Unwind

21. Lev

“Ain’t no one gonna tell you what’s in your heart,” he tells Lev. “You gotta find that out for yourself.”

Lev and his new travel companion walk along train tracks, surrounded by thick, brushy terrain.

“You got it in your heart to run from unwinding, ain’t no one can tell you it’s the wrong thing to do, even if it is against the law. The good Lord wouldn’t have put it in your heart if it wasn’t right. You listenin’, Fry? ’Cause this here is wisdom. Wisdom you can take to the grave, then dig it up again when you need some solace. Solace—that means ‘comfort.’ ”

“I know what solace means,” says Lev, peeved by the mention of “the good Lord,” who hasn’t done much for Lev lately, except confuse things.

The kid is fifteen, and his name is Cyrus Finch—although he doesn’t go by that name. “No one calls me Cyrus,” he had told Lev shortly after they met. “I go by CyFi.”

And, since CyFi is partial to nicknames, he calls Lev “Fry”—short for smallfry.

Since it has the same number of letters as “Lev,” he says it’s appropriate. Lev doesn’t want to burst his bubble by pointing out that his full name is Levi.

CyFi enjoys hearing himself talk.

“I make my own roads in life,” he tells Lev. “That’s how come we’re traveling the rails instead of some dumb old country road.”

CyFi is umber. “They used to call us black—can you imagine? Then there was this artist dude—mixed-race himself, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. He got famous, though, for painting people of African ancestry in the Deep South. The color he used most was umber. People liked that a whole lot better, so it stuck. Bet you didn’t know where the word came from, did you, Fry? Following right along, they started calling so-called white people “sienna,” after another paint color. Better words. Didn’t have no value judgment to them. Of course, it’s not like racism is gone completely, but as my dads like to say, the veneer of civilization got itself a second coat. You like that, Fry? “The veneer of civilization?” He slowly sweeps his hand in the air as he says it, like he’s feeling the fine finish of a table. “My dads are always saying stuff like that.”

CyFi’s a runaway, although he claims not to be. “I ain’t no runaway—I’m a run-to,” he had told Lev when they first met, although he won’t tell Lev where he’s running to. When Lev asked, CyFi shook his head and said, “Information shall be given on a need-to-know basis.”

Well, he can keep his secret, because Lev doesn’t care where he’s going. The simple fact that he has a destination is enough for Lev. It’s more than Lev has.

Destination implies a future. If this umber-skinned boy can lend Lev that much, it’s worth it to travel with him.

They had met at a mall. Hunger had driven Lev there. He had hidden in dark lonely places for almost two days after he lost Connor and Risa. With no experience being a street rat, he went hungry—but eventually, hunger turns anyone into a master of survival.

The mall was a mecca for a newborn street rat. The food court was full of amazingly wasteful people. The trick, Lev discovered, was to find people who bought more food than they could possibly cat, and then wait until they were done. About half the time, they just left it on the table. Those were the ones Lev went after—because he might have been hungry enough to eat table scraps, but he was still too proud to rifle through the trash. While Lev was finishing off some cheerleader’s pizza, he heard a voice in his ear.

“You ain’t gotta be eatin’ other folks’ garbage, foo’!”

Lev froze, certain it was a security guard ready to haul him away, but it was only this tall umber kid with a funny grin, wearing attitude like it was a cologne.

“Let me show you how it’s done.” Then he went to a pretty girl who was working at the Wicked Wok Chinese food concession, flirted with her for a few-minutes, then left with nothing. No food, no drink, nothing.

“I think I’ll stick to leftovers,” Lev had told him.

“Patience, my man. See, it’s gettin’ on toward closing time. All these places, by law gotta get rid of all the food they made today. They can’t keep it and reuse it tomorrow. So where do you think that food goes? I’ll tell you where it goes. It goes home with the last shift. But the people who work these places ain’t gonna eat that stuff on accounta they are sick to death of it. See that girl I was talkin’ to? She likes me. I told her I worked at Shirt Bonanza, downstairs, and could get her some overstock maybe.”

“Do you work there?”

“No! Are you even listenin’ to me? So any-who, right before closing I’m gonna get myself over to the Wicked Wok again. I’ll give her a smile, and I’ll be all, like, ‘Hey, whatcha gonna do with all that leftover food?’ And she’ll be all, like, ‘Whatcha got in mind?’ And five minutes later I’m walking away in orange chicken heaven, with enough to feed an army.”

And sure enough, it happened exactly like he said it would. Lev was amazed.

“Stick with me,” CyFi had said, putting his fist in the air, “and as God is my witness, you will never go hungry again.” Then he added, “That’s from Gone with the Wind.”

“I know,” said Lev. Which, in fact, he didn’t.

Lev had agreed to go with him because he knew the two tilled a need in each other. CyFi was like a preacher with no flock. He couldn’t exist without an audience, and Lev needed someone who could fill his head with ideas, to replace the lifetime of ideas that had been taken from him.

A day later, Lev’s shoes are worn and his muscles are sore. The memory of Risa and Connor is still a fresh wound, and it doesn’t want to heal. Chances are, they were caught. Chances are, they’ve been unwound. All because of him. Does that make him an accomplice to murder?

How could it, when Unwinds aren’t really dead?

He doesn’t know whose voice is in his head anymore. His father’s? Pastor Dan’s? It just makes him angry. He’d rather hear CyFi’s voice outside of his head than whatever voices were inside.

The terrain around them hasn’t changed much since they left town. Eyehigh shrubs and a smattering of trees. Some of the growth is evergreen, some of it yellow, turning brown. Weeds grow up between the train tracks, but not too tall.

“Any weed dumb enough to grow tall ain’t got no chance. It gets decapitated by the next train that comes through. Decapitated—that means ‘head cut off.’ ”

“I know what ‘decapitated’ means—and you can stop talking that way; all double negatives and stuff.”

CyFi stops right there in the middle of the railroad tracks and stares at Lev like he’s trying to melt him with his eyes.

“You got a problem with the way I talk? You got a problem with an Old World Umber patois?”

“I do when it’s fake.”

“Whachoo talkin’ about, foo’!”

“It’s obvious. I’ll bet people never even said things like ‘foo,’ except on dumb prewar TV shows and stuff. You’re speaking wrong on purpose.”

