by Rae Mariz
I climbed the steps to the front door before I remembered that the cardkey to my house was tied to my orange shoelace, tied to the belt loop of the pants that lay crumpled in a pile in Ari’s bedroom. I just hoped Mom wouldn’t get pissed at me for waking her up so late.
I rang the bell. I rang it a couple times.
The lights didn’t go on, but I heard the keypad tones and locks slide out of place. Mom opened the door.
“What’re you doing home? I thought you were staying at Ari’s,” she said when she saw me. “Who’s that?” She watched Cayenne’s unfamiliar car pull out of the driveway.
“A friend from school,” I muttered. “I didn’t feel like staying out,” I lied. “And she offered to bring me home.”
Mom looked at me, apparently unprepared to come up with a lecture on the dangers of coming home. I kissed her good night and hurried to my room before she could ask me about my night.
I checked my intouch® just to see if Ari apologized or something for ditching me.
The last message from her was the link for the Rate It! site. I went to it.
There was the picture Ari took of me in my new clothes looking startled and uncomfortable.
According to votes, it said I was a 2.5. Halfway between You’re a Skeezy Crack Whore and You Are One of the Unwashed Masses.
Most of the Craftsters got sixes—Yeah, You’re Pretty Cute—except Avery, who got an eight, You Are a Classic Pinup Girl.
Some of the anonymous comments on my picture were vicious. I couldn’t stop reading and rereading them. I didn’t understand why people would say things like that about me when they didn’t even know me. Then I finally closed it down.
There was a message on my Network page.
Apologies. by mikes
Mikey never said the words “I’m sorry.” I stared at the message, thinking about what Cayenne had said. Sometimes it’s hard to know who your friends are. But sometimes it was really easy.
In the glow of my Network page, I sent a private message to Mikey.
Are you sleeping? Say no. by kidzero.
I never sleep. by mikes.
I laughed. I’d seen Mikey fall asleep in the most uncomfortable places—hunched over a desk in Math Attack, sprawled out on a bus stop bench, cuddled up beside Lump—but he would always maintain that he never slept.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard. So many times tonight I wished I could talk to Mikey, and now that I had him here I didn’t know what to say.
I was kind of afraid. Afraid of what he could say.
Say something, by kidzero.
Like what? by mikes.
Like that we’re ok? by kidzero.
We’re ok, by mikes.
I stared at his words for a while, trying to feel if they were true. It felt true. He sent another note.
I’d ask how things went tonight. But I really really really don’t want to know. by mikes.
After Hours. Bleh. by kidzero.
But how was the music? by mikes.
The music was win win win win win. But I got ambushed by the Hit List guy. They tracked us down. by kidzero.
What did he want? by mikes.
He wanted to know if we wanted to play at After Hours. by kidzero.
Really? And do we want to? by mikes.
I thought about it. What did I really want?
I wouldn’t mind playing. But I’m not that excited about doing it at After Hours. Or for Hit List. by kidzero.
What did Ari say? by mikes.
I didn’t want to admit that she ditched me. Even to Mikey. Maybe especially to Mikey.
Hey, when did you tell Ari about what happened in Cosmonova? Rocket asked me about it? by kidzero.
Awkward. And I didn’t tell her. Ari started blabbing about what a big drama it was. Like OMG! DID YOU HEAR? PALMERROCKETEVA. OMG! And I told her I already knew. That we were unfortunate enough to witness the disheveled aftermath of the unholy union firsthand. by mikes.
Yeah, well. Like you said. AWKWARD. And speaking of unholy unions…Eva Bloom? Why?
But I deleted it before I sent. Delete, delete, delete. I wanted to know, but I never wanted to know.
I sent: Yeah, well. Like you said. AWKWARD. by kidzero.
I told him about all the DJ sounds at After Hours, joked with him about stupid details to cover up the painful truths. I didn’t mention Jeremy. Didn’t tell him about Cayenne.
You coming to the War Game on Sunday? I’m cheering for the Princesses. 150%. by mikes.
I thought Swift was your boy. by kidzero.
I thought he was yours. by mikes.
Whatever. Save the Princess 4ever! by kidzero.
YEAH! Swift can take a virtual sniper bullet to the groin. by mikes.
Wow. That was…um, graphic. by kidzero.
We spent the next forever writing back and forth. He made me forget the hollow hurt of being left. Helped me untangle the complicated everything that had been overwhelming me since I got branded. He wasn’t here, but he felt close.
25 COORDINATES
I got up way late the next day. In the living room I noticed a Trendsetters delivery box that must’ve come for me when I had been getting ready at Ari’s. I opened it to find some clothes and a note from Anica.
I think you’ll enjoy our new look.
A Lass
The box was filled with I AM A TARGET MARKET T-shirts. A skirt silk-screened with the Unidentified face, and a dress with an intricate question mark pattern. The worst thing about the package was that I would wear these clothes. If I didn’t know the cynical backstory to these products, I would buy them.
