The trees and the signs started popping back up. Then the signs gave way to houses. Pointy houses and flat-topped ones. Some made of brick and some of stucco and some of what looked like wood.
“We’re coming into Lincoln now. Posh posh.”
“Your town isn’t posh?” I asked.
Amnah laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. It was wiry and angry. “You knew it wasn’t posh. You kept looking around like you were lost in a horror movie. Just wait until you get into the actual city,” she scoffed. “Cambridge is going to blow your little mind.”
“But, so, what’s it really like in Old Harmonie? I mean, really?” Tommy asked.
“It’s just—” I began. But how do you describe a place that’s so familiar that you’ve never even had to think about the way it was before? It wasn’t something to describe. It just was.
“All the streets are cul-de-sacs,” Ilana said.
“Cul-de-whats?” Tommy asked. He slowed the car down a little and swerved around something. It gave me time to see a big oak tree that was covered in the same ribbons we had seen back on the fence. All different colors.
“Cul-de-sacs. Little loops. All the houses are the same design. It’s efficient. People are nice. People are smart.”
“People are smart out here, too,” Amnah interjected.
“She didn’t say people weren’t smart out here,” Mouse said with a sigh. “Tommy asked. She’s answering.”
“But, like, everything’s really nice, right?” Tommy asked.
“I guess, but—” I began.
“Yes,” Ilana interrupted. “Everything’s really nice.”
“I knew it!” Tommy said. “Just you wait until I move to town. Bananas.”
A pickup truck passed by our car. A big red one with flames on the side that glittered and morphed, taking on the shape of a dragon, a centaur, a Pegasus, one after the other. It made me dizzy to watch and I closed my eyes.
“Why are you so sure you’re going to move there?” Theo asked.
“Simple: StepUp Charter School. You have to apply to get in and they only accept the very brightest—the best of the best. And the kids who go there go on to the top universities and, eventually, get recruited by Krita and go to live in Old Harmonie or one of the other Kritopias.”
“Keep smoke blowing,” Amnah told him.
“Do you go to that school?” I asked Mouse.
She just shook her head.
“I’d sooner cut my own ear off,” Amnah said.
“Amnah has a chip on her shoulder, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Tommy said.
“It’s just another way that Krita messed with us,” Amnah said. “Anyway, our school is just fine.”
“Exactly. It’s just fine. My school is great. We are doing the exact same curriculum that is taught in the Kritopia schools. Plus added mathematics drilling. Plus—”
“Yeah, yeah. Sounds like great balls of fun.”
I guess it was something about Amnah’s tone, but Tommy stopped talking. Mouse examined the palm of her hand.
We shot over a bump and I rocketed forward. An arm slapped across my waist. When I opened my eyes, I was looking right into Mouse’s. They were honey brown, like Theo’s, but with tiny golden flecks in each iris.
“Thanks,” I whispered.
Mouse smiled and moved her arm off my stomach.
“Do you, um, drive a lot?” Theo asked.
“On my uncle’s lot, mostly. He taught me when I was nine so I could help him move cars around. I had to sit on books and he had these flip-flops for me that he glued blocks to so I could reach the pedals.” We bounced again. Hard. “The potholes out here are wicked bad. My uncle complains about them all the time. Taxes, taxes, axles, axles. Hey, do you have—”
“You’d better not be asking them if they have potholes in Old Harmonie,” Amnah said.
We didn’t, but I decided not to say so. I peered up at the blue sky, hoping that at least it would seem familiar, but as my eyes focused I noticed drone after drone after drone. Some of them dragged signs behind them. Eat at Moe’s! Ride the Dreamline! Shop the Star Sale! Then a huge truck passed us and cut off my line of sight to the sky. Everywhere there were colors and words and objects darting about.
Tommy hit a lever and something started clicking. He turned off the main road we were on and onto a smaller, tree-lined one.
“What are you doing?” Amnah asked.
“We need to show them the forest,” Tommy said. “We’re driving right by Lincoln.”
“This isn’t a sightseeing tour,” Amnah told him. “They’re on a mission, remember?” She said “mission” so snidely I thought the word might break.
“But they have to see the sculptures, right? I mean, it’s a one-in-a-million shot for them, and the park is right up there.”
“Amnah’s right,” Theo said.
But Ilana looked back through the rear window, back toward Old Harmonie. The sooner we got to Cambridge, I knew, the sooner I would lose her. “How long will it take?”
“Twenty minutes, I swear,” Tommy said. “It’s like one of my all-time favorite places in the world. Sincerely.” He slid into a parking spot far away from any other spot.
“We have time now that we’re driving,” I said. “It’s just a little break.”
Ilana nodded. “Yeah, sculptures sound nice.” She opened the door and climbed out. I got out after her.
Theo hesitated, then he opened the front passenger door and got out. “We can’t—” Theo started.
“Yes, we can,” I said. I put my hand on his arm. He looked at me and at Ilana and I guess he understood that I wasn’t about to let her go.
Tommy was already skipping down the street. The town looked like a museum. There were huge churches with tall steeples. The bells in one rang out a single, clear chime just as we walked into the main part of town. Each store displayed beautiful wares in their windows, like gauzy sundresses that changed color as the sun hit their threads and a toy store full of old-fashioned, clunky but cute-looking robotics and games.
