My room smells of smoldering candlewick and her homemade shampoo. Sure, I'd meant to open the window before we fell asleep, but sometimes sleep, it just doesn't give you a chance to see it coming, does it?
Sometimes one minute you're talking to a dark form breathing next to you, and the next? Still talking but drifting, and you're guessing you're not the only one.
When you wake, the shapes look different and a stale shrillness hangs in the air.
"Seriously?" her grainy voice moans. "You're not seriously thinking of rising-shining now, are you?"
Even though I don't want to, I open my eyes. I see Jessa looking vaguely in my direction, the morning's dim glow coloring her messed hair. Her mugging face is a scrunched version of itself.
My legs – sore and throbbing below – stretch unconsciously, dragging my spine into a nice taut feeling; her bare foot touches mine, then moves away. How is she even here?
"Oh Jessa," I groan back.
In just a few months, from everything being completely fukaduka, to being here with you. Even stiff with sleep, your face is just so beautiful, so incredibly honest. In the moment.
When your green eyes fill with appreciation, a person can find themselves. It's a feeling I'm not used to. My world, the one I've wrestled and figured out, doesn't include someone like you.
Jessa likes to insist she isn't the smartest of girls, even as she tells you exactly what you need to know. She also has a knack for asking the right questions, in just the right ways.
I'm lucky, she's like a sweetener spooned into my life's bitter tea.
"Stay with me?" she says.
I eye the brass clock on the side of the bed. I'll have to set it again one way of another. What will it be? School or work?
Jessa knows she'll make whatever decision I do. Or I'll do whatever she wants.
I reach over her prone body. Feeling a warm breeze on my chin, I'm frozen, locked in thought and then I'm losing all thoughts.
The next mechanical rings rattle off the nearest wall, so close I can almost touch them a second time.
School? Wait for spinning? Or wake for sitting? School, and pretending to learn? Or getting lost like an ant marching in place?
Jessa being here isn't making it any easier. Her thick hair rests under my nose, smelling of soap and smoke, an enveloping combination.
* * *
The dull thumps of my brother and sister are coming through the wall.
Aaron is rustling under his bed, finding his half-broken musixca that needs to be pumped so long before giving a few minutes of soft radio.
Lisi's replacing one set of heavy textbooks in her pack with another. Absorbed tomes shake the floor as she fills her load.
There's a pause, then the tone of Aaron counseling Lisi on something. She murmurs affirmation.
He leads them away, to gather up some other moments, to complete more morning tasks. They're old enough now to get going all by themselves. I've been realizing many mornings recently: how much more self-sufficient they've been forced to be is obvious.
I've tried to be there for them, right? But I haven't been perfect, I don't know how to be, school and work and I have no time.
And now, Jessa on top of everything, wrapped across me, I'm losing track of what I wanted to do. No idea what that was because, I had no time to decide yet, and here they are needing me. At least mom and dad left out money for lunch, so the children wouldn't go hungry.
I noticed the quips on the table when getting back last night with Jessa from the Station, and wondered where they'd got them. We'd lingered so long out there in the dark night, Jessa and I, that everything was quiet when we'd slipped in.
We could even sit to talk in the kitchen awhile, with everyone asleep, before falling exhausted into bed.
I wind the timepiece first, round and round, then twist the slim copper hand into place. School has become an afterthought.
"I'm thinking noon, just in case," I say. "Or do you need earlier? You going get mad at me if you don't get into the wash?"
"Mmmm," she groans again, like a tired kid. I groan back, trying to press my knuckles into her ribs, knowing the wiggle with which she'll squirm away.
She flips onto her stomach. "You don't want to do something before we go tospinning?"
"Like what?"
"Breakfast, lunch, a carriage to the Mall, this…"
She kisses me deeply. I kiss back.
I had turned my back to her last night, dropping tired into bed and falling asleep before she wanted.
It wasn't how she looked. Not the ugly shadows cast by her boniness, not the tightness of the muscles across her stomach, the roundness of her butt, like a little boy's.
It couldn't be that, because I can't deny it, I like this toned version of Jessa. It was the "her" of the time when we've really gotten to know each other.
Not that she isn't like most of us in this part of town and in need of a little more fat. But she's still pure beauty, a V-shaped face and nose with just a slight bit of shape.
So, in the quiet of bed, we kiss and kiss, griping each other a bit for a while, and I love that.
The only problem, I guess, is she's always one to take it all in so deeply, and I'm… I don't know, what? Distracted?
She's one always to respect the moment enough to stay out of trouble, and I'm… Too worn down for that? Too afraid? Too stupid?
"You know, Mike, you really bring out the worst in us. We really should go to school. Maybe tomorrow?"
Her presence, like always, pushes down the moment like a lever, lifting you up and the meaning and rules you've built up evaporate. My meaning doesn't appreciate that. It's messy but entrenched.
"How about we sleep first and see how much we miss school?" I ask, running my thumb down her check as she pulls her face away.
Jessa likes the meaning she's lived with too.
After making dinner the other night, watching gooey cleaner cut through the grease on the plates, I realized how much she meant to me.
She's the only girl I've really shared so much with. Lisa's so different, a sharp little sister, a fount of expressions.
Like that time she called me "inelegant," or when she gave her "brother hugs." Her little fingers, holding mine. But I kept things from her, more than I keep from Jessa.
