Scripted (6 page)

I nod slowly. Coming up with plus-ten plotlines comes so naturally to Lia. I imagine storming past Revere to the front of the classroom and demanding a chance from Mr. Black, the Audience cheering me on.

“I'll think about it,” I say.

“Ask him. Monday.”

“All right,” I agree. I look over at the clock on my night table. “I gotta get going.”

Lia claps the journal shut. “Okay, maybe I'll visit Callen. Stuff ended not so plus ten last night after No Arms.” She picks up her book bag. “Which means we argued as much as Callen
can
argue. It's, like, different shades of silence. I-hate-you silence, I'm-hurt silence, I'm-tired-of-this-silence silence.”

I give her some silence of my own. Like, I-would-love-it-if-he-never-spoke-to-you-again silence. I smooth out wrinkles in my comforter. “I hope you make up,” I say finally.

• • •

I take the really long way to Fincher's, riding down the eastern coast, gliding past Avalon beach houses, including Lincoln's. A blue sheen radiates from the distance. The aquarium. Scoop works there every weekend as part of his apprenticeship. Thinking about him grieving while cleaning out tank filters makes me want to tell him
something
about the Patriots.

If I move fast, I can find him, say what I have to say, and still make it to Fincher's on time. I get a ticket, lock my bike to a camerapole, and join the crowds churning through the halls. The air in here is sharp and pure, with a vacuumed, institutional quality to it. I haven't been to the aquarium since I was a kid, and I find myself almost hypnotized by the octopi and squid, lobsters and eels, salmon and sharks.

Lots of entrancing sea creatures, but no Scoop. I take a break from my search to get an ice cream from the concession stand. I'm peering over the cartons, trying to choose a flavor, when I remember the morning's propro Missive.

“Do you have any fruit?” I ask the elderly man with a flourishing mustache.

He shuffles over to a carton of apples and hands one over. “Half a cetek,” he says crankily. He was probably anyassigned.

Apple in hand, I sit on a concrete bench across from the jellyfish tank and bite in. Juicy and sweet. Must be from the Granary. The best fruit is grown there—a cluster of farms and orchards at the southern tip of the island. I let the apple lie in my lap, resting my head against the wall and closing my eyes. What if Callen were with me, watching the jellyfish, their transparent, filmy skins undulating through the water like silk scarves fluttering in the air. Then I imagine us on the Herrons' living room couch, his arms around me.
Eagerly
around me.

I'm so transfixed by my daydreams that Scoop manages to sneak up on me.

“You're watching that tank almost as intensely as you watch Callen during lunch.” He grins, waiting for my response.

Ugh, how? I've never breathed a word about how I feel about Callen to any Character but Selwyn. Scoop doesn't even sit at our lunch table that much—he kind of rotates tables—and his figuring this out jolts me. He's in the standard aquarium worker uniform—dorky aquamarine nylon pants that are far too baggy, a coral-colored polyester polo shirt, and an aquamarine Windbreaker with a dolphin silhouette stitched over the heart. Somehow his dreamboat face, with the razor-sharp cheekbones, overpowers all the ridiculousness and makes it look good.

“I don't—I don't know what you mean,” I stutter unconvincingly.

“If you say so.” He has an apple too, and he chomps it loudly. “Kiel Apples are the best. Juicy.”

“Kiel Apples give me energy,” I reply. Other Characters have to have noticed if he did. Maybe even Callen. Well, it's not the important thing now. “I need to talk to you, Scoop.
Not
about Callen,” I say, scanning the hall. We're so exposed in this position. A cube-shaped ventilator with hoses snaking into the tank seems promising, humming loudly enough to cover up whispers.

“Come here.” I stand and guide him to the ventilator, then crouch down and gesture toward a crumbling replica reef. “I think I see a seahorse,” I say loudly. I check above me: the cameras can't see our faces as long as we stay kneeling and looking down. Scoop follows my example.

