Set Me Free (6 page)

I shake my head. “I’m willing to bet that under that postal uniform and construction vest, they are heavily armed.”

I’m not used to being the one making decisions. It’s a little bit nerve-racking. It’s also kind of exciting.

We are walking down the sidewalk toward Joey’s building, looking — we hope — like three ordinary boys.

“What floor did you say you live on again?” Jonah asks.

“Ninth,” I say with forced cheerfulness.

“Great.”

The spies may be watching my building, but nobody is watching Joey’s. The construction guy is still pretending to be deeply involved with the hole in the asphalt when Mrs. Lorenzo’s chatty daughter, Jackie, exits her building. She’s probably on her way to pick up more
Butter Brickle non-dairy ice cream product for her mother. Jackie approaches the mail carrier and begins a conversation.

This is a very lucky break. I know from experience that Jackie Lorenzo can talk for hours. She’s pointing to the mailbox and asking questions. It’s just the distraction we need.

Jonah, the lookout, will use his Phoenix School whistle to alert us if there is any change in status. Taking advantage of Jackie’s presence, Louisa and I make our way across the street. It takes every inch of willpower we have not to break into a run, but since that would call attention to us, we force ourselves to walk.

We make it to the entrance of Joey’s apartment building without the postal carrier or the construction worker noticing.

“Does someone have to buzz us in?” Louisa asks under her breath, when we arrive at the glass doors of the main entrance.

“Used to,” I say, pulling open the heavy door. “They
did away with the buzzers years ago to save power.” Another lucky break.

On the other,
unlucky
hand, they also did away with the elevators for the same reason. So we have to walk the nine flights up to Joey’s floor.

I’m hoping we don’t run into any of the apartment building’s inhabitants who might recognize me. Louisa’s original plan had been to avoid the halls, the stairwell, and the lobby by climbing up the fire escape. But unlike Ricky, we aren’t tall enough to jump up and tug the fire escape ladder down. We have every intention of using the fire escape as our way out, though.

Calf muscles throbbing, we push through the stairwell door and into the ninth-floor corridor.

Here’s where it gets dicey: Joey and Ricky are away at military training camp in California. Mr. Dennison is off serving his mandatory military tour overseas, and isn’t due back until early next spring. The only wild card is Mrs. Dennison. She was exempted from military duty because she had lost hearing in one ear as a child, so she
works part-time at the local grocery store, but I don’t remember her schedule. I do remember she was a neat freak: always obsessed with cleaning the apartment, ironing, and keeping their laundry looking sharp even with the city’s strict water-rationing policy and electrical shortages. I figure we’ve got a fifty-fifty shot at her being out at this time of day.

If she’s home, this whole mission will be an epic fail.

“You knock on the door,” I tell Louisa. “Mrs. Dennison’s never met you, so you can just pretend you’re lost or something.”

Louisa makes her way to apartment 9D and knocks gently on the door.

We wait.

“Knock a little louder,” I whisper from where I’m hiding behind a huge potted plastic plant.

Louisa knocks again. After a good two minutes with no response from inside, we feel pretty confident that Mrs. Dennison is not at home. I join Louisa at the door and make quick work of the bolt with Dizzy’s handydandy lock picker.

And then we’re inside.

I pause in the tiny entranceway and breathe in the scent I remember as distinctly as my own name: the lingering aroma of that morning’s tofu bacon mixed with the clean, crisp scent of the rosewater spray starch Mrs. Dennison uses when she irons.

We go directly to Joey’s old room. Louisa flings open the window that leads to the fire escape, while I search for something heavy enough to smash my bedroom window, but not too heavy for me to hurl across the alley.

I look around the room frantically. There’s Joey’s prized possession — his laptop — but I can’t bring myself to fling that out the window. There are a handful of sports trophies, but none big enough to break the glass (Joey never was much of an athlete). There is a small lamp with a plastic base (useless). Then Louisa spots it — wedged in the corner: a bowling ball.

I go out on the fire escape with it. Hoisting the heavy orb up to my shoulder, I send it shot-put style across the alley and through the plate glass of my bedroom window.

I can only hope no one comes running at the sound of the glass shattering. But I guess since we’re nine stories up, no one hears it. And speaking of nine stories up …

I try not to look down as I gauge the distance from Joey’s window to my own. The alley is only about six feet wide, and the fire escape landing closes that gap by about two and a half feet. So according to my calculations, I’ll have to clear only about three and a half feet when I jump from the fire escape landing and through my bedroom window.

That’s right:
jump
.

Louisa sees me eyeing the distance and she begins to get jittery. “Um, Maddie, I think I’m having second thoughts about this part of the plan.”

So am I. It’s not just the height and the distance that scare me; it’s the shards of broken glass still stuck in the window frame that are really giving me pause. Even if I make it across the alley, and through the window, those glass fragments are going to be hard to miss.