I suppose somewhere in me there are memories of my mother. The real her, before mom faded away with dad, like they all do.
When I look at them now, the dulled and fuzzy pair drooping in their bedroom, those memories feel soaked in a bitter fog.
It's only a little past seven now, so plenty of morning. I make a distant-looking face as I study Jessa closing her eyes. Not a hint of plumpness there. I yawn.
"Then, whatever you want. It's not like we're crotcheties yet. We can do something before spinning."
She turns, her shoulders rise and slump, and she draws the arm I offer down around her.
Eventually, I hear the muffled rhythm of my brother belting out a song I don't know for Lisi, and Lisa interjecting with taunts and squeals as they move to leave the apartment.
Some lyrics I can't understand become clear as they pass my closed door. About "coming out" "up on top," following "your way," and "finding your path." He sings a lot, Aaron. Warbling sounds in a manner I can't. His voice aims for your goosebumps.
Even muted by the wall, he's good, a virtuoso-in-the making to my ears. Or no doubt at least getting there, thanks to his constant practice.
For some reason, the sound makes me wonder if he blew his candle out last night, or left it to burn out again humming himself to sleep? I know it's so dark without it, but I thought I taught him better than to waste what we have.
After awhile, silence settles in, and some amount of time passes, and then Jessa and I start finding sleeping slowly getting harder as the sun heats the room.
I don't think we ever heard my parent's rise and leave, but they must have at this point, the day is bright outside.
My body's hard points run against Jessa's, as by reflex we nudge each other away. I stare up at the pipes on the ceiling. I never want to get out of this small bed.
"What do you think Mike?" Jessa asks in a rough voice, in a tone saying I'm being invited into thoughts that have been quietly churning. "Why do we even bother?"
"Bother with what?"
"Getting up. Doing the same thing as everyone. We give them our legs, eight hours a day now. Twelve later, forever, until… what? Pretending like it's a life, the sit-ins, the dancetons, the whole Mall… taking benfis, right, like people do? Messing with school…"
Before we started spending so much time together, I'm pretty sure, Jessa didn't talk like this.
She focused on things like making clothes and making nice with her teachers, with people in general. She discussed books about long-ago queens, and dragons and rivergirls, real life stories of vice and crime, and friendly rivals on the Competitions.
Not that I don't have some similar interests. I found out about hers as we slipped away from the crowds before or after shifts at the Station, and then to my formulaic, normal family apartment, the start of what was beginning to feel like a formulaic normal romance.
Even as much as we both are brimming with feeling now, though, we've been grown in the same world.
She notices the silence across my family's small box. "Hey, your parent left already, I guess."
I hadn't even I really even thought about it. "Looks like it."
"Will they be at the friend-meets tonight. Why don't we have people over, after the Station? I want to see Trice and Rober. Or at my place, maybe. Not that it's any fun there."
"You sound like me," I say, thinking about her asking about why we bother. The last time I'd gone with my whole family to the sit-in cini.
We'd all sat on a gingham blanket, watching a movie about a dog that talked and then forgot how. Lisi couldn't have been older than a year. The rest of us laughed really hard, enough that it hurt. I can almost feel it.
Think about now: My parents, their Ribol-addled brains, knowing they'd leave shortly after I finished school -- in what, 18 months? – and how they seemed less and less relevant to us as that day approached.
Somehow Aaron and Lisi understood as much as Jessa and I. Like a lot of kids, we knew. Forty-five is right around the corner for all of our parents.
Being able to only just mill about towards the end muddied minds... I'm sure I'll be the same way; I don't blame them.
At least once they leave, Aaron and Lisi will have me. It's tougher for kids like Jessa, with rotten siblings or none, after enduring parent who were never even a little good. Knowing you'd likely be spending time crammed together with the other castoffs.
"Sorry, I can't do tonight," I say. "I mean, I'm supposed to be doing something. With Stesher."
I don't say any more.
She doesn't ask. I'm she sure knows that she should. Instead, she pulls one of her knees to her chest. I feel a tingle of anticipation.
"Ok, I'll probably just see Trice somewhere out then, like the park."
I feel bad. "She still worried about the tests?"
Her friend wouldn't stop babbling about them.
"Yeah, she thinks she has a chance if she studies enough."
"I assume Rober still thinks that's dodo."
"Of course."
Her eyes drift down to my strong calves hooked above the sheet.
"There's awhile before you have to think that about me," she says.
"And we've already given up on me. Obviously."
"I don't know why you have to be so pessimistic, Mike, you're so smart in everything but math. Even the sciences."
"Yeah, the sciences without any numbers." A full-on truth. "A real genius."
She frowns.
"No you're right, you can definitely count on me to get you your own house. We'll run dimensionals on double-dee vizias and wash our clothes all day," I say. "Electric sofi maker and all that, too, not just the instant crap."
I notice her blushing. I shouldn't be talking about our future, I realize. I was just playing a role. It's one of the things I'm good at.
"Seriously, though, don't get your hopes up. I'm a fuduwad with no chance of even passing through the first round. Like pretty much anyone I still know at this point."
"Uh, right…" she sighs, waving her hands around at the same time, as if to point out we'd chosen sleep over school.
A rest instead of mental training that seemed unlikely to change anything at this point.
I didn't mean to include her in my words or drag her down, or her friends. My small room feels smaller as I think about how I've brought her here, into my sourness, but as she nuzzles her head in my chest, I feel better.
