by Maya Rock
“I have to do something,” I mumble to myself. I’m sick of thinking, so I decide to work on the radio. Everyone’s so impressed I can build stuff, make things, figure out how electricity and levers and pulleys and transistors work, but it’s easy to do when the reward for working on a project is peace. I never get that feeling at Fincher’s, where I’m pressured to hurry up and fix; it’s totally different from slowing down and creating.
I’m in the final stages. I have all the materials I need—now it’s time to put them together. I use an old pen to poke four holes into a used-up hydrogen peroxide bottle that I snagged from the chemistry classroom and then carefully weave green insulated wire through the holes. I’m following the instructions from an electronics book I borrowed from Fincher’s. Then I coil the wire around the outside of the bottle. I tape the wires to the germanium diode and connect the other end of the diode to the copper foil beneath the stripped telephone cord wires with alligator clips. I hold the receiver to my ear and move an alligator clip to different points on the wire wrapped around the bottle until I hear faint noise. The volume wavers.
One station is especially loud—oldies, playing the jingly frenetic music from season sixty-eight, gaudacious. I touch another loop of wire and hear Nelly and George, popular evening talk show hosts, bantering about next Sunday’s baseball game.
“My money’s on the Pigeons,” chortles George. He’s from the Arbor, so he has to root for them.
“I’m with you, George,” Nelly coos. “It’s not going to be easy for the Ants, going up against Callen Herron.”
I just can’t escape Callen today. A burst of static makes me move the alligator clip farther down the wire. Static scratches in my ear again, then I hear muffled voices.
“Did you see the show?”
“My mom said it was scary.” More scratchiness, then an unintelligible string of syllables. I hear something that sounds like srastle. Sounds like Reals. Blissful Days–obsessed Reals, like Dr. Kanavan. I press my ear harder into the receiver. I think I’ve tapped into one of their walkie-talkie transmissions.
“Sandcastle.” I pull out from the garble. Not srastle, sandcastle. Probably having fun on Eden beach. The whole transmission dissolves into static, and after a couple of minutes, I give up.
Chapter 4
I smear the pink lotion from Media1’s Skin Sequence onto my face and let my skin soak it up while I go over to the bathroom’s porthole window. The snowney has melted, and the flowers in the Herrons’ backyard are all opening, welcoming the morning sun. When Media1 really wants to push the fake weather, they’ll raze the plants, but the garden’s been spared so far. Callen’s mother must be happy about that.
I wash the lotion off, thinking about the day ahead. Lia should be here soon, for the Diary of Destiny. Afterward I’ll go to Fincher’s. A normal day. With Belle gone. The one thought shifts everything, and next thing I know, I’m looking at my face in the mirror, wondering if Belle did her Skin Sequence yesterday morning.
She’d thought it was a normal day, and she had been wrong.
The reflection of my face takes on a greenish tinge, catching light from the Missivor blinking in my room. Clutching my towel around me, I go to check it.
Product Promotion: Consider the benefits of fruit of all kinds. Oranges, apples, grapes, bananas. Fruit is delicious and healthy. Talk to your friends and family about how much you like fruit.
Weather: Please refer and react to the weather as you deem appropriate.
First good news in ages. I turn the Missivor off and walk to my closet, pulling out a lime-green tank top and the jean shorts that I frayed for liberato. I’m taking underwear from the dresser drawer when the phone rings. I dash over to my night table and pick it up while trying to maintain a grip on my towel and clothes.
“Nettie, I’m having an emergency.” Selwyn’s wispy voice flutters through the receiver. “I saw a roach by the stove, and I’m calling you from the counter where I’ve taken refuge.”
“You’re where? On the counter?” I tuck the phone between my chin and shoulder. Selwyn’s kitchen isn’t very big, and their counters are always junked up with pans and dishes and cereal boxes and potato chip bags.
“Yeah, there’s room next to the toaster and the napkin holder. The second I saw it—well, first I heard it, this sound, like someone dropped a bunch of pins—I screamed and jumped up here. I haven’t eaten yet, and I was going to boil an egg, but now I’m too scared to do anything.”
