Z 2134 (16 page)

“Liam!” she screamed back, looking up and
down the flaming wall for him.

“Are you OK?” he asked.

“Yeah, they’re dead!” she shouted over
the loud flames.

“Face the fire and look to your right!”
he screamed. “Are you?”

“Yes!” she yelled, “Why?”

“That’s south. Stay in the woods and head
south. I’ll find you where the fire ends!”

“OK!” Ana cried, swiping at her stinging
eyes.

“Be careful!” he shouted. “I’m going now,
moving away from the fire. We won’t be able to hear each other again!”

“OK!” Ana screamed. “I’ll meet you where
the fire ends!”

She waited for a reply.

None came.

After 10 seconds, she retreated into the
forest, glad to know Liam was alive and looking to help, however temporary that
assistance might be.

As Ana trudged deeper into the woods, she
tried to ignore the constant buzz from the Network orb, hovering above and
broadcasting her every move.

T
he TV hall inside Chimney Rock erupted
as the horn signaled the coming Fire Wall.

Adam’s emotions were balled up and thick
in his throat, trapped between fear, terror, and numb humiliation as the many
spectators inside the orphanage’s TV hall had one eye on the spectacle on the
screen and the other on his reactions. Some pretended they weren’t watching
him, but most didn’t bother to hide it.

And he refused to give them anything more
than the blank mask he gave the TV as he chewed on his inner cheek and dug his
nails into his leg.

While he’d managed to hide most of his
emotions, it wasn’t like they weren’t tearing him up on the inside.

Ana was barely gone, and Adam would never
see her again. Every time he saw her on the screen and the camera closed in on
her face, he saw the fear and terror, and it tore right through him.

His new friends were all around him;
Tommy, Morgan, and Daniel, each dividing his attention between the oversized
monitors blanketing the long length of the wall and trying to talk to him.
Fortunately, they were also talking to some girls in the front of the hall,
which kept most of their attention.

Adam kept his face blank, showing them
nothing as one side of each monitor showed Ana running from the fire and the
other showed a near-frantic Liam running behind her.

Ana cleared the Fire Wall as Liam’s feed
went temporarily dark, heightening tension as the producers liked to do. Ana
had just barely escaped, momentarily safe as flames swallowed the three
zombies. Then one of the monsters emerged from the Fire Wall, completely on
fire but still walking.

Adam sank into his chair, glad he was
near the back corner of the room. He sighed, still trying not to cry as he
watched his sister narrowly escape both zombie and fire.

Once Ana was safe, the whispers
surrounding Adam grew louder. He could see several kids staring from the far
sides of his peripheral vision and felt the bristles of others watching him.

Being watched was worse than being
invisible — how he had spent his time at Chimney Rock, and most of life, thus
far. When he and Ana first arrived at the orphanage, Adam was happy to wear his
usual cloak of invisibility. The last thing he wanted was what he’d always had —
people laughing at his expense, making fun of him and his “weirdness.” He was
content to just go to class, spend time with his sister, and keep to himself.

But now that his entire family was gone,
he felt truly alone for the first time in his life. And he wished that he’d
been wired differently so he had an easier time making friends.

He thought of his father and how easy it
always seemed for him to speak to strangers, even when he didn’t want to.

Adam watched the screen as it shifted to
show a girl with long black hair climbing out onto the wide branch of a tree,
then lying flat against the bark as a couple of zombies passed below.

I hope they see her.

Come on, stupid zombies, look up.

Immediately, Adam felt horrible.

While others openly rooted on the zombies
against players they didn’t like, or hadn’t bet on, Adam had never wished for a
player to die. But every player who died who wasn’t his sister put Ana a bit
closer to City 7.

He wondered what the odds were that Ana
could actually make it to City 7. He smiled a bit as he imagined both his
sister and father living in City 7, free and happy. But then when he imagined
that scenario, and him still being stuck in City 6, his smile faltered.

If Ana somehow wins, maybe I should get
myself arrested. Maybe all three of us could live in City 7, all happily ever
after.

He watched as his new friends laughed
with the girls. He thought about his father again. It was three years ago when
Adam first realized just how different he was from other kids. He suspected
that his parents had always known. It would explain the frequent whispers when
people thought he wasn’t paying attention. But he’d never really thought much
about it until three years ago, when kids started picking on him more harshly.
They called him names like freak, Quarter Boy, and stupid.

It was three years ago when he nearly
broke down in tears and asked his father why it was so hard for him to make
friends.

“Wanna know the secret?” his dad had
asked.

Adam nodded.

“Double I and F,” he smiled. “Remember
that and you’ll always be fine.”

“What does that mean?” Adam said.

His father smiled. “It means be
interesting, interested, friendly and funny. That’s the formula for making
friends. It’s never been more complicated than that.”

Still trying not to cry, Adam said, “How
can I be interesting if I’m actually boring?”

Adam’s dad shook his head. “No one’s
boring unless they think they are. So maybe it’s time you stopped sentencing
yourself to the lie.” His father smiled then winked, like he always did when
trying to cheer up his son. “Being interesting doesn’t mean making stuff up to
make people like you. It means framing who you are in a riveting light. You
know all those books you love to read?”

Adam nodded.

“Well, those books should give you an
endless list of things to talk about. People love stories, Adam, and they
always will. Keep reading and you’ll never run out. Beyond the stories,” his
father put his arm around Adam’s shoulder, “lies the other side of interesting,
and that’s being interested. As much as people love stories, every beating
heart wants another ear to listen to theirs. Treasure their words like they
were your own and respond to what they’re
truly
trying to say, and not
just that surface layer. Any time you’re talking about things that are
interesting to someone else, you’re instantly more interesting to them.”

