Lizard Radio

by Pat Schmatz

  The sight of kickshaw draws a warm run of water in my mouth. I can see no way to get the dragon so I palm the kickshaw, clenching my fingers tightly around it.

  “I know that you care deeply about this community, about your comrades. You made some foolish, tragic decisions. We need to set this right, all of us together. Your comrades will need you tomorrow, and so will I.”

  “Where’s Sully?”

  “She’s asleep.”

  “Will she be expulled?”

  “We’ll work everything out in the morning. For now, I think we all could use a little sleep.”

  I hold the kickshaw up in front of my face. Sweet little kickshaw. It is the way to CropCamp and humanity, to alla the One, to being an us in the them. It’s my conduit to a safe and protected life with strong guidance and guardianship.

  Looking directly into Machete’s eyes, I tear the kickshaw in half, then in half again. I shred it like Rasta did in the field, walk over to the privo, and flush it. Only then do I face her.

  “You’re upset.” She nods. “I understand.”

  She places another kickshaw on the little table by the cot.

  “Sometimes,” she says, “we get a second chance.”

  She crosses to the door and looks back at me with all of that sympathy. She pulls the door shut behind her with the familiar click of dead bolt. The kickshaw sits quietly on the table and waits for me.

  It would be so easy. It would taste so good. I haven’t eaten since breakfast, hours and a lifetime ago. I’m so hungry, and I’m so tired, and it would not hurt one thing in the world for me to take it. Nobody would know. I can’t do anything useful for the next several hours, anyway. I’m locked in. I have no choice.

  Kickshaws are not good.

  I rip up the second kickshaw and flush it before I can change my mind.

  I PACE THE QUARRY. I want out. I tried to be a comrade with the humans, but now I’ve danced with the dragons, and I will not be tamed. I pace the other way, around and around. As long as I stay awake and pacing, I know what I am.

  The dead bolt clicks. The doorknob turns, and I back against the wall. Machete has come to toss kickshaws into my cage. They’ll pile high until I finally break down and eat one, and then I’ll go on a feeding frenzy. I’ll glut myself with kickshaws, strings of kickshaw saliva hanging from my serrated teeth until I collapse in a kickshaw coma and —

  It’s not Machete. It’s Nona.

  Nonanonanona.

  “Come on,” she whispers.

  I grab my socks and boots and follow her on the tippiest of toes. It’s hard to contain myself in quiet. I want to roar up the stairs and burst into the night air. Instead, we slink up and slide through the cracked-open door at the top into the entry hall, all lights off and doors closed. We creep out, nestling the screen door carefully into its frame.

  The rain has stopped. The moon is big and bright, and it backlights a bank of clouds. We skulk around the edge of the Quint and stop in the bushes on the far side, away from the yard lights. I sit to put on my boots, and wet grass soaks my bum. Nona kneels beside me.

  “Where are the others?” I ask.

  “Emmett’s back in Pieville. Sully is locked in a Quarry room like yours.”

  “Aaron?”

  “Probably hiding back in his slice. Emmett told me what Aaron did. Not a surprise.”

  “Why are you out?”

  “I was never in. I did nothing wrong — I just helped in a time of great need. Ms. Mischetti commended me on my commitment to community.” She drops beside me on the wet grass. “I am committed. Just not the way she thinks.”

  “What way then?”

  “Your way. Donovan’s way.”

  My pulse begins thudding to the beat of Lizard Radio. Nona is a saurian.

  “I didn’t mean to push you so hard,” Nona says. “Did I hurt you?”

  “Do you listen to Lizard Radio?”

  “What?”

  “Did the lizards tell you to push me into the grove?”

  “No lizards.” She shakes her head. “No radio.”

  The lizard beat skips and fades.

  “It was a knowing,” she says.

  “What’s a knowing?”

  Nona heaves a huge sigh, as if I’ve just asked her to recite all of the SayFree tenets. A cloud slides over the moon, casting a layer of chill and I rub my palms together, trying to up some body heat.

