Stealing Liberty

by Jennifer Froelich

  “And that’s worth the risk?”

  “It’s worth it to me.”

  The conversation died. No one seemed to understand why I asked.

  At least they didn’t roll their eyes.

  Since then I’ve stayed quiet. Watching, listening. Reed’s plan has too many holes, not the least of which are Brock and Xu, who have the run of the school now. Only Middlebrooks’ new rule against visible bruises keeps them in check. Barely. And for how long?

  This morning I followed them just before dawn. They met Kino on the western edge of campus, near one of the warehouses. I couldn’t hear what they said, but afterward they headed to the old Red Cross truck Kino uses to transport our food to wherever she sells it. Brock started the engine while Xu ducked into the back.

  Are they part of her black market scheme?

  The girls are heading around the outside of the common room now, toward the fields where spring onions are sprouting. I follow at a distance, watching. It’s what I do best.

  I have to keep an eye on Riley. I know she wants to play a bigger part in this heist, but the more she’s involved, the more likely she is to get caught.

  And hurt.

  I can’t let that happen.

  Chapter 32

  Xoey

  * * *

  Sam is by the gardening shed, pacing.

  “Is everything okay?” I scan the bushes behind him, hoping nothing has happened to the kittens.

  He nods. “I was looking for Fai…, uh, something, but I found something else instead. It’s over here.”

  We follow him around the side of the shed, past the brambles and under a wide roof sheltering a rusting tractor. The roof is heavily bowed in the middle, like it could collapse any minute. I have passed it dozens of times on my way to the fields but never inspected it until the day I heard the kittens mewling. It always seemed abandoned: a sad sculpture memorializing the death of American agriculture. A movement near the back tire catches our attention.

  Paisley squeals. “A kitten!”

  “Don’t!” Sam reaches out to stop her, but he’s not quick enough. Paisley circles a stack of barrels, then drops to her knees, popping up a few seconds later with a furry bundle in her hands. She’s grinning from ear to ear.

  “Be careful!” Sam reaches toward her, but Paisley twists away, snuggling the cat close to her chest.

  “I am being careful! But look…isn’t he cute?”

  Sam scowls. “That’s Faith. And she’s a girl.”

  A noise behind us makes me jump. We all turn and see Adam circling the tractor.

  “What’s going on?”

  Riley frowns. “Sam has something to show us.” She turns back to Sam. “It is something other than a cat, right?”

  Sam says nothing, but stays focused on Faith, who is purring in Paisley’s arms.

  “Sam?” I prod.

  He lifts his eyes, startled. “Oh! Yeah, it’s over here.”

  We follow him around the tractor to the back wall of the shed, sidestepping through a dark space with towers of decaying pallets on either side. Everything is covered in dust, cobwebs, overgrown vines, and weeds. Only a narrow strip of concrete floor is visible, streaked with dirt and debris where something has been dragged away. Sam steps past it all and stomps on the floor, producing a hollow, metallic sound.

  Riley steps around me, tapping it with her foot. “What is it?”

  “Something metal,” says Adam. “There’s a handle. It’s a hatch, isn’t it?”

  “Yep.” Sam nods. “Faith got back here and was hiding, so I moved some stuff to find her. I found this too.”

  “Let’s see if it opens.” Adam grabs the rusty handle.

  “Wait.” Sam frowns at Paisley. “You’ve got her, right? I don’t want her to fall in.”

  Paisley sighs, still cradling the kitten. “Yes, Sam. You can trust me, you know!”

  He hesitates, but then turns to help Adam. Together, they tug on the handle. Nothing happens. They keep trying for several minutes with no results.

  “Maybe it’s locked from the inside,” Riley says. The boys ignore her.

  “Let’s try again.”

  They grab the handle and tug. This time the hatch responds, moving less than an inch as it scrapes against the frame.

  “Pull harder,” Adam says.

  Sam glares at him. “I am pulling harder!”

  Riley digs through piles of junk around the tractor, coming up with a long metal spike. “Get it to move just a little more and I can wedge this in there.”

