FLOOR 21

by Jason Luthor

  “Thanks, chief. I appreciate it.”

  “Don’t call me chief,” she says with a wink. “Anyway, I have work shift on the rooftop today. Ever since Danny was taken out by Security, we’ve been lagging.”

  “Gotcha,” I say, snapping my fingers her way. “Sucks being one person down.”

  “Right. Well, good talk. I’ll see you soon?”

  “You got it, chief,” I say with a wink, twirling away and sighing. Thank God that’s over with. I mean, I’m glad we’re back on good terms, but I just wish there was a way to skip the emotional thickness. That’s a coat that doesn’t wash off easy.

  Did I mention that Danny won’t be back for another week? Damn. That’s a lot of Reinforcement.

  Recording Eight

  “And on Sevenths Day, the Tower rests.”

  God. I get so tired of hearing that, and it has to be said at least once a week. See, every seventh day is food day, the day that everyone gets to have off from work. Well, everyone except Security. We kind of need those guys, but they still get most Sevenths Days off. They have a rotation so that that they only work one Sevenths Day each month.

  So even though I hate the public announcement since it wakes me up when I’m trying to sleep in late, I do like the grub. We get our weekly supply of food delivered to our door in crates, and the only thing we have to do is unpack it, store it, and set the crates back out. I’m lucky. Living on Floor 4, we get a little more food delivered than everyone else. I think that has to do with the type of work my dad does. He’s really in demand as a scientist, so we get extra rations. We also get other stuff, too. Sugar for one thing, and salt. Man, you can’t have good soup without some salt. I feel bad for everyone that doesn’t get any, which is pretty much most people in the Tower.

  Although I was thinking about this today, too. My family gets a decent amount of food. Allison’s told me she doesn’t get as much, and she definitely doesn’t get nearly as much salt. You can’t grow salt, after all. We get that from the Scavengers, who have to bring it back from . . . well, from wherever they go when they go on the Scavenging. The lower floors, I guess.

  But so, think about this. I get this much food because I live on Floor 3. That probably mean the people living on Floor 1 get even more. I know for sure Allison gets less food, since she’s told me that before. She lives on Floor 6. I’m guessing they do it this way since there’s only so much food from the gardens to go around. Well, I got to thinking. What happens when you get to Floor 11? I guess they get even less food. So, what happens on Floor 12? Floor 15? I know people live down there. How much are those guys getting to eat each week? It can’t be much, and they can’t come up here for more.

  So, what are they eating, and where are they getting their food from? The Tower Authority? I can’t see how. Just about everything that comes out of the garden gets eaten by the upper levels. Look, I work those veggies like everyone else. I’ve got calluses as big as quarters to prove it. I know we’re not getting enough to feed everyone past, like, maybe Floor 15. If that.

  If you’re wondering why I’m thinking about this, well, of course I am. My brain’s an overactive addict hooked on info, plus just the fact that we have to go to second floor is a reminder. Don’t forget that on Sevenths Day, we have to go to Reception, which—it’s not like I hate Reception. It’s actually kind of fun, afterward. You get to hang with the other kids and just chill for a while, plus it’s the only time when the top floors all get together at once. I’m not just talking about kids my age. I mean everyone. Parents, old people, just about anyone you’ve ever seen in your part of the Tower. So we have to go and sit, and listen to Receiver Garry talk for an hour.

  What I’ve never liked is the Reception Hall. There’s a lot of really creepy stuff they’ve got pinned on the walls, the sort of stuff you don’t see anywhere else in the Tower. There’s this one thing in particular, a wooden carving of a man hung on a cross. Well, maybe that’s not the right word to describe it. I mean, he’s literally bleeding out of his hands and feet, so he’s got some major issues going on. What the heck is that supposed to be? It’s pinned up there, looking down on us like he’s about to bleed all over our heads, and nobody can even tell me why. Nobody can remember why it was put there in the first place. Then you’ve got this other stuff hanging around, like this six-pointed star and a few rugs laid out on the floor. Also, there’s a book on the back table written in some squiggly language I can’t read. Oh, but there is one statue I do like. It’s this big, fat guy that’s laughing. He’s got, like, his whole belly out there for the world to see. You rock it, fat man. I don’t know who you are, but you shake that belly.

