“Ha, ha!” cried Ampai, throwing her arms around Somkit and spinning him around. “I knew you could do it! And just in time for next Sunday, too!”
“What’s on Sunday?” asked Pong.
Somkit looked at Ampai and raised both hands innocently. “I didn’t tell him anything about it yet. But you should. He told you his secret.”
Ampai nodded. “Fair enough.” She checked the door to her office once more, then leaned against it with her arms folded. “We’re planning a march across the Giant’s Bridge. It’s why I’ve been gone. I’ve been gathering more people to join us.” She smiled at Somkit. “I’ve got them, too. At least a thousand. And I bet I can get a thousand more if what you tell me about your sun orbs is true.”
Pong stared at her. “A march? Like a parade?”
Somkit snickered. “Like a protest.”
“But what are you protesting?”
“A week from Monday the Governor will sign a new law,” said Ampai. “It will raise the price of orbs by ten percent. Every color.”
Pong thought about the poor people he’d seen agonizing over buying Violet orbs at the Light Market. If the orbs were ten percent more expensive, they would be out of their reach.
“But it’s not just that he’s raising the orb prices,” added Somkit. “It’s the reason he’s raising them. He’s going to spend that money on a huge new building project. A youth reform center.”
“It’s a jail,” said Ampai. “For children.”
Pong winced as if someone had punched him in the chest. A children’s jail. Just thinking the words made him feel sick.
Somkit looked at him sorrowfully. “Namwon’s full,” he explained. “There’s no room for the prisoners’ children anymore. And there are whole packs of kids who run the alleys. They don’t have any homes or families to take care of them. They’ll probably end up in the ‘reform center,’ too. The Governor says it’s for their safety.”
Pong stared down at the floor. Desperate people deserve our compassion. Father Cham had gathered up children, blessed them, and found them families. But here, the Governor was going to catch them like dogs and stick them in a pen.
“It’s monstrous,” Ampai hissed, pacing in front of the door. “A jail? We don’t need another jail. We need schools — decent ones. And hospitals, like they have on the West Side. The people won’t stand for it, either. They’ve put up with things this long because they’re afraid of the Governor. It’s not just because he controls the police. They’re afraid he’ll take away what little they have. They don’t want to lose his light.” She stopped pacing and turned to Somkit. “But now they have nothing to be afraid of! If we can show up on that bridge carrying our own orbs, it will show everyone — on both sides of the river — that we don’t need the Governor, or anything he has to offer.”
She reached into her jacket and pulled out a tiny notebook. “I’ve got almost one thousand commitments for the march next Sunday,” she repeated, tapping the cover. “I know you can’t make that many orbs in such a short time. But what could you do? A hundred? Two hundred?”
Somkit’s proud smile drooped. “At this rate? Five? I can’t overcharge an orb or it’ll shatter. I have to use ones that are already faded. But it’s going to take too long to wait for our Mud House orbs to fade out. We lose only one or two a day at most.”
“Isn’t there anywhere else to get faded orbs?” asked Pong. “What if you offered people money to buy theirs?”
Ampai considered this for a moment, then shook her head. “The money we have saved up is for food and medicine. Besides, I don’t want word to get out about what Somkit can do. The Governor has spies everywhere, and if he hears that we’re looking for faded orbs, he might figure out what we’re up to. Then he’ll find us and shut us down for sure. If we’re going to do this, we need to keep it a secret until the last minute.”
“What about taking faded orbs from a recycling depot?” asked Somkit.
“No,” said Ampai firmly. “No stealing. We have to do this honestly. Otherwise we’ll prove we’re just as terrible as the Governor says we are.”
Pong listened to Somkit and Ampai run through one bad option after another. There was just no easy way to get the number of faded orbs they needed in time.
Somkit’s face sagged, his hopes crushed. Pong had never seen his friend so disappointed.
“I think I’ve got an idea,” said Pong suddenly.
The others stopped talking and swiveled their faces toward him. “Go on,” said Ampai.
