The next day was Saturday. Weekend or not, Hill residents were required to work a half day before the weekend could really begin. The roommates, having slept off most of the sugar from their late night, followed their normal morning routine.
“It’s just wrong to do this on a Saturday,” moaned Reed after the alarm shattered the room’s silence.
Riley mumbled some incoherent sentence that ended in a sleepy exclamation when he sat up and rediscovered the bunk above him.
“Don’t blame me,” mumbled Reagan. “It wasn’t my idea. Man, I hate this!”
The silent, rushed feel of breakfast had become part of a normal morning for Reed. But that morning, as soon as he walked in the door, he knew something was not right. The quiet pressed down on the room with a heavy foreboding. Whispers flitted through the silence like birds before a coming storm. Even the rattle of dishes from the dish pit was hushed and subdued. By the end of the meal, Reed was almost suffocating in the heavy atmosphere. As soon as they finished and escaped back out into the cold morning, Reed drew a deep breath of the fresh air in relief. “What’s up with that?”
“I don’t know.” Reagan shook his head and drew his brows together. “Something must’ve happened. See if you pick up anything at work.”
As it turned out, Reed heard about nothing else. Talk flew thick and fast around the belt, some fact and some fiction. No one person knew all the details but, in the end, Reed managed to piece together what had happened from many different accounts.
The night before, a boy from the Dorms had been on his way down to the city just after supper, paycheck in hand. Somewhere between the Hill and the Boulevard, he had been waylaid by a single attacker, robbed, and brutally beaten. The encounter might have ended in a murder except that a group of Hill residents, passing by, came to his aid. The attacker fled on foot. Several of the boys had chased him, but he had shaken them off in the maze of alleys. The witnesses could only say it was a teenager, therefore a Hill resident. The Council and the city police department had already begun an investigation.
Reed felt sick. The uneasiness he had tried to ignore all night came back. His gut had been right; they had walked right past a murderer lurking in one of the inky alleyways. He didn’t want to think about it. The sick feeling wore off as the morning progressed, and he had recovered himself by the time noon rolled around. But, when he left the factory at lunch and started toward the park’s entrance, he noticed men in heavy overcoats and dark uniforms posted along the winding road. The black figures silhouetted on the hilltops were cut out sharp and grim against the gray clouds. Police. Reed dropped his eyes and hurried past.
When Reagan and Riley arrived at the gate, Reed was waiting by the bus. “So I wasn’t just being paranoid last night.”
Reagan held up his hands. “Okay, so you were on to something. We came that close to getting mugged, but it was the cat that let us in on it, not you.”
Reed crossed his arms. “And what did the cat do?”
“Don’t you see? That punk didn’t know Miss Kitty was there and stepped on her tail or something. She let everybody know where she was, and he thought his cover was blown. He just waited for the next guy to come along.”
It made sense, even if it meant Reed wasn’t the hero he had hoped. As they climbed into the shuttle, he consoled himself that at least he wasn’t the one stretched out on a hospital bed. It was a cheering thought.
When they arrived back at the Hill, they discovered that the Council’s investigation was moving ahead quickly. More men in uniform were waiting in the parking lot as the workers unloaded. Officers blocked off the North Stairs, the Mushroom, the sidewalks, even the East Stairs behind the cafeteria. No one was allowed to leave.
When the last bus emptied, Director Connors appeared at the top of the North Stairs, tall and stern against the overcast sky. Two men in black flanked him, arms folded. The guards pushed the teens closer to the foot of the hill as the superintendent quieted the crowd with a lifted hand. “You are all to proceed immediately to your rooms and remain there until further notice.” His booming voice carried well in the cold air. “The Hill is under lockdown until further notice.”
Immediately, the men in black herded the crowd up the stairs and pushed the teens into their dorms. Reed found Michael waiting at the door to his hall as everyone crowded in. When the last boy filed past, Michael shut the door and locked it from the outside with an ominous click.
“What a day,” sighed Reagan, flipping on the fluorescent light above the sink in their own room.
“I’ll say,” Reed grumbled, tossing himself up onto his bed. “This happen often?”
“No, we’ve never had anything like this before. I don’t know what’s gonna happen next. I guess we just make ourselves comfortable and wait.” Reagan sighed and kicked off his shoes. “So much for lunch. I’m starving.”
They waited. Over an hour later, Michael stepped into the room carrying a clipboard. He glanced around, wrote something down, and left without a word. Nothing else happened for a long time. At last, well after three o’clock, a boy from down the hall stuck his head in and said that Director Connors had ordered everyone down to the Square.
“Here we go,” Reagan sighed, jumping off his bed.
“How the heck are they gonna get five thousand people to fit on the Square?” Reed wondered aloud as he pulled a Baja hoodie over his head.
It wasn’t easy. The crowd packed not only the Square, but crammed into the spacious area between the dorms like sardines in a can. Reed hardly had room to shiver in the cold wind.
