Imprisoned

by J D Jacobs

  I smile and sit back in my chair. “Are you gonna finish eating anytime soon? Or are we gonna continue twiddling our thumbs?”

  “I outta make you twiddle your thumbs all day for getting me heated like that,” he says as he goes back to finishing his gyro.

  Cody and I have been sitting in Danny & Lucy’s, which is one of the restaurants of the Shoa, for about an hour and a half, talking about the same random crap that we used to talk about when we were in Westwood. We usually meet at one of the Shoa’s for an hour for his lunch, but since today is Saturday, we have a whole lot of nothing going on.

  “I’m trying to make it to the Tevoc Shop before they close so speed it up,” I tell him.

  “Dude, they don’t close until 8 PM. We have six hours; chill out. Besides, you’re not really missing anything.”

  “That’s because you’ve been there a hundred times already,” I tell him. “I only got a chance to see it when Koji gave me the tour, but I want to buy some stuff.”

  “How did you even get trytes?” he asks in between bites. “Have you been selling autographs? That’s pretty low, dude. Letting the fame get to your head.”

  “Bro, shut up. Dad is apparently rolling in trytes that he never spends, so he gave me five hundred. He just told me to bring him back some shaving cream.”

  Cody drops his gyro as soon as the number comes to his ears. “Your dad gave you half a grand just because!? I’ve barely raked in five hundred and I’ve been training in the nursing program for longer than you’ve been here!”

  “Oh, how the tables have turned,” I say. “Wasn’t it you that strutted around with a different Rolex every year? Or was it you that had three different cars before we even graduated?”

  “Nah, that wasn’t me,” he unconvincingly tells me. “You must be mistaking me for somebody else.”

  My hip chirps at me, and I grab the walkie-talkie on my waist and pick it up to listen to it.

  Brrp. “Where are you?” Brrp.

  It’s my dad. Walkie-talkies are his way of keeping track of me when I’m not in the hospital. The Scavs have found a few walkie-talkies over their missions, and surprisingly they still work. I’m not sure how much longer they can work in the apocalypse, but it’s now been six months and they haven’t shut down yet. There’s only a limited amount of walkie-talkies, so only a few important people have them. It’s a little sad that I’m considered important enough to have one, considering I only use it to tell Dad where I’m at.

  I push down on the side button and talk into it. Brrp. “Me and Cody are at Danny & Lucy’s. About to head to Tevoc.” Brrp.

  Brrp. “Okay. Be back at the hospital by seven tonight. Harrison wants to talk to you about something very important.” Brrp.

  I give Cody a confused look, and he returns it. “What does Jenkins want that’s so important?” Cody asks me.

  “No clue.” I reply. Brrp. “What does he want?” Brrp.

  Brrp. “Too detailed to tell you over this thing. Just be back by seven.” Brrp.

  Brrp. “Will do, Dad.” Brrp. I then put the walkie-talkie back on the clip at my hip and turn to Cody.

  “That’s weird,” I tell Cody. Before I can continue on, I look over Cody’s shoulder and see a man and his young daughter walking toward us.

  “Jaden Foxx!” the man excitedly begins. “I finally get to meet you! I’m sorry for bothering you, I just wanted to say hey and introduce ourselves. My name is Trevor and this is my daughter, Lilly!”

  “Absolutely! Pleased to meet you!” I stretch out my hand to shake his, and he eagerly grabs it and does so. It’s now been a week and a half since I’ve been roaming the city on my own free will, so I’m used to people randomly coming up to me to talk at this point. I look down at the young girl that is shyly hiding behind half of her dad’s leg. “And how old are you, Lilly?”

  “Six,” she calls out from behind her dad after he encourages her to do so.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Lilly! I love your name! Reminds me of my favorite flower: the purple lilac.” I look up to her father to get a good look at him. “Absolutely beautiful color.” There: I incorporated my purple reference as I try to do any chance I get. I give a short pause to see if the man reacts unusually to it, but he doesn’t. “Oh, I’m sorry. This is my friend, Cody.”

  The two shake hands, and the eagerness from Trevor is now being thrown on Cody, who throws an uncomfortable look in return. “I’m sorry again for interrupting you two,” Trevor tells me. “Don’t worry about your lunch bill; I’ll handle it! Maybe we’ll run into you again another day and we can talk some more. Have a great day!”