I went to the kitchen to get breakfast, leaving the box like a guilty conscience. While I ate, Mom ran through a droning monologue about being where I told her I’d be, punctuated with high-pitched Are you listening to me?s.
“And keep your intouch® on at all times,” she added.
“You told me to keep it off after closing time because of roaming fees.”
“Don’t tell me what I told you to do!” she shouted, completely unreasonable now.
I stood up and flipped on my intouch®. “There!” I shouted. “Now you can see that I’ll be in my room.”
“Go to your room!” she shouted back, a little too late.
I slammed my door and locked it. I tossed myself onto my bed and opened my notebook®. I scrolled through the chat I had with Mikey last night, thankful again that our conversation was password-protected. While I was in the middle of composing a passionate critique of all my mother’s failures as a logical being, I got a new message.
39.954276N 75.165651W
15:30
by anonymous
I clicked over to the mapping software to check the coordinates. It was a park in the city center.
I wish I could say I hesitated. That I remembered all the Protecht security tips. That I thought over all the pros and cons of sneaking out right now to meet some people who I knew had less-than-legal extracurricular activities. But I didn’t.
I punched the coordinates to my room into my notebook® and synched my intouch® to the mapping software, trusting Elle’s Alibi to keep my secrets safe.
Mom would be leaving for Aunt Gillie’s soon. I turned my music on, checked the door again. I’d spent so many countless hours alone in my room listening to music nonstop that this was the easy part of my alibi. From the speakers, the fly buzzed against the glass in my Background Checks song.
I opened the window.
Mom didn’t think it was safe for me to ride my bike, but it was the only way I could get into the city. She forced me to do it. If she had been reasonable and authorized my Game card to be accepted on the metro, I wouldn’t have to take drastic actions to get out of the house.
But my intouch® was keeping my secrets. I was moving fast and no one knew my trajectory. This was probably what Mikey meant when he talked about “breeze.” I always thought he was referring to simple speed, but there was probably this feeling of freedom in h
is word choice.
I rode to the city, enjoying the breeze.
It wasn’t until I got closer to the park that I started to feel the doubt about what I was doing. I mean, this was my mother’s worst nightmare exactly.
When I got to the coordinates, I bent over to lock my bike. Someone leapfrogged over the bike rack and landed close beside me. I stumbled backward, scared.
“Not regretting meeting up with a stranger from the interweb, are you?” he said, grinning. “Come on.”
He was wearing the Urban Climber harness over his dark anti-scenester clothes. He turned and took the steps two at a time, hustling up a low dividing wall.
I couldn’t believe I was following him.
He hopped down from the four-foot ledge in a move both skillful and reckless. “Cayenne said you helped her through security last night.”
I slid down after him, resting my foot on the back of a park bench and stepping down carefully.
“I guess,” I answered.
“Why?”
I shrugged. I didn’t have a good answer, or any answer. “There was a scene at After Hours. They made it look like an Unidentified stunt.”
“Yeah, I heard.” He took a seat on the bench. “Well, next time we have to make sure there’ll be no mistake,” he said, squinting up at me.
I sat down beside him, my fingers played with a carved into the bench. “What does this mean?”
“It’s the symbol of our disinterest in what they’re telling us. That we are not impressed.”
“Yeah, well, what’s it going to mean when they start using it to sell stuff to people who are disinterested and generally unimpressed?”
“This is a movement,” he said. “It’s something real.”
I was getting kind of nervous again. “Where’s everyone else? Cayenne and Tycho and the others.”
He laughed. “Sophia told me you used the Network’s friends list to track them down. It’s an inherent flaw in their system. They use your connections to trap you in a social web. But there are ways to get free of their control.”
He smiled, but I was still uncomfortable. I looked around. “Aren’t they coming?” I asked again.
“No, but we’re going to meet them.” He grinned. “You don’t want to get caught loitering here, do you?”
He was right. We couldn’t sit here in this public space for long without getting hassled by the authorities.
“Come on.”
“I shouldn’t.”
“Why? You’re not afraid of me, are you?”
“I don’t even know who you are.” I stood up. I was feeling something that was probably fear if I could admit that. “Who are you?”
He got to his feet too. “How am I supposed to answer that? You want a name? You want to know my likes and dislikes? To list the ethnicity of my ancestors? Would knowing any of these things answer your question? There aren’t answers to all questions. The simplest questions are the hardest ones.” He leaned in close. “Who are you?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came.
“Who are you when you’re alone? When no one is watching? What’s left then?”
My mind was empty. I couldn’t think of a single thing that felt true.
I watched his lips as he spoke.
“You are the unidentified.”
The door slid shut with the finality of my decision. I was going with him. I was sitting in the van of a strange guy who just answered “Can’t” when I asked him why he couldn’t tell me his name.
