No Easy Way Out (8 page)

“I never heard about that.”

“I guess she forgot to tell people,” Lexi said, walking toward the door, opening it for the guard. “I’ll be back here every night after Lights Out.” She hoped Marco got her message—
I’m here if you want to hang out
. However he’d gotten in here, she felt pretty sure he could get in again.

The guard took the door and held it open for her. Lexi walked through, wishing she could have said good-bye. But really, where was Marco going to go? They were trapped in here. She would see him again. The thought brought a smile to her lips.

Maddie was still awake when Lexi returned to the cot. “Where have you been? I’m wired and there’s nothing to do.”

“I found a boy in the stockroom,” Lexi said, unable to keep it to herself. She’d met a
boy
.

Maddie was all ears at the mention of boys. “Are you telling me there’s a party in the stockroom and you are just letting me in on it now?”

“
A
boy, singular.” Lexi stretched out on the cot, hands behind her head. “And he wasn’t your type.”

“At this point,” Maddie mumbled, flopping back on her pillow, “any boy is my type.”

“Well, he’s gone now. And we just talked.”

“What a waste.”

It hadn’t been a waste. Lexi would find him again. He was her people. She’d finally found her people.

• • •

Marco waited five minutes before crawling out from under the desk. He crept to the door and cracked it open. With only the one lit bulb, it was hard to know if the coast was clear, but he needed to get out of there, so he just ran for it.

“I knew she wasn’t alone in there.” The guard emerged from the shadows.

Before Marco had a chance to utter a syllable, the guy fired the Taser and a jolt like fire in the blood sent Marco into a swirl of darkness.

L
exi had just finished brushing her teeth when an announcement beckoned her to the mall offices.

Maddie, who stood at the next sink, splashed water at her. “Uh-oh,” she said, miming concern, “did Mommy Dearest find out about your new boyfriend?”

Lexi froze.
Supercrapafragilistic
.

“Hello, I’m joking,” Maddie said, drying her hands on her shirt. “Breathe.”

Lexi took a breath. “My mom and I have issues.” Like that began to cover the minefield that was Lexi’s relationship with the Senator.

“Join the club,” Maddie said. “See you at break-slop?”

Lexi groaned thinking of her first freeze-dried slurry meal. “I guess.”

She had to ask where exactly the mall offices were, but once inside, she knew where her mother’s office was located. The Senator’s screaming voice emanated from the room at the end of the hall.

“I said I did not want a police state!” she barked. “We need to develop trust and you have your men out Tasering every breathing body they find!”

A guy who looked to have gorged too often on the potato chips sat opposite her mother. His arms were crossed over his broad chest and his face looked like a cartoon of a face, all round and red with beady eyes under bushy brows. He cleared his throat before responding.

“You have a rat problem, Senator,” he grumbled. “And you have to put rats in cages.”

“They’re kids, Hank,” her mother said, “not rodents. I want them to fall into line and your policy is not helping with that goal.”

Hank put his hands on his thighs and pushed himself to standing. “It’s your call,” he said, “but you invite rats to dinner, you can’t complain when they sh—” He noticed Lexi in the doorway. “. . . crap all over the carpet.”

The Senator waved Lexi toward her. Lexi obliged, and even let her mother kiss the side of her head. “Good morning, sweetheart,” Dotty said, her voice sounding tired. Her mother’s eyes looked bruised.
When was the last time she got any sleep?

“You called for me?” Lexi said.

“I need you to go with Hank to check in all the young people his team collected last night.” The Senator handed Lexi a laptop bag. “Your father hasn’t trained anyone on the system yet and he can’t type as fast with only the one arm.”

Lexi glanced at Hank. He was giving her the once-over too, and did not look that impressed. Lexi straightened herself and put on her serious face.

“Sure,” she said, “no problem.”

“She needs clothes,” Hank said. “That shirt is see-through.”

Lexi hugged the laptop to her chest.
If the shirt is see-through, that means the guy last night might have seen . . .
How many times in one week can you wish yourself deleted from the universe?

“Here,” Dotty said, handing Lexi a hoodie. “Put this on and get going.”

Lexi kissed her mother, not caring that this was the first time she’d done so in weeks—she was that grateful for the sweatshirt. She tugged it on, zipped it up, and pushed past Hank into the hallway.

• • •

Marco was kicked awake by a passing boot. He coughed, then fished a splinter of wood from his mouth—how that had gotten in there, he did not want to know. Patting down his clothing, he found that his person was unmolested. More importantly, the universal card key was still safe in his pocket. Perhaps that was the best he could hope for considering with whom he’d been sharing a cell.