“Wrong? What makes it wrong? It’s classic, just like those TV shows—and I ain’t appreciating you disrespecting my patois. Patois means—”

“I know what it means,” Lev says even though he isn’t entirely sure. “I ain’t stupid!”

CyFi puts up an accusing finger like a lawyer. “A-HA! You said ‘ain’t.’ Now who’s talking wrong?”

“That doesn’t count! I said it because it’s all I hear from you! After a while I can’t help but sound like you!”

At that, CyFi grins. “Yeah,” he says. “Ain’t that the truth. Old World Umber is contagious. It’s dominant. And talkin’ the talk don’t make a person dumb. I’ll have you know, I got the highest readin’ and writin’ score in my school, Fry. But I gotta respect my ancestors an’ all they went through so I could be here. Sure, I can talk like you, but I choose not to. It’s like art, you know? Picasso had to prove to the world he can paint the right way, before he goes putting both eyes on one side of a face, and noses stickin’ outta kneecaps and stuff. See, if you paint wrong because that’s the best you can do, you just a chump. But you do it because you want to? Then you’re an artist.” He smiles at Lev. “That’s a bit of CyFi wisdom right there, Fry. You can take that to the grave, and dig it up when you need it!”

CyFi turns and spits out a piece of gum that hits a train rail and sticks there, then he shoves another piece in his mouth. “Anyway, my dads got no problem with it—and they’re lily-sienna like you.”

“They?” Cy had said “dads” before, but Lev had figured it was just some more Old Umber slang.

“Yeah,” says CyFi, with a shrug. “I got two. Ain’t no thang.”

Lev tries his best to process this. Of course, he’s heard of male parenting—or “yin families,” as they’re currently called—but in the sheltered structure of his life, such things always belonged to an alternate universe.

CyFi, however, doesn’t even catch Lev’s surprise. He’s still on his brag jag.

“Yeah, I got myself an IQ of 155. Did you know that, Fry? A’course not—how would you know?” Then he hesitates. “It went down a few points, though, on account the accident. I was on my hike and got hit by some damfoo’ in a Mercedes.” He points to a scar on the side of his head. “What a mess. Splattered—y’know? I was nearly roadkill. It turned my right temporal lobe into Jell-O.” He shivers as he thinks about it, then shrugs. “But brain damage ain’t a problem like it used to be. They just replace the brain tissue and you’re good as new. My dads even paid off the surgeon so I’d get an entire temporal lobe from an Unwind—no offense—rather than getting a buncha brain bits, like people are supposed to get.”

Lev knows about that. His sister Cara has epilepsy, so they replaced a small part of her brain with a hundred tiny brain bits. It took care of the problem, and she didn’t seem any worse for it. It had never occurred to Lev where those tiny pieces of brain tissue might have come from.

“See, brain bits work okay, but they don’t work great,” CyFi explains. “It’s like puttin’ spackle over a hole in a wall. No matter how well you do it, that wall ain’t never gonna be as good. So my dads made sure I got an entire temporal lobe from a single donor. But that kid wasn’t as smart as me. He wasn’t no dummy, but he didn’t have the 155. The last brain scan put me at 130. That’s in the top 5 percent of the population, and still considered genius. Just not with a capital G. What’s your IQ?” he asks Lev. “Are you a dim bulb or high-wattage?”

Lev sighs. “I don’t know. My parents don’t believe in intelligence scans. It’s kind of a religious thing. Everyone’s equal in God’s eyes and all that.”

“Oh—you come from one of those families.” CyFi takes a good look at him.

“So if they all high and mighty, why they unwinding you?”

Although Lev doesn’t want to get into it, he figures CyFi is the only friend he’s got. Might as well tell him the truth. “I’m a tithe.”

CyFi looks at him with eyes all wide, like Lev just told him he was God himself.

“Damn! So you all holy and stuff?”

“Not anymore.”

CyFi nods and purses his lips, saying nothing for a while. They walk along the tracks. The railroad ties change from wood to stone, and the gravel on the side of the tracks now seems better maintained.

“We just crossed the state line,” CyFi says.

Lev would ask him which state they’ve crossed into, but he doesn’t want to sound stupid.

Any spot where multiple tracks merge or diverge, there’s a little two-story shack standing there like a displaced lighthouse. A railroad switch house. There are plenty of them along this stretch of the line, and these are the places Lev and CyFi find shelter each night.

“Aren’t you afraid someone from the railroads’ll find us here?” Lev asks as they approach one of the sorry-looking structures.

“Nah—they ain’t used anymore,” CyFi tells him. “The whole system’s automated—been that way for years, but it costs too much to tear all those switch houses down. Guess they figure nature will eventually tear them down for free.”

The switch house is padlocked, but a padlock is only as strong as the door it’s on—and this door had been routed by termites. A single kick rips the padlock hasp from the wood, and the door flies inward to a shower of dust and dead spiders.

Upstairs is an eight-by-eight room, windows on all four sides. It’s freezing.

CyFi has an expensive-looking winter coat that keeps him warm at night. Lev only has a puffy fiberfill jacket that he stole from a chair at the mall the other day.

CyFi had turned his nose up when he saw Lev take that jacket, just before they left the mall. “Stealing’s for lowlifes,” Cy had said. “If you got class, you don’t steal what you need, you get other people to give it to you of their own free will—just like I did back at that Chinese place. It’s all about being smart, and being smooth. You’ll learn.”

Lev’s stolen jacket is white, and he hates it. All his life he’d worn white—a pristine absence of color that defined him—but now there was no comfort in wearing it.

They eat well that night—thanks to Lev, who finally had his own survivalist brainstorm. It involved small animals killed by passing trains.

“I ain’t eatin’ no track-kill!” CyFi insisted when Lev had suggested it. “Those things coulda been rottin’ out here for weeks, for all we know.”

“No,” Lev told him. “Here’s what we do: We walk a few miles down the tracks, marking each dead critter with a stick. Then, when the next train comes through, we backtrack. Anything we find that’s not marked is fresh.” Granted, it was a fairly disgusting idea on the surface, but it was really no different from hunting—if your weapon were a diesel engine.

They build a small fire beside the switch house and dine on roast rabbit and armadillo—which doesn’t taste as bad as Lev thought it would. In the end, meat is meat, and barbecue does for armadillo exactly what it does for steak.

