Truancy Read online

  “Well,” Umasi said, a slow smile spreading across his face, “it looks like you pass the test in its entirety, Tack.”

  Tack grinned back, unsure of what to say.

  “I’ve never been so glad to be proven wrong,” Umasi said, walking over to Tack and clapping a hand on his shoulder. “I daresay we’ll need to clean up some of your wounds before you return home.”

  “Yeah,” Tack agreed, the adrenaline slowly leaving his body. “Just one thing…”

  “Yes?” Umasi asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “I’m thirsty,” Tack declared.

  “Well.” Umasi laughed. “That can be easily remedied.”

  Together Umasi and Tack dusted themselves off and made their way back to the lemonade stand. Though Tack’s body hurt in a dozen different places, he realized that he had never felt better. For that one afternoon, he felt invincible—ready to take the whole City. Tack had discovered that, as usual, Umasi was right:

  Improvement only did come after suffering.

  11

  DEATH

  Tack made his way towards the cafeteria. It was lunchtime, and though he wasn’t feeling particularly hungry, he was hoping to meet Suzie there. She had made up with Melissa shortly after the incident with the copied paper, and Tack had been seeing less and less of Suzie. This worried him, in a nonspecific brotherly fashion.

  Tack paused outside the large cafeteria doors as he heard a familiar voice echo through the otherwise silent hallway.

  “Very well, the cafeteria seems to be in order. The food is no good by adult standards, of course, but the place is reasonably sanitary, and that’s all that really matters.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Caine; we do pride ourselves on cleanliness in this school.”

  Recognition struck Tack like a punch in the face—it was the Disciplinary Officer that he had seen expel a student, standing again with the principal. Since it was nearing the end of the year, Tack immediately understood that the Disciplinary Officer must be performing his routine inspection.

  “I expect you would like to sit through some of the classes?” the principal suggested.

  “Naturally.” Mr. Caine nodded, lifting a clipboard hastily to read something. “First, however, I’d like to look around the hallways a bit. We’ve had some trouble with students here under the Zero Tolerance Policy, I understand.”

  The principal frowned. “Well, yes, there were a few miscreants, but given the hundreds of well-behaved students that still remain, I’m sure that you understand that they were a small minority.”

  Tack and all the other students milling around knew that the principal was lying through her teeth. While cowed by the rumors of terrible punishments, most of the students at the District 20 School were now anything but well behaved. There was a restless anger simmering in the school, and in the past week alone, two dozen stink bombs had been set off in various classrooms and hallways, posters and notices taped to the walls had been torn down, and so many intentional messes had been made in the cafeteria that Tack was sure the janitors must have had to work overtime in order to make it clean enough to earn Mr. Caine’s approval.

  “And what’s your name, young man?” Mr. Caine asked suddenly, causing Tack to jump. The Disciplinary Officer was looking right at him. “Don’t worry about the rules for now; you may speak.”

  “Er, I’m Tack,” Tack said nervously.

  “Do you like it here at this school?” Mr. Caine asked.

  “Oh, erm, yeah, it’s pretty good,” Tack lied.

  “And what do you think of your teachers, in general?” Mr. Caine asked, twirling a pencil with his fingers.

  “They’re uh … good; they’re good,” Tack said lamely.

  “I see.” Mr. Caine sounded skeptical as he straightened up and turned away.

  While Mr. Caine’s back was turned, the principal shot Tack an angry glance, clearly displeased that he hadn’t sounded more enthusiastic. Mr. Caine didn’t notice, however, as he was busy scribbling something down on his notepad as he approached another student. Tack noticed a distinct increase in angry mutterings around him. Suddenly, as Mr. Caine marched over to interview another student, a high-pitched shriek issued forth from the crowd.

  “How do you like this for Zero Tolerance?”

  A second later, something shiny sailed through the air and landed near Mr. Caine’s feet. Tack caught a glimpse of what looked like a tinfoil wrapper, just before it inflated and burst with a loud snapping noise. A foul odor spread swiftly throughout the corridor, prompting many students, Tack among them, to lift their shirts up to cover their noses. Mr. Caine stood frozen, which struck Tack as ominous, but the principal was now coughing in fury and looking wildly around at the students present.