  Adam and Sam grunt, their faces flushed as their biceps begin to tremble. It works. The hatch rises another inch and Riley shoves the metal spike in the gap. Adam lets go of the handle and grabs the spike, using it to pry it open. With one final grating protest, it gives way and swings upward, revealing a hole in the floor.

  Adam squats and examines it. He and Sam are still breathing too hard to talk.

  I step closer and see the top of a medal ladder. The rest is swallowed up by darkness. “Where do you think it goes?”

  Riley shakes her head. “No telling.”

  “Maybe there is.” Sam points to a yellowing piece of paper on the back of the hatch, stuck behind a thick sheet of plastic. When he pulls it out, it starts to disintegrate in his hands.

  “What is it?”

  “A diagram or—”

  “A map.” Sam raises his head. “A map of the tunnel system.”

  On Sunday I wake before dawn, already arguing with myself. Over the winter, three Sundays passed when I was too sick to meet Kino in front of the library. Three Sundays when she did not lock me in a closet.

  As soon as I felt better, I had to go looking for her.

  “I thought you had come to your senses, Xoey.” Her mouth twisted in amusement as she led me back to the library.

  I know God is always with me, but it was Oliver I imagined at my side that day, the memory of his words encouraging me to be strong as I stepped inside the closet. Before the sound of Kino’s heels on the corridor had completely faded away, I took a deep breath and began to sing. It’s how I have endured every Sunday since.

  But it gets more difficult every week. Ever since Oliver started ignoring me.

  The broken springs under my mattress protest as I rise and head to the showers. When I round the corner, I run into Rosa Linda. We both jump back, startled.

  “I’m sorry!” I say.

  Face to face like this under the bright lights, I notice two things at once. First, she is more shaken by our collision than I am. Second, she has bruises up and down her arms.

  “Rosa Linda! What happened?”

  She is already walking away.

  “Wait! I didn’t mean to pry, but can I help?”

  She hesitates but does not answer. Instead, she shakes her head and keeps going. For a minute, I stare down the empty hallway, feeling helpless. Brock or Xu must have gotten to her, but why wouldn’t she tell me?

  Half an hour later, I am sitting on the edge of the fountain watching the sun rise over the library. I have not been able to get Rosa Linda and her bruises out of my mind. I think about how I felt, watching Oliver flirt with her. I swallow my guilt and pray.

  My prayers confuse me lately: rambling, strange conversations with God, probably not formed as they should be. I pray anyway. I pray for people I do not even like. I pray for my friends while they plan to commit a crime. I pray for selfish things, like for my hair to grow back quickly. For Oliver to like me again.

  I pray about the hatch Sam found. The darkness beneath it scares me, no matter what Riley thinks.

  “Talk about providence!” she said last night. “I think your God came through for us this time.”

  “Riley…”

  “No, seriously! The timing is perfect. What if those tunnels lead straight to the train yard, like the map says? It will solve so many problems. We can get the Bell off the train and out of sight so fast…”

  Her voice trailed off while her brain
kept working. I’m glad Riley is happy and feeling involved again, but…does God want us to steal?

  There is a scripture my mom quoted so often, I should have it memorized. I never did. Instead, little pieces of it buzz around in my head while I stare at the fields in the distance, just visible beyond the boys’ dorm. Something about not getting tired of doing what is good and reaping a harvest if you do not give up.

  So what good am I doing, with all my doubts and fears and indecision?

  I cannot see much good in spending my time in a closet, but it seems better than letting Kino think she has won her battle against God. By now, all the girls in our dorm room know what I do on Sunday mornings. One or two make fun of me, but the rest seem to understand. At least a little bit.

  “It’s your own little act of rebellion, isn’t it?” Kate said last week.

  She might be right, but her smirk annoyed me. If I’m honest, nothing she says is going to sit well because she’s another girl Oliver talks to while he ignores me. Just yesterday, I saw her across the courtyard, wrapping her arms around his back, squealing when he turned around and…what? What was he trying to do? It looked like a ridiculous game of cat and mouse. I stopped watching and went to find Riley.

