On a Clear Day (2 page)

All that changed in a friggin’ heartbeat. It was like there was a plan to have a surprise party for everybody—how weird does that sound?—and then, at the last minute, they decided to kick the crap out of everybody instead.

We had all known about the Central Eight companies. C-8 controlled everything, and some people were worried about just how much influence they had, but it was the way they screwed with your head that got to me. Like when one of the companies claimed that they could end world hunger within ten years and announced a quadrillion-dollar investment. The Internet was all over that, saying that it would bring an end to war and an end to dictators and an end to everything bad except dandruff. The company brought out a whole new range of seeds that could grow anywhere and bugs couldn’t mess with. But then they got a patent on the seeds, and before anyone
knew it, they controlled all the food production in the world. And people were starving everywhere.

It was bad, but it wasn’t so bad if it didn’t reach you personally.

“The sun is always warm if your belly is full!” my mother used to say. Poor mama. After my father died, she worked so hard to find a better life. When things began to come apart, when people started noticing which category they fell into, she worked even harder to keep us out of the lowest rank. That’s how we got to Fox Street in the Bronx.

The lowest rank was the
favelos
, poor people who lived by either stealing or begging. Nobody knew how many of them there were. Some people said that in America, it was half the population.

The next step up was the Gaters, people who lived in gated communities. At first they just built communities with their own shopping malls and restaurants away from the inner cities, places you needed a car to get to. Then they started issuing special credit cards if you wanted to buy anything in their communities. And finally they put up gates and armed guards. My neighborhood,
mi barrio loco
, had gates even though no one had much money and the dried-up old men guarding them were mostly useless. Still, they wanted to keep the
favelos
out because they’d steal whatever little we had.

Mama worked two jobs to buy an apartment just for the two of us. I knew she was working herself to death. When she died, my family bought our apartment and gave me the little place I have now rent-free.

So there are the
favelos
, then the Gaters, then those invisible people who seem to have everything. The
New Yorker
magazine always has articles about how unfair it is for some tiny percentage of the population to own everything. But just knowing something doesn’t help you to do anything about it when you’re too busy trying to cover your own butt. You saw what was going on, and then after a while—maybe your mind closed down or something, I don’t know—you stopped seeing it.

Nobody saw the whole school thing coming. Well, maybe some people saw it, but I sure didn’t.

It started when the government announced that it was going to increase the educational opportunities for everybody and make the whole system fairer. Then we heard that everyone was going to get the new supertablets and individual instruction in any field you wanted. Free. That was like really great. All these trucks started pulling up and unloading boxes of electronic stuff and passing it out like it was free candy or something.

What came to my mind was that there were so many around, the
favelos
wouldn’t steal them. The tablets were good. They had all the connections you needed, but the apps were just so-so. If you knew what you were doing, you could fix the apps, and I did. What I couldn’t fix, what blindsided me, was when they closed the schools. I was almost fifteen.

What did you need schools for if the curriculum apps were available? You could go over and over the material until you got it in your head, and the FAQ sections were intuitive and generally on the money. I took advanced
math courses and dug them, but I missed hanging out in school. The word on the street was that the higher-level Gaters were hiring private tutors. The rest of us were on our own. It was nothing new, once you thought about it. It just was smack up in our faces for the first time.

I don’t know what it was about hanging out with other kids in school that was so good. I learned as much about the subjects I liked from the apps as I would have sitting in a classroom. But when school actually shut down I felt terrible. Something deep inside of me was going crazy, as if I was having trouble breathing. A friend said it was just because we were getting older, that letting go of being a kid was hard. I don’t know, maybe she was right.

I used to look forward to being seventeen. Now it doesn’t seem like such a big deal. If seventeen happens, it happens.

E
very day for the next week I watched the minutes pass, and then the hours. The light outside my window changed the color of the ancient blinds from pale yellow to gray to charcoal brown as the sun slanted from across Rainey Park. María’s death pushed in on me, squeezed me against the walls, and I realized how quiet I had become.
She just stopped singing
, Ernesto said. That was what America had become. In the old films, families chatted around the dinner table, making smart-ass remarks over canned laughter and twisting their faces to show what you were supposed to think. I loved the old films because the people in them were so uncomplicated. It was as if they had nothing really to care about.

I thought that I had nothing really to care about.

Footsteps on the stairs.
Clunk, tap. Clunk, tap
. It was Ramón, and by the rhythm of his steps, I could tell he was in a hurry. Perhaps his toilet was stopped up again and he wanted to use mine. He would pee all over it and I’d have to scrub it down.

“Girl!” he called in a hoarse voice. “Girl!”

I got up quickly, moved across the floor in the darkness, and turned on the lamp. My bathrobe was hanging on the door, and I threw it around my shoulders. Through the open door I saw his half-moon face close to me. His eyes were dark and shining. There was a fear in his manner.

“What?” I asked.

“Two boys down there,” he said. He pointed with a bony finger toward the floor. “They ask for you.”

“They said my name?”

