The Moon Dwellers (17 page)

Cole dips his head forward
conspiratorially
and lowers
his voice, half-covering
his mouth
with one of his hands.
“I know a guy who can get one of the guards to turn off the electric fence for a few minutes, maybe ten if we’re lucky,”
he
says
.

I gawk at him like he’
s an alien.

“What?” he says
.
“We were thinking about trying to escape once so I looked into it.”

I don’t have to confirm that he is telling the truth—his face i
s dead serious.
“Okay.
If we get your guy to turn off the fence at say midnight, two hours after lights out, we can sneak out of our cel
ls and climb the fence,” I say
.

“Our cell
s will be locked,” Tawni points
out.

“T
here’s a trick for that,” I say
.
“I’ve done it before.
Get a small piece of cardboard or plastic from somewhere, anywhere, and when you shut your door for the last time at night
, slide the plastic between the door and the frame, blocking the deadbolt.
When the door automatically locks, it will still click, but you’ll be able to open it.”

“Nice,” Cole says, nodding.
I smile.
I am
glad to be able to bring some level of expertise to the table.

“Right,” Tawni says
, “so at five minutes to midnight we leave our cells.
Adele and I will be together
and we’ll meet you”—she gestures
to Cole—“at the fence.
We’ll
meet
in the shadows in the northeast wing.
When the electricity goes out we start climbing.”

Cole’s eyes narrow and his face crinkles
up.
“Ho
w do we tell the time?” he asks
.

“We’ll have to base it off
of the guards’ patrols,” I say
.
“Start counting from the ten o’clock lights out.
Approximately every fifteen minutes a guard will go by—watch through the slot in your doors.
Once seven patrols pass we’ll know it’s about quarter to midnight.
Then we’ll just have to count in our heads for ten minutes—six hundr
ed seconds.
Then we go.”
I am
feeling confident—prob
ably too confident—but it is
a good
feeling, one I have
n’t felt in a while.

“Wh
en should we do it?” Tawni asks
.

“How about tonight?” I say
, feeling eager butterflies in my stomach
.

“That’s pretty tight,” Cole says
.
“I’ll have to check with my guy to see if it’s possible on such short notice.”

“It better be,
” I say.
Acting in a hurry is
better than taking a long time to plan our escape.
That way the dirty guard wo
n’t have time to rethink his choice to help us.

“We’ll need money to pay hi
m,” Cole says
.
“You know, the guard who helps us.”

I knew it sou
nded too good to be true.
I do
n’t
h
ave any money and certainly
no
way of getting any.
But I ask
anyway.
“How much?”

“At least fifty Nailins I expect.”

My heart si
nk
s.
I have
n’t seen that much money in my entire life.
It might as well be a million.
Even if we co
me up with a w
ay to raise some money, we wo
n’t be able to get that
much in ten lifetimes.
I close my eyes tightly and clench
my teeth, tryi
ng to stifle a scream.
I need
a miracle.

I ge
t one.

“I ca
n provide the money,” Tawni says
.

My eyes flash open and I look
at the skinny, white-
haired girl beside me.
I look back at Cole.
He does
n’t
seem surprised.
In fact, it i
s like he ex
pected her response.
I realize
that when he mentioned the money he wasn’t talking to me.
He was talking to Tawni the whole time.

I turn
back to Tawni.
“You have
access to fifty Nailins?” I say
in disbelief.

“More if we need it,” she says
.
“When I got caught trying to go interdistrict without a travel permit my parents were all over me, asking me why,
why would I do such a thing?
So I gave them a BS story about how I really wanted to see the Lantern Caverns of the ninth subchapter a
nd how I never thought they’
d let me go.”
She pushes
a strand of hair out of her face, grinning.
“They bo
ught it, and although they couldn’t get me out of doing time in the Pen, they were able to make
my stay here as easy as I want
it to be.
I could have had a plush room on the third floor, five
-
star meals, access to a telebox, pretty much anything I want.”

“Then why do you sleep in a crappy cell next to me?”

Tawni’s face fa
ll
s
.
“Because if I took advantage of what my pare
nts could do for me, then I’
d be just as
terrible as them.
I swear to G
od, Adele, I’m not like them—never will be.”

“Truth,” I say
solemnly.

