Sunlight 24

by Merritt Graves

“To rob someone?”

  “No, to Revise. How does it feel to Revise?”

  I studied the dark window. “Good.”

  “Is it worth it?”

  “I don’t know yet.” I looked at him and grimaced. “I shouldn’t have done this to you . . . I should . . . I should go.”

  “We both know you’re not going anywhere.”

  Michael’s voice had been growing in fervor, but he stopped abruptly and sat back down, like he was a pendulum that could only swing so far one way. He interlaced his hands in front of his face, his skin still looking translucent in the dim light, and started crying, gently at first, and then in a steady stream that he tried to smear away with his hand. “Dorian, I don’t know what’s happening. I—I’ve gotten used to people doing things that I don’t understand, but you were always . . . you always made sense about everything. And we’re always helping people out. Though now . . . I don’t know. All of a sudden you’ve gotten mean.”

  “I’ve always been mean,” I mumbled in a half whisper.

  “No, you haven’t.”

  “Michael . . .”

  “Did you get to pick? Did you get to choose how you Revised?”

  “I didn’t have that much money, so I had to focus on the basics: Processing. Memory. Storage. Stuff like that.”

  “You sound like my computer,” Michael commented, swiping away a tear, as he looked over at his workstation.

  “Yeah, but that’s what we need, Michael—and that’s what you need since you’re competing with them. You can’t really do anything until you have those things first.”

  “And what are you going to get the next time?”

  “I don’t know. It depends.”

  “Won’t everyone you’re competing with just keep Revising, too?”

  “I suppose.”

  “So, you’re probably going to have to use all that money on more processing, memory, and storage, right? Not something more—”

  “Michael, I see what you’re getting at, but the kind of thing you’re talking about is so . . . it’s hard to count. And if you’re spending all your money on stuff that’s hard to count, you’re going to be passed by the people who aren’t. Then it’s like . . . it’s like, what’s the point?”

  “Because only people who are Revised in that way matter?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Tell you what, Dorian? Tell you that the wetware is pointless if you’re just going to be a jerk with it? Okay, I’m telling you. I’m telling you you’re getting it backwards.”

  “Michael . . .”

  “Do you remember the first time we met?”

  “Uh, it’s been a while.”

  “It was in the sandbox at the K-Spring summer day camp when we were ten. I was building this tunnel network and these two kids were purposely driving trucks through it that were too big to fit inside. For a while I just kept excavating the sand and patching up all the damage, but they must’ve known they were getting to me because they kept doing it and finally I couldn’t help it any longer and started crying. Which made them start pulling out all the little cars and guys and equipment because they said I was going to flood the place since I was such a faggot crybaby and that it was their job to protect it. But just as they were about to march away with everything, you came over and said, “As much time as you two spend fucking around together I wouldn’t be calling anyone else that if I were you.”

  And they just looked at you and walked away. And when they were gone you started asking me all these questions about the tunnels, and how I made them stay up, and what kind of tools I was using, acting really impressed and interested. That changed everything for me. ’Cause before then I always had this iciness in my chest whenever I was around other kids. You know that feeling when you wake up in the middle of the night and you feel like something horrible is inside the room with you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well that’s the way I felt all the time. I felt like there was always this eye, panning and scanning for weakness and as soon as it found mine, it was going to spring out. And that day it did.” He got out of his chair and paced over to the small table that his Mars colony model was stationed on. “It would’ve been the beginning of a nightmare, I know it. Because I mean, God, I’ve got this effeminate voice and searing anxiety—and that’s the stuff I would’ve fixated on because that’s what they were fixating on. That would’ve been my life. But after that day, no one picked on me again because they knew I was your friend. You changed everything for me.”

  “You were a smart kid—you would’ve figured it out.”

  “You have to be safe to be smart in that kind of way. Because if you’re always looking over your shoulder, it doesn’t matter what kind of future you have in front of you. You’ll never know.” He smiled wanly at me but the look in his eyes was fierce. “I thought you were the coolest person alive when you told those kids off.”

  “The reason I felt confident enough to do that was because I was athletic and good-looking and smart. If you take them away, or if they become irrelevant because the mean kids get Revisions and I don’t . . . well . . .”

  “You’re still those things,” said Michael through his tears.

  I looked down at the floor. “Maybe in some vintage kind of way, but I’m not Revised—at least not nearly as much as I need to be. And so all those qualities have pretty much been inflated away. And the world’s going to keep inflating and inflating and inflating.”

  Michael looked like he was about to say something, but he broke off his sentence at its first word as his eyes passed my leg. “Dorian, you’re bleeding!”

  I looked down and saw streaks, black and web-like, in the gloom.

  “Here, take this,” he said, throwing me an old shirt from his dresser.

  I pressed down on the part that looked the worst.

  “And your arm, too. What happened?” he asked.

  Before I could say anything, we heard the doorbell ring upstairs.

  Chapter 40

  “Do you think it’s them?” Michael asked after a few moments.

