HENRI: $34.99
I dreamed of rain. Blue teardrop shapes falling. I’d never felt rain in real life. My father says it has a cool sting. He says we are better off in the dome, away from assaults on the skin.
I’ve seen rain in movies thousands of times. I’ve taken showers. But the rain in my dream was different. It was cool and landed in a light, chaotic rhythm on my skin.
I woke, swallowed the day’s words and tried to hold on to the calm of my dream and the hope of my plan. But someone was buzzing our door, forcing it all away.
“Speth!” I heard a voice cry out, muffled from the hall. The hairs on my neck raised.
“What the hell?” Sam croaked, turning over. “Who is that?”
Saretha slept on, undisturbed.
Sam turned on the screen. Mandett Kresh was pounding on the door.
“Speth!” he called again. A note of miserable panic sounded in his voice. I stood and hesitated. What did he want?
Sam staggered past me and opened the door.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Sam said, yawning, glancing back at Saretha.
“They took her,” he whispered, shaking his head.
I blinked at him. Sam closed the door behind him.
“Who?” Sam asked. Saretha stirred and pulled the covers over her head. Mandett was briefly distracted.
“Mrs. Stokes,” he said. “Beecher’s grandmother.”
“Beecher,” Sam muttered. I didn’t understand why Mandett had come to tell us—to tell me.
Mandett’s head kept shaking. His face contorted, struggling through a thought he couldn’t finish. I wondered if he even knew why he’d come.
He finally spoke. “She said you were special. A perfect secret keeper. A fly in their ointment.”
He stared at me with hope, like I could do something, but what? What had she meant?
Sam shook him off. “Dude, what are you telling us?” he asked, moving back to the door.
I wished I could tell all of them I was on the cusp of doing something. If I could prove what they had done with Saretha’s image...
“Aren’t you going to do something?” Mandett demanded.
My thought trailed away. What could I do? My best plan might save our family, but no one else. I couldn’t help Mrs. Stokes. I wasn’t going to change how things were.
I closed my eyes slowly, to show I was grateful to him, even if I was helpless. I don’t know if he understood. A knot lay under my heart, but I couldn’t worry about the entire city, or the system that controlled us. I had to do what I could for my family. It was all that I had, and it was very little.
Mandett peered at me, trying to comprehend. His face crumpled, and something in him seemed to break. He put his fingers to his lips, almost as if he was asking if what he was doing was right. I realized that Mandett’s Last Day wasn’t far off. He zipped his lips unsteadily and waited just a moment, as if it might work like a magic spell. When nothing more happened, he left, his face contorted in scorn and despair.
* * *
When evening came, I didn’t travel far. I knew what I had to do. As the dome turned a grayish indigo, I swung down to a mid-ring building with a few small embellishments to set it apart from the stark buildings in the poorer neighborhoods. It looked well printed and had slim balconies that would have made Placement easy, which was probably the intent.
I dropped onto the roof and considered whether it was better to enter from there, or rappel down the windows to the twelfth floor. The city stretched out around me for miles. I wondered if Mrs. Stokes was still in it. You have to agree to ToS when you enter the city and when you leave. She wouldn’t, but that wouldn’t save her. Once she was Indentured, the company or Brand would agree on her behalf.
I took off my gloves and wiped my hands across my knees. I was sweating. My mask felt hot. I felt gross and self-conscious. It was just Henri I was going to see, but my nerves were jangling.
I looked over the edge. The windows were thin, and there was plenty of room for me to slip between them without being seen. I worked out which way was north and which side Henri’s apartment would be on. I took a breath and rappelled down quick, before I thought too much about what I was doing. My plan wasn’t fair to Henri, and part of me really didn’t want to face that.
I found him sitting in a wide, comfortable-looking chair inside. He had a book in his hands. The sight of it surprised me. Henri had a book?
It was bigger than the books I had seen in movies and shows. The cover had the number Nineteen Eighty-Four spelled out in silver foil. Under that was a scrawl of swirly letters I could not read. My heart beat a little faster. What should I do now? Knock on the glass?
Before I could decide, Henri’s eyes peeked up over the pages and flashed with alarm, then surprise. He stood, put the book carefully on the chair, turned to an open glass security case on the wall where the book must have been kept, then turned back to the chair like he didn’t know what he was doing. Finally, he turned to me. His wide smile broke across his face, muddled slightly by confusion as he crossed the room and opened the thin balcony door.
“What are you doing?” he whispered. It was just like Henri to ask a question, even though he knew I wouldn’t answer. His Cuff charged him. It was weird hearing the telltale buzz from his arm—I’d only ever heard him speak in a Squelch.
I went in and took off my mask. My hair crackled with static. I smoothed it out, but could feel bits of my ragged pixie cut still standing on end.
I took stock of the room, looking for his backpack, then thought, what kind of person does this make me? Henri deserved my attention before I moved on to other things.
Henri was looking at my mask. He didn’t say it, but I knew he was thinking I shouldn’t be wearing it. I wasn’t a Placer. Not anymore.
