The Unwanteds (18 page)

“It does matter,” Aaron said evenly
.

Alex watched the rivulets of rainwater roll across the not-quite-level square of dirt that was their backyard. He lifted up his shovel and noticed the dent it had left. And then, using the blade of the shovel in different directions, he made a triangle. And attached to the bottom of the triangle a rectangle. “Look,” he whispered. “It’s our house.”

“Stop or I’ll report you.”

“What’s the sense in that?” Alex said logically. “I’m already Unwanted.”

Aaron frowned, and then looked at the mud drawing, tilting his head this way and that. “What? I don’t see.…”

“Not a real house,” Alex sighed. “Don’t you see that it looks like our house?”

The rain muted the edges of the drawing as Aaron shook his head, puzzled
.

Alex glanced over his shoulder. There was no one in sight. He grabbed the food scraps bucket, picked out a chicken bone, and pushed the shovel toward Aaron. “Here, hold this. Now watch.” Aaron took the shovel as Alex sank to his haunches and made a triangle with a rectangle attached to the bottom. “See?”

Aaron shifted his eyes uneasily. “It’s …,” he said, but it was like he was thinking so hard about what he was seeing in the mud, and how he shouldn’t be thinking about it at all, that he couldn’t think and speak at the same time. He dropped down to his haunches too, almost as if being smaller would protect him. The shovel’s handle rested along his damp neck and the collar of his now rain-soaked shirt
.

Alex glanced sidelong at his brother. He twirled the bone between his fingers, and then held it out loosely in the palm of his hand toward Aaron. The rain splashed on his forearm, shattering the air
.

Slowly Aaron peered over his shoulder this way and
that, then slipped his hand over the once-innocent chicken bone, which now held the power to decide his future and his fate. And shakily he lowered it to the mud. With a light hand he tried to copy Alex’s house, which had now melted and was gone
.

Alex watched him for a moment, trying to keep from breathing too hard in excitement and fear, and then dumped the bucket of scraps in the hole and began to push the mud back over it with his shoe to fill it
.

Aaron, entranced, wiped the mud clean with his left hand and drew another house with his right. This one had almost begun to look like something when the boys heard the squelch of footsteps behind them
.

“Boys,” said the deep, cold voice of Mr. Stowe. The man stepped forward as Aaron wildly tossed the bone toward the hole and turned on his haunches to face his father, the shovel in his hand
.

Alex stared at the bone, which had landed near his feet, and stopped pushing the mud into the hole, knowing that hiding the evidence wouldn’t help his case at all. He turned around slowly, the empty bucket swinging in his
hand as hard drops of rain pounded against it
.

Mr. Stowe stared hard at the ground, where Aaron’s house was slowly melting away. He looked at Aaron, then at Alex, then back to Aaron again. “Alex,” he said to Aaron, “give your brother the shovel and come with me,” he said in a horribly quiet voice
.

Aaron’s eyes grew wild, and then he controlled himself. He handed the shovel to Alex and followed his father to the house
.

“And Aaron,” Mr. Stowe said, not realizing he was actually talking to Alex, “finish up your brother’s work.”

What Mr. Stowe didn’t see as he walked into the house was the leap of hope and the pleading glance to play along that Aaron shot to Alex over his shoulder. Nor did he see the returned look of disbelief, followed by a cool shrug of indifference from Alex, the already Unwanted. Alex turned his back on his brother, and, using the shovel as he always did, he slowly, methodically, filled in the hole
.

It was the slurping of the ice cream malts through straws that woke Alex. He opened his eyes, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling, trying to figure out where he was.

“Have a nice nap?” Meghan grinned.

Alex sat up and shook the sleep from his brain. “Yeah,” he said, “actually, I did. I haven’t been sleeping very well the last few nights.” He rubbed his eyes. “Where’s Sam?”

Meghan shrugged. “Library, maybe?”

Lani stared at the wall and didn’t say anything at all.

“Lani?” Alex said. “Are you okay?”