“Smorgas-bash!!” CyFi decides to call this hunting method as they eat. “That’s what I call creative problem solving. Maybe you’re a genius after all, Fry.”

It feels good to have Cy’s approval.

“Hey, is today Thursday?” says Lev, just realizing. “I think it’s Thanksgiving!”

“Well, Fry, we’re alive. That’s plenty to be thankful for.”

That night, up in the small room of the switch house, CyFi asks the big question. “Why’d your parents tithe you, Fry?”

One of the good things about being with CyFi is that he talks about himself a lot. It keeps Lev from having to think about his own life. Except, of course, when Cy asks. Lev answers him with silence, pretending to be asleep—and if there’s one thing he knows CyFi can’t stand, it’s silence, so he fills it himself.

“Were you a storked baby? Is that it? They didn’t want you in the first place, and couldn’t wait to get rid of you?”

Lev keeps his eyes closed and doesn’t move.

“Well, I was storked,” Cy says. “My dads got me on the doorstep the first day of summer. No big deal—they were ready to have a family anyway. In fact, they were so pleased, they finally made it official and got themselves mmarried.”

Lev opens his eyes, curious enough to admit he’s still awake. “But . . . after the Heartland War, didn’t they make it illegal for men to get married?”

“They didn’t get married, they got mmarried.”

“What’s the difference?”

CyFi looks at him like he’s a moron. “The letter m. Anyway, in case you’re wondering, I’m not like my dads—my compass points to girls, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah. Yeah, mine does too.” What he doesn’t tell CyFi is that the closest he’s ever been to a date or even kissing a girl was the slow dancing at his tithing party.

The thought of the party brings a sudden and sharp jolt of anxiety that makes him want to scream, so he squeezes his eyes tight and forces that explosive feeling to go away.

Everything from Lev’s old life is like that now—a ticking time bomb in his head. Forget that life, he tells himself. You’re not that boy anymore.

“What are your parents like?” CyFi asks.

“I hate them,” Lev says, surprised that he’s said it. Surprised that he means it.

“That’s not what I asked.”

This time Cy isn’t taking silence for an answer, so Lev tells him as best he can. “My parents,” he begins, “do everything they’re supposed to. They pay their taxes. They go to church. They vote the way their friends expect them to vote, and think what they’re supposed to think, and they send us to schools that raise us to think exactly like they do.”

“Doesn’t sound too terrible to me.”

“It wasn’t,” says Lev, his discomfort building. “But they loved God more than they loved me, and I hate them for it. So I guess that means I’m going to Hell.”

“Hmm. Tell you what. When you get there, save a room for me, okay?”

“Why? What makes you think you’re going there?”

“I don’t, but just in case. Gotta plan your contingencies, right?”

Two days later they find themselves in the town of Scottsburg, Indiana.

Well, at least Lev finally knows what state they’re in. He wonders if maybe this is CyFi’s destination, but Cy hasn’t said anything either way. They’ve left the railroad tracks, and CyFi tells Lev they have to go south on county roads until they can find tracks heading in that direction.

Cy hasn’t been acting right.

It began the night before. Something in his voice. Something in his eyes, too. At first Lev thought it was his imagination, but now in the pale light of the autumn day it’s clear that CyFi isn’t himself. He’s lagging behind Lev instead of leading. His stride is all off—more like a shuffle than a strut. It makes Lev anxious in a way he hasn’t been since before he met CyFi.

“Are you ever going to tell me where we’re going?” Lev asks, figuring that maybe they’re close, and maybe that’s why Cy’s acting weird.

CyFi hesitates, weighing the wisdom of saying anything. Finally he says, “We’re going to Joplin. That’s in southwest Missouri, so we’ve still got a long way to go.”

In the back of his mind, Lev registers that CyFi has completely dropped his Old Umber way of talking. Now he sounds like any other kid Lev might have known back home. But there’s also something dark and throaty about his voice now, too. Vaguely menacing, like the voice of a werewolf before it turns.

“What’s in Joplin?” Lev asks.

“Nothing for you to worry about.”

But Lev is beginning to worry—because when CyFi gets where he’s going, Lev will be alone again. This journey was easier when he didn’t know the destination.

As they walk, Lev can tell Cy’s mind is somewhere else. Maybe it’s in Joplin.

What could be there? Maybe a girlfriend moved there? Maybe he had tracked down his birth mother. Lev has worked up a dozen reasons for CyFi to be on this trip, and there’s probably a dozen more he hasn’t even thought of.

There’s a main street in Scottsburg trying to be quaint but just looking tired. It’s late morning as they move through town. Restaurants are gearing up for the lunch crowd.

“So, are you gonna use your charms to get us a free meal, or is it my turn to try?” Lev asks. He turns to Cy, but he’s not there. A quick scan of the shops behind him and Lev sees a door swinging closed. It’s a Christmas store, its windows all done up in green and red decorations, plastic reindeer, and cotton snow. Lev can’t imagine Cy has gone in there, but when he peers in the window, there he is, looking around like a customer. With the weird way CyFi has been acting, Lev has no choice but to go in as well.

It’s warm in the store, and it smells of artificial pine. It’s the kind of scent they put on cardboard air fresheners. There are fully trimmed aluminum Christmas trees all around, displaying all sorts of holiday decorations, each tree with a different theme. In another time and place, Lev would have loved wandering through a store like this.

A saleswoman eyes them suspiciously from behind the counter. Lev grabs Cy’s shoulder. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.” But Cy shakes him off and goes over to a tree that’s decorated all in glittering gold. He seems mesmerized by all the bulbs and tinsel. There’s the slightest twitch right beneath his left eye.

“Cy,” whispers Lev. “C’mon—we have to get to Joplin. Remember? Joplin.”

But Cy’s not moving. The saleswoman comes over. She wears a holiday sweater and a holiday smile. “Can I help you find something?”

“No,” says Lev. “We were just leaving.”

“A nutcracker,” says Cy. “I’m looking for a nutcracker for my mom.”

“Oh, they’re on the back wall.” The woman turns to look across the store, and the moment she does, Cy picks a dangling gold bauble from the glittering tree and slips it into his coat pocket.

Lev just stands there, stunned.

Cy doesn’t even spare Lev a glance as he follows the woman to the back wall, where they discuss nutcrackers.