“What about friendly and funny?”

His dad laughed. “You’re already
friendly,” he punched Adam lightly on the shoulder. “Problem is, you’re too
shy. There’s nothing wrong with that, really, but it does make it harder in the
making-friends department. If you don’t have the courage to say hi first,
that’s fine, you might grow out of that. Even if you don’t, you can always smile
with your eyes. But no matter what, you have to genuinely enjoy meeting new
people, or they’ll see through your smile.”

Before Adam could push the next protest
from his mouth, his dad said, “Being funny doesn’t mean being a comedian, it
means being able to recognize life’s regular humor. And if you don’t think
something’s funny, at least try to see why someone would. The more you see
humor in your world, the easier it is to draw it into conversation.” He
tightened his embrace. “Truth is, Son, making friends is about being yourself
more than anything else.”

After a few months in Chimney Rock, Adam
finally listened to his father’s words and was shocked when he found that his
father was right. For the first time ever, Adam had friends. Tommy, Morgan, and
Daniel all seemed to genuinely like him. They thought he was interesting,
seemed interested in what he had to say, and laughed at most of his jokes.

Still, even with new friends around,
nothing replaced the familiar comfort of the people who really knew you — family.

“Holy crap!” Tommy cried, “Check out the
black-haired bitch!”

“Don’t call her a bitch,” Daniel said.
“You’ll get us in trouble.”

Everyone turned to the screen as it
showed a slow-mo replay of the girl with black hair dropping from the tree and
launching her heel hard into a lone zombie’s chest. The zombie hit the ground,
screaming as the girl smashed her heel repeatedly into his face.

Morgan leaned into Adam’s ear and
whispered. “Hey, Adam, let’s hit the mess hall. There’s something we wanna show
you.”

Adam shook his head, then turned to
Morgan and met his blue eyes. “I don’t want to leave the hall,” he said. “I
don’t want to miss what happens with Ana.”

“You kidding, man?” Morgan ran his hand
through his curly blond ringlets. “They’re going to rebroadcast this shit a
billion fucking times!” His voice hit the air with a whispered hiss, low enough
that none of them could possibly get in trouble for his dirty mouth.

Daniel said, “Nothing ever happens the
first day, not after the Halo anyway, and we’ll only be gone for a minute or
two.”

Tommy’s hand fell on Adam’s back. “Come
on,” he said. “You don’t want us to do this without you. Trust me, it might
even make you forget about what’s happening to your sister on the outside.”

After another two minutes of pressure,
and the creeping fear that he might lose his only friends in the world, Adam
finally agreed, then stood and followed Tommy, Morgan, and Daniel out of the TV
hall, then down the long hallway toward the mess hall, which they reached in
less than a minute — but walked right by as if they were never aiming for it at
all.

“I thought we were going to the mess
hall,” Adam said.

Daniel said, “Nah, we’re going somewhere
cooler.”

Morgan grinned. “Patience,” he said.
“We’ll get there.”

Adam swallowed, suddenly nervous and
wishing he were somewhere else. They walked for another minute until they
reached a section of the hallway, far farther then Adam had ever been. The area
was roped off for repairs, with a black plastic curtain hanging behind the rope,
running from ceiling to floor. A sheet of parchment was stapled to the black
plastic with the single word “repair” written in all caps.

“Where are we?” Adam wondered out loud.

“Don’t worry about it,” Morgan said,
parting the plastic, then ducking behind it. Tommy followed, then Daniel, with
Adam taking tentative steps at the rear.

“We’re not supposed to be here,” Adam
said, shaking his head as he stepped past the curtain and then through an open
doorway.

Morgan was first to laugh, but Tommy and
Daniel were both only one breath behind. “Don’t be such a bitty baby bitch,” he
said through a cackle of laughter.

“Yeah,” Daniel agreed. “Live a little.
You can’t obey all the rules all the time.”

Adam kept quiet as they crept through a
darkened room, filled with a ton of heavy-looking furniture, all of it draped
in filthy, dust-covered sheets. Adam wasn’t sure whose room it had been, but it
seemed as if it had been there forever, and it had been just as long since
anyone had occupied it. Adam wasn’t even aware that there were living areas on
the same floor as the TV hall.

They crossed the shadow-filled obstacle
course and found a quiet stairwell on the farthest side. Adam hedged, falling a
step back where the dark shadows grew darker.

Morgan laughed, louder than before, then
said, “Peas or grapefruits?”

“What?” Adam twisted his grin, trying to
figure out what Morgan was trying to say without looking scared.

“Peas or grapefruits?”

Adam said, “What?” again, as he slowly
realized what he
thought
they were saying. He took a second to chew the
probability in his head, since being wrong meant laughing, and always at his
expense.

What if they’re not talking about my
testicles?

“Grapefruits,” Adam said.

Morgan grinned, said, “All right then,
let’s go,” and waved his arm forward, stepping into the dark stairwell. Daniel
and Tommy followed, with Adam another three steps behind.

A new surprise waited one floor below — another
room just like the one above.

Jayla was sitting on the middle cushion
of an old couch, with her legs crossed, and wearing the cutest smile Adam had
ever seen.

Jayla was the prettiest girl in Chimney
Rock. With olive skin, dark-chestnut hair, and golden eyes, she had a look that
was both exotic and intoxicating, so much so that whenever she crossed Adam’s
path, he was unable to
not look
at her.

Adam noticed Jayla for the first time on
his second day at the orphanage. She smiled at him while waiting for her
spoonful of lunchtime slop in the mess hall. Judging by the width of her smile,
she’d been living at Chimney long enough to maybe not realize how sour the food
tasted.