A minute later Connor’s already beginning to doze when he hears the shout from outside.
“We know you’re in there! Come out now and you won’t get hurt!”
Connor’s heart sinks. Josias Aldridge has apparently pulled another sleight of hand. He’s made Connor appear for the police. Abracadabra. With his journey over before it even began, Connor swings the door open to see three Juvey-cops aiming weapons.
But they’re not aiming at him.
In fact, their backs are to him.
Across the way, the cab door swings open of the truck he had hidden under just a few minutes before, and a kid comes out from behind the empty driver’s seat, his hands in the air. Connor recognizes him right away. It’s a kid he knows from school. Andy Jameson.
My God, is Andy being unwound too?
There’s a look of fear on Andy’s face, but beyond it is something worse. A look of utter defeat. That’s when Connor realizes his own folly. He’d been so surprised by this turn of events that he’s still just standing there, exposed for anyone to see. Well, the policemen don’t see him. But Andy does. He catches sight of Connor, holds his gaze, only for a moment . . .
. . . and in that moment something remarkable happens.
The look of despair on Andy’s face is suddenly replaced by a steely resolve bordering on triumph. He quickly looks away from Connor and takes a few steps before the police grab him—steps away from Connor, so that the police still have their backs to him.
Andy had seen him and had not given him away! If Andy has nothing else after this day, at least he’ll have this small victory.
Connor leans back into the shadows of the truck and slowly pulls the door closed. Outside, as the police take Andy away, Connor lies back down, and his tears come as sudden as a summer downpour. He’s not sure who he’s crying for—for Andy, for himself, for Ariana—and not knowing makes his tears flow all the more. Instead of wiping the tears away he lets them dry on his face like he used to when he was a little boy and the things he cried about were so insignificant that they’d be forgotten by morning.
The trucker never comes to check on him. Instead Connor hears the engine start and feels the truck pulling out. The gentle motion of the road rocks him to sleep.
The ring of Connor’s cell phone wakes him out of a deep sleep. He fights consciousness. He wants to go back to the dream he was having. It was about a place he was sure he had been to, although he couldn’t quite remember when. He was at a cabin on a beach with his parents, before his brother was born. Connor’s leg had fallen through a rotted board on the porch into spiderwebs so thick, they felt like cotton. Connor had screamed and screamed from the pain, and the fear of the giant spiders that he was convinced would eat his leg off. And yet, this was a good dream—a good memory—because his father was there to pull him free, and carry him inside, where they bandaged his leg and sat him by the fire with some kind of cider so flavorful, he could still taste it when he thought about it. His father told him a story that he can no longer remember, but that’s all right. It wasn’t the story but the tone of his voice that mattered, a gentle baritone rumble as calming as waves breaking on a shore. Little-boy-Connor drank his cider and leaned back against his mother pretending to fall asleep, but what he was really doing was trying to dissolve into the moment and make it last forever. In the dream he did dissolve. His whole being flowed into the cider cup, and his parents placed it gently on the table, close enough to the fire to keep it warm forever and always.
Stupid dreams. Even the good ones are bad, because they remind you how poorly reality measures up.
His cell phone rings again, chasing away the last of the dream. Connor almost answers it. The sleeper room of the truck is so dark, he doesn’t realize at first that he’s not in his own bed. The only thing that saves him is that he can’t find his phone and he must turn on a light. When he finds a wall where his nightstand should be, he realizes that this isn’t his room. The phone rings again. That’s when it all comes back to him, and he remembers where he is. Connor finds his phone in his backpack. The phone ID says the call is from his father.
So now his parents know he’s gone. Do they really think he’ll answer his phone? He waits until voicemail takes the call, then he turns off the power. His watch says 7:30 a.m. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes, trying to calculate how far they’ve come. The truck isn’t moving anymore, but they must have traveled at least two hundred miles while he slept. It’s a good start.
There’s a knock on the door. “Come on out, kid. Your ride’s over.”
Connor’s not complaining—it was outrageously generous of this truck driver to do what he did. Connor won’t ask any more of him. He swings open the door and steps out to thank the man, but it’s not Josias Aldridge at the door. Aldridge is a few yards away being handcuffed, and in front of Connor is a policeman: a Juvey-cop wearing a smile as big as all outdoors. Standing ten yards away is Connor’s father, still holding the cell phone he had just called from.
“It’s over, son,” his father says.
It makes Connor furious. I’m not your son! He wants to shout. I stopped being your son when you signed the unwind order! But the shock of the moment leaves him speechless.
It had been so stupid of Connor to leave his cell phone on—that’s how they tracked him—and he wonders how many other kids are caught by their own blind trust of technology. Well, Connor’s not going the way Andy Jameson did. He quickly assesses the situation. The truck has been pulled over to the side of the interstate by two highway patrol cars and a Juvey-cop unit. Traffic barrels past at seventy miles per hour, oblivious to the little drama unfolding on the shoulder. Connor makes a split-second decision and bolts, pushing the officer against the truck and racing across the busy highway. Would they shoot an unarmed kid in the back, he wonders, or would they shoot him in the legs and spare his vital organs? As he races onto the interstate, cars swerve around him, but he keeps on going.