“This is a secret, so you can't tell anyone,” I whisper. “The Patriots do publicity for Media1 in Zenta. You know, writing ads, answering fan letters. Belle's going to be fine.”

Scoop grabs my wrist with his other hand, pulling me in closer. All the joking is over. I can see his eyes are bloodshot, like he spent the whole night crying. “Where did you hear that? I don't believe it.”

I feel myself flushing. “I can't say who told me, exactly, but it's a Media1 source. A reliable one.”

He zips up his Windbreaker. “I have another, equally reliable source—”

“Weneedtopauseforreenactment,” a voice says behind us. My pulse quickens and my throat goes dry as we slowly look up. A male cricket. Did he hear us fralling? I cannot afford a fine, not with the motif change coming up.

The cricket has a nose like a boxer's, crooked, as if it had been broken and healed wrong. His eyes are small and dark like olive pits. He's ugly, even for a Real, and his voice is raspy. “Pauseforreenactment,” he repeats.

“Hmm?” I say, rising to my feet. “What—what did you say?”

“Where do you want us to start?” Scoop says, next to me. He straightens out his Windbreaker cuffs and unzips it again. “He said ‘pause for reenactment.'” A reenactment. My breathing slows to normal—it's okay. They just want the propro. I'm safe.

“Go back to the bench,” says a younger female Real with a high ponytail, a camera balanced on her shoulder. I straighten the straps on my tank top and return to the bench. Glad I did the Skin Sequence this morning. I rarely have reenactments—and when I have in the past, they're usually silent or sidekick parts in scenes with Lia. Reenactments almost guarantee a scene will be broadcast.

We wait as the cricket struggles to mount the heavy camera on her shoulder.

Actually, they don't want the propro. The male recites our lines to us several times, and we repeat them back, starting with “You're watching that tank almost as hard as you watch Callen during lunch,” which makes me wince, ruining several takes. It's exciting that the Audience might be interested, but I don't want any of the Characters in the hall to overhear. Someone might tell Lia.

The reenactment goes up to and through the propro for Kiel Apples. They don't seem to have noticed any of the fralling afterward.

The male cricket murmurs to the female as they look over the footage on the camera. I hope they like what they see. I hear one word over and over.
Pipits.
The stern-faced Real looks over at us, and what I think is a smile creases his rough face. “We have what we need.”

“What was that word they kept saying,
pipits
?” I whisper to Scoop as they leave.

“
Puppets,
” he whispers back. “That's what the crew calls us.”

“Really?” I mouth. I've always felt superior to the Reals, and in the back of my mind, I assumed they agreed. But
puppets
needles at me.

Scoop's mouth quirks up. “Don't let it pull your strings. Besides, what do you expect? They're not our friends.”

“Yeah, but they—” I strive for the right words. “They care about us. Without us, they'd have to live in the Sectors. They might not even have jobs if the show didn't exist,” I remember Dr. Kanavan once lamenting how a childhood friend of hers, a nurse, couldn't find any work in the Sectors.

“The Audience cares, maybe. But Media1 doesn't,” Scoop whispers. He shrugs off his Windbreaker, revealing arms that are pretty muscular for someone who doesn't do sports. Scoop isn't gangly tall like Witson, or scary large like some tracs. He has just enough heft to make you feel protected but not threatened. Belle was lucky to have him as a big brother.

But he's not my brother. We're not even close friends, and I get the feeling if I stick around here longer, he's going to try to frall with me about her again. We were already way too close to getting caught. I clamp my hand over my mic. “I have to go. I'm supposed to help out at Mr. Fincher's.”

“Wait,” he says. “Do you know what the Sandcastle is?”

I step back, a chill running through me. I rub my arms, wondering if I should tell him that I heard the word on my radio's Media1 channel.

“You've heard of it, haven't you?” he whispers, closing the space between us. “I think it's where they keep the Patriots. I don't think they make it to the Sectors.”

