Downsiders

by Neal Shusterman

  “Landing at LaGuardia sure is something special,” twanged the man beside her. “You come down right over the city. No better view anywhere, especially this time of day.”

  To get the man off her back, she finally looked out of her window. She thought she would find patchwork farmlands, but they were already above the suburban sprawl that surrounded the city. It was twilight—the sky was full of color, but she didn’t look up. She could only look to the ground, where streetlights were already beginning to come on. To Lindsay, it looked like a grid of computer chips, stretching out for miles and miles. So many people, she thought. Lindsay could count on a single hand the people who really cared about her. And now, outside her 767 window, was a brutal reminder of how many people didn’t.

  “Kind of makes you feel real small,” said the man beside her. “Puts your life into perspective.”

  “Yes, it does,” said Lindsay, finally understanding what a cruel thing perspective could be.

  In a place where perspective never reached the horizon, Talon Angler cradled his little sister in his arms. “Tell me about the Topside,” asked Pidge in between bouts of coughing. He tried to entertain her with her favorite toy—an old battery-operated puppy that had lost most of its fur long before it came to the Downside. But she had had no interest in any of her toys since her sickness had come. Now, as Talon touched his lips to her forehead to feel her fever, he could tell it was soaring.

  “Please, Talon,” she asked again.

  Talon took a deep breath. “The Topside is an Inside-out, Downside-up kind of place,” he told her. “Filled with strange people and strange machines.”

  “Tell me about the people,” Pidge rasped out. Talon shifted position, trying to remember the Topside lore he had gathered from his brief glimpses through the grates, the old tales, and, of course, the strange ramblings of The Champ. All considered, Talon knew very little, but ever since he began his Catching rotation, little Pidge saw him as the world’s foremost authority on surface life.

  “The people’s minds have been scorched by the sun,” Talon continued, “until they can’t tell up from down. That’s why they build towers instead of tunnels, like normal people.”

  Pidge ran her feverish hand along Talon’s handcrafted pop-top vest, making a gentle metallic rattle with her fingers. “What are the towers for?”

  “Punishment,” explained Talon. “All day long Topsiders hurry from one tower to another, in uncomfortable shoes. They race around in a circle from avenue to avenue, getting some money each time they go around, then giving it right back to the rich people, who own the streets.”

  Pidge coughed again as Mom slipped through the curtain to bring her a bowl of throgsneck soup, just like Grandma used to make. “Nothing a nice bowl of throgsneck soup can’t cure,” Mom said. But that was just wishful thinking. Pidge’s cough was a thick liquid bark, and it would take more than soup to make it go away. So far none of the usual remedies were working. There were whispers that it might be a return of the dreaded Tunnel Fever—but then, that’s what they called any sickness that killed people. Talon doubted there really was such a thing.

  Their mom began to fuss with Pidge, feeling her forehead, fluffing her pillow, and Pidge, in no mood for parental doting, pushed her mother’s hand away and began to whine.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” said Talon, who was always best with Pidge when she was ill, “I’ll stay with her.”

  His mother threw Talon a worried glance as she gently set the soup down before them. “See if you can get her to eat,” she said, then reluctantly slipped back out through the heavy curtains.

  Pidge looked at the rich, flavorful brew, but had no interest in it. “Tell me about the machines.”

  “You know about those,” said Talon.

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “Okay...there are the trains, which the smarter Topsiders use, that take them underground. Then there are the Top-side cars—loud, sludge-smelling things that start and stop, start and stop, and never get anywhere. The cars have loud horns that the Topsiders blow at one another to keep each other awake while they sit in their cars, waiting to move.”

  Pidge laughed, but it came out as a pained cackle. “Are there any good-guys up there, or are they all bad-guys?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Talon. “But I do know that there’s a place called jail, where the bad ones go.”

  “I’ve heard of that place,” whispered Pidge. “Do all Topsiders go there?”

