Unwind (12 page)

“Don't just stand there,” says a kid hurrying past. “There are clappers on the roof!”

“No,” says another kid, “I heard they're in the cafeteria.”

All around Lev, the bewildered cops pace with a false determination in their stride, as if they know exactly where to go, only to turn around and pace with the same determination in another direction.

Connor and Risa have left him.

He realizes that if he doesn't leave now with the last of the stragglers, he'll draw the attention of the police.

He runs away, feeling more helpless than a storked baby. He doesn't know who to blame for this: Pastor Dan for cutting him loose? Himself for betraying the only two kids willing to help him? Or should he blame God for allowing his life to reach this bitter moment?
You can be anyone you want to be now,
Pastor Dan had said. But right now, Lev feels like no one.

This is the true meaning of alone: Levi Jedediah Calder suddenly realizing he no longer exists.

The antique shop is in an older part of town. Trees arch over the street, their branches cut into unnatural angular patterns by the profiles of passing trucks. The street is full of yellow and brown leaves, but enough diehards still cling to the branches to make a shady canopy.

The baby is inconsolable, and Connor wants to complain to Risa about it, but knows that he can't. If it hadn't been for him, the baby wouldn't even be part of the equation.

There aren't all that many people on the street, but there are enough. Mostly it's kids from the high school just knocking around, probably spreading more rumors about clappers trying to detonate themselves.

“I hear they're anarchists.”

“I hear it's some weird religion.”

“I hear they just do it to do it.”

The threat of clappers is so effective because no one knows what they really stand for.

“That was smart back there,” Connor tells Risa, as they
approach the antique shop. “Pretending to be clappers, I mean. I would never have thought of that.”

“You thought quickly enough to take out that Juvey-cop the other day with his own tranq gun.”

Connor grins. “I go by instinct, you go by brains. I guess we make a pretty decent team.”

“Yeah. And we're a bit less dysfunctional without Lev.”

At the mention of Lev, Connor feels a spike of anger. He rubs his sore arm where Lev bit him—but what Lev did today was much more painful than that. “Forget about him. He's history. We got away, so his squealing on us doesn't matter. Now he'll get unwound, just like he wants, and we won't have to deal with him again.” And yet the thought of it brings Connor a pang of regret. He had risked his life for Lev. He had tried to save him, but had failed. Maybe if Connor were better with words, he could have said something that would have truly won him over. But who is he kidding? Lev was a tithe from the moment he was born. You don't undo thirteen years of brainwashing in two days.

The antique shop is old. White paint peels from the front door. Connor pushes open the door, and bells hanging high on the door jingle. Low-tech intruder alert. There's one customer: a sour-faced man in a tweed coat. He looks up at them, disinterested and maybe disgusted by the baby, because he wanders deeper into the recesses of the cluttered store to get away.

The shop has things from perhaps every point in American history. A display of iPods and other little gadgets from his grandfather's time cover an old chrome-rimmed dinner table. An old movie plays on an antique plasma-screen TV. The movie shows a crazy vision of a future that never came, with flying cars and a white-haired scientist.

“Can I help you?”

An old woman as hunched as a question mark comes out
from behind the cash register. She walks with a cane, but she seems pretty surefooted in spite of it.

Risa bounces the baby to get its volume down. “We're looking for Sonia.”

“You found her. What do you want?”

“We . . . uh . . . we need some help,” Risa says.

“Yeah,” Connor chimes in, “Someone told us to come here.”

The old woman looks at them suspiciously. “Does this have something to do with that fiasco over at the high school? Are you clappers?”

“Do we look like clappers to you?” says Connor.

The woman narrows her eyes at him. “Nobody
looks
like a clapper.”

Connor narrows his gaze to match hers, then goes over to the wall. He holds up his hand and jabs it forward with all his might, punching the wall hard enough to bruise his knuckles. A little painting of a fruit bowl falls off the wall. Connor catches it before it hits the ground and sets it on the counter.

“See?” he says. “My blood isn't explosive. If I were a clapper, this whole shop would be gone.”