“I—I have to go,” I declare, turning and walking down the hall as fast as I can without breaking into a run. I can't let myself get too bogged down in thoughts about Patriots again, not while I'm on the E.L.

I start
dozing off on my bed Sunday evening while reading
The Player in the Attic.
I'm dangerously close to drooling on the cover when the phone shrieks.

“Nettie. It's me,” Lia announces.

“You woke me up,” I greet her groggily. “Trying to read the book. Can you just tell me what happens?”

“Sure. But can you come meet me at the playground now?” She throws out the request like a dart to a board. “It's important.”

She's upset—I can tell by her clipped tone. “Okay. Be there soon.” I shove my sneakers on and leave the house, quickly covering the short distance to the playground that divides the Arbor from Treasure Woods. We used to frall here, swinging side by side so the cameras couldn't get a good view of us. Lia's waiting for me, hunched on a swing, hands gripped high on the chains. When she sees me, she smiles weakly. Her eyes are puffy.

Still, she looks more beautiful than ever. She's wearing a long white sleeveless dress and the
liberato
beads she bought with Selwyn on a post-ratings-payment shopping spree. Up close, I discern eyeliner tracing the lids of her cat eyes and mascara turning her light brown eyelashes black. Media1's been inviting her to private Sessions at the Center; they're offered to high-ratings Characters on how to be more camperf.

“Hey.” I drop into the swing next to hers, feeling underdressed in my frayed jean shorts, same ones from yesterday.

“Callen and I broke up,” she says flatly, staring straight ahead.

My mind splinters, jagged cracks radiating from the words
Callen and I broke up.
I wet my lips nervously, feeling like I'd better say something, but Lia keeps going without even glancing at me.

“Yesterday, after the Diary, I went over to his house. To apologize about the night before. It was like he was waiting. Like he'd been waiting for weeks, for the right moment.” She glances over at me quickly, checking to make sure I'm listening, and I nod. “He said we want different things. That's true.” She laughs bitterly. “
He's
not even sure about the baseball apprenticeship.
I
have goals.”

I draw circles in the dirt with my sneakers, trying to come up with the thoughts that belong to the trustworthy friend she needs. Not the boyfriend-coveting one she has.

“You do have goals,” I summon up. “Your ambition is one of the best things about you.” I mean it. She's so certain about what she wants and how to get it, in every area of her life.

While I float around, aimless, just like Callen.

“I've been in shock since yesterday,” she says, dipping back in the swing and kicking at the air like a temperamental baby. “I thought things were fine,” she cries out, sitting up again. “I know we were arguing, but God. I completely misread him.”

“I thought everything was okay too,” I say, though now the slight edge he had when talking about her on Friday seems much more significant. “I never saw it coming.” But Callen would make sure we didn't; he's so controlled.

I'll never have to watch them hold hands again, I realize. Never have to hear about potential close-ups again. No more spied-on kisses to drive spikes into my heart.
The torture is over.

“Let's walk,” she says, jumping off the swing. We leave the playground and head down Elm Street. A buzzing noise cuts in underneath birdsong, and I glance up. Another fighter jet.

“I knew I'd get bored of him eventually,” Lia reflects, picking a leaf off a hedge. “Callen isn't the best conversationalist. You know what I mean?” She tears the leaf apart, scattering the pieces on the ground, like she's making a trail to help us find our way back.

“Yeah, he's quiet,” I say. We pass house after house with Saturday-night family scenes on view. I see a father and a daughter bent over a board game in one house. At another, a family with three kids—a real rarity on the island—gobbles down sundaes at a mahogany dining room table.

“But I would have stayed with him longer,” she allows, increasing her pace. The longer we walk, the faster she goes. “If it had been my choice.”

If it had been my choice.
“So many things are like that,” I say. “And it almost never is.”

Lia frowns, her forehead creasing. “Nettie, God. Don't bleak me out more.”