  I duck my head, ashamed again. I am not mad at Kate, any more than I was mad at Rosa Linda. I am mad at Oliver. Or maybe myself, though Riley gets upset whenever I revisit our last conversation, thinking something I might have said or done is to blame.

  “This is Oliver’s problem, not yours. And one of these days, he’s going to explain himself. If not to you, then to me.”

  Don’t think about that now. I check my timer. Five minutes until Kino puts me in the closet again. I reach in my pocket and pull out a bit of food I saved from breakfast yesterday.

  “Is that grape juice?” I asked Paisley. She was peeling back the foil lid on a small plastic cup filled with purple liquid.

  “Yeah. Didn’t you get any?”

  I shook my head. “They only had orange juice when I went through the chow line.”

  A hand reached past me then, depositing a sealed grape juice cup by my elbow before disappearing again. I turned and saw Oliver at the table behind me, twisting back toward his meal without comment.

  “He listens, but he doesn’t speak,” said Riley. Then a little louder, “That’s creepy, O!”

  I blushed and tucked the juice inside my pocket with a small piece of bread. I eat it now, praying over each. I try to remember exactly how we took communion back when I was able to worship with other believers. It’s not perfect. Communion is about coming together and I am all alone. It feels good anyway, remembering Jesus’s death this way. I rise and walk toward the library. Another favorite verse of Mom’s comes to mind: This is the day the Lord has made. Rejoice and be glad in it.

  Chapter 33

  Reed

  * * *

  The sun isn’t even up yet on Saturday morning and I’m dragging. Dragging out of bed, dragging myself along the fence, past two Sentribot towers and toward the train yard. It’s quiet out here, nothing to listen to but my feet striking the gravel. A cadence travels up my legs, vibrating in my chest. By the time it reaches my ears, my lips, it’s become a work song I begin to hum. Maybe it’s because I’ll be loading freight all day, but it’s probably because I stayed up too late last night, listening to music.

  It all started because I found a book about American legends and got drawn into the story of John Henry, a man whose job was laying steel for the railroad sometime around the first civil war. When he found out a steam drill was being brought in to replace him, he challenged it to a contest of strength. He won, but died soon after. I guess his heart couldn’t take all that manual labor. It’s a strange tale and I’m not sure why it’s a legend.

  “What’s the message? Hard work’s worth dying for? Or taking on something powerful means you’ll lose, even when you win?”

  I was picturing the train yard at the House. Loading and unloading boxes is nothing like driving a hammer through granite. Still, it’s wearing me out. Nothing about manual labor feels legendary.

  Oliver leaned over my shoulder, studying the drawing of John Henry. “Maybe. If he died free.”

  “I don’t think he did. It says here he might have been a prisoner. Or a slave.”

  “There’s a song about him,” Adam said from across the room.

  I raised my head in surprise. Oliver started these “man cave” nights in the Hidden Library to encourage Adam and me to start talking again. Of course, the girls refused to be banned, coming and going as they please. It hasn’t worked anyway. Up until last night, Adam has ignored me completely.

  I figured it was time to try harder. “Can we hear it?”

  Adam nodded, digging through a pile of antique music devices. First he played the Ballad of John Henry, which told the legend a little differently from the book. Then he played military cadences, prison work songs, and chain gang spirituals from the same era.

  These are the ones sticking in my head this morning.

  I pause at the electromagnetic gate between the school and the train yard while it scans my nanochip. My ears pop from the pressure — something I’ll never get used to. I quicken my pace and catch up with Jay Johns by the old depot. We don’t waste energy on a greeting. Instead, I follow him upstairs to the footbridge spanning the tracks, and we head toward the warehouse on the other side.

