by Megan Lynch
He assumed she’d thank him and tell him to run off and play, but she surprised him again, with two words as soft as his bed at home.
“I know.”
Jude was free, and his parents had come to collect him with a little brother in his mother’s arms. They were proud of him for enduring prison, for making his mark while he was here to improve efficiency, and for alerting the staff to Mr. Richards’s terrible mistake. Mr. Richards was there too, and he was awfully sorry for any trouble he’d caused. At that point in the dream, Jude was holding his brother, marveling over his little fingers and toes, and he was happy to forgive and forget.
Let bygones be bygones, he said, but they couldn’t hear him. He said it louder.
They cupped their hands to their ears. What?
He said it again, louder.
He woke himself when he realized he was talking in his sleep. He sighed and looked at the room. A little white cell with three sets of white-painted bunk beds, each with an adolescent-shaped lump beneath the white sheets. By the look of the sun, it was nearly time to get up anyway; soon, the lights would flash on and the Metrics anthem would blare from the loudspeakers to signal wake-up time. After that, the sheet of glass that served as the fourth wall would lift from the floor and the guards would come in to check for cleanliness and escort them to breakfast. Jude was glad he’d woken up today his way; he swung his feet onto the floor and made his bed.
Although they’d all been taught from the time they were very young to make the bed the same way, most children and adults reverted to the shortcut, unless they were due for a check-in from Metrics. Jude had stayed true to the bed-making routine as it was originally taught, and today it served him well. In the center of the bed between the mattress and the iron frame was a small bag of white powder.
He had never seen any actual drugs before, so he would have liked the chance to pick the bag up and sniff it to be sure it wasn’t laundry detergent or sugar or something else strange and innocent, but he wasn’t going to get that chance. The other boys would be waking up any moment, and the early morning sun was already dampening the room. Think. Focus. Think. The time to figure out the details—who, when, and why—would have to wait. He thought briefly of tossing it in the center of the room and taking the chance that nobody—or all six of them—would be blamed. But he thought of Kopecky, sleeping soundly in the bunk above him, and knew he couldn’t be the cause of him going eight days without food again. Anyway, the cameras were set off by sensors; as long as Jude stayed beside his bed, he was hidden—he hoped—but if he threw the bag, the cameras would turn on to reveal five sleeping bystanders and Jude standing and looking very guilty. That meant flushing the bag down the little stainless steel toilet was out too, as he’d have to cross the room to get to it. The sun was rising quickly. Think.
Through the morning calm came the Warden’s voice over the loudspeaker: “Good morning, boys. Surprise inspection today.”
No time. Jude’s knees buckled, so he crouched next to his bed with the bag still in his hand. Suddenly, as if his body acted of its own will, he stuffed the bag inside one of his socks. The other boys were stirring now, making halfhearted noises of protest as they rose. Jude swallowed some hot saliva, shivered, and ran his hand over his ashen-colored arm. The hair on it stood stiff. Black spots formed over the other boys stuffing sheets into the corners of their beds.
Kopeckey eyed him. “You okay, buddy?”
“Me?” Even as he said it, he began to feel better. “Yeah.” The bag slipped. Maybe if he was able to get it under the arch of his foot, he’d be able to pull it off.
The glass lowered. The Warden herself stepped over the crack in the floor and stood tall in the center, encircled by the sleepy boys. Two guards, both young women wearing makeup, which made their faces look sculpted and perfect, stood just behind her. Ms. Shepherd stood behind them, as if to watch and learn how to do inspections. Paul inhaled fully and looked them over with a smile.
“Well,” she said. “Good morning, boys.”
Everyone except Jude returned the greeting. Jude was still concentrating hard on wiggling the bag under his foot.
“Again, more cheerful! Good morning, boys!”
Jude snapped his feet together as if he were standing at attention. This time he joined in. “Good morning, Warden!”
“That will have to do. Let’s not waste time; we have received a tip that someone in the building is hiding something. Naughty, naughty. Fox boys are treated very well, and if you’ve decided you want something we cannot offer, we feel it would be best if you were relocated.”
From the corner of his eye, Jude saw Kopeckey shudder.
“Prepare for a pat down on your marks,” she said.
Jude was already standing on his mark—the place on the floor marked with a small black dot. They were required to stand here during inspections to ensure they were just the right distance apart from their beds and each other, so they could not help hide anything. His stomach churned.
“Begin!”
They went to Kopecky’s bed first. The guards ruffled the bedclothes, took the pillowcase off and tossed it on the floor, and peeked inside his shoes under the bed. The inspection took less than ten seconds, less time than it took them to check that their beds were made correctly during daily inspection. One guard lazily ran her hand up and down Kopecky’s sides. Then she took a step back. Jude began to suspect something horrible. “Clean,” one said to the warden.
They moved to the next two beds and boys in line, declaring them clean in even less time than they'd taken with Kopecky. The warden’s eyes turned hungrily to the next boy. Jude forced himself to meet her gaze as the guards began to untuck his sheets.
“Ladies, allow me.” Warden Paul pounced on Jude’s bed and vigorously snatched the sheet away from the mattress. “Remember, the tip we received was quite serious, and we mustn’t stop until we find what we’re looking for. And we will find it!”
