It seemed so obvious now that this was a terrible idea, but somehow it hadn’t yesterday. Yesterday it was just a thought. Static. Harmless. A blurry collage of what it’d feel like being smarter and more charismatic on the other side. The person I always wanted to be. And picturing him always got the most screen time in the lead up because it was more exciting to ponder. And because I knew I could always back out, the downside never quite sank in the way it would have if I was locked in. I could always tap the breaks and do the responsible thing because I’d always done the responsible thing. Even when I woke up this morning, I was still split right down the middle about whether I wanted to go through with it or not. Honestly. And maybe if I’d just had one or two more stamps, or told Ethan I needed more time on the device, I’d be home right now doing schoolwork and eating a PB&J.
But no, I was here, feeling like I was coming apart. Sweating. Shouting. Cut by the razor-thin margin separating this reality from that possibility. Trying to will myself backward so I could do the rational thing. Knowing that every second I was drifting farther away, slipping further into some dimension where I’d be trapped forever in a six by eight foot cell. Panic welled up like gas jets behind my eyes and I had the intractable urge to rip off the ski mask.
A phone rang in the kitchen and Mrs. Moore answered. “Hey honey . . . yeah, he’s here, we just got back from the med room . . . I don’t think so . . . uh-huh, uh-huh . . . yeah, he’s okay.”
It must be the professor. If he came home and decided to work, we’d be stranded in that closet.
“Yeah, we just started making it now.”
Pause.
“It’ll be done then so we can all eat together.”
I looked over at Ethan and watched his fingers open and contract in time with his breathing. “Put your glove back on,” I whispered.
“What?”
“Your glove, put it back on.”
We couldn’t leave prints. We couldn’t get caught. We just couldn’t. I’d imagined some close calls when I’d dreamed this all up—the police coming and having to run—but I’d never played it all the way through. What would that even feel like? What would I do if Mrs. Moore opened up the door again and found us?
Ethan nudged me. “I think she’s left the kitchen.”
“What?”
His whisper was barely audible. “I don’t think she’s in the kitchen anymore.”
I pressed my ear flush with the door again and tried to blot everything else out. Eventually I heard a voice, but only in faint, intermittent syllables. “Where’s the kid?”
“I don’t know.”
I peeked under the door and didn’t see any feet. “Let’s just do it.”
“With the kid out there? He might be in the dining room.”
I turned to Ethan, our eyes meeting through the ski masks. “We gotta risk it: if the professor gets back and comes in . . .”
“Then we’ll wait him out.”
“Not if she finds the device upstairs—it’s just lying there in the closet,” I said. “This might be our last chance.”
Ethan pondered for a moment and nodded.
Very slowly, I brought my hand up toward the door. When I reached the brass knob, it seemed like folds in time were opening—my face was burning. My arms and legs felt stiff and far away.
“Why are you stopping?”
Because I don’t know what I’m doing. Because we’re fucked forever if I’m wrong. “Thought I heard something,” I whispered and, urged on by an almost equal fear of looking weak in front of him, I turned it. When the door was cracked open half an inch, I paused and mashed my eye up against the opening and scanned. No one so far. I went another inch. The kitchen looked empty. I continued until I could fit my head through and see dusk exhaling its first breaths through a bay window, but found nobody in the hall or the kitchen.
I could hear Mrs. Moore now, one room over, apparently talking to someone else. “Yeah, it seems that way now, but I think they’ll come around.”
I looked at the hallway and then at Ethan. He nodded.
“It’s not really an issue . . . uh huh. I know . . . uh huh, and I told them that.”
We crept out into the open carefully, as though we were naked. I could see Mrs. Moore’s reflection in the hallway mirror facing the other way. Still talking, she turned sideways, gesturing with her hands. I froze. So did Ethan. And then she turned and paced back the other way. “And that’s what tenure is for—these kinds of situations.”
I focused all my energy on making silent footfalls. I thought light thoughts, imagining myself walking on a whisper. I breathed in sharply as we passed the first open door; it was the laundry room. Empty. I stopped and listened for the kid. Nothing except for the woman talking behind us. I took another step, wishing I’d worn my old shoes that were too shabby to squeak on hardwood. The second door was closed, as was the third. When we neared the front door, the hallway expanded into a vestibule that broke off into the dining room. That, too, was empty.
I looked back at Ethan and then at the front door again. Maybe we should just go. They’d find the open safe and be perplexed, but nothing would be gone. No harm, no foul. The problem was if they reported it the police would pull the thermal records, see two extra heat signatures, and know we’d been there. And they’d start pulling other records, too. Metadata from traffic cams. Dash cams. Community pollinator drone cams. And depending on what had been recorded, the trail might point straight to us.
Ethan was about to open the door, but I shook my head—beckoning upward. He paused for a few seconds on the front rug, grimacing through his ski mask, then finally joined me in a crouch at the bottom of the staircase.
I pressed my forehead against the balusters beside him; there was no one on either of the landings above. I tiptoed around the curled post and, dreading a creak, began to ascend with light steps. Floating. I knew any second the kid could appear around a corner and that we’d have to what: Run? Cut past him? The Moores’ backyard bordered a park and our car was parked in the lot on the other side. How many people would see us streak across in our ski masks before we got there? How many people would see the make and model and even the license plate of the car when we pulled away?
