Truancy Read online

  They made their way back to the elevator, leaving the sound of shattering ceramic behind them. As the doors opened to reveal the lobby, the red and blue lights of Enforcer cars and fire trucks flashed from outside. The sprinklers, the Truants saw, had gone a long way towards extinguishing the results of the firebomb that Zyid had thrown earlier, though some stubborn flames licked at the walls where the water had not reached. Outside, the Enforcers and firefighters could be seen arguing heatedly over something.

  “The Enforcers want to come inside and kill us, and the firefighters want to come inside to put out the fires,” Zyid mused calmly. “Neither wants the other going in first. It’ll take them a bit to figure out who’s in charge of what.”

  The Truants stood around him, waiting for an order. Their only exit was blocked by an army of Enforcers, and yet they felt a lot calmer than they had any right to be. They all looked to Zyid, certain that he would have an answer. Sure enough, after a few seconds of thought, Zyid spoke.

  “Alex and Gabriel, get that delivery cart over here,” he ordered curtly. “Frank, give me your scarf. The rest of you, cover the doorway; shoot anyone that comes in.”

  As the two Truants quickly wheeled the cart over to Zyid, Frank unwrapped the black scarf he’d been using to mask his face. Zyid opened his duffel bag and took out the last item he’d saved. It looked like a white lump in the shape of a bread mold, with a fuse sticking out of it. He quickly wrapped it in the scarf. Loading it onto the cart, he lit the fuse and gave the cart a shove, aiming it towards the busted front doors.

  “As soon as it goes off, run through, don’t stop for anything, and scatter. Meet back at headquarters,” Zyid ordered.

  “What is that?” Frank asked, staring at the receding cart.

  “Saltpeter melted together with sugar.”

  “Sugar?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does it do?”

  As if in answer to the question, extremely thick, white smoke began filling the parking lot. The Truants wasted no time in running through the doors and into the chaos outside. The smoke cloud grew larger and larger until it covered the entire block, and by the time the Enforcers organized a search of the area, all the Truants, except one, had vanished.

  The Truant left behind was of no use to the Enforcers. The Truants would never betray each other, especially not in death.

  4

  A REBELLIOUS CHILD

  Several days had passed since Tack and Suzie’s sojourn in the park, and it was now a Friday. Not any typical Friday, but the one day of the year traditionally set aside for “Freshman Friday,” an event that was almost humorously named, despite its brutal nature. Freshman Friday was the day when upperclassmen were free to tackle, beat, and shove dirt into the mouths of freshmen, with the tacit approval of the Educators.

  Tack wasn’t a freshman and had nothing to fear for himself. Suzie, however, was in her first year of high school, and Tack was certainly afraid for her. Tack had survived his Freshman Friday two years ago with yolk from hurled eggs running down his face. He had been lucky—it was well-known that a few students every year were actually killed during Freshman Fridays.

  Tack apprehensively wondered what the other students had prepared this year—eggs, water balloons, and rocks were among the less lethal things that he’d seen some of them carrying. Whatever it was, Tack was determined to protect his sister from it. Together, Suzie and Tack had come up with a survival plan earlier in the week.

  “Thanks for waiting for me,” Suzie whispered to Tack as they met in the lobby, under the shouts and screams coming from outside.

  “It was no problem,” Tack assured her quietly. With all the commotion going on right outside the front doors, he didn’t think that there was much danger of the guards catching them talking. Still, he kept his voice down.

  “How bad is it?” Suzie asked, looking towards the school doors, cringing at the distant noises of humiliation and pain.

  Tack stated the obvious. “Looks and sounds pretty bad. A lot of last year’s freshmen are out there having fun.”

  “They probably couldn’t wait to start doing to others what had been done to them last year,” Suzie pointed out, bitterness and anger in her voice. “Why is there a Freshman Friday at all?”

  “It’s a cycle. It’s always been that way,” Tack answered.

  “But why do the new freshmen keep on becoming bullies? Why don’t they change things when they’re the bigger ones?” Suzie demanded.