Lani stared at the wall and said even less than nothing, if that were possible.

Meghan raised her eyebrow. “Hmm,” she said. “What’d you do now, Alex?”

“I swear, I—nothing!”

Lani slurped on the dregs of her milk shake. Loudly.

Meghan looked back and forth between the two and slowly, uneasily, got up from the couch. “I’m … going to go find out where Samheed is,” she said carefully. “I’ll be right back.” She hurried over to Earl, glancing back occasionally over her shoulder.

“Lani, I—”

Lani sat up and faced Alex, silencing him with her glare. She breathed evenly three or four deep breaths, her eyes flaring. Finally she spoke. “You don’t just kiss a girl on the cheek and then ignore her for three days.”

Alex’s jaw dropped. He flushed bright red.

“Don’t do it again.”

“Uhh …” Alex whispered an oath under his breath and put his burning face in his hands, trying to think of something to say. Finally he sighed deeply, looked up, and gave Lani a helpless look.

“I said, don’t do it again.” Lani’s voice was growing louder.

“Okay! Okay, I won’t. I’m … sorry. I’m … wait a second.” He tipped his head to the side. “You mean, don’t … you know. The first thing? Or don’t, um, ignore you?”

Meghan sidled back over to them, clearing her throat loudly as she approached.

Lani rolled her eyes at Alex and smiled brightly at Meghan. “Is Samheed coming down tonight?”

“Maybe later, he said. He’s working on some art project in
the library with Will Blair.” Both girls sneered at the mention of Will’s name.

Alex sat very still, not quite sure if he was allowed to speak. And not needing to, as it turned out, since Meghan and Lani were both suddenly quite chatty.

“So, what’s he working on?”

“It’s some sort of drawing thing. Threety, I think he called it? Alex, you know what threety is?”

Alex cleared his throat. “Uh, what?”

Lani tilted her head. “Do you mean 3-D? Like, three-dimensional?”

“Yeah, that’s it, I think. It’s like he’s trying to draw a closet door on the wall of his room, but it would be a 3-D doorway that led to a room you could actually go in and out of. He was thinking of it as a defensive spell—a place to hide, I guess.”

“How would you keep others from coming in it once you’re inside, though?” Alex asked, intrigued.

“That’s what I was wondering,” Meghan said. “Only Mr. Today can do that.”

Lani whipped her hair behind her ear and rummaged through
her book bag. “Hold on a minute,” she said. “I know I read something …”

Alex thought Lani’s ear was just about perfect. He thought about how he’d whispered into that very same ear right before he’d kissed her, and he blushed again.

Meghan, eyeing Alex, rolled her eyes.
Ahh, now I know what’s going on
, she thought.
Geez
. She coughed lightly. “I’m still trying to figure out how Simber and Florence got into the theater that one time. They’re way too big to fit in the tube, and that’s the only way in there.”

Lani pulled out a book. “Oh, that’s not too tough, Meg. I wondered the same thing. In fact Alex could probably make that happen better than either of us or Samheed.”

“Who, me?”

“You’re the artist, Alex.” Lani said. She smiled; all traces of the earlier fire in her eyes were now extinguished.

“I don’t see how that gets Simber and Florence to fit in the tube,” he said. “What, did Ms. Octavia sketch 3-D pictures of them and put the picture in the tube?”

“No,” Lani said, her eyes dancing now as she paged through her book. “No, it’s much simpler than that.”

Meghan sat up, intrigued.

Alex’s brain started churning, trying desperately to come up with the answer before Lani read it, as if they were playing a game of trivia. “Let me guess,” he said. “Hold on—I’m thinking.” He squinched his eyes shut, picturing what elements were needed. “Okay …,” he said.

“Well?” Lani jiggled the book on her lap, her finger holding the place.

“She drew a bigger tube in 3-D.” Alex said.

Lani blinked. “No.” Lani watched Alex’s shoulders fall in defeat, thinking about it. “But I think that would work too,” she said thoughtfully. “Good one, Al.”