There’s a panic brewing deep down in Lev now, slowly fighting its way to the surface. Cy and the woman chat for a few moments more, then Cy thanks her and comes back to the front of the store. “I’ve gotta get more money from home,” he says in his Cy/not-Cy voice. “I think my mom will like the blue one.”

You don’t have a mom, Lev wants to say, but he doesn’t because all that matters now is getting out of the shop.

“All right then,” says the saleswoman. “You have a nice day!”

Cy leaves, and Lev makes sure he’s right behind him, just in case Cy suddenly has a phantom urge to go back into the store and take something else.

Then, the moment the door closes behind them, CyFi takes off. He doesn’t just run, he ejects, like he’s trying to burst out of his own skin. He bolts down the block, then into the street. Then back again. Cars honk, a truck nearly mows him down. He darts in random directions like a balloon losing air, and then he disappears into an alley far down the street.

This is not about a gold Christmas bulb. It can’t be. It’s a meltdown. It’s a seizure, the nature of which Lev can’t even begin to guess. I should just let him go, Lev thinks. Let him go, then run in the opposite direction, and not look back. Lev could survive on his own now. He’s gotten street-smart enough. He could do it without CyFi.

But there was that look about Cy before he ran. Desperation. It was just like the look in Connor’s face the moment he pulled Lev out of his father’s comfortable sedan. Lev had turned on Connor. He will not turn on CyFi.

With a pace and stride far steadier than CyFi’s, Lev crosses the street and makes his way down the alley.

“CyFi,” he calls, loud enough to be heard but not loud enough to draw attention. “Cy!” He glances in Dumpsters and doorways. “Cyrus, where are you?”

He comes to the end of the alley and looks left and right. No sign of him. Then, as he’s about to lose hope, he hears, “Fry?”

He turns his head and listens again.

“Fry. Over here.”

This time he can tell where it’s coming from: a playground to his right.

Green plastic and steel poles painted blue. There are no children playing—the only sign of life is the tip of CyFi’s shoe poking out from behind the slide. Lev crosses through a hedge, steps down into the sand that surrounds the playground, and circles the apparatus until CyFi comes into view.

Lev almost wants to back away from what he sees.

Cy is curled, knees to chest, like a baby. The left side of his face is twitching, and his left hand quivers like gelatin. He grimaces as if he’s in pain.

“What is it? What’s wrong? Tell me. Maybe I can help you.”

“Nothing,” CyFi hisses. “I’ll be all right.”

But to Lev he looks like he’s dying.

In his shaking left hand CyFi holds the ornament he stole. “I didn’t steal this,” he says.

“Cy . . .”

“I SAID, I DIDN’T STEAL THIS!” He smashes the heel of his right hand against the side of his head. “IT WASN’T ME!”

“Okay—whatever you say.” Lev looks around to make sure they’re unobserved.

Cy quiets down a bit. “Cyrus Finch doesn’t steal. Never did, never will. It’s not my style.” He says it, even as he looks at the evidence right there in his hand.

But in a second the evidence is gone. CyFi raises his right fist and smashes it into his left palm, shattering the bulb. Gold glass tinkles to the ground. Blood begins to ooze from his left palm and right knuckles.

“Cy, your hand . . .”

“Don’t worry about that,” he says. “I want you to do something for me, Fry. Do it before I change my mind.”

Lev nods.

“See my coat over there? I want you to look in the pockets.”

CyFi’s heavy coat is a few yards away tossed over the seat of a swing. Lev goes to the swing set and picks up the coat. He reaches into an inside pocket and finds, of all things, a gold cigarette lighter. He pulls it out.

“Is that it, Cy? You want a cigarette?” If a cigarette would bring CyFi out of this, Lev would be the first to light it for him. There are things far more illegal than cigarettes, anyway.

“Check the other pockets.”

Lev searches the other pockets for a pack of cigarettes, but there are none.

Instead he finds a small treasure trove. Jeweled earrings, watches, a gold necklace, a diamond bracelet—things that shimmer and shine even in the dim daylight.

“Cy, what did you do . . . ?”

“I already told you, it wasn’t me! Now go take all that stuff and get rid of it. Get rid of it and don’t let me see where you put it.” Then he covers his eyes like it’s a game of hide-and-seek. “Go—before he changes my mind!”

Lev pulls everything out of the pocket and, cradling it in his arms, runs to the far end of the playground. He digs in the cold sand and drops it all in, kicking sand back over it. When he’s done, he smoothes it over with the side of his shoe and drops a scattering of leaves above it. He goes back to CyFi, who’s sitting there just like Lev left him, hands over his face.

“It’s done,” Lev says. “You can look now.” When Cy takes his hands away, there’s blood all over his face from the cuts on his hands. Cy stares at his hands, then looks at Lev helplessly, like . . . well, like a kid who just got hurt in a playground. Lev half expects him to cry.

“You wait here,” Lev says. “I’ll go get some bandages.” He knows he’ll have to steal them. He wonders what Pastor Dan would say about all the things he’s been stealing lately.

“Thank you, Fry,” Cy says. “You did good, and I ain’t gonna forget it.” The Old Umber lilt is back in his voice. The twitching has stopped.

“Sure thing,” says Lev, with a comforting smile, and he heads off to find a pharmacy.

What CyFi doesn’t know is that Lev has kept a single diamond bracelet, which he now hides in the inside pocket of his not-so-white jacket.

Lev finds them a place to sleep that night. It’s the best they’ve had yet: a motel room. Finding it wasn’t all that hard to do—he scouted out a run-down motel without many cars out front. Then it was just a matter of finding an unlocked bathroom window in an unoccupied room. As long as they kept the curtains drawn and the lights off, no one would know they were there.

“My genius keeps rubbin’ off on you,” CyFi tells him. Cy’s back to his old self, like the incident that morning never happened. Only it did happen, and they both know it.

Outside they hear a car door open. Lev and Cy prepare to bolt if a key turns in the motel room lock, but it’s another door they hear opening, a few rooms away. Cy shakes out his tension, but Lev doesn’t relax. Not yet.

“I want to know about today,” Lev says. It’s not a question. It’s a request.

Cy is unconcerned. “Ancient history,” he says. “Leave the past in the past, and live for the moment. That’s wisdom you can take to the grave, and dig up when you need it!”

“What if I dig it up right now?” Lev takes a moment to let it sink in, then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the diamond bracelet. He holds it in front of him, making sure the streetlight spilling through a slit in the curtains catches the diamonds so they glisten.

