Stealing Liberty

by Jennifer Froelich

  “It’s so stupid,” Paisley whispered during dinner. “Why would they send her to a labor camp if she’s too sick to work here?”

  Meanwhile, Oliver tried to coax Xoey to eat her soup. She only swallowed a few spoonfuls.

  “Kino doesn’t want dead weight,” Reed answered, “like students who can’t work.”

  “And she has the power to do that?”

  Reed glanced at me, then back at his soup. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  Paisley and I made eye contact across the table: an unspoken pact. Xoey is not getting shipped off to any labor camp. Not if we can help it.

  “Let me know if she gets worse,” Oliver whispered as we walked toward the dorms.

  “Sure thing, O.”

  Now that we’re free to talk, seems no one has anything to say.

  “I’m heading upstairs,” Reed says.

  Oliver, Sam, and Paisley follow, leaving Adam and me alone. He still doesn’t talk much, but he’s been loyal and a good listener whenever I gripe. Tonight I’m not in the mood for talking. I step through the cabinet to the Hidden Library. He follows.

  Over the past few days, we’ve managed to transform the small room completely. After scouring the room for mics and cameras (we found none), we ended up dragging a lot of the junk through the narrow passageway and stowing it in the tunnel. At first we wondered how they got all the heavy stuff here in the first place, then we found a large pair of double doors behind two heavy shelving units. They’re locked and painted shut, so I guess we’re safe from prying eyes. We’ve dusted off the shelves and piano, and are starting to arrange the books in alphabetical order. We read on folding chairs, or on top of the old washing machine. Yesterday Adam and Reed brought some of the old electronic equipment in from the tunnel, including a disc player, speakers and an ancient television that’s about fifty-inches wide and two inches thick.

  “How retro,” I said.

  Reed just gave me a crooked grin and began unwinding cables and wires.

  “You actually think you’re going to get this stuff to work?”

  Adam nodded and handed me a stack of old CDs. I flipped one over, reading song titles from a band called The Police.

  “One disc for eleven songs? It’s archaic.”

  It took them awhile to sort out the connections and plug everything in.

  “Good thing this room has electrical outlets,” Reed said. “This stuff’s so old, it won’t connect to the WiPo network.”

  “Yeah, as long as someone doesn’t come down to do laundry and hear you blasting…Weezer? Arctic Monkeys? Pink Floyd?” I flipped through more discs. “Who came up with these band names?”

  Tonight Adam has already turned on the stereo, grabbed a disc from the shelf, and pushed play. He keeps the volume low enough to be masked by the rumbling dryers next door. Some of the stuff he listens to seriously hurts, but this one’s not so bad.

  I pick up a book with a picture of the Statue of Liberty on the cover. I’ve read a lot about it and other American monuments that no longer exist. I’m fascinated by stories of immigrants who came to America from all corners of the world, giving up everything just to step foot on these shores. Just like my grandparents. I read about what they sought. Freedom, opportunity, safety, peace.

  “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

  It’s from a poem once displayed at the Statue of Liberty, meant to welcome people to the land of the free, the home of the brave. It makes me sad, thinking how different everything is now.

  I glance at Adam. He’s studying a vinyl album cover, reading lyrics, I suspect. We’re changing, every one of us, by what we read. It’s as if we have only existed in darkness before, with one light guiding us down a fixed path. Now we’re flooded with light, and it’s a prism, shining from a thousand angles, giving us perspectives in colors we never imagined.

  After half an hour, I close my book and head upstairs. Adam doesn’t follow me. I find the others in the corner of the common room, chatting while Reed watches the news. Anchorwoman Jez Rodriquez, touted by the State Press as “the most trusted journalist from Sand to Sand,” is gushing over President Amaron and the UDR’s fiftieth anniversary tour he’s planning. Monica told us he is the special visitor Kino hopes will visit us this spring. Why the president would want to visit a prison school is beyond me.

  I sit down next to Reed. “Why do you watch that garbage?”