“Connor, stop!” he hears his father yell. Then he hears a gun fire.
He feels the impact, but not in his skin. The bullet embeds in his backpack. He doesn’t look behind him. Then, as he reaches the highway median, he hears another gunshot, and a small blue splotch appears on the center divider. They’re firing tranquilizer bullets. They’re not taking him out, they’re trying to take him down—and they’re much more likely to fire tranq bullets at will, than regular bullets.
Connor climbs over the center divider, and finds himself in the path of a Cadillac that’s not stopping for anything. The car swerves to avoid him, and by sheer luck Connor’s momentum takes him just a few inches out of the Caddy’s path. Its side mirror smacks him painfully in the ribs before the car screeches to a halt, sending the acrid stench of burned rubber up his nostrils. Holding his aching side, Connor sees someone looking at him from an open window of the backseat. It’s another kid, dressed all in white. The kid is terrified.
With the police already reaching the center divider, Connor looks into the eyes of this frightened kid, and knows what he has to do. It’s time for another split-second decision. He reaches through the window, pulls up the lock, and opens the door.
Here’s a sneak peek at
From
1 • Starkey
He’s fighting a nightmare when they come for him.
A great flood is swallowing the world, and in the middle of it all, he’s being mauled by a bear. He’s more annoyed than terrified. As if the flood isn’t enough, his deep, dark mind has to send an angry grizzly to tear into him.
Then he’s dragged feetfirst out of the jaws of death and drowning Armageddon.
“Up! Now! Let’s go!”
He opens his eyes to a brightly lit bedroom that ought to be dark. Two Juvey-cops manhandle him, grabbing his arms, preventing him from fighting back long before he’s awake enough to try.
“No! Stop! What is this?”
Handcuffs. First his right wrist, then his left.
“On your feet!”
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They yank him to his feet as if he’s resisting—which he would, if he were more awake.
“Leave me alone! What’s going on?”
But in an instant he’s awake enough to know exactly what’s going on. It’s a kidnapping. But you can’t call it kidnapping when transfer papers have been signed in triplicate.
“Verbally confirm that you are Mason Michael Starkey.”
There are two officers. One is short and muscular, the other tall and muscular. Probably military boeufs before they took jobs as Juvey-rounders. It takes a special heartless breed to be a Juvey-cop, but to specialize as a rounder you probably need to be soulless as well. The fact that he’s being rounded for unwinding shocks and terrifies Starkey, but he refuses to show it, because he knows Juvey-rounders get off on other people’s fear.
The short one, who is clearly the mouthpiece of this duo, gets in his face and repeats, “Verbally confirm that you are Mason Michael Starkey!”
“And why should I do that?”
“Kid,” says the other rounder, “this can go down easy or hard, but either way it’s going down.” The second cop is more soft spoken with a pair of lips that clearly aren’t his. In fact, they look like they came from a girl. “The drill’s not so hard, so just get with the program.”
He talks as if Starkey should have known they were coming, but what Unwind ever really knows? Every Unwind believes in their heart of hearts that it won’t happen to them—that their parents, no matter how strained things get, will be smart enough not to fall for the net ads, TV commercials, and billboards that say things like “Unwinding: the sensible solution.” But who is he kidding? Even without the constant media blitz, Starkey’s been a potential candidate for unwinding since the moment he arrived on the doorstep. Perhaps he should be surprised that his parents waited so long.
Now the mouthpiece gets deep in his personal space. “For the last time, verbally confirm that you are—”
“Yeah, yeah, Mason Michael Starkey. Now get out of my face, your breath stinks.”
With his identity verbally confirmed, Lady-Lips pulls out a form in triplicate: white, yellow, and pink.
“So is this how you do it?” Starkey asks, his voice beginning to quaver. “You arrest me? What’s my crime? Being sixteen? Or maybe it’s just being here at all.”
“Quiet-or-we-tranq-you,” says Mouthpiece, like it’s all one word.
A part of Starkey wants to be tranq’d—just go to sleep and if he’s lucky, never wake up. That way he won’t have to face the utter humiliation of being torn from his life in the middle of the night. But no, he wants to see his parents’ faces. Or, more to the point, he wants them to see his face, and if he’s tranq’d, they get off easy. They won’t have to look him in the eye.
Lady-Lips holds the unwind order in front of him and begins to read the infamous Paragraph Nine, the “Negation Clause.”
“Mason Michael Starkey, by the signing of this order, your parents and/or legal guardians have retroactively terminated your tenure, backdated to six days postconception, leaving you in violation of Existential Code 390. In light of this, you are hereby remanded to the California Juvenile Authority for summary division, also known as unwinding.”
“Blah, blah, blah.”
“Any rights previously granted to you by the county, state, or federal government as a citizen thereof are now officially and permanently revoked.” He folds the unwind order and shoves it into his pocket.
“Congratulations, Mr. Starkey,” says Mouthpiece. “You no longer exist.”
“Then why are you talking to me?”