And then before I know it, Jessa is out of bed. I hear the faint echoes of a distant clopping of horses outside, pulling a big carriage way down below us. I feel the breeze.
She's opened the window. My radio's been wound up by her and left playing in my room.
The sofi she's made has probably gotten her wired, almost shaking, I assume, hearing her going bedroom by bedroom in our apartment, looking around.
She's led around by her curiosity, from the kitchen and bathroom to the front-door at the opposite side, ducking in the other rooms -- Aaron and Lisi's, my parents' -- jutting off in-between.
She reminds me of a cat in an alley looking for new friends, and wondering what they've got with them.
One song after another from the winners comes on, the ones who used their talents to overcome a lack of other hope, by coming out ahead in the Competitions.
My brother eats it all up: The Greatest Show, American Singers, Rock or Not. Not to mention things like Best Chef and Dance Dance.
He's been having trouble convincing Lisi it meant quite as much as he thought. We don't tease. Some songs are good, I definitely think. Like, definitely Roger Kaplan from The Greatest Show, or Greatest, as it's called.
The announcers reel off the names of songs. A one-two-two-one, a one-two-two-one. They don't mention the years many of the talents won.
Kaplan, Court Lawler, Tshaaen Something, Sendy Roberson. Enough listeners know anyway. '32, '34, '27. We watched them. It was either something we did, something it made no sense to tune out completely, or something we heard about when watching their decedents.
Same with the dancers, and the painters and comics that won. The cooks and the models and poets, too, somehow, I mean that's what we talk about.
At home, Lisi mostly studies or reads while sitting with Aaron watching the Competitions on our vizia, so long as the light's good. When it's not, she mostly knits.
I spend a lot of my time out after the Station, most of it with Jessa these days, and so I barely get to watch with him at home these days. Lisi does like the cooking shows, I guess.
My parents we barely see, but when they're around, they generally just sit quietly chatting with each other in the kitchen with us while Aaron gets so excited, humming along. Nobody minds Aaron's obsession.
There's nothing much that I'm so special in. But maybe I'm becoming not even that anymore? Jessa is making things different.
I'm not good at anything but something feels right, and yet it's not like it's not still feeling wrong.
I specialize in wanting to be with Jessa. I mean good fukaduka, she's so beautiful and so warm.
I want to see, and not in some dark future of candles. Not in the moon-shadowed streets. Not across rows of bikes, spinning and sweating, as my legs spin and she sweats, and I sweat and she spins. I mean… I know it's the same for everyone, but I… I…
"You know what I found?" she says, wandering back in. "It's that book I told you I wanted to read. It's in your bother and sister's room."
"Orion's Lies? Yeah, Lisi was reading it."
"You don't think she'd mind if I borrowed it right?"
"Lisi? No way. Go for it."
You know, I know I'm not uniquely able to realize how screwed up it all is, not the only one to so be unsettled, like a criminal walking in a crowd.
I notice she's watching me.
"Nevermind," I say, noticing she's been thinking about my thinking face.
"I'll just assume everything then," she says.
"Sorry, I was fukudoiling up my head with it again." I shrug. "I won't give you the speech. About how we spin our lives away like animals."
She sits on the bed and grabs my wrist.
"But is it really so unfair? I was just thinking about how much more awful it could be.
We always have something to eat," she says. "There's no war to fight in. You can earn more if you want, get into school if we're lucky, start a business if we try. We have radios, and the time with the vizia.
"And you have me, and your brother and sister. We get time to hang out with our friends. Even some of the near-crotcheties seem to enjoy meeting up in the fields."
"Like I say, I just wish I could see you at night by more than vizio or candlelight. You know, without going to the Mall I don't know how to explain it."
"You could be blind. Or we could all be dead. You're not that bad at history. Is it really so unfair?"
There's a supposedly cruel fairness to everything now, right?
After all of the fighting for the last of the unhuman fuel, and how after the War of Rejection turned so atomic, leaving the dead out-numbering the living by so, so many ... we're supposed to be happy that we hadn't lived to smell the stench.
We're supposed to offer our lower halves not to be there.
At least one of the books on Lisi's floor, I know, must have a chapter on it. We could go look it up.
"All right, all right, all right, all right" I say. "Like I was saying, nevermind. I'm just happy I met you."
I think of my plan with Stesher, and feel bad.
* * *
When you see the Station from far away, it looks a big brick birthday present. But it's so large you could stand at one corner and look forever in each direction, unable to make out where any side ends.
How many people are in there? Tens of thousands? Hundreds? Sometimes, when you're squatting, in a sea of swishing sounds, it seems like you couldn't pick a big enough number.
Even if you close your eyes and try to block it out, you feel an ocean of humanity, peddling past feelings, spinning those wheels. The drone of the Competitions can fade but never the grunts, no matter how hard you concentrate elsewhere.
And yet when you feel like you could float away, just keep floating forever, you stayed weighed down amid the others. A dot in a grid, that has to be there.
Jessa's been following me to it, the Station. Or rather, she's been walking beside me, but a step behind, barely here, lost in her thoughts. Her smooth brown pants, and tight burnt-orange top bounce in and out of the corner of my eye.
The world feels more empty than usual. People must be already at work or at school, or… I don't know… or waiting?
That's about all of the choices there are if you're young enough to be still around here. Most of those working are spinning, that much I know.