  “Who did this?” she shrieked.

  Mr. Caine, however, had calmly surveyed the crowd with narrowed eyes. He suddenly stepped forward, shoving two boys aside to glare down at a girl with dark hair and a defiant expression upon her face.

  “What’s your name?” Mr. Caine demanded.

  “Melissa,” the girl said defiantly, looking up at Mr. Caine without fear.

  “The stink bomb came from where you are standing,” Mr. Caine said softly. “And your voice sounds like the one that shouted before it was thrown.”

  “Yeah, so?” Melissa said, still standing defiant. “You can’t prove it was me.”

  “Expel her, Mr. Caine!” the principal said angrily. “We have no tolerance for this kind of—”

  “Quiet,” Mr. Caine ordered. “Now, Melissa, you are obviously a clever girl. You’re right. I can’t prove anything. Your mistake, however, is that I don’t need to prove anything to expel a student.”

  Melissa seemed to deflate at this, breaking eye contact with Mr. Caine. Mr. Caine had the look of a predator that had cornered its prey. But before he could strike, someone called out from the back of the growing crowd.

  “It wasn’t her, Mr. Caine,” the girl called. “It was me.”

  There were gasps of astonishment and an increased muttering as the students craned their neck to look at who had spoken. Tack couldn’t get a glimpse from where he was standing. He thought that there was something very familiar about the voice, but before he put a face to it, Mr. Caine darted through the crowd. As Melissa stood there, seemingly struck dumb by her sudden rescue, a leaden weight of dread suddenly dropped into Tack’s stomach. Melissa was the name of Suzie’s best friend … no, it couldn’t be. She wouldn’t do something like this.

  Tack shoved his way through the crowd after Mr. Caine. He saw Mr. Caine enter the stairwell, pulling a girl behind him by the scruff of her neck. Suzie. What the hell was she thinking?

  Without bothering to wonder what he was thinking, Tack broke into a run and sprinted down the corridor. He slammed the stairwell doors open, and raced down the stairs after Mr. Caine and Suzie. All the while, Tack’s mind was racing. Suzie, expelled? He wouldn’t allow it; he couldn’t allow it.

  Remembering what Umasi had told him about the expelled students, about the hopeless fate that awaited them, Tack kicked the ground floor doors open and ran out into the foyer, just in time to see Mr. Caine and Suzie vanish through the school doors. Tack ground his teeth as he remembered what Umasi had said about doing nothing rash—but no matter what anyone said, he wouldn’t roll himself aside so that Mr. Caine could step on Suzie.

  Outside in the bright sunlight, Tack was blinded for a moment. Then he saw that the street outside the school was empty except for a few unoccupied cars and two lone figures at the end of the street. Tack ran after them, and suddenly saw Suzie turn to look at him. Mr. Caine stopped next to a black, unremarkable car.

  “Suzie!” Tack shouted.

  “Tack!” Suzie called back as Mr. Caine opened the passenger door and unceremoniously shoved Suzie inside.

  “No!” Tack cried, still half a block away from the car.

  Mr. Caine opened the driver’s side door, slipped inside, and slammed it shut as Tack let out another shout.
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  Then, suddenly, a dark figure lunged from behind a parked car and hurled what looked like a fiery bottle inside the car that Mr. Caine and Suzie had just entered. Tack’s mouth opened involuntarily as his eyes tracked the progress of the bottle, and in one fleeting moment he noticed that some kind of thick, sticky-looking paste had been smeared all along the other side of Mr. Caine’s car, particularly near the fuel tank. Tack wanted to let out a warning, to somehow rush forward fifty feet and catch the bottle, to do something to stop what he knew was about to happen … but he couldn’t. The bottle crashed against the side of the car, and then burst into flame.

  Tack was overcome by a surreal sensation, watching as the flames leaped heavenward. In seconds, an angry fireball consumed the entire car. Mr. Caine had been expelled from the car by the blast, and now lay motionless on the sidewalk. But Suzie … where was Suzie?

