Away We Go (20 page)

Outside Wellness, I flip my phone open and group-text my newsies:
minor emergency. meet you inside the chapel?

I look up and there's Jane, striding through the sliding glass doors.

“My blood work is fine,” she says, by way of introduction. “But if I go into cardiac arrest, you'll have to give me CPR. Can you handle that, Orientation Leader?”

I laugh. “I guess we'll see.”

There is a horde of protesting students on the chapel lawn,
large even by Westing standards. Jane and I push through campus security and local police. There are several more police cruisers parked on the grass by the chapel. Inside, news crews have set themselves up near the pulpit at the front, tripods deployed, cameras flashing. Reminds you how big a deal Westing is, how much taxpayer money is going into this experiment, this pilot project of the government's. We're all worth tens of thousands of dollars. A reassuring thought, to have your life valued so highly.

Everywhere I turn, students, faculty, administrators. So many people. Countless signs waving in the air.

“Spread your wings and F.L.Y.”

“We Will Be FREE.”

“Westing is a CULT. Don't drink the Kool-Aid.”

“‘Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.'—Benjamin Franklin.”

The administration likes to stress that a minority of the student body is associated with F.L.Y.; strictly speaking, they're not lying. Fifty-one percent of the students in the hall aren't waving a damn thing.

At the pulpit, the director of Westing and a number of her assistants fiddle with the microphone, filling the stuffy air with unpleasant scratchy noises. My stomach grumbles. At lunch I didn't have much of an appetite. Now I'm packed in here with a legion of newsies, brought in to replace us. I am tired and hungry and there's no sign of the rest of my kids.

“Sorry we have to sit so far in the back because of me,” Jane says, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “I can imagine how much you were looking forward to this.”

“Highlight of my year,” I say. “How you feeling?”

“Alive, for now.” She grimaces, as if this is a problem she's been meaning to resolve.

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah.” I know I should say more. Make another joke. Say something amusing. Clap her on the shoulder. Are guys allowed to clap girls on the shoulder? What would Zach do?

The director saves me from the pressure of being a decent human being.

She adjusts the microphone one last time, and begins:

“By now you've all heard of the incident that took place late last night, at about two-thirty in the morning, in which a number of students from a student organization named the Front for the Liberation of Youths in Recovery attempted to rush the main gate. To put an end to all rumors and speculation, let me say this. The students were caught on camera as they approached the gate. Campus security notified local law enforcement personnel because of the size of the group. As a result of rash and foolhardy actions taken by both sides, a confrontation ensued. Two students were fatally wounded, and an officer is currently at a nearby medical center, where he is being treated for head injuries.”

The place is so quiet I can hear Jane breathing beside me.

Only two words, but difficult to process.

Fatally.

Wounded.

“What happened last night is a tragedy not only for those directly affected, but for all of us who have to dwell in the aftermath, and whose solemn duty it is to persevere in the face of renewed criticism of our cause. The question we keep coming back to is: Why are we here? It all circles back to that. Even here, on this very campus, we have heard similar objections and complaints, from teachers and students alike. Why bother with grades and papers, final exams and research projects, art exhibitions and dance recitals? To what end? What good is a student's transcript if we know she will never truly leave
Westing? Never apply for an internship, never go to college, never get a job?

“After all, though we do not speak of it, we all know it. The only place students go after Westing is away to hospice care, to a tertiary care facility twenty minutes' drive from the school, where all our students go when we can no longer provide for them here. But while you are here, we hoped to give you some small fraction of normalcy, of the life you might've lived had you not been infected. While you are here, we hoped you might read Plath and Steinbeck late into the night, study the history of the Qing Dynasty, discover a passion for the workings of the American political system. We hoped you might fall in love with the beauty of a mathematical proof, be filled with wonder at using a telescope to look back in time. We believe education has a human value, is a human right. It has always been our mission to extend that right to you, and in time, to all youths in recovery.

“But we need your help. You must work. You must produce. We believe there are Michelangelos and Sapphos here. Prove us right. Stay within these walls. If not for yourselves, then for all those afflicted youths less fortunate than you, so that they might have a chance to live the lives you live right now.”

She pauses to take a sip from a cup offered to her by one of her aides. “I apologize to our newest cohort of students for such a grave introduction to Westing. But given the circumstances . . .” Clearing her throat, she says, “In spite of the difficulties and in the face of skepticism from legislators and media alike, Westing has prospered. You are its future. You are its stewards and its keepers, and it, in turn, will come to be your home. Welcome. Remember not everyone has such a home. Remember all those students of Westing who are no longer with us—especially the two misguided youths we lost last night: Troy Davis Holland and Martin Hugo
Singer. Hold those names in your memories and do not follow in their footsteps, for what happened to them was needless. A true waste. But most of all—most of all, remember why you are here.”