To the right, the road we'd be been on walking slices through a cluster of apartments, up to the long hill of patchy grass leading to the Mall.
At a different time -- or maybe the same time on a different day – we'd see it teaming with a mass of blurry bodies in dull colors, interacting, alive and mostly happy, despite everything.
"When's the last time you even went to a danceton at the Mall?"
"Trice and I went in third-to-last grade."
"Last year?"
"Yeah, well, I'm really not as a big of a dork as you make me out to be, and I really don't think you're that tough."
"Really?"
"Really."
"I'm glad that you think that."
"You are such a Sephanie from Rock or Not."
"Glad to meet someone with Court Lawler's observational skills."
"Well, maybe I do," she says. "But that doesn't mean I don't think on my feet."
The sounds of carriages come from behind us, and then they pull by, a mix of gaunt faces staring out.
I wonder about some. One of the men's bushy eyebrows remind me of my father. He slouches lopsided in his seat, borne ahead, and I'm thinking you can't really know what's behind the blankness. Jessa and I, most kids really, almost always walk.
It's so much better than in those slow rolling coffins.
The dented lunch cars start as we draw closer, the dozen or so rows of shiny grey squares. The sky ahead happens to be blue and empty, the only cloud to see is far in the distance.
The ground tilts up for a short bit and then I know it'll dip back down. I see the huge brick box in my head before it even arrives in scene. I take her hand in mine, before I even know why.
How long has it been like this, I wonder. How many guys like me have been in this spot, here, with a girl's hand in theirs?
Maybe I should leave the questions to her. It was only fair.
I spy small, steadily moving shapes ahead, people showing up early for a shift. I begin to hear the feet of more horses behind us.
The first time I'd met Jessa was at the Station actually. It was the first or second week back after the summer, the first of three Septembers like it (for ever, I guess) and I could barely lift my head toward the end of each day.
Weirdly, I hadn't expected to be thrown right back into a normal routine. And yet I was, and I was using up my last reserves of energy from July and August.
The room had kept jumping around on me that day. The meaty smell was turning my stomach.
I'd vomited before, and I was going to happen again, I knew it. I weaved my way as quickly as I could through the crowd to the outside when it was all over. White and terrified.
And there she was, milling about with some of the others around our age.
Those eyes, green like the trees in a forest in a picture book, when I finally met them, it was something special. They weren't what I first noticed, however. That was the way she leaned forward when she laughed, flipping her hair.
She stood a bit off from her group, with another girl -- it could have been Trice, I'm not sure – she was just so engaged in being entertained by her. I don't know why I went up to them, only that I had started to feel better.
She was rubbing her forearms, I remember, and in the middle of responding to something her friend had said. \She was younger than me, of course, but just a bit, I figured, no more than the year.
I asked her about the red pin that she wore. I can't remember now what it was for because, as almost as soon we started talking, my woozy head began upsetting my stomach again.
She looked unfazed by her day. They would have been being easy on her grade at that point. She probably could have handled more. I didn't even try to be giddy or charming.
I found that just by giving her a few words to get to trust you, Jessa will be welcoming. Pointing out a thing about the building that I hadn't realized She carried the chat, and I caught my breath.
It was the strangest thing. More light-headedness than flirting on my part. Jessa didn't linger, nor could I.
But, right after that I had a familiar feeling about her, like she'd been part of my life for longer.
It's about an hour before our spinning turn starts, but already, people are huddling together. Later it will be crowds of dozens, in some cases around a leader, but in most, just aimless congregation.
"Hey, it's Stesher," Jessa says. "Your buddy."
I see him too. He's tall and skinny. Awkward in some ways, but slides more than flails. Everything he's wearing always feels too big. I'm surprised to see him now, not sure why he's here so early, considering.
We walk over to where he's with a few people from school, classmates I only barely knew.
We'd been good friends and then grown a bit distant, but fallen back together again recently. He was just funny, man, the same as ever but older.
Sometimes he kept his talking to a minimum but he was such a character when he got going. Or many, really, I was getting to know again, he plays them all.
Jessa thinks he's trouble. He's not, but he does seem to find himself meeting it a lot. Every since we were really, really young, he's found himself joining with the schemers and scammers. There are stories his parents told.
Personally, I think he only knew what he was doing a small majority of the time. In some ways, in his own way, he's straight as an arrow. The whole trick is to realize he just did what he thought made sense when it popped in his head and didn't immediately go away.
Look at him: his hair was slicked back, neat. He thought he was presentable.
As he walks up, his face meets mine with a look of sourness.
"It's not happening tonight, brude," Stesher says.
"It isn't?" I ask. I wasn't expecting that.
"Nope, my parents were ridiculous. I don't know what's up with them. Totally fukaduka. Like hours of Best Chef-music-running-through-my-head of togetherness.
Like, every moment of the day. I couldn't," he raises his tone ever so slightly, and starts to talk a touch more slowly, "get it, you know. There was a lot of family bonding. Like never leaving their room."
"Really?"
"Seriously," he says. He turns to Jessa, "it's getting kind of icky, the family time."
I'd known Stesher's parents, Jym and Susan, off and on for years, and watched them, like my own, fall victim to the mental rusting of Ribol. They were more distant too, such a contrast to when I knew them when we were young.
Now, they barely registered your hellos, and spent more and more time at the bland friend-meets. Still, they never got close to forgetting their family in a way a lot of parents did.