“What if we went through the city and found Violet orbs that were just about to fade, and we swiped them before the owners found out —”
“That’s stealing,” said Ampai.
“And we replaced them with good orbs from the Mud House without them noticing?”
“That’s swapping!” said Somkit.
“We could get the faded orbs we need,” continued Pong. “People in the city would get fully charged orbs that will last longer. Everyone wins, and no one needs to find out about it.”
“Totally brilliant!” said Somkit, beaming.
“There’s just one problem,” said Ampai. “No one knows exactly when orbs will fade. If you know how old they are, you can guess about how long they’ll last, but when they actually go out — poof! — they just go.”
“I can tell,” said Pong. When the other two looked surprised, he added, “Orbs make a different sound when they’re close to going out. And they flicker, very faintly. I saw it happen tonight at the Light Market.”
Ampai raised one eyebrow, skeptical. “I’ve never noticed that before. Somkit, have you?”
Somkit shook his head, bewildered. “No, but Pong sees things that other people miss. You should’ve seen him with these mangoes when we were little. If he says it happens, I believe him.”
Ampai chewed on her thumbnail as she paced in front of her desk. “If we could have one hundred orbs — one hundred Gold orbs — for the march . . .” She jerked her head up at Somkit. “Can you even imagine the scene? To have the people of Chattana holding their own light? What a statement that would make!”
Somkit’s face mirrored her excitement. “Once I get the orbs, I can start charging them right away. As long as we keep them turned off, they’ll last until the march, and then —” His eyes landed on Pong, and he stopped. “Wait. What about Pong? What about his boat?”
Ampai turned to Pong. She looked at him a long time, trying to read his face. Her eyes traveled down to his bracelet-covered wrist. “What do you say? Do you want to stay and help us?”
“I . . . think . . .”
“Because if you stay, you’re taking a risk. I will protect you as much as I can, but I can’t promise for sure that you won’t get caught.”
Pong swallowed hard.
“What I can promise,” she went on, “is that if you help us, I will get you on the fastest boat to the sea when this is all over. If we pull this off, you’ll be free. You have my word.”
Pong looked from Ampai to Somkit. Once again he found himself pulled like the tide, torn between leaving and staying. The new prison sounded horrible, but Pong couldn’t believe that one march would stop it from being built. The Governor would do what he wanted, just as he always had.
The world is full of darkness, and that will never change.
But he couldn’t get over the look of hope on Somkit’s face. He owed his friend. For saving his life. For living out those years at Namwon alone. He’d left him once. He couldn’t leave him again, not right now. What was one more week when he’d waited four years?
Pong nodded at Ampai. “All right. I’ll do it.”
She nodded back. “Get ready. We start tonight.”
Pong became a bat, sleeping all day with a sheet wrapped tight around his face like wings. He woke at dusk and got ready to go out into the city with Ampai to hunt down faded orbs. Because Somkit’s work required the sun, the boys crossed paths only at the dinner table, which was breakfast for Pong.
“I feel so weird,” said Pong, yawning over a plate of garlicky clams. “This new schedule makes me feel like I’m walking underwater. At the temple, we were up before sunrise and in bed by dusk.”
“Yeah, but that was before you came to the sleepless city,” said Somkit as he dumped a spoonful of bright chilis onto his food and stirred. Pong’s stomach burned just watching him. “This place doesn’t come alive until the sun goes down. Besides, you get to go around with Ampai.” Somkit grinned, then whispered, “Admit it — it’s fun, isn’t it?”
Pong smiled back. It was fun. Despite his desperation to escape, he loved the nightly excursions with Ampai. Every night when he waited for her near the Mud House door, his pulse revved faster, like a boat motor warming up.
“You ready, kid?” Ampai would ask, not waiting for his answer before she slipped out into the alley. Pong didn’t wear the Junior Patrol disguise anymore, just plain clothes. But he did keep the cap to cover up his still-spiky scalp.
