Gravity Box and Other Spaces (22 page)

He had permission to skip school that day because of the new Ro-boy, but he asked to go anyway. He left his personal monitor behind, though, and took a different transit line per the PAL's instructions.

It took a while. Once he arrived he took out the matrix. He didn't think he would need it anymore, but Erica was not at school. He didn't know the school either because it was for older kids. He had to ask around. Finally, he found someone who knew her and told him where to go. Bruce did not want to go where he had been directed, but he did anyway.

The area was over a kilometer away. He recognized Erica from her PAL's description, but she was taller than he expected. Taller than the others with whom she occupied an abandoned section of an old commercial district. Bruce knew he should not be here, that it was dangerous, though exactly how he did not know. Seeing her, laughing and drinking something purple from a short bottle, he hesitated. She looked past the age to need a friend like Ro-boy, but he had made a promise and Ro-boy always told him to keep promises.

Also to never make them lightly.
He thought he understood why now.

He approached the group of six and stopped when they noticed him. A boy leaned toward Erica and whispered something. She grinned. Bruce felt watery inside.

“You're Erica,” he said.

The grin vanished. “How'd you know that?”

Bruce opened his pack and took out the PAL. Arm extended straight out, he brought it to her. “Your friend told me.”

“Your Teddy?” one of the others said, and they all laughed.

Erica reddened. “Piss off,” she said, looking past the PAL right into Bruce's eyes.

“It said you might say that. I am supposed to remind you about Pete,” Bruce said.

Erica lunged for him as the others laughed, her face twisted with anger.

“Who sent you, you little shit?” She grabbed at the PAL as Bruce backed away, suddenly terrified.

“It was an accident!” Bruce said, dropping the PAL, the shell of his Ro-boy, as he continued to back away.

Erica, fists clenched, glared at Bruce, but she stopped. The laughter finally died down. Erica gave her companions a gesture Bruce did not see and then swept the Ro-boy off the pavement.

She examined it and came toward Bruce again. She caught his wrist before he thought to run and yanked him close. She smelled sharp as he collided with her. He felt his tears well up as she dragged him away from the others and into an empty store jammed with bare metal shelves and broken glass. She whirled him around and released him so that he staggered backward into a wall and sat down.

“Tell me where you got this,” she said, holding up the insert.

“The doctor's office.”

“Which doctor?”

“Widistal.”

Erica snorted. “That asshole. What did you do, lift it? Yeah, I guess you had to; he wouldn't have just handed it out.” She frowned. “Or would he?”

“I found it in his drawer.” Bruce tried to straighten up without standing.

Erica tossed it back into his lap. “It's a little late. I'm too old for a PAL.”

“It wanted me to find you so it could come back. It misses you.”

Another snort. “Yeah, sure. Tell it thanks but it wasn't around when I needed it. Sitting in a drawer, useless. I haven't had it for—” She stopped, a distant gaze softening her face, and Bruce got the impression that it had not been so long ago that she had lost her friend.

“Did they give you a new one?”

She nodded. “Wasn't the same.” She stared out the broken window of the shop for a time and shook her head.

“Listen, a piece of advice. If you know what's good for you, don't depend on those things. All they do is try to program you to be a good citizen.”

“What's wrong with that?”

“Nothing if that's what you want to be.”

“I don't know what I want to be.”

“Exactly. Maybe you should find out before you let something else make you over. Gotta be somebody first before you become somebody else.” She glanced at him again. “My mom remarried. The new man didn't like where I was heading and decided I needed some revision. I don't know what he told Widistal, but it ended up with me losing my original PAL and getting one that, I don't know, fit my stepdad's idea what I should be.” She shook her head. “He never asked me. Mom I guess, being alone was too much of a risk for her to challenge him. Been close to a year now. Anyway, I chose to do without.”

“Did it work?”

She shrugged. “It is what it is.”

Bruce pulled out the matrix from his backpack and held it up. “This is yours.”

“Keep it. I don't need it anymore. Don't want it.”

Bruce put it back into his pack. “Okay.”

“Listen, you came here all by yourself? I'll walk you back. Not the greatest place to be for someone—I'll just walk you back.”

She took him to the transit stop near the school. “I appreciate what you tried to do,” she said.

He looked at her. “I made a promise, that's all.” As she began to turn away, he said, “Can I talk to you again sometime?”

“Why would you want to?”

He shrugged.

“Do you have any friends? Your own age, I mean.”

“Sure, at school—”

“I don't mean playmates. I mean friends, people you share secrets with—and trust.”

“I don't know.”

“If you don't know, then you don't. Do yourself a favor and make one. Do you more good than a PAL.”

“Do you have a friend?”

“No.”

“Do you want one?”

She opened her mouth and Bruce saw the rejection forming in her face, but she held it back and frowned, thinking. “What's your name?”

“Bruce.”

“Well, Bruce—maybe.” She took a slip of paper from a pocket and a pen from another and scribbled something. “This is my loco. Three days from now, call me. I'll let you know. Okay?”