He’d spent a miserable night in the old med center/PaperClips surrounded by just the sorts of people you’d expect to find in the drunk tank of a local lockup. There were a few older guys, most looking wary of their fellow inmates, but by far the majority of this crowd was teens and college-aged kids, grouped according to clothing type: goths in black pleather, jocks in jerseys, would-be ganstas in baggy shorts with ’do rags on their heads. All kids Marco would have hated had they met at school—he could tell just by the looks they gave him.

He curled his knees in and sat pressed against the wall. He figured if he made himself small, he’d stay off people’s radar. The room felt like the Thunderdome—they’d all entered, but only one would leave.

If this was what he’d face in the service halls every night, he needed to rethink his entire plan. He needed Mike with him at all times to defend against these dickheads. But how to convince paranoid Mike to leave his nice little bunker in the garage?

“Get up, people!”

The heavyset guy from yesterday in the senator’s office pushed through the double doors from the stockroom. Behind him were two guards in full riot gear and the senator’s kid.
Lexi.

“I am chief of security Hank Goldman. I need to confirm that all of you are registered, and then escort you in groups back to your Home Stores for assignments.” He pointed a finger at the exterior wall. “Get your backs against the glass and we can start this process.”

“Or what?” some idiot shouted.

“I will personally beat the living crap out of any troublemakers.”

As if hoping to serve as an example, two goth kids rushed the four of them. Hank smacked the first in the chest with a nightstick, then smacked the second in the back of the head with it on the downswing.

“Any more of you assholes want to test my resolve?”

Apparently not. Everyone shuffled toward the wall and formed a single-file line. The goth kids were left unconscious on the cement. Marco stepped over them as he approached the table.

“Marco Carvajal,” he said, looking purposefully at the daughter.

Lexi glanced up, then back at the screen. She seemed to be blushing. Did she regret sharing the M&M’S?

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“It’s not your fault I got nabbed.” She seemed genuinely ashamed. Could he use this guilt to some advantage? Perhaps she could be useful in solving his Mike problem. Perhaps she could feed ideas to her mother . . .
Check and mate.

“You’re already registered,” Lexi said, distracted. Then she swallowed. “I still feel bad you ended up in here”—she nodded her head at the line—“with
them.
”

“Oh, these gentlemen were charming bunkmates,” he said. Marco tried to glance over the top of the computer to see his file. Just what did Lexi know about him?

“Any of them you want me to send to bathroom cleaning duty?” Lexi waggled her eyebrows, then blushed deeper, as if horrified by her own eyebrows.

Hank stepped forward. “Is there a problem with this one?”

Lexi closed the laptop. “Nope, everything’s fine. Next!”

Marco gave her a two-finger salute and joined the guard who was waiting to lead him back to the Lord & Taylor. He hadn’t gotten a peek at his file, but he doubted the senator would put their little deal on the books. It was safe to assume Lexi was in the dark. He could play her like a goddamn n00b.

• • •

Shay appreciated the regimented schedule the new mall order imposed on her. If every fifteen minutes there was another announcement telling her to use the facilities before breakfast, or to line up for breakfast, or to finish breakfast so that she could line up to receive her work assignment, there was little time in between to dwell on the fact that she could not scrape the image of Nani’s blackened, bloodshot face stuck through with tubes off the inside of her brain.

There were other distractions too, like the fact that her frontier-woman nightshirt itched like a scab and she had to pretend with every bite that she was eating oatmeal and not the “Southwestern Omelet” the guard claimed he was scooping onto her plate. There were all the people jostling for places to sit around the first-floor courtyards, and all those germ-ridden bodies made her break out in cold sweats. So much to worry about. She had barely enough time to obsess over her misery.

But what was she so miserable about? She was one of the
survivors
. Everyone around her was muttering about this. They had survived. Life was a gift. Each day was so precious. Shay tried to agree with them when they looked at her, bobbed her head as was expected, said,
Yes, a blessing,
when it looked like they needed more. She ate her “Southwestern Omelet” because that’s what you did when you were alive: eat, breathe, sleep, wake.

She snaked through the line toward the registration table at the entrance of the JCPenney. There were security guards everywhere. A man who was caught without his mask was yelled at until he tugged it on. Two teens caught holding hands were pulled apart and reminded of the ban on non-necessary touching. Was this really living?

“Name?” the guard said when she reached the table. He now had a laptop instead of a clipboard and sheet of paper.

“Shaila Dixit,” Shay mumbled.

“Spell that, please,” the guy said.