"They're going to Florida, soon?" Jessa asks.
"Yeah, nice knowing them, and bon voyage," he replies, without malice or pain.
"Hey," I ask, "you hearing anything more about what's happening with your brother and sisters, other than Lucee?"
I'm not sure, but I don't think I would have been so blunt without Jessa around.
"I don't know. It's still kind of like how it was, half in their own place. The others, it's… hard to know what I can do, but I'm asking the right people now at least. The boys, we've been okay with things.
"The girls are a bit more anxious. I'm hoping Lucee can get them to understand. She's a good kid."
We can tell he's ready to talk about something else.
"Speaking of girls, how's your friend Trice?" he asks. He's been trying to get a chance with her.
She's cute, and I certainly can't say anything about him trying to date younger. He looks at me. Generally, he feeds on me to make mischief. "She good?"
"She's good, I guess," Jessa says.
"Say hi for me, will you?"
Stesher knew that he didn't really have a chance. Jessa liked Rober, she liked Rober with Trice, she knew Rober before Trice.
"I can try," she says, with a smirk-less face. We share quick silent looks between us, knowing she's putting him on. Even her sarcasm is a type of honesty.
"Hey, Mike, look!" she blurts out, looking over my shoulder. "Those girls are in my chem class. I bet I missed something…"
"Go see," I say. Stesher scans the faces, looking for the markers of people who haven't been corrupted. People who could hope to exceed failing ranks in the early sciences.
The two of them never made sense together, Jessa and Stesher. Just the type that didn't mix. Which was odd, because in some ways they aren't alike. They both like me, too.
I've been seeing Stesher less lately, but we've been trying to find time for us to hang out, to both make a little money and to avoid losing touch again.
Jessa couldn't hang with us not because of her being innocent, but because of how she's innocent. On some level she must (or someday will) suspect there's a reason you're friends with who you're friends with, and wonder about me.
As she talks for a bit with her classmates, Stesher and I at first discuss others things, like the story of the book he'd stayed up reading, a monster novel.
Something about coming from caves, entering minds, devouring children in the night. The shadows on the wall had spooked him. I can't say I understand why.
It seems fairly generic. I'd read two books just like it in the past month.
I watch Jessa, her skinny shoulders bouncing with glee. Stesher tells me more about his family, and asks about mine. He gets along well with Aaron, especially.
And then, when it's all clear around us, we talk about how simple it would have been for him to get what we needed, the large defense knife in his dad's closet, if his father hadn't insisted on having the whole family in their room to watch the vizio, and then slept past noon.
They had a week of night shifts, starting at 9 p.m.
By the time Jessa returns, we've agreed to move tonight to tomorrow or the next night maybe, depending on some things. I feel my muscles relax. Soon after, a familiar low horn moans through the air.
Our small groups break up, and we move erratically toward the spokes of forming rows, bumping into and off of and through each other. From above we look like ants, I'm sure.
The youngest cluster starts ahead to my left, spilling out in a blub, and then the crowd flows past me into the older people at the other doors. Eventually, far away, the dull hum of chatter passes into the blank looks of the almost, and then full, crotcheties, who walked the rows and mopped up sweat.
Jessa holds my arm tightly as we move through the crowd. I slip my other hand onto her shirtsleeve. I breathe in her smell for the last time for a bit.
"So, I'll see you later?" she asks.
Someone nearly falls into me, pushing me in the direction of the amorphous line I need to be getting on.
"Mike?"
"You heard Stesh. It's not happening. I'm all yours tonight."
As she pops her thumb up and smiles, I slip into the bodies funneling forward. We almost never push or shove or fall. It's just a resigned collective stumble.
The rhythm starts here. I can feel my feet lift of as if commanded. The open sky says goodbye to us. I look again for Jessa, but can't find her now we are flowing forward.
Waddling, I look up, the brick and backs of heads are all I can see. If I wanted to squeeze my way against the bodies and out of the teaming mass I don't think I could. I know I am advancing, but it's only confirmed when the door into the Station is about to swallow me up.
* * *
Casting long shadows across the cavernous space, the yellow lights shinning up in the rafters look like dim little dots. They aren't meant to truly light the room, just to keep us aware of where we are.
I hover above my seat, suspended in the air. I inhale and exhale with my eyes closed, like I've gotten used to at this point.
I'm almost frozen, except for my hands tightening and loosening. My chest and shoulders, expand and contract, rise and fall, my nostrils wave. I'm careful not to move anything else. It's a habit, a personal superstition, a talisman to feel bulletproof.
Around me, I can hear irregular murmurs, but most of us are quiet, or are getting that way.
The warm rumble is dying down, turning into a black-and-white drone of breathing and oiled chains. There are no clocks but you can hear time moving forward as the volume sinks.
I think of Jessa, of being young, of being confident. The whistles blow -- stinging the air -- and slowly, all at different paces, our legs begin moving beneath us.
Each of our bobs up and down come a little faster, an impeccable set of irregular pistons, huffing. I feel a draft, swirling up. Now my head and shoulders shake. And suddenly the whooshing sound turns deafening.
Heads begin to hang all around me. I can smell pours opening. My world tilts slightly side to side, like a boat passenger, sure only of the steadiness of the horizon. The colors of others wave in front of me.