He had loaded my bike into the back, then climbed into the driver’s seat. When he held up his card to authorize the ignition, I was already starting to regret this. The motor cleared its throat, then continued to run silently.
The van slowly pulled away from the curb.
It hadn’t even taken much to get me to go with him. Just a promise. He told me there was a place the Unidentified met. A place where they could sit for hours without the authorities harassing them. A place where intouch® signals were blocked. A place where they could talk without being overheard.
He promised freedom.
Things you are told are freedoms in fact limit your choices.
That was true. There were only two choices. Go or don’t go. I went.
But maybe I was choosing my suicide?
I laughed.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said, and returned to the uncomfortable outer-spacey silence. I watched the street signs and the people on the sidewalks and felt the separation between them and me. In the passenger seat of a stranger’s van, no one can hear you scream. I laughed again, my nervous reaction.
“You OK?” he said.
“Maybe I should just—”
“We’re here.”
We hadn’t gone very far. Just a few blocks through the city. Five minutes of regret.
“Here?”
We’d stopped in front of a prison. An ancient prison, unused for decades, but still standing in the center of the city.
I jumped down to the curb, relieved to be out of the van, but not exactly excited about the prospect of breaking into a prison. “How are we supposed to get in?”
He waved me over to the intersection, away from the wall. “This connects to one of the incomplete inmate escape tunnels.” He stood there holding open the grate to a storm drain, right in the middle of the sidewalk. Carefree in the bright afternoon sunlight.
“How did you find this?”
“Let’s just say I’m good at finding weaknesses in people’s defenses.” He reached out his hand to me. “After you.”
The choices were always the same. Do it, or don’t.
He lowered the grate behind the both of us. Grinning in the damp underground.
He whispered stories about famous escapes as we stepped carefully, crouched underground. “The prisoners we remember are the ones who escaped.”
“Yeah, but those stories were about the ones who got caught trying to escape. Not the ones who got away.”
“Huh, OK. You win.”
The tunnel led up to a cell block. All the barred doors stood open, rusty at their hinges. The sunlight highlighted the clouds of dust from our footsteps and increased the contrast of the cracks in the stone.
“So this place is just abandoned?” I asked, looking up at the individual skylights. “No one comes here?”
“We come here,” he said, leading me through the long corridors. “The stone walls block intouch® tracking signals, and it’s fitting, don’t you think?”
“I don’t…How?”
“The abandoned shopping centers were reappropriated for use as the education institutions of the Game, and we’re reappropriating the penitentiary into the headquarters of our resistance.” He ran his hand across the wall and pieces of it flaked off and rained to the floor. “They should’ve used prisons, right? When they were proposing the Game? If they were going to take over existing architecture, what better way?”
“The Game isn’t a prison,” I argued, weaving around the rubble of a crumbled wall. “It’s the only place we get to actually do anything, where we’re allowed to be.”
“It’s a system that makes the inmates grateful for their lockdown.” He leaned his weight to push open a door. “Hah. You lose.”
“Do you always keep score?”
He turned and stepped closer to me, leaned down, and whispered, “Always.”
I followed him out into the yard. “Observation tower,” he said, pointing to the dominating structure in the center. “Isolation cells. Warden’s office.” He took the stairs two at a time in the administration building. “The Game keeps us isolated from the outside world. How is that not a prison?”
He opened the door to a small office where I was met with semi-hostile stares from each of the Unidentified.
“What’s she doing here?” Sophia asked.
“I thought we were planning a party, and everyone’s invited?” he replied, joining the group.
C
ayenne looked away and focused on her notebook® screen again, not saying a word. Tycho and Lexie kind of watched me from the sofa. I stood there awkwardly. They were the Unidentified, and I was the uninvited. What was I doing here?
Elijah whispered something to Sophia then came over to greet me.
“How’s Mikey?” Elijah asked.
“OK, I guess.”
“Tell him I said hi.”
“Yeah, OK.” I waited three forever-seconds, then added, “So, you’re planning a party?”
“We are indeed,” the voice of the Unidentified announced. He was perched in front of a window overlooking the prison yard.
I felt the intensity of Cayenne’s irritation from across the room.
“It’s going to be epidemic,” he continued. “An event to announce to the administrators that they can’t stop the force of our dissatisfaction. Once the word gets out.”
“A protest party?” I interrupted. “But haven’t you seen the news? Those don’t do anything.”
Lexie rolled her eyes and muttered something to Tycho. Way to make friends and influence people, Kid.
“Maybe,” he said, jumping down from the windowsill. “But maybe an invitation to protest is more powerful than the protest itself.”
“She doesn’t need to know everything,” Cayenne snapped, still not looking at me.
“Not everyone can keep a secret like you can, Cayenne.” He grinned at her, then turned back to me. “What if the meaning wasn’t in the message? What if it was only a way to deliver a deeper idea? A method of distribution.”