  “Sometimes I hear things.” She is hesitant in a way that I’ve never heard Nona be. I nod, and she goes on. “Not with my ears but sort of inside. Like coming to CropCamp.” I nod again, and she starts to sound more like herself. “I hadn’t seen Donovan for years but I got the knowing, and I asked to come to this camp. I saw him when we pulled into the driveway, walking behind Saxem.”

  Nona’s eyes fill and shine in the moonlight.

  “We talked before orientation that first night.” A tear slides down her cheek, but her voice stays flat-footed. “He was still all Donovan.”

  “He didn’t take the kickshaw.” I remember so clearly the way he dropped it and covered it with his foot. “He ditched it.”

  “Nobody can ever make Donovan not be Donovan. He just is.”

  Her mouth moves in a sideways tug, and another tear spills, and I know. She feels about him the way that I do about Sully.

  “So he still is?” I ask. “Even though he vaped?”

  “Of course he is.”

  “You talk to him?”

  A spark of Sheila-hope flickers, but Nona shakes her head.

  “Not exactly. It’s more like . . .” She scrunches her eyes closed, looking at something deep inside. “Everything is a particle and a wave at the same time. You know that, right?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it is.” She opens her eyes, and they are no longer leaking. “It’s physics. I think vaping means becoming all wave.”

  “And the wave can talk?”

  “No, no. It’s not like that. Not like we sit down and have chats. It’s a knowing, like I’ve always had, only it’s from him. I think it is, anyway. Feels like it. I want it to be.”

  Knowings and waves. Beneath the drippy dark of the moon cloud, huddling on cold wet grass after a Quarry breakout, they seem as possible as Lizard Radio.

  “So is dying like that, too? Is Rasta a wave now?”

  “I don’t think so,” she says. “I think that vaping is vaping, and dying is dead.”

  I hug my knees in close, drop my head, and rock back and forth. Vaping is vaping, and dying is dead. Sheila’s a wave. Rasta is gone. Nona loves Donovan. Lizards in the grove.

  “Lizard. We don’t have much time. Rasta’s da is coming at seven, and Ms. Mischetti will —”

  “Rasta’s da?” That yanks my head up. “How do you know?”

  “I listened under her window when she was reporting to the gov. She lied about everything. She said that Rasta and Sully and Emmett were on an innocent lark. Didn’t mention your name. Not once.”

  “But why is he coming here?”

  She looks out across the Quint. The moon has escaped the clouds again, and Nona’s features are bright as day. Sharp-hook nose and stubborn chin.

  “Docs,” she says. “There are docs to sign before he can take — you know.”

  Even with the moon, the night is so thick, so hushed.

  “Does everyone know what happened?” I ask.

  “Just me and Emmett. And Lacey. Ms. Mischetti said that she’d tell the camp in the morning. Set up grief counseling and all.”

  “Not even Sully?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see Sully. She was already locked in.”

  “Can you get her out?” I ask. “Like you did me?”

  Nona looks at me sideways.

  “We have no time for the likes of Sully,” she says.

  “We do,” I say. “Emmett, too. And Aaron, I suppose. They’re in it as much as we are.”

  Her eyebrows lift. I wish that she didn’t know so much.

  “
Aaron?”

  “Safer to have him with us than not. Do you know which pies he and Emmett are in?”

  “Emmett’s in the third. You’re not going down to Boyville, are you?”

  “I am. You get Sully, and I’ll get them, and we’ll meet in the grove.”

  Nona shifts, turns to face me directly.

  “What was in that grove?” she asks.

  “Go get Sully,” I say.

  The lizards felt realer than real and more powerful than a thousand Machetes. I don’t know where they went, but they’ll come back. They have to. No one else can free us from this endless tangle of night.

  “I’ll get Emmett and Aaron,” I say. “We’ll meet in the grove and figure out the next part together. We have to hurry, before it gets light.”

  I stand and pull the wet coveralls away from my bum. Nona looks up at me.

  “It’s so risky,” she says. “Getting the boys all the way over there. Can’t we meet somewhere in the middle?”

  “The grove,” I say.

  Still Nona sits there, looking up at me.

  “I know that Sully doesn’t like me, but don’t cut me out, okay?”

  “I won’t cut you out.”