  “Because that’s how people are,” Tack snapped, steeling himself for what he knew would come next. “Come on. We’ll go out with a large group of other students so we’ll be harder to hit. We break off from the main group once they start attacking, and run straight for the subway.”

  “What if they come after us?” Suzie asked.

  “Then you run, and I’ll get them to follow me,” Tack promised. “You just keep running for the subway.”

  Suzie frowned. “What if they catch you?”

  “Then that’s my problem,” Tack said, more harshly than he intended.

  Suzie’s frown deepened. “Are you sure about this?”

  “Yes,” Tack confirmed, trying to convince himself that he was.

  “All right,” Suzie said, sounding unconvinced but resigned. “Then we might as well go out with that group.”

  Suzie pointed towards a moving clump of gray uniforms. A number of freshmen had huddled together for protection. Tack grabbed Suzie by the hand, and pulled her over to the back of the group, where they did their best to remain inconspicuous. The students waited until all their arms had been scanned by the guards, and then those at the front of the bunch pushed open the doors, and those behind quickly followed. The group nervously made their way down the street, remaining ominously unmolested.

  As they turned the corner, a hail of loose bricks taken from the school building itself rained down upon them from the mob that had lain in wait.

  Yelps of shock and pain erupted among the group, and Tack saw the girl in front of him go down bloody, having caught a piece of brick in the temple. Grabbing Suzie by the arm, he broke from the group, running as fast as he could towards the route he took to the train station—the one that bordered District 19, and the one that very few students ever took. Fortunately, it seemed that most of the group had had the same general idea as they, and they quickly scattered to take their own routes.

  When Tack looked back, he found that none of the bullies were chasing them. As he and Suzie rounded another street corner and slipped out of sight of the ambush, they stopped to catch their breath, gasping heavily for air.

  “We made it,” Tack declared, clapping Suzie on the shoulder.

  “No, we didn’t,” Suzie whispered, sounding horrified.

  Looking up, Tack felt his heart leap into his throat. Standing in front of them were three large seniors, all grinning maliciously.

  “I told you that some of them might come this way, Joe,” the boy on the right said to the boy in the middle, who appeared to be their leader.

  “Good thinking,” Joe acknowledged, looking like he had never done any for himself in his entire life.

  “Never miss an opportunity to teach them little kids some respect.” The boy on the right grinned, cracking his knuckles.

  “Why don’t you assholes just leave us alone?” Suzie shouted suddenly.

  Four pairs of eyes snapped towards Suzie. While the three bullies digested the fact that they had just been insulted by a girl less than half their size, Tack stared at his sister and wondered what had made her snap like that. He had never known Suzie to be so reckless.

  “Looks like this one needs to learn to respect her elders!” Joe declared, as he advanced towards Suzie.

  Tack made a split-second decision.

  “Hey, you scrawny little bastards!” he bellowed. “Why don’t you pick on someone who can kick your ass? Come here and try me, you cowards!”

  The three bullies turned towards Tack. Realizing th
at he had a second at most before their shock wore off, he began to run. The three bullies plunged after him. Tack was not particularly athletic, though he was good at sprinting. Putting on a desperate burst of speed, Tack rounded the corner, and was brought up short by a sheer wooden wall. It was the barrier, Tack realized … the wooden barrier that separated District 19 from District 20.

  District 19! The one place that no one would be crazy enough to follow him into! Seized by sudden, desperate inspiration, Tack gripped a plank jutting out from the crude wooden wall and scrambled over onto the other side.

  The three bullies howled with outrage as Tack unceremoniously fell to the ground with an impact amplified by the weight of the backpack. Tack felt a mixture of pain and triumph, the former coming from the elbow that had taken the brunt of the fall and the latter coming from the fact that he’d escaped for now.

  “Come on; let’s get him!” Tack heard one bully say.

  “No way, man, there’re vagrants in there; don’t you know anything?” Joe said, sounding terrified.

