Grandfather (23 page)

“The Grand Imperial has
requested you be comfortable until tomorrow,” the woman said. “My
name is Helly.”

Everything in front of me
was truly amazing. I didn’t care that Cornelius wanted to keep me
comfortable to do his stupid interview. I was worried about
something else. “What will he do with Ashton and Marley?” I
asked.

Helly didn’t say
anything.

“I want them here,” I
demanded.

“Can’t do that,” Helly
said.

“You’re supposed to keep
me comfortable,” I said. “I won’t be comfortable without
them.”

“Nice try,” Helly said,
looking closely at her blue nails. “They’re staying in their cells.
Dinner will be brought to you later.” Her smile was killing me. She
was so clueless as to what was going on.

“How can you be with
Grandfather?” I asked her. “What’s in it for you?”

Helly turned around and
headed back to the double doors. “Everything’s in it for me,” she
said, leaving me alone.

Examining everything
again, the room overwhelmed me. Everything there probably cost more
than the whole orphanage. A
lot
more. People were living large within the wall.
We outsiders couldn’t even dream of a room like this. Yet, there I
stood, not dreaming.

I walked toward the sofas.
My eyes caught the black box on the table. On top of it was a tiny
hole with a green button beside it.

Curiosity.

I pressed it.

Immediately, a bluish
light sprung out of the small hole, revealing a large transparent
TV screen floating in the air above the entire coffee table. It
reminded me of a ghost. I backed away, my legs hitting the couch. I
couldn’t stop myself from falling. It was as if the couch was
sucking me in. It was so comfortable. Definitely the most
comfortable thing I had ever sat on.

The screen displayed a
young woman in pink clothing speaking, but I couldn’t hear what she
was saying. I searched the area for a way to turn the volume up. I
didn’t see anything at first, but after a few minutes, I discovered
a thin piece of glass sitting on the couch. It looked a lot like
the cell phones I had seen. Maybe that’s what it was.

It practically weighed
nothing and felt nothing like glass. It was smooth. The edges were
rounded. As I had seen Cornelius’s phone do, the piece of glass lit
up, revealing a keypad along with other buttons. I knew it had to
control the TV. I hit the up button labeled ‘VOL’. The woman’s
voice became louder. I looked at her more closely to see she had
pink eyes to match her clothing. Was that natural?

“Exciting indeed,” she was
saying. “And the big question we all want to know is how he’s
adapting to life here.”

“That’s right,” a man who
didn’t appear on the screen said. “People are also dying to know
what he looks like.”

The headline
HUNT FOR BOY ENDS
appeared on the screen.

“Unfortunately, we’ll have
to wait until tomorrow to find out,” the man’s voice
said.

A picture of the
Presidential Tower was displayed beside the reporters head. “Can
you believe tickets have already been sold out?” the woman
asked.

“Tickets were gone after
only five minutes,” the man told her. “Nothing has sold out as
quickly as this event. People are drawn to this boy. It’s
absolutely miraculous.”

“They sure are,” the woman
said. “I know I’ll be watching the interview tomorrow.”

“Oh definitely,” the man
said. “This will be bigger than the last Olympics.”

They were definitely
talking about me. The reporter said a few more things before the
screen changed to an advertisement for the latest phone. It looked
much like the controller for the TV. It was a transparent piece of
glass that lit up when touched. I grabbed the TV controller and hit
the button to change the channel. Another news station came
on.

“We imagine he’s being
treated very well as we speak,” an older man was saying. The
headline read:
CARSYN TO SIT WITH MEEKO
AND CLEO
. I changed the channel again,
only to come across another news station guessing what I was doing
and what I looked like. They showed a large crowd standing outside
of the Presidential Tower taking pictures and trying to get in. A
line of officers monitored the area. These people were obsessed
with me. Out of all things to talk about, it was me. There were
plenty of others things going on, such as the starving outside of
the wall. But no, it was all about me.

What was going
on?

In anger, I flipped
through the channels rapidly until I came across some sort of
program unrelated to me. I ended up spending the next hour watching
a story about a boy who grew up to be an officer at the wall,
making sure outsiders didn’t try to walk in. Toward the end, he
ended up shooting a poor woman wanting to get in. “We must protect
ourselves,” the main character said. I had to change the channel at
that point. Ridiculous.

Next, I came across a
channel talking about the weather. A gray-headed man who didn’t
look old in the face pointed at a map of what I guessed to be New
Dawn. “It’s getting rather dry again, so tomorrow, the National
Weather Institution will create moisturized clouds around the area
to bring us some precipitation.”

“But it’s a different
story in the southern region,” a woman took over. The screen
switched to her. “A mistake made by the NWI led to a series of
tornados this morning – first tornadoes in two decades.”

“That’s right, Dyna,” the
man said. “We’ll have more after this break and what the NWI has to
say about their unintentional mistake. I imagine somebody’ll be
losing their job after that little incident.”

Outside the glass wall, it
had grown completely dark. I could barely see the wall in the
distance.

I thought about Ashton and
Marley. They were still stuck in the cold cells, probably starving.
There I was, sitting in a huge luxurious room watching the TV. It
wasn’t fair. Perhaps I could try to get them. I thought about going
to find them, but that wouldn’t work. I didn’t have a key to get in
and I knew I didn’t have a chance at picking the lock. And besides,
there was a good chance Cornelius was having me watched. In fact,
there were probably cameras and recorders in the room.

A knock came at my door.
Another transparent screen appeared next to the door, revealing a
man outside of my door.

Surreal.

