Masterminds (15 page)

Are the footsteps becoming quieter? I peer through the grating.
The guard is walking away from us!

With her finger, Tori gestures above us. At first, I don't understand. And when I finally do, I wish I didn't.

The duct we're in is an offshoot of the ventilation line we crawled across on. It is plumb-line vertical. In other words, the only way out of here is by climbing straight up through a featureless metal tunnel without so much as a single handhold. And we have to do it silently, to avoid attracting the attention of the Purple People Eater on the other side of the wall.

Above me, Eli presses the rubber soles of his shoes into the sides of the tin passage and lifts himself a few inches, pushing outward with his hands to jam himself in so he doesn't fall.

“I can't do it,” I whisper. But I have to be so quiet that my words don't reach the others.

Tori is already shoving me from below.

I try to say no, but I don't dare produce any sound. I realize in horror that I'm going to have to do the impossible because there's no way to refuse without giving away our presence in the duct.

It's the most grueling, exhausting, painful, and unpleasant thing I've ever attempted. Once we've made it a few feet up from the bottom, warm, slimy droplets begin to rain on me—Eli's sweat. I realize that I, in turn, am sweating all over Tori, who deserves better. Not only is she climbing herself, but she's boosting me ahead of her.

About ten feet up, we reach the print shop level. Gingerly, Eli eases the grating out of the wall.

“Did you catch that Dodgers game last night?” comes an adult voice.

A flash of purple fabric passes by the opening.
A second guard!

Eli is so startled that he drops the grating to the tiles. In that instant, the entire world grinds to a halt as we freeze inside the duct. If they heard us . . .

“Yeah, a real pitcher's duel. It all came down to that squeeze play in the bottom of the seventh . . .”

Three kids have never been so perfectly still and soundless. Somehow, in their baseball conversation, the Purples missed the clatter of the grating. Miracle.

Carefully, Eli fits the register back into place and we climb on, an inch at a time. I'm getting better at this, but not much. The agony in my shoulders is excruciating, and the effort to keep my sneakers jammed against the sides feels as if I'm being torn in two, like a wishbone. It's an unimaginable ordeal when you can't allow yourself so much as the luxury of a groan.

Eli passes the outlet for the surveillance monitoring station. He doesn't even consider exiting there—not with two Purples on the scene.

Still ten feet to the top. A new worry begins to nag at me. We're now high enough that if Eli slips, he'll wipe us all out permanently. It's a very long way down, the equivalent of a three-story building. And it's only becoming longer.

I can tell when Eli sees the end in sight. He speeds up, if you can use the word
speed
to describe our snail-like progress. Whimpering with exertion, he hauls himself into the main passage and reaches down to help me. I swear this is the scariest part—to be so close, with the danger of falling still very much a possibility. The walls are slick with perspiration and my body is a single blinding ache.

And then I'm there, lying flat on my face on the cool metal. Never could I have imagined that simply being horizontal could feel so glorious. I can't move; Tori has to climb over me, digging her sneakers into my back. I barely notice. There are degrees of pain, and this one barely registers after what we've just gone through.

Gonging footsteps on the metal stairs indicate that the Purples are on their way up. I grasp the problem immediately, but Eli and Tori haven't figured it out yet. And there's no way I can warn them—not with the guards so close.

I squeeze past them in the tiny space. The next time Malik calls me shrimp, I intend to tell him about this moment. No way could somebody his size have managed it.

There it is in the duct ahead of me—the grating we removed to climb down to the security station. If the Purples happen to look up, they're going to see a hole in the ceiling where the grille is supposed to be!

The gonging sound is very close now.
They must be right at the top of the stairs!
I can't risk crawling—it would make too much noise. In desperation, I launch myself forward, belly-sliding along the passage. Without stopping, I snatch up the grating, reach it down through the opening, and then pull it back into position, just as the two Purples appear at the top of the stairs below me.

One by one, we slither noiselessly over the security station, clutching our guts during those terrifying seconds we spend exposed, directly above the guards. Once we're past, though, moving forward, instead of up, it seems as easy as a stroll down Fellowship Avenue. We cross over the factory floor and soon reach the main feed from the air conditioner on the roof.

That first glimpse of night sky is the most beautiful sight I've ever laid eyes on. Then it's gone, and Malik's big ugly mug is blocking the view. Actually, he looks
beautiful too. Anybody would.

“What took you so long?” he rasps.

“Not now,” Eli groans. “Get us out of here!”

Malik drops the rope down to us, and we climb up to the roof. The second my feet hit the gravel, my legs collapse under me, and I sit there, cross-legged, weeping.

“Are you guys all right?” asks Malik. He seems pretty frazzled himself. It couldn't have been easy, waiting up here all alone, wondering what he would do if we didn't come back.

“I'm not sure any of us are all right,” Eli says wearily. “But this isn't the place to talk about it.”

Tori puts an arm around me. “It's okay.”

But it's not okay. It might never be okay.

“Come on, Hector,” Malik chides. “Get a grip.”

You get a grip!
I want to yell at him.
You didn't escape by the skin of your teeth like we did! You didn't see what we saw!

Blinking back tears, I look at Eli and Tori, who heaved me up, dragged me along, and never once considered leaving me behind, even when my clumsiness slowed us down and threatened to get us caught. There's no way I could have made it without them.

Then I picture myself skimming across the duct and
resetting the grating in the nick of time. My shoulders straighten a little. There's also no way
they
could have made it without
me
.

My mother's words from long ago come back to me: I'm valuable.

I think of the conference room and wonder: Valuable
how
?

