by Danny Lasko
For us lo-pry, there’s really only one avenue for real hope: work hard at the academy, pass your Trials in your designated branch of Jubilee—music, art, performance, storytelling, or sport—and the Synarch grants you a life full of comfort, succulent food, even praise for your work. Graduates are the entertainers of the chosen class of New Victoria, the Citizens, and are treated liked prized pets in a land of literal milk and honey. Fail your Trials and your best hope for survival is to find an apprenticeship with a plumber or a builder or a doctor. You’ll never earn money or a better life, but the Synarch will give you work and, in return, let you live in a house and give you vouchers for food and clothes. But it’s hard. Trials are strict. Last year, eighteen percent of Trials passed. Total. In sport, much less. My granddad used to say it was easier to get drafted into the NFL. Whatever that was.
At the academy, we’re better dressed, better fed, even praised. Pass our Trials and all of this continues. Fail and it disappears. All of this keeps the young generation on the Synarch’s side. The critics, usually old people, say that all the Synarch is doing is breeding jesters for their royal courts. Jesters or not, it’s a way out. In fact, a lot of kids hang around the school after hours just because home stinks. Why revolt? Especially the strongest of us who know we’ll make it out of the pits if we play by the rules. Rebellion happens maybe once in a generation but never lasts more than a day.
Most academies have a strong reputation in one or two of the branches of Jubilee. California schools are known for their musicians. Storytellers or performers, New York. But if you want the best Escape players in the country, you draft out of Texas. Allen Academy is no exception. Trinity, our opponents tonight, are three-time state champs and the number-one-ranked Academy in the country. Allen is in the top five every year. They’ve just never made it over the hump, and it’s hurt them. Until this year. This year, not a coach, a doctor, or even a magic rock wall will stop me.
If Allen wins, if we win the state championship, then the district gets fed. Food, clothes, upgraded water, sewer, and garbage systems. And we actually get included in circulation. That’s right. Commerce. Allen hasn’t had it since the days before the Unification. It’s the first step in becoming a Citizen-sanctioned city, the goal of all lo-pry pits.
My granddad says we used to pay taxes for upkeep. Not anymore. And the only money that comes from the Synarch to the lo-pry funds the academies and its facilities. If the mothers and fathers and everyone else stuck in this rancid sack of rotgut are going to survive, Allen needs a big payout. And according to almost everyone, I’m their best chance. It’s a lot of pressure to put on a bunch of teenagers, but honestly, they’re the only ones left who believe they can make a difference.
I hear her laugh wafting down the halls even before I turn the last corner to the commons area. It’s more of a melody than a laugh, really, like the beginning of a Mozart minuet. Trying to describe Annie Walker without using the word “music” is like trying to describe summer without the word “warm.” It’s how we met, in fact. I just heard this singing one day and had to follow it until I found her. I’ve been hers ever since.
I spot her through the glass walls sitting among a collection of benches and students, including Tommy Briggs, whose arm is draped around her shoulders. I’m not even in the room before she turns to me and wraps me in her emerald eyes. That’s why I don’t get jealous of other guys trying to get a taste of what it would be like to be hers. Her eyes won’t let me.
I finally break my smile and turn to Tommy.
“What are you doing?” I ask him, gesturing to his misplaced arm around Annie.
“I’m movin’ in on your woman,” he answers. He stands an inch taller than me at six-foot-five. His dark brown skin, lean muscular body filling out his Eagle blue uniform, and dreadlocked hair draped along the sides of his face—he’s just cool.
“Some best friend you are.”
“Dude, if you were my best friend, you’d let me try and woo this woman away. No one can resist the Grin.”
“Let you?”
“Yeah, you know, and not kick the crap out of me.”
SAYNO Tommy drops it. SAYYES Annie rejects Tommy.
“Sure,” I say, leaning back into a bench across from them.
“Really?”
“Have at it, Romeo.”
Tommy flashes that patented bright white smile and leans in to Annie.
“So, Annie, baby, how’s about—”
“Sorry, Tommy. You just don’t sound right.” Annie slips away from Tommy’s frozen form and plants herself under my arm, fitting right into the cavity between my chest and shoulder. The crowd around us busts out in mocking laughter. I feel like king of the world.
“That’s messed up,” he whispers.
“Raysh,” says Gloria Sharp, a seventh-year music student with long elegant hands who plays the piano so beautifully, it almost allows me to believe life is fair. “You ready for tonight?” she asks, hitching the portable keyboard she carries on her back.
“Oh, yeah. I predict Tommy here will be the star of the show,” I say, trying to soften the recent blow.
“Have you played in the new stadium yet?” asks Layla Flowers, a sixth-year in art, who hopes to design buildings after the academy. “It’s got a breakaway roof, just like the one in Revolution! The same cam system and everything.”
“Practiced in it this week,” answers Joag Hogsworth, inching closer to Layla. “It’s all cliffs and tunnels and stuff. Trinity’s goin’ down tonight!”
I love these moments. Just a bunch of friends joking and laughing, thinking moments like these will go on for as long as we want them to, talking about things like our survival doesn’t depend on them.
“Oh, hey,” says Annie. “Do you have my com?”