“Where’d you get that?” CyFi’s voice has lost all the playfulness it had only a second ago.

“I kept it,” Lev says, calmly. “I thought it might come in handy.”

“I told you to get rid of it.”

“It wasn’t yours to get rid of. After all, you said it yourself—you didn’t steal it.” Lev twists the bracelet so a diamond refracts a sparkle of light right into CyFi’s eye. Without the room lights on Lev can’t see much, but he can swear he sees CyFi’s cheek starting to twitch.

Cy stands up, looming over Lev. Lev stands as well, a full head shorter than CyFi. “You take that outta my face,” says CyFi, “or I swear I’m gonna pound you into pork rinds.”

Lev thinks he might actually do it, too. CyFi clenches his fists; with the bandages he looks like a boxer, hands wrapped before putting on the gloves. Still, Lev doesn’t back down. He just dangles the bracelet. It sends little twinkling lights flitting around the room like a lazy disco ball. “I’ll put it away if you tell me why this bracelet and all those other things wound up in your pockets.”

“Put it away first, then I’ll tell you.”

“Fair enough.” Lev slips the bracelet back into his pocket and waits, but CyFi isn’t talking. So Lev gives him a little prompt. “What’s his name?” Lev asks. “Or is it a she?”

CyFi’s shoulders slump in defeat. He crumples into a chair. Lev can’t see his face at all now in the darkness, so Lev listens closely to his voice. As long as it still sounds like Cy’s voice, he knows that Cy’s okay. Lev sits himself on the edge of the bed a few feet away from Cy and listens.

“It’s a he,” Cy says. “I don’t know his name. He musta kept his name in another part of his brain. All I got was his right temporal lobe. That’s only an eighth of the cerebral cortex, so I’m seven-eighths me, and one-eighth him.”

“I figured that was it.” Lev had realized what was going on with Cy even before he stole the bandages from the pharmacy. Cy gave him the clue himself.

Do it before he changes my mind, Cy had said. “So . . . he was a shoplifter?”

“He had . . . problems. I guess those problems are why his parents had him unwound in the first place. And now one of his problems is mine.”

“Wow. That sucks.”

CyFi laughs bitterly at that. “Yeah, Fry, it does.”

“It’s kind of like what happened to my brother Ray,” says Lev. “He went to this government auction thing—ended up with ten acres on a lake, and it cost next to nothing. Then he finds out that the land came with a bunker full of toxic chemicals seeping into the ground. Now he owned it, so now it was his problem. Cost him almost ten times the cost of the land to clean up the chemicals.”

“Sucker,” says Cy.

“Yeah. But then, those chemicals weren’t in his brain.”

Cy looks down for a moment. “He’s not a bad kid. He’s just hurting. Hurting real bad.” The way Cy’s talking, it’s like the kid is still there, right in the room with them. “He’s got this urge about him to grab things—like an addiction, y’know? Shiny things mostly. It’s not like he really wants them, it’s just that he kind of needs to snap ’em up. I figure he’s a kleptomaniac. That means . . . ah, hell, you know what it means.”

“So, he talks to you?”

“No, not really. I didn’t get the part of him that uses words. I get feelings mostly. Sometimes images, but usually just feelings. Urges. When I get an urge and I don’t know where it’s coming from, I know it’s from him. Like the time I saw this Irish setter on the street and I wanted to go over and pet it. I’m not a dog person, see, but all of a sudden I just had to pet that pooch.”

Now that Cy’s talking about it, he can’t stop. It’s all spilling out like water over a dam. “Petting that dog was one thing, but the stealing is another. The stealing makes me mad. I mean, here I am, a law-abiding citizen, never took nothing that didn’t belong to me my whole life, and now I’m stuck with this. There’s people out there—like that lady in the Christmas store—they see an umber kid like me and they automatically assume I’m up to no good. And now, thanks to this kid in my head, they’re right. And you wanna know what’s funny? This kid was lily-sienna, like you. Blond hair, blue eyes.”

Hearing that surprises Lev. Not the description, but the fact that Cy can describe him at all. “You know what he looked like?”

CyFi nods. “I can see him sometimes. It’s hard, but sometimes I can. I close my eyes and imagine myself looking into a mirror. Usually I just see myself reflected, but once in a while I can see him. It’s only for an instant. Kinda like trying to catch a bolt of lightning after you’ve already seen the flash. But other people—they don’t see him when he steals. It’s me they see. My hands grabbing.”

“The people who matter know it’s not you. Your dads . . .”

“They don’t even know about this!” Cy says. “They think they did me a favor stickin’ me with this brain chunk. If I told them about it, they’d feel guilty until the end of time, so I can’t tell them.”

Lev doesn’t know what to say. He wishes he’d never brought it up. He wishes he hadn’t insisted on knowing. But most of all, he wishes Cy didn’t have to deal with this. He’s a good guy. He deserves a better break.

“And this kid—he doesn’t even understand he’s a part of me,” Cy says. “It’s like those ghosts that don’t know they’re dead. He keeps trying to be him, and can’t understand why the rest of him ain’t there.”

All of a sudden Lev realizes something. “He lived in Joplin, didn’t he!”

Cy doesn’t answer for a long time. That’s how Lev knows it’s true. Finally Cy says, “There are things he’s still got locked up in my brain that I can’t get at. All I know is that he’s got to get to Joplin, so I got to get there too. Once we’re there, maybe he’ll leave me alone.”

CyFi shifts his shoulders—not in a shrug but in an uncomfortable roll, like when you get an itch in your back or a sudden shiver. “I don’t want to talk about him no more. His one-eighth feels a whole lot bigger when I spend time hanging around in his gray matter.”

Lev wants to put his arm around Cy’s shoulder like an older brother to comfort him, but he just can’t bring himself to do it. So instead he pulls the blanket from the bed and wraps it around Cy as he sits in the chair.

“What’s this all about?”

“Just making sure you two stay warm.” And then he says, “Don’t worry about anything. I’ve got it all under control.”

CyFi laughs. “You? You can’t even take care of yourself and now you think you’re gonna take care of me? If it weren’t for me you’d still be chowing down on other folk’s garbage back at the mall.”

“That’s right—but you helped me. Now it’s my turn to do the same for you. And I’m going to get you to Joplin.”

