Fifty

Chess

The last of the coins dropped quickly.

It seemed like the kids had had so many coins when they’d lugged all the buckets up the stairs. And the buckets had seemed so heavy and full as Chess and the others tipped them forward, balanced on the railing. The coins rolled down the screen like a quenching waterfall.

Chess felt so victorious, so powerful.

So happy.

But then the buckets were empty. One by one, Chess, Finn, Rocky, and Lana dropped the empty buckets to the floor of the catwalk.

“Should I throw these, too?” Finn asked, starting to peel off the coins taped to his wrists. “Because these would belong to Other-Natalie or the Judge, and it could help them to see these, too. Right?”

“No—no!” Chess cried, coming to his senses. He realized that Finn had already peeled off the coins he’d taped onto his face. Or maybe they’d just fallen off; Chess hadn’t exactly had time to study his brother’s face in the midst of fighting off the effects of the big screen.

“You might still need those for protection,” Lana said, agreeing with Chess. “Because . . . we didn’t plan very well, did we? Shouldn’t we have arranged for some sort of conveyor belt to bring those coins back up, so we could keep throwing them? So people could keep looking at the coins instead of at the screen?”

“Or we could just shout for everyone to pay attention to us, now that they’ve seen the coins,” Finn said. He began waving his arms and jumping up and down. “Hey, everyone! Up here!”

But Finn was just a little kid on a narrow platform eight stories up in the air. His voice was completely drowned out by the enormous speakers blaring from the giant screen beneath the catwalk.

Don’t listen, don’t listen, don’t listen. . . . Chess thought.

He broke out in a cold sweat with the effort of fighting against the noise. And against the temptation to climb down and look at the screen.

“Did people look at the coins, or was that all for nothing?” Rocky asked.

Chess couldn’t quite bring himself to gaze out at the crowd. He looked at Finn. He looked at Kafi. He looked down at the pile of coins they’d poured onto the ground below the screen.

And . . . they were gone.

All of the coins had completely vanished.