The old woman stares at him, and it's a hard gaze for Connor to hold—there's some sort of fire in those weary eyes. But Connor doesn't look away. “See this hunch?” she asks them. “I got it from sticking my neck out for people like you.”

Connor still won't break his gaze. “Guess we came to the wrong place, then.” Glancing at Risa, he says, “Let's get out of here.”

He turns to leave, and the old woman swings her cane sharply and painfully across his shins. “Not so fast. It just so happens that Hannah called me, so I knew you were coming.”

Risa, still bouncing the baby, lets out a frustrated breath.
“You could have told us when we came in.”

“What fun would that be?”

By now the sour-faced customer has made his way closer again, picking up item after item, his expression showing instant disapproval of everything in the shop.

“I have some lovely infant items in the back room,” she tells them loud enough for the customer to hear. “Why don't you go back there, and wait for me?” Then she whispers, “And for God's sake, feed that baby!”

The back room is through a doorway covered by what looks like an old shower curtain. If the front room was cluttered, this place is a disaster area. Things like broken picture frames and rusty birdcages are piled all around—all the items that weren't good enough to be displayed out front. The junk of the junk.

“And you're telling me this old woman is going to help us?” says Connor. “It looks like she can't even help herself!”

“Hannah said she would. I believe her.”

“How could you be raised in a state home and still trust people?”

Risa gives him a dirty look and says, “Hold this.” She puts the baby in Connor's arms. It's the first time she's given it to him. It feels much lighter than he expected. Something so loud and demanding ought to be heavier. The baby's cries have weakened now—it's just about exhausted itself.

There's nothing keeping them tied to this baby anymore. They could stork it again first thing in the morning. . . . And yet the thought makes Connor uncomfortable. They don't owe this baby anything. It's theirs by stupidity, not biology. He doesn't want it, but he can't stand the thought of someone getting the baby who wants it even less than he does. His frustration begins to ferment into anger. It's the same kind of anger that always got him into trouble back home. It would
cloud his judgment, making him lash out, getting into fights, cursing out teachers, or riding his skateboard wildly through busy intersections. “Why do you have to get wound so tight?” his father once asked, exasperated, and Connor had snapped back, “Maybe someone oughta unwind me.” At the time, he thought he was just being funny.

Risa opens a refrigerator, which is as cluttered as the rest of the back room. She pulls out a container of milk, then finds a bowl, into which she pours the milk.

“It's not a cat,” Connor says. “It won't lick milk out of a bowl.”

“I know what I'm doing.”

Connor watches as she rummages around in drawers until finding a clean spoon. Then she takes the baby from him. Sitting down, she cradles the baby a bit more skillfully than Connor, then she dips the spoon into the milk and spills the spoonful into the baby's mouth. The baby begins to gag on the milk, coughing and sputtering, but then Risa puts her index finger into its mouth. It sucks on her finger and closes its eyes, satisfied. In a few moments, she crooks her finger enough to leave a little space for her to spill in another spoonful of milk, then lets the baby suck on her finger again.

“Wow, that's impressive,” says Connor.

“Sometimes I got to take care of babies at StaHo. You learn a few tricks. Let's just hope it's not lactose intolerant.”

With the baby quieted, it's as if all the day's tension has been suddenly released. Connor's eyelids grow heavy, but he won't allow himself to fall asleep. They're not safe yet. They may never be, and he can't let his guard down now. Still, his mind begins to drift off. He wonders if his parents are still looking for him, or if it's just the police now. He thinks about Ariana. What would have happened to them if she had come along with him, as she had promised? They would have been
caught on that first night—that's what would have happened. Ariana wasn't street-smart like Risa. She wasn't resourceful. Thoughts of Ariana bring a wave of sadness and longing, but it's not as powerful a feeling as Connor thought it would be. How soon until she forgets him? How soon until everyone forgets him? Not long. That's what happens with Unwinds. Connor had known other kids at school who disappeared over the past couple of years. One day they just didn't turn up. Teachers would say that they were “gone” or “no longer enrolled.” Those were just code words, though. Everyone knew what they meant. The kids who knew them would talk about how terrible it was, and gripe about it for a day or two, and then it became old news. Unwinds didn't go out with a bang—they didn't even go out with a whimper. They went out with the silence of a candle flame pinched between two fingers.