“The best way to hide in Chattana is not to hide at all,” Ampai told him as she led him along the gangplanks, over a bridge, and out toward one of the main canals. “If you act like you’ve got nothing to hide, people will believe you. Just follow me and do exactly what I do.”
Pong swallowed down his fear of being spotted and soon learned to walk forward with purpose — not too fast, not too slow — and to never, ever look over his shoulder.
Over the last few nights, Ampai had taken Pong into every pocket of the city. Sometimes they walked, and other times she rowed him in her shallow-bottom boat. While Pong listened to the Violet lights hanging outside shops and homes, Ampai distracted the owners, chatting them up as she peeled her tangerines.
In spite of the tens of thousands of Violet orbs in the city, their work was going more slowly than planned. For one thing, they had to be choosy about where they went. They had the most success in the poorer sections of town, where Ampai had the most connections, and where it was natural for her to strike up conversations with people while Pong made his quick switches.
But the other reason they made slow progress was that Ampai had other work to attend to — her main work.
She was a stirrer of hearts.
“This’ll only take a minute,” she said as she rowed the little boat through the network of canals at the southern end of the city. Down here, the city blocks dissolved into rafts of houseboats tied loosely together. Pong watched the people on the decks of their tidy homes as they pulled up nets of glittery carp or sat in semicircles, playing card games. Every one of them waved to Ampai as they passed.
She tethered the boat to a small floating house bobbing up and down in the reeds. “Kla?” she called, stepping onto the deck. “Hey, it’s Ampai. I’ve brought you some tangerines.”
A man’s deep voice floated out the open doorway. “Tangerines won’t help me,” said the tall man sadly. “But come in, sister.”
Pong followed Ampai into the little shack. It was sparsely furnished but swept as clean as a monk’s room. Like most people, this guy Kla called Ampai “sister,” but one look at them together and it was obvious they weren’t even distantly related. He towered over her, a great beast of a man, as big as Yai but with an even thicker neck and arms that were muscular and brown from working in the sun. He took up almost the entire room all by himself.
When Kla raised his eyebrows at Pong, Ampai said, “My assistant. You can trust him.”
She stood in the center of the dark room with her hands in her pockets. “How’s your wife?”
Kla nodded at a sheet of cloth covering the doorway to the other room. His face sagged, and Pong was struck by how such a huge man could suddenly seem so small. “Not good,” he whispered. “She needs me to be home to care for her, but I gotta work. I gotta go right now, actually. Two jobs working the docks just to keep us fed. It ain’t enough to pay for a doctor, too, especially not the kind she needs.”
He rubbed his enormous wrists and Pong noticed that he had a crossed-out tattoo. He had served time in Banglad, the men’s prison. Pong stared, awed and a little afraid.
Kla slumped on a stool in the corner. “I tried to get better work, but you know how it is.”
Ampai glanced at his wrist and nodded.
The giant cradled his forehead in his hands. “What’m I gonna do? I can’t get a decent job, not with a prison record. I can’t earn enough to get us more light than that thing.” He nodded at the single Violet orb hanging from the ceiling. “We can’t cook food. Can’t boil water. If it goes out, my wife — she’ll . . . she’ll be in the dark.”
“We’re about to change all that,” said Ampai.
“You been saying that for a long time, sister. Nothing changes.”
“It will this time. We’re going to show the people that Chattana’s better off without the Governor.”
“Ha!” barked Kla. “You mean the man who saved us all? Who brought us into the light?”
“The Governor lit the city,” said Ampai. “That’s not the same thing. How many years has it been since you were released from Banglad?”
“Eleven.”
“Eleven! Brother, you already served your sentence and still you’re paying the price for one mistake. It’s the law, but it isn’t what’s right. It’s time that we showed the Governor that he doesn’t have control over what’s right and what’s wrong.”
“And you think a bunch of people standing together are going to make him step aside?” asked Kla.
Ampai squared her shoulders. “This march that I’m planning isn’t just to prove to the Governor that he can’t dismiss us any longer. It’s to prove it to ourselves. Don’t you see that?”