“We won’t be for much longer.” They tug him toward the door.
“Can I at least put on shoes?”
They let him go but stay on their guard.
Starkey takes his sweet time tying his shoes. Then they pull him out of his room and down the stairs. The Juvey-cops have heavy boots that intimidate the wood of the steps. The three of them sound like a herd of cattle as they go down.
His parents wait in the foyer. It’s three in the morning, but they’re still fully dressed. They’ve been awake all night anticipating this. Starkey sees anguish on their faces, or maybe it’s relief, it’s hard to tell. He hardens his own emotions, hiding them behind a mock smile.
“Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad!” he says brightly. “Guess what just happened to me? I’ll give you twenty guesses to figure it out!”
His father takes a deep breath, preparing to launch into the Great Unwinding Speech that every parent prepares for a wayward child. Even if they never use it, they still prepare it, running the words through their minds while on lunch break, or while sitting in traffic, or while listening to some moronic boss blather on about price points and distribution, and whatever other crap that people in office buildings have meetings about.
What were the statistics? Starkey saw it on the news once. Every year the thought of unwinding passes through the mind of one in ten parents. Of those, one in ten seriously considers it, and of those, one in twenty actually goes through with it—and the statistic doubles with every additional kid a family has. Crunch those juicy numbers, and one out of every two thousand kids between the ages of thirteen and seventeen will be unwound each year. Better odds than the lottery—and that doesn’t even include the kids in state homes.
His father, keeping his distance, begins the speech. “Mason, can’t you see that you left us no choice?”
The Juvey-cops hold him firm at the bottom of the stairs, but they make no move to get him outside. They know they must allow the parental rite of passage; the verbal boot out the door.
“The fights, the drugs, the stolen car—and now being expelled from yet another school. What’s next, Mason?”
“Gee, I don’t know, Dad. There are so many bad choices I can make.”
“Not anymore. We care enough about you to end your bad choices before they end you.”
That just makes him laugh out loud.
And then there’s a voice from the top of the stairs.
“No! You can’t do this!”
His sister, Jenna—his parents’ biological daughter—stands at the top of the stairs in teddy bear pajamas that seem too old for her thirteen years.
“Go back to bed, Jenna,” their mother says.
“You’re unwinding him just because he was storked, and that’s unfair! And right before Christmas, too! What if I had come storked? Would you unwind me also?”
“We are not having this discussion!” yells their father, as their mother begins to cry. “Go back to bed!”
But she doesn’t. She folds her arms and sits at the top of the stairs in defiance, witnessing the whole thing. Good for her.
His mother’s tears are genuine, but he’s unsure whether she’s crying for him or for the rest of the family. “All these things you do, everyone told us they were a cry for help,” she says. “So why didn’t you let us help you?”
He wants to scream. How could he possibly explain it to them if they can’t see? They don’t know what it’s like to go through sixteen years of life knowing you weren’t wanted; a mystery baby of uncertain race storked on the doorstep of a couple so sienna-pale, they could have been vampires. Or to still remember that day when you were three years old and your mom, all doped up on pain medication from your sister’s cesarean delivery, took you to a fire station and begged them to take you away and make you a ward of the state. Or how about knowing every Christmas morning that your gift is not a joy, but an obligation? And that your birthday isn’t even real because they can’t pinpoint when you were born, just the day you were left on a welcome mat that some new mother took too literally?
And what about the taunts from the other kids at school?
In fourth grade Mason’s parents were called into the principal’s office. He had flipped a boy off the top platform of the jungle gym. The kid had suffered a concussion and a broken arm.
“Why, Mason?” his parents had asked, right there in front of the principal. “Why
did you do it?”
He told them that the other kids were calling him “Storky” instead of Starkey, and that this was the boy who had started it. He naively thought they’d rise to his defense, but they just dismissed it as if it didn’t matter.
“You could have killed that boy,” his father had reprimanded. “And why? Because of words? Words don’t hurt you.” Which is one of the hugest criminal lies perpetrated by adults against children in this world. Because words hurt more than any physical pain. He would have gladly taken a concussion and a broken arm if he never had to be singled out as a storked child ever again.
In the end, he got sent to a different school and was ordered to have mandatory counseling.
“You think about what you did,” his old principal had told him.
And he did what he was told, like a good little boy. He gave it plenty of thought and decided he should have found a higher platform.
So how do you even begin to explain that? How do you explain a lifetime of injustice in the time it takes the Juvey-cops to herd you out the door? The answer is easy: You don’t even try.
“I’m sorry, Mason,” his father says, tears in his eyes as well. “But it’s better for everyone this way. Including you.”
Starkey knows he’ll never make his parents understand, but if nothing else, he’ll have the last word.
“Hey, Mom, by the way . . . Dad’s late nights at the office aren’t really at the office. They’re with your friend Nancy.”
But before he can begin to relish his parents’ shocked expressions, it occurs to him that this secret knowledge could have been a bargaining chip. If he had told his father he knew, it could have been ironclad protection from unwinding! How could he be so stupid not to have thought of that when it mattered?
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