The Gift (9 page)

Speaking of which, Weasel Boy comes bobbing up to us. “Hey, guys!” The smug look on Byron’s face makes me want to ralph. “I
acquired some backstage passes for us! Party
on!
”

Party on?
I guess all of the times I’ve told him to stop talking like such a blowhard have paid off, but I’m not sure I love the result.

“Not interest —,” I start to say, but Janine cuts me off.

“You got
backstage passes?
You mean we’ll get to meet the
Bionics?
” screams Janine as if she’s the world’s original teenybopper. Weird—I didn’t think she had an ounce of teeny to bop in her.
She lifts Byron right off the ground with a hug.
Man, these Bionics must be really good.

“I thought this was supposed to be an open-mike thing,” I say.

“It is,” says Byron as Janine lets go of him. “But they’re doing it for free. Why are you asking? Were
you
going to get up on the stage?”

“Maybe I was.”

I start to blush, until Byron replies unctuously, “Well, I’ll get you on the list. Consider it done.”

“Forget it,” I say. I can’t give Byron the satisfaction. “Not interested. Let it go.”

“Come on, Wisty,” says Janine. “You were good back at Garfunkel’s.”

Just then another bomb crashes overhead, and dirt rains down from the ceiling. Byron doesn’t even flinch. He just turns and
stalks off toward the stage.

Janine, Emmet, and Sasha chatter with excitement. Meanwhile, I’m standing here thinking,
Gee, isn’t it rather inconvenient to be in the middle of an underground cavern in the middle of a war? Where tons of rocks
could come tumbling down and bury us alive at any minute?

None of that dispels the incredible energy of the concert scene, though. Onstage right now is a group that uses only their
mouths to create the music of a full band. Some of them sound like guitars, some like basses, some like drums, some like trumpets,
some like instruments that haven’t yet been invented.

Janine is giggling and pointing at the stage. It’s as if just being here is changing her whole demeanor. She’s being… a normal
person.

Next we watch these young guys who do incredible balletic duels. Leaping, spinning, twisting, and defying gravity.

And then there’s a mind-blowing dance troupe that does their entire show on stilts. It just keeps going.…

If there’s one thing that makes me hope we stand a chance against the New Order, it’s the knowledge that we have so much talent.

Talent—and
passion.

That’s what scares the N.O. about us, isn’t it? We’ve got it, and they don’t. We all have the gift.

Whit

WHAT HAVE I DONE?

I’m sitting on the roof of Garfunkel’s bombed-out, dilapidated department store, looking down at the journal in my lap. How
could I have ever put such a thing down on paper, much less thought it up in the first place?

This poem I’ve just written wasn’t plagiarized from Lady Myron or anyone else. I have to take full responsibility for these
sickening words.

I look off at the horizon, past the outskirts of this burned-out city and the yellowing hills. I see a lazy squadron of bombers
passing along, their contrails turning pink in the light of the setting sun. Is it that the world’s turned upside down? That
everything that was normal yesterday is extinct today? Or is this whole Celia thing just slowly driving me crazy, turning
me into some death-obsessed poet?

Just then I hear voices.

I run to the edge of the roof and look down at the bomb-pocked street. A small gang of slacker-looking dudes in black T-shirts
and jeans is laughing and walking toward the building’s entrance. I have no idea who they are, but at least we know nobody
employed by the New Order wears black jeans and Ts. Or has long hair.

Still, I have a bad feeling. Just like the one I’d told Wisty about, before she and the rest left for Stockwood.

I zip down the fire escape to see what’s going on with these guys.

Turns out they’re a band looking for the Stockwood Festival. Why a bunch of musicians wouldn’t know the whereabouts of the
biggest concert ever in Freeland seems a little suspicious.

Also suspicious is that they radiate jerkosity. They keep snickering and slapping each other on the back, saying things like
“Righteous” and “Big-time,” the kinds of expressions used by guidance counselors who are trying a little too hard.

The leader—a guy with too much gel in his hair and this horrible wannabe goatee—looks me up and down. “Are you the man here?”
he asks.

“Nobody’s really the leader here. And nobody else is here anyway.”

“They at the music festival?” he asks.

“I think it’s something like that.”

“You have directions? Like I said, we’re a band. We’re called the Nopes. Ever heard of us?”

I resist the obvious response and just shrug my shoulders. “I think it’s in a stadium in the next city, down the old interstate—about
twenty miles south of here.”

“Really? I heard it was north, dude. The
other
way.”

“That’s what they told me anyhow,” I say. “I honestly don’t know. Sorry, guys.”

“Well, we’ll come back here if you got it wrong,” he says with a threat in his voice. “Hey, can you tell me this: will Wisteria
Allgood be there? At Stockwood?”

“Wist-a-who?” I say, hoping I don’t look panicked. Even though I kind of am.

“Wisteria Allgood, the Youth Resistance leader,” he repeats.