When I was five steps from the top of the staircase, I got down on my knees and crawled. Then, in slow motion, I stuck my head just far enough around the corner that I could see to the end of the long hall. Nothing. I paused and listened. Silence. My heart lifted a little as we neared the bedroom. Just close the safe; do that and they’ll never know. They’ll never even have a reason to pull the thermal scans.
The duvet and carpet looked different bathed in shadows; the sunlight had dimmed, and it felt like the room frowning at me as I crept across to the closet. Somewhere outside a lawn mower had started up, slipping in between the ambient whir of the environmental unit.
“How much should we take?” Ethan asked.
I looked down at the open safe. There were several, uneven stacks of minted silver coins inside. “Let’s just shut it and leave; they’re already suspicious.”
“We didn’t do all of this for nothing—how much are we going to take?”
I grabbed some coins, hopefully few enough that their absence would either go unnoticed or lead to such confusion and self-doubt that the Moores wouldn’t report it. Judging by the haphazard storage, I doubted they’d ever done an exact count.
“That’s it?”
“It’s what we talked about.” My whisper rose above his. “If no one notices they’re gone, then no one comes looking.” I removed the device and put the safe back under the rows of Mrs. Moore’s clothes.
“Yeah, but—”
“But nothing.”
I positioned the closet’s sliding door just how I’d found it, slightly open, and then quickly surveyed the bedroom to make sure I hadn’t disturbed anything. For a few seconds, I wasn’t scared anymore. Except for us, everything was back in its place.
“Psssst. Psssst.”
I was already out of the bedroom door and had to look back at Ethan. “What?” I mouthed silently.
He gestured toward the window.
I shook my head and walked over to him. “We’re right above the kitchen . . . she might see us drop.”
“Different bedroom?”
“Then someone could see us from the street.” I motioned downward. “Front door so it looks normal.”
He stared at me for a moment and then started for the hallway. I followed a few paces behind.
When Ethan got to the stairwell, he made a hard pivot and crashed back into me. “He’s coming,” he whispered, as I heard the sound of steps being taken two at a time, the way a kid would do it.
Trying to look everywhere at once, I tripped back down the hall and slipped into the first open door. A bathroom. There were twin white sinks on my right and an open closet full of towels to my left. I went into a smaller room with a toilet and a shower, shut the door behind me—then pulled the flower-patterned curtain across after stepping into the tub. A moment later I heard steps nearby.
“Light on.”
Through the tiny gap left between the curtain and the wall I looked at the window above the toilet; it was small, but I could probably fit through. It was too late, though. The door was opening, and the kid was coming in.
I shrank back against the wall.
“Light on.”
The toilet seat creaked as it was raised and after a few seconds there was a trickle, then a stream. I used the splashing sound from the urine as cover to take the breath I’d been holding out for, aware again how hard my heart was slamming. He had just come home from soccer practice; surely he’d take a shower.
I eased into a springing stance. I didn’t want to hurt him but, honestly, with the nanobots racing through his veins, I was more worried about him hurting me. Only the public schools like mine played competitive sports without them—our track team had turned into such a laughing stock that kids from Lawrence came to our meets just to jeer at us. For four years I’d trained year-round, getting up early to do hills, never drinking or eating sugar, while they had a nurse inject them once at a clinic and were instantly twice as good as I’d ever be.
Everyone was always like, “You’re so athletic and smart, Dorian, you don’t even need to Revise.” But that was horseshit—being in the school’s “gifted” program felt more like a farce than anything anymore. And it was exactly why I needed to Revise. Unlike everyone else, I was just talented enough for being lapped to really hurt.
I braced myself as the urine slowed, but a moment later he flushed the toilet and just walked out of the room.
Puzzled, I thought back and remembered them discussing his injury. Stitches. He wouldn’t shower with stitches. The sound of running water as the kid washed his hands let me take a deep breath, then relax my grip on the rack as I heard footfalls get fainter, exiting into the hallway.
Circular holes were cut into the top of the curtain, allowing it to slide back and forth along a metal bar; I grabbed a fist full both above and below and moved them together so they wouldn’t make a noise. Then crept out of the shower and waited, listening.
The door to the hallway was slightly ajar. I peeked out as far as I could, then pushed it open a little more so I could fit through. Ethan was already in the hallway.
“It’s clear,” he whispered.
There was loud music coming from the kid’s room as we tiptoed past it on our way back to the stairwell. One after the other, we drifted down the steps. Soundless. Breathless. When we got to the front door, I held out a hand in warning. After water started running in the kitchen, we took our ski masks off, I turned the knob, and we stole out into the dusk.
Chapter 2
“Dorian, dinner. Come down!” called my mom.
“I’ll be there in a second!” I called back, before hammering a few more bullshit sentences of my summer Fahrenheit 451 paper onto the keyboard. I hadn’t read the entire book, naturally, but fortunately tons of other people on the link had, and there were countless reviews and summaries. Bradbury seemed like a chill dude for the most part, and I liked what he was driving at, but it didn’t feel prescient anymore considering we kind of already beat his firefighters to the punch and stopped reading all by ourselves.