  Tack dashed forward, never once considering any danger. He plunged through the plume of smoke billowing from the car and to the passenger door, which he wrenched open with his bare hands, ignoring the burning-hot metal. His heart jolted up into his throat as Tack knelt down, and the dread that had already filled him multiplied a dozen times as his fears were confirmed. There in the backseat of the car, her body charred, lay Suzie. The world seemed to stop as he gently pulled Suzie’s horribly unrecognizable body from the car and cradled her in his arms.

  As if he were someone else entirely, witnessing the scene from far away as a spectator, Tack reached out mechanically to brush a blackened strand of hair out of Suzie’s face. Hugging Suzie tightly Tack let out a great shuddering gasp and took a deep breath, heedless of the smoke and fumes flowing into his lungs. As tears began to run down his face, Tack could feel Suzie’s body grow steadily cold in his arms, and he was suddenly seized by an urge to look at something, anything, else.

  Hearing something move, Tack looked up. Standing above him was a boy who looked to be about Tack’s age. Through the smoke, Tack saw that the boy’s long black hair had been tied into a ponytail that flailed wildly in the fierce wind, the same wind that now blew smoke all around them. The boy wasn’t wearing the gray uniform of students, but was clothed all in black—jeans, a leather belt, a long-sleeve shirt, a windbreaker buttoned around his neck so that it splayed behind him like a cape. The boy’s left hand was clenched, and in his right he held a gun.

  But what Tack noticed above all was the boy’s face, faintly sallow complexion darkened by soot, expressionless, lacking compassion, fear, or regret. Tack searched desperately for any emotion, but could find none. For a moment, the two boys stood staring at each other, one the killer of the other’s sister, and in that moment Tack somehow found the strength to speak just one word.

  “Why?” he asked, his voice cracked and pleading.

  The boy that had so calmly killed Suzie looked back at Tack evenly, his face not so much as twitching a muscle.

  “She was collateral damage,” the boy said coldly. “Nothing more.”

  And with that, the boy spun around and walked away, his windbreaker fluttering behind him. Tack watched him go, stunned by what he had seen and what he had heard. Then, as he looked down at his dead sister again, reality came crashing back down on him, and without knowing what he was doing, an unearthly shriek ripped from his chest.

  A new impulse seized control of his brain. Run, it told him. Run. He didn’t want to see others find Suzie like this, he realized; he didn’t want to be there when they found her. He didn’t want them to see him; he would’ve vanished off the face of the earth if he could. Tack stood up, and Suzie’s body fell from him. He looked at his clothing, now thoroughly stained with Suzie’s blood. He tore off the bloodied gray jacket of his school uniform and cast it aside.

  Leaping to his feet, Tack ran. He ran so fast that the whole world seemed to be a blur to him. He didn’t know where he was running or for how long. The aches and pains in his legs seemed distant to him, and the whole experience was so surreal that for a moment, Tack felt as though he were running through a dream.

  And then it was over. Tack came to a stop, his head spinning, his legs burning, and his lungs screaming for relief. Without so much as looking around to see where he was, Tack collapsed onto the ground.

  * * *

  “So, Noni, did you complete your task?” Zyid asked, shooting a glance at the assassin.

  He removed his windbreaker and tossed it onto his desk. He’d arrived back at the Truancy hideout to find Noni there already waiting for him, which he took as a sign of his being behind schedule. He had been delayed a couple hours, as he had taken several detours, including one into a crowded mall arcade, to assure that he wouldn’t be followed on his return. However, in retrospect the assassination had been so easy that he was probably being overly cautious.

  “Yes, sir,” Noni confirmed quietly. “And you?”

  “I was successful, yes.” Zyid gave a slight nod. “There were some complications, however.”

  “Complications?” Noni asked.

  “It’s nothing to be worried about,” Zyid said dismissively. “A girl happened to get caught in the blast that ended Mr. Caine’s life. Apparently the late Disciplinary Officer was in the process of expelling her when I got him.”

  “Civilian casualty,” Noni said softly.

  “Yes.” Zyid nodded. “Also, a male acquaintance of hers apparently saw me do it.”

  “Someone saw you?” Noni asked hesitantly. “Shouldn’t you have killed him, sir? He might go to the Educators as a witness.”

