If he notices the emotional blood he’s drawn, Dewey’s detached expression and bland tone don’t show it. “I suppose that is my long way of saying I have no doubt Stef and the others will join us because the future means more to them than their past. They will come for the same reason that you will make the choice Atlas wishes you didn’t have to make.”
His words hang in the air and his eyes lock with mine. Understanding and fear swirl behind his eyes. Then he shrugs and whatever I saw is gone when Dewey says, “That is a conversation for another night, seeing as how I have wasted much of this one.”
I shove aside my own fear that I have been pretending for days hasn’t been growing and say, “I hope you’re right, Dewey. About the others joining.”
“You should have realized by now that I am more often right than not.” Before I can come up with a biting response, he places his hat on his head and starts toward the stairs. “You’ll find rubbing alcohol and nail polish remover in the bathroom upstairs. They should help you remove all evidence of tonight’s adventures. Tomorrow, I will buy gloves.”
“Dewey,” I say. Slowly, he turns and I scramble to try to come up with the right words for what I want to say. Only, I can’t seem to find them, so all I can offer is, “Thanks—you know.” I shrug and jam my hands into my pockets. “For waiting up.”
With his face covered in shadows, it is impossible to tell what Dewey is thinking in the silence. Finally, he clears his throat and sharply says, “It’s not like I did anything out of the ordinary. It was just as easy to read in the living room as it would have been up in the library. Make sure you turn off the lights.”
It isn’t until he disappears up the stairs and I am reaching for the light switch that I realize Dewey wasn’t carrying a book. He had lied about why he was downstairs and I blink back tears.
I couldn’t remember the last time anyone cared enough to wait up for me.
Six
I am barely awake as I work on the assignment Nicolle gave me, to familiarize myself with competitors’ page designs, when I hear one of the designers working behind me say, “You have to see this! City Pride was just arriving to scrub it off the walls, so Mica took a picture to prove it was there.”
The excitement level spikes in the room as the designers all make a beeline for the picture. By the end of the day it’s clear everyone in the building has seen the photos of the spray-painted logos. Most are upset that public buildings were defaced, but there are several who are more disappointed to learn the images were removed before they would get to see them in person.
Their disappointment is short-lived.
By Friday, all anyone can talk about are the mystery paintings throughout the city that Atlas, Dewey, and I have lost sleep creating. Gloss employees have started to get up early to hit the streets looking for where the logo turns up next. They will all be gone by the time I grab my next spray can, but hopefully that will change if Stef and her friends make the choice to show up tonight. The cover story of the logo’s creation and Mrs. Webster’s insistence that the spray painting was the work of overzealous fans has held—for now. Dewey and Atlas had created a few dummy online accounts to back up Mrs. Webster’s claim, though two sets of Marshals have returned to question Mrs. Webster and various members of the marketing team about the painted images.
“They wanted to know if we arranged for someone to do the paintings as part of our marketing campaign,” one indignant woman huffed to several colleagues, who were huddled over a community box of doughnuts. None of them noticed the snaillike pace of my coffee pouring as they reacted to the news.
“That’s crazy!”
“But cool.”
“Cool?”
“That we have passionate fans—hell yes. Have you seen the things people are posting online?”
“It’s against the law. It’s wrong.”
“So what? You want to go back to the old logo, so whoever is doing this will stop?”
“That will just encourage them to do it even more. That’s what the ones who questioned me said.”
But that isn’t what’s going to happen, I think as I take the coffee back to my team’s design room. Not if I can help it.
Weeks ago, Dewey quoted someone named Ovid who said that water could burrow a hole into rock if given enough time—or something to that effect. I think of that quote now standing next to the rust-red steel girders above the dark, flowing Chicago River. I have already watched two navy-and-powder-blue-uniformed police officers and an alert, athletically compact dark-haired woman in the Marshals’ distinctive footwear stroll by. Tonight wouldn’t be as easy. And it would get harder and more dangerous from here, but the only way to drill a hole through to the other side of the rock was to keep the water steadily dripping.
I spot Stef, dressed in dark skin-tight pants, a black long-sleeved shirt, matching baseball cap, and dark sunglasses, standing at the northern end of the bridge.
Relief swirls with dread.
She came. Dewey was right. A fact that I am sure he will remind me of.
Stef nods, then steps around several other pedestrians and strides toward me. In her wake are the curly-haired twins in matching denim shorts and gray T-shirts. Beside them, the girl with the long braids, who’s dressed in baggy blue jeans and a tight white T-shirt.
I asked for four people. Part of me thought the older ones would come. I guess I should have known better.
“I wasn’t sure you would be here,” I call as they approach.
“The future matters more than the past,” Stef says, stopping in front of me. The others take up positions just behind her. “You should know that Joy still doesn’t like you. She’s planning to kick your ass once this is over.”
“I hope she’ll have the chance to try.” I toss her a backpack filled with spray-paint cans. “I guess we’d better get to work.”
I keep my voice down as I quickly sketch out their part. Each person will visit two or more public locations with the supplies we provide. Between the traffic and the laughter and conversation and wind, no one can hear us speak, but I still take care to avoid certain words. “More and more people are coming out at night, so working fast is important.”