“I think I’ve heard of her,” I say. This is getting worse and worse—the “Youth” Resistance is something you just don’t hear
us referring to ourselves as.

I shiver and look back casually at the visitors. “Hey, guys, it’s getting late, and I’m supposed to go meet some friends for
a pickup game. Want to come?”

“We’re musicians, not jocks,” he says, narrowing his eyes at me. “Come on, guys. We better get rolling so we can do some rocking.”

And, with that line—a dead giveaway that they
aren’t
“rockers”—they turn and walk away. I watch until they round the corner.

As soon as I’m pretty sure the phonies in black are gone, I take the fire-escape stairs three at a time. Up in my makeshift
room, I flip open my journal to take another look at
the poem I’d written earlier. And, as if by some otherworldly magic, I see a short message instead.

It packs quite a punch.

GO TO YOUR SISTER. SHE NEEDS YOU. TRUST NO STRANGERS.

It’s written in familiar handwriting. Like
my father’s
handwriting.

And then, when I blink, it’s gone.

I flip madly through the journal, hoping to find it again to convince myself I hadn’t hallucinated, but instead I come across
my most recent poem.

Another wave of panic comes over me.

What on earth made me write a six-page poem about the
death of my sister?

Wisty

I HAVE TO ADMIT, I nearly lose my nerve, just watching the level of talent that’s been assembled onstage. I also know that this crowd can
be brutal if they don’t like your music.

Worse, I almost say thank you to Byron for getting us passes so that we can watch the acts from back here. We’re so close
we can see droplets of sweat, and the way a singer’s mouth forms around a particular word, and the speed of a guitarist’s
fingers.

And then the Bionics are up.

Okay,
now
I understand Janine’s personality switcheroo. They’re by far the hottest band
ever
. How do I know? Because seeing their sweat is actually a turn-
on
and not a turnoff. That has never happened to me before. Sweat usually equals stinky Whit-hug after a track meet.

Everything is different with these musicians. It’s as if
they’re on a whole other plane from everybody else. The singer-bassist, the guitarist, and the drummer—who I consider the
cutest of the three (though it’s not like I’d say no if any of them asked me out)—brush by me on their way to the stage. I
can practically taste their rock-star auras, their
magic.

They take up their instruments as the hunky lead singer says a generous and humble thank you to the adoring crowd—and I find
myself actually squealing with Janine. No wonder the Bionics are banned by the N.O.

But then—
What the heck? How could —?

Suddenly an enormous poster of The One Who Is The One is rising up behind the band.

I know it’s just a poster, but I’m totally creeped out, seeing him looming over the stage like that.

The audience hushes, too. Just a picture of that evil monster is enough to throw a pall over the concert hall.

But then—totally brilliant—the band strikes the first chord of their first song, and the poster catches fire in the lower-left
corner. The whole thing quickly goes up in flames as the underground arena explodes in the most unbelievable screams and cheers.

I don’t know how to explain it—I mean, I know I can’t do what they do, but I’m not intimidated; I’m
inspired.

And it’s a good thing, too, because their set—eight great songs—seems to go by in a flash. And then it’s just like the open-mike
list says—next up is a little-
known wonder hailing from… Garfunkel’s department store?

“
Wisteria Rose Allgood!
Give it up for her!”

The Bionics drummer actually winks at me as he walks by. And, at least in part to keep my face from exploding into a fierce
blush, I dash out onto the stage.

Wisty

“UMM, HI, EVERYBODY,” I manage to say after a few seconds in which I feel totally flash-frozen. What did I just get myself into?

The brilliant spotlights and—even more blinding—the glare of hundreds, make that thousands, of pairs of eyes… looking right
at me.

This is definitely a little more than I was expecting or prepared for. It’s definitely a little frightening… but it’s also
exhilarating. I feel a strange connection to all these people. We’re in this together, right? It’s us against the big bad
N.O. They’ve got the guns, but we’ve got the numbers.

“How ’bout those Bionics, huh?” I ask lamely, but they reward me with a massive cheer anyway. Cool. I guess they’re in a generous
mood.

“So I’m going to sing a couple of songs,” I say, trying to slow my speech down and not blurt or stutter. “But first I just
want to remind you all of one important thing. You
know how we’re kind of outnumbered outside of Freeland?”

Massive
boo.

“And you know how they’ve taken away so many of us? Just kids, even little babies. They have control of the cities. They have
the country. They have the planes. They have the tanks.”

Right then, almost as if on cue, the chasm shakes and shudders from another overhead bomb blast.

More massive boos.

“But what they don’t have is our spirit. That… they
cannot
have!”

Massive cheers.

“And not only that but—as a kid I met in one of their horrible prisons reminded me—
they’re afraid of us.
That’s why they’re hunting us. That’s why they stage their plots and propaganda against us. That’s why they bomb —”