But when J'mee said this—"Rules are for other people"—it made me see how big the difference between us really was. It made me queasy. Because all of a sudden I realized just how naked I really was.
So I just rubbed my head and said, "It's still a good disguise."
"No, it isn't," she said.
"Fine. Have it your way."
"Running away isn't fair to your mom, you know?"
"What do you know about it? You don't even have a mom!"
"I know about moms."
"You don't know my mom."
"I know she's the one who works the hardest. Your dad doesn't do anything."
"Yes, he does!" I knew she was right, but I wasn't going to let her be the expert on my family. Besides, if she was right ... then we were wrong to be going up the Line. And even though the Line scared the yell out of me, I didn't want to go back either. Not after coming this far.
"I know that you're really hurting her."
"You don't know anything. You don't live with us."
She tapped her head. "I bet I know more about you and your family than you do."
"Oh, yeah—?"
"Yeah." She went blank for a moment, then came back and said, "Your mom and dad are divorced. Your dad filed for bankruptcy six weeks ago. Then he applied for an offworld emigration permit for himself and you and your brothers. His debts were paid off by a private debting company, conditional against a bid he has on file for indentured-service with the Sierra Colony." She went blank and came back again. "Your older brother applied to UCLA under a re-channeling contract, but it wasn't accepted. Your little brother takes medicine to keep him from wetting his bed, but it doesn't always work. And you—" She stopped.
"Go ahead—" I could feel my anger rising at this invasion of privacy, but I still had to hear what she knew.
"Your school record has a note in it that says that you're antisocial and you need emotional therapy." She looked at me with a smug superior expression. "Lots of flow-through kids need help." And then she added, "It's normal for poor kids." Like that excused it.
I stared at her, astonished. I'd never met any kid so ... spoiled. It was as if an enormous gulf had just opened up between us that could never be bridged again. I could feel my face getting redder and redder—and she just smiled at me like an arsenic-flavored princess.
I couldn't think of anything to say, so I just blurted, "You're a goddamned nasty little bitch." Then I left as quickly as I could.
ELEVATOR CLUB
When I got back to the cabin, all I wanted to do was think about the stuff that J'mee had said, but Stinky insisted on showing me all the tricks he'd taught his monkey. Stupid things—like crotch-grabbing and booger-flicking and pretending to fart and vomit and all the other stuff that little kids think is funny. I guess if I'd been in the mood, I might have thought it was funny, but I wasn't in the mood and I thought it was stupid and annoying. And when I said so, Stinky just looked up at me and said, "You sound like a grownup," which was probably the nastiest thing of all he could have said. If this was what it was like to be a grownup, permanently angry, perhaps I should just open a window and jump out now.
Instead, I turned on the television.
Maybe I didn't really want to think about it at all. What J'mee had said was worse than nasty. It was true.
I flung myself into a chair and flipped through the channels, looking at the views from all the different observatories all up and down the Line, but not really seeing any of them. There were also telescopes mounted in the bottom of the car that you could control yourself to look at anything you wanted, so I was playing with the view from one of those for a while, looking straight down the cable. At full magnification, I could see the next car, 250 miles below, very clearly. It was racing up toward us at incredible speed, but never gaining.
The views of the Earth were also pretty spectacular. We were high enough now that I could see El Paso from the air. I tried to spot our tube-town, only it was off toward the side, not quite around the curve of the planet, but far enough to make the angle tricky, and I couldn't be sure which one it was anyway. They all looked alike from here, and the atmosphere made everything fuzzy and twinkly, even with digital correction. I did spot the meteor crater again. That was easier. You tell the telescope what to look for and it just slides across the landscape to the target. From here, the Barringer crater looked like a big dimple in the ground. It was even farther away than El Paso and even farther around the curvature of the Earth, but it was big enough to be clear despite any atmospheric interference.
Finally, Dad looked up from the papers he was working on and said, "All right, Chigger, what is it?"
"Nothing," I said.
"No, it is not nothing. The way you're clicking through channels—"
"I hate being poor," I said.
"We're not poor."
"Then why did you file for bankruptcy?"
He was silent for a beat. "How did you find that out?"
"It doesn't matter. I found out."
"Your mother, right?"
I didn't want to tell him about J'mee and everything she'd said—he'd probably just get mad at me, even though I hadn't done anything. J'mee was wrong about us anyway. I didn't need help. I was fine. If people would just leave me alone. Once we got to Geosynchronous, this whole adventure would be over anyway and we'd all go home—except Dad, so it didn't matter, did it? And I really didn't need to have another one of those "sympathetic conversations"—not now, not ever, and certainly not with Dad. So instead I just said what I was feeling. "Screw the moon. This is another one of your good ideas that didn't happen."
"Chigger—"
"Dad, why couldn't you just take us to Disneyland and leave us alone? I don't want any more of your good intentions—"
The argument was just getting warmed up when Weird walked in, looking weirder than usual. Even for Weird. He looked flushed and upset and scared, but he also looked excited about something—kind of like the time he got off the roller coaster and discovered he'd crapped his pants. He looked at both of us, then retreated hastily to the bathroom without saying a word.
Dad looked at me—looked at the bathroom—then looked back at me. "We'll talk about this later." He went and knocked softly on the bathroom door. "Douglas? Are you all right?"
The reply came back muffled. "Yes. No."
"Do you want to talk about it, Douglas?"
The bathroom door opened and Douglas stepped back into the cabin. He looked from Dad to me, then back to Dad again, decided it didn't matter, gulped, and nodded. He couldn't even talk. He managed to blurt, "I just joined the Elevator Club."
Elevator Club—?! Huh? I wondered who the unlucky girl was.
Stinky was already demanding—"What's the Elevator Club? I wanna join too!"
I stared at Douglas in amazement—suddenly realizing that my big brother had crossed a line, and even though he was still my big brother, he was finally and irrevocably a grownup too. He finally had the secret handshake. Bobby and I were still children. I turned to Bobby and said very calmly, "You have to be eighteen to join. It's like a driver's license. I can't join either."
Dad gave me a surprised and appreciative glance. "Thank you, Charles," he said. He patted Douglas on the shoulder. "You want to talk privately?" Douglas nodded and Dad steered him back into the bathroom and shut the door behind them. I thought I heard Douglas stifle a sob, but I couldn't be sure.
After they were gone, Stinky looked at me. "Well, what kind of a club is it—?"