Hungry (18 page)

I try to wriggle away while talking fast, “Dr. Demeter told me to…”

“Shhhh,” the man in the pale green uniform hisses and tightens his grip as he shoves me in front of him down the hall. “This way.”

Again, I work to wiggle free, thinking I might be able to run for the stairs and get back to my room before he can identify me, but he digs his fingers into my skin and growls, “Apple, stop.”

I whip around and come face-to-face with Basil. Before I can shriek, he clamps his hand over my mouth. “Shhhhhh,” he says, his eyes wide with worry. “We have to hurry.”

I follow blindly, gripping Basil’s hand, looking again and again to make sure it’s really him. We burst through the exit door and careen down the staircase toward the first landing, but he pulls me down another flight. “We can get out this way.”

“But how, but who, but, but…” I stammer as I stagger after him.

“Keep going,” he tells me.

We flee into a utility room where Basil leads me through a maze of meters, water tanks, and washing machines until we come to a large, windowless steel door sealed tight. He takes a Gizmo out of his baggy pale green pants, points it at the door, and commands it to open. Automated locks whirl as the door does what he says, and we step outside onto a small concrete pad under the weak light of the stars.

“Ravi,” Basil whispers hoarsely. “Ravi!”

A guy in boxer shorts and a T-shirt steps out from behind a pillar. “Man, took you long enough. I’m freezing my balls off out here.”

Basil quickly strips off the pale green uniform to reveal his regular clothes underneath. He shoves the shirt and pants at Ravi. “She wasn’t where you said she’d be.”

“But how? But what?” I continue to splutter.

Ravi puts the uniform on. “Where was she?”

Basil half grins. “Snooping around on the second floor.”

Ravi looks at me and laughs. “What were you looking for?”

“A signal,” I say.

“It’s a dead zone out here,” Ravi tells me. “The only signal is Demeter’s VPN and for that you need a password.”

“Yeah, I figured, but…” I stamp my foot because this is not the conversation I want to have. “Would one of you tell me what’s happening?”

Basil hands Ravi the Gizmo. “Thanks,” he says. “I owe you.”

“Nah,” Ravi tells him. “Now we’re even.” They grab hands and bump shoulders before Ravi steps inside the building. “Be safe,” he says, then he looks over his shoulder at me. “And Apple.” I stare at him. “Thank you for getting him out of the meeting safely. He’s important.” He smiles kindly then disappears behind the closing door.

Basil reaches for me. “You ready?”

I stand mutely, trying to process everything that just happened.

“Unless you want to stay here?” he says withdrawing his hand a little.

A small breeze carrying the scent of faux roses rouses me from my stupefied state. I look up and see the lights of Smaurtos circling the elevated highway and, just beyond that, the gaudy glare of the EA. On the other side of this place is my home. I don’t know which way we’re going, but I grab Basil’s hand and say, “Get me out of here.”

*   *   *

Basil and I run across the craggy lot toward a shell of new construction. I look over my shoulder at the glowing dome receding behind us, expecting to see orderlies with flashlights burst through the back door, yelling my name, but everything stays eerily calm and quiet. Soon someone will notice that I’m missing, though, and they’ll know I couldn’t have gotten far.

“Where are we going?” I pant.

“This way.” Basil leads me inside the skeleton of a building. “I have a vehicle.”

Giant robotic construction machines loom like replicas of dinosaurs in the darkness around us. “You going to fire up one of these?” I ask.

“That’d be inconspicuous,” he says, as he disappears behind a half wall and returns pushing some contraption that looks half a bicycle. Instead of a front wheel, there’s a big metal cage thing on casters.

I step closer and blink, trying to find more light. “What is that?” I stick my fingers through the spindly metal bars of the cage.

“It’s the vehicle,” he says.

“But, what is it?” I persist.

“It’s a bike and a shopping cart. A bike-cart.”

“What’s a shopping cart?”

He huffs, impatient. “A thing people used to push through stores where they bought food.”

“Why?” I ask.

“How should I know? And why is that important?”

“But what are we going to do with it?”

“You ride in here.” He points to the cage. “And I’ll be back here.” He points to the seat.

“Where’s the motor?”

“For god’s sake, Apple!” he says, indignantly. “It doesn’t have a flippin’ motor. I’m going to pedal it!”