  “They all do sooner or later,” Talon explained. “And they have to stay there a long time if they don’t have a special card that gets them out of jail for free.”

  Pidge looked away. “I feel sorry for them,” she said. “Maybe we could build enough tunnels so they could all come down here, and we could teach them up from down.”

  “Maybe,” whispered Talon. Pidge’s eyelids were drooping. Before she slipped off to sleep, he tried to bring a spoonful of soup to her lips, but she pushed it away with a limp hand. Then in a moment she was asleep, rasping slow breaths.

  Throughout his Catching expedition that night, Talon carried the unrelenting feel of Pidge’s fever against his lips. Gutta, and even Railborn, could tell that Talon was not his usual self. As they peered through the narrow drain slits and concrete cracks to track potential fallers, Talon’s mind seemed elsewhere. Because they knew about Pidge’s condition, neither was surprised when Talon brought up the idea of a Topside Raid.

  “No! Don’t even think about it,” bellowed Railborn loud enough to be heard through the exhaust vent they stood behind, watching a dirty man with a shopping cart.

  “It’s been years since the last official raid—maybe it’s time.”

  Railborn had already begun to pace. “What makes you think anyone’s gonna listen to you? And, anyway, why would anyone go after what happened the last time?”

  “No one really knows what happened the last time!” Talon reminded him. All anyone knew for sure was that twelve strong Downside men were sent up one fall, wrapped in heavy skins from head to toe and wearing dark goggles to protect them from the unpredictable effects of the sun— then, a few hours later, they came back battered and bloody. According to their mad ravings, the moment they rose from the manhole they had been trampled by what they described as “a frenzied stampede of crazed Topsiders”— thousands of them running in an endless pack down First Avenue, each wearing short pants, and numbers on their backs. Needless to say, no one believed them, and they were all locked away in the Chamber of Soft Walls—victims, they say, of Sun Dementia. It was a dark moment in Downside history that no one liked to talk about.

  “Well, then, what about an unofficial raid? A secret one— just us three. We’ll go after nightfall and come back before dawn.”

  Talon turned to Gutta for support, but she was not forthcoming. Instead, she leaned back with her arms folded, reserving judgment as she watched the two boys debate.

  “It’s against the law!” said Railborn. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to end up on a slime gang, cleaning tunnel walls all my life.”

  “That won’t happen—people go on secret night raids all the time, right, Gutta?”

  Gutta still stood with her arms folded. “I’ve heard rumors...”

  “Made-up stories!”

  “Oh yeah?” said Talon, getting in Railborn’s face. “Where do you think lightbulbs come from, Railborn? And batteries, and pens, and conditioning shampoo?”

  “Topsiders make them for us, like bees make honey,” was Railborn’s rote response.

  “Yeah, they make them—but how does it all get here? Do you think the rain just washes it down the drains to us? Think about it, Railborn. Somebody has to get it! It’s just that no one talks about it.”

  Talon’s logic struck a chord in Railborn, but it only served to make him even more obstinate. “If no one talks about it, then it’s not my problem. It’s like my father says—”

  “Your father?” Talon laughed, tossing a glance down at
Railborn’s alligator boots. “I wouldn’t put too much faith in a man who hunts an entire species to death!”

  At that, Railborn pulled out his sword and swung it against the wall. His ruddy face turned a deep shade of crimson. “That wasn’t his fault,” growled Railborn. “And if you say one more thing about my father, I swear I’ll sludge-face you, Talon. I’ll sludge-face you in the main line!”

  Finally Gutta came between them. “Now that’s something I’d like to see,” she said with a smile, pushing them away from one another with arms that were deceptively strong for their size. “But I’d rather not see it now.”

  Both Talon and Railborn kept their silence for a moment. Beyond the grate, a car horn was suddenly silenced by a crunch of metal, followed by angry, incomprehensible voices. Two taxis had collided. It seemed to be what they did best. Talon paid it no mind. Instead, he told his friends what was really on his mind.

  “My sister needs medicine.”