  “Yeah.” I looked around the room and then at the window again. I thought about peeking through the blinds but decided against it.

  “I think they’re just asking people on the block if they’ve seen anyone,” said Michael.

  “That means they’ve narrowed it down this far.”

  “Maybe they’re asking on lots of blocks.”

  “Maybe.” I looked at Michael’s closed door. “But we need to find out. Can you hear talking at the door from the basement stairwell?”

  “I think so.”

  The doorbell rang again.

  “Let’s go then.” In a second, I was down a corridor and into a larger room with a couch and a dry bar. I heard Michael’s mom’s footsteps pad across the kitchen above me as she walked to the front door. I crept up the stairs and pressed my ear against the door to the kitchen.

  “Crack it open—it doesn’t squeak,” said Michael, adding, “They can’t see you from the entry.” I took his word for it and gently opened it a few inches, just as Mrs. Monroe was unlatching the front one.

  “Can I help you?” she said, hesitating.

  “Hello, Ma’am, sorry to bother you, but there’s been a break-in nearby and we have reason to believe the suspect might’ve came through your neighborhood. Have you happened to see anyone suspicious?”

  “Oh my, I heard the sirens, but . . . how—how close?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out, Mrs. . . .”

  “Monroe,” she finished for him. “I wish I could be more helpful, but I’ve just been inside, making dinner.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t see anyone out the window, though—going for a run or anything like that?”

  “A run?”

  “Yeah. The suspect’s been passing through yards.”

  She paused. “Sometimes neighbor kids used to come through playing games, but that was during summer . . . and hasn’t happe
ned much lately.”

  “So you didn’t see anything like that?”

  It made me apprehensive that he was pressing her so hard. Were they doing this to everyone else on the block, too?

  “No.”

  “Do you mind if we step in for a second?” This was a new voice, a deep velvet tone. A woman.

  My heart sank.

  “No, of course, please do.”

  The sounds of sirens and the helicopter faded as they entered and closed the door behind them. “Ma’am, don’t be alarmed, but a neighbor thought he might have seen someone acting strangely around your house,” said the female police officer.

  I jerked my head back from the door, turning toward Michael. “Are you sure your mom knows you’re here?”

  “Yes,” he whispered back.

  I rubbed my forehead and tried to think, but my heart was slamming so hard that my thoughts were unsteady, too. It occurred to me that maybe I should turn my fear down farther. And maybe some other things, too: Inhibitions. Shame. Caution. It was kind of all or nothing at this point.

  “Does inviting them in mean she’s agreeing to a search?” Michael whispered again.

  “I don’t know—probably.”

  “The Shaws are always saying they’ve seen someone doing something, though—parking their car the wrong way, or kids walking on their lawn,” said Mrs. Monroe, seeming to recover from her initial apprehension. “They don’t have much to occupy them, so even little—”

  “It was your other neighbor. Mr. Grazier.”

  I could feel the weight of the police woman’s gaze sweeping the house, like she was examining every surface for fingerprints. “And he claims to have seen someone tampering with a basement window.”

  This succeeded in truly startling Mrs. Monroe, who cried, “Oh, my son’s down there!”

  “Could you go ahead and call him to come up?” asked the male officer.

  I could feel her nod and turn.

  “Michael. Michael, could you come up here for a second?”

  Michael looked at me. “What should I do?”

  “I know you’ve got some hiding spots, but they’ll find me if they search the house.”

  “Do you think they’ll search upstairs?”

  “They’ll search everywhere.”

  “If there’s just two I can lead them both into a room and you can slip out to somewhere they’ve already looked.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Michael, some people want to talk to you!”

  “She’s worried—say something, quick!” I hissed.

  “I’m too close to the door.” Michael tiptoed down the steps as quietly as he could and retreated to the billiards room. Then called out, awkward and unconvincing, “I’ll be there in a second! I’m just finishing up something.”

  “It’s the police, Michael!”

  “Okay, I’ll be right there!”

  He scaled the steps lightly, two at a time, and in three seconds was standing next to me again.

  “Just go,” I whispered. “I’ll talk to you on your bug. Answer with two sharp breaths for yes, one for no. Got it?”

  He nodded and pushed the door the rest of the way open. “Yeah, what is it?” he said a few moments later, trying to sound casual.

  “Michael, they just want to know if you saw anything funny out your window.”

  “Not besides the lights. What’s going on out there, anyway?”

  “We’re looking for someone,” the male cop answered. “Did you see or hear anything unusual when you were downstairs?”

  I decided now was as good a time as any, and instead of going right toward the front hall when I opened the door, I went left into the dining room. Fortunately, the stairs were at the side of the house, so I could get to the second story unseen.

  I took the first few steps quickly but then lingered halfway up, listening. “The basement makes some weird sounds sometimes, but nothing besides that.”

  The female cop replied. “A neighbor said he saw someone outside a window.”

  Michael did his best to sound startled. “You mean today—when I was down there?”

  “Just a few minutes ago.”

  “Whoa. I didn’t see anybody. Which window was it?”

