Another part of my brain whispers, You mean the books that you read on a screen? The books they—whoever they are—can change without anyone knowing about it?
I squirm in my seat, wishing for the first time that I hadn’t come here tonight. That I didn’t know the little that I have come to understand.
I thought I understood how things worked and why. Now . . .
“But why does it matter?” I say to Geeze. “There are other words.”
“Don’t you see?” he presses. “Words have power. They are the way we pass along history and knowledge and thoughts and ideas. Sometimes conflicting ideas about the same subject. Books—real books like the one in your hands—give everyone equal access to those ideas. Limit the words people can see and you limit their power. Limit the words heard on the news and you shrink people’s understanding of the world to what you want them to see.
“Get people focused on other things while you limit their choices in ways they don’t think to complain about. Only so many television channels—that way the ideas in them can be controlled. Only certain artists are allowed to display their work—because others might provoke different thoughts and viewpoints. You limit immigration and say it’s for safety and insist that other countries have made it harder to travel to theirs. Little by little, piece by piece, lives are controlled—minds are controlled—even as people still believe they are free.”
“No one controls my life,” I say. “No one controls any of us. We make our own choices—lots of them—every day.”
“Really?” he asks. “Is it really a choice if you aren’t able to see all the options? Think of a magician who tells you to pick a card. Is it really a surprise that you select the same one he’s thinking of if all of the cards he’s holding are the same?”
“I—I don’t know,” I admit. I’m unsettled, because I’ve never once given something like that a thought. And Geeze . . .
“What’s your name?” I ask again. “I can’t just keep calling you Geeze. It’s distracting.”
His left eyebrow arches. “Geeze? As in geezer?”
“You were the one who said I was too young.” I shift against the faded fabric of my chair and stare down at my hands. “I had to call you something.”
“Geeze.” He sounds baffled. Then he starts to laugh. “I think I actually like it better than Atlas.”
I look up. This is the Atlas the gray-haired woman from across the school said I would speak to?
Still grinning, Atlas answers, “As to how they control us? Well, what did you just do with the tablet and the book?”
“I searched for the words you mentioned.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to know if you were telling the truth.”
“Have you ever done anything like that before?”
“I look up the meanings of words all the time for school.”
“Not that. Have you ever verified what someone told you before?”
Verify.
To prove to be true; to confirm; to establish the truth.
“I’ve never had to,” I say, feeling dumb and defensive even as I say it.
“Really?” Atlas mocks. “Are you just that smart that you miraculously know everything, or is it because it never occurred to you to question something that you’ve been told is true?”
Insult and uncertainty twist inside me as Atlas gets up and starts to pace the length of the room.
“You’ve never questioned whether what your instructors teach you in class is the truth or whether what you hear on the news might not be real?”
“Of course not. Why would I?”
“Why wouldn’t you?” He walks to the wall and places his hand next to a line that reads:
Truth will ultimately prevail where pains is taken to bring it to light. —GW
“I suppose you believe the midnight-to-daylight curfew is to prevent people from being inconvenienced by pesky roadwork and vice versa. That the City Pride Department’s work miraculously caused crime to disappear with a fresh coat of paint? ‘Verify’ isn’t just a word they’ve pulled out of use, Meri. They’ve taken away people’s ability to question what is real and what is something they want you to believe. And the sooner you admit that it’s the reason you don’t know anything, the sooner we can get out of this room. Your mother—”
“My mother did important work!” I leap out of my chair. The book on my lap falls to the scarred wooden floor with a loud thud. “And crime did disappear. Otherwise they would have never taken all the cameras off the streets.” We still have a day off from school to celebrate Civic Liberation—the day the country removed the last of the cameras.
I look at the walls around me. My pulse thuds like steel drums in my ears. If I believe Atlas, I also have to accept that my mother kept a giant secret from everyone she claimed to love. That she didn’t trust us with something so important.
Suddenly, I’d rather live with the lie.
“You’re wrong,” I insist. “Whatever this is, you’re wrong about it and her and I’m not staying here and listening to you make fun of me or destroy my mother’s memory anymore. I’m going home.”
I shove my tablet into my bag and stride across the room.
“Meri, stop. Wait!”
I throw open the door of his “station” and step into the blackness of the anteroom. Atlas can chase after me if he wants, but I’m done listening. I’m not getting on his stupid train-that’s-not-a-train. I’m going to go home and recycle my mother’s paintings and any hint of the life she never cared enough to tell me about. Then I’m going to forget all of this. Every bit.
I feel my way to the door we came through and grasp the handle. Locked.
“Meri, I’m sorry.”
“Give me the key,” I yell as Atlas stops beside me. “I want to get out—now.”
“I’m not a stationmaster. I don’t have the key,” he says in hushed tones. “This is my first time being a conductor.”
I yank on the door. It won’t budge.