Pong had sat through dozens of these visits with Ampai. He’d heard dozens of versions of these hopeful speeches. But now, as he watched her lift up the giant man using only her words, he felt something shift inside him. He rocked on restless feet, and his chest ached as if his lungs were no longer sitting quite right. Something beneath his rib cage strained and fluttered, bashing against the old walls around his heart.
“This time is different,” continued Ampai. “We’ve got more people on our side than ever before. The march is less than a week away. I told you my goal: to get everyone that lives beneath the Violet and Blue to come out. He can’t ignore us if we have that many people.”
The giant looked up. “And you’ve got them?”
Ampai smiled. “I will. But I’m missing the dockworkers. The great elephants of men like you. I don’t want any violence — on either side — and if you and your friends show up on the bridge and stand with us, the police will think twice about a confrontation.”
The big man shook his head. “I dunno. You really think the Governor’s going to change things just because a bunch of people stand on a bridge all at once? We’re like little fruit flies to him.”
Ampai’s eyes glimmered in the dim room. “I’ve got something up my sleeve that will show without a shadow of a doubt that we don’t need him.” She threw Pong a wink. “We can change things forever, but only if there’s enough of us. That bridge has to be full. Say you’ll be there with me?”
Nothing in the shack had changed, but somehow the shadows seemed pushed to the corners.
Kla looked up at Ampai. “All right. Me and my crew’ll be there.”
Ampai flashed him a grin. “Good. And until then, this is for you.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tangerine. She handed it to Kla. It was wrapped in a sheaf of money.
Tears brimmed at the lids of Kla’s eyes, but Ampai whisked Pong back to the boat before he could thank her.
Even after Ampai rowed them back to solid ground, Pong felt dizzy, as if they were still bobbing up and down on Kla’s house. They had more work to do, but he dawdled, hanging back in the shadows of a side alley.
“Hey, little guy,” said Ampai, stopping to wait for him. “You okay? Hungry?”
“I’m not hungry,” said Pong.
Ampai sauntered back towar
d him. “What’s wrong, then? You’re tired? It’s not easy staying up all night, is it?”
“It isn’t that,” said Pong quietly. “It’s just that . . . I just realized that we’re really different.”
Ampai grinned. She was in a good mood, and she was trying to pass it on. “It’s true. You don’t eat enough oranges.”
Pong shook his head. He didn’t want to joke or laugh this off. “No, I mean . . .” He took a deep breath and let all the words out at once. “You look at this city and you see everything that’s wrong with it. And you want to fix it. I look at it and see all the same things, but . . . I just don’t think it’s possible to fix any of it.”
Ampai tilted her head and raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to go on.
“When something’s really broken . . . when it’s bad,” said Pong, “you can’t fix it. You can’t make it good.”
Ampai’s face softened, and even though she wasn’t much taller than Pong, she leaned down to look him square in the eyes. “What are we talking about now? The city? Or a boy?”
Pong looked away. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re wrong,” she said. “We aren’t so different. We have much more in common than you know.”
Ampai unbuttoned the left cuff of her jacket sleeve and rolled it up. She held her wrist out to Pong. For a moment, he thought she was about to show him a prison mark, but her dark bronze skin was bare. Instead, she hooked a finger up her sleeve and pulled down a thin, woven bracelet.
Pong stared. Ampai wore a bracelet just like the last one Father Cham had given him — red and gold braided together. The colors had faded a bit, but otherwise it was identical.
“But how . . . ?” he whispered. “Where did you get that?”
“The same place you did.” Ampai glanced up at the buildings towering over them. “I was one of those babies born among the ashes of the Great Fire. Before the Governor came. They called us basket babies, the ones who floated downriver to Tanaburi. I grew up there, going to the village school, but I spent more of my time at the temple, studying with Father Cham. He was my teacher until I grew old enough to move to Chattana on my own.”
A Wish in the Dark Page 13