For a few long seconds, nobody in the chapel says a word.

Then a chorus of voices erupts:

“What did you really do to Marty and Troy?”

“The administration lies!”

“We won't go to your tertiary death camps!”

“Pass the Kool-Aid!”

I can't breathe. I know I
should
but it's a surprisingly difficult task, the working of my lungs, the contraction and expansion of my chest. Jane asks me something unintelligible, and I do not respond.

Dozens of kids rise from their seats to yell, “Pass the Kool-Aid!” until it grows into a chant.

Cameras flick and flash from every direction.

All I can think about is his middle name was Hugo.

I didn't even know.

Maybe the director is lying.

Maybe Marty escaped into the fields and trees and roofs lit beyond Westing's walls.

It's a story that I want desperately to believe in.

There is a blond-haired girl with a mole on her neck sitting directly in front of me.

I throw up in her hair.

LIFE IS [INSERT METAPHOR HERE]

There are no celebratory convocation day fireworks tonight.

I sneak onto the library roof and dangle my feet over the edge.

I don't jump.

I have about a million texts and missed messages, but there's only one I care about.

hey kid. i herd. cant believe it. drop by?

It's very late when I take him up on his offer. The corridor outside his room is eerie and dark, but I hear someone singing from a nearby room, about how happiness is a state of mind. I knock softly on his door three times. I'm half hoping he's asleep by now, that he won't hear, because I need him, and I need to stop needing him, but the door swings open, and he's there, dark brown hair in his eyes, his chest—inches away—heaving. He sniffs, wipes at his face with the back of his hand. He's in his boxers.

“Noah!” he says, in a hoarse voice. “Come in. Come in. You look extravagantly awful. Great to see you. Man, you look awful.”

I shut the door behind me.

He opens his arms to give me a hug—we both hesitate, because he's half naked. But then we go for it. Our bodies fit together so easily and his heart thumps against my chest. His hand brushes the top of my head gently, and I close my eyes, press my face into his neck.

He pulls away, places a hand on my shoulder. His splash-colored eyes blink. “You're crying,” he says. He's breathing hard. He can't seem to catch his breath.

I reach into my pocket and withdraw a package of Skittles I got from the basement vending machines. “Please.”

“God,” he says, pained. He pulls on a shirt, a pair of shorts. He takes the package gently from me and places it on the table while I stand near the door like an idiot.

Why did I come here?

“I'm sorry,” I say. I can't bring myself to say what I'm sorry for, so I settle on, “It's late.”

He sits down on his bed, pats the spot next to him.

I sit down so our legs are touching.

“I was on the library roof,” I say, as if that will clarify the matter.

“I'm sorry, Noah.”

I nod. I want to tell Zach what some kids are saying. That the police shot Marty in the back. Why would they shoot him in the back? But instead, I say, “Fireworks got cancelled this year.”

“I know, I
know,
” he whispers.

Out in the hall someone runs past the room, their steps echoing.

Zach smiles without actually looking at me. “People here don't sleep.”

I don't respond.

My cheeks are wet.

Does he notice? Of course he does.

And then he wraps his arms around me and I wrap my arms around him. We lean back together, and I bang my ear on the headboard. His shirt reads
Biology is my life.
I press my face into
Biology.

“I'm still awkward,” I mumble into the fabric.

“It didn't escape my notice,” he says. “You're all bones. All scaffolding.”

“He took the Polo key,” I say, ignoring the drama joke. “I looked for it and it's gone. But he should've known the ladders wouldn't be there. I mean, he was with us. That's what I don't get.”

Zach speaks haltingly, like he's afraid to contradict me. “It's hard to say,” he says, his voice somewhere above my head.

“If Melanie hadn't—that night—he and F.L.Y. wouldn't have had to rush the main gate. He should've known. That's what I don't get.”

“He stood up there a long time,” Zach says.

“Everyone saying different things. That he got shot. That he escaped.”

“What would you
want
to have happened?” he asks. He pulls a blanket over us, over our heads. “Now if we only had some Skittles,” he adds.

I want to laugh and I want to cry.

I reach out from under the blanket, grab the packet from the table, then settle back under. It's dark and I can't see, but I find his hands, slip the package into them. I hear the tear, feel the candy spill over us. We pop them in our mouths and I listen to him chew.