“I’m sorry,” Atlas continues. “I can’t even imagine how hard it must be for you to accept all of this. That your entire world is a lie. I’ve grown up my whole life surrounded by books—real books. I heard my father and grandfather speaking the words that your mother painted on those walls—talking about history and the way it’s changed over the years. How they—the government—shape lives without almost anyone understanding what they have done. I’ve never seen the world that you thought you lived in. It makes it harder for me to explain things to new people.”
The regret in his voice pulls at me and I shake my head. I’m not going to listen to any more. “Let. Me. Out!” I pull at the door again and kick it when it doesn’t open.
Atlas lets out a frustrated sigh and runs a hand over the back of his neck. “Look, your mom was involved in something—something important. She didn’t tell you about it, because that’s the Stewards’ policy. There are good reasons for the rule, but it hurts. I can see that, and I’m sorry. You can leave. I promise you can, but not just yet. A passenger can’t go until they have heard it all. You have to ride the train at least that far before you make the next choice. I can’t let you off in between stops.”
“Maybe your father should be the one to talk to me about the rest since his son seriously sucks at it.”
“He can’t.”
“Why should I believe that?”
Atlas snaps, “Because he’s gone.”
We stare at each other as his words settle like a blanket on the darkness.
“He’s missing, and no one knows where he is or even if he’s alive.”
Atlas’s voice cracks and I let go of the door handle.
Atlas shoves his hands into his pockets and looks up into the black above us. “My father and your mother were working with someone on an important project before her accident. I have no idea what it was or who they were working with. They kept it secret from almost everyone—including me. So when I saw you following me the othe
r day, I thought your mother told you about Verify, like my father and grandfather told me. That you were like me and maybe because of your mother and what she told you, you might know something that could help me figure out where he is.”
The rest of my anger fades. If my mother had gone missing, I would have done the same. I stare at him in the darkness. A sliver of light from the next room casts a shadow across his face, but it doesn’t hide the hurt and the hopelessness that I know far too well. We’re both alone. Both trying to find someone. We both need something to hold on to. Quietly, I ask, “What’s your dad’s name?”
Hope flickers in his eyes. “For safety, we all have code names. Your mother would have known him as Atticus. That’s a character from an important book I guess you never read and . . .” His expression goes blank as he studies my face. “Atticus. You’ve never heard of him, have you?”
I wish I could say yes. But I would have remembered a name like that. “I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head and turns so I can’t see his face in the shadows. “It’s not your fault. The Engineers told me to leave it alone.” There’s a pause. Then, “I screwed up everything tonight.”
My heart twists. I don’t want to feel for Atlas. He’s irritating and self-important. There are so many reasons for me to question whether he’s telling the truth—and yet, I recognize the hopelessness in his voice. And maybe it’s foolish, but I feel as if I know him because of it. Rose would tell me to be logical. She would warn me not to trust the connection I feel, but I do.
I step away from the door and turn my back on the exit. “So I’m a disappointment because I didn’t know anything about Verify and you screwed up everything about my ‘train ride’ in order to learn more about your father. Does that about sum it up?”
He stares at me and there is a moment where it feels like time stands still. Then relief fills his eyes and the corners of his mouth twitch. “You forgot to say that I’m a pain-in-the-ass know-it-all who acts more like he’s two than eighteen.”
“Wow. Eighteen. I’m only two years younger than you.” More like one year and a handful of months, but who’s counting.
“Yeah, I know,” he says, waving me back toward the light of the station room. “There’s a reason why your age matters. This might sound simplistic, but it’s hard to hide what you know once you know it. Because of what has happened to other resistance groups, the Stewards have been incredibly careful. No one under eighteen has been allowed in from the outside. We have had hundreds of our members arrested or gone missing because they unintentionally revealed too much about what they know to the wrong person. And the new recycling push that will be launched next week is going to cause us to lose members even faster now.”
“How?” I ask.
“People have been convinced they are doing good by calling the Earth Protection Group when they see a neighbor or friend with books or newspapers they don’t want to get rid of. Instead, they’re helping the government ferret out people who know too much while fulfilling their goal of eliminating all records that dispute their claims.”
I think about the man with the magenta-streaked hair who was arrested just days ago near the school.
“Look,” Atlas says. “Going back into the world after stepping onto the train . . . it’s not as easy as it sounds. You’re different in ways now you don’t even understand. My dad’s friend Quixote once told me it felt like he had to pretend he didn’t know two plus two equals four and agree with everyone when they told him the answer was really five.”
“I’m sorry that your dad is missing,” I say honestly. I can imagine how screwed up he is over it. Hell, I know how messed up I am still. “But I don’t understand what you’re doing here or what my mother was a part of. You talk about missing words and train stations and people getting arrested, but how do I know any of it is real? How do I know you’re not trying to harm the city, like I’ve been told?”
“So you want to verify what I’m saying.” Atlas flips open the lid on the box and picks up a red spiral-bound book. He fingers the edges as he studies me. “The Engineers have a long list of all the things I’m supposed to talk to you about and rules about how much to say and when. That’s supposed to take weeks, then after that you decide if you are ready to take the train to the next stop.”