  Tack quickly forced himself to his feet, thinking it prudent to get away as fast as he could while the bullies were still arguing. Taking a deep breath and swallowing his own apprehension, he began plunging deeper into District 19. Vagrants or no, he didn’t have much of a choice now.

  As he jogged along, Tack found himself glancing around frequently, looking for dangers lurking in the shadows. He found none, only more evidence that the district had indeed been long abandoned. There were no skyscrapers in the district, only rows of lonely houses and shops. Store display windows lay empty or broken, apartment buildings crumbled in disuse. An old movie theater had its box office windows boarded shut, and a café on a street corner had its tables and chairs all overturned. There was no sign that anyone had ever visited the district in years.

  Feeling a little more confident that he wasn’t in any immediate danger, Tack slowed to a walk, his breath gradually returning to normal. It was an odd place that definitely deserved to be labeled “abandoned,” Tack thought, but he still couldn’t imagine why exactly the Educators didn’t want anyone to see it. As Tack rounded a street corner, however, he abruptly froze, certain that what he was seeing couldn’t be real.

  There, on the side of a street in front of a small brownstone building, stood a gray plastic folding table with a cardboard sign taped to its front and several items placed on top of it. There was a jug of pale liquid, stacks of paper cups, and a large blue and white plastic cooler. There was also a pair of metal folding chairs, one behind and another in front of the table. The one behind the table, Tack realized with a jolt, was occupied by a boy that looked to be around his age. Half-convinced that he had gone mad, Tack slowly walked forward.

  As he did so, the boy looked up from a book he had been reading, dog-eared his page, and shut his book. Then he crossed his arms and calmly waited for Tack to approach.

  The boy was peculiar in more ways than one. He had a faintly sallow complexion, which was rare in District 20. He certainly wasn’t dressed for school. Instead of a uniform, he wore plain, khaki jeans that were slightly frayed, a plain polo shirt with a buttoned-up collar, over which he also wore a beige vest. The boy had put his feet up on the table, and Tack couldn’t help but notice that he wasn’t wearing any socks, just a pair of simple white sneakers.

  The boy’s sleek, shiny black hair had been parted down the center into a neat, bowl haircut that looked strange to Tack. Something about the boy, however, immediately discouraged any thought of laughing. Perhaps it was his face, which was as perfectly placid as Tack could imagine a human’s face being. Or maybe it was the opaque black sunglasses he was wearing that defeated any attempt to discern what was behind them.

  Moving closer, Tack could see a bar code and nine-digit number tattooed onto the boy’s arm. He was a student.

  And yet he wasn’t in uniform.

  “Hello there,” the boy said, lifting his legs and placing them back onto the ground. “It’s been a long time since a stranger has come this way. I understand that students are specifically warned not to come here these days.”

  “Yeah,” Tack managed, still not wholly certain that the kid wasn’t some sort of stress-induced hallucination.

  “Are you lost?” the boy inquired.

  “Uh … I don’t think I am,” Tack replied, flustered.

  “Well then, you must be here on purpose,” the boy reasoned. “Care for a drink?”

  The boy waved his hand at the metal folding chair that sat across the table from him, indicating that Tack should take a seat. Tack obliged without thinking, which was when he noticed what was written on the cardboard sign that had been taped to the front of the table. “Lemonade—1 Bill,” Tack read silently.

  “Is this … your lemonade stand?” Tack asked incredulously.

  “Indeed,” the boy confirmed. “My name is Umasi.”

  “I’m Tack. So you … you just sit out here all day?”

  “More or less, yes,” Umasi agreed, taking some ice from his cooler and adding it to the large jug of lemonade.

  “And you can make a living that way?” Tack asked in disbelief.

  “No, not really.” Umasi poured some lemonade into a paper cup. “I am very fortunate in that money is something that I do not have to worry about.”

  “Why not?” Tack asked.

  “That, I’m afraid, is a secret,” Umasi said lightly, pushing the cup of lemonade over to Tack. “Please, drink. You’re sweating.”