Tawni nods
.
“In any case, I still have access to an account they set up for me with the warden, I mean
with the concierge.”
I chuckle
at her little joke.
“There are more than two hundred Nailins in it.”

Cole whistl
es
.
“I didn’t know you had that much dough.
How about sharin’ some with an old friend of yours?”

Tawni smirks
.
“We’ll need all of it if we’re go
ing to
pull this off.”
She lowers
her voice again.
“First to pay off the guard and then to travel across the Moon Realm.”

I nod
.
“Thanks, Tawni.
And you too, Cole.
I wouldn’t stand a chance
without your help.”
I realize then that I do
n’
t have to be alone anymore—can’t be alone, ca
n’t sta
nd it for one more second.
I
hit a
new
low the previous day and then everything started moving u
p again.
My downward spiral is finally over
.

It reminds
me of something my da
d said one year at Christmas
, when we didn’t even have the money for presents, or
fancy
food, or anything.
He said
, “Sometimes, girls, you have to hit your lowest low just before you hit your highest high.
It makes you appreciate the good thi
ngs so much more.”
Right now i
s starting to feel like one of those times.
Yeah, maybe meeting a couple of friends and coming up with a plan to escape from a juvenile delinquent
facility i
sn’t the bes
t of times in my life, but it i
sn’t the worst either, and for that I
am
thankful.

We leave the cafeteria long after we arrived—we a
re the last to go.
Although we a
ren’t
satisfied by the food
, we a
re still satisfied.
By other things.
More important things.
Life
-
changing things.
I am
going to rescue my family, and hopefully myself at the same time.

Yeah, things a
re looking up.

Chapter Six

Tristan

A
hhh, a holiday at the Sandy Oasis.
It has
everything anyone could ever want.
Soft, plush beds to sleep on.
Warm, sa
ndy beaches (they even simulate waves and paint
picturesque ocean views).
Half-naked girls ready to throw themselv
es at any celebrity who happens
to make eye contact.

I throw up in my mouth when we arrive
.

Roc i
s carrying my bags wh
ile my security detail protects
me from the girls.

You
’re probably thinking that I am
a big wimp to let my father dictate the terms of m
y holiday so easily.
I could’
ve pushed back harder, tried to force him to see my point of view.
But you see, the thing is, my father doesn’t like being pushed
around
.
And I could tell he was in one of his moods, more stubborn than the lovechild of an ox and a mule.
So I played along.

Roc and I ar
en’t staying in the Oasis.
Not for long anyway.

We’re going to find the girl.
I hope she is alive.

We reach
my room with a record low of only three girls offering to have my babies.
I guess I am
losing my touch.
From the look
s
in their eyes, I think they a
re offering to have them, like, right now, immediat
ely.
I do
n’t make eye
contact for fear that they’
ll
rip their clothes off and
throw themselves at
me and my entourage.

The room i
sn’t really a room.
More like an entire wing of the hotel, comprised of ten disti
nct rooms, only five of which a
re bedroo
ms.
The others a
re sitting rooms, standing rooms,
massage rooms, and kitchens.
I do
n’t even count the six bathrooms as rooms.
The co
st for a single night would
fe
e
d an entire subchapter of the Moon Realm
for a year
.

Luckily we a
ren’t staying long.
“Quick and unexpected action is the most effective in battle,” my fightin
g instructor used to say.
I am
about to put his advice to the test.
Perhaps not in a traditional battle, but in a battle nonetheless.
A battle to take back my life.

I ask
my security guards to wait outside, to monitor the four doors for any fake-tanned girls trying to gain a
ccess to my suite.
When they are gone, I say
, “Is this going to work, Roc?”

“I’m not sure, sir,” Roc says
.

“Cut th
e sir crap, Roc, please,” I say
.
“We are about to embark on a rogue mission and I want you to be with me as a friend, not as a servant.”

“I’ll try, sir,” Roc says
, grin
ning from ear to ear.
I grin
back, swatti
ng at him playfully.
He punches at me and for a moment there is a good chance it’
s going to escalate into another practice fight, but
then there’s
a sudden knock at the door.

One of my guards enter
s
, a
giant
with no neck and fists the size
of
boulders
.
His nose looks like it has been broken a dozen times—it i
s flat and wide.
Although
I
expect to have to translate a series of grunt
s and hand signals, he surprises
me by speaking perfect English
, in a
n
unexpectedly high voice
.