She gave him the letter-by-letter, and he informed her that she’d been assigned to supervise at the school, which had once been Baxter’s Books.

“Supervise?” Shay was confused. She was a student herself.

“Everyone over the age of fourteen gets a job,” he said. “There won’t be new clothes until lunch, so just head up to Baxter’s now.”

Shay did as she was told. A few of the escalators were back online, so she only had to tromp up one flight of steps to reach the third floor. There was a guard standing at the information desk to Baxter’s.

“Student or teacher?” he asked.

Shay wondered whether the fact that he couldn’t tell spelled doom for her tenure at the school. “Teacher,” she replied.

“Movies.” The guard nodded toward the CD and DVD section of the store.

Inside the walled-off area were some other kids around her age, but most people there looked like grandparents. One harried-looking woman with blond hair and cat’s-eye glasses stood in a corner sifting papers from a stack in her arms into piles. Instinctively, Shay wandered over to her.

“Can I help?”

The woman glanced up. “Yes!” she gasped, dumping a load of paper into Shay’s arms. “I’m Alison Chase, director of this whole school experiment.”

“Experiment?”

“God knows if this thing is going to work,” Alison muttered, sweeping a stray lock behind her ear.

She asked Shay to finish collating the stack, then shuffled over to where she’d piled books into different groups. Perhaps due to Shay’s example, some other people approached her and offered to help sort the books. A tiny flicker of warmth sprouted in Shay’s chest. She had done something good.

Just as Shay sorted the last page into its pile, Alison clapped her hands for everyone’s attention. She introduced herself, then began explaining what they were all doing there.

“I was asked by the senator to help organize a school for the young children with us here in the mall. I am the head of a private elementary school, and thus have some experience with this kind of thing. Still, we are operating by the seat of our pants. I am going to assign you into teams of two, and give each team five to ten children.” She pointed to Shay. “This young woman is standing next to the packets I’ve put together for each team. Hopefully the instructions contained therein will help you manage your charges. Then again, I wrote it in the wee hours last night, so no guarantees.”

Some people laughed in response. Shay glanced at the pages, becoming more nervous with the woman’s every word. Who thought it was a good idea to put her in charge of anyone, let alone
children
?

Alison answered her question as if reading her mind. “You were all selected for this job based on what little we know about you—either you have a child or younger sibling here in the mall with you, or you indicated that you were a teacher, camp counselor, or babysitter at some point in your registration. Our main job is to keep the children happy. Any ideas you have for how to accomplish this, please bring them to me. I am open to any suggestions. We basically have the entire mall at our disposal.

“I figure that the older children might respond to some sort of academics, so I’ve put the teachers and parents in charge of them. For the younger kids, I planned that the teams would take them to the food court, which needs to be cleared of tables and chairs. We can use it as a big field, and we have the two rides that the kids can play on.

“Unfortunately, this is as far as I’ve gotten with the planning. Again, please come to me with any suggestions. I really appreciate your helping to take care of these kids.”

She began to read off the teams. Shay picked up a packet of paper and flipped through the paragraphs. The instructions seemed highly vague.

“Shaila Dixit and Kristian Olivier. Five-year-old Group C.”

Five-year-olds? What was she supposed to do with a five-year-old? Did they use diapers? She hadn’t changed a diaper . . . ever.

A guy who appeared to be around twenty-five walked toward her. “Hi, I’m Kris,” he said, holding out a hand.

“Shay,” she said, handing him the papers. “I think you should be in charge.”

“Because of my evident charm and wit? Or was it my spectacular outfit that gave my leadership credentials away?” He tugged on his T-shirt, which featured Tweety Bird giving the finger.

Shay smiled despite herself. “Because anyone is better than me.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he said. “I mean, I’m an actor-type. Known shady element of society.”

“You’re an actor?” Shay found herself interested—she hadn’t thought anything would be interesting ever again. “I was Titania in my old school’s production of
A
Midsummer Night’s Dream
.”

“You’ve been a fairy queen and claim to have no leadership skills? Oh, modesty. For shame!” He swept a hand against his forehead. Then he bowed deeply. “Way back in high school, I played that ‘merry wanderer of the night’ Puck, my lady.”

Shay felt giddy. She tried to recall a single line from the play, from anything, from Tagore even, and failed. “So what makes you a good teacher?”

“I run an after-school theater program at Alison’s school. You know, after all-day auditions and answering all the fan mail and before I escape to Broadway for curtain call, etcetera, etcetera.” He rolled his hand and fake yawned.

“And the Tony goes to . . .” Shay said.

“You’re too kind.” Kris kissed the air to his invisible fans.