Stef nods. “We get it.”
“We even practiced with the cans you left behind to make sure we can do it quick,” the girl with the braids adds.
“We did,” Stef confirms. “And we have a few ideas for next time. If you’re willing to let us make some suggestions.”
“Any and all ideas are welcome. It’s going to take a lot of effort to get people ready for what we have to tell them,” I admit.
“We aren’t afraid of doing the work.” Braid girl lifts her chin.
“Good,” I say. “Then you’re with me tonight.” Quickly I explain that Atlas and Dewey are working on the south side of the city. Their efforts should pull the Marshals to that area, leaving us free to hit the middle and north side. Tomorrow, we will double the number of painted symbols. Then double them again the next right and so on. Each night we’ll strike at a different time while continuing to expand the number of images painted.
“The Marshals are going to get seriously annoyed,” one of the twins says.
“That’s part of the plan,” I admit.
“Cool!” his brother adds with a grin. “Anything that jerks the Marshals’ chain is worth doing.”
“Then let’s go see how many Marshals we can annoy,” Stef says. “We have to get you guys home before your curfews.”
With that parting salvo Stef and the twins head toward the south side of the bridge. Then I turn to braid girl and ask, “What’s your curfew?”
She shakes her head. “Gram told my mom we’re at the movies. As long as I’m back in two hours no one will be the wiser. If I’m late she’ll cover for me.”
She pulls out her phone to show me a picture of her and a woman with very short salt-and-pepper hair smiling in front of a movie theater marquee. The time stamp in the corner says the photo w
as taken five minutes ago. “It’s always good to have an alibi.” She shoves her phone into her back pocket, ties her braids into a ponytail at the nape of her neck, and gives me a cocky smile. “Just wait until you hear what else we’ve come up with. I can tell you all about it while we do this.”
As we walk to the L and ride the train several stops north, I learn the girl’s name is Amber. She’s two years younger than I am and in hushed tones tells me she found the truth by stumbling across her grandmother’s old textbooks while playing in their basement when she was seven. “So your entire family knows about—everything.”
“My grandmother and I do. My parents . . .” Amber scrunches her nose. “They believe that this country is on the right track and that anyone who says different is just trying to cause trouble. They turned in my grandmother when I mentioned she still had books at her house. The Environmental Department gave her a choice—to willingly turn over her books to officers for recycling or to be arrested. If it weren’t for me, I think she would have let them take her. Instead, she claimed she had forgotten all about the books and told my parents that she was relieved to have them out of the house. After that, I started searching for other people with books. I can pretend to my parents that I don’t know what was in the books that were taken from my grandmother, but I can’t lie to myself.”
I don’t spot any military boots as we pass through the L station. We then head to an ice cream store located next to a Celebrate Chicago store filled with T-shirts, trinkets, and screens displaying breathtaking images of the city’s most popular sites. I glance at the photo Rose sent to me earlier, then push open the ice cream shop doors.
A guitar riff blares as we step inside.
“Wait here,” I tell Amber. I weave through the tables to the counter where three employees are dressed in red-and-white-striped shirts with the name of the shop embroidered on the pockets. Each of them is busy scooping ice cream and scanning payment from customers’ personal screens. I glance at the picture Rose sent me on my own screen, then make a beeline for the guy with two diamond studs winking from his eyebrow at the very far side of the counter. He’s currently scooping pink ice cream for a young girl and her mom. His wide smile gives him a movie-star-handsome look. It doesn’t surprise me that Rose had once dated him.
“Rose Webster left something for me?” I shout over the music. The guy nods. He reaches down and pulls out a duffle. Without any other acknowledgment, he drops the duffle atop the counter, and returns to work. I hoist the bag onto my shoulder and head for the exit. Once Amber and I are outside, I pull two backpacks out of the bag, hand one to Amber, and say, “Time to get to work. We can stick together for the first few until you get the hang of it.”
“We can do more if we split up,” she says. “That’s the whole reason you asked for help, right?”
She’s right, which sucks.
“I promise I won’t get caught,” she says. I know she can’t really make that vow. Neither can I.
Taking a deep breath, I pull a transit card from my pocket and hand it to her along with instructions about which neighborhoods to center her efforts in. “Fast is better than good,” I advise.
“I plan on being both because I am not going to let them win.”
I smile. Neither am I.
For the next two hours I dart in and out of alleys, hide behind dumpsters, and scale fire escapes, leaving a trail of paintings and several angry shouts for the police behind me. When I finally head home, I spot several people pointing at a painting on a bus stop sign done in a hand that isn’t mine.
The next day, Stef and eight others join in. By Sunday night, there are fifteen of us. On Monday, everyone at Gloss is buzzing about pictures they’ve been sent or have taken of marks around the city that resemble the e-zine’s distinctive new logo. The staff is torn between being horrified at the damage to the design of city walls and buildings and signs, and energized. And this time the Marshals don’t stand outside the door—they come in.
I hold my breath until Rose walks by my team’s corner design room and smiles to let me know everything is still okay. I work long after Mrs. Meacham and the others go home, planting forbidden words in the text of advertising images that Rose has passed to me. Mrs. Webster doesn’t need them, yet. It’s still too soon. But I want them all to be ready just in the event I am not here to create them later.