When all the halls had been emptied, the Director appeared at an open window on the second floor of Reed’s dorm and addressed the waiting young people through a megaphone. He informed them of last night’s events and explained the measures taken that day. The speech was filled with enough “for the safety of all’s” and “for the public good’s” to make Reed sick. He didn’t feel very good or safe with the dark figures of the police visible on the fringes of the crowd.
The superintendent then laid down the law: no one under any circumstances was to leave the Hill that day or the next unless instructed otherwise. They were free to move among the dorms, but no more. Police would be positioned around the perimeter, and violators would be severely dealt with. That was all.
This announcement was greeted with silence by the crowd but, as soon as Director Connors disappeared back into the room, an audible groan arose.
“There went the weekend,” said Riley, shoving his hands into his pockets as the crowd dispersed.
“Aww… it’s not that bad,” consoled Reagan. “Besides, this way I can have a captive audience when I dress Reed up as my fashion model.”
Reed made an odd noise somewhere between a sneeze and a hiccup.
Reagan patted him on the back. “Gesundheit. Let’s go back to the room, and you can watch the master at work.”
In no time, he had Reed “fixed up” like the night before. When he was satisfied with Reed’s appearance, he focused on his own and transformed from the corporate office man to the swankified Reagan of the Dorms. He stood next to Reed in front of the mirror. “It’ll do,” he observed critically.
“Do you do this every Saturday?”
“Not usually. Just special ones.”
“And what Saturday isn’t special with Reagan around?” observed Riley, spiking up his gelled hair with a comb.
Reagan laughed. “I like the way you think… sometimes.”
Reed had not anticipated the response his new look would generate once they left the room. He was noticed, even liked, more than ever before. He hadn’t realized before how strong was the correlation between style and status on the Hill. They dove straight into a whirlwind tour of the Dorms that Reagan called “hall hopping.” To Reed, it felt more like “whizzing.” They went straight from one dorm to the next, meeting people and playing games. The dorms were bursting with activity, throbbing with anything from games of “Sardines” to FIFA championships. When he emerged from Dorm Twenty Four, his ears still ringing from the beat of some enthusiastic hip-hop dancers, Reed began calculating which dorms were left unvisited. “That takes care of all of ’em,” he announced, “except ours and Dorm Eleven.”
“Don’t count Eleven,” said Reagan, brushing off his jeans from a slide he had taken in a game of hall whiffle ball. “We won’t go there.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Let’s just say it’s the ghetto of the Hill, and not in the cool way. It’s on the east side where nobody ever goes. The Director puts all the troublemakers, misfits, and shady characters there so he can have all his rotten eggs in one basket.”
The three returned to their own hall where they found a crowd of boys waiting, ready for Reagan to “get things going.” Always willing to oblige, Reagan set things in motion, sending someone to fetch his iPod and borrowing the largest sound system on the hall. He had no trouble with either request. That was how they spent the rest of the day. Reed wasn’t sure he had ever had so much fun in his life. If this was the Hill, he loved it.
Much later, after the party had peaked and been broken up by a few of the RDs, Reed and Reagan ambled down the hall in search of the next thing to keep them busy. As they passed one of the rooms, Reed caught sight of a boy leaning against the wall who seemed to be watching them go by. As soon as their eyes met, the boy looked down and seemed to be busy with his phone. Reed had never seen him on the hall before. In fact, he had never noticed him anywhere on the Hill.
“Who is that?” Reed nudged Reagan and gestured back toward the stranger.
“Him?” Reagan glanced at the boy. “Oh, him! I haven’t seen him around in a while. He’s—”
Before he could finish, a crowd of boys spilled out a doorway and collided with the pair, engaged in an all-out battle of plastic light-sabers and Silly String. Since it was a completely pointless melee, they joined in without hesitation. Forgetting his question, Reed joined Reagan in gleefully pummeling anyone and everyone with a saber borrowed from a fallen hero.
He was beginning to really enjoy himself when a hand seized him by the scruff of the neck and jerked him out of the fray. Surprised, he found it was Reagan. His roommate held him back from the rest firmly, watching the scuffle from the sidelines with a look of complete innocence. Reed’s incredulity changed to sudden understanding as he caught sight of Michael trotting down the hall. He quickly dropped the saber.
“Okay, okay, break it up! I said break it UP!” the RD bellowed above the din. The fight subsided.
“Everybody get back to your rooms,” Michael ordered. “If you’re not from this dorm, then get back wherever you belong; it’s five minutes till curfew.”
He sounded tired and cranky. The crowd began to disperse immediately. As Michael turned away, Reed heard him mutter under his breath, “Man, this lockdown’s gonna kill me.”
As the rest of the boys scattered to their rooms, the stranger Reed had seen earlier slipped through the thinning crowd and out the door, one of the last to leave.