“Sorry.” We start down the wide road that leads out of the Arbor, passing the spot where I was thrown off the bike. No more houses, only trees and traffic lights and us strolling down the sidewalk, jolted by the occasional car speeding by. We pass the high school and cross into downtown.

“Where should we go?” Lia says as we pass a string of closed shops, including Delton's, the luxury department store Terra mocked me about. Restaurants and bars are open, and since the weather is nice, Characters are dining outside, laughing softly and sipping wine. The crickets changed the downtown public spaces for
liberato,
so everything is in beiges and tans, all the benches are wicker, and all the signs are in a loosey-goosey typeface, like drunk Gothic lettering.

We get caught up in a small crowd waiting to get inside the Game Palace. Last time we went, Selwyn stood by the Spate table for hours, mesmerized. She can't handle playing—says her heart starts pounding way too fast—but she loves to watch.

Lia pushes her way through and bumps into a burly senior whose name I can't remember. “Look where you're going,” she chides him.

When he recognizes her, he falls into conciliatory mode. “Oops, my fault,” he says, putting his hands up. “I wasn't paying attention.”

“No kidding,” she says, surging past him. I sneak a look back and see that he's still watching her, enthralled. Lia's always been liked, admired—feared, even. But something changed when we were sophomores, after she dated Martin, grew three inches, and got the starring role in last season's play. Even the freckles around her eyes turned sexy.

“A lot of boys will be glad Callen's out of the way,” I offer as she pulls me down a short alley between the Game Palace and Music Maven.

“Maybe,” she mutters, picking up her pace again when we emerge back onto the street. She points up to a set of bay windows with flower boxes above an ice cream shop. “We should live in those apartments after graduation,” she says, arms stretched out, balancing on the curb like it's a tightrope. “It's near the Blisslet Theater and all the most plus-ten restaurants on the island. I'll be able to walk to the theater for rehearsals and performances. You'll be able to walk to work too.” She glances over at me mischievously. “To your work as a math teacher at Bliss High.”

“Don't jinx me.” I give her a gentle push, and she pauses and teeters, but her feet stay planted on the curb, and soon she starts walking it again, even faster. “Living here would be fun,” I say, catching up with her. A lie—downtown is too noisy for me—but I want to keep her mind off Callen.

I'm not really sure where on the island I want to end up after graduation. If I saved enough, I could apply for a beach house, like Lincoln's family has. But my ratings would have to be higher for Media1 to give it to me—as with apprenticeships, housing is a joint decision between Media1 and the Character owners.

“Let's scope out the plaza for the Double A.” Lia hops off the curb in front of the town hall and rounds the corner of the building, me right behind her. We emerge onto the plaza, which is blazing with light from the dozens of lamps Media1 installs on all important sets. Lia sits down on the fountain's ledge and bops a mermaid's hollow bronze tail.

“He won't be sitting with us at lunch anymore,” she announces as I walk over toward her.

“Yeah, that'd be strange,” I say, dipping my fingers into the fountain's cool water. Coins glimmer at the bottom; all those swallowed-up wishes. I want to prove my support. “I don't even want to talk to him after what he did to you.” I cringe. I can hear the lie loud and clear, but Lia seems so caught up in her own thoughts that she doesn't notice.

“Thanks,” she says. “He doesn't deserve me, and he doesn't deserve my friends. Let him have all the tracs he says he doesn't fit in with.”

“Yeah.” I sit on the ledge next to her. “I hate that he hurt you.”

“Me too.” Lia's shoulders droop, her earlier gloom returning. “I always wanted us to be closer. I don't mean like the close-up, I mean, like, with feelings, and I hoped one day we would get there, but . . .” Her voice trails off, and she studies her shoes, subdued.

“It seems like Callen just wasn't right for you,” I say, putting my arm around her. She doesn't respond, so I change the subject. “I went to the aquarium yesterday.”

Lia raises her head, grinning. “You went to see Scoop? Give in already, you two were meant for each other. He's tall, exactly your type.” She claps her hands.