  He eyes me warily. “Just keeping up with current events.”

  I don’t believe him. Xoey has been reading the blog his grandmother wrote. Sometimes she shares it with me, just little tidbits she finds interesting. I know Elena Reed wrote a lot about the media (how to examine what they say, the language they use, the sound bites they share). She urged people to study their reports for missing information, questions they don’t ask or answer, and assumptions they make. She even wrote about which adjectives and verbs they use to portray someone as good or bad. I’m pretty sure that’s what Reed’s doing, so why does he always have to lie?

  The next night we’re back in the common room, and Reed’s watching the news again. Xoey is with us tonight, sandwiched between Oliver and Sam and growing paler by the minute. I told her to go to bed more than once, but she just shakes her head.

  Paisley has made her a hat, but Xoey wants to give it to someone else.

  “I’ll make more,” Paisley says. “But I made this one especially for you.”

  The hat is purple and blue, designed with earflaps tapering down to end in braided tassels and topped with a bright green pom-pom.

  I try not to laugh when Xoey tries it on. “Wow! Looks great.”

  Paisley beams. “It reminds me of this place I visited with my mom in the RZ where they grow these amazing wildflowers. You wouldn’t believe all the colors…”

  Paisley keeps talking, but I tune her out. Instead, I flop down by Reed again, pleased when he shifts uncomfortably. Jez Rodriguez is on the pixel wall again, standing in a warehouse this time, where workers box up various objects behind her. They’re valuables seized from insurgents, she says, during raids conducted over the past several decades.

  “…Now these objects, once only associated with terror and corruption, will find usefulness again,” she explains, “sold at auction this week to pay off a longstanding American debt to China.”

  Reed leans forward. “What do you suppose are in all those crates?”

  I peer at the screen, but Jez Rodriguez has already disappeared, replaced by a public service announcement reminding us to report our neighbor’s (or even our mother’s) unsanctioned activities to UDR authorities. It’s our civic duty.

  “It couldn’t be hard to find out.”

  “I bet Sam could find an inventory list pretty quickly.”

  I frown at him. “Why?”

  “Because they’re selling stuff,” he says. “I want to know what it is.”

  “Whatever.” I stand up, intending to do something more interesting. Oliver stops me.

  “Riley.” He jerks his head toward Xoey, who’s coughing again.

  “Don’t you think you should be in bed?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Come on. I’m going too,” says Paisley.

  Xoey sighs (even that rattles in her chest) and stands up.

  As we walk toward the door, Oliver stops me. “You’ll get me, right? If she needs anything?”

  “I will.”

  It happens in the middle of the night. Xoey has been sleeping restlessly, disturbing me and everyone else with her wet, rattling cough. Now she’s wheezing, struggling with every painful breath.

  It’s a familiar sound. Two other girls from our room have already been sent to the Med Center with it. Neither returned. Oliver and I talked to Paisley before curfew.

  “Can you put the Med Center on a video loop if she gets worse? Take us off the Cit-Track?”

  She nodded. “Just let me know when.”

  I add my blanket
to Xoey’s bunk and climb the stairs to Paisley’s room. “It’s time,” I whisper. “O and I are taking Xoey to the Med Center.”

  She nods, rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she reaches for her tablet. I go back downstairs and grab my shoes. A fresh layer of snow has fallen overnight and my feet and legs are soaked by the time I circle the common room and find Oliver’s window. It only takes two pebbles against the glass to rouse him. In less than a minute, he has joined me on the sidewalk. Together, we walk back to the girls’ dorm.

  “I’ll get her and meet you here,” I say.

  “No way.”

  He follows me inside. Before I even point to her bunk, he’s bending over, silently scooping her up and carrying her out of the dorm, through the snow and up the stairs to the Med Center. As I hold open the door he glances up at one of the cameras.

  “I sure hope Paisley turned those off.”