“Make up a story, kid, any story you want,” he says through a mouthful. “The best story you can possibly think of.”

“Okay,” I say. “
Okay.
What about PPV is a biological weapon that accidentally got released into the general population. Marty found out, organized a rebellion. Of course they had to make it look like they got him.”

“Of course,” Zach says. “Like, the electorate would
totally
hold the government responsible for wiping out American children instead of North Korean ones.”

“Actually, that's the thing. It was a biological weapon designed to be used against centipedes and millipedes.”

“Well, I can at least see where they were coming from with that,” Zach says.

“Marty's in Hawaii now, drinking out of a coconut and generally having a great time.”

“But
hey,
here's one thing you didn't answer,” he says. “Why did he take the key?”

“To remember us by,” I say immediately. “He knew they would've moved the ladders. It wasn't about the ladders or the shed. He just wanted
something.
The key's a metaphor, of course. But for what I don't know.”

“More metaphors,” Zach continues, fitting another one into my mouth. “Skittles, bear wrestling . . .

“Have you noticed,” Zach says, “We only ever speak in metaphors, when we're absolutely bent on saying something meaningful? God, it's so annoying.

“Like—life is an ocean and we're in a paddleboat. Paddling,” he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice.

“Because that's what paddleboats are for,” I say.

“
Exactly,
kid. Or
hey,
I got another,” he says. “Life is one of those balloons you get when you're six and let go of and watch get smaller and smaller—”

“Until it gets caught in a tree.”

“Exactly.”

“Life is”—I pause, thinking—“eating at the cafeteria. Once a year they serve something decent but the rest of the time all you get is the same shit over and over again.”

He laughs. “Nah, I got it. Life is a mirage in a desert.”

“That's so deep, Zach. It's so deep it's like a lake you can't see the bottom of.”

“Are you—are you using a metaphor to rip on my metaphor?”

I shake my head. “I wouldn't do that.”

If I can rip metaphorically on his metaphors, why should anything else matter? What more do you need? I want to ask him that, but I can't.

I hold him tighter, and he gasps.

“I'm sorry,” I say immediately.

But his body has gone rigid.

I throw the blanket off us.

His face is white, sweaty. He is covered in Skittles.

“I get—
spasms,
” he says, and closes his eyes. “I have painkillers in my closet. Top shelf.”

I grab the pills, and he sits up, downs a couple with a long sip from a water bottle. He rests his head against the headboard and sighs.

The pills are contraband, which means he's in a lot of pain and he doesn't want the doctors at Wellness to know.

“I feel so
weak,
” he says. His eyelids grow heavy, flutter. “How long is it, before Apep comes?”

“Eleven days,” I say.

“They'll send a team up there into space to blow it apart,” he says. “They have to. It's probably this top-secret mission. Like in this movie I watched . . .”

“It'll probably miss.”

“They have to,” he says. His eyes flutter again, then close, and just like that he's asleep. I listen to him snore and try to muster the will to go home to an apartment without Marty.

An Apology to Our Users

Here at AwayWeGo, we've always set the bar for customer service sky-high because we've always known that our users are so much more than customers. In partnership with Westing Academy, it has been our deepest privilege to help Westing students foster meaningful connections with one another and their families outside, and it is our deepest hope that our efforts might serve as a model for broader implementation within the National Recovery Program.

It was with these sky-high expectations that we launched our AwayWeKnow news module two years ago. This initiative was integral to our team's evolving vision of what a social network could be. If AwayWeGo has always served to promote connectivity and understanding between Westing students, it seemed only natural to extend that connectivity and understanding between students and the wider world.

Since the beginning of our AwayWeKnow initiative, however, it has always been our policy not to report on the National Recovery Program, so as not to compromise the political neutrality of the Westing experiment, and because we believed wholeheartedly in Westing's vision of giving each and every student a chance at a normal life, unbesieged by fear and worry. But in light of yesterday's tragedy, we would like to acknowledge that this lack of reporting may have contributed to a
climate of apprehension and misperception and mistrust. As the only news provider for Westing students, we have a duty to educate our readers, and it is a duty we failed to uphold. For this, we owe users our deepest apologies.

Everything we do at AwayWeGo is aimed at allowing Westing students and families to navigate the National Recovery Program in the most humane way possible. As such, we are reinventing the AwayWeKnow user experience as we speak. We know users expect the world from us, and we are going to work night and day to deliver it.

Lane Cusack, CEO of AwayWeGo