“No, no, that . . .” I suddenly want to be honest with her, like I can cancel out my lie about not wanting to talk to Callen with this unrelated truth. I push my hair forward to block my mouth from the cameras on the mermaids. “Yeah, I went to see him, but there was no love stuff. I told him how the Patriots are doing publicity in Zenta, to cheer him up about Belle.” Lia's jaw drops open, and I rush to reassure her. “But don't worry—I didn't tell him the information came from you or Bek.”

She clamps her hands on her temples, aghast. “Nettie, that was a secret.”

“What's the harm?” I whisper back. “No one can trace it back to you. Besides, you were the one who said I should talk to him.”

“I said
get his mind off it,
not
reveal what I swore you to secrecy about.
We could get in big trouble,” she hisses. She draws back, squinting at the night sky and thinking, before diving forward, pushing her hair in front of her face again to block the cameras. “The real problem is—why do you care so much?” she whispers. “You weren't even friends with her. Let Scoop deal with it and move on, like everyone else on this island whose relatives get cut.”

“I'm not caught up in—”

Before I can finish, Lia grips my arm. “You know what? Never mind. Just don't do it again, okay? And throw out that dirty bottle.” She leaps up and runs down the terrace steps before I can tell her I have no intention of throwing out the bottle.

“There's a lot of work to be done here before the Double A,” she shouts over her shoulder to me, back on-mic. “You don't know how slow the planning committee is. Sometimes I wish I could just run the whole ceremony on my own.” A squirrel pokes its head out of a trash can, then scampers off when it sees us. Lia frowns. “Gross. I wonder if we could get trash cans with lids for the ceremony.”

“I'm sure you can,” I say, descending the terrace steps. “It's going to be great, Lia. We're lucky you're in charge of so much of it.” I pause at the bottom step, imagining what it will feel like to be sitting here, listening to Mayor Cardinal's opening remarks and the traditional poem about our futures, waiting for the apprenticeships to be called out.

When mine is, I'll march up to the podium and shake hands with the mayor as I receive my assignment and smile for the pictures. At last I'll know. My future will be set. But the vision feels hazy and dissipates quickly. What's left is a mostly empty plaza and my present, which is all uncertainty.

• • •

We get back to the Arbor around eight. Lia seems to have regained her confidence. She walks me to my door, rolling her eyes at Callen's house while I scrounge in my pockets for the keys.

“Growing a real jungle over there,” she sneers.

I actually think the Herrons' yard is plus ten—it's cool they're not scared to distinguish themselves from the tame lawns around them. “Yeah,” I say, shrugging. “The mosquitoes go wild in the summer.”

“Ick,” she says and falls silent. I find the key and make a point of taking it out slowly, not wanting her to feel like I'm eager to leave.

She spends a while retying a ribbon at the neckline of her dress, glancing up twice, before saying, “At least my next boyfriend won't be scared of closing up. Or holding me.”

“You're so better off.
Onward through the turmoil,
” I say, quoting a line from a Drama Club play that we always mock, about a girl cheating on a biology test with tragic results. It was that mediocre play that convinced Lia she could write her own.

“
Tomorrow beckons,
” she quotes back. “Speaking of tomorrow, don't change your mind about Mr. Black, okay?” She claps her hand over my shoulder, like we're tracs getting pumped for a game.

I nod. “I won't. Fincher's was awful yesterday. Five hours spent on a defective music box.”

“Black's your ticket out. See you later.” She leaves, and I go inside, hoping to catch the Reals on the radio again. But the idea drops away when I see the green light from the Missivor. I approach my room cautiously, dreading hearing about another Patriot.

Nettie Starling: Please go to the Center at 8 a.m. Saturday for a rescheduled Character Report, during which you will learn about the Initiative.

The Initiative. I press the off button hard, pick up
The Player in the Attic,
and flip pages for the cameras. Not reading. I can't concentrate. Lia had been pretty positive about the Initiative, but I still remember the graffiti scrawled on my math desk.