  Anyway, when we get together in Reception Hall, it’s so tight our shoulders are almost overlapping. It reminds me of what happens when I try to pack my suitcase to sleep overnight at Allison’s. The thing that makes the entire situation so irritatingly terrible is that Receiver Garry will go on and on and on about how we need to work together to stay happy and alive here in the Tower. He’s also real fond of reminding us why we should keep our thoughts on the skies instead of worrying about the Darkness or why we’re here. Don’t ask questions, don’t doubt, have faith. Yup, that’s Garry, which pretty much makes him my nemesis. Still, I get where he’s coming from.

  See, there’s this story. It’s not told each Sevenths Day, but every now and again, we’re reminded of it. It’s really important, apparently. Story goes that the Darkness came to the Tower. When the Darkness came, so did the Creep. Nobody’s sure why, but the way Receiver Garry tells it, the Darkness was a punishment. I don’t know why we were punished and neither does he, but apparently there used to be a lot more of us people and a lot less Darkness. He says we did . . . something, and whatever it was brought the Darkness. And according to him, the shadows you see when you touch the Creep are the souls of people the Darkness punished. They’re trapped inside it. Forever. So, it’s a sin to think about going to the lower levels. Never mind trying. That’s like saying you want to go back to the things that got us punished in the first place. Instead, Receiver Garry says it’s important to look to the skies. Even though the skies are basically dark and cloudy forever, he says they’ll open up one day. Some of us, people, I mean, were taken out of the Darkness. I don’t mean they came into the Tower. I mean they went elsewhere, above the clouds. Saved from all of this, I guess. Meanwhile, the rest of us were left here. So who took them? How’d they get up there? Kinda reminds me of what Mrs. Bloom said about flying cities.

  Some story, but I still don’t know what any of it has to do with that creepy statue in Reception Hall. Anyway, I got to go. I mean, I should spend time with my dad or something. Thing is that as weird as Mom is, sometimes I feel like I’d rather hang around her. Actually I’d rather just spend some time with Allison, and that’s saying something considering our recent argument, but I can’t just, like, avoid my parents. And about Dad, the thing is that even if Mom’s crazy, at least I get that. People go nuts sometimes. Life happens, right? Dad, though . . . Dad’s something else. With him I feel like he just . . . vanished. Like those patches of sunlight we get once in a while that vanish when the clouds converge on them. Yeah, that’s Dad. After thirteen, he just stopped being the guy I knew. I remember playing games of baseball with him. He’d make a whole day of it, actually. He’d save up our meat rations, and then one Monday, he’d just surprise me. I’d wake up to the smell of meat patties served on buttered bread buns. Do you know how much he probably traded away to get his hands on those ingredients?

  But you know what he does these days?

  Nada.

  My memories don’t match the current version of the soulless robot I currently call Father that I live with, and sometimes I just stare at him like who are you? Our talks don’t go past “how was your day?” and anytime I try to get him interested in my questions about the Tower, he brushes me off like I’m the village idiot. Let’s not pretend as if he cares about telling me what he does at work. How’s a girl suppo
sed to relate when her dad treats her like a stranger on an elevator?

  The part that just gets me is the fact that it’s been years since he started acting like this. I should be over it by now. But you know what? I keep hoping that one day, he’ll come into my room with a hamburger in his hand, pick up the baseball bat that I keep in my room, and tell me to get ready to hit the field.

  It never happens.

  I want to kill hope, but it hasn’t happened yet. Been at it for a few years. Maybe one day I’ll succeed. Until then . . . well, I need to hang with him. He’s going to be gone for a while ‘’cause he’s prepping weapons for a big operation in the Deep Creep. Yeah, I can’t believe it’s that time of the year again. Time seems to be really racing by me the older I get.

  So, yeah, I’ll probably be busy for a while. Next week is the Scavenging.