It was Cornelius. The
words ‘Deny’ and ‘Allow’ appeared beside his face. I looked at the
TV controller in my hand. The numbers were now gone, also revealing
an image of Cornelius’s standing outside of the door. Before I
could hit the deny button, the option faded away. The knob wiggled
and the door opened. The screen revealing his face faded away. The
buttons on the remote returned.

His anger was gone, but I
knew it was still there somewhere. And nobody knew when it would
jump out. He took a seat on the other end of the couch, across from
me. He crossed his legs. Glancing at the TV screen in front of me,
he spoke, “Bet you never saw anything like this outside of the
wall.”

“Maybe there would be
stuff like this if you guys didn’t separate yourselves from
everybody else.”

Cornelius didn’t get
angry. He rubbed his hand across the leather. “It’s for the best,”
he said. “Limiting the number of people who can have these nice
things makes this a lot better.”

“It’s not right,” I
said.

“I don’t care,” he said.
“I have it, and that’s all that matters.”

“You know,” I started,
feeling my face turn red. “If the people outside every city wall in
the entire nation got together, they could easily take you
down.”

“But it’ll never happen,”
Cornelius said.

“And why is that?” I
asked.

“It just won’t,” he
said.

I said nothing. The thing
was, he was right. It would be way too difficult to get everybody
together.

“
They don’t care anymore,”
he said. “They’ve adapted.”

He was wrong. They did
care. People just didn’t think they had a chance. I didn’t blame
them. That’s exactly how I felt before Edgar found me.

“Maybe people inside a
city wall will realize what’s going on,” I said.

Cornelius laughed. “My
boy, that would never happen. Look around you.” He motioned around
the room. “They don’t want to lose everything. This life isn’t so
easy to leave behind.”

“I won’t have a problem
doing so,” I told him. I had to admit that everything was nice and
comfortable. But the longer I stayed in the room, the closer it
made me to everybody else in the city, and I didn’t like it. I
didn’t want to be one of them.

“Let’s get to the point,”
Cornelius said. “You have to be prepared for the interview tomorrow
evening.”

“
Yay,” I said
sarcastically.

Cornelius ignored me. “You
will act like you are happy to be here. You will say that you are
treated well here. You will not say anything about Grandfather. You
will appear so thankful that you’re with me and will act as if
everything is just so perfect.”

“And what if I
don’t?”

“As I’ve said before,”
Cornelius began. “I have two prisoners just taking up
space.”

I didn’t have to think
long. “I’m only doing it to keep Ashton and Marley
safe.”

“I don’t care why you’re
doing it,” Cornelius said coldly. “Just do it.

“And what will you have me
say about being kidnapped?”

“You’ll tell them that you
were kidnapped outside of the orphanage at midnight.”

“Why midnight?” I
asked.

“I need some support for
the new curfew law I’m working on,” he answered. “You’ll give that
to me.”

I didn’t want to do that.
But there was nothing I could do. Perhaps the reason Cornelius
wasn’t so angry was because he found a way to turn the situation in
his favor.

“You will tell the people
that they were from a different region…that way everybody will be
more thrilled about the
Bill of Border
Control
that just went into effect. If
they ask why they did it, you will tell them they hated me for the
bill and learned that I was searching for you. They got to you
before I could.”

“Anything else?” I
asked.

“You’ll tell them that
I’ve been waiting for you to settle down before talking about your
parents . . . my friends.

That made me angry, mainly
because I still didn’t know if he was lying about my parents or
not. He said he knew the truth. I just didn’t know if that was
it.

Cornelius took out a piece
of paper and handed it to me. I skimmed through it. It was
basically everything he had just told me. “Memorize it,” he said.
“Your mistakes will be on Ashton and Marley.” He stood up and
walked to the door just as another knock sounded. We both watched
the screen pull up, revealing a man in a white suit pushing a
cart.

“Dinner,” Cornelius said,
opening the door and greeting the man. The server pushed the cart
to the dining table. “Enjoy your stay,” Cornelius said. “Be ready
for the interview tomorrow.”

I stayed seated while the
man laid out my dinner on the long table. I thanked him before
leaving. I don’t know why I did that, especially if he was a part
of Grandfather. Maybe he wasn’t. I don’t know.

I walked to the table to
see what was there. I lost my breath. One empty plate sat in front
of the chair at the end of the table. Surrounding the empty plate
were three different types of meats, a basket of bread, a bowl of
salad, some sort of rolls stuffed with some kind of meat and
vegetables, four different sides that I had never seen before, and
a large plate with every fruit you could think of.

It was so unfair. There
was more than enough food for me. I didn’t eat this much food two
weeks in the orphanage. I thought of what Marley and Ashton would
be eating. It would be another average sandwich and a glass of
water. I couldn’t eat all of that good food knowing they were
hardly getting anything. I reclaimed my seat on the couch, ignoring
the dinner until I couldn’t anymore. My stomach growled and I felt
lightheaded. I was going to have to eat something. I slowly sat
down in front of the empty plate and shoved a fork into a piece of
meat. It seemed to melt in my mouth. I closed my eyes. “Wow,” I
whispered to myself. I couldn’t control myself. I filled my plate
up with a little bit of everything. I could’ve refilled my plate,
but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It just wasn’t right. I
leaned back in my chair, glaring at the food, feeling guilty
instantly. I didn’t deserve to eat like that. And something told me
Cornelius was indulging me with nice things on purpose. He wanted
me to feel like one of them. He succeeded, and I didn’t like it. I
lied down on the couch, thinking of Ashton and Marley, thinking of
everybody under the mountain, thinking of my interview. Anything I
said wrong would come back on Marley and Ashton. My safety was
secured for the time being. Surely there was something I could do
to assure Marley and Ashton’s safety.