Meghan frowned. “Well, what did she do, then?”

Lani smiled. “Picture the theater. Back where Simber and Florence were standing. What was right behind them? I’ll give you a hint—there’s something the theater has that this lounge doesn’t have.”

Alex looked up. “Doors,” he said, puzzling. “Huge ones. But nobody ever uses them—they’re just painted on for aesthetics, right?”

Meghan blinked.

Alex tapped his chin.

“Oooh,” they said together. Lani grinned.

“But I still don’t see …,” Meghan began.

Alex’s eyes lit up. “So, if Ms. Octavia, or anyone good enough to draw in 3-D, painted the same set of theater doors somewhere else in the mansion, Simber and Florence could simply push them open and walk right into the theater, through those painted doors, without using the tube. Right?”

“Exactly!” cried Lani. “Just as if they were walking through any real door.”

Meghan’s clouded face began to clear. “But … why have the tubes at all, then?”

“Think about it—all those doors that would have to be painted in everybody’s rooms—there would be no room for them all! We’d have to move our beds around to get to them. And this way,” Lani said slyly, “Simber can’t get into the lounge.”

Alex sat up, his stomach twisting. “So, a 3-D magical drawing of any real doorway, anywhere in the world, would lead you into that room? No matter where you are, or where the doorway is?” He leaned forward, holding his breath.

“Yes!” Lani said. “Isn’t that cool? But they’re really hard to
paint. I can’t understand why Samheed would think he could draw a closet of defense in a hurry—it would take hours. Days, maybe.”

Alex’s mind whirled.
All I have to do is learn to paint in 3-D
, he thought.

“Wow!” said Meghan. “I’m going to go tell Sam anyway. Maybe it’ll help with their project.” She went over to the tube and disappeared, leaving Alex and Lani quite alone in their corner of the lounge.

Alex looked up and cleared his throat. “You’re really smart, Lani.”

Now it was Lani’s turn to blush. “Yeah,” she said. “I like to read.”

Alex glanced at her latest spell book. “Do you have any advanced spell books? Not like the history of killing spells like you were reading the other day at breakfast. But, like, ones with … with lethal spell components actually written in them?” He almost whispered the last part.

“No,” Lani said.

“Oh.”

“Why?”

Alex remembered what Ms. Octavia had told him about the scatterclips spell. And he thought that if he ever came across the High Priest Justine in a real battle, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill her. “No reason, I guess. I mean …”

“Well,” Lani said, “if I find one, do you want to know about it?”

“Yes. I mean, I guess so. It wouldn’t hurt.” Alex looked down at the carpet for a long time. “So, um, about that other thing, with the kiss?”

Lani blushed hard. “I think you’re smart enough to know what I meant.”

He bit his bottom lip, and then leaned forward, elbows on his knees, peering at her, remembering when they first met. “Hi,” he said softly. “I’m Alex. It’ll go quickly.”

Lani blinked at him, surprised that he remembered that first day. “Lani,” she said. “And no, it won’t.” They both smiled at the grim memory.

“Do you—,” they both said at the same time, and laughed. “You first,” said Lani.

“Do you ever think about them? Your father? Your family?” Alex asked.

Lani’s eyes hardened. “Never. Only my younger brother, who Mr. Today promised me he’d try and save.”

Alex regarded her thoughtfully. “Mr. Today can do that?”

“I guess he can try. He told me he helps the High Priest Justine decide who the Unwanteds will be. He said when my father wanted to send me to the Purge before I was thirteen, he helped convince Justine to do it.” Her eyes clouded.

“Wow,” Alex said, a bit shocked. “I didn’t know. Mr. Today must have really wanted you here.…” He trailed off, lost in thought.

“And my father must have really wanted to get rid of me.” She shrugged off the hurt. “What about you? Do you think about your parents or your brother?”

He was quiet for a long moment. “No,” he said, finally. “I never think about them at all.”

Windows and Doors