I cover my clenching teeth with a mock grin.
“Yeah, about that.”
“No.”
“It was, ah, discovered by Mrs. Sterling.”
“Raysh!”
“I’m sorry. There was no way of getting it back. Trust me.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“What? What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you owe me a com. A wireless com. And a back rub. And probably other things.”
“You lost Annie’s wireless?” asks Tommy. “First the band geek gets tough on you and now this.”
“Tough?” asks Annie, popping her head up almost gleefully. “What band geek?”
“It was nothing.”
“You should have seen him, Annie,” laughs Tommy, ignoring my glares. “Your boy waltzes into class like forty minutes late, swings the door wide open, and announces he has a question for Linus Sob! The class went crazy for Horatio.”
“Linus Sob?” asks Annie. “You mean little Linus Sob, with the curly hair and glasses?”
“Yeah.”
“Why were you asking him a question?”
“Oh,” I sigh, trying to not talk about it, “he was doing his fairy tale speech again in front of the class.”
“Ah,” she nods slowly. But watching her, I can tell she’s more interested than she’s trying to let on. I ask her, but she shrugs me off and smiles.
“What fairy tale speech?” asks Gloria.
“You’ve never heard Linus’s speech about the Pied Piper?” I ask. “He does it every year. I practically know the thing by heart.”
“Me too,” says Tommy with way too big a smile. “Don’t listen to Sooth, he’s got something mean against the band geek.”
“Who’s the Pied Piper?” asks Layla.
“The Pied Piper,” I repeat. “You know, with the rats and the music and the children disappearing?” I get nothing from no one unless you count the snicker from my tentative best friend, Tommy.
“See? My point exa
ctly,” I say.
“Maybe you should tell it to them,” suggests Tommy before hiding behind a swallow from his glass.
“Yes!” cries Layla Flowers and Gloria Sharp at the same time, followed by the rest of them. I glare at my former best friend, Tommy.
“No.”
“Oh, please, Horatio.”
“It’s stupid. Not worth the time.”
“Come on.”
“No.”
“Then I’ll do it,” says Tommy, hopping up from the bench. “Linus has a great story. He just doesn’t tell it right! I’ll show all y’all! Gloria, I’m telling a story. I need a soundtrack. Mysterious and magical with flutes.”
“Tommy!” I warn, but it’s too late. He has his eyes closed, waiting for Gloria. He’s in his zone. If he wasn’t a spectacular grip on the Escape squad, he would easily have made it as an entertainer. It’s probably his first love. But I think the pressure from his family and the academy made him leave his ideas of performing behind. Doesn’t seem to be helping me right now, though.
LEAVE Bring everyone down questions are asked SHOUTDOWNTOMMY fight Tommy questions are asked STAY everyone happy.
“This isn’t a good idea,” I say under my breath.
“Come on,” nudges Annie. “You might like this. Tommy’s a natural.”
“I promise, Annie, I will never like this.” I feel her pull away a little. More than I want her to. I have to keep cool, have to keep the truth from boiling over.
On cue, Gloria’s keyboard weaves an extraordinary tune of strings and flutes and captures the attention of everyone in the commons area. Since it’s lunch time, that’s nearly the entire school.
“This story,” begins Tommy in the same way Linus Sob tells it every year. Even his voice changes a little bit to fit the style of Linus’ memorized words. “This story happened to happen long before ‘once upon a time’ or even ‘once long ago’ and in a place so hidden that it could scarcely be found even when it existed! But, oh, what a place it was. It made Heaven jealous to look upon it. For the small town of Hamelin was nestled in the woods where Beauty herself was born. To have seen such a place as Hamelin.”
Gloria follows with a swell of song, and Tommy gives me a wink and nod and flashes a smile that jumps from face to face among the crowd. He lets go of any hint of inhibition or even mockery and performs the story, playacting, vocalizing, and making it really hard for me to stay in the same room with him.
“But just as everything that has ever aged will do, even this wonderful place, even Hamelin had its problems. Rats. Rats! By the hundred, nay thousands! Millions, perhaps. Too many to count to be certain. They came on a night that hosted no moon and made it their business to stay, ignoring the squeals and shrieks by men and women alike. They crawled in the shadows and in the sunlight. They scampered in the streets and in the houses. They hid in the covers of the cribs and in the corners of the cabinets and closets. Oh, they were everywhere!
“They trapped them and crushed them and burned them and broke them, but still they numbered so many that numbers meant nothing at all!
“‘What do we do?’ a woman cried to the mayor at the town meeting in the old large church. ‘We will have to leave our beautiful town and concede to the vermin that claim this place.’
“The rumble and the mumble began to weave its way through the company of townsfolk and back to the shaking ears of the poor mayor. And beside him, a boy, the mayor’s boy. The only cripple in town, bitten by a rat with a poisoned mouth and left with but one good leg, hanging on a crutch of old dark wood. No one paid him even one moment’s notice except for his father, the mayor. And this same mayor tossed a rat off of his table and for the sake of his son shook his head, hoping that an idea would fall loose in his brain. But instead of an idea, he heard a whistle.”