Unable to help herself, she flipped the mattress onto the floor and stared at the empty bed frame.
She stood there staring for several seconds. Blinking, she rushed to the other side and rifled through the bedclothes again, running her hand up and down the mattress several times. Everyone in the cell was staring at her now. All over his body, Jude’s skin was white-hot and beading with sweat.
The warden stopped and sharply turned her head toward his mark. Her voice was a hiss. “Search him.”
The guards, now compelled to follow their boss’s example, flung their arms at Jude’s body, beating their hands against his rib cage, hips, groin, legs, and, inciting an involuntary gag, his ankles. Jude pushed the floor away with his feet, standing a little taller on the bag.
“Clean,” said one guard, with a little less conviction than she’d declared the previous three boys.
“May I?” asked Paul, and began her own pat down. She patted, rubbed, and slid her hands all over Jude. When she was still unable to find what she was looking for, she gave the back of his head a clean slap. Jude fought for control to stay upright. If he passed out, it was all over for him; the legal system would do its job and keep him behind bars forever.
Warden Paul leaned in very close to his face. “Perhaps one of our friends has swallowed the contraband.”
At that very moment, that the contents of Jude’s stomach escaped his body and landed with a terrible squelch onto the floor, and most unfortunately, on Warden Paul’s shiny black pumps. No one moved for a second, and Jude found himself feeling relieved in spite of the situation he was still in.
One of the guards allowed a smile to creep across her face. “Well, I think we can rule that one out.”
Paul closed her eyes and exhaled. “The tip we received indicated that the contraband was in this cell, number sixty-five. I trust that you can locate it. The boys must learn that they cannot hide.”
She walked out of the cell. The sound of squishing shoes could be heard all the way down the hall.
Jude and h
is cellmates survived the nearly two hours they were forced to stand on their marks. After the guards left their cell and cleared them to continue on to their work assignments, he could feel the eyes of the five other boys on him.
Later, one of them asked, “What did you do?”
“Nothing!”
“I’m Brown, by the way.” The boy named Brown stuck out his hand, and Jude shook it warily. “Why are they blaming you?”
“I don’t know!” Was this how you lied? Jude had never told a lie before. He’d never had a reason until today.
“You can tell us!”
“Maybe you didn’t hear,” said Kopecky. “He said he didn’t know.”
Jude’s head was spinning again, and there was nothing in his stomach this time to provide him any respite. “I didn’t do anything to deserve coming here, and I’m not doing anything wrong while I’m here. I’m getting out. I’m not like you.”
The next day, Jude’s jaw was still sore from Brown’s fist, and Kopecky refused to speak to him.
And he still had the bag—the plastic ever threatening to break from his uncontrollable twisting and prodding—in his pocket.
Chapter Eleven
Bristol stuck a new stencil to the wall and opened his can of yellow. He had never been caught because it was easy to discern whether the presence behind him was friend or foe.
It was always a friend. If he heard a voice behind him, without having heard them coming, they were just another unreg, out roaming the night. The cameras all had their ranges, and it wasn’t difficult to learn how to stay on the outskirts of them. The police always made a racket in their cars, which, despite quietness being a major component of their design, gave little low whistles that could be heard from blocks away. The police never learned how to step without making the gravel crunch beneath their feet or slow their breathing until their bodies were almost truly still. The unregistered lived silent lives.
Most of them were looking for Drift. Bristol had done his fair share of the stuff, but he liked creating graffiti better, and he couldn’t concentrate on making things—or anything else—when he was on it. Maybe the problem was that he’d never had friends to share it with. He was always alone on his trips, sprawled on his bed like a beached starfish. He was separate from his body and his mind and could observe his thoughts drifting through his mind as easily as he could watch clouds pass in the sky. Always, at least one of those thoughts was a hope that Denver would think he was just sleeping if she happened to wake up and see him. Coming out of the trance in the morning was heartbreaking. The following day would pass with no sleep and no food—what was the point?—and there’d be nothing to savor or delight or comfort until that evening, when he held the white powder in his palm again, anticipating the next few hours of oblivion. He’d wasted two years of early adolescence like this. A part of him bought into the common unregistered philosophy: life doesn’t matter. You may as well spend your time feeling good, or at least not feeling bad.
Bristol wasn’t ready to turn down that philosophy entirely yet. And yes, he realized he’d probably just traded one drug for another, because drawing made him feel good, and so did watching people look at what he’d done, and so did listening for police cars while he worked. But though all signs pointed to the meaninglessness of his life, something else made him want to believe otherwise. He didn’t want to think about it too hard. He wanted to paint about it. He inhaled the damp night air and the paint and felt his lungs swell. He was aware of his heartbeat. I am. I am. I am.
There were days where he was glad his previous fantasy about being registered and working as an assigned Artist would never come to be. It used to make him so angry, so hopeless, so prone to sniffing powder and just watching thoughts swirl thorough his mind. Now, it seemed such a silly thing that Metrics would ask someone with pictures for thoughts to make something pretty for a park, or a courthouse, or a rich person’s house. He might as well be a bricklayer, just following the plans. If that would have been his job anyway, why not chop vegetables for a living?