“It’s kind of like Fruitlands,” I said. That’s where everyone went when they wanted a day away—shopping and restaurants and an amazing ice cream stand that served flavors like basil strawberry, goat cheese fig, and gooey caramel cream. This town had its own ice cream shop: Lincoln Licks. The window was painted to look like the world’s biggest sundae.
The village green was mostly empty except for the geese, who paid no mind to the swan swimming in the small pond.
“Must have lost its mate,” Ilana said. “They mate for life.”
“That’s sad that it’s all alone,” I said.
“Not really,” she replied. “Swans are actually pretty mean.”
We trotted after Tommy as he left the main street and went across the village green. It looked like there were rows of trees ahead of us, skinny ones neatly planted just like back home. When we got closer, though, I realized that they weren’t live trees. They were sculptures, made of bronze, of thin pine trees. They were small. Most were just about our heights.
“Stay still,” Tommy whispered. “Look closely.”
So I did. I looked at the trees. Ilana stood with her back against mine staring at her own tree. I could feel her breath go in and out, could smell her sweet, familiar smell like sunscreen and sunflowers. “Oh!” she said. Just as she said it, a face appeared on the bark of the tree. It had been there all along, but I hadn’t noticed it until I had relaxed. The face was wrinkled, of course, with deep-set eyes, heavy brows, and a wide, toothy smile. It wasn’t just a face, either; it was a whole body. A whole person! He wore a suit, or maybe it was a uniform. It had large buttons that caught the sun and glinted at me. How had I missed them at first? Now that I saw the man sculpted in the tree trunk, it was impossible not to see him.
I started to feel raindrops on me, though there was still bright sun.
Tommy clapped his hands together. Mouse had a huge grin on her face. Even Amnah seemed a litt
le calmer. “Wait,” Tommy whispered. “Man, I wish you could see your own faces! It’s almost better watching you than watching the trees.”
The rain was warm and fell in big but slow drops. It dripped down my skin and sloughed off some of the salt and dirt. As the rain fell, the trees grew. The ground under us vibrated softly. Up and up and up they went. Real, live birds that had been resting in their branches flew into the sky, swooped around, then gathered in the center of the bronze forest. The trees towered over us now, the people in their trunks turned to giants. I spun around and stared up at the faces. A woman whose hair grew out into the branches, her grin like a boomerang. A man whose chest spread out wide as an ox. His mouth was open and almost-audible laughter spilled down.
“How?” I asked.
Next to me, Ilana shook her head. “It’s amazing.”
I put a hand on the trunk of a tree and felt it moving under my fingers. The trees were twelve feet tall now and still growing. The faces grew more distinct. And they smiled. All of them smiled down at us, inviting us to smile, too. My dry lips cracked as they spread into a grin.
“See!” Tommy cried with glee. “Totally, sincerely amazing right?”
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” he said. He tilted his head back. The raindrops fell on his face and he stuck his tongue out to catch them.
Theo coughed. I knew what he was going to say. It’s time to go. We’d all said it, a million times. Still, this time the words fell with added weight. We were getting closer to good-bye.
14
A smile stayed on my own lips as we got back into the car. “What was that all about?” I asked.
“You feel better, right?” Tommy asked.
“Yes, but I still don’t understand it.”
“Human psychology,” Tommy said. “When we see a smile, we smile, too. And the more we smile, the happier we feel.”
“So that whole big thing—all those sculptures and the way they grow—it’s just to make you happy?” I asked.
“You say that like it’s no big thing,” Amnah said.
“It’s the only thing,” Mouse whispered. She smiled, too.
“Thanks for showing us,” Ilana said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Thanks.”
“Back on the road now,” Tommy said as he started the car. The rumble didn’t seem so loud now, more like a cat purring.
Theo turned around from the front seat. “We’ll be there soon,” he said. “It’s all going to work out.” He looked at Ilana, but I got the feeling he was really talking to me.
We drove out of the town in friendly silence. All because of a sculpture garden. Maybe they were right. Maybe that’s what art was supposed to be for—to bring us together, to fill us with hope.
Tommy turned the car onto the main road we’d been driving on before. The billboards came back, promising the best food, the best cars, the best experiences. After the sculptures, the signs felt cruder. They pushed their way into my head and pushed out the nice feeling the trees had given me. What a strange world that would hold those two things so closely together.
Tommy rearranged the rearview mirror. “Did you know that your body creates more than six cups of saliva every day? I was thinking there’s got to be a better use for all that saliva than just swallowing it.”
“Swallowing spit? That’s a little gross,” Ilana said.
“What? You do swallow it. I mean, it’s only natural. And what a waste, right?”
I thought back to the statues. They must have been on hydraulics or something, but they appeared magical. They felt magical. It was like real, live giants were growing up next to us.
“Irrigation is the most obvious choice,” Ilana said.
“Right, I thought of that. Of course.”
“Of course,” Theo said.