22. Risa

Risa Megan Ward watches everything around her closely and carefully.

She’s seen enough at StaHo to know that survival rests on how observant you are.

For three weeks she, Connor, and a mixed bag of Unwinds have been shuttled from one safe house to another. It’s maddening, for there seems to be no end in sight to this relentless underground railroad of refugees.

There are dozens of kids being moved around, but there are never more than five or six at a time in any given safe house, and Risa rarely sees the same kids twice. The only reason she and Connor have been able to stay together is because they pose as a couple. It’s practical, and it serves both their interests.

What’s that expression? The devil you know is better than the one you don’t?

Finally, they’re dumped in a huge, empty warehouse in a thundering airtraffic zone. Cheap realty for hiding unwanted kids. It’s a spartan building with a corrugated steel roof that shakes so badly when a plane passes overhead, she half expects it to collapse.

There are almost thirty kids here when they arrive, many of them are kids Risa and Connor had come across over the past few weeks. This is a holding tank, she realizes, a place where all the kids are warehoused in preparation for some final journey. There are chains on the doors to keep anyone unwanted out, and to keep anyone too rebellious in. There are space heaters that are useless, since all the heat is lost to the high warehouse roof. There’s only one bathroom with a broken lock and, unlike many of the safe houses, there’s no shower, so personal hygiene is put on hold the moment they arrive. Put all that together with a gang of scared, angry kids, and you’ve got a powder keg waiting to explode. Perhaps that’s why the people who run the show all carry guns.

There are four men and three women in charge, all of them militarized versions of the folks who, like Sonia, run the safe houses. Everyone calls them “the Fatigues”—not just because they have a penchant toward khaki military clothing, but also because they always seem exhausted. Even so, they have a hightension determination about them that Risa admires.

A handful of new kids arrives almost every day. Risa watches each group of arrivals with interest, and notices that Connor does too. She knows why.

“You’re looking for Lev too, aren’t you?” She finally says to him.

He shrugs. “Maybe I’m just looking for the Akron AWOL, like everyone else.”

That makes Risa chuckle. Even in the safe houses they had heard the inflated rumors of an AWOL from Akron who escaped from a Juvey-cop by turning his own tranq pistol against him. “Maybe he’s on his way here!” kids would whisper around the warehouse, like they were talking about a celebrity.

Risa has no idea how the rumor started, since it was never in the news. She’s also a bit annoyed that she’s not included in the rumor. It ought to be a Bonnie-and-CIyde kind of thing. The rumor mill is definitely sexist.

“So are you ever going to tell them you’re the Akron AWOL?” she quietly asks Connor.

“I don’t want that kind of attention. Besides, they wouldn’t believe me anyway. They’re all saying the Akron AWOL is this big boeuf superhero. I don’t want to disappoint them.”

Lev doesn’t show up with any of the batches of new kids. The only thing that arrives with them is an increase of tension. Forty-three kids by the end of their first week, and there’s still one bathroom, no shower, and no answer as to how long this will last. Restlessness hangs as heavy as body odor in the air.

The Fatigues do their best to keep them all fed and occupied, if only to minimize friction. There are a few crates of games, incomplete decks of cards, and dog-eared books that no library wanted. There are no electronics, no balls—nothing that would create or encourage noise.

“If people out there hear you, then you’re all done for,” the Fatigues remind them as often as they can. Risa wonders if the Fatigues have lives separate and apart from saving Unwinds, or if this endeavor is their life’s work.

“Why are you doing this for us?” Risa asked one of them during their second week.

The Fatigue had been almost rote in her answer—like giving a sound bite to a reporter. “Saving you and others like you is an act of conscience,” the woman had said. “Doing it is its own reward.”

The Fatigues all talk like that. Big-Picture-speak, Risa calls it. Seeing the whole, and none of the parts. It’s not just in their speech but in their eyes as well.

When they look at Risa, she can tell they don’t really see her. They seem to see the mob of Unwinds more as a concept rather than a collection of anxious kids, and so they miss all the subtle social tremors that shake things just as powerfully as the jets shake the roof.

By the end of the second week, Risa has a pretty good idea where trouble is brewing. It all revolves around one kid she hoped she’d never see again, but he had turned up shortly after she and Connor arrived.

Roland.

Of all the kids here, he is by far the most potentially dangerous. The troubling thing is that Connor hasn’t exactly been the image of emotional stability himself this past week.

He’d been all right in the safe houses. He’d held his temper—he hadn’t done anything too impulsive or irrational. Here, however, in the midst of so many kids, he’s different. He’s irritable and defiant. The slightest thing can set him off. He’d been in half a dozen fights already. She knows this must be why his parents chose to have him unwound—a firestorm temper can drive some parents to desperate measures.

Common sense tells Risa to distance herself from him. Their alliance has been one of necessity, but there’s no reason to ally herself with him anymore. Yet, day after day, she keeps finding herself drawn to him . . . and worried about him.

She approaches him shortly after breakfast one day, determined to open his eyes to a clear and present danger. He’s sitting by himself, etching a portrait into the concrete floor with a rusty nail. Risa wishes she could say it was good, but Connor’s not much of an artist. It disappoints her, because she desperately wants to find something redeeming about him. If he were an artist they could relate on a creative level. She could talk to him about her passion for music, and he would get it. As it is, she doesn’t think he even knows, or cares, that she plays piano.

“Who are you drawing?” she asks.

“Just a girl I knew back home,” he says.

Risa silently suffocates her jealousy in a quick emotional vacuum. “Someone you cared about?”

“Sort of.”

Risa takes a better look at the sketch. “Her eyes are too big for her face.”

“I guess that’s because it’s her eyes that I remember most.”

“And her forehead’s too low. The way you’ve drawn it, she’d have no room for a brain.”

“Yeah, well, she wasn’t all that bright.”

Risa laughs at that, and it makes Connor smile. When he smiles, it’s hard to imagine he’s the same guy who got into all those fights. She gauges whether or not he’d be open to hear what she has to tell him.

He looks away from her. “Is there something you want, or are you just an art critic today?”

“I . . . was wondering why you’re sitting by yourself.”

“Ah, so you’re also my shrink.”

“We’re supposed to be a couple. If we’re going to keep up the image, you can’t be entirely antisocial.”

Connor looks out over the groups of kids, busy in various morning activities.