  Tack wiped the sweat off his forehead and took a sip. It was good. Clearly homemade, not the bottled stuff sold by most stores in the City. Tack quickly gulped down the rest of it and placed the empty cup on the table. Unsure if he owed anything for the lemonade, he waited to see if Umasi would charge him.

  Umasi didn’t. Instead, he filled a second cup and nudged it over to Tack, who found that he was horribly thirsty after all the running he had done.

  “So, why would a student of the City, who has signed all sorts of promises to obey the Educators, find himself here against their wishes?” Umasi asked, as Tack downed his second cup of lemonade.

  “I was running from some bullies,” Tack said dazedly, feeling as though it were all a dream.

  “Ah yes.” Umasi frowned, pushing a third cup of lemonade over to Tack. “Bullies—some of the Educators’ most ingenious tools.”

  Tack paused with the filled cup halfway to his lips.

  “Tools?” Tack repeated carefully.

  “That’s right.” Umasi nodded. “Violent, aggressive students do the Educators’ work for them. They work towards perpetrating an atmosphere of fear and pressure in school. They also keep the students hating each other, rather than blaming the Educators.”

  Tack contemplated that. It made sense, except for one thing.…

  “Why would the Educators want to do that?” Tack asked.

  Umasi froze, staring at Tack in a way that made him feel uncomfortable, as if he were a bug being examined under a magnifying glass. There was an ominous silence. Finally, Umasi seemed to come to a difficult decision, and began to speak.

  “Tell me, Tack,” Umasi said, stirring the jug of lemonade with a large wooden spoon. “Why do you go to school?”

  Tack was thrown by the question. At first he stared at Umasi incredulously, sure that the strange boy was joking. Searching his face, Tack saw no signs of sarcasm. He decided to voice the obvious answer. But as he racked his brain for the obvious answer, he discovered that there was none.

  “I go to school to learn,” Tack invented wildly, saying the first thing that came to mind, though he knew in his heart that it wasn’t true.

  “Really?” Umasi raised an eyebrow. “Something tells me that you’re not truly interested in learning what they teach you. Nonetheless, I’ll entertain your proposition. Why do you want to learn?”

  Tack frowned. It was as if they were engaged in a verbal duel and Umasi had the advantage of being able to read Tack’s thoughts before he eve
n had them.

  “Because it’s important,” Tack said quickly, stalling for time.

  “Why?” Umasi pressed.

  “Because … because I want to be successful in life,” Tack said, flustered at having to repeat what his parents and teachers always told him.

  “That’s not actually answering the question,” Umasi pointed out. “Why is learning important?”

  “To get a good job,” Tack said mechanically.

  “And don’t you think,” Umasi said, pouring himself a cup of lemonade, “that it’s strange that you must go through these meaningless classes—that you must practice exceedingly complicated types of math, obscure minutiae of biology, aimless drawing, and more, all at the same time? Just to get jobs that, in all likelihood, would not involve even one of them, let alone all?”

  Tack found that he had no answer to that, and it seemed like Umasi hadn’t expected him to have one. Finishing his fourth cup of lemonade and finding his thirst quenched, Tack sat back and looked up at Umasi.

  “But why?” Tack asked feebly. “Why make us waste our time?”

  “Control,” Umasi answered simply. “They keep you too busy to rebel, too downtrodden to protest being a second-class citizen, and too well-conditioned to challenge them when you reach adulthood. Indeed, many end up joining them so that they can do the same to the next generation. It’s really a complicated form of bullying.”

  Tack thought he should be feeling more surprised than he was, but he wasn’t. It was as if he had known it all along but had never had time to think about it. What he was surprised to find was that he believed every word that Umasi said. The mysterious boy couldn’t be more than two years older than Tack, and yet Umasi seemed almost omniscient. Something about the way he spoke made it impossible to doubt him.

  “All I will say for school, Tack, is that it is less monstrous than some of the alternatives,” Umasi said, taking a sip from his cup.

  “Alternatives?” Tack inquired, sitting up in his chair.