I focus…
I zip my legs around in circles…
I spin…
The noise really is some strange loudness, almost impossible to explain. The rows and rows of young men and young women spinning on their bikes.
An overwhelming call to quiet. It won't last long, of course, the chorus of air. What comes next always come next. How long it's been that way… I don't even know.
My lower half is disappearing already. I focus one side of myself, and then the other, leaving the weightlessness unaffected by my awareness. The rest of me sways.
What is it about this, the mindlessness, that comes and goes? My legs go round and round, and I'm going nowhere but I'm heading out. I start to lose myself, I don't even know how to think.
I spin…
Without warning, the upper third of the walls around us comes alive, the large screens bathing us in a glow. Huge grinning heads beam out, then the stages and crowds.
Splashes of the people out there echo on the people in here. The usual jolt out of the silence.
The Competitions are there to watch if we want to look. Out of the dark wings of a stage comes a dancer, twirling – it's Dance Dance. Her dark skin is loosely wrapped, and the fabric billows around her, catching the lights, rippling across our backs arching over our bikes.
I notice most of the other riders across the Station aren't paying attention.
A few are even trying to talk, which never works well. Her rhythm started out of beat with ours, and is slowing merging with it as tender music plays on over us, with a twang from its unintentional crackle of echoes.
It must take half a row of us to just have the enormous entertainment and the lights. But that's just one row in hundreds. Or is it thousands? Or millions? I peak out for Jessa, even though I know I can't see her.
I stare ahead, wondering how good this is. I go nowhere, but I head out.
I spin.
* * *
Later, his hair wet from the showers, Stesher finds me by our normal spot. I'm pressed against the rough wall, letting the crowd push by.
My fresh shirt feels good, even as the smell of soiled socks escapes from the bins they've been tossed in, wafting as an almost smoky wave on top of the old and young passing by.
One adult pops a pill out of a sack as he walks by. I can't wait to get back to the outside air, who really cares if the stars were the only thing to see by.
"I was looking for you," Stesher says as he comes up to me. "I didn't know if you'd go to find Jessa or not. Fukaduka nice."
As the words come out, he glances around, nervously, like he feels her coming. Can he tell I can't wait to see her? Would he believe that possible of me? I don't even know why I checked whether he was here.
"What can I say, I'm going a little dodo in the head, brude."
"I'm glad. I talked to Ryan, he's got a knife stashed we can use. Tonight."
"Really?"
"Yeah, it's buried, he'll show us. He's not coming along, but he'll loan it to us for a share."
"Ok, wow, did you know?"
"He had a slicey? No, we were just talking, and it came up."
"Fantanny, Stesher, you know…. Anyway, I guess I just need to tell her. We were improvising anyway, didn't really even get to talk about any plans."
I had to say yes. We'd been talking about tonight, what can I say? Jessa would understand. My brother and sister need it. I need it. We have nothing more than nothing…
Stesher puts his hand on my shoulder, and I notice again how long his fingers are. "Yeah, brude. Get that done. I'll see you in an hour. Same place we were going to meet."
He turns me.
I step forward, tossing a hand up above my shoulder to signal that I'll be there.
When I tell Jessa, she's quick to bless us not hanging out. She'll see her friends after all. I'll see her tomorrow. I feel bad she'll be going to her room alone, but I know that Jessa's not one to worry about.
"You'll be in school in the morning?"
"I'll be waiting for you."
"I mean, I'd rather spend the whole day together again, but that chem stuff, you know," she says, as I notice she's bringing her shampoo bottle home again to refill. "You don't have to study but you should go too."
"Says you."
And I reach out and grab her right there in the yard, and kiss her. And again she kisses me back. As I pull away, all I can see are her green green eyes, which were never closer.
* * *
And before I know it, here we are, in the shadows, Stesher and I. Out there, up the hill, the glow from the big windows flickers with the people, mainly from Northton, shopping.
Those from Northton, they're not too tired, they're not without the means, not like us.
And those of us in there, between the times of spinning, caring for families, second jobs… we stand out amid their chubby masses. Drawing glances and snickers.
The last time I was inside was maybe three weeks ago.
In my head I can see the rows of glass storefronts, the small trees, posters for Competitions, lanes of thinning human traffic, ambling lightly, unlike the desperate list of the Station two hours earlier.
I can imagine the white light, even late into the night, like it was now.
Soon it would be blinking out, leaving the last of them to return to their electrified homes and us to our candles,, and everything in-between quiet and dark.
Stesher is breathing heavily, I notice. I look at him. There's an oddness to his expression, like he's been told to smell something bad. I wish he wasn't so jumpy. We'll need to circle around to the other side of the Mall, their side.
"We should get going," I say. We need to get around and feel set-up within a half hour or so. "It's late enough."
With his long neck, he nods.
We take the longest path around, passing only a few people, mostly in groups. We talk a bit in a patter matching their noises, agreeing without saying that anything else would be suspicious. He apes the head waggling of a Northton boy.
We'd been good little pirates two weeks ago, I felt like that had proven something.
And then Stesher did a good job flipping what we had. Splitting a share later with Ryan was going to be unfortunate but necessary, I guess. I hadn't even bother asking Stesher how much.
It seemed wrong to give up anything while Ryan, this guy I didn't really know, another one of us, another cog in their power grid, was out huddling and doing banfis somewhere.
Or maybe he'd ridden out to the clubs, and was enjoying himself by the fires. It was dodo but he had had what we needed.