Risa follows his gaze. There’s a group of kids who hate the world, and spend all day spewing venom. There’s a mouth-breathing kid who does nothing but read the same comic book over and over again. Mai is paired off with a glum spikehaired boy named Vincent, who’s all leather and body piercings. He must be her soul mate, because they make out all day long, drawing a cluster of other kids who sit there and watch.

“I don’t want to be social,” Connor says. “I don’t like the kids here.”

“Why?” asks Risa, “They’re too much like you?”

“They’re losers.”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean.”

He gives her a halfhearted dirty look, then looks down at his drawing, but she can tell he’s not thinking about the girl—his head is somewhere else. “If I’m off by myself, then I don’t get into fights.” He puts down the nail, giving up on his etching. “I don’t know what gets into me. Maybe it’s all the voices. Maybe it’s all the bodies moving all around me. It makes me feel like I’ve got ants crawling inside my brain and I want to scream. I can stand it just so long, then I blow. It happened even at home, everyone was talking at once at the dinner table. One time, we had family over and the talk got me so crazy, I hurled a plate at the china hutch. Glass blew everywhere. Ruined the meal. My parents asked me what got into me, and I couldn’t tell them.”

That Connor is willing to share this with her makes her feel good. It makes her feel closer to him. Maybe now that he has opened up, he’ll stay open long enough to hear what she has to tell him.

“There’s something I want to talk about.”

“Yeah?”

Risa sits beside him, keeping her voice low.

“I want you to watch the other kids. Where they go. Who they talk to.”

“All of them?”

“Yeah, but one at a time. After a while you’ll start to notice things.”

“Like what?”

“Like the kids who eat first are the ones who spend the most time with Roland—but he never goes to the front of the line himself. Like the way his closest friends infiltrate the other cliques and get them arguing so they break apart. Like the way Roland is especially nice to the kids that everyone else feels sorry for—but only until nobody feels sorry for them anymore. Then he uses them.”

“Sounds like you’re doing a class project on him.”

“I’m being serious. I’ve seen this before. He’s power hungry, he’s ruthless, and he’s very, very smart.”

Connor laughs at that. “Roland? He couldn’t think himself out of a paper bag.”

“No, but he could think everyone else into one, and then crush it.” Clearly that gives Connor pause for thought. Good, thinks Risa. He needs to think. He needs to strategize.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you’re his biggest threat.”

“Me?”

“You’re a fighter—everyone knows that. And they also know that you don’t take crap from anyone. Have you heard kids mumbling about how someone oughta do something about Roland?”

“Yeah.”

“They only say that when you’re close enough to hear. They’re expecting you to do something about him—and Roland knows it.”

He tries to wave her off, but she gets in his face.

“Listen to me, because I know what I’m talking about. Back at StaHo there were always dangerous kids who bullied their way into power. They were able to do it because they knew exactly who to take down, and when. And the kid they took down the hardest was the one with the greatest potential for taking them down.”

She can see Connor curling his right hand into a fist. She knows she’s not getting through to him. He’s getting the wrong message.

“If he wants a fight, he’ll get one.”

“No! You can’t take the bait! That’s what he wants! He’ll do everything within his power to pull you into a fight. But you can’t do it.”

Connor hardens his jaw. “You think I can’t take him in a fight?”

Risa grabs his wrist and holds it tight. “A kid like Roland doesn’t want to fight you. He wants to kill you.”

23. Connor

As much as Connor hates to admit it, Risa has been right about a lot of things. Her clarity of thought has saved them more than once, and now that he knows to look for it, her take on Roland’s secret power structure is right on target.

Roland is a master of structuring life around him for his own benefit. It’s not the overt bullying that does it, either. It’s the subtle manipulation of the situation.

The bullying almost acts as cover for what’s really going on. As long as people see him as a dumb, tough guy, they don’t notice the more clever things he does . . . such as endearing himself to one of the Fatigues by making sure the man sees him giving his food to one of the younger kids. Like a master chess player, every move Roland makes has purpose, even if the purpose isn’t immediately clear.

Risa wasn’t just right about Roland, she was also right about Lev—or at least the way Connor feels about the kid. Connor hasn’t been able to get Lev out of his mind. For the longest time he had convinced himself it was merely out of a desire for revenge, as if he couldn’t wait to get even with him. But each time a new group of kids shows up and Lev isn’t among them, a sense of despair worms its way through Connor’s gut. It makes Connor angry that he feels this way, and he suspects this is part of the anger that fuels the fights he gets into.

The fact is, Lev hadn’t just turned them in, he had turned himself in as well.

Which means that Lev is probably gone. Unwound into nothing—his bones, his flesh, his mind, shredded and recycled. This is what Connor finds so hard to accept. Connor had risked his life to save Lev, just as Connor had done for the baby on the doorstep. Well, the baby had been saved, but Lev had not, and although he knows he can’t be held responsible for Lev’s unwinding, he feels as if it is his fault. So he stands there with secret anticipation each time there’s a group of new arrivals, hoping beyond hope he’ll find that self-righteous, self-important, pain-in-the-ass Lev still alive.

24. Risa

The Fatigues arrive with Christmas dinner an hour late. It’s the same old slop, but the Fatigues wear Santa hats. Impatience rules the evening. Everyone’s so hungry, they crowd noisily around, like it’s a food delivery in a famine, and to make it worse, there are only two Fatigues there tonight to serve the meal instead of the usual four.

“Single line! Single line!” yell the Fatigues. “There’s enough for everybody. Ho, ho, ho.” But tonight it’s not a matter of getting enough, it’s a matter of getting it now.

Risa’s just as hungry as the others, but she also knows that meals are the best time to have some privacy in the bathroom, without someone bursting in through the unlocked door or simply pounding repeatedly to get you out faster.

Tonight, with everyone clamoring for their holiday hash, there’s no one at the bathroom at all, so, putting her hunger on hold, she moves away from the crowd and across the warehouse toward the bathroom.

Once inside she hangs the makeshift OCCUPIED sign on the door knob, and pushes the door closed. She takes a moment to examine herself in the mirror, but she doesn’t like the straggly-haired, ragged girl she’s become, so she doesn’t look at herself for long. She washes her face and, since there are no towels, dries it with her sleeve. Then, before she even turns for the toilet, she hears the door creak open behind her.

She turns and must stifle a gasp. It’s Roland who has entered the bathroom.