Bruce took the paper and watched her walk away. Things shifted in his head, a quick surge of anticipation, then it faded. He put the slip in his pocket and went home. In the solitude of his room, he reinserted Erica's matrix.

Where's Erica?

“She didn't want you back.” He described the encounter to the PAL.

That is sad. I could be good for her now. It sounds like she isn't using a friend at all—

That sounded wrong to Bruce. Somehow he had the impression that you did not use friends. You had them, they had you. He was unsure how that differed from what the PAL meant.

“I'm not going to try to return you again.”

I understand. What will you do with me?

Without answering, he removed the matrix from the PAL and dropped it into his desk drawer. He took out the one his mother had intended him to have. Ryan's. She wanted Ryan. Wanted him to be Ryan. He knew that, but it did not matter, not the way he thought it should. She had no idea who he was, that was all. Maybe if she did, she might stop missing someone who could no longer be here.

He wrote a note for his mother, by hand, which was his way of letting people know it was important.

I'm not Ryan. I'm me. I won't tell Dad.

He tapped the end of the stylus against his chin, studying the note.
Good enough
, he decided, and wrapped the Ryan matrix in it and taped it closed. He set it aside until he could find a time to give it to his mother without his dad noticing.

He took out the slip of paper with Erica's contact loco and placed it on the desk. Three days, she said. Bruce wondered what it would be like to have a friend. He wanted to know what that was like.
Perhaps it was like finding yourself?

Sean Petty clamped the padlock in place and kicked back the straw in front of the door. He sneezed hard and wiped his nose on his sleeve wondering how much longer his cold would last. He turned to leave, but the sight of his brother Alan leaning against the ladder to the loft stopped him in his tracks.

“I said never to go in there.” Alan's voice was a deep, quiet rumble.

“My chores are done,” Sean said. “I was just looking. I didn't touch anything.”

Alan stepped away from the ladder. “Go on. Supper's ready.”

Sean ducked his head and moved past Alan. His brother was taller and a lot stronger, but he had never struck Sean. It only seemed sometimes as if he would.

Halfway across the barn, he heard the padlock open, and stopped to stare back at Alan. His heart raced. He should go into the house, do as he had been told, but his resentment won out, and he strode back.

Alan stood in the center of the small room, hands in his pockets, looking all around. A rack of small bows, little better than toys, leaned against one wall, quivers of arrows
hung from pegs above them. The opposite wall held a banner, red lettering across white canvass:

A framed photograph hung beside it: two rows of boys grinning at the camera, holding their bows. In the center of the second row, his oldest brother Roy towered over them all and alongside him a much younger Alan. Roy had been older by four years, a closer span than the eight years that separated Alan from Sean. Alan looked less and less like Roy each year, the strain of maintaining the farm wearing at him. The ten-year-old photograph showed Alan with an easier face: a happier boy than the man he now was.

Behind Roy stood a huge, round section of an ancient oak tree. That section hung now on the wall opposite the door. Six inches thick, nearly seven feet across, it had been the meeting table for the
Arrows
back when they had gathered on the farm. Sometimes, Sean remembered, they had taken it into Buxton for special meetings at the hall Roy used for
Arrow
business. Other clutter filled the corners of the locker, odds and ends Sean wanted to poke into.

“I told you to get back in the house!” Alan shouted without turning to face the door where Sean stood.

“I want to know about the Arrows!” Sean shouted back. “You keep it all locked in here, and you never tell me about them. It's not fair.”

“No, it ain't. But that's the way it is. Now, go on.”

Sean's hands shook with frustration. He did not want to cry in front of Alan, so he kept his mouth tightly shut and hurried out of the barn, back to the house. He ran up the stairs to his room where he stripped out of his coat and
boots and sat on his bed working to regain control of himself.

In the last year, since he had turned fourteen, Sean hadn't been able to ignore the deepening desire to know more about the
Arrows
. Alan's attitude made no sense. He knew so much. He knew everything that was left to know. But he refused to explain anything, just like everyone else. Roy was dead, seven years ago in the East, killed in some riot while serving in the army, and all Sean remembered about him were the stories he used to tell about the
King's Arrows
he used to lead, that and a big, friendly presence, doing what he could to make up for the deaths of their parents. Sean's memory of Roy was large and warm, but with too few details.

He washed his hands and face and went downstairs. He heard the tinny sound of the crystal set in the living room. He stopped at the entrance. On the small table by the door lay the daily
London Times
, December 10, 1936.

Alan sat in the chair next to the radio. He looked up and Sean became frightened at the expression on his face. The last time Alan had looked so grim was the day they had learned of Roy's death.

“What is it?” Sean asked.

“Hush, now. Listen.”

Sean held his breath. The radio said, “—found it impossible to carry on the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge the duties of King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love. Therefore—”

Alan shook his head. “The King's abdicating.”

“England is without a King?”

“Edward just stepped down.”

The radio droned on. Stunned, Sean went back to his room. He sat by the window and stared out over the dark smudge of forest that bordered the farm, barely visible in the starlight, and thought:
England is without a king—what will happen now?