SCHOOL: $7.99
The Westbrook School was set on the inside edge of the Onzième, a collection of large, connected buildings printed from mottled surplus plastics in uneven, translucent shades of gray. The front of the main building faced a wall meant to discourage—though not completely bar—teenage access to the businesses of the Quatrième. Most of us enter through the back of the Parker™ building.
The moment I stepped inside, Shari Gark blocked my path, while other kids streamed in around me. Despite what it cost her, she demanded, “You guna talk if therza FiDo?”
Shari followed the Word$ Market™ carefully, looking for words that dropped in price. Slang words—sometimes called gutter words—like therza would fluctuate wildly, but could often be spoken for pennies. Her use of FiDo surprised me. FiDo was the code word everyone used for when the WiFi went down, but was pricey. Kids would run up and down the ring, shouting it in an outage; it didn’t cost anything then. Adults would break into wordy conversations, asking each other saved-up questions and savoring the answers. When I was younger, it happened a lot. The rooftop transmission nodes would get damaged or vandalized. Then it stopped happening. Silas Rog spearheaded the effort to centralize the WiFi system, offering to house it in an impenetrable bunker beneath his well-guarded offices.
I didn’t think the WiFi was likely to go out, but if it did, would I speak? Shari stared at me, red rising in her cheeks.
“You think ur better den me?” she demanded.
I was stunned she had spoken so much. Since she had turned fifteen, she had said maybe five words. Now she was willing to spend $57.94 to express her rage, or to show she was different from me. Maybe she just wanted to make me speak.
Her face contorted into a furious sneer. Younger kids chattered and whispered about me as they passed. Older students shuffled through the hallway, staring at me quietly. Shari drifted into the stream, fuming, headed toward our word economics class.
I turned to open my locker, but I couldn’t because it wouldn’t play the Ad before the combination screen. I wasn’t allowed into word economics, either, because Mrs. Oglehorn said I could not be expected to contribute meaningfully to the class. Technically, she was right. But I knew for a fact Shari hadn’t spoken a single word in class since her fifteenth. Neither had half a dozen other kids. Nobody was going to waste money speaking in word economics. Mostly they just sat and waited to learn how to hunt for word bargains.
In communication ethics, Mr. Valk pretended nothing had happened, at least at first. “Shrugs are considered communication, and are Trademarked by the Rand® corporation, unless the movement of said shrug is less than two centimeters, in which case it is exempt from charge, as the ruling Merrill v. Dakin laid out.”
My ears perked up. It was critical that I remember what I could do with my body and what I could not. I could shrug, but only slightly.
“As with any free gesture,” Mr. Valk went on, “repetition will be flagged and charged if a pattern of communication is discerned.”
He must have said this a hundred times. The Rights Holders couldn’t allow a person to subvert the system by microshrugging a love poem in Morse code.
“All modes of affection are charged to the initiating party of said affection and, subsequently, to the reciprocator at a lower rate, with the exception of hand-holding, which is charged equally to both parties, or not at all, if the hand-hold is not an act of affection, as determined by the parties’ mutual serotonin levels. A 0.35 threshold has been defined as that limit as read by a standard Cuff.
“This can allow two clinically depressed parties to hold hands free of charge, which, while technically legal, is considered immoral and disrespectful to the Law.”
Behind him, the room’s screen lit up with the outline of a sad boy and girl holding hands, but seeming to get no joy out of it. I couldn’t help but think of Beecher and wish that I had felt something more for him.
Mr. Valk then looked at me. His eyes narrowed. “What is charged for communication can and does change over time, as different suits and cases come before the court refining the Law. One day, even silence could be charged a fee if it is determined that such an action is an intentional act of protest.” His voice grew harsher, but then he closed his eyes, relaxed and resumed our normal class.
I didn’t get to go out for driving class because Mr. Skrip, the driving teacher, asked me if I wanted to go out on the ring, and I couldn’t answer. He looked at me for a long moment, deeply disappointed.
“Waste of aptitude,” he said. I was one of his favorites, partly because he’d liked Saretha before me, but mostly because he felt I had very good control.
I liked driving, but I was relieved not to go out. Driving on the ring around the city is stressful, with all those expensive cars passing and cutting you off. In an accident, there is zero chance that someone from our school would not be found culpable, regardless of what actually happened, and that suit would be ugly.
“Fault is decided by the courts, not the facts,” Mr. Skrip liked to remind us.
We all knew we were only there so we could learn to chauffer Affluents and run their errands. Why would I want to do that?
* * *
In the hall, Phlip and Vitgo made a game of blocking my path and pretending they would move only if I would tell them which way to go. I tried not to let them irritate me too much, which was hard because Phlip and Vitgo were always irritating.
Sera Croate came up behind me and twisted my arm behind my back. “She won’t even scream,” she said, like I was an experiment. $7.96. I yanked away from her, fury scorching through me, radiating from the ache in my shoulder. Sera Croate had hated me for years, but now she was acting like I wasn’t even human. I rubbed my arm, every muscle in my body suddenly tense. Was this what it was going to be like from now on?