Bristol stepped back and observed his painting. He should have moved the stencil down a quarter of an inch to make the wings appear more symmetrical, but besides that, he was satisfied. It was a small image, one he hoped wouldn’t attract too much attention so people would have the chance to look before it was destroyed. On the side of the public library, there was now a little blue book burning on the brick wall. Out of the flames, a young butterfly flew toward one of the barred windows. Bristol had seen an old movie about a library. If the movie was to be trusted, libraries used to house tens of thousands of books, not hundreds of computers in individual plastic stalls. Maybe his picture would spark some recognition in a kindly old librarian. Maybe she would let it stay.
Don’t get emotionally attached, Denver would say.
Bristol gathered his supplies and thought of his sister. He’d never had to worry about her before. It was a strange change, ever since that letter came. When her appeal to leave her impending marriage contract was denied, she had responded, as Bristol expected she would, with more research and a lengthy letter. She strutted around for a day, positive they’d reconsider. But they didn’t, and now it looked like Denver really would have to marry the Four. She knew it and grew more depressed. For a few days after that, she didn't shower. Bristol knew the kinder thing would have been to offer to find her some Drift, but he lacked the courage to watch his sister go through that.
“The worst part of it,” Denver had said with puffy eyes and a set jaw, “is that I know the woman who keeps denying my appeals. I bet she doesn’t even know I work in her office.” She wiped a tear with the back of her hand. “Mrs. A. A. thinks she’s too important to go by a real name. She needs more privacy.”
The wheels in Bristol’s mind had turned then. “Does she ever work late?”
Denver had snorted. “Always. Almost every night. She’s always going on about how much she has to do and how she was the last one at the office at night and the first there in the morning. It’s sick.”
The memory of her words echoed in his mind as he walked away from the butterfly.
Getting an official Metrics janitor’s uniform was a little tricky. Bristol had gone to Denver’s office on his day off to make friends with the cleaning staff there and ask for this favor. He approached one of the janitors, a woman named Jelani, whom he discovered had just had a baby one week ago, and offered to draw a portrait of them together in exchange for this small favor. Bristol had brought his notebook with him and did a quick sketch to give her a sample of his work. A few minutes later, he handed her an honest sketch of her grooved face, stringy hair, and something in her eyes that looked like daring. Fifteen minutes later, he was dressed no differently than the other unregs in the building. She’d given him a uniform, and he put it on over his clothes until he looked like he belonged with the rest of the staff. The only difference in his appearance might have been his running shoes, but he was not taking those off.
Mrs. A. A. worked on the thirteenth floor, like Denver, and though Bristol could just make up a name for her, he thought it would be better if he actually knew it. He didn’t expect it to work, but he approached the reception desk in his janitor’s uniform.
“Excuse me?”
The security guard at the reception desk sighed deeply, clearly to indicate that Bristol was interrupting something. He lowered his watch away from his face. “Yes?”
“I’m supposed to go do Mrs. A. A.’s office. But there are two Mrs. A. A.s.”
The man’s mouth was still in a sour shape, but he set up a hologram on his desk. “I only see one here. Allison Ansberry? Works at the Department of Domestic Affairs?”
“Okay. Where’s that?”
“Thirteenth floor.”
“Thank you.”
Amazed at the success despite the simplicity of this plan, Bristol stepped onto the elevator armed with everything he needed to bring a drop of justice to Denver’s life.
When
the elevator doors opened, he walked around the office looking at the names on the doors: Mr. P. W., Mrs. R. B., Ms. K. H. People were rushing around everywhere talking into their watches or carrying stacks of paper. No one gave him a second glance even though he carried no cleaning supplies and his sneakers made little squawks as he walked. He congratulated himself on coming when so many people were around, but he hadn’t planned that. He couldn’t see Denver anywhere, but he was sure he’d see her—and more importantly, that she’d see him—just as soon as the action started.
When he arrived at Mrs. A. A.’s door, he was also delighted to see that several men and women were in her office, discussing something that required the use of pie chart projections. He guessed she was the one behind the desk. She was probably fifty years old, but had makeup tattooed on her lifted face to make her look at least twenty years younger. He circled the hallway one last time to plan his escape route. Looked like a bit of a hike to the stairwell, but it didn’t matter. Talk fast.
He puffed up his chest, marched straight over to Mrs. A. A.’s door, and threw it open.
“Allison!”
The people inside gaped at him. He stood in the doorway and started straight at her as convincingly as he could.
“Allison, it’s no use. It’s been good, baby, but it’s over!”
The woman behind the desk stood slowly and opened her mouth, but he couldn’t tell if she was outraged yet or just very confused. In his peripherals, he saw heads popping out of offices. He kept talking.
“I know what you’re going to say, and no! I can’t go on! It’s not fair to your husband!”
Mrs. A. A. flushed crimson as the people in her office looked at her for a response. “I…I don’t know who you are!” she said and looked around at the people sitting on the couch. “I don’t know who this person is!”