  “Wow, thank you so much! It was great meeting you!” I call to him as he walks away and playfully wave at Lily, who responds to my wave with an adorable laugh. I look at Cody, who is now looking at me the same way he did Trevor. “What? The man was happy to see me. Don’t judge.”

  “Not that, dude,” he says as he stands up with his leftover food in his hand. “The purple reference. You did it again. You need to quit pushing this purple thing to every new person you meet. Makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Uncomfortable?” I ask as I follow him to the trashcan and out the restaurant door. “What’s so uncomfortable about that?”

  “Don’t pretend like that awkward three second stare between you two didn’t happen,” Cody says. “I bet that’s what Jenkins wants to meet with you about. He’s noticed you mentioning the color once every conversation; he even asked me why you keep doing it. Of course, he didn’t believe me when I told him I didn’t know. Apparently I should know why you do weird shit.”

  “I don’t think it’s that noticeable,” I say, but I can tell that I must be wrong. “Maybe I’ll try toning it down a little.”

  “What’s so special about purple anyway?” Cody asks. “Something to do with your eyes?”

  “It’s nothing really. It’s just… something personal, that’s all.”

  “Oh, I gotcha, more secrets you won’t tell me about,” Cody jokes at me, but I can tell the truth to the joke bothers him a little. “I don’t wanna dive too far into your personal thoughts so I’ll drop it at that. But if I hear you mention the color one more time while I’m around, I swear I really will fight you.”

  Cody and I walk across Tryton and toward the Tevoc Shop, all while shaking a few hands along the way. As much as I enjoy talking to new people, I do sort of wish there was a way for me to hide myself. Dad gave me a pair of sunglasses a few days ago to hide my identity, but the fact that I have a giant burn mark on the side of my face is a good indicator that I’m that one guy who survived an explosion, amongst other dangerous things.

  Cody and I talk our way up to the Tevoc Shop and walk through the giant front doors. Although I had a glimpse of the Tevoc Shop before, I still can’t help but gawk at the amount of tiny booths that could be fit in one giant warehouse.

  The Tevoc Shop is basically a flea market that mixed steroids and protein powder in its vodka shots. Four floors of controlled chaos and thousands of people makes this place look like the inside of an ant hill. There’s no telling how many consumers are in here. I would have to bet that a tenth of the population is in this shop right now.

  With this much demand for the goods in the Tevoc, it makes me wonder how the Scavs are able to get everything that people want. Grant told me that it is very rare to find people who are willing to be Scavs since it is such a dangerous job, even though you get paid more than anyone else in the city. He even showed me a list of tryte earnings by person: Jenkins sits firmly at number thirty-eight as the highest paid non-Scav.

  “There’s the jersey shop over there,” Cody points to his side as we walk down the row of booths. “They have basically any NBA and NFL jersey from the past thirty years. Look at this, man!” As we reach the booth, he pulls down a Chicago Bulls jersey that has “Jordan” and the number 12 on the back. “Michael Jordan wore the number 12 for one game in his career. Wore it because someone stole his number 23 jersey that
day. Do you know how rare this is?”

  “I’m assuming pretty rare,” I tell him. I knew the story of the number 12 mainly because MJ is Cody’s favorite player. As for me, I tell Cody that Kobe Bryant is not only my favorite player but the greatest player of all time, but I only say that because I can argue with Cody that he’s better than MJ. That debate is one of the most classic ones.

  “This is sick, man. I gotta have this… Thirty trytes!? This man must be crazy! Not a soul in this city can afford to drop that much on a jersey!” He then looks up at me with hope gleaming in his eyes, and I answer him before he says anything.

  “You’re funny if you think I’ll buy you that jersey.”

  “Dude, c’mon! You have 500 trytes! You can buy half the city with that and you haven’t spent any of it yet. I’ll owe you big time!”

  He has a point. He also bought me stuff when I used to be broke before the Cozmin, so I don’t suppose it’d hurt to pay him back. I snatch the jersey from his hands. “You owe me big time,” I exaggerate. Cody gleams like a little kid who was just given twenty pounds of sugar.