As we round the huge building, we start to see way off in the distance, a cluster of street lamps and illuminated houses; I can almost hear their vizios running without metering even as midnight approached.
The landscape behind us sat nearly black.
There were so few of them, but we all knew kids from Northton, and the handful of other towns nearby, like Astrea and Zubkill, and the lone estates that scattered out from the population centers, and continued even further on.
The fair thing was that in school, they would only have as much of a chance as any of us. They took the same tests. They got no extra points. They could end up spinning too.
Stesher stopped in front of a garbage can and pointed. It startled me as I realized that I could barely even see his long arm so close. He's pointing to two girls heading down the dirt path, their hands full of shopping bags.
They would have been perfect, but they were almost specks in the distance. Still it felt good to watch their bouncing gaits.
We continued creeping toward the road they were taking, as they disappeared to the limits of our sight. Somewhere a horse whinnied. There's maybe a mile between the Mall and the houses.
The ground under our feet turns into trimmed grass and well-packed paths, a terrain that stretched over the expanse toward the north, unlike the itchy wild patches we were more used to.
I'm sick of wandering, feeling the day in my days, so as soon as I can get Stesher's attention again, I motion for us to crouch down.
"Let's just wait here," I say.
"You think?"
I point back the way, we'd come. There's more groups streaming away than before.
"Our kind always leave first."
"What does that mean?"
"It means we wait here. Our kind leave first because it takes longer. The rush this way will start soon, it's almost closing."
"But we don't want the rush."
"I know, which is why we might as well sit," I say.
As much as I'm pretending to be so nonchalant about this, my heart isracing. I think of Jessa, and Lisi and Aaron. How can't I try again?
Stesher, he understands, you know. I watch him leaning away from me, looking out.
"You see that," he says after a bit.
A handful of autos begin streaming out of the Mall toward Northton, and past it, toward other illuminated coves. Groups of people become visible building at the exits on the foot.
Another few autos pull away, starting small and getting quickly smaller.
"You know what I'd do if I had one of those?" Stesher asks, in what I know to be a hypothetical question.
As we stand and walk toward the people, lights begin to go out at the Mall, first at the far end of the building and then further up the line.
We hasten our steps and find ourselves beginning to overtake some threesomes and pairs. There's a guy, one of them, and his girl. Stesher looks at me, and I shake my head.
Three girls I notice up ahead are too far away to catch up with. The lonely lady isn't carrying any bags. The four brudes are obviously not appropriate.
I begin to realize we're surrounded by them. The air feels freer. There's a brightness to their moods, as natural as Jessa's clear emotions.
I feel like I don't know how to even walk amidst them. I'm growing more conscious of every step I take.
Stesher tugs on my shirt and I follow his eyes. There's a teenage boy, a few years older than Aaron. He has hair you could grab by the fistful and he fills out his tight shirt, bulging at the belly.
He's listening to a white musixca that's hung around his neck, almost dragging two big bags from his chubby hands.
We follow him, and I hold my breath as the road splits off but he heads right, separating us from most of the other walkers of the night. The boy is lost in another world in his head. In the music, or maybe a story. We keep pace at a distance.
The stretch between the Mall and Northton is empty, quiet, with a few trees, and more bugs. Stesher and I realize we've come far enough.
"Hey," I shout.
At the first he doesn't hear me, so I bend down and pick up a rock and throw it at the boy.
He half-falls over, and then turns around and sees us. As he picks the wires from his ear, Stesher starts running, his tall pants barely keeping up with him.
I do a jump-skip and start to run as well. Within a second, it's clear the boy isn't only barely jogging because he knows he can't get away.
Stesher waves the knife toward his face.
"Ok," he says, in a tough-guy voice. "We're here from your stuff."
"Why should you get my stuff," the boys responds.
Closer up, I can tell he's not completely spoiled, but definitely a self-confident child of wealth. "I'd give it to you but you're just going to sell it back to us, why don't we cut out the middleman."
I reach and grab his collar. Gripping his shirt, I use my other hand to take the rope off from around his neck.
"I swear, I fukaduka swear…" he mutters.
I look to Stesher to hit him, but then I realize he's not playing that in this. He's just Stesher, my old friend, who once was small and is still really just a kid.
Instead, I shove him so he now stumbles backwards. I peak into his shopping bag. He moves to lung forward instinctively and Stesher draws the knife up.
"Fuduwad," I say. "What's your name."
"Luther," he says.
"Well, Luther, thank you for shopping for us today," Stesher says, "Have a pleasant night."
"You're really going to just take my stuff?"
"It's my stuff now," Stesher says.
Luther eyes the musixca in my hand. I bring it in closer to my body.
"Ok," Luther says, "Ok. Ok."
"Good," Stesher says.
"Why you got to do this anyway? Steal my fiddiling stuff. I mean, I didn't do anything to you."
"You're allowed to be out this late," I say.
"Yeah, so, is that a question?"
"No, it's a statement. You can be out this late and no one cares. You're not a bad kid to anyone. And I guess we just find that unfair. We need to get some fiddling stuff too."
I see Luther watching Stesher and the knife. The slicey is clearly big enough to want to not get poked by it.
"Anything else, Luther, that you got in your pockets," I say, and at that moment, headlights pop over the hill in the distance, heading straight toward us.