And that’s
if
I even make it across.

Again, I look around Joey’s room, this time for something I can use to fashion a makeshift bridge. It has to be at least four feet long and strong enough to hold me and Louisa. Separately, of course. But Joey’s room is turning out to be a major disappointment.

Frustrated, I throw myself onto Joey’s bed, facedown into his pillowcase.

His crisp, rose-scented, meticulously
ironed
pillowcase.

I spring up and tell Louisa to wait here while I dash out of the room.

Minutes later, I’m back, lugging our bridge.

A
re you crazy?” Louisa demands. “You want to walk across the alley on an ironing board?”

“An
industrial-grade
ironing board,” I correct her, struggling to maneuver the giant laundry apparatus out the window and onto the fire escape. “Mrs. Dennison was always very clear about that.”

With great effort, I balance the wide end of the board on the railing of the fire escape and lower the narrow end out across the alley until it lands on my windowsill. I give it a little jiggle to test it.

“Sturdy,” I pronounce.

Louisa does not look convinced.

So I climb up onto the board and carefully take a
step away from the fire escape landing. “See? Perfectly safe.”

I begin making my way across the padded surface of the board, putting one foot painstakingly in front of the other and holding out my arms for balance.
Don’t look down don’t look down don’t look down
, I tell myself, my blood roaring in my ears. I remember at CMS Evelyn told me she was scared of heights. I never have been, but I think that could all change right now.

At last, I reach the windowsill. Taking care to avoid the broken glass pieces, I duck in the window and hop down, landing safely on my bedroom floor.

My bedroom floor
.

I look around the room, tears blurring my vision for a moment. It’s all so painfully familiar, but alien at the same time. The light yellow walls, the scuffed pink dresser, the ancient stuffed animals, my bed …

My bed.

I fight the urge to drop onto my mattress and dive under the fluffy, oversized comforter I’ve always loved. I know if I do that, I will be crushed under
the weight of more emotion than I’m ready to bear. If I do that, I will never be able to make myself leave.

Focus
, I tell myself.
This is a mission. See it through
.

“That was amazing,” cries Louisa, gawking at me across the alleyway. “You’re so brave. You weren’t scared at all.”

“Louisa, I was terrified.” I yank open a dresser drawer, feeling a sting of memory at the sight of a few old T-shirts in there — the ones I didn’t like enough to bring with me to Louisa’s. I grab a ratty one, wrap it around my hand, and carefully punch the pointy glass shards out of the window frame, sweeping away the tiny broken pieces from the sill. “Brave doesn’t mean not being scared,” I tell Louisa, who’s about to step out onto the ironing board. “Bravery is just, I don’t know, doing what you have to do, even when you’re scared to death.” As the words come out of my mouth, I realize they almost sound like something … my mother would say.

Louisa takes a deep breath. “Okay,” she says. “Then here’s me, doing what I have to do.”

I clamp my hands around the edges of the ironing
board and hold tight, giving the bridge some extra support. Louisa, the athlete, is graceful and coordinated and she makes it across without incident.

“Now what?” she says, letting out a breath as she joins me inside. She looks around my room and her blue eyes fill with the same kind of nostalgia that’s making my heart ache.

“We search,” I say, bottling back the tears building in me. “Evelyn seemed to think the legend would be on a flash drive, so we can start by looking for one of those.”

We exit my room and head to the living room. Everything looks the same. On the row of hooks by the front door hang my father’s favorite sweatshirt and our three mandatory gas masks. Posted on the back of the door is the building’s emergency escape route, and below that an evacuation map of Chicago, to be used during citywide invasion drills. There’s a pair of old sneakers in the middle of the floor, right where I’d left them the day I moved in with the Ballingers. Above the mantel is the stark, black-on-white abstract painting that’s hung there for as long as I can remember.

Both my parents like modern art, but since we could never afford the genuine article, we made do with inexpensive prints and reproductions. Before the Art Institute was burned, Mom and Dad would take me there on day trips, eager for me to learn about all kinds of art. We even saw a concert once, in the Institute’s Rubloff Auditorium. My mother liked to say that the Institute was just “buzzing” with artistic energy, like a hive of creative geniuses.

“I always loved coming to your house,” Louisa suddenly says, her voice wistful.

“Really?” This comes as a shock to me. Louisa’s house is big and beautiful, with decorator furniture and a sprawling yard out back.

“Don’t get me wrong,” says Louisa, following me to the kitchen. “I mean, I love my family and my home, but your apartment was always so cozy. I loved that when we were falling asleep in your room, we could hear your parents laughing together in the living room. And there were always kids playing out in the street. You could never be lonely here.”

For the first time it occurs to me that maybe Louisa didn’t have everything in the world, like I’d always thought.

