Unwind (33 page)

“Then, aren't you breaking the law? Doesn't the law specify that you have to keep 100 percent of an Unwind alive?”

The smile has begun to fade from the counselor's face. “Well, actually it's 99.44 percent, which takes into account things like the appendix.”

“I see.”

“Our next bit of business is your preadmission questionnaire. Due to your unorthodox arrival, you never had the opportunity to fill one out.” She flips through the pages of the questionnaire. “Most of the questions don't matter at this point . . . but if you have any special skills you'd like to let us know about—you know, things that could be of use to the community during your stay here . . .”

Risa wishes she could just get up and leave. Even now, at the end of her life, she still has to face that inevitable question,
What good are you?

“I have some medical experience,” Risa tells her flatly. “First aid, CPR.”

The woman smiles apologetically. “Well, if there's one thing we have too many of here, it's medical staff.” If the woman says “well” one more time, Risa may just drop her down a nice deep one. “Anything else?”

“I helped in the infant nursery back at StaHo.”

Again that slim smile. “Sorry. No babies here. Is that all?”

Risa sighs. “I also studied classical piano.”

The woman's eyebrows raise about an inch. “Really? You play piano? Well, well, well!”

Connor wants to fight. He wants to mistreat the staff and disobey every rule, because he knows if he does, it will get this over with faster. But he won't give in to the urge for two reasons. One: It's exactly what they want him to do. And two: Risa. He knows how it will devastate her to see him led to the Chop Shop. That's what the kids call it, “the Chop Shop”—although they never say it in front of the staff.

Connor is a celebrity in his dormitory. He finds it absurd and surreal that the kids here see him as some sort of symbol, when all he did was survive.

“It can't be all true, right?” the kid who sleeps in the bed next to his asks the first night. “I mean, you didn't
really
take on an entire squad of Juvey-cops with their own tranq guns.”

“No! It's not true,” Connor tells him, but denying it just makes the kid believe it even more.

“They didn't
really
shut down entire freeways looking for you,” another kid says.

“It was just one freeway—and they didn't shut it down. I did. Sort of.”

“So, then it is true!”

It's no use—no amount of downplaying the story can convince the others that the Akron AWOL is not some larger-than-life action figure.

And then there's Roland, who as much as he despises Connor, is now riding Connor's fame wave for all it's worth. Although Roland's in another unit, wild stories are already getting back to Connor about how he and Roland stole a
helicopter and liberated a hundred Unwinds being held in a Tucson hospital. Connor considers telling them that all Roland did was turn them in, but decides life is literally too short to start things up with Roland again.

There's one kid Connor speaks to who actually listens and can tell the truth from the fabrications. His name is Dalton. He's seventeen but short and stocky, with hair that has a mind of its own. Connor tells him exactly what happened on that day he went AWOL. It's a relief to have someone believe the truth. Dalton, however, has his own perspective on it.

“Even if that's all that happened,” Dalton says, “it's still pretty impressive. It's what the rest of us
wish
we could have done.”

Connor has to admit that he's right.

“You're, like, king of the Unwinds here,” Dalton tells him, “but guys like you get unwound real quick—so watch yourself.” Then Dalton takes a long look at him. “You scared?” he asks.

Connor wishes he could tell him different, but he won't lie. “Yeah.”

He seems almost relieved that Connor's scared too. “In group they tell us that the fear will pass and we'll get to a place of acceptance. I've been here almost six months, and I'm just as scared as the day I got here.”

“Six months? I thought everyone goes down in just a few weeks.”

Dalton leans in close and whispers, as if it's dangerous information. “Not if you're in the band.”

A band? The thought of there being music at a place where lives are silenced doesn't sit well with Connor.

“They set us up on the roof of the Chop Shop and have us play while they're bringing kids in,” Dalton says. “We play everything—classics, pop, Old World rock. I'm the best bass
player this place has ever seen.” And then he grins. “You should come listen to us tomorrow. We just got a new keyboard player. She's hot.”

*   *   *

Volleyball in the morning. Connor's first official activity. Several staffers in their rainbow of flowered shirts stand on the sidelines with clipboards, because apparently the volleyball court isn't equipped with twelve individual cameras. From behind them, on the roof of the chop shop, music plays. Dalton's band. It's their sound track for the morning.

The opposing team completely deflates when they see Connor, as if his mere presence will ensure their loss. Never mind that Connor stinks at volleyball; to them the Akron AWOL is a star in every sport. Roland's on the opposing team as well. He doesn't wilt like the others—he just glares, holding the volleyball, ready to serve it down Connor's throat.

The game begins. The intensity of play can only be matched by an undercurrent of fear that runs beneath every tap of the ball. Both teams play as if the losers will be immediately unwound. Dalton had told Connor that it doesn't work that way, but losing can't help, either. It reminds Connor of the Mayan game of pokatok—something he learned about in history class. The game was a lot like basketball, except that the losers were sacrificed to the Mayan gods. At the time Connor thought it was cool.

Roland spikes the ball, and it hits one of the staffers in the face. Roland grins before he apologizes and the man glares at him, making a note on his clipboard. Connor wonders if it will cost Roland a few days.

Then suddenly, the game pauses, because everyone's attention begins to shift to a group of kids in white, passing the far side of the court.

“Those are tithes,” a kid tells Connor. “You know what those are, right?”

Connor nods. “I know.”

“Look at them. They think they're so much better than everyone else.”

Connor has already heard how tithes are treated differently than the regular population. “Tithes” and “Terribles,” that's how the staff refers to the two kinds of Unwinds. Tithes don't participate in the same activities as the terribles. They don't wear the same blue and pink uniforms the terribles wear. Their white silk outfits are so bright in the Arizona sun, you have to squint your eyes when you look at them, like they were adolescent versions of God himself—although to Connor they look more like a little squad of aliens. The terribles hate the tithes the way peasants despise royalty. Connor might have once felt the same way, but having known one, he feels more sorry for them than anything else.