  “The left one on the west-facing side.” They were taking turns. This was the male cop answering.

  “That’s my room. And the storage room’s next door, but . . . I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Do you mind if we take a look?”

  Michael hesitated.

  “Say yes,” I whispered into his bug feed. “I’m already upstairs and they’ll just do it anyways if you don’t. I looked it up; they can say it’s a pursuit.”

  “No, go ahead, I don’t mind,” said Michael, in a tone that sounded like he minded. He was usually so sincere and earnest, but that was because he hadn’t been lying. Ever. And now that he was, it was like listening to a completely different person. “It’s this way.”

  “Hold on a moment. We’re going to bring in some folks to help us,” said the male officer.

  That must’ve been what they wanted all along, and only sent two cops in initially to make the Monroes feel at ease.

  “Is it safe for us to be here?” asked Mrs. Monroe.

  “As long as we are.”

  I crept into the guest bedroom in the corner of the house. It had the advantage of windows on two walls, facing both the street and the west lawn, where I’d made it into the basement. I cracked open the blinds just enough to see a group of eight or nine police officers shuffling up the path to the front door. Two more officers were walking through the yard, about forty feet from where I’d stowed the bicycle.

  “I really don’t think anyone’s down there,” Michael said.

  Through my bug feed I heard the basement door open, followed by the sound of a dozen feet trundling down the wooden steps.

  “Best to be sure. You stand by me and we’ll let them go ahead.”

  “Are they leaving anyone on the first level?” I asked Michael in a whisper.

  For a few moments all I could hear was more feet shuffling, but then there were two sharp breaths. Yes.

  I looked around the room for a place to hide; there was the closet, behind the door, or under the bed. Nowhere good.

  I stepped away from the window and listened as treads over hardwood in my earpiece transformed into muffled ones as they reached the carpeted basement. There was some commotion a few seconds later and I figured they were probably searching the storage room.

  “Clear!” someone yelled in the distance.

  “Michael, which one’s your room?” asked the woman.

  “The one on the left.”

  They were going into Michael’s room. I’d been in Michael’s room. Had I left any footprints? Tracked in any mud? Maybe, but fuck . . . fuck, it was worse than that—I’d been bleeding. And probably gotten some on his carpet. Just a speck would be enough.

  “This is quite the setup you’ve got,” the male officer commented. “What were you doing down here when we came?”

  “I hadn’t been home long, but . . . I was right there . . . sitting at my workstation.”

  “And what were you working on?” asked the female officer.

  “Just homework.”

  “Will you open it up and show us?”

  I went hot all over. It suddenly dawned on me that they didn’t actually think anyone else was in the house. They thought Michael was the runner. He must’ve fit the profile and this was all just a pretext to get him to talk without a lawyer.

  “It was just some physics homework.” I heard the sound of typing on a keyboard. “Nothing too exciting but, you know, it can be interesting.”

  “I thought you said you could see out the window,” the woman said.

  There was another long pause. The memory of me closing the blinds flashed across my mind.

  “Uh, well yeah . . . I could.”

  “But the blinds are down.”

  “Yeah, I p
ut them down.”

  “When your Mom called you to come up?”

  “Well . . . a little before then.”

  “So, you just happened to shut the blinds in the period between seeing the police lights and when we came to the door?”

  “I mean . . . um, well yeah, the lights were making it hard to concentrate.”

  I ran my hand through my hair. My hair. The mask. It wasn’t on my head. I looked around frantically, but it wasn’t there. I must’ve dropped it on the floor in Michael’s room. “Michael . . . can you get to your bed without looking suspicious?” I whispered.

  One sharp breath. And then another one. And another one. I couldn’t tell if he was signaling or just breathing hard.

  “You’re going to need to try.” I waited a moment. “Because I left my ski mask in your room. It’s by the foot of your bed.”

  He didn’t answer.

  I heard blinds rolling up and the window opening. “Are you sure that’s true, Michael? Because you can’t see any lights from where your desk is.” There were footsteps. “Now you can, but you’d have to be all the way over here. So, is it possible you weren’t at your desk?”

  Silence.

  “Michael . . . is it possible?” the female cop asked.

  “No, no, no—I saw it when I closed them,” he tried to recover. “I always close the blinds at night since its weird that things can look in. You know, drones and stuff.” The chair groaned and I heard him take a few steps and stop, probably trying to slide the mask under the bed without them realizing. It was unremarkable; if it were facing down it would look like an ordinary piece of laundry on the floor.

  “What were you doing before your homework?”

  “Before my homework?”

  I had to help him. “Don’t repeat the question, Michael; it’s a giveaway that you’re stalling. This isn’t even something you need to lie about.”

  “Like I said, I just got home so . . . I guess I got a glass of water first . . .”

  I stopped paying attention to what was going on in the basement when I realized what was happening outside. They’d found the bike and were radioing it in. My heart sank even further. Hiding out and then sneaking over to a place they’d already searched seemed impossible now. They weren’t leaving.