  As we approach the guy in charge of the booth, he points to a sign right next to us that we missed. “We’re having a buy one, get a second 50% off sale.” He then winks at me. “But for you, I’ll cut it down to 100%.” I smile and thank him as I turn back to the racks of jerseys.

  “Dude, you can get anything you want in this city just because you’re you,” Cody whispers to me, impressed at my status.

  “I wish that were true back in high school. Life would’ve been a whole lot better.” I search through the jerseys until I come across a purple Kobe Bryant jersey. This one has a yellow-shadowed number 8 on the back. “Bingo.”

  “I gotta hand it to you: Kobe may be the second best player, but that jersey looks dope.”

  I throw the jersey on as I walk over to pay for his. “Who said Kobe was second best? That’s LeBron. MJ is barely sitting at number 3.”

  And that sparked an argument that lasted a good fifteen minutes. I’m pretty sure he knew I was kidding about putting MJ as the third best, but I think he enjoys arguing over NBA players as much as I do.

  We stayed in the Tevoc shops for a long time. I only ended up buying Dad’s shaving cream and a bag of Skittles. As for Cody, he took advantage of his friend now being the most famous person alive, but not because I bought him anything. The only other thing I bought him was a butterfly knife, and that was only because I bet him the knife that he couldn’t spin it around his hand for twenty seconds without cutting himself. He proved me wrong, but that’s just an accident waiting to happen. But most of the stuff he carried were random things that booths would give me for free just because I’m apparently going to save the world: necklaces, watches, yoyos, lunchboxes. I didn’t have any need for all of them, so I gave them all to Cody. He seemed more than thrilled. He’s been grinning like an idiot the entire time we’ve been walking back to the hospital.

  Cody checks one of the watches I gave him once we finally reach the hospital. 8:16 PM. I’m just a little late for my meeting with Jenkins. Hopefully whatever he had for me could have waited an hour.

  We walk in the front doors and into the beautiful lobby of the hospital. I spot Jenkins sitting on the couch in the middle of the lobby with his back to us.

  “I’m gonna sneak my way to our room,” Cody whispers to me. Before he leaves, I hand him the shaving cream I bought for Dad and ask him to run it to Dad before he goes to sleep. Cody then begins tiptoeing his way across the lobby with his pile of gifts in his hands, but Jenkins hears him and turns around.

  “Jaden!” he begins with a weak smile, trying to hold in his impatience from having to wait so long. “You finally made it back! I was starting to get worried.” Jenkins then turns to Cody, giving him a look much more malignant than the one he gave me. “Seems like you two had a little shopping spree. Or at least one of you did.”

  Cody rolls his eyes and turns away, clearly not having the energy to argue with Jenkins. He pushes the button for the elevator door, and Jenkins turns his eyes back to me as Cody waits. Once Jenkins looks away from Cody, I see him flip Jenkins a bird as his elevator door slides open.

  “Here, I got you a new coat.” Jenkins hands me a nice, fleece coat and begins to walk past me.

  “What is this for?” I ask him as I catch up to him, not expecting a free coat on a late-July night.

  “Just for being you. Also so you won’t get cold on our walk. That jersey you’re wearing isn’t going to warm you up too much.”

  Our walk? “Where are we going?”

  Jenkins gives a sly grin. “To my favorite bar.”

  “Why exactly?”

  “To talk about some things. Are you okay with that?”

  I’m a little staggered with the way he’s acting right now. Last thing I want to do is go shoot the bull over a few drinks with Jenkins, but I don’t really guess I have much of a choice. “I suppose.”

  8.

  As we walk out of the hospital and back into the city, I try to convince myself to quit being so cautious. It would be different if we were in my room, but we’ll be in public, so whatever he says or does will be seen by dozens of other people. And if he did anything remotely harmful to me, the entire city would have his head before I even hit the floor.

  “So, what’s the name of this bar?” I ask him as I slip the fleece jacket on.

  “The Crowbar,” he says.

  “Creative name. And what exactly are we going to talk about at this Crowbar?”

  “Just going to catch up,” he tells me with a light smile. “I feel that you should be filled in on important details going on within and outside of Tryton’s walls.”