  Railborn offered him an impotent shrug. “How do you know they have what she needs?”

  Railborn had a point—Talon didn’t know—but he had heard rumors about people who were brought back from the edge of death by Topside potions in orange vials. Topsiders might not be too bright, but there were certain things they did very well. It was no secret that battling death was one of those things.

  “She’ll get better,” offered Railborn, gripping Talon’s shoulder in a rare show of compassion. “I’m sure she will.”

  “And if she doesn’t?”

  Railborn pursed his lips and spoke gently. “Then it just wasn’t meant to be...and none of the medicine in the world could change that.”

  Not able to hold each other’s gaze, they turned to peer out of the grate. The two cars, their hoods spewing steam, clogged up traffic like a rat in a drain. Right now none of the three were interested in the mysteries and miseries of the Topside streets. While they had been arguing, their potential faller had taken his shopping cart and moved on. There was nothing keeping them here anymore, and it was time to make the trek home.

  As they wound their way through air ducts and forgotten subbasements, Talon could not get the image of his sick sister out of his mind. “A true friend would come to the surface with me, if I asked,” he told Railborn.

  “But a true friend would never ask another to break the law,” was Railborn’s response.

  Railborn went on ahead, but Gutta lingered with Talon, waiting until Railborn was out of earshot. “I’d go with you, Talon,” she said, “if you asked me.”

  Talon smiled at her offer but knew that Railborn was right: A true friend would never ask. Besides, what good was a Topside Raid when he wasn’t even sure what he was looking for? He thanked Gutta and told her to go on ahead.

  “Maybe you can talk to The Champ,” she suggested. “He’ll know what to do. He might even get you what you need. I think that maybe he has his own magic.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” The last thing he wanted to do was beg The Champ for charity, but now it seemed he had little choice.

  Talon sat down on the rusted remains of some disowned appliance, then watched as Gutta disappeared behind Rail-born down a jagged hole in a concrete floor to an abandoned utility tunnel below. When they were gone, Talon took a different route, trying to lose himself in the maze of subbasements and accessways that made up the uppermost reaches of the Downside’s High Perimeter. Places that rested so tantalizingly close to the surface, you could feel the air around you change with the weather.

  As frustrating as it was, Talon had to admire the way Railborn stuck to his sword and held firm to the laws and edicts that governed Downside life. A few years ago, no one would have dreamed of traveling to the surface without getting permission from the proper authority. The problem was, no such authority existed now. There hadn’t been a real leader—a “Most-Beloved”—since before Talon was born, because the Downsiders thoroughly believed that it was better to have no leader than a bad one. These days everyone was waiting for the perfect someone who would be spontaneously and unanimously exalted into the lifelong position. Unfortunately, nobody was universally loved anymore. There were the Wise Advisors, of course, but without a leader to run things, no one really listened to what the Wise Advisors had to say—mainly because nothing they ever said was either wise or advisable.

  Talon pondered and puzzled over his alternatives as he wandered the many passageways of the High Perimeter, still not ready to cross the clearly marked boundaries that separated Downside chambers from those of the upper world. It was as he wandered that fate—and the answer to his woes— hit him like a brick.

  In a city where things were constantly being torn down to build a bigger and better tomorrow, falling bricks were more the rule than the exception. Demolition was a growth industry, and the buildings that remained were endlessly renovated to satisfy the ever-changing tastes and lifestyles of those who lived there.

  On East Eighty-fourth Street, one such home was under renovation—or, to be more precise—two such homes. Two identical three-story brownstone town houses were being merged into one. And all because Lindsay Matthias had moved in with her father.

  It had begun as a simple enough project: rip out a living-room wall and some upstairs walls, then join the two buildings like Siamese twins. A single living space with two faces on Eighty-fourth Street. But things are never as easy as they seem, and Lindsay Matthias found herself living in a home that was perpetually incomplete.