The rumbling engine sound follows, stopping in front of us before we have a chance to think. The auto's windows roll down and a gray, balding man wearing suspenders peaks his head out. The night is dark and almost everything looks grey.
"It's ok," the man says to Luther. "I'm alerting the police. These guys won't get far." He looks at me. "I've got a weapon in here too, boys. Don't make me use it."
Stesher, who'd been rocking in place, takes a step forward with the knife and then thinks better of it.
Instead, he grabs one of the shopping bags and pushes the boy out of his way. "C'mon," he shouts, taking off toward the town in a sprint. I realize he's right. The police cars will be here in a minute.
The old man certainly had an alert for the crackles and pops in there. And he wasn't doped up on Ribol; he acted quickly to press the button, he knew how to talk with authority.
He studies me from behind his window, while Luther stares from the ground, eying his music player.
A fog lifts in my head, and I know I need to move. I hop over the teenager's legs and start running. Stesher's already closed most of the gap to the first building, a coffee shop, Donna's Java.
As I pass it I recognize the name as a place where the parents of one of my classmates worked.
In the south, we had to spin, but we could do more, too, up to a point. Before we got together, Jessa was already thinking about getting a job, something aside from her friends to help her avoid going back to her lonely room.
I can see green and white in the store windows and realize a police car must have been unfortunately close.
I think of when I saw Jessa's face in one of the shop windows at the Mall, next to mine, one of the first times we got together.
Stesher has disappeared down the streets. There's no point in trying to find him now. We'll meet back at the apartments or the Station tomorrow. I push up my pace as I round the corner, heading down the middle of the road toward a side street.
I'm rowed by lit lamps, and above the buildings, I can see I'm starting to get close to the lighted homes.
I wonder how many families are still awake. I can feel the car approaching. It's going to begin to sweep the roads. It'd be dodo to keep running, not to find a place to hide.
Reaching the side road that I realize now is just a long alley, I start looking for someplace to stay out sight. It's dotted by metal doors, clean and empty. I grab the first handle and it resists.
I hop from doorway to doorway, clutching at the knobs like I'm drunk, stumbling widely, as the color of this long box of mine rises to the palette of a mossy cave. Just a hole to the moonlight above.
I think I can be okay: if only Stesher hadn't run first and faster, if only something would change about these doors; if only the silent siren's path just continues on. I crouch down against the wall, wondering if it's any help to bother.
I feel in my pocket for the musixca I going to give to Aaron.
I think of silly stupid moments with him. With my sister. How am I going to explain this to Lisi? Where did Stesher get off to? What about Jessa? Where is she tonight, again? Is there anything I like more than waking in bed with her?
And just like that the bottle stoppers are turning down the alley, and the unmarked row turns bright, like a verdant morning.
I feel my ribs on the hard ground. I slow my breath and get paper-thin. They don't need to come all the way down checking things out if they don't see anything.
It's not early. Luther didn't seem like anyone whose parents really had enough pull for them to worry too much about letting us slip away.
I twist around, looking up from the floor for a way to scale the concrete. There's barely a crack to grab onto. There's no way out, not without getting caught.
I hate that I'm getting caught. Or maybe I'm not. I really don't think they can say me. My thoughts are all over the place. I think about just today. As I let my mind drift, it starts bobbing with the memories of spinning, and Jessa.
The car pulls forward in the alley. I cover my head, wanting to fall back asleep. I hear the wheels crunching down the street in a slow roll.
Through my arm I see a further brightening of the stretch behind me as they pull forward. And then they stop, and then there's the worst sound possible. The sound of doors opening. Two sets of feet on the gritty road.
Judging just by their shadows as I look past an arched armpit, I guess that they're somewhat similar shapes and ages, lumpy, but stiff.
The headlights stay on, and a flashlight sweeps across our stage.
"Whoever's over there," one of them shouts. "Easy now."
Yeah, easy, easy, we don't like your type over here making trouble," the other says, in a deeper tone. "Remember stain," he says stern and scolding, like a young father, but with an older voice, "this is no time for trouble, it's late. We got families."
And here am I, for this stupid music player. And whatever Stesher doesn't drop. Here I am for this.
No, it's going to be okay, Jessa would say, if she wasn't channeling me. I'm counting myself out too soon.
I could have gone on further, broken into one of the buildings, found Stesher.
I wonder if he gets away, how long is he going to wait to split things up? Ryan will be pushing to turn it into loot. They can't cut me out. He knows I won't say anything.
Thinking about Stesher thinking of me, I feel outside myself.
"Ok, dodo-tits, get up," the shouter offers.
"Do it already, stain," the second voice says. "Slowly. But we don't got all night."
I don't even know if Aaron wants a new musixca. I pull it out look at it. What is Jessa even going to say? Why do I keep doing this just when she's offering me everything.
Then, suddenly I'm standing and facing them. My head is so light I don't even feel like I'm here.
And I guess I'm in the shadows and they're looking at me weird. I show them they can have it back, to give to Luther. I'm ready to go back to this morning, to Jessa, to being their human piston. They can have my legs and my sweat.
They can have all of it; I know I'm not really able to refuse. I tried to get a bit of their fiddling stuff but it's not unfair for them to want to keep it. Someone like me is never going to pass their tests. Here, they should keep their things.
And then a gunshot cracks the silence all around me, and I just know that's the shot that's going to kill me.
"Oh Jessa," I moan.