“Weeks?”
“Yeah.” He gives me another bright, white grin. “I think we can both agree that I suck enough at this that no one will be surprised if I skip a few of the steps. I don’t think we have time for that, and I certainly don’t have the patience.”
“Why don’t we have time?” I ask.
“The government has been making a big push to find anyone who knows what we know. My dad and over a dozen of our people have disappeared in the last few days. The new recycling program I mentioned is going to make it worse, and the Engineers in charge are looking to shut things down before that starts. Dad was against pulling back, but now that he’s missing, I don’t know what will happen.”
I yawn. “Sorry,” I say. My body aches and is heavy with fatigue. It feels like finals happened days ago. So does my talk with Mr. Webster and Rose. If I sit back in the armchair, I’ll probably be asleep in a matter of seconds. If that. Everything Atlas is saying about the recycling program sounds like it’s important, but I just don’t understand why. I shake my head to clear away the fog. “I promise I’m listening. It’s just been kind of a long day.”
“Yeah, I get that.” He stoops down to grab the dictionary from where it fell and returns it and the spiral notebook to the box where he found them. Carefully, he places the wooden lid back on and runs his hand over it. Then he looks up at me and says, “Is there anything I could say in the next few weeks that would make you trust what I’ve already told you?”
I am torn between wanting to believe Mr. Webster, who I have known all my life, and Atlas, who has related a story that paints my mother in an altogether different light. I can’t imagine what he could tell me that could tilt the balance. Slowly, I shake my head.
“I didn’t think so. So there’s only one thing left to do. Follow me.”
He crosses to the far wall and presses a small wavy gold design that’s located on a painted book’s burgundy spine. I jump as a door in the left side of the wall slides open. He grabs a small lantern off a hook inside and hits a button on the top, and it flickers to life. The bright illumination chases away enough of the shadows that I can make out a set of stairs beyond the doorway. The stairs lead down.
“Come on.”
“Where?” I don’t move a muscle. “To talk to someone else who is going to try to convince me to accept that everything you’re saying is real?”
“Who said anything about talking?” Atlas arches an eyebrow. “I’m going to jump a few chapters ahead of where we are now in the notebook and do what I’m not supposed to do. I’m going to show it to you.”
He steps through the doorway. The gold flickering of the lamp catches every sharp angle of his face as he turns and waits for me to make a decision about what I will do next.
“Are you scared, Meri?”
To walk into a dark stairwell with someone I met just a few hours ago in order to go God only knows where? Logically, I should be terrified. But while there is much that I don’t know, I can’t make myself believe that Atlas would intentionally cause me harm.
“No, I’m not.” I cross the room, trying to shake free of the foggy tentacles of fatigue. “No more talking.”
He nods with approval. “Then let’s go.”
Atlas heads downward, taking the golden ray of light with him. His footsteps echo as I step through the doorway and follow.
The stairs are steep. The rail I grab for support shifts and rattles. A musty smell envelops me like a damp fleece blanket and I shiver at the chill that seems to have materialized out of the chipped, pocked walls.
“Be careful of where you put your weight on those last steps. The wood is rotting,” Atlas warns from the bottom.
He holds the lantern up high. The shadows undulate. I feel the soft sections of wood move under my feet and leap to skip the bottom step. I smack into Atlas, who lets out an “Oof!” The lantern clatters to the ground, taking the light with it. I start to push away, but Atlas’s arm wraps around me and squeezes me against his chest. He stumbles, hits the wall, and swears when he kicks the lantern and it scrapes against the hard, cold ground. But he doesn’t let me fall.
“You okay?” he asks as he steadies us both. Without the light I can’t see his face. I can only feel the warmth of his chest and the strength of the arms that didn’t let me hit the ground. It reminds me of the only other embrace that I couldn’t shake loose and made me feel secure and safe.
When I was a toddler, it was a game to try to slip out of Mom’s arms. Her laugh would shimmer in the air, and she would hold tight and tell me that no matter how much I tried, I would never be able to shake her free. When I got to middle school it was more something I had to put up with, like taking the red cough medicine that is supposed to taste like cherries but never fails to make me gag. I tried to explain my feelings to her. I yelled. I complained. I gave her the silent treatment. I stepped back whenever I could to keep her at arm’s length. I’m not sure when she stopped trying to close the distance between us or why I didn’t tell her that I never wanted her to.
“I’m fine.” I shrug and step away. “No damage done.”
“Not to you, maybe. The lantern wasn’t as lucky.” The moist chill returns full force as Atlas retrieves the lantern from the ground and holds it aloft to display the large dent in one of the bottom corners. “I did warn you those steps were rotten.”
“You should probably get someone to fix that.”
“I’ll put it on the list right under find my father and hoard the resources that will someday rescue a country that doesn’t understand that it needs rescuing.”
Well, when he put it that way . . .
“The problem with running an underground movement like this is that a lot of what we do needs to happen in areas the city has lost interest in or forgotten about.”
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