  “No, Noni.” Zyid shook his head. “I draw the line between us and the Educators at the harming of students … whenever possible, at least. Sometimes it can’t be helped or foreseen, as with the death of the girl, but otherwise I avoid it if I can. The boy probably won’t be able to tell the Educators anything useful, at any rate—there was so much smoke that I could hardly see him myself.”

  “Yes, sir,” Noni said.

  “What time is it?” Zyid asked suddenly.

  “Almost five thirty by my watch, sir,” Noni replied dutifully.

  “Time—there’s never enough of it in this City.” Zyid scowled. “Enough about my performance. Tell me how the hideouts are faring.”

  * * *

  Tack awoke in the dark with a bad taste in his mouth, and he spent his first few moments of semiconsciousness spitting the foul taste out. As he grew more lucid, he moved to get to his feet, but felt a sudden pain stab through his legs. Tack tried again, and this time managed to stand, though the pain still lingered. Rubbing his legs, Tack wondered why they were hurting so badly. As a particularly sharp jolt of pain shot through his sinews, Tack suddenly remembered something about running. Running … yes, Tack realized, he had been running a lot. Running from what, though?

  Then the memories came rushing back, and the next thing he knew, Tack was back on his knees with tears running down his face. Knowing that Suzie was dead was like being punched in the stomach, except the feeling persisted until Tack felt short of breath. Suzie wouldn’t want him to be like this, Tack knew, but no matter how hard he struggled not to think about her, not to think about how she would never laugh again, never tease him again, he only managed to dredge up more memories, each plunging a sharper knife of emotion than the last into his chest.

  Desperate to concentrate on something else, Tack forced himself to his feet again and looked around. He was standing on a rickety wooden pier overlooking the West River, the wide, unforgiving body of water that isolated the City on one side. Glancing around at a battered-looking warehouse with broken windows standing near some adjacent piers, Tack realized that the area had been abandoned. It was nighttime now, and the street lamps along the edge of the water were still lit, and in the distance Tack could see the busy, twinkling lights of the inhabited City.

  Here, as far from the place he’d run from as he could have wished, Tack knew he should have felt better, should have felt freer, and yet as he looked out at the placid, black waters of the river, calmly mirro
ring the lights of the City, Tack only felt worse as he realized that there was no true escape. The City was just a cage, and no matter how hard people fought over it, in the end they were all still trapped inside it. The enormous breadth of the river seemed to gaze back at him gloatingly, wallowing in its perpetual victory.

  “Let me out!” Tack suddenly screamed at the river, which made no response but to stir about in mocking calmness.

  Tack seized a chunk of wood broken off from the pier and hurled it at the river, desperately wishing to cause the vast, dark entity some harm. The wood landed on the water with a splash, bobbed beneath it for a moment, and then rose to the surface, where it floated along the current of the river. Tack glared at the wood like it had betrayed him.

  “Fine, go along with the stupid river!” Tack shrieked maniacally. “Maybe I will too! Then I’ll be dead, dead like her!”

  Tack clenched his fists and felt a wholly new level of rage bubbling in his gut. The kids were fighting the adults over control of the City and didn’t care how many people they killed while they did it. Collateral damage, and nothing more? Tack stared angrily into the darkness of the river, which in turn seemed to stare deeper back into him. He remembered how the boy had turned his back on Suzie’s dead body, and he felt his sorrow melt away into sweet, addictive anger. Let the river do the mourning, Tack thought. He wouldn’t let sadness tear him apart; he would hate Suzie’s killers instead. As Tack leaned against the rickety wooden railing along the side of the pier, he remembered the name. The Truancy, Umasi had called them. It was they that had killed his sister.

  Tack had always been sympathetic to the Truancy, no matter what Umasi said, no matter what he had cautioned. Only now that the Truancy had ended one that he cherished did Tack truly appreciate the value of life. Suzie was dead, and her killer, who had so easily written her off as collateral damage, now walked free. The bubbling rage in Tack’s gut spilled over, and he began to yell. Tack channeled all the emotion built up in his chest, and he yelled, screaming vague threats and promises into the night for what seemed like hours. No one was around to hear him except the dispassionate river, which swallowed his cries and made no response.