And now he closes the door gently behind him. Risa immediately realizes her mistake. She should never have come here alone.

“Get out!” she says. She wishes she could sound more forceful in the moment, but he’s caught her by surprise.

“No need to be so harsh.” Roland moves toward her in a slow, predatory stride. “We’re all friends here, right? And since everyone’s eating dinner, we’ve got some quality time to get to know each other.”

“Stay away from me!” Now she’s scanning her options, but realizes in this tight a space, with only one door, and nothing she can use as a weapon, her options are limited.

Now he’s dangerously close. “Sometimes I like having dessert before dinner. How about you?”

The second he’s in range, she acts quickly to hit him, to knee him, to inflict any kind of pain that would distract him enough for her to fly out the door. His reflexes are simply too fast. He grabs her hands, pushes her back against the cold green tile wall, and presses his hip against her so that her knee can’t reach its mark. And he grins, as if it was all so easy. His hand is on her cheek now. The shark tattooed on his forearm is inches away, and seems ready to attack.

“So, whaddaya say we have some fun and make sure you don’t get unwound for nine months?”

Risa has never been a screamer. The way she always saw it, screaming was a show of weakness. A sign of defeat. Now she has to admit defeat, for although she has lots of experience warding off creeps, Roland has even more experience being one.

So she screams. She lets loose a bloodcurdler at the top of her lungs. But her timing is as bad as it could possibly be, because just then a jet roars by overhead, shaking the walls and completely swallowing her scream.

“Ya gotta learn to enjoy life,” Roland says. “Let’s call this lesson one.”

That’s when the door swings open, and over Roland’s massive shoulder Risa sees Connor standing at the threshold, eyes blazing. She’s never been happier to see anyone.

“Connor! Stop him!”

Roland sees him too, catching his reflection in the bathroom mirror, but he doesn’t release Risa.

“Well,” says Roland. “Isn’t this awkward.”

Connor makes no move to tear him away. He just stands there on the threshold. His eyes still rage, but his hands—they’re not even clenched into fists.

They just hang there limply by his side. What’s wrong with him?

Roland winks at Risa, then he calls over his shoulder to Connor. “Better get out if you know what’s good for you.”

Connor steps over the threshold, but he doesn’t move toward them. Instead he goes to the sink. “Mind if I wash up for dinner?”

Risa waits for him to make a sharp and sudden move, catching Roland off guard, but he doesn’t. He just washes his hands.

“Your girlfriend’s had her eye on me since Sonia’s basement,” says Roland. “You know that, don’t you?”

Connor dries his hands on his pants. “You two can do whatever you like. Risa and I broke up this morning. Should I turn off the light when I leave?”

The betrayal is so unexpected, so complete, Risa doesn’t know who to hate more, Roland or Connor. But then Roland eases his grip on her. “Well, now the mood’s ruined, isn’t it.” He lets her go. “Hell, I was just kidding, anyway. I wouldn’t have done anything.” He backs away and offers that smile of his again.

“How’s about we wait until you’re ready.” Then he struts out just as boldly as he had come in, bumping Connor’s shoulder on the way out as a parting shot.

All of her confusion and frustration unleashes at Connor, and she pushes him back against the wall, shaking him. “What was that? You were just going to let him do it? You were just going to stand there and let it happen?”

Connor pushes her off of him. “Didn’t you warn me not to take the bait?”

“What?”

“He didn’t just follow you to the bathroom—he pushed past me first. He made sure I knew he was following you here. This whole thing wasn’t about you, it was about me—just like you said. He wanted me to catch him. He wanted to make me crazy, to get me fighting mad. So I didn’t take the bait.”

Risa shakes her head—not in disbelief, but reeling from the truth of it.

“But . . . but what if . . . what if he . . .”

“But he didn’t, did he? And now he won’t. Because if he thinks you and I broke up, you’re more useful to him if you’re on his side. He might still be after you, but from now on, I’ll bet he’ll be killing you with kindness.”

All the emotions rebounding madly through Risa finally come to rest in an unfamiliar place, and tears burst from her eyes. Connor steps forward to comfort her, but she pushes him away with the same force she would have used against Roland.

“Get out!” she yells. “Just get out!”

Connor throws up his hands, frustrated. “Fine. I guess I should have just gone to dinner and not come in here at all.”

He leaves and she closes the door behind him, in spite of the line of kids now waiting for the bathroom. She sits down on the floor, her back against the door so no one can get in as she tries to get her emotions under control.

Connor had done the right thing. For once, he had seen the situation more clearly than she—and he had probably ensured that Roland wouldn’t physically threaten her again, at least for a while. And yet there’s a part of her that can’t forgive him for just standing there. After all, heroes are supposed to behave in very specific ways. They’re supposed to fight, even if it means risking their lives.

This is the moment Risa realizes that, even with all his troubles, she sees Connor as a hero.

25. Connor

Holding his temper in that bathroom was perhaps the hardest thing Connor had ever had to do. Even now, as he storms away from Risa, he wants to lay into Roland—but blind rage is not what the moment needs, and Connor knows it.

Risa’s right—a brutal, all-out fight is exactly what Roland wants—and Connor’s heard from some of the other kids that Roland has fashioned himself a knife out of some metal he found lying around the warehouse. If Connor launches at him with a rage of swinging fists, Roland will find a way to end it with a single deadly thrust—and he’ll be able to get away with it, claiming it was self-defense.

Whether Connor can take him in a fight isn’t the question. Even against a knife, Connor suspects he might be able to either turn the blade against him, or take Roland out in some other way before he has the chance to use it. The question is this: Is Connor willing to enter a battle that must end with one of them dead? Connor might be a lot of things, but he’s no killer. So he holds his temper and plays it cool.

This is new territory for him. The fighter in him screams foul, but another side of him, a side that’s growing steadily stronger, enjoys this exercise of silent power—and it is power, because Roland now behaves exactly the way he and Risa want him to. Connor sees Roland offer his dessert to Risa that night as an apology. She doesn’t accept it, of course, but it doesn’t change the fact that he offered it. It’s as if Roland thinks his attack on her could be wiped away by feigning remorse—not because he’s actually sorry for what he did, but because it serves Roland’s needs to treat her well now. He has no idea that Risa and Connor have him on an invisible leash. Connor knows it will only be a matter of time, however, until he chews his way through it.