“Do you want to sit?” he asked. He picked up the book again, self-consciously, like it was something he shouldn’t have. “It’s licensed,” he explained. “I have to renew soon.” Maybe he was embarrassed by the extravagance of it.
His apartment was not very different from ours, though he lived alone, which meant he had been allocated three times as much space as Sam, Saretha or me. He had a couch, a counter and kitchen, and a giant wall-screen in roughly the same setup as ours. There was also the chair and, beside it, the open glass case. Without knowing what to do, I sat in the chair.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. “I have Mandolin Inks™.”
A small pang for Tylenola Ram hit me. I’d completely forgotten about what she’d done, and had heard nothing about her condition. I microshrugged, which was as close as I could come to saying no, but unfortunately, it was also as close as I could come to saying yes. He looked at his book, then offered it to me. I took it. I hoped he would tell me something about the team or what had happened when I was late.
“Check the haircuts,” Henri said, crossing the room.
I opened the book. It was filled with black-and-white pictures of kids doing things—playing soccer or basketball or tennis, out in the open sun. They played hockey and swam in pools and wore what looked like Olympic™ leotards for their gymnastics. There were kids laughing, and kids chatting with each other and kids sitting at desks looking forward. Kids leaned on books, looked in books and read books. There were books everywhere. They were discarded on desks and stacked carelessly on shelves. Books seemed like no big deal.
Henri printed out a hamburger, popping out the two spongy circles of bread and a darkly colored burger circle from a laser-perforated sheet, followed by a thinly printed slice of cheese. He assembled it all together, putting the extra outer bits into the printer’s reclamation drawer. He offered it to me. I did not take it—a clearer way to say no. Henri shrugged, fully, and scarfed it down.
“I could have ordered something better, like a real plum,” Henri said, chewing, “if I’d known you were coming.”
My mouth watered a little, thinking of a real plum, imagining what it might be like. A pang of jealousy ran through me. Henri could afford a plum—and not just for himself. For me.
“What do you think?” he asked, tapping the book and talking to me like I was someone who could answer.
I didn’t understand the book I was holding. It wasn’t a story. It wasn’t Laws. It wasn’t history. It wasn’t news. There were captions under all the pictures, like “Dee and Catherine share a good laugh on the way to class,” and “The sophomores enjoy a school activity.” I stared at the audacious waste of words, inked on the page for posterity.
Henri knelt down next to me and impatiently turned the pages, past grids of angled faces over expensive-sounding names, like Kim Hunter and Doug James. Then I saw a girl named Catalina Jimenez, and a longing washed over me. She didn’t look like me, and it was hard to tell from the black-and-white image if our skin color was the same. I wasn’t sure if our family had actually been named Jimenez, but I knew it hadn’t always been Jime. I couldn’t help but wonder—was this the girl who illegally downloaded music so long ago?
Henri wanted to show me the color pages. He was obviously proud. These pages showed more faces, with more amazing—and colorful—hair. These kids were older, all around eighteen, and each of them had four or five lines of text beneath their names, like they were important somehow.
I’d never seen something so fascinating and dull at the same time. Someone had put tremendous effort into documenting a school year in 1984. I didn’t know anything about that period of history. I knew there was a big war that century, but the specific story of it was not something my school could afford the rights to. All we needed to know was that the domes had put an end to war.
I tried to discern the greater reason Henri was showing me this book. He giggled and put a finger next to one girl’s picture. Her hair was wild, the color of platinum, sticking out on each side like two Pegasus wings. Around her, everyone’s hair looked incredible and strange, and beneath each picture was a beautiful name like Mark, Lewis, Sara or Claire, and under the name, a list of sports and activities, and then a phrase.
I looked at Henri. Was he really not going to tell me anything? He ran his finger down over one phrase and then another.
“We were born, born to be wild”
“Snorts & Slorts”
“Never call me Gordo”
“Cut the Jibba Jabba”
“I wandered lonely in a wood...”
Were these phrases they had each Trademarked? Was this a book of Affluents? Influents™? No. It was too old. Henri smiled. He ran his finger under a phrase below a boy wearing thick glasses on his face.
“Pretty cool, ya?”
He held it there and waited. It took me a minute to understand; Henri was choosing these words. His Cuff did not buzz. It was just like I had always heard. You could point to any word or phase or sentence. His eyebrows raised.
“You want to try?” he asked.
I had misjudged him. He wasn’t just showing off with his book; he wanted me to use it to communicate. This wouldn’t be like talking in a Squelch. It would hardly be like doing anything at all.
I scanned the page, considering. I didn’t want to tell Henri “Make my day” or “Love ya, cutie.” I wanted to know what Kel had said about me, or where he kept his small teardrop-shaped device, but the only question I could find was, “Where’s the beef?”
That would not help.
I paged back to the front of the book, to the title page. 1984: Lincoln High School. Longing filled me for the world to be a different way. Maybe not like it was for the kids of Lincoln, but with some of the freedom they had.
The book wouldn’t help. Pointing to other people’s words and letting those kids speak for me was not a solution. I closed it and put it back in Henri’s hands.