If that is the case—well, then Mrs. Webster will have Gloss’s summer design intern to blame for the words that are published.
I start with words like “diverse” and “vulnerable.” Words that I remember Atlas having me look up in a bound, paper dictionary weeks ago. They are words I have often thought about since that day. They aren’t overtly controversial like the words I will disclose in images that will be published in later issues—words like “verify” and “revolution.” But I think I finally understand why they were taken from us.
“Vulnerable”—people who require more time and attention. Like the homeless that the City Pride Department claimed no longer needed to live on the streets, and the elderly who would have known the forbidden words that others could not look up.
And “diversity”—a word to celebrate differences when the government wants only what is the same. Sameness makes people comfortable. It discourages discussion. Most of all, it represses change.
My mother changed and she died.
Change pushed my father to drink.
I’m not sure what changing will do to me, but when I leave the tablet with the finished designs in the bottom drawer of Rose’s desk, I know that tonight I am going to discover whether I am brave enough to find out.
Defying my father took stubbornness. Outrunning the Marshals as they scoured the streets looking for anyone with a spray-paint can required determination and fast feet. But the next . . .
“We need to talk about this,” Atlas insists as we walk down the alley in the haze of the cloud-covered moonlight and faint gold glow of the streetlamps up ahead.
An hour ago, Dewey watched from the doorway as I made my preparations for the night’s work. He wordlessly nodded when I placed my Merriam Adams identification in the center of the table and he handed me the ones created for MaryAnn Jefferson. Merriam, the intern from Gloss, already left a message with her office about a family emergency. There is even a record of a train ticket purchased in that name. If things go well, she’ll be back fetching coffee in a day or two. Mrs. Webster will know how to handle whatever questions come if Merriam doesn’t return at all.
“You can wait another day,” Atlas says again, as if I wasn’t paying attention before. “We still have time to find my dad and Isaac and come up with another way to get information about the Unity Centers they were taken to.”
“We don’t,” I say, running a hand through my newly darkened hair. “The paintings are getting people to talk. The fake online accounts the twins and the others have created to gush about Gloss are starting to come online. Momentum is building. If we don’t have the answers people will ask for when they ask for them, it will all fall apart.”
The logo—the paintings showing up throughout the city, but unreported by the news—have lit a spark. People are asking a question—the right question. What does it mean? But to turn the spark into something more, we need more. We need fuel to create a blaze government lies can’t put out.
“We only have one chance to get this right. If we don’t break through the wall of lies at the exact moment people are listening, we might lose them.” The end of the alley comes closer and I slow my steps.
Since the moment I put stylus to screen and began sketching image after image, looking for the one that would launch a new fight, I knew I would have to take this step. Dewey and I planned for it even as Atlas worked to find another way. The fact that he is here speaks louder than all his protest. If he truly believed it wasn’t necessary, he would have tried harder to keep me home tonight. He wouldn’t be standing with me—where I need him to be—now.
I stop and s
tare at the exit to the alley.
A black sedan cruises down the street. A triumphant, patriotic-sounding boy-band tune is carried on the night air—probably from the public screens.
Atlas turns and looks at me, and when I look into his face the wall I have constructed around my fear trembles.
I don’t want to be here.
I want to go back to months ago—when I didn’t know the word “verify.” When my mother was alive. My father didn’t drink.
I think about the night my mother left the house and never returned. How annoyed I was when I wanted to talk about ideas for an art class project and she didn’t have the time. She tried to hug me, but I turned my back on her. I can still feel her fingers on my shoulder and hear her voice say, “You’ll be fine. I promise.”
Then she walked out the door and went in search of the same truth I’m looking for now. She had to know there was a chance she wouldn’t return, but she went anyway. I will do the same.
“Meri.” Atlas gently lifts my chin so I am looking him in the eyes when he says, “I should be the one doing this.”
I shake my head and take a deep breath. Neither quiets the churning inside. “You have a harder job than I do. You have to save me,” I say, taking his hand in mine. With my other hand, I pull out the phone I have been using, press it into his hands. Then, before I give in to the fear I am pretending not to feel, I take several steps backward toward the street. “I trust you. Now you have to trust me.”
“Meri . . .”
I leave the alley and step onto the sidewalk without allowing myself to look back, taking comfort in the feel of the small tracking and recording device I picked up from Dewey’s friend pressing against my heel as I walk. But, I can picture Atlas behind me—frustrated and angry, stalking to the motorbike he has parked in a spot on the street and watching as I pass a man in military boots. The man is leaning against a recycling can.
I understand how Atlas feels—watching me go—helpless to do more than stand on the sidelines. Weeks ago, he asked me to trust him to face the Marshals on his own. Leaving him to confront the danger alone was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do. Today, the tables have turned and it is harder still to put one foot in front of the other knowing what is about to happen. But I am determined to confront this choice with the same strength he demonstrated on Navy Pier. Atlas did what was necessary and he survived. I will do what must be done and hope the ending will be the same.
Disclose Page 7