  “Don’t. I can’t stay here. It’s wrong.”

  I shiver deep on that. Nona and her knowings.

  “Promise that you won’t leave me here,” she says.

  “I won’t. I’m getting Aaron, aren’t I? You think I’d include Aaron and leave you?”

  “But promise.”

  “Okay.” It seems like an easy enough promise to make. “I promise.”

  Nona gets up and heads back to the office building. I make a run for the boys’ Pieville.

  THE BOYS’ PIEVILLE is set up very similarly to our side, and even in the shifting moony darkness it’s easy to find the third pie. The problem is that I don’t know how to wake Emmett without waking anyone else. I walk around the pie, trying to guess which slice might be his. One slice has an open window, and I step up close, framing my hands around my eyes so I can see in.

  I am nose to another nose, and I leap back with an out-loud squeak. Emmett steps out and wraps himself around me, startling me again so badly, we almost both go down. We bobble and recover and then he’s right in my face, hollow-eyed and quivering.

  “I tried,” he whispers.

  I put a finger to my lips and fast-foot it away from the pies with Emmett right behind me. Once we get clear, I turn to him.

  “I tried,” he says again. “I did. I tried so hard to find a pulse, kept telling myself that it was because of the rain and the dark and the shivering, and if I tried harder, I’d find it, or make it happen, or —”

  I put a hand on his shoulder. I’ve never reached out to touch someone else. Never, not once in my life. He leans into my hand so hard, I almost lose my balance again on the steepness of the slope, so I pull him toward me a bit, and he collapses against me.

  No quiet tear-trail on the cheek for Emmett. He’s crying for real, sobbing even, and I don’t know what to do with my hands. I pat his back a couple of times like I’ve seen people do, and then I take his shoulders and gently set him away from me because his crying is jiggling something loose in my own chest and I’m not ready for that.

  “Where’s Aaron’s slice?” I ask.

  Emmett shakes his head, and I nod.

  “No,” he says. “Aaron says to leave him out of anything we do or he’ll go to Machete. Says he’s not going to Blight for Sully or anyone else.”

  “Come on, then,” I whisper. “We’ve got to hurry.”

  I don’t want to be relieved, but I am. The dream-memory of Aaron’s bloody smile looms a little too vivid in the dark. Besides, I don’t want him in my grove again. I’d like to be above that, but I’m not.

  Emmett and I pop up near the Pavilion, and I scan the grounds. The moon is winning its hide-and-chase game with the clouds. I’m not cold anymore — with all the nerves and running around, I’ve broken a sweat.

  “You’re not kickshawed?” I ask.

  Emmett pulls a kickshaw out of his pocket. I take it from him and rip it up and grind it into the dirt with my boot.

  “I knew I shouldn’t take it,” whispers Emmett.

  I nod, still watching the Quint and the fields. I hope Nona got Sully out okay. You’d think those Quarry rooms would be more secure. But then, how secure does anything need to be? The biosensor corral gives Machete all the security that she needs.

  We skirt behind the Pavilion and the far side of the fields, around the toolshed to the potato field, and then slip-n-slide down the path into the girls’ Pieville. I keep expecting Lacey to leap out at any second, but Pieville is dark and quiet. When we approach Lacey’s slice I put an arm out to slow Emmett.

  He takes my hand, and I pull him past, quiet and easy. The woods help us sneak along. Nothing rattles or cracks on the wet ground, and the wind stirs the treetops and smatters leftover rain on the leaves and the ground, covering the sound of our movement and breath.

  Bringing Emmett to the girls’ side is clear folly by human standards, but tonight is a new world. When we get to the grove, the saurians will be there. Not just dancing geckos, but actual adult physical saurians. Not waves but particles. They’ll push my hair off my sweaty forehead and warm the uncertain chill in my spine and tell me that I’m a good lizard, a fine lizard, and that I am enough. They will take charge. They will take care of me, and of Emmett and Nona and Sully.

  All the way to the grove I repeat this to myself, make it loud and true in my brain because it has to be true. I need it to be true. I stop just before the turn into the grove to listen for the lizard pulse. Something rustles on the path, and I spin and Emmett latches onto me. Sully stops smack, and Nona runs into her from behind. I step away from Emmett, putting space between our bodies.