I should have been having a great week. If I had just done what was expected, everyone would be congratulating me. They would have been impressed I had carried on, even after what Beecher did. I would have had coupons for food and speaks. I would have had a Brand, probably Moon Mints™, and I would have been able to buy them at a great discount for the rest of my life for my loyalty. I could have kept my head down, just like everyone else. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.
Sera eyed me, like a snake about to unhinge its jaw and devour its prey. My hands clenched to hard fists. Punching was still in the public domain. But could I really do it? I could never even look at Sera without thinking about how her parents were taken. They were beaten mercilessly for refusing to AGREE, and Sera came into school the next day pretending she was glad they were gone.
“I like Mrs. Harris better,” she’d said. She was only eight years old.
How could I hit her, remembering that?
Sera opened her mouth—no doubt to say something vile—but stopped cold as a senior girl named Itzel Gonz approached us. Without breaking her stride, Itzel met my gaze and drew a pinched thumb and finger across her lips as she passed silently by.
A tingling crept up the back of my neck. My hands slackened as I watched Itzel in awe. Frowning, Sera and her little posse stalked off to our next class. I lagged behind, savoring the one brief, bright moment of my day.
In consumer ethics & etiquette, Mr. Julianiis would not let me take my seat. Instead, he had me stand up in front of everyone. He lit the room’s wall-screen with a survey of different well-regarded brand logos. “How will she buy products and services if she does not speak?” he asked, pointing to me like a specimen. Everyone stared. I backed up until I hit the screen. The logos scattered away from me. All those eyes felt like they were drilling into me, trying to understand me, but they couldn’t. I looked down at my Cuff, which should have been recording my words. I was exposed and alone, but in my gut, I felt glad that at least my silence meant that I also had privacy. They would never know what I was thinking.
“She could sign for stuff,” Bhardina Frezt offered.
“She cannot sign for stuff,” Mr. Julianiis said coldly. “She has chosen not to communicate. Signing counts as a form of communication. If she does elect to communicate, she has a legal obligation to read her speech. Until then, she cannot agree to Terms of Service or make purchases of any kind because, as you all know, the idea of exchanging money for goods is Patented. It requires payment of a fee. A small fee, kept reasonable by your good friends at Prolix Patents™, who remind you to Pay Well™.”
Mr. Julianiis clicked a picture of the Prolix Patents Inc. logo onto the room’s front screen and smiled beside it, like he was posing for a photo. Prolix Patents™ was probably his Brand.
“No, Miss Jime will lean on the good graces of her family and friends to feed and clothe her until she comes to her senses. Does anyone believe she has done the right thing by turning her back on society with her silence?”
I scanned the faces of my classmates for a sign that someone agreed with me. I secretly wished someone would show the sign of the zippered lips, or at least say something in my defense, but how could I expect that? I had never stirred up that kind of trouble for anyone else. I tried to remind myself that my mother approved of what I had done. I held on to that idea like fuel.
At lunchtime, a nine-year-old kid I’d never seen before asked me if I would talk to his dad so his family could collect the bounty. I couldn’t say no, and he tried to make that into a yes. Sam found me and told the boy to shove off.
Near the end of the day, Nancee hurried over to me.
“Don’t say anything,” she said. I didn’t, of course. She looked left and right to see who might be listening, then whispered, “I’m next.”
I knew she was next in my class to turn fifteen, but she clearly meant something more. She zipped her lips nervously and waited for my reaction.
“I just wish...” she said, trying not to look upset, “I wish you’d let me know.”
Regret swelled in my stomach. I had no way to tell her how much I cared about her. We’d been friends since we were little. It had never occurred to me to use my words to tell her that she was important—that she mattered to me. I’d always assumed she just knew how much her friendship meant to me.
“If you come, I’ll—” She glanced around again, then leaned right in to my ear and whispered, “I’ll know why you did it, and you won’t have to say a word.”
I was overcome with an urge to hug her, but I had to squelch it. I had to be strong. I gritted my teeth and looked down enviously at her bare forearm. I wondered how she would feel when they put the Cuff on her thin, pale arm.
Behind her, Mandett Kresh was milling around. He was a little younger than us both. The moment our eyes met, he also pulled his fingers across his lips.
“Please come,” Nancee said, squeezing my hand before she turned and left with him.
An uneasy feeling welled up in me. Would I be blamed? But I couldn’t let myself think that way: just about myself. It was selfish. If Nancee went silent like me, she wouldn’t be protected like I had been. There would be no ambiguity in her motive. I couldn’t let her do it, but how could I stop her?
I walked home in a fog. The dome was dark above me. The sky was heavy with clouds beyond—I could tell from the deep gray. I tried to think of what I could do to stop Nancee, but I’d made that impossible. My head went in circles trying to work it out, but when I arrived in our apartment, something was waiting that made me forget all about Nancee and the trouble she was headed toward.