“We should get started,” Louisa says, snapping out of her thoughts.

I nod. “Try my mom’s desk.”

Louisa goes to the corner of the living room that my parents use as a home office area. She sets about searching through the desk drawers while I head for my parents’ bedroom.

It’s pretty bare — they took most of their belongings. I check my mother’s jewelry box. She’s never had any really fancy or expensive jewelry like Dr. Ballinger, who has an antique strand of pearls and lots of gold rings and bracelets. I search all the felt-lined compartments — no flash drive.

I fling open the closet doors and riffle through her pants pockets, jacket linings, and purses; I shake all of her shoes hoping a flash drive will fall out of one of them. No such luck.

I go back into the living room. Louisa is looking
under the sofa cushions. She turns to me and says, “Nothing.” I can see she’s starting to panic. So am I.

“Maybe it’s not a flash drive,” I say, grasping at straws.

“Well, what else could it be?”

Good question. I let my eyes scan the living room, wondering if there might be anything in here that could provide a means of decoding the document. My eyes are drawn to the huge abstract painting above the mantel.

And I have to catch my breath.

Because only now do I realize what that painting really is:
lines!
Bold black stripes arranged in groups of three, parallel and equidistant, a repeating pattern.

They are the symbol of the Hornet!

So it was always there, always in my life. This legacy, this promise. My mother’s courage and dedication represented in three black lines, like a secret family crest.

A crazy notion drives me to climb up on the mantel and reach for the painting. Maybe there’s some numeric clue in the pattern of the lines, or perhaps it’s as simple as
the legend being printed on the back of the canvas. Or maybe there’s a safe hidden behind the artwork and there’s a flash drive inside it.

“Louisa!” I cry. “Give me a hand with this!”

It takes me a moment of struggling with the heavy canvas to realize that Louisa isn’t helping me. I turn to look over my shoulder, ready to ask her why, and that’s when I see that she’s frozen in place, staring at the front door to the apartment.

Someone on the other side of it is turning the knob.

A tsunami of terror crashes over me. I hop down from the mantel and grab Louisa’s arm, tugging her through the living room and back into my bedroom. I peek around the doorframe just as the front door opens.

I am expecting to see an Alliance scout or an armed police officer entering my apartment. So when I realize who it is, I nearly collapse with relief.

“Who’s there?” Louisa whispers from where she’s crouching behind my dresser.

My mouth and throat have suddenly gone dry, and I have to swallow before I answer. “It’s your mother.”

There in my living room stands Dr. Ballinger, the woman who’s been like a second mom to me since kindergarten. She is an older version of Louisa, just as pretty, just as graceful. At first I can’t imagine why on earth she would be in my apartment when both my parents are away and I, her phony daughter, am (as far as she knows) off at boarding school with her real one.

“What is she doing here?” I whisper to Louisa.

“Who cares?” Louisa’s eyes are already shining with tears of happiness and relief. “All that matters is she’s here. We don’t have to run anymore!”

I wonder why this announcement doesn’t have me jumping for joy.

Louisa reaches for the doorknob; instinctively I pull her back.

“What’s
wrong
with you?” she hisses, scowling. “I want to see my mom!”

“So do I!” I whisper hurriedly. “But, I don’t know…. Something is just telling me we shouldn’t go out.”

I don’t know why but there’s this powerful feeling of apprehension, like a silent alarm in my head telling me to remain hidden.

Louisa looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Maddie, all we’ve wanted all this time was to go home to our parents. And the only reason we couldn’t do that was because we knew the Alliance would be watching and waiting to ambush us before we even made it in the door.”

I nod. She’s right, of course, but the warning lights are still flashing in my brain. “I just think we shouldn’t,” I whisper feebly. I couldn’t explain why even if I tried. It’s just a feeling, a hunch.

Louisa’s whisper takes on an angry edge. “My mother will take care of us! She can call the authorities and explain about CMS; the military will search out the Alliance cells in the city and vaporize them!” She frowns. “We’re saved, Maddie! I don’t understand what you’re waiting for!”

My lip trembles. “Don’t you think I’d love to run out there now and throw myself into her arms, just as much as you would?”

Louisa’s frown deepens and her voice is choked with tears. “So why don’t we? And why are you being so bossy all of a sudden? Do you think just because your mom’s a leader it gives you the right to be one, too?” she snaps. Suddenly her face changes. “That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t want to go out there because it’s
my
mother. You’re
jealous
because my mother is
here
, while your mom is off being the Hornet. You can’t see your mother so you don’t want me to see mine!”

Her words are like a slap in the face. I feel the sting all the way to my heart. I try to speak but I can’t. All I can do is shake my head.

Louisa turns away from me and is about to stomp out of the bedroom.

And that’s when we hear the knock.