Goodhouse (12 page)

“You reported me,” I said.

“You stole from civilians,” he said. “Let's start there. What's wrong with you? Didn't I warn you not to touch anything?” Owen kept scrolling over the demerits, inspecting each one.

“Can you only see half the wallscreen?” I asked. “You know, with the chalk line and all—do you need me to tell you what it says on my half?”

“You were so obvious,” he said. “I had to report you, or somebody else would have.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It would've been a shame to let someone else get all the credit.”

“I don't blame you for being mad,” Owen said. “But it's your own fault.”

Outside, a T-4 whirred past and a proctor shouted for somebody to hurry up. The air conditioner turned the dusty, dry smell of Ione into a musty odor that reminded me of rainy springs and rotting pine duff. Suddenly I saw my personal page flash on the screen. I stood up. “What are you doing?” I asked. “How do you know my password?” But I didn't react fast enough.

Before I could stop him, Owen had scrolled down the page and registered me for a month of extra work detail. “You're going to make this right,” he said.

“Delete those,” I said. “You little shit.” I crossed the room and tried to erase them myself, but the computer wouldn't allow this. A message appeared in my in-box congratulating me on my successful registration.

Owen backed away, expecting some kind of physical retaliation. “You owe me,” he said. He stumbled against one of the beds and then stepped behind it. I was a little taken aback by how genuinely afraid of me he seemed. “Four hundred credits,” he said. “And I've spent most of the rest on applications. I'm out of money. I can't go to college as a Level 3. You fucking owe me.”

“You handed me to Creighton and Davis.”

“I told you not to touch anything,” he said. “I told you.”

He was on the other side of the room now, as far away as he could get in such a small space. I took a deep breath and tried to control my anger. I realized that I knew his password, too. I'd seen him type it in dozens of times. I'd learned it without even meaning to. In less than two seconds I'd opened his personal page and found his work detail registration. He tried to knock my hand away as I typed in his name, but I was ready for him. I was nearly six inches taller and my reach was longer.

“Stop,” he said. “Just stop.”

“We'll make it right together,” I said. “It'll be a field trip.” I was quoting Bethany.

I clicked Accept, and it was somewhat mollifying to watch Owen try to delete his own name.

“You didn't really have empathy for me until now, did you?” I asked. “See, I'm helping you. Roommates have to instruct each other.”

“You asshole,” he said.

“Work on your outlook,” I said.

Owen was still touching the screen, scrolling through various options, trying unsuccessfully to transfer his name elsewhere. He was mouthing a word, not giving it enough breath to say it aloud. It looked like he was saying,
Shit, shit, shit
.

No one from La Pine would have turned me over to our class leaders. No one would have put my name in a work detail. They were my people. They were my family, and I felt them at my back now. I didn't belong here.

“It's the Zeros, right?” Owen said. “You saw them again and now you're breaking down.”

“That's not it,” I said.

“You leave the school for a few hours and you generate a ton of demerits and two AJT citations? Just like that?”

I didn't know what to say. Something
was
wrong with me. I walked over to my bed and lay down on top of the covers. “You aren't depressed, are you?” He sounded hopeful. “You could report yourself. You might get a doctor to say you weren't mentally sound on Community Day.”

“I'm not reporting myself,” I said.

“You have to let the Zeros motivate you in a positive way,” Owen suggested. He spoke as if this was rehearsed. “I've been thinking about it a lot. I was on that bus, too, right? A lot of us were, and I've been doing double meditation and it's been totally helping.”

“Good,” I said. “Then you won't mind logging on and doing my meditation, too.”

“It's not a bad thing that happened on the bus,” he said. “It's just a reminder that we have to be careful with our status. We have to be grateful for what we have. No one was killed, right? It was just the Zeros letting off steam. That's always good—if no one gets hurt. They feel like they made a statement, and we were scared but mostly okay, and now we're more aware of how important our choices are in the next year. It's”—he stuttered—“it's good, really.”