  Recording Nine

  “Good luck out there,” I tell him. He just smiles back at me before he walks off. For a second I feel weak, like my legs are two jelly sticks. It’s not ’cause I have a crush on him or anything. Seriously, it’s not. He’s just . . . cool, you know? Not just him, I mean. All of them.

  Scavengers.

  Right, it’s been a while since I recorded. At least a week. A little more, actually, but who’s counting? I’m the only one. Anyway, the guy’s name is Mike. Just plain, ordinary Mike. Nothing fancy. Not a William or Maxwell. Just one word.

  Mike.

  Okay, so I do like Mike a little more than the rest of them. Sue me! I’ve known the guy for about five years now. Since I was twelve, can you believe that? Dang, life likes to just jump past you. But yeah, Mike. He actually saved my butt once, when I was down on Floor 14. That’s actually when we started for reals talking. I mean, I was only twelve then, so it’s not like he had any reason to chat me up. The difference between a twelve- and a sixteen-year-old’s as big as the space between towers. Anyway, back then I was doing my normal thing, you know? Chilling in the lower halls and exploring the Tower. It was one of the first times I’d ever touched the Creep, and let me say, one of the few times I tried to. I mean, it’s not something you want to make a habit of. Anyway, turns out Mike was down there, too, and that wasn’t coincidence. Cool thing about Mike—the reason I keep trying to talk to him is he’s curious. Unlike a lot of other people I know, he actually wants to know what’s going in the Tower. I mean, c’mon, that explains why he’s a Scavenger now. So turns out he saw me heading below and decided to follow. ’Course he decided to be slick about it and not tell me, probably because he was embarrassed that I had more courage to get myself into trouble than he did. See, even at twelve, I was what you’d call a problem child. No wonder my mother started getting gray hair early. You can actually see it in her kinky curls now.

  Well, so, there I am. Floor 14. You start to really see signs of the Creep by that point. It doesn’t cover the walls, but it does kinda come pushing out of the cracks and seams between the floorboards. If it’s creeping out of a seam above you, sometimes it drips this . . . I don’t know what to call it. Let’s call it moisture. It’s not water. You could call it saliva, but . . . ugh, no. Anyway, it drips this moist, clear liquid. Now, the liquid won’t make you hallucinate. It will make your skin tingle, and right after, you’ll start feeling your heart’s trying to stage a prison breakout. But, so, I’m staring at this stuff dripping down the walls, and I dunno, decide I should touch it. So I don’t just grab for the moisture. No, that’d be for cowards. Instead, I decide to yank a big freakin’ palmful of the Creep.

  Note to anyone that might ever listen to this: Never grab a handful of the Creep. That stuff will mess . . . you . . . up. I was tripping balls. I don’t know what other way to put it, because I was literally falling over myself, seeing shadow things everywhere. I was about to scream, but Mike got to me first. Good thing, too. See, Security’s not what you would call “peaches” with people when they start wandering down to the lower floors. They really don’t want you touching the Creep, but they know it’s going to happen anyway. It’s a public secret. Actually, I hear there’s a bunch of people that meet on the lower levels just to touch the stuff and freak out to hallucinations. Security doesn’t care as long as you keep it under control, but—and this is the super-key part—you have to keep it secret. Well, screaming doesn’t help you stay low-key, so I’m pretty sure I would have landed in Reinforcement. Thank God for Mike. Poor guy practically had to tackle me to keep me from running off through the halls and screaming like a maniac. Cool guy—Mike also had to put up with me trying to bite his fingers off while he tried to keep my mouth shut, which basically passes the friendship test. See, it’s the mark of someone you want to keep around. Will they or won’t they risk their fingers for you? So even back then, he was a tough one, old Mike.

  That’s a real long story just to tell you why I like Mike more than the rest of the Scavengers, and the point is that one of the reasons he even became one is because he was a lot like me. I always appreciated his help, but I think the biggest surprise was that he stuck around after my shenanigans. See, Mike’s what you’d call a “cool guy.” He’s basically got the opposite of what I do. Jackie? She sends people running like a Creep infestation. Mike? Slick, handsome dude who kicks ass at sports and can jam out on a guitar. That’s, like, the double whammy. He can impress both the sports chicks and the feels chicks.