THINGS TO DO TODAY

           
•
  
Piano Practice (1.5 hours)

           
•
  
Ballet Practice (1 hour)

           
•
  
Begin Diet (Goal weight: 99 lbs. Currently 101.5)

           
•
  
Tread Water (18 minutes—preparation for big game)

           
•
  
Work on Book with Tori

           
•
  
Work on Serenity Day Project with Tori

I stare at the page for a few minutes and then cross out “Work on Book with Tori.”
Your Own Backyard
has to be put on hold for the time being. Then I draw an arrow,
moving our Serenity Day project to the top, and add the tag “prioritized.”

Serenity Day will be here before we know it, but every time I mention our mural to Tori, she acts like it's something she vaguely remembers from a distant past. Never mind that it's 50 percent of our Contentment grade, and pretty much the most important thing we do in school all year.

It's more than just the project. When you've been best friends with somebody your whole life, you know when they're acting weird.

We're more like sisters than friends. I call her parents pseudo-Mom and pseudo-Dad, and she has her own drawer in my dresser so she'll have clothes available for spur-of-the-moment sleepovers. There are things in my closet that I don't remember if they're hers or mine. That's closer than close.

Until lately. Neither of us has slept at the other's house for weeks. We hardly even hang out these days. I can't quite explain it. Nothing's changed. We haven't had a big fight—it's nothing like that. It's just that she's never got time for me anymore. Even when we're together, it always seems like her mind is somewhere else.

What changed? Sure, I know I annoy some people—okay, Malik—because I'm kind of a perfectionist with my to-do lists. But Tori and I have been best friends since the cradle. If that stuff bugged her, it would have come out
years
ago.

What's so different about
now
?

My mom has a theory. “You girls are getting older, Amber. You're reaching the age where your interests might be, you know, evolving.”

Translation: When you get to the upper grades, you start wanting to have boyfriends and girlfriends. I get that. How clueless does she think I am? You'd have to be locked in a closet not to notice that Tori has been brewing kind of a crush on Eli. But this is different. Something's bugging her. The last few days she's been pale, with dark circles under her eyes. I'm positive she's having trouble sleeping, although she insists she's fine.

When I finally nail her down to work on the project, I'm shocked by how little progress she's made. The background of the mural looks great—just the right hints of Carson National Forest, with the mountains in the distance. But she's barely started on the faces, which is annoying because last week she blew me off, saying she was too busy working on the faces!

I'm fuming in her attic studio, waiting for her to get out of the shower. How big a deal should I make out of this? I don't want to fight—that will only drive her away, and things are bad enough already. But if she gets a D, it's
my
D too. Even if I ace everything else in Contentment all year, the best I could hope for would be a C. And that just doesn't cut it when you're the teacher's kid.

Well, at least there's a set of pictures—head shots—on the table beside her easel in her attic studio. That means she
is
working on faces—or at least she's planning to. I leaf through them, curious to see who she's planning to use. It's a lot of kids, but plenty of adults too, especially people like Mom, Dr. Bruder, and Mr. Frieden, who are so prominent around town. There are a few Purple People Eater cards. She even has Bryan Delaney, who's the closest one to a real human being, since at least we know he has a real human wife. Our original idea was to substitute magazine faces for the Purples, who don't like to have their pictures taken. But that was before we knew about the cards.

Then I catch a glimpse of more photos. These aren't in the main stack; they're under the table in a small carton, half hidden under some tubes of oil paint. Did Tori forget these?

I fish them out and peer at the print on top. It isn't a head shot—it looks kind of like one of the bulletin boards at school. I squint at it. The heading says
Osiris 1: Eli Frieden.
It's dotted with pictures of Eli at all ages, including when he was a baby. There are other things too—papers and notes—but they're too small to read. A few seem to be on school stationery.

How serious has this crush become? Has Tori started an Eli collection? I frown. If that was true, she'd have a collection, not a picture of a collection!

I probe further. It's another bulletin board picture—this one's Hector Amani! I know for a fact, even without asking, that Tori doesn't have a crush on Hector!

And another one. It's
me
!

I hear Tori's footsteps on the attic stairs too late. “Okay, let's get to work—” She swallows the rest of it. Seeing what I'm looking at turns her to stone right there in the doorway.

“What
is
this?” I breathe.

I've known the girl since birth. I can honestly say I've never seen her so freaked out. “You can't tell anyone!” she begs. “Promise me, Amber!”

“Why do you have collages about people, with baby
pictures, and information? Why do you have one about
me
?”

She enters the room, still white-faced. “I can't tell you.”

“You
have to
tell me!” I exclaim.

“You wouldn't understand,” she says lamely.

“Try me!” I insist. “We're best friends! At least, we're supposed to be!”

“We are!” she cries. “Of course we are!”

“Then why can't you tell me what this is about?”

She fixes me with an intense stare. “Then promise you won't tell anyone! Not even your parents! I could get into
so
much trouble over this! You can't imagine how much!”

At this point, I'm pretty freaked out myself. It isn't just what Tori's saying, but the fact that she believes it a million percent. Whatever's going on here, something about it has her scared to death. “Okay. Take it easy. I promise.”

She's silent a moment, then says, “This isn't going to be easy for you to hear, but the adults in this town have been—monitoring us.”

“That's it?” I'm astounded. “That our parents keep an eye on us?”

“It's not what you think,” she says emphatically. “They're studying us the way a scientist studies the stuff in test tubes and on slides. When Randy said something's screwy here—”

“
Randy?
” I explode. “Is that what this is all about? Randy is
Randy
! He's never taken anything seriously since the day he was born, and you've let him ruin Serenity for you! Don't you get it? We won the lottery, Tori! Only a handful of us get to grow up in the most wonderful, peaceful, amazing town there's ever been! But thanks to
Randy
and that stupid note, you can't even see it anymore!”