  Right now, the second-floor hallway was the center of incompletion. In the middle of the hallway, where there had once been a mirror, was now a jagged hole lined with broken plaster and brick. Beyond that hole was the matching hallway of the building next door. It was an eerie thing to see because it gave the illusion that the mirror was still there. Lindsay had been tempted to step through the looking glass but didn’t dare because there was a two-foot gap between the buildings that didn’t show on the blueprints— hence the trouble with remodeling—and beneath that gap was a pitch-black drop down to who-knew-where. That hole in the wall had been there ever since she had arrived from Texas the week before, and since her room was closest to it, she found the winter nights bitterly cold.

  “That’s life in the big city,” Todd, her preening weasel of a stepbrother, had said. “Deal with it, or die.” Todd probably missed the mirror more than anyone else because it gave him one more opportunity to admire that pretty face of his that all the girls fell for. That is, all the girls too stupid to figure out what a preening weasel Todd was.

  If there was any saving grace for Lindsay, it was that she didn’t actually share any genetic material with Todd. How she and Todd ended up under the same roof was a story in and of itself. It was Dad’s fault, really, because he had a tendency to fall for flighty, impulsive women who never quite took to motherhood.

  Todd’s story wasn’t much better than Lindsay’s. His mother was a dancer who gave birth to Todd long before she even met Dad. Then, shortly after she and Dad were married, during her Sunday matinee performance of Cats, the woman took a bad leap, plunging right into the orchestra pit. This was one cat who didn’t land on her feet. They rushed her off to the hospital while Todd, only eight years old at the time, was left in tears, clutching her dismembered tail in the theater lobby.

  During her three months in traction she had a spiritual awakening, and upon her discharge from the hospital she joined a cult in the mysterious recesses of Brooklyn, where she remained ever after. Dad, his heart being much larger than his brain, became Todd’s guardian, and lavished on the boy all it took to spoil him putrid. None of this, of course, explained Todd’s cruel streak and his atrophied conscience. He was the kind of kid who wouldn’t just pull the wings off of flies; he would then dangle the severed wings in front of the flightless insects just to torment them.

  In spite of having come from similar domestic fall-outs, Lindsay was quite different. Having spent her formative years in the company of academics, she had a love of literature and art. She c
ould explore the city’s libraries and museums for weeks on end, and suspected she would do precisely that, because Dad wasn’t exactly bending over backwards to spend time with her. Mark Matthias was too emotionally involved with civil engineering to have a life beyond his work. But then, it takes a special kind of man to devote his life to the building of an aqueduct.

  Dad’s late hours left plenty of time for Lindsay and Todd to share—and since the moment Lindsay’s plane touched down, she had become a new wingless fly for Todd to torment.

  It was 10:00 in the evening when Todd burst into Lindsay’s room without knocking, as he always did. “Lindsay, Lindsay, Lindsay...” he said with a sigh and a sad shake of his head. “You and I need to talk.”

  “Why?” she asked apprehensively, putting down the book she was reading and pulling her knees up under her covers.

  He sat at her desk chair and used her bed as a footrest for his grimy shoes. “You just had to run and tell Dad I was smoking, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t run to him. He asked me about it.”

  Todd grabbed a paper clip from the desk and used it to scrape the dirt out from under his fingernails. “There’s a little thing called a ‘white lie,’ you know.”

  “I won’t lie to my father.”

  “Our father,” insisted Todd.

  “If you say so.”

  Todd put down the paper clip and leaned in closer. “He lectured me for forty-five minutes,” he said. “That’s a new record.”

  But obviously none of it sank in, because Todd’s breath reeked like a diesel exhaust pipe.

  “Listen, Todd. The last thing I want is to stand between you and a premature death, so suck cigarettes all you want, but I won’t lie to Dad about it.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” said Todd—which was something he often said. Lindsay had yet to figure out what “it” she was supposed to “get.” Todd glanced down at the night-stand, and Lindsay reacted an instant too late. His lanky arm snapped out like a toad’s tongue and snatched up her book before she could stop him.