Thirty-Three

Chess

“No, no—wait—it’s no trap—I should have explained—” Lana began as all the kids shrieked and clutched for the door handle.

The door handle which . . . wouldn’t budge.

“We asked to be tied to these chairs,” one of the people in the chairs said.

It was a woman with the same gray eyes and long chin and wispy hair as Lana.

“Yes, Mom—you explain,” Lana said. “Or Dad.”

Lana’s mother was surrounded by nine or ten other people also imprisoned in the chairs. One of them was a large man in a dark business suit—Lana’s dad? The others wore uniforms that probably meant they were guards or maids or maybe even butlers.

Chess didn’t care about making sense of the uniforms right now, or figuring out anyone’s identity. He looked around for something to throw at one of the windows so they could escape. A paperweight, maybe? A lamp?

“All the windows are shatterproof,” Lana’s dad said, as if he could read Chess’s mind.

Chess decided mind-reading that wouldn’t be much of an accomplishment. Rocky, Kona, and Emma were also frantically glancing about. Rocky had even gone over and put his hands around the bowling-ball-sized globe on the newel post at the bottom of a grand staircase.

“So just listen,” Lana begged Chess and the others.

Lana’s dad frowned, deepening the lines on his face. His suit looked expensive, the kind that should have made him seem powerful and decisive. But it sagged on his slumped shoulders. His face and his suit both looked crumpled.

“Do you know the stories about sailors who had to be tied to the masts of their ships?” he asked. “Because that was the only way they could avoid being so mesmerized by mermaid songs that they sailed their ships onto the rocks and died? We are those sailors.”

“You’re afraid of mermaids?” Finn asked. Now he was the one peering all around. “You think this house is a sailing ship? And you’re on the ocean?”

“Figuratively,” the man said.

“Dad,” Lana complained, “they don’t need to hear about myths and legends and analogies. Just what’s true now.”

“In there. That is what we’re afraid of,” Lana’s mother said, straining against the ropes on her wrists to point into a formal living room off to the side. The furniture in that room was just as ornate and imposing as at the Judge and the Mayor’s house. But on the largest wall, over a huge fireplace, a blanket covered with childish purple daisies was draped over . . . was that another TV?

Lana’s mother was pointing straight at the daisy blanket.

Or, more likely, a TV behind it.

“Ooohh,” Finn said. “We didn’t like what was on the TV back at that house, either.” He pointed toward the Judge and the Mayor’s house. “Why didn’t you just unplug it? That’s what we did.”

“We couldn’t,” Lana’s dad said. “And every time Lana managed to cover it, we couldn’t stop ourselves from uncovering it. She had to blindfold herself and put cotton in her ears and tie us to our chairs, and then cover the TV. She had to do all that just to be able to leave the house.”

“Why can Lana resist uncovering it, when you couldn’t?” Emma asked.

“We don’t know,” Lana’s mom said.

Chess saw Lana’s eyes dart about.

She knows, but she doesn’t want to tell her parents? he wondered.

“Perhaps you should move away from that room.” This came from one of the tied-up men, who seemed to be wearing a guard’s uniform.

Chess realized that all of the kids had started drifting toward the TV covered with the purple-daisy blanket. Even he’d turned toward the TV; he caught himself sliding his feet forward.

But I didn’t decide to walk in that direction, he thought. I didn’t plan to move at all.

If he thought, I am just going to stand right here. I’m not going anywhere, his feet stayed in place. But if he stopped thinking that, the TV drew him like a magnet.

“Do you have any rooms without TVs?” Chess asked.

“Uh, no,” Lana said, almost as if she were embarrassed.

“I am—or was—in charge of the local TV station,” Lana’s dad said. “I needed TVs in every room in my house.”

“Turns out, you didn’t,” one of the women in a maid’s uniform said. “Turns out, it was bad for you, too.”

Emma tilted her head, watching the woman. Chess decided Emma was probably trying to figure out how the woman had the nerve to say that to someone who was clearly her boss. He sniffed. This house smelled a little like the bad odor that had infected the Judge and the Mayor’s house. But the smell seemed to be growing fainter and fainter.

“Whatever the TV does to people—that must have replaced the odor as a way to control everyone,” Emma said. She turned to Lana’s father. “Did you know that was going to happen? Do you know how it works?”

The man shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“We were just trying to sell our advertisers’ products,” he said. “I mean, sure, we knew some of our techniques were a little . . . oh, addictive . . . but . . . we didn’t expect the government to start using the same techniques.”

“You mean, you didn’t expect the government to start using them on you.” It was the same maid again.

Chess tried to catch Emma’s eye. He wanted to ask, Could this woman help us, too?

Maybe not, if she would just go straight to the TV if she escaped from the chair.

Emma was busy appealing to Lana.

“We have to go somewhere safe and have you explain everything to us,” Emma begged.

Lana shot a glance at all the adults in the chairs.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s try my room.”

All the kids trooped up the stairs together. Even though the house was nearly as grand downstairs as the Judge and the Mayor’s place, the upstairs looked shabbier.

“We don’t actually have as much money as my parents want people to believe,” Lana said, as if someone had asked.

They turned the corner into a room that seemed like a smaller version of Other-Natalie’s. One wall was dominated by the same poster they’d once seen in Other-Natalie’s room: It showed a group of teenagers wearing menacing expressions and orange-and-navy-blue clothes. Other-Natalie stood front and center in the group; Lana was in the back row. Solemn lettering hovered at the top of the picture like a threat, announcing, “When we stand together, no one can oppose us.”

“Other-Natalie had a poster like that, and she tore it down,” Finn said. “Why didn’t you do that?”

“I . . . was afraid,” Lana said. “It just didn’t seem like . . . I could.”

Her gaze darted toward the opposite side of the room, where a tattered quilt hung from a large rectangular object on the wall. Chess didn’t need to walk over and pull down the quilt to be certain that it was covering another TV screen. But his feet turned him in that direction anyway.

He wasn’t the only one. Emma was three steps ahead of him—three steps closer to the TV.

“Emma, no!” he cried. “Don’t do it!”

The others started shouting along with him, and rushing after Emma. Finn screamed, “Here, take my coins! That’ll help you!” Kona yelled, “Kafi wouldn’t even be able to reach the plug on that TV!” Rocky hollered, “Fight back!”

Emma moaned, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t . . .”

All five of them grabbed for Emma.

And we’re all wearing or carrying coins, Chess thought. Maybe that will help? Maybe . . .

Emma kept moving toward the TV anyhow. Chess barely managed to get one unsteady hand on her shoulder.

Emma reached for the TV.

And then, suddenly, she grabbed the lever out of her bag and swung it at the quilt over the TV screen.

The sound of breaking glass filled the room.