I’m too flabbergasted to say anything. My mouth just hangs open stupidly for several seconds. “What good is that?” I finally blurt out.

Basil balls one fist on his hip. “It’s good enough to get us the hell out of here if you’d stop yapping!”

“Sorry,” I say quickly. “I mean, thank you? It’s just, I never thought I would see you again and…”

“Didn’t you want to?” he asks, frowning.

“Yes! Of course, but…” I slump back against one of the hulking machines. My head spins and my ears ring. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“Ok, look.” Basil takes a deep breath, probably realizing that I’m not going anywhere until he explains a few things. He leans against the vehicle next to me with the bike-cart propped at his side. “After your mom threatened to call security, I hid outside your house. I heard her say she was taking you to rehab at Dr. Demeter’s, so after she put you in the Smaurto, I made my way down here and figured we’d need a way to get out again. I found some old abandoned shops and made this thing, which apparently is very stupid.”

“No,” I say. “It’s not stupid at all. It’s amazing. And you’re amazing. But how did you get inside Dr. Demeter’s? How do you know Ravi? Why did he help you? What did he mean that you’re important?”

“Ravi’s an Analog,” Basil tells me. “There are lots of us. We help each other. A while back Ravi had some trouble with security. I let him hang with me until things died down so he owed me a favor. We’re all working for the cause.”

“What cause? I don’t get it.” I run my fingers through my hair. “I need to understand more about the Analogs and…”

“I know.” Basil lays his hand on my arm. “And I’ll tell you everything you want to know, but right now, we should really get out of here, because they’ll be looking for you very soon. Ravi can only cover for so long.” He grabs the bike-cart contraption.

“Wait,” I tell him. “I have to know one thing.” He stops and looks at me like he wants to pick me up and shove me inside the cart. “Did you know who I was before we went to my house tonight?”

“No,” he says. “I just thought you were some really cute girl named Apple that I was trying to impress.”

My stomach zings when he says this. Blood rushes to my cheeks and despite everything, I smile.

“And to be honest, if I had known who your parents are, I would have never invited you to an Analog meeting.” He looks up and laughs as if he can’t believe all that’s happened. “The whole idea of a privy at a resistance meeting is absurd.”

“Privy?” I ask.

“That’s what people like me call privileged people like you,” Basil says, a note of apology in his voice.

“Then why did you come here for me?”

“I owed you one,” he says, but then he drops his eyes. In the murky light I can’t make out his face. “And,” he says quietly, “you’re still a cute girl I’m trying to impress.”

I can’t help but laugh out of surprise and embarrassment. “Well, I’m pretty impressed.”

He looks up with a little grin on his face. “It’s the bike-cart thing, isn’t it?”

“It’s definitely the bike-cart thing,” I tell him.

*   *   *

I climb inside the cart as Basil balances the bike. It takes a few tries before he can pedal without nearly toppling over, but soon we’re bumping across the empty lots away from my house and Dr. Demeter’s and toward the lights of the EA on the other side of the highway.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“That depends,” he says.

“On what?”

“On you.”

“Me?” While I’m trying to figure out where we should go, Astrid suddenly comes to life. “Yaz is calling! Yaz is calling!” she shouts happily.

“What the…!” Basil is so startled that he loses control of the bike. We wobble violently side to side.

“It’s just my Gizmo!” I shout at him, gripping the cart so I won’t fly out. But it’s no use. He careens sideways. The cart pops off the front of the bike and topples over, dumping me to the ground. I roll and land several feet away from where he’s tangled in the fallen bike.

I scramble to get the Gizmo out of my pouch. “Accept,” I tell Astrid and Yaz comes on the screen.

“Hey, I’ve been looking for you!” she shouts over the raucous noise of an EntertainArena crowd. “The new Hedgy’s World is open and…”

“Yaz! Yaz!” I shout urgently. “I need your help.”

“Turn that off, for crap sake!” Basil yells. He tries to get free from the bike, but his pant leg is caught in the chain.

“What’s going on?” Yaz yells. “Are you okay?” She squints. “I can barely see you.”

Basil scuttles over, dragging the bike along with him. “They’re going to find us in ten minutes unless you get rid of that!” He tries to grab the Gizmo from me, but I swat at his hand.

“Who’s that with you?” Yaz asks as Basil wrestles me for the Gizmo, but I push him away.