“You’re a prisoner.” I wiggle into my clothes, then fall back on the bed and stare at the motionless cameras on the ceiling. They rarely swivel when I talk to Selwyn.
She sighs. “Distract me. Did Lia and Callen close up?”
“I don’t know, and it’s killing me,” I report, voice thick with misery.
“They probably didn’t,” she says. “Lia would have called you if they had. Heck, she’d have come over afterward. You know Lia. She likes talking about it more than doing it.”
It. “Ugh, stop.” I shut my eyes, trying to block the images whirling through my mind. “I don’t even want to—”
Selwyn shrieks, and I hold the receiver away from my ear.
“I thought I heard the roach,” she wheezes. “But it was just the fridge making noises.”
“Your parents are at work?”
“Yeah,” Selwyn confirms. Her parents often spend weekends and nights in the hospital, where they hold administrative positions. They were anyassigned into the apprenticeships that led to those professions. The Bakers rarely make school functions, and when they do, they seem scattered and have dark circles around their eyes.
“Okay, enough,” I say, pushing my mind into problem-solving mode. “You gotta get out of there. Forget the egg. Grab some bread and leave the kitchen.”
“All right.” She forces herself to slow her breathing. “I’m putting my foot on the floor . . . ,” she narrates, her voice taut. I listen as she describes her four-step trip to the bread box, the untying of the bread bag, withdrawing of two slices, and retying of the bag. “I’m going to take it upstairs,” she says rapidly. I hear her scurrying up the Bakers’ carpeted stairs and running down the hall to her closet-sized bedroom.
“You can do it,” I call encouragingly.
“Made it,” she declares a few seconds later. “So scary.” I hear the sound of her bedroom door slamming shut.
“I know. Good for you,” I say. Lia gets impatient with Selwyn’s sensitivity, but Selwyn and I have been friends since kindergarten—far longer than Lia and I. I trust her completely, even though she is a little high-strung. These days she’s crucial, since she’s sympathetic about me and Callen. Which reminds me.
“Selwyn, I almost sent Callen to the hospital yesterday,” I announce.
“Really?” she gasps.
I recount the whole walk to her, joking darkly, “If only I had really hit him. Disabled him before close-up time.” Above me, the cameras swivel.
• • •
Lia arrives while I’m fiddling with the radio, trying to catch the Reals’ transmission again, and I hear Mom, probably up since dawn, go to the door to let her in. Mom adores Lia because she keeps the Audience watching me.
“Hey, Ms. Egretine, how are you? I saw the new reading space in the library with those plush cushions. Soooo cute.” Lia sounds upbeat. Like she got what she wanted last night.
While she and Mom talk, I go over to the mirror hanging from my closet door and practice looking normal, a little smile to show that I’m happy to see her.
After a few more minutes of chitchat with my mother, Lia comes up, pushing my door wide open with her hip, and I hear the tinny sounds of cameras rotating and shifting.
“Diary time,” she sings, taking off her jacket and sniffing it. “This reeks. Of smoke. Did I tell you Callen started smoking? I saw him, what, over twelve hours ago, and I can s
till smell it. It’s all over my body. Mom still smokes when . . .” She trails off. “I just hate it.”
“Callen smokes? Really?” I squeak, not looking her in the eye.
“I told him he’s going to be a haggard old man, but he doesn’t listen. He’s so stubborn. I say go right, he’s, like, left.” She stalks the room, searching for a place to put her coat. I’m still standing by the mirror, watching her. “Not just left, but, like, left, now and always. The coach got sick yesterday and called off practice, but most of the Pigeons stayed anyway. Not Callen. He’s so lazy.”
“We can all be lazy.” Would she be so irritated with him if they’d closed up last night?
“Hmm, speak for yourself.” She flings the coat over the back of my desk chair. She’s in jeans and another liberato tunic. Hers is nicer than mine, though, gauzy and pink with lace embroidery at the sleeves. It even has some shape because she put on a belt. She settles onto the bed, mouth curled petulantly. “Do you think I’m too mean to him?”
“I don’t know,” I say, the total truth. I can’t take it anymore. “So, last night.” I study my fingernails.