Gloria picks it up without missing a beat. She switches to the sound of a flute or a pennywhistle playing along with Tommy’s story. The crowd swallows every note with pleasure. I want to leave. Badly. How I wish I had Annie’s com with me now.
“At least it sounded like a whistle. A high-pitched, friendly, lovely, hopeful whistle. He wondered if he was mad, crazy, dreaming, but no! The whistle came closer and turned into a pipe, and the pipe turned into a song and soon it was a man, tall and spindly, dressed in yellow on his left side and red on his right, with an oversized hat that fell over his oversized hair that fell over his eyes and red lips that pinched tightly on the tip of a dark wood pipe and played a marvelous tune.”
Gloria performs a synthesized flute solo as though she had been rehearsing it for years. The talent and potential of the kids here, I can’t get over it. And for them I keep my tongue.
“Ah, yes,” sings Tommy, his eyes closed and head swaying with Gloria’s tune. “The mysterious music and the mysterious man made them forget all about the menacing rats. And when they remembered, a thing happened that caused all of the people to cease their blinking for the better part of an hour. The rats had gone! Back into their corners and shadows, up the woodwork and down the drains, out of sight, and for the first time in a very long time, the people sat on their seats without brushing something furry and angry away.
“‘I can rid you of these rats, if you like,’ said the stranger dressed in yellow on his left side and red on his right.
“Well, after so many months of vermin scampering, squealing, squabbling, and screaming, you can imagine just how silly this new stranger sounded. Get rid of the rats! How was it possible? It was one thing to scare them away but another thing entirely to get rid of them completely. They had all tried and they had all failed, and now this one man, this pied piper, would win the day? The audacity!
“But the mayor, who had raised his hand and lowered his voice and steadied the third nerve on the back of his neck, spoke with a wisdom and sincerity that comes from only the desperately needy. ‘It’s all we have. We shall give him a chance. The worst he can do is the same as the best that we’ve done, so there is no folly in letting him try.’
“But a sneering, snaky voice slipped from the swarm. ‘Surely the Piper can show proof of his claims?’
“The Piper sized up the town, and the town sized him up back until finally the Piper brought his flute up to his lips and started a tune, both haunting and lovely, and weaved it in and out of every nook and cranny until it filled every space of the large old church. And what should happen but rats? Everywhere. From the walls and the ceilings, from the corners of the floors, every rat inside the church came scurrying out of its hiding spot and marched two by two out of the doorways right past the gasping crowds!
“‘It’s magic,’ they cried! ‘It’s a gift! A blessing! Our prayers have been answered at last,” they cheered. Of course, the Piper could rid the town of the rats, oh, yes, dearies. But just as anyone who does a job and does a job well rarely does it for free and is the only person in a thousand miles who can do what must be done, then you are sure to be paid well.
“‘One dollar,’ whistled the Piper. One dollar? Is that all? ‘—a head.’ The mumble and the bumble almost drowned out the mayor’s thoughts. The mayor hemmed and hawed and twiddled his thumbs and cleared his throat, for he was not at all good at making tough decisions, but he was very good in fact at looking around and praying for a solution.
“‘Done!’ cried the crowd when the mayor wouldn’t speak, even though they all knew that not all the gold in the treasury would cover even half the bill.
“‘Tomorrow, then,’ said the stranger, and he walked past the townsfolk, past the mayor and his young son hanging on his crutch made of old dark wood, and disappeared into the sweet night air.
“Well, just as anyone who looks forward to wonder and awe surely to come the next morning cannot sleep the night before, so it was that the town couldn’t, either. Not the mayor, not the townsfolk. And it was just before daybreak when all th
e people in all the town heard the sound. It was happy and hopeful and hallowed and hot, and they saw for themselves the Piper strolling down the main street. And behind him, glorious and strange, were the rats, tens of tens of thousands marching along, ignoring everything in their path but the spellbinding sound of the Piper’s pipe. He marched them up and down and over where the town met the river, and there he stopped. He turned. And he played aloud with such vigor and vim that the rats danced their way into the wide river Weser, drowning themselves in pure jubilation.
“And that was it. The town was clean. No more scurrying, scratching, squealing, or squeaking. The Pied Piper had done it! Hooray for the Piper! The rats were gone! Hamelin was free! And they all marched in a parade back to the church, where the mayor was waiting, his thumbs a-twiddle and his smile a-shake, for though he wanted nothing more than to pay this Piper his due, unless the gold would fall from the sky, he could not do it.
“The town had other ideas. Don’t pay at all! And a man with a short white beard, still wearing his stocking cap, began to laugh. And the horrible people laughed—all but the mayor and his boy. And with one last long look, the Piper turned back the way he came, parting the mocking crowd now showering him with insults and names and throwing bits of berries and bushes at him.
“‘You have chosen your prize,’ whispered the Piper before he slipped into the dark. But the mayor chased him down and begged him to stop.
“‘Piper, I am sorry. They have removed me as mayor and my power is gone, but I have come to give you what I have and to thank you for your service. ’Twas the rats that made my boy lame. And I will forever be grateful for your service. And I promise, I will be happy to pay for the rest of my life until you see fit that my debt is fulfilled.’