squad—is charged with monitoring the weapons cart. Seeing the scowl on both Brooklyn’s and the Sarge’s faces, he steps back and lets her open her weapon locker.

  Jabbing a finger at her and stopping inches away from her eyes, Sarge says, “You go last. The squad’s probably gunning for you, and I won’t be explaining why you got shot. Hear me?”

  She nods. She’s lucky they haven’t already sent her back to the StaHo. She’s actually surprised they’re letting her finish the tests.

  When they call her name, she uses every technique she’s learned about relaxing and how to breathe while shooting.

  In the first firing position she lines up her rifle on a barricade. She makes eight of nine good shots, but then the gun jams. Like she’s been taught, she slaps, pulls, observes, releases, taps, and then shoots again. Distracted, she misses the shot.

  In the second firing position she stands without the rifle supported. It malfunctions again on the second and sixth shots. She clears it each time, but now she’s rattled. She misses all but four shots.

  In the third position she kneels in a make-believe foxhole, but now it feels like she really is in a foxhole, fighting for her life. It’s nearly noon and the sun is high, beating down. The rifle jams on the first shot, and she’s tempted to throw it as far as she can and then stomp on it. Though the only thing she can see are the single and pop-up targets downrange, she knows her squad is watching every shot.