“I hear they know the exact date and time of their unwinding,” one kid says.

“I hear they actually make their own
appointment
!” says another.

The ref blows his whistle, “All right, back to the game.”

They turn away from the bright white uniforms of the chosen few, and add one more layer of frustration to the match.

For a moment, as the tithes disappear over a hillside, Connor thinks that he recognizes a face among them, but he knows it's just his imagination.

It's not Connor's imagination.

Levi Jedediah Calder is one of the very special guests of
Happy Jack Harvest Camp, and he is wearing his tithing whites once more. He does not see Connor on the volleyball court because the tithes are strictly instructed not to look at the terribles. Why should they? They have been told from birth they are of a different caste and have a higher calling.

Lev may still have the remnants of a sunburn, but his hair is cut short and neat, just as it used to be, and his manner is sensitive and mild. At least on the outside.

He has an appointment for unwinding in thirteen days.

She plays on the roof of the Chop Shop, and her music carries across the fields to the ears of more than a thousand souls waiting to go under the knife. The joy of having her fingers on the keys again can only be matched by the horror of knowing what's going on beneath her feet.

From her vantage point on the roof she sees them brought down the maroon flagstone path that all the kids call “the red carpet.” Kids who walk the red carpet have guards flanking them on either side, with firm grips on their upper arms—firm enough to restrain them, but not enough to bruise them.

Yet in spite of this, Dalton and the rest of his band play like it doesn't matter at all.

“How can you do this?” she asks during one of their breaks. “How can you watch them day after day, going in and never coming out?”

“You get used to it,” the drummer tells her, taking a swig of water. “You'll see.”

“I won't! I can't!” She thinks about Connor. He doesn't have this same reprieve from unwinding. He doesn't stand a chance. “I can't be an accomplice to what they're doing!”

“Hey,” says Dalton, getting annoyed. “This is survival here, and we do what we have to do to survive! You got chosen because you can play, and you're good. Don't throw it away. Either you get used to kids walking down the red carpet or you'll be on it yourself, and we'll have to play for
you
.”

Risa gets the message, but it doesn't mean she has to like it. “Is that what happened to your last keyboard player?” Risa asks. She can tell it's a subject they'd rather not think about. They look at one another. No one wants to take on the question. Then the lead singer answers with a nonchalant toss of her hair, like it doesn't matter. “Jack was about to turn eighteen, so they took him a week before his birthday.”

“He was not a very happy Jack,” says the drummer, and hits a rim shot.

“That's it?” says Risa. “They just took him?”

“Business is business,” says the lead singer. “They lose a ton of money if one of us turns eighteen, because then they've got to let us go.”

“I've got a plan, though,” says Dalton, winking at the others, who have obviously heard this before. “When I'm getting close to eighteen, and they're ready to come for me, I'm jumping right off this roof.”

“You're going to kill yourself?”

“I hope not—it's only two stories, but I'll sure get busted up real bad. See, they can't unwind you like that; they have to wait until you heal. By then I'll be eighteen and they will be
screwed
!” He high-fives the drummer, and they laugh. Risa can only stare in disbelief.

“Personally,” says the lead singer, “I'm counting on them lowering the legal age of adulthood to seventeen. If they do, I'll go to the staffers and counselors, and the friggin' doctors. I'll spit right in their faces—and they won't be able to do anything but let me walk right out that gate on my own two legs.”

Then the guitar player, who hasn't said a word all morning, picks up his instrument.

“This one's for Jack,” he says, and begins playing the opening chords to the prewar classic “Don't Fear the Reaper.”

The rest of them join in, playing from the heart, and Risa does her best to keep her eyes away from the red carpet.

The dormitories are divided into units. There are thirty kids per unit—thirty beds in a long, thin room with large shatterproof windows to bring in the cheerful light of day. As Connor prepares for dinner he notices that two beds in his unit have been stripped, and the kids who slept in them are nowhere to be seen. Everyone notices but no one talks about it, except one kid who takes one of the bunks because his mattress has broken springs.

“Let a newbie have the broken one,” he says. “I'm gonna be comfortable my last week.”

Connor can't remember either the names or the faces of the missing kids, and that haunts him. The whole day weighs heavily on him—the way the kids think he can somehow save them, when he knows he can't even save himself. The way the staff keeps waiting for him to make a mistake. His one joy is knowing that Risa is safe, at least for now.

He had seen her after lunch when he stopped to watch the band. He had been searching for her everywhere, and all that time she was right there in plain view, playing her heart out. She had told him she played piano, but he never gave it much thought. She's amazing, and now he wishes he had taken more time to get to know who she was before she escaped from that bus. When she saw him watching that afternoon, she smiled—something
she rarely did. But the smile was quickly replaced by a look that registered the reality. She was up there, and he was down here.

Connor spends so much time with his thoughts in the dormitory that, when he looks up, he realizes that everyone in the unit has already left for dinner. As he gets up to leave, he sees someone lurking at the door and stops short. It's Roland.

“You're not supposed to be here,” Connor says.

“No, I'm not,” says Roland, “but thanks to you, I am.”

“That's not what I mean. If you get caught out of your unit, it's a mark against you. They'll unwind you sooner.”

“Nice of you to care.”

Connor heads for the doorway, but Roland blocks his path. For the first time Connor notices that in spite of Roland's muscular build, they're not all that different in height. Connor always thought Roland towered over him. He doesn't. Connor prepares himself for whatever Roland might have up his sleeve and says, “If you're here for a reason, get on with it. Otherwise, step aside so I can get to dinner.”