  The Med Center is empty, which is sad, but good for us. I know plenty of kids who should be here, recuperating. A few are still fighting illness in the dorms. Most are already gone.

  Oliver puts Xoey on one of the exam tables while I switch on a light. As soon as we unwrap her, I start to panic. She’s so pale! I grab one of her hands and show Oliver.

  “Her fingernails are blue!”

  “Quick. Find a nebulizer.”

  I start digging through the cabinets. “What will it look like?”

  “A small machine with narrow ports and clear tubing.”

  Oliver heads to the Medibooth. Its vending machine dispenses medicine based on diagnoses, but we don’t have time to wait and we can’t afford to have it record anything about Xoey’s visit. Oliver pulls a screwdriver from his pocket and jams it into the lock, prying it open with brute force. He searches its contents quickly, grabbing four vials of clear liquid while I try and figure out how to put the nebulizer together.

  “What is that?”

  “Albuterol.” He takes the tube from my hand and secures it to a mask. “Here. Put this on her face.” He attaches one of the vials to the nebulizer port and presses the power switch. It starts to hum. Within seconds, a cloud of white vapor is passing through the mask and into Xoey’s lungs. Oliver takes her pulse.

  “How do you know how to do all of this?”

  He shakes his head. “Never mind. Find more blankets.” He points to a cabinet.

  I find several and pull them all out. I hand one to Oliver, which he wraps around Xoey.

  My hands shake as I pile the rest by the door. I’m furious. “They have thick blankets up here, gathering dust in a cabinet while we freeze to death in the dorms!”

  Oliver’s face is still grave. “Search for other stuff we might find handy. We need to figure out what to do now.”

  For the next half hour, Oliver fusses over Xoey while I raid the Med Center, pilfering vials, ointments, and pills from the vending machine along with bandages, air casts, and a heating pad from the cabinets. I don’t know what most of the meds are for, but I wrap them all in a blanket and hug them to my chest.

  I watch Xoey’s color return to normal while thinking about Jeanine. There are medical books in the tunnel. I vow to carry them to the Hidden Library and read them as soon as I can. Next time someone needs help, I won’t stand by, useless.

  “The sun will rise in an hour,” I say. “How’s she doing?”

  Oliver brushes her hair from her face. “Better. But there’s no way she can work munitions today. She barely stayed on her feet yesterday.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Why don’t you take that stuff to the Hidden Library? I’ll let her rest a little longer, then meet you there.”

  I nod and head outside. It’s desperately cold and the load I’m carrying is heavier than I planned. By the time I reach the Hidden Library, my arms are shaking.

  Reed’s already there, reading in the corner. As soon as he sees me, he jumps up to help.

  “What’s all this?”

  “Stuff I lifted from the Med Center.”

  His lips twitch. “You stole it?”

  I unload the med supplies into an empty bucket. “Yeah, but it’s no joke. Xoey’s sick. Oliver and I took her up there a few hours ago.”

  “What? Is she going to be okay?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

  “The cameras—”

  “Disabled. Paisley did it last night, along with our Cit-Track IDs.”

  “Is anyone else there? So many guys have been disappearing—”

  “Same with the girls, but no. The Med Center was empty. At least it was when I left. Vardelos will return soon.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Hide her here.”

  “But she can’t stay here all day! If she doesn’t clock in at munitions—”

  “There’s no way she can work. She’s too sick. And if Haak sees her, he’ll send her to Vardelos and then…” I press my lips together. Tears burn behind my eyes, but I don’t want to cry. Not in front of Reed. “She’ll be gone. To a labor camp or worse.”

  “We can’t let that happen.”

  “So we hide her here indefinitely while Kino and Haak tear the school apart, looking for her?”

  “No.”

  For a minute his eyes hold mine. They are raw and scared. I see my reflection. I see myself.

  Rubbing my tears with the back of my hand, I back away. Reed starts to reach for my hand then reconsiders, remembering I hate him.