  See, what he doesn’t get credit for is his brain. Guy’s smart and super-curious. He can just keep it under wraps better than I can. Now here’s the deal. I think the fact that I can’t keep it in is why he stuck around. Or at least it’s why he didn’t ignore me. He’d come around once in a while to see how I was, and then he’d sneak in these questions about any new places I’d traveled. That was just how he did things. He’d come around asking about parts of the Tower I’d explored, since he knew I was basically the only one who had the brass to piss off Security. Thing is, you can really only do that so many times before you start, you know, talking. About stuff. And that’s how me and Mike ended up spending a day a week talking about said stuff. But I mean, you know, what do you say to someone that cool when you’re young? I tried, though, and hey, let’s give the man some credit—Mike stuck around. One day he even came by just to see how I was doing. No questions about the Creep or the Tower. He just started talking to me like a normal dude last year.

  When I turned sixteen. Hm.

  Creeper.

  I’m kidding about that.

  What was I talking about? Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re saying, that I lose track of what I’m talking about when it comes to Mike. Maybe I do crush on him a bit. Who cares, right? Whatever. Anyway, he’s a Scavenger now, so, of course, I went out to say good-bye to him. That stuff’s dangerous work.

  The Scavenging happens every three months. Technically, we’re all supposed to say good-bye to the people from our floors chosen to be Scavengers, but nobody from Floor 1 or Floor 4 gets picked for it. It’s everyone beneath that gets selected, and you can’t say no when you’re chosen to be a Scavenger. That’s like saying you want your family to die. We depend on the Scavengers to go into the lower parts of the Tower to get new supplies, which could mean lightbulbs or scrap metal, or even things like salt and sugar. There are two things that people want from Scavengers more than anything else, though.

  The first should be obvious: food. We live on a diet of some pretty pathetic vegetables. Most of the time, we get more of the same from our Scavengers. Vegetables. Which, I mean, you can’t complain. You need them to live. Duh. Other times we get brought meat. Now, I don’t know where this meat comes from or what gets killed to have it, but once in a while, we get delivered straight-up steaks. What the heck, right? Where do they even find this stuff? Well, they do, and that’s all most people care about. Rarely, and I’m talking, like, super-rare, the Scavengers bring back candy.

  I can’t even tell you how unheard-of that sugar is. You might as well give the kids drugs, especially the young ones. They gobble sugar up. Why do you t
hink everyone looks forward to birthdays? It’s one of the few times you get to eat something with sugar in it. Well, once in a while, one of the Scavengers will come back with a haul of candy. They might be chocolate bars or rainbow-colored orbs, but they’re always delicious. Now, remember, we can’t just go grabbing this stuff. The candy still gets taken up to Floor 1 first, so it can be distributed later. Still, makes your day when your food crate arrives at the beginning of the week and you’ve got a candy bar inside as a surprise. Me and Mom share them sometimes, watching the clouds outside the window while we munch on chocolate. Not like we say much to each other, which is preferable, but it’s nice to spend some time with her that doesn’t involve her crying for hours. So, yeah, I kinda like chocolate for reasons beyond the sugar jitters. Those are probably the best days I have with Mom. I just wish they happened more often ’cause, you know, at least then I’d feel a little more comfortable talking to her. At least I’d like to imagine someday where she surprises me with candy and has a conversation that doesn’t involve a double dose of crazy. It sucks ’cause I know she loves me, I mean, she’s always excited when my birthday comes around or holidays. It’s just the large stretch of time that we call normal weeks and months that is hard.

  Anyway, like I was saying, obviously everyone wants food, but there’s actually one thing they want more than that. Want to take a guess? That’s right. Information. Nobody knows how far down the Tower goes, where it ends, or how we got up here in the first place. So, yeah, of course, it’s nice to get a clue. Once in a while, the Scavengers bring up new movies, but those only tell us so much. A movie will kind of tell you what the world was like once, but it doesn’t say anything about how we got here.

  Not that it really matters. We all know when the Scavengers find something that’s actually important, and we all know that we’re never going to see it.