I sauntered down the stairs and into the dining room. Mom, Dad, Jaden, and Jaden’s autonomous buddy robot, Mr. Jefferson, were sitting expectantly at the table.
“You should’ve just started,” I said, pausing in the archway before slipping into my usual chair next to Jaden. I hated how my parents would wait on me for the smallest things—sometimes for the longest time—just to make me feel guilty. It was asymmetrical warfare, because with their lightweight jobs and four-hour workdays, they had loads of free time. They could blanket me with it and then reload with another twelve hours and do the same thing tomorrow.
“No, honey, it’s important we eat at least one family meal. We hardly get to see you anymore.”
Mom’s voice made me wince because I knew there was nothing in it. No passive aggressiveness. No pauses for effect, or dialed-in aggrievement. Just the sincere, face value which made it land all the harder.
Worse, were the wrinkles that spread across her face when she smiled. She was in her forties, but somehow—not until this moment—I’d never really thought about her getting old before. She just seemed to float outside of time—almost a concept or an abstract feeling of maternal love, telling me I’d be okay during my weakest moments. That I was safe even though I knew I wasn’t. The wrinkles were strange, though, because they meant that she wasn’t safe either. They made things sadder and more fragile and gave me the urge to tell her just how much I cared about her.
I held the thought for a few moments, feeling wistful, but I knew I couldn’t do it. They’d know something was up if I started acting emotional.
“Right.”
There was the clatter of chipped dishes and abraded, slightly-bowed silverware as we started digging in and passing around condiments. “How has your day been?” my father asked, nudging a serving spoon into the ham casserole.
I always dreaded our superficial question-and-answer routine, but even more so tonight because all I could think about was police lights shining through the curtains. The doorbell ringing. The looks on my parents’ faces when an officer appeared in the doorway. “You know, same old, same old.”
“Actually, I don’t. You’ve been coming home so late these past couple of months and then, when you’re here, you lock yourself away in your room.” As if to emphasize the point, Dad folded his spindly, psoriasis-stricken arms and rested his elbows on the table.
He was thin and handsome, but his proportions were awkward and rangy and he looked perpetually off balance. He’d played center in basketball at a small technical college in Illinois, somehow earning a full scholarship even though he hadn’t had the footwork to be much more than a late-game foul dispenser.
“I’ve always done that.”
Mom returned my toothy, shit-eating smile with a genuine one and then said, “That’s true, but at least you’d practice piano. You’re such a gifted player, Dorian. Everyone says so.”
I thought about the keyboard collecting dust by my dresser, where the same (Handel?) sheet music had been sitting out since last spring. “Who’s everyone?”
“Well, Mrs. Krall, for one, and Anne Jacobs. And—”
“I don’t think they’re qualified to be making those kinds of appraisals.”
“And me,” she said. “I’ve never heard anyone play so . . . I don’t know what the right word for it is, but—”
“I’ll start up again—I just needed a break. Classes are getting harder and, you know, you have to pick your spots.” I took a deep breath, pushing the green beans around on my plate.
“You don’t seem to be picking very many of them,” said Dad, who loved making little quips like this, probably thinking that they made up for all the things that weren’t being said. Th
at there was thoughtfulness pre-built into a snappy remark that, while perhaps not readily apparent, would leach into your consciousness all the same.
“Yeah. Like I said though, I’m going to pick it back up.” I wanted to add, and I’ll be a hundred times better when I do, playing Islamey backwards—blindfolded.
“Even brief pauses in practice can erode skills, Dorian,” Mr. Jefferson informed me in a smooth, professorial timbre.
I rolled my eyes. We’d had Mr. Jefferson for a few weeks now, but the way its ghost-white shell hung over its black, wire-laden frame still weirded me out—hating how it was trying to look industrial and powerful yet simultaneously innocuous and cute, like some home-assembled kid’s toy.
I scowled as it turned and inspected me, hoovering up kinesics data with its large, cobalt eyes. Despite the phosphorescence, they were oddly human—emotive and intelligent.
“Jaden, what’s this thing doing at the dinner table?”
“Mom said it was okay,” said Jaden, shrugging nonchalantly, as if he hadn’t spent hours methodically lobbying her for the privilege.
“And he does bring up a good point, Dorian. I think—”
“Of course you think so, Mom. It’s telling you what you want to hear so you’ll buy more of its bullshit add-ons, which is the only thing it’s programmed to care about. But it doesn’t have any idea what I do . . . or how carefully I spend my time.”
Jaden smiled maliciously. “What about the three hours between track practice and now when you were out with Ethan? Were you being careful then? Doing lots of, uh . . . homework?”
I ignored him and took a bite of casserole. Jaden was playacting. It was a familiar routine, pretending to be enemies for the express purpose of earning our parents’ implicit trust on those few, critical occasions when we needed the other’s endorsement. And while I didn’t like messing with Mom and Dad and was a little nervous about how far Jaden took things sometimes, I knew any alibi would be all the more convincing if it seemed given reluctantly.
Sunlight 24 Page 2