  “Go get Paisley and meet me back here,” he says. “I’ll get Sam. We’ll figure out something.”

  Chapter 24

  Xoey

  * * *

  Time passes quickly while I am sick. It floats above me like steam from the laundry room next door. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Timeless time, like a nursery rhyme, making no sense. I float too, listening to whispers for hours or days, wondering what is real and what is not.

  Oliver carried me here from the Med Center. Reed and Riley set up a bed for me in the corner, made from stolen blankets. These things I know. I drift in and out, hearing there was a fuss about the break-in and theft. Kino yelled and threatened, but nothing came of it. Paisley hid our tracks well. Still, I dream Kino follows Oliver’s footprints through the snow to the Hidden Library. When she finds me, she pulls the nebulizer tubes from my nose and drags me upstairs where she drops me in the snow. I wake up, flailing from side to side.

  “Shh. It was just a dream.”

  Someone holds my hand and I fall asleep.

  I am alone during the day. In the evening, someone feeds me. Paisley and Riley help me return to the dorm at night so I can sleep in my own bunk.

  “To avoid suspicion,” Riley says.

  In the morning, they bring me back to the Hidden Library and I sleep through the day again.

  But how many days have passed?

  I am too sick to worry. Eventually, the worst of my illness fades. I have slept enough and my fears take form.

  “I need to get up,” I say when Paisley brings me dinner tonight. “I need to—”

  “You need to rest.” Riley crosses her arms and stares at me until I lie back against the blankets. “We’ve taken care of everything.”

  “How?”

  She and Paisley fill in gaps where my memory fails.

  By the time Oliver carried me to the Hidden Library, Sam and Paisley were already here, fingers flying over their tablets as they wrote code to hide my illness from the Cit-Track. Paisley focused on cameras and mics, looping feeds, setting timers for the coming week. Sam accessed the munitions plant, altering the records to show me being scanned, weighed, and clocked in with everyone else each day, even though I was actually beneath the common room, feverish and unconscious.

  “I wish you remembered,” Paisley says. “If you hadn’t been so sick, you would have laughed. When Sam finished uploading the rootkit, Oliver jumped up and hugged him. Picked him up off his feet! Can you imagine? I thought Sam was going to have a
fit, but he just turned bright red and tried not to smile. You know the way he does? So cute! All while Oliver kept saying, ‘You did it, Sam! You saved Xoey’s life! You saved her!’”

  “You all saved me,” I say. “Every one of you.”

  Paisley blushes and starts talking again, detailing the code Sam wrote and how beautiful it was, like art. Riley and I grin at each other over her head.

  It takes a week for me to recover enough to return to my normal schedule, just in time for classes to resume. It should be easy, sitting at a desk instead of making bullets, but after my first day back, I’m so tired I can barely move. Riley keeps urging me to go to bed, but I refuse. The Hidden Library is much warmer than the dorms, with the laundry room next door. And I’m enjoying the way Oliver fusses over me, propping me up with blankets in the corner while Reed messes with the old television.

  While I have been recovering, he and Zak have continued their investigation into the bomber. Kino is growing impatient, but at least there have been no more threats or attempts on her life. Reed spends most evenings brooding, asking questions he has already asked, or scrolling through the student records Kino shared with him.

  Tonight he takes a break from the investigation, instead fixating on Jez Rodriguez’s news report from last week and what might be in all the crates we saw in the warehouse behind her.

  “I still don’t understand why you care about a bunch of junk being auctioned off,” Riley says.

  “Because they didn’t tell us everything. They’re glossing over something important.”

  Riley shakes her head. “Paranoid much?”

  Meanwhile, Sam connects the TV to a tablet so they can search State Press archives.

  A grainy image of Jez Rodriguez pops up on the flat screen.

  “Is this it?”

  “Yes. Can you play it?”

  The archive rolls. Jez is back inside the warehouse where workers pack up valuables: old vehicles, artwork, and artifacts. Jez says it was all confiscated from terrorists.