“Last night,” she repeats, puzzled. She twirls her braid around her finger. “What do you mean?”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “You and Callen.”
“Me and Callen, what?” But then she bursts out laughing. “Just kidding. I know what you mean. It didn’t happen.”
Relief pours through me. “Oh, no—why not?”
“We’re, like, on the couch, and I reach down, and I’m going to, like, unzip his jeans, and I open my eyes, and Nettie, he has his I’m-barely-here stare.” Lia does an expert imitation of Callen’s faraway look. “We’re making out, and his arms aren’t even around me. They’re at his sides, like I’m so hard to touch. God, I felt like I had to pry his mouth open—like, am I your dentist? I couldn’t go through with it.”
“Ew, weird.” I sit down next to her, shaking my head. From here I have a clear view of the coat she threw on my chair. I resist the urge to put it in the closet. Lia hates it when I clean up after her.
“I don’t even know if he has before. I assumed all the tracs had, but maybe I was wrong. What if he’s a virgin?” Her eyes bulge out.
“I don’t know.” I giggle nervously. She waits for me to say more, but soon gives up, pulling her lucky pen out of her straw bag. “Never mind. I want to come up with some plus-ten Vows for this week. Like we talked about?” She stares at me significantly, and it takes me a second to recall her saying she’d think up juicier plotlines for me.
“Yeah, I remember.”
“March twenty-third,” she declares, writing the date. A glint of light catches her eye. She looks over to the window and inhales sharply. Uh-oh. She pushes her hair forward, obscuring her mouth from the cameras. “You have to get rid of the bottle.”
I put my chin in my hand and curl my fingers around my lips. “Does it matter? They won’t notice.”
“Nettie, just do it. You don’t want to get fined for keeping a dirty old bottle.”
I stare at the bottle, glowing in the early morning sun. “The whole thing is depressing,” I mouth, remembering Scoop’s stricken face and then his questions. She’s gone, but she’s not, still in his head and mine.
“Yes, Nettie, I know it’s depressing, but you have to throw that bottle out,” Lia mouths, putting her hand on my arm.
“I don’t want to,” I mouth back stubbornly. “I think it’s nice, and it’s been seasons since Belle even touched it.” I hang my head.
Lia snaps her fingers in front of my face. “Stop. You’re being melodramatic. I already told you, Belle is probably happier doing publicity in the Sadtors. You are still on the show. Act like it.”
She’s right. The company’s still taking care of Belle. I cling to that knowledge like it’s a precious jewel, and my doubts begin to fade.
“What were your Good Things this week?” I say, taking the notebook and pen from Lia.
“I got an A on my literature test,” she declares, lying on her back, entirely exposed to the cameras on the ceiling. “Nice picture,” she says, noticing the framed photo of a conch shell next to my shelves behind us. Lia’s been on me for seasons to decorate, saying my bone-white walls need the help, so I knew she’d approve of this photo I scored at a Four Corners tag sale. She stretches her arms out above her head and arches like a gymnast, then lifts her legs up until her toes touch the slanted ceiling above my bed. “Yippee,” she crows before letting her legs fall flat. I sense her relief that we’ve stopped fralling, her natural ease in front of the cameras taking over. She’s like a lightbulb with multiple wattages, and she’s on High now. I write down her grade.
“Also, Ms. Pepperidge likes the play.”
“Plus ten.”
“Yeah, I know. It’ll definitely set me apart from the other Blisslet applicants.” Lia wants to apprentice as an actress in the island theater troupe. There are four slots and nine girls interested. But she’s Lia—she’s going to get it.
She sits up abruptly and turns, positioning her face so at least four cameras have a good shot of her.
“I actually made a major change in the play,” she confides. “Instead of cheating on the chemistry test, the Mia character is going to embezzle funds from her dad’s bank.”
“Yeah?” I like listening to Lia talk about her play stuff. My mind just doesn’t work like hers—I’m all about cut-and-dried logic.
“Yup, and I even might have her go to jail. What do you think?”
“Well, I—”
“I know, I know,” she says, playing with her braid again. “Now people might just end up hating her. But I think I can still show her vulnerability.” She takes the notebook from me. “Okay, your Good Things.”