  Outside of the walls, huh? He’s gained my interest. Is Jenkins going to tell me about this second surviving city that he’s been trading letters to? I’m eager to see what he has up his sleeve.

  A few minutes later, we make our way to the side of an apartment complex that has a stairwell leading under the building and into the bar. Hanging on two poles that extend horizontally from the building is a very bright and exuberant neon sign of a golden and teal crow with his wings spread open. At least they have a sign to match the name.

  A roar of cheers comes from the people once Jenkins makes his way through the door, but an even louder roar explodes when I walk in. The people in the bar begin to head toward me, but Jenkins quickly lifts his hands and tells them that I’m not in the mood to talk right now, just in the mood to listen to music.

  I’m totally okay with him saying that. People come up to me on the regular during the day, but talking to a bar full of drunk people will last all weekend. I can imagine the sloppy conversation now: “Oh my God, Jaden, you saved my life! I freaking love you man! You are seriously the best thing to ever happen to me.” Not necessarily a conversation I want to have fifty times.

  I’m still wondering why Jenkins brought me to this bar to talk to me, though. Doesn’t he know what happened last time I was around alcohol? The entire scene makes me uncomfortable and brings back my unpleasant memories that revolve around alcohol. I don’t enjoy this environment, and he must know that.

  “Why are we here?” I ask him.

  “Exactly what I just said: to listen to music.” Jenkins leads us to a booth in the back corner of the bar, making sure it’s isolated enough to where people might forget that we’re even here if they drink hard enough. The entire bar is dimly lit and equipped with pool tables, a small stage, a jukebox, and other stereotypical bar essentials that should keep everybody in here entertained.

  “We’re not here to listen to music. There’s not even anybody on stage,” I point out.

  “Not yet. They come on in a couple of minutes. You’re not in a hurry, are you?”

  “It’s not that. I’m just not a big fan of being around drunk people.”

  “My apologies. I simply enjoy having a conversation with music in the background,” Jenkins sighs. “No big deal. I guess I’ll go ah
ead and tell you why we’re here.”

  Before he can continue, cheers again circulate throughout the bar, and I hear a man tap on a microphone. I look and see four men walking on stage: one with an acoustic guitar, one with an electric guitar, one with a bass guitar, and one that takes a seat behind the drum set.

  “Hello, you dirty crows, we are the Guitar Gangsters! How are you guys doing tonight?” The crowd eagerly explodes in cheers as a way to drunkenly tell the guy that they’re having an ass-kicking night. Considering it’s not even 9 PM and these people are already plastered, I won’t disagree with them.

  “Guitar Gangsters, huh? What cheesy 1940’s movie did they get that name from?” I ask Jenkins with a smile. I know that the important thing he was going to tell me was about to come, but I’m now a little more interested in the band. They’re all wearing dark colored fedoras and suit jackets that they take off and place on the individual stools behind them. Once their jackets are off, I see that each member has a pair of suspenders that is a different color from the other bandmates’.

  “They’re the best band left on the planet,” Jenkins says with a sense of modesty. “Their job in the city is to play, and they do a damn good job at it. People love listening to them, some people even buy guitars at the Tevoc Shop just to get it signed by the Guitar Gangsters.”

  I give an impressed look while I turn back to the band. “This first song is a classic from ’96 and is by one of my favorite bands, Soundgarden. We haven’t played this one in a while, but we thought it would be a perfect one to start off The Night of Nineties. This one is called ‘Burden in My Hand.’” The crowd erupts again, and shortly after, the lead singer begins singing the lyrics “Follow me into the desert/ as thirsty as you are.”

  “They only play covers,” Jenkins says. “Tonight is The Night of Nineties, so they’re sticking to 90’s rock. People love listening to music that they’re comfortable with. Playing covers gives the crowd a sense of the times before the Cozmin and before Tryton.” Jenkins adjusts in his seat to get a more serious look at me. “And that’s why I wanted to talk to you, because me and you are both focused on life during Cozmin and during Tryton. We can’t indulge in the past because we’re scared of the present. Look at these people: they are all captivated by this band who’s singing a song that existed in a time where people didn’t have to hide behind filtering walls for safety.”