The way I felt after being with those sculptures was the way I felt in Oakedge. Like anything was possible. I settled back in against Ilana. She didn’t mention my bony butt this time, but instead tucked her chin onto my shoulder.
“The problem is there’s bacteria in saliva. And what if those bacteria are dangerous to the plants?”
“Filtration?” Theo said. He had turned his head so he was looking more at Tommy, and I could see circles under his eyes, but also that he was looking a little more relaxed.
“That’s one option,” Tommy said. He waved one hand as he spoke. “But really, then we’re starting to lose efficiency.”
“Shouldn’t you have both hands on the wheel?” Theo asked.
“So I’m thinking gray water. I mean, not gray water exactly. But, you know how you can reuse water for like toilet flushing and stuff like that. We could add our excess saliva to the gray water, thereby using even less clean water. Pretty brilliant, huh?”
Tommy swerved the car when he slapped the steering wheel.
“Okay, that’s a plausible option,” Theo said.
“I really think you should concentrate on having your hands on the steering wheel,” I said.
“But there is one problem,” Theo went on.
“What?” Tommy asked.
“Collection,” Ilana said.
“You really shouldn’t encourage him,” Amnah said. I wondered if she’d heard Tommy’s thoughts on saliva before.
“Au contraire, my friends. I have thought this through. You know how you go to the dentist and they have that thing that sucks the saliva out of your mouth?” He turned over his shoulder to look at us in the backseat.
I didn’t know much about driving cars, but I knew you were supposed to look where you were going. “Tommy!” I cried out.
“Seriously,” Theo said to him.
Tommy spun his head around and looked in front of us, but he still waved his right hand around as he spoke. He tucked his finger into his mouth. “Mr. Thirsty, that’s what my dental hygienist calls it. Anyway, we’d use those.”
“When?” Ilana asked.
“All the time, of course. Constant collection into a little bag. Like what your friend Benji had in his pack, only in the opposite direction.”
“You want people to wear those things all the time?” Amnah asked. “By the way, let me remind you that this is the kid whose plan we’re all following. The kid who wants us all to go around with straws in our mouths that suck out our saliva, we’re letting him lead us on this foolish errand.”
“It will only seem weird at first, but then it will seem normal.”
“He’s right about that part,” Mouse said. “As for the rest of—”
But she didn’t get to finish her thought because Tommy, who had peeked over his shoulder to see Mouse as she spoke in his defense, did not see the large pothole.
Theo saw it. He yelled, “Tommy, look out!”
Tommy swerved, but it was too late. The front tire slammed into the pothole. I slid hard against Ilana, who slid against the driver’s seat, knocking Tommy forward so his foot pressed down on the gas, shooting us back out of the pothole with another thud as the back tire hit.
Then there was a thud, thud, thud. And then the car stopped.
“To be fair, we were all way into the conversation,” Tommy said. “I mean, on balance, it wasn’t just me.” He stood next to the flat front wheel of the car. The sun glinted off the windshield and into his eyes, so he held up a hand to shield them.
“Whenever you know you’re wrong, you add in all those extra words. ‘To be fair.’ ‘On balance.’ ” Amnah kicked the ground as she spoke.
The trunk was still open after our futile search for a spare tire. There was a jack and a lug wrench, but just air where the spare tire should have been.
The car was parked under a huge billboard that kept changing its picture. I had watched them cycle around as the others talked. An advertisement for a hearing specialist that showed a tiny man standing inside a giant ear. A picture of a bowl of fruit next to a can of juice and the words “An orchard in every glass.” A pair of glasses that shimmered and shined
in the late-day sun and made me touch my own glasses.
“I’m just making sure we all understand that blame can be spread around,” Tommy said. He still had a hint of smile, like he was holding out hope that maybe somewhere deep, deep down he would be able to find the humor in this situation.
“Can we get another tire somewhere?” I asked.
“Not tonight,” Tommy said. “All the stores will be closing soon, and there is the whole not having any more money issue.”
“There’s also the sun,” Mouse said.
“Yeah, it’s going down. I know, I know,” Tommy replied.
“It’s going down over there. It’s setting in the direction we were driving.”
“West,” Ilana said.
“West,” Mouse agreed.
“West?” Tommy asked. “No way.”
But there was no denying the setting sun.
“Really, it was more that way,” Tommy said, pointing southwest. “It wasn’t strictly west. If we looked at our whole route, I bet we weren’t even heading directly west fifty percent of the time.”
Theo leaned back against the car. “So how far out of the way do you think we went?”
“Ten, fifteen miles,” Amnah calculated.
Theo’s shoulders slumped.
“It wasn’t all out of the way. We needed to go south, too. It wasn’t all out of the way,” Tommy insisted. His cheeks turned red and he started to chew on his lower lip.
Off in the distance I could see a drone heading our way. I nodded toward it, and Theo looked up. He just shrugged. He was right. What could we do now if a drone from Krita saw us?
“What are we near?” Theo asked. “Are there any towns close by?”
“I’m not one hundred percent sure where we are. Precisely,” Tommy admitted.
Ilana stretched her arms above her head, her fingers laced together. “We can’t just stand here on the side of the road. Six kids and a car, that’s bound to draw attention.”
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