“No, Owen,” I said. “It's not good.”

“You have to handle it,” he said.

“I am handling it.” I sat up. “Look, something happened to me the other night. What do you know about the Exclusion Zone?”

“It's off campus,” he said. “Off-limits.”

“Davis took me to some building,” I said. “He gave me a drug, too. I don't know if it was just to make me sick or scare me. But there's a basement where all the convicts fight each other.” Even as I said the words, they felt false, too fantastic. “And the Mule Creek guards bet money,” I said. I saw the disappointment in Owen's expression. He thought I was lying.

“You asshole,” he said.

“You've been here longer than I have. You must have heard rumors, some kind of talk.”

“I'm trying to help you. And you're deflecting,” he said. This was what the school called it when you held other people responsible for your own wrong-thinking.

“This is real,” I said. “I promise you.”

“Oh, I believe you,” he said. “My spectacularly sane roommate who just last week woke up screaming, ‘Lie down or I'll kill you.' I believe everything he tells me.”

“I didn't say that,” I said.

“You don't remember saying that,” Owen corrected. He leaned over to his trunk and pulled out a small cardboard box of crackers. He also had a bar of chocolate with the words
Swann Industries
printed in silver-on-blue paper. When he was agitated, he ate like a squirrel—sitting at his desk, taking small bites of cracker and chocolate, clutching his food in two hands. “No, I don't want to know what happened, James,” he said. “I'm not your
buddy
,” he added, as if the word tasted sour in his mouth. “I'm not going to ask you personal questions. You aren't part of my future, and that's all I care about.”

I stared at the ceiling. The overhead light was a long fluorescent bulb in a wire cage. It looked like some sort of mythical glowing wand. I thought of La Pine and the brutal power of the fire itself—the way it had grown out of the windows and doorways in long columns of flame. And then I revised this memory. I saw the flames rising from the palms of my own hands, saw my fingers holding the flare of a match.

“Why didn't you ever ask me what happened at La Pine?” I said. “Aren't you curious?”

This was clearly not what Owen expected to hear, because he glanced up from his tiny chocolate meal.

“Well,” he said after a moment, “what happened?”

“You wouldn't believe me,” I said.

Owen nodded to himself. “Just being a dick, then.”

“You're no better than the rest of us,” I said. “If you think some art program is going to make you normal, you're more unbalanced than I am.”

“I
am
better than the rest of you,” Owen said. “If I don't think so, who will? And if you had any brains, you'd do something with your training.”

“What training? I sang in a choir. Tanner and the rest of them couldn't care less about that.”

“We can do something that other people can't—not even civilians. Why don't you take advantage of it? You're supposed to be really good. So: write a song to sing at the ceremony. Why do you think they're building the pavilion? They want to showcase us, to show off the really bright ones. Put a good face on Goodhouse. If you had any sense, you'd organize something, make people notice.”

“All I do is make people notice,” I said.

“Then stop being a fuckup,” he said. He paused. “So, did you do it? Did you help burn down your school?”

“No,” I said. “Of course not.” I turned to the wall and pulled my blanket over my shoulder. I closed my eyes and let the darkness reach out and flatten over me. “Why would anyone think that's even possible?”

 

EIGHT

That night, just before ten, Tanner appeared again on our wallscreens—this time to give a speech about Founders' Day and how we were preparing to have the “eyes of the nation upon us during this very special time.” He'd obviously taken pains with his appearance. The impressions of a comb were still visible in his thin, wet hair, and he'd spread some kind of orangey makeup under his eyes.

I lay in bed. My elbow throbbed. My body was tired but my mind was clenched and alert. I hated that we couldn't turn off the screens during official announcements. The volume was always high, and there was sometimes a delay between rooms, so the sound was discordant, filling the dormitory alternately with words and gibberish.