  Our supervisor is a guy named Mr. Mariscal. I never saw him around campus until coming to work in the train yard. Jay says he keeps to himself. He’s mean though, yelling all the time and whacking us on the knuckles with this big stick whenever we don’t work fast enough to suit him. Saturday and Sunday are the worst days. We work from sun up to sun down with only a short break for lunch and dinner. When I finish my shift tonight, I’ll report to Kino’s office, where she’ll ask me pointless questions again. I’ll just stare at my mom’s video feed and try not to fall over from exhaustion.

  Our footsteps fall into a rhythm on the footbridge, a new cadence saying, one more week, one more week. The Bell will be here in one more week.

  Then, maybe I can get Kino to pull me off train yard duty. I know Middlebrooks has been nagging her about it. She has a “favorite boys” list on her tablet — Paisley wrote a backdoor hack to read it. For some reason I’m on it, along with Oliver, Brock, and Adam. But Sam’s name is at the top of the list, underlined and highlighted in bright yellow. When Paisley told us about it, Oliver immediately started teasing him.

  “You’re the prettiest boy in the school, Sam! Maybe even the whole world!”

  Sam turned bright red, then spent the next few minutes trying not to smile. Eventually he started to worry Middlebrooks was going to make him do something embarrassing.

  “Of course she will,” Paisley said. “She’s going to make you dress up in fancy clothes and dance with girls. I bet the cameras will focus on you a lot.”

  That didn’t make him feel any better.

  I never think about the president’s visit for long. It belongs to another world — one in which we have already stolen the Liberty Bell. I don’t live there right now. My thoughts are always on the heist — how we’ll make it work, what I might have missed. As soon as dinner was over last night, I headed straight to the Hidden Library and went over the plan again with Sam.

  “As soon as the Bell leaves Old Philly, you’ll know?”

  “Yep.”

  “How will you know it’s the right crate?”

  “I’ll know.” Sam nodded confidently. “I calculated the weight and dimensions of the Bell and its crate. When a matching shipment leaves Old Philly along the western rails, I’ll get a notification. Then I can estimate the date and time it will pass here.”

  “Couldn’t there be others the same size?”

  “Same weight, height, depth and width, with high security tags? Probably not. These cars are usually running at half capacity. Most agencies ship by air.”

  “And it should still co
me next week, right?”

  “Yep. Once it is en route and I have a tracking number, I’ll tag it. By the time it crosses the Rockies, I’ll know when it will get here.”

  “Exactly?”

  He shrugged. “Give or take fifteen minutes.”

  “And by then, we’ll know the crate number and car number?”

  “Yep.”

  To make sure the train stops at the House rather than just speeding by, Sam had to schedule a fake shipment of supplies to our warehouses.

  “It’s on the railroad’s schedule, but not the school’s. If it comes during the day or evening shift, expect some confusion when the train stops.”

  “But how will we know how long the train is? Or if the car holding the Bell will stop where we need it to stop?”

  “Once I know the car number, I can reprogram the fake shipment to be wherever I want it.” Sam pointed to the map I had drawn on the chalkboard. “Then I’ll make sure the car with the Bell is here — somewhere near Warehouse Four, just like you asked.”

  “Perfect.”

  There’s a Sentribot blind spot behind the maintenance garage. I’m counting on it to mask our theft.

  “And if the train comes through in the middle of the night? You’ll make sure I’m offline with the Cit-Track, right?”

  “Yep. And Paisley’s working out your off-duty access to the train yard. She wrote a wicked cool rootkit. Your chip will let you in, but the time stamp won’t record or set off any alarms.”

  Still, we have a problem. Paisley told me days ago that my access to the train yard cannot be altered to let anyone else through, like Oliver and Adam, who I’m counting on to help me unload the Bell.

  “We’ll have to figure out something. I can’t unload it by myself, much less provide cover or create a diversion.”

  I was still trying to work out a solution when Sam found the new tunnel hatch. I’ve only had a chance to visit it once. Oliver and I climbed down the ladder Monday morning, but didn’t get far. Some of the tunnels have collapsed and there’s a lot of old stuff in the way. Still, the map shows a branch running right under the train yard. Hopefully it will be passable enough to get Oliver and Adam inside.