“We’re in trouble. I need your help,” I plead.

“Is he hurting you?” Yaz screams. “Tell me where you are. I’ll call security!”

“No don’t!” I yell at her. “He’s with me.”

“What’s going on?” she demands.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Basil’s hand coming toward me. “Meet me out front of the EA in ten minutes,” I yell right as he slaps the Gizmo from my hand, sending it clattering to the ground.

He runs toward it and lifts his foot then hops in a circle trying to find it, shouting, “Where did it go?”

“Stop!” I dive toward the spot it landed, sweeping my hands from side to side. “Are you crazy?” My hand brushes against something solid, and I realize that my Gizmo has gone into cloaking mode. With my back to Basil, I scoop up the invisible Gizmo and whisper to Astrid to kill the signal receptor so the whole thing powers down.

Basil stomps toward the bike shouting, “Now we’re screwed. They’ll have our location in no time.”

“Yaz will help us!” I tell him.

“I can’t trust a privy.” Basil jerks the bike up from the ground and drags it toward the cart, which lies on its side, one caster still spinning. “People like you are the enemy of people like me.”

“I’m not your enemy!” I shout.

He stops what he’s doing long enough to scowl at me. “Not you. Your friend. Your family.”

“You’re wrong about Yaz!” I run toward him while slipping the silent, invisible Gizmo in my pouch. “She’ll help us. I know she will.”

“She’ll help you. Not me.” He struggles to put his contraption back together, seething like that enraged boy I accidentally cornered a few nights ago. “And even if she can’t help you, you’ll be fine because your family has the money and the connections to stick you in a fancy rehab center or pay your restitution so you stay out of prison if you get caught,” he says. “But I don’t have that. Nobody will bail me out of this. I will rot in prison, working off my restitution until I’m thirty years old if they get a hold of me.” He swings his leg over the bike. “Maybe we’re better off apart.”

“How can you say that?” I yell at him. We stare at each other. “I feel something when I’m with you.” I press one hand against my chest where it aches at the thought of being separated from him again. “It’s something I’ve never felt. No matter what my mother says, this is real to me.” I reach out and press my other hand onto the same place on his chest, and my pulse dances when I feel his heart beating fiercely. “You can’t tell me you don’t feel it, too.” I wait. Watching him. Feeling his heart beat beneath my palm. Wondering if my mother was right.

Basil sucks in a deep and ragged breath. “Of course I feel it,” he nearly whispers. “From the moment you stumbled into Flav-O-Rite.”

For a split second, the world becomes a small, perfect place. It’s just me and Basil alone in the middle of this rocky field under a few diligent stars. He leans forward and tilts his head to the right. I do the same. My eyes close. Then our lips touch. I pull back and press my fingers against my tingling mouth. Suddenly nothing seems quite as bad as it did a few seconds before.

But Basil shakes his head. “I can’t afford to get caught.”

“And I don’t want to go back to rehab,” I tell him.

“Then we have to get out of the Inner Loops.”

“My friend will help us,” I tell him. “She’s just across that highway.” I point to the lights. “She has a Smaurto, and she can take us to the border and get us through the toll.”

“I can get us through the toll,” he says.

“Yeah, right. On this thing?”

“That’s not the issue.…” he says, but I cut him off.

“Do you know how long it will take us to get there without a Smaurto?” I look over my shoulder at the lights from the dome. “We don’t have that much time.”

He turns his face to the sky and groans out of frustration.

“Basil,” I say, grabbing his arm. “Trust me. She will help us.”

He shakes his head as if he can’t believe what’s happening. But then he sighs and says, “Let’s go.”

*   *   *

We ditch the bike-cart at the edge of the EA entrance pavilion and head for the doors. Basil stares at all the hologram ads and virtual fountains. “Have you been to one of these before?” I ask as we quickly weave through all the people milling about.

“Nothing as fancy as this,” he says. “Things in my area are a little less…” he searches for the word.

“Obnoxious?” I say, pointing to the giant two-story screen over the entrance that’s playing a trailer for the new 3-D
Hedgy Adventure
movie.

“I was going for interactive, but obnoxious would work, too.”

“There’s Yaz.” I wave to my best friend in her sleeveless orange minidress and bouncy blue trainers. I start to run toward her but suddenly I stop short. “Oh, no,” I say when the massive screen above her head changes.