The customer finally leaves, and Sonia joins them in the back room. “So, you're Unwinds and you want my help, is that it?”

“Maybe just some food,” says Connor, “a place to rest for a few hours. Then we'll be on our way.”

“We don't want to be any trouble,” says Risa.

The old woman laughs at that. “Yes, you do! You want to be trouble to everyone you meet.” She points her cane at Risa. “That's what you are now. TROUBLE in caps-lock.” Then she puts her cane down, and softens a bit. “That's not your fault, though. You didn't ask to be born, and you didn't ask to be unwound, either.” She looks back and forth between the two of them, then says to Risa just as bald-faced as can be: “If you really want to stay alive, honey, have him get you pregnant again. They won't unwind an expectant mother, so that will buy you nine whole months.”

Risa drops her jaw, speechless, and Connor feels a flush
come to his face. “She . . . she wasn't pregnant the first time. It's not her baby. Or mine.”

Sonia considers this and takes a closer look at the baby. “Not yours, hmm? Well, that explains why you're not breast-feeding.” She laughs suddenly and sharply. It makes Connor and the baby jump.

Risa isn't startled, just annoyed. She gets the baby's attention again with another spoonful of milk and her index finger. “Are you going to help us or not?”

Sonia lifts her cane and raps it against Connor's arm, then points to a huge trunk covered with travel stickers. “Think you're boeuf enough to bring that over here?”

Connor gets up, wondering what could possibly be of use to them in the trunk. He grabs on to it and struggles to push it across the faded Persian rug.

“Not much of a boeuf, are ya?”

“I never said I was.”

He inches the trunk across the floor until it's right in front of her. Instead of opening it, she sits on top of it and begins to massage her ankles.

“So what's in it?” Connor asks.

“Correspondence,” she says. “But it's not what's in it that matters. It's what's underneath.” Then with her cane she pushes away the rug where the trunk had been to reveal a trapdoor with a brass pull-ring.

“Go on,” says Sonia, pointing again with her cane. Connor sighs and grabs the ring, pulling open the trapdoor to reveal steep stone steps leading down into darkness. Risa puts down her bowl and, holding the baby over her shoulder in burping position, approaches the trapdoor, kneeling beside Connor.

“This is an old building,” Sonia tells them. “Way back in the early twentieth century, during the first Prohibition, they hid hooch down there.”

“Hooch?” asks Connor.

“Alcohol! I swear, this whole generation's the same. Caps-lock IGNORANT!”

The steps down are steep and uneven. At first Connor thinks Sonia will send them down alone, but she insists on leading the way. She takes her time, and seems more surefooted on the steps than she does on level ground. Connor tries to hold her arm to give her support, but she shakes him off, and throws him a nasty gaze. “If I want your help, I'll ask. Do I look feeble to you?”

“Actually, yes.”

“Looks are deceiving,” she says. “After all, when I saw you, I thought you looked reasonably intelligent.”

“Very funny.”

At the bottom, Sonia reaches toward the wall and throws a light switch.

Risa gasps, and Connor follows her gaze until he sees them. Three figures. A girl and two boys.

“Your little family has just grown,” Sonia tells them.

The kids don't move. They appear to be close to Connor's and Risa's age. Fellow Unwinds, for sure. They look wary and exhausted. Connor wonders if he looks as bad.

“For God's sake, stop staring,” she says to them. “You look like a pack of rats.”

Sonia shuffles around the dusty cellar, pointing things out to Risa and Connor. “There are canned goods on these shelves, and a can opener around somewhere. Eat whatever you want, but don't leave anything over or you really will see rats. Bathroom's back there. Keep it clean. I'll go out in a bit and get some formula and a baby bottle.” She glances at Connor. “Oh, and there's a first-aid kit around here somewhere for the bite on your arm, whatever
that's
all about.”