I have one—yesterday’s math test.
Lia writes it down, sighing, “Already time for Bad Things.” She hums as she thinks. “Well, obvious, no close-up, and—” She hesitates, then scrawls a lowercase m on a line by itself. Tiny m’s are scattered all through this volume of the Diary.
“Mom again?” I say.
She nods, ducking out of view of the cameras and motioning me to come closer. “She got so plastered on Monday that she tripped down the stairs and sprained her ankle. Dad just hid out in his study.” Lia’s father is really into his job, adult education. He’s sort of an absentminded professor most of the time, only ever speaking up, it seems, to admonish Lia if her grades aren’t up to par. Grades don’t matter if you want to become a Blisslet, but he wants her to be like him.
I bite my lip, trying to figure out how to respond to the stuff about her mom. “Sorry about that,” I say on-mic, inching backward. It’s all I can think of, and with my ratings the way they are, I need to stay on-camera, which means cutting down on the fralling.
“Yup, it sucks,” she says bluntly, reaching for the Diary again. “Hey, I came up with one—did you finish your radio? That would be a Good Thing.”
“Yeah, I did.” I look over at the completed radio on my desk. I’m about to tell her what I heard on Media1’s walkie-talkie channel, but she’s off and running before I have a chance.
“How are we going to get you out of Fincher’s?” Lia says. She nibbles at the top of the lucky pen. “Maybe you should ask Mr. Black about the math teacher apprenticeship. That could be your Vow for next week.” She pokes my knee with the pen, arching her eyebrows, like, See? This is it. Her attempt to get me off the E.L.
“But Revere’s been working for the slot since they were announced. I won’t be able to catch up,” I protest, curling up on my side across from her.
“The Double A is in a month. There’s still time.” Lia begins writing in the notebook. “I think you’d be a great teacher.” She can’t say it on-mic, but I hear the unspoken reason: maybe my ratings would be better if I were in an apprenticeship I liked.
/> But . . . Revere. “I’d feel awful if I got it, though. Revere would be pissed if he ended up anyassigned.”
“Oh, come on. Revere’s incapable of being mad. Listen, it can’t hurt to ask,” Lia says. She puts the pen down next to her leg, and I discreetly pick it up, not wanting red marks on my comforter. She reads what she wrote out loud. “Vows. Nettie Starling vows to quit moping around and ask Mr. Black about her chances of getting the available high school math teacher apprenticeship slot.” She blocks her face from the camera and quickly mouths, “The Audience will love it if there’s conflict between you and Revere.”
I nod slowly. Coming up with plus-ten plotlines comes so naturally to Lia. I imagine storming past Revere to the front of the classroom and demanding a chance from Mr. Black, the Audience cheering me on.
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
“Ask him. Monday.”
“All right,” I agree. I look over at the clock on my night table. “I gotta get going.”
Lia claps the journal shut. “Okay, maybe I’ll visit Callen. Stuff ended not so plus ten last night after No Arms.” She picks up her book bag. “Which means we argued as much as Callen can argue. It’s, like, different shades of silence. I-hate-you silence, I’m-hurt silence, I’m-tired-of-this-silence silence.”
I give her some silence of my own. Like, I-would-love-it-if-he-never-spoke-to-you-again silence. I smooth out wrinkles in my comforter. “I hope you make up,” I say finally.
• • •
I take the really long way to Fincher’s, riding down the eastern coast, gliding past Avalon beach houses, including Lincoln’s. A blue sheen radiates from the distance. The aquarium. Scoop works there every weekend as part of his apprenticeship. Thinking about him grieving while cleaning out tank filters makes me want to tell him something about the Patriots.
If I move fast, I can find him, say what I have to say, and still make it to Fincher’s on time. I get a ticket, lock my bike to a camerapole, and join the crowds churning through the halls. The air in here is sharp and pure, with a vacuumed, institutional quality to it. I haven’t been to the aquarium since I was a kid, and I find myself almost hypnotized by the octopi and squid, lobsters and eels, salmon and sharks.