“The people who matter know it’s not you. Your dads . . .”
“They don’t even know about this!” Cy says. “They think they did me a favor stickin’ me with this brain chunk. If I told them about it, they’d feel guilty until the end of time, so I can’t tell them.”
Lev doesn’t know what to say. He wishes he’d never brought it up. He wishes he hadn’t insisted on knowing. But most of all, he wishes Cy didn’t have to deal with this. He’s a good guy. He deserves a better break.
“And this kid—he doesn’t even understand he’s a part of me,” Cy says. “It’s like those ghosts that don’t know they’re dead. He keeps trying to be him, and can’t understand why the rest of him ain’t there.”
All of a sudden Lev realizes something. “He lived in Joplin, didn’t he!”
Cy doesn’t answer for a long time. That’s how Lev knows it’s true. Finally Cy says, “There are things he’s still got locked up in my brain that I can’t get at. All I know is that he’s got to get to Joplin, so I got to get there too. Once we’re there, maybe he’ll leave me alone.”
CyFi shifts his shoulders—not in a shrug but in an uncomfortable roll, like when you get an itch in your back or a sudden shiver. “I don’t want to talk about him no more. His one-eighth feels a whole lot bigger when I spend time hanging around in his gray matter.”
Lev wants to put his arm around Cy’s shoulder like an older brother to comfort him, but he just can’t bring himself to do it. So instead he pulls the blanket from the bed and wraps it around Cy as he sits in the chair.
“What’s this all about?”
“Just making sure you two stay warm.” And then he says, “Don’t worry about anything. I’ve got it all under control.”
CyFi laughs. “You? You can’t even take care of yourself and now you think you’re gonna take care of me? If it weren’t for me you’d still be chowing down on other folk’s garbage back at the mall.”
“That’s right—but you helped me. Now it’s my turn to do the same for you. And I’m going to get you to Joplin.”
22. Risa
Risa Megan Ward watches everything around her closely and carefully.
She’s seen enough at StaHo to know that survival rests on how observant you are.
For three weeks she, Connor, and a mixed bag of Unwinds have been shuttled from one safe house to another. It’s maddening, for there seems to be no end in sight to this relentless underground railroad of refugees.
There are dozens of kids being moved around, but there are never more than five or six at a time in any given safe house, and Risa rarely sees the same kids twice. The only reason she and Connor have been able to stay together is because they pose as a couple. It’s practical, and it serves both their interests.
What’s that expression? The devil you know is better than the one you don’t?
Finally, they’re dumped in a huge, empty warehouse in a thundering airtraffic zone. Cheap realty for hiding unwanted kids. It’s a spartan building with a corrugated steel roof that shakes so badly when a plane passes overhead, she half expects it to collapse.
There are almost thirty kids here when they arrive, many of them are kids Risa and Connor had come across over the past few weeks. This is a holding tank, she realizes, a place where all the kids are warehoused in preparation for some final journey. There are chains on the doors to keep anyone unwanted out, and to keep anyone too rebellious in. There are space heaters that are useless, since all the heat is lost to the high warehouse roof. There’s only one bathroom with a broken lock and, unlike many of the safe houses, there’s no shower, so personal hygiene is put on hold the moment they arrive. Put all that together with a gang of scared, angry kids, and you’ve got a powder keg waiting to explode. Perhaps that’s why the people who run the show all carry guns.
There are four men and three women in charge, all of them militarized versions of the folks who, like Sonia, run the safe houses. Everyone calls them “the Fatigues”—not just because they have a penchant toward khaki military clothing, but also because they always seem exhausted. Even so, they have a hightension determination about them that Risa admires.
A handful of new kids arrives almost every day. Risa watches each group of arrivals with interest, and notices that Connor does too. She knows why.
“You’re looking for Lev too, aren’t you?” She finally says to him.
He shrugs. “Maybe I’m just looking for the Akron AWOL, like everyone else.”
That makes Risa chuckle. Even in the safe houses they had heard the inflated rumors of an AWOL from Akron who escaped from a Juvey-cop by turning his own tranq pistol against him. “Maybe he’s on his way here!” kids would whisper around the warehouse, like they were talking about a celebrity.
Risa has no idea how the rumor started, since it was never in the news. She’s also a bit annoyed that she’s not included in the rumor. It ought to be a Bonnie-and-CIyde kind of thing. The rumor mill is definitely sexist.
“So are you ever going to tell them you’re the Akron AWOL?” she quietly asks Connor.
“I don’t want that kind of attention. Besides, they wouldn’t believe me anyway. They’re all saying the Akron AWOL is this big boeuf superhero. I don’t want to disappoint them.”
Lev doesn’t show up with any of the batches of new kids. The only thing that arrives with them is an increase of tension. Forty-three kids by the end of their first week, and there’s still one bathroom, no shower, and no answer as to how long this will last. Restlessness hangs as heavy as body odor in the air.
The Fatigues do their best to keep them all fed and occupied, if only to minimize friction. There are a few crates of games, incomplete decks of cards, and dog-eared books that no library wanted. There are no electronics, no balls—nothing that would create or encourage noise.
“If people out there hear you, then you’re all done for,” the Fatigues remind them as often as they can. Risa wonders if the Fatigues have lives separate and apart from saving Unwinds, or if this endeavor is their life’s work.
“Why are you doing this for us?” Risa asked one of them during their second week.
The Fatigue had been almost rote in her answer—like giving a sound bite to a reporter. “Saving you and others like you is an act of conscience,” the woman had said. “Doing it is its own reward.”
The Fatigues all talk like that. Big-Picture-speak, Risa calls it. Seeing the whole, and none of the parts. It’s not just in their speech but in their eyes as well.
When they look at Risa, she can tell they don’t really see her. They seem to see the mob of Unwinds more as a concept rather than a collection of anxious kids, and so they miss all the subtle social tremors that shake things just as powerfully as the jets shake the roof.
By the end of the second week, Risa has a pretty good idea where trouble is brewing. It all revolves around one kid she hoped she’d never see again, but he had turned up shortly after she and Connor arrived.
Roland.
Of all the kids here, he is by far the most potentially dangerous. The troubling thing is that Connor hasn’t exactly been the image of emotional stability himself this past week.
He’d been all right in the safe houses. He’d held his temper—he hadn’t done anything too impulsive or irrational. Here, however, in the midst of so many kids, he’s different. He’s irritable and defiant. The slightest thing can set him off. He’d been in half a dozen fights already. She knows this must be why his parents chose to have him unwound—a firestorm temper can drive some parents to desperate measures.