CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Real

When I got home, I couldn’t wait for dinner to end so I could insert that black card in my miniscreen. Pell decided to brief us on her entire day, including how she tricked C-7 into washing the already-washed dishes. Valex and Len marveled at her cleverness, and I blended into the background, slurping up my muddy-brown soybean stew.

I even swirled my finger around the bowl to make it look like I’d enjoyed it. “Can I be excused? I still have a lot of homework to do.”

“You’ve been doing homework all day.” Len gave me a suspicious look and I remembered I was supposed to have been studying with Maxim. Not the best excuse.

“Let her be. She’s trying to catch up.” Valex winked. How much did he know?

Len pursed her lips. “Don’t work all day, dear. You need to have fun sometimes, too.” Her words jolted me, and my spork clanged on my plate. They were the same words I would throw at my real mom when she turned me down for a shopping trip or dinner out. Guilt trickled through me. Here was a nice, new mom trying to spend time with me, and I was throwing it all away.

I couldn’t change the feelings in my heart. I didn’t want Len, I wanted my real mom. The truth made me hate myself for taking their time, invading their lives. I folded my napkin and summoned a polite smile. “Thank you for a wonderful dinner.”

“Thanks for eating with us, Jenny.” Pell spoke with her mouth full. She looked so cute in twin braids sticking out on either side, I almost wanted to stay and play Pixie Swap with her.

“You’re welcome. Bus ride tomorrow?”

She gave me a thumbs-up. “You bet!”

I walked slowly to my room, but when I closed the door, I ran to my miniscreen and whipped out the black card. The familiar dot dot dot came on the screen and I waited, hoping Martha’s connections weren’t outdated.

The screen flashed and a man with spiky blue hair and three glittery nose rings stared back at me. His eyes traveled the entirety of my bruised cheek before meeting my gaze. “Yes?”

“Web of life.” Even as I said it, I felt stupid, like I was in some type of James Bond movie.

The man narrowed his eyes. “Who gave you this number?”

Was I going to get Martha in trouble? I hoped not. “Martha.” Hoping the first name would do, I waited as a knot tightened in my chest.

“One second.” The screen went blank and I wondered if he’d severed the connection. It was like I was walking on Christmas ornaments and egg shells, waiting for something to crack. What kind of people was I dealing with?

The man came back on the screen. “What do you want with us?”

I cleared my throat and tried to project my most authoritative voice so I didn’t sound like some kid. “I want to learn more about you.”

“This isn’t a school project.”

“And I’m no normal schoolgirl.”

His eyes narrowed, and I realized he wasn’t that much older than me. “What’s so special about you?”

I crossed my arms. “Only the fact that I’m three hundred and twenty years old.”

His face softened and he seemed to see me for the first time. “You’re a cryosleeper?”

“The richest one in all of New England. Now, are you going to tell me where to find you or do I have to hunt you down?”

He cracked his knuckles, finally looking interested. “Our next meeting is this Friday night. I’m sending the coordinates to your miniscreen. High-rise thirty-two seventeen G, level twenty-four.” Geez, that seems pretty low. Is it a lower level than where Martha lives? I certainly hope not.

“Come alone. No recording allowed. Code word paradise.”

“Got—”

He ended the connection and the screen went black. I shook all over, cold sweat dripping from my chin.

Could I do this?

I had until Friday to figure it out.

School seemed trivial compared to the larger issues in my life. I couldn’t concentrate in General Relativity, and I sat by myself at lunch, a good seven tables from Maxim and Exara. Whenever Maxim looked in my direction, I pretended to be interested in my soybean mush.

The afternoon was a big boring mishmash of uneventful classes. When the techno jingle finally rang, I shot up, yanked my miniscreen’s wire from my screendesk, and bolted out the front doors. I stepped onto the hoverbus in relief, glad the drama of Ridgewood Prep was over for yet another day. I shuffled to the back and plopped down in the last seat, putting my head back and closing my eyes.

“Anyone sitting here?”

I looked up in disbelief. Maxim held onto the center pole, steadying himself as the hoverbus detached from the ramp. It was too late. I had nowhere else to go. “No.”

“No as in no one’s sitting here, or no I can’t sit here?”

I crossed my arms and gave him a nasty look. “Both.”

“Great.” He turned away, then turned back toward me again. “I really need to talk to you.”

I was about to tell him to go to hell when I realized he was my alibi, and I’d need another one if I was going to attend that meeting on Friday. “Okay, but my stop is in twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes isn’t a lot of time.”

What did he want to talk about? The last three hundred years?

“That’s what we’ve got.”