“Yes!” He nodded furiously and his eyes grew wide.

I thought of going back to bed, of ignoring whoever it was, but I knew I would never go to sleep. Who were they? Maybe the old man was wrong and they didn’t know my name. Maybe they were just asking for a girl.

“What did they say?”

“They said Dahlia Grillo!” The bony finger was pointing up. “You can run to the roof and come down in the back where the cleaner’s used to be!”

“What do they look like?”

“One is in a wheelchair, and the
pájaro
is walking!” The
old man wiped at his chin. “Rafael is downstairs. He has a pistol in his jacket.”

A wheelchair?

“I’ll come down. Tell Rafael not to go away.”

“You should run!”

“What do they want?”

“Maybe they’re looking for a woman.”

“One in a wheelchair and the other is gay? I don’t think so.”

I put on my jeans and a sweater and followed the old man downstairs. He stopped every few steps and peered down, like a cat. The smell of fried garlic came up to meet us, and I felt better.

From the window on the first floor I saw them. Two white boys. They were in the street next to a small van. It looked like some kind of military vehicle. Wheelchair Boy looked anxious. The other one sat on the bumper and had one leg crossed over the other. He looked freaky. I went downstairs and to the front door. Rafael was standing near the front gate. His hand was in his pocket, and I knew he was holding his gun.

The boys looked at me. I couldn’t tell how old they were, but they were young. The one who the old man described as gay seemed confident. Either he had beautiful eyes or he was wearing eyeliner. His hair was streaked with colors.

“Who are you looking for?” I asked.

“Someone who wrote an article on computer projections for the
Math Journal
,” Wheelchair Boy said. “Dahlia Grillo. Do you know her?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Who are you?”

“My name is Javier.”

“Michael,” the other one said.

For a moment I thought they were making up the names, but then a flash hit me and I wanted to look up again at the boy who was standing. I thought I knew him.

“Why do you want to see this … what did you say her name was?” I was not looking up.

“Dahlia Grillo,” Javier said. He was smiling slightly. I didn’t like him.

“Why do you want to see her?”

“You live here,” the other boy said. “You know what is going on in the world. How screwed up things have become. But there are people who want to change things. Mostly young people.”

He looked away, down the street. I checked to see what he was looking at, and there wasn’t anything to see. We looked back at each other and he started talking again.

“There’s going to be a conference in London of people from around the world who have the idea that we can save the world. I’ve been invited to the meeting and want to bring some people with me. Very bright people who want to redirect the way the world works. There’s a bit of a crisis going on. The Central Eight—you know who I’m talking about?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe? Okay. They’ve leaked a report, or maybe it was hacked, that they expect a two-percent growth in the economy next year. They’ve been feeding us zero growth for years as some kind of balanced utopia, and now they’re
going to start heating things up again. That’s got to be either impossible to pull off or very painful for somebody else. Or it could mean that C-8 is going to expand.”

He stopped and looked at me.

“So?”

“So the Eton Group—that’s what the Brits call themselves—is organizing the conference to see what can be done,” Michael said. “I would like to take an American team with me. Seven or eight good people who care about doing something positive. I hoped that Dahlia Grillo would be part of that team.”

“From what we’ve heard, she has mind-blowing math skills.” Javier spoke again. “Someone in California saw an article she wrote in the
Math Journal
. She’s smart enough, but we’re leaving for the UK in two days, so we need her on board quickly.”

“If I see her, I’ll tell her,” I said.

“I’ve got a handout you can show her,” Michael said. “If she’s interested, there’s a number she can call. We need the best people we can get. I know the Brits are sharp, and I know they can’t handle the job by themselves. There are people all over the planet forming small resistance groups. The C-8 companies know about us, but they don’t see us as a threat. And I guess we haven’t been up to now. But if the two-percent figure is right—I just want to know whose veins they’re going to take it from …”

His voice trailed off. He looked serious.

“We’ll wait for her call,” Javier said.

“Who is ‘we’?” I asked. “Who are you?”

“I’m somebody who thinks that a group of us can make a difference,” Michael said. “I’m getting together other people who at least want to try. Or maybe they see that doing nothing when you see evil means that eventually you become part of that evil.”

“Could be,” I said.

“You don’t trust us.” Javier was smiling again. “That’s a good sign. Trust isn’t worth a lot these days.”

“Neither are words,” I said, wishing I hadn’t.

“Yeah, that’s true, but if you happen to see Dahlia”—Michael stood and extended his hand to me—“tell her we really need her.”

“You say the English call themselves the Eton Group,” I said. “What do you call yourselves?”

“The Resistance.” Javier spoke quickly.

“Not very original,” I said.

Michael shrugged and held out his hand again. It was soft and cool to the touch.

I looked away from his eyes.

Then they started to leave. The old man and Rafael stood at the door, watching them. I turned and saw Mrs. Rosario looking out the doorway. We watched as the motorized wheelchair went into the back of the van they were driving. It looked like Wheelchair Boy was getting into the driver’s seat.