“I am personally asking you to be on your best behavior,” Tanner said, “to let the world see what important work we are doing here. You are part of a great tradition, a promise kept. Let yourselves shine as an example to every nation. I am counting on you. God bless.” He kept glancing offscreen as he spoke. I overheard the boys next door calling him a talking turd.

After lights-out, Owen clicked on a flashlight and tinkered with the abstract for the mural. Usually he labored over the faces and expressions of the founders, checking his work against old photographs. But tonight he took orange paint and drew what appeared to be a tiger lolling on the floor of the classroom, tucked in among the children. Its green eyes were like my own.

“I don't think that's strictly accurate,” I said, leaning on my good elbow and peering through the flashlit dark.

“Leave me alone,” Owen said.

I waited until he was asleep, until his breathing deepened into a snore, and then I reached under the mattress and pulled out the device Montero had given me. It was designed to slip over the front of an actual print reader. It was just a few millimeters wider, and it would be hard to distinguish from the real thing once it was in place. I felt a kind of awe just holding it in my hand, something so small and powerful—contraband under my control. And yet this moment was undercut by worry, a nagging disquiet. I thought I knew why Montero wanted a Goodhouse print. When I'd first arrived at Ione, there'd been a breakout attempt at Mule Creek. I assumed that he wanted a point for some similar reason. If Montero could find me in Quality Control, he could probably find an exit.

I sensed, then, that I should go to someone, that this was bigger than I'd first imagined. But it was too late. There was no way to explain my delay, no way to justify another theft. And besides, I didn't regret it—not really, not enough. I tugged my blanket over my head and pressed my thumb to the screen. The front panel lit up when it was touched. I relished the way this little slip of plastic was mine, the way I felt when I managed to capture my own print and I saw for the first time that green phosphorescent swirl, a shape that belonged to no one else.

The next day I went to talk to Tim about transferring my shift. He sat on the other side of his desk, clearly distracted. He used the stump of his finger to tap on his handheld. I was thinking that the problem was with the Quality Control room. It obviously wasn't secure—too isolated and remote. I explained that I'd be happy to work nights, any shift he wanted, but that I didn't want to go back. He cut me off. “I'm sorry you aren't enjoying yourself, James, but you do realize, that doesn't concern me.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes, sir,” he corrected. “Just because I used to be one of you doesn't mean you can disrespect me.”

*   *   *

I ended up stuffing the print reader into one of the rejected cupcakes, jamming it all the way down so that the chocolate cake closed over the top. The longer I had contraband in my possession, the more likely I was to get caught. I spent several miserable shifts staring over my shoulder, watching the catwalk overhead, scrutinizing every shadow at the base of the grain silos. And then Tim transferred me back into the mixing rooms, with their long sight lines and brightly lit workstations. I was sure I'd be safe there.

I thought things were starting to normalize. Owen and I were falling back into our routine. My elbow healed quickly, and I went every morning to the infirmary for the shot. I didn't see Bethany. And this was a good thing. I'd been thinking about her too much, thinking about Sunday, about meeting her in person. Temptation was overwhelming my judgment. When I walked through the infirmary, I searched for her; I told myself that I was trying to avoid her, but that was a lie, another self-deception. I didn't know what to do. To contemplate the problem was to magnify it, and so I felt relief each time I left the building to rejoin my routine—safe for another day.

And then something surprising happened. Owen got a demerit. At dinner on Friday, some Level 2 kid shoved him from behind as we waited in the cafeteria line. The shove might have been accidental, but Owen turned and hit him in the face with his empty tray. It wasn't much in the way of a fight, but Creighton was nearby, ready to make something out of it. I was standing beside Owen when it happened, and I watched with openmouthed surprise.

“Good work,” I mumbled.

“Shut it,” Owen said. His face was a mask of disproportionate fury. He was obviously as shocked as I was. Though, honestly, it was not completely unexpected. When you lost status, you could fall precipitously. Perhaps you were treated differently and so you became different. It was hard to know where it started or where it would end.