“Okay.” He sat next to me, his leg warming the side of mine. The seat wasn’t that small. He could have spread out, leaned against the window, or kept his thigh to himself.

“I’m sorry about your jaw.”

The entire left side of my face was purple as a plum. I would have gotten a lot of raised eyebrows, except everybody had already heard about the embarrassing fight. “It’s nothing.”

He touched my chin, bringing my face up toward his. I felt his breath on my cheek. “This is not nothing.”

I was tired of dancing around the point. Now was as good a time to ask as any. “Why the hell did you ask me to dance?”

Maxim dropped my chin and looked away. “That’s what I need to talk to you about.”

The hoverbus reached the first stop and a rush of people walked on and off. Maxim waited until the bus started up again. Five agonizing stops left.

“Exara’s family and my family have a kind of understanding, an agreement of sorts.” He ran his hand through his silky black hair. “My family lives in her father’s high-rise.”

“She owns the whole building?”

“Her father does, yes.”

“Wow.”

“Wow is right. Anyway, my parents got into financial trouble a few years ago, losing billions of people’s credits in investments, backing a recycling factory that refused to process living matter for fertilizer.”

“What’s living matter?”

Maxim sighed. There were dark circles under his eyes. They were bigger purple-black rings that could give my jaw a run for its money.

“It’s people, Jenny. They recycle everything else around here, so it was only a matter of time before they got around to people. There’s no place to bury the dead, and it’s cheaper than conventionally fertilized food for the people in the lower levels. The government has to do something to keep them fed or they’ll revolt.”

“Oh, gosh.” My stomach hollowed and a squirmy feeling crawled over my shoulders.

“My family believes in what’s right, and we stuck to our choices even when the factory went out of business and was bought out. My father’s had a tough time finding a job since. With my sister’s lung condition, living in the smog and mildew choking the lower levels is out of the question. So, extreme measures had to be taken to ensure Rainy could live in a place where she wouldn’t get sick.”

Maxim trailed his finger up and down the silver pole. “Exara’s father lets us stay in the apartment for free because she and I are going out. It worked fine until I got to know her and realized I didn’t like her anymore. If I break up with her, my whole family may have to move to the lower levels. I’d have to quit Ridgewood and go to work in the factories, and Rainy would get sick.”

He looked into my eyes. “I’m not saying it wasn’t worth it, but kissing you put all that on the line.”

The thought of a little girl getting sick and dying because of me made me nauseous. The whole situation seemed like something out of a screwed-up soap opera that had run for too many seasons. “You really think Exara’s dad would throw you and your family out if you two broke up?”

He leaned back in his seat. “You know Exara. What do you think?”

“That’s so not fair. It’s not fair to her, either. You can’t pretend to like someone.”

“It worked out fine for a while. I mean, she’s a beautiful girl. Anyone would be excited to go out with her. Everything was fine until I met you.”

I backed up against my side of the seat, like touching him would turn him to stone. This world I’d woken up in was so cold, so cruel. How could life get this bad? “I don’t want to get involved. I don’t want your family thrown out on my account.”

“I knew that was what you’d say. That’s why I debated telling you. I don’t want to push you away. I want you to know the kiss we shared was real.”

I blinked as his words sunk in. Then my heart tore. He liked me. He actually liked me more than Exara. Unfortunately, we could never be together. Not with so much on the line. The hoverbus stopped again, and this time Maxim got up.

“Wait!” I grabbed his arm.

He looked at me hopefully, as if I’d figured out some way to trick the universe. If I had, I wouldn’t be on the hoverbus—I’d be back in 2012.

“I need you to cover for me again this Friday night.” He looked away, shaking his head, and I wondered how disappointed he was. “I can’t keep doing this. You’re going to get caught.” “One more time. That’s all I ask.”

Everyone had filed off the bus, and he only had a few seconds before he missed the stop. I felt so bad keeping him there, but I needed him. If he truly liked me, he’d help me out. Maxim signaled to the hoverbus driver to buy us more time.

“Okay. One more time. Where do you go, anyway?”

The hoverbus driver got up out of his seat and shouted down the length of the bus. “Do you want to get off or not?”

“Go!” I waved my hand. “I’ll tell you later.”

Maxim nodded. “Bye, Jenny.” He ran down the length of the bus and jumped off without looking back. The doors closed and the bus detached from the ramp. I told myself I wouldn’t look out the window, but I did anyway. Maxim stood on the platform like a homeless person, staring at me in the seat we had shared, as the hoverbus took off.

Too bad for him I didn’t specify when “later” would be.