  “We don’t have much time.” Nona cuts the freeze-n-hush as she steps between me and Sully, breaking our eye-lock. “Come on.”

  She walks into the grove, just like it’s the Quint or the potato field or anywhere else. I follow her with a hammer-fast heart.

  The grove is perfectly still. No saurians. No rescue mission. No dancing lizards, no singing geckos. Just wet grass and wind and a dapple of leaf-patterned moonlight. I turn away from the others and fold my arms over my suddenly sickish stomach.

  Why aren’t they here? Korm’s gone. Sheila’s gone. Rasta’s gone. The saurians are all I have left.

  “So what’s the plan?” Nona asks.

  I turn and bump Emmett, who’s right on my heels. Nona comes closer. I try to catch Sully’s eyes, but she’s looking somewhere over my right shoulder.

  “The plan,” I say.

  After a very long, empty pause, Sully meets my eyes. No warm glow, no flashing lights.

  “Yes, Lizard.” Her out-loud words cut sharp, harsh. “You know, the plan. Nona said that you had one.”

  “Why did you say that?” I turn on Nona.

  “Because you’re the one to save us.” She nods. She’s sure. Emmett nods, too. “Donovan said.”

  “Who the fike is Donovan?” Sully crosses her arms. “And when does the saving start?”

  That is the question of the night. The saurians aren’t here, and neither is Donovan Freer. My dragon is under Machete’s control. There are no otherworldly saviors. Nothing but disintegrating options for the four of us. I can only see one way out.

  “The plan is this,” I say. “Nona and Emmett, you go back to your slices. Emmett, you are super-sorry tomorrow. You got led astray. Sully, I’m taking you back to the Quarry. You’re super-sorry tomorrow, too, and you beg for another chance. You tell Machete that I was a terrible influence, that I’m full of delusions, that I told you to break me out, and now you realize what a bad choice you made. Emmett, you tell her that I’ve been plotting to overthrow camp from the start. Both of you tell her that. She’ll believe it.”

  “And you?” asks Nona. “What will you do?”

  “I’m going out to m
eet Rasta’s da.”

  “She won’t let you leave.” Sully is still looking at me like I’m someone she’s never seen. “She just about lost her bowel train when you got away last night. She said that if anything happened to you, I’d never make it to Blight because she would personally kill me dead where I stand and sign the docs.”

  “Kill you dead? She said that?”

  “I want to know what happened to Rasta.” Sully’s voice is harsh and flat, Nona-style. “Machete said that she couldn’t see the path and she fell. Aaron was supposed to be with you. What happened?”

  “He didn’t push her,” Emmett says. “It was an accident.”

  “Then why isn’t he here?”

  “He said he’s out of this, no matter what you say.”

  “Exactly what will Rasta’s da do?” Now Sully turns on me again. “Help you overthrow the gov? Bomb the camp? Are you Sabi now?”

  “He must know about the implants,” says Emmett. “He signed off on them.”

  That knocks Sully and me both loose. All three of us stare at Emmett.

  “What are you talking about?” asks Sully.

  “Kickshaw implants. That’s why the camps work. They keep us from jazz, and they keep us from violence. My cousin told me. It’s kickshaw implant, or it’s Blight.”

  We stand in the sinking moonlight and register that.

  “What do we do, Lizard?” asks Nona. “We’ll do whatever you say.”

  But do you like it or fear it?

  “Just go back to your slices, okay? Please? And do like I said?”

  Nona and Emmett stutter around, fluttering their hands and trying to make words. Sully stands apart with her arms crossed. She’s not flashing any lights. She’s just watching me.

  “I mean it.” I point back toward Pieville. “Go. If you trust me a titch, you’ll go now, and you’ll hurry, and you won’t get caught.”

  “Remember your promise?” Nona asks.

  “Yes, I remember.”

  Emmett throws himself around me again, wraps one leg around one of mine, and kisses me on the cheek. Then he takes off at a trot. I watch them both leave, brushing past Sully. She does not move until their rustlings are out of earshot. Then she speaks.