I think his feelings were hurt. I just sat there, like the dud Margot said I was. He put a hand on my shoulder. I tilted my head just enough for my hair to brush against it, but not enough to be charged. I don’t know why I did it, but it seemed to jostle him into saying something relevant.
“Kel’s pretty mad,” he said, standing and pulling the book away. “Did you really steal an iChit™ player?”
He put the book back behind the glass and closed the door. A light on the case flashed and then turned a steady, angry red.
“Why?” he asked me, as if I had said yes.
Even if I spoke, and even if I had the words, I don’t think Henri would have understood. It was an embarrassingly foolish thing to have done. Henri didn’t know what I wanted or needed to hear. Letting my hair brush his hand sent the wrong message. I had to get to the thing I needed. I held out my arm.
Henri looked at it. He saw the Cuff. His brow furrowed. What does she want? I could practically hear him think it. It took him a minute, but then he got it.
He crossed over to his closet and reached blindly inside. He pulled out his pack, and then, from its pocket, the blue, teardrop-shaped device. He made a swiping motion with it, to ask if I wanted my Cuff removed. I indicated nothing. I stood and swallowed and thought about Henri living alone. Did he have any family? Did he have any friends besides Margot and—I guess—me?
He took my hand. His hand was large and rough, and I could feel he was trying to be gentle. He swiped again, and my Cuff cracked open. He pulled it off. I realized I was holding my breath. I slowly let it out and breathed again.
The flesh on my arm where the Cuff had been felt prickly, cool and tender. A faint odor of moisturizer and old skin rose up. I stood and rotated my hand, like the muscle needed to stretch.
Henri waited for something more. Now what? We were both thinking the same thing. I looked at the metallic-blue device in his hand. I stood and took it from him. The weight of it surprised me. Henri took it back at once. He couldn’t let me have it. He couldn’t know why I wanted it, and it was his to account for.
Henri took a step closer, his chest in my face, and then he hugged me. I did not expect it to feel so nice. Henri smelled warm and sweet. I wanted to hug him back, but I just let my head press against him. No Cuff would record me. I lifted my arms, but underneath everything, that odd, ripe smell of bound flesh kept reminding me of how we were all trapped. I thought of Saretha on her couch and Sam at the window, growing quieter each day. I thought of Margot and her music. I thought of Mrs. Stokes in a cell. Whatever comfort I might have wanted or needed, if I hugged Henri back, Margot would be hurt, and Henri would almost certainly make more of it than I wanted or could handle.
I pushed him back gently, trying not to be too harsh. Henri’s face turned bright red.
“Kel didn’t think you would come,” he said, looking away.
They had discussed this? He picked up my open Cuff and turned it over in his hands like a bracelet.
“We kind of argued about you. She said none of us would ever see you again.”
That felt horrible.
“But she said if I was right—if you showed up, it would demonstrate you were sorry.”
He handed my Cuff back to me.
“I think she would give you another chance,” he said.
Another chance? For what? He seemed amused by my confusion. I stretched my neck toward him, my eyes demanding that he explain better. He was doing a terrible job.
“Unless you really don’t want to be a Placer anymore.”
I flopped back in the chair. Was this really an option? Kel might forgive me?
“Margot said you’d come. Henri, she will be at your apartment before you are even home,” Henri said, imitating Margot’s oddly exact phrasing. “I guess it took a little longer,” he added with a shrug.
Why did Margot think I would go to Henri and not to her? If I was going to apologize, or beg my way back, she would have been the logical choice. She couldn’t have anticipated what I planned to do—but she could have assumed I liked Henri the way Henri liked me.
I sat, blinking, deep in thought. Henri zipped his metallic blue Cuff remover back inside his pack and shaped the bag with his hands, like he was getting ready to go.
What should I do now? Go with him? Take the device by force? Beg him for it with my eyes? If I tried hard enough, Henri might put the device in my hands and suffer the consequences. Would Kel kick him off the team?
It had never occurred to me I might be offered my spot back.
Henri waited, and when I did not respond, he stepped closer, shrugged and held out his arms, as if to say, Are you coming? I looked at his bag. I wanted to go back to the group. Would they really have me? Henri wasn’t exactly reliable at reading Kel’s mood.
If she did let me come back, Kel would watch me like a hawk. If I wanted to get that little blue device, I would have to wait. I would have to be patient. My chest felt tight, thinking about it, unsure what was best. I didn’t know if I could let Saretha wait. Yet, if I was a Placer, I would have far more options. Could I have my family back, and this, too?
I felt awful closing the Cuff back over my wrist. It seemed to squeeze tighter. I hated the idea that I would eventually betray poor Henri, even if I got away with it. The thoughts in my head grew louder as I tried to defend what I was doing. I told myself I could work it out so that no one ever knew. Weren’t my reasons justified? If I was back with the Placers, I would at least stand a fighting chance of slipping it away, unnoticed, and I could return it before it was missed. I really wanted to hug Henri now, but I couldn’t. Instead, I followed him out into the night.