Promised (36 page)

“My spike?”

“You know. For this compassionate little outreach of yours.” He did a double jerk of his thumb, like a hitchhiker, to indicate the cameras.

It took me a sec to follow his logic from the cameras to the viewers to a likely spike in my blip rank. “You think that's why I'm talking to you?” I asked. “For my blip rank?”

“The fifty cuts are tonight,” he said. “Students will be pulling stunts all day today to get their blip ranks higher. It happens every year. It's pathetically predictable, actually, especially among the doomed.”

I dropped my rock and brushed my hands. “Actually, ass-wipe, I just wanted to be sure you were okay,” I said. “My mistake.” I turned and started toward the quad.

His voice came after me. “Your name would be?”

“Seriously?” I paused to stare back at him and braced a fist on my hip. “That's an apology?”

He lowered his ice pack again. He didn't bother to smile and I didn't either. Then he gave the slightest shrug.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “It hasn't been my best morning. I'm Linus Pitts.”

I frowned, considering him, and then I took a couple steps nearer again. “Rosie Sinclair,” I said.

“We meet at last.”

His voice was so deadpan I couldn't quite tell if he was being ironic. That was when I noticed something really was wrong with his eye. I came nearer to inspect him. The pupil was a murky color instead of clear black.

“Can you see all right?” I asked.

“As it happens, I can't. I think there's blood in my eye.”

“Let me see.” I looked closer while Linus aimed his eyeballs at me. It looked like red liquid had spilled inside his left pupil. I didn't know that was possible. “Shouldn't you get that checked?”

“Probably.”

“Like now?” I said.

He closed one eye slowly, and then the other. “This happened to me once before. It'll clear in a few days.”

I laughed. “So you're half-blind and it's no big deal?”

“I'm not keen on doctors.”

“Neither am I, but I like to be able to
see.
”

“Like I said. It'll clear.”

With a beeping noise, the ice cream truck backed up from the dining hall next door and drove away.

“How long have you worked here?” I asked.

“Me? Three years.”

“That's a lot of dishes,” I said.

“What makes you think I only wash dishes? I do a lot of prep, too.”

He resettled the ice pack against his bad eye and shifted so he could see me with the other.

“Where's your accent from?” I asked.

“I'm Welsh, by way of St. Louis.”

“Why aren't you in school yourself?”

“Because I quit,” he said.

“To work kitchen prep?”

His eyebrows lifted. “You're a regular charmer. You know that?”

“Sorry,” I said. “There's nothing wrong with kitchen prep. I'm just wondering.”

“How do you feel about getting cut tonight?” he asked. He pushed off from the giant spool and ran a hand down his apron, catching his thumb where the string wrapped around to the front.

“I said I was sorry. You don't have to be vindictive.”

He let out a laugh. “Not bad, Sinclair. You almost make me want to watch the show.”

“You don't?” I asked. “Seriously? But you work here.”

“Exactly. It's too much of a good thing. Franny likes to run it in the kitchen, and I always work facing the other direction if I can help it.”

I couldn't believe it. He worked on the staff of one of the most popular reality shows of all time, and he didn't watch it. Actually, that was pretty interesting. “Cool,” I said.

“Tell me something,” he said. He lowered the ice pack and turned it in his fingers. “All that compulsory sleep every night. What's that feel like?”

“It's a little weird,” I said. I glanced around to see a mic button on the top of the giant spool. Every inch of this place was wired for sound. I leaned back against the spool in the place where he had been, and tugged idly at my necklace.

“Do you dream a lot?” Linus asked. “Can you actually feel yourself getting more creative?”

“Not really.”

“That's the theory, though, right?” he asked.

It was. One of the principles of the school was that our creativity was increased by our sleep because it cemented the learning from the day. It puzzled me, though, why we needed a full twelve hours. I wondered if Linus knew anything about what happened at the school at night.

“I didn't know it was such a tough question,” he said. He had a way of smiling with his eyes narrowed in concentration, like he was serious even more than he was happy. I found it oddly inviting.

“It's weird,” I said. “I miss the night. I miss who I am in the night.”

“That's not so weird,” he said. “Go on.”

“I don't dream at all anymore, either.” I glanced out at the sheep again. “I miss that, a lot. I also miss feeling like I'm asleep. I
know
I'm asleep. I know the time goes by because when I wake up, it's daylight again. But I don't
feel
like I'm sleeping here, you know?”

“That sort of makes sense,” Linus said.

It was hard to explain what I didn't fully understand myself. I put the toes of my boots together and examined them. “I think it's connected to the cameras. I feel like I'm always on,” I said. “Like they've pushed a button and I'm always on. Night is completely skipped. When I wake up, I'm continuing directly from the evening before when I climbed in my sleep shell. Like I haven't had a break. Like I've been cheated.” That was it. I felt cheated. I wasn't simply asleep. Someone was stealing my sleep
and
my privacy from me, until I existed only for the show. “It's like being robbed.”

“That can't be good,” he said.

I did the double thumb jerk to indicate the cameras. “I'm not sure I'm supposed to talk about this.”

He smiled. “You can talk about anything. People say negative things about Forge all the time. You're only being honest.”

I felt a tingle of apprehension. “It feels like a mistake.”

“It adds authenticity. Viewers love that,” he said. “Besides, if you dislike it so much, you should be glad to be going home.”

“Don't say that!” I said, alarmed.

“Why not?”

“I want to stay here so badly, it hurts,” I said. “It'll kill me if I have to go, but every time I look at my blip rank, it's worse.”

“So you're a pessimist,” Linus said. “How refreshing.”

I laughed and half squirmed at the same time. “Are you doing this on purpose? Tormenting me?”

“Not at all,” he said. “Why do you want to stay? You want to be a big star? Is that it?”

I couldn't possibly explain this hungry thing inside me. I needed to make films, real films about real people. It was the one way I knew, the one, complete way to get to the truth and show what really mattered. If I had to go back to Doli now, without an education, realistically I'd end up working at McLellens' Pot Bar and Sundries, or at the prison school like Ma. I'd be dead my whole life.

“Have you ever heard of Doli, Arizona?” I asked.

“No. Should I have?”

“We're the poorest zip code in the country. Half the people don't have jobs. My school is a farce and I'm on the pre-prison track there. It's teaching me nothing, let alone anything about film,” I said. “And don't ask me why we don't leave Doli. It's still my home.”

“I didn't ask you,” he said quietly. He leaned a hand on the wooden spool. “You can't seriously be here for the education.”

“Crazy, huh?”

He drummed his fingers for a second. “What's your blip rank?”

I lifted my gaze toward the horizon. “Last I checked, it was ninety-five.”

“That's quite lousy.”

“Exactly.” I took a deep breath and tried to smile. “The worst is going to be facing my little sister. She believed in me so hard.”

He sloshed the ice pack in his hand and then chucked it with a clank into a garbage can. “You're good. I'll give you that,” he said.

I wasn't sure what he meant. Linus took a step backward and waved up at the tower where the big cameras were. An old guy with a mustache looked around from the back of one.

“Hey, Otis! How's it going?” Linus said, and waved again.

“Where are my smokes?” the old guy called down.

“I'll bring them at lunch!” Linus yelled back.

Otis vanished again.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Otis is a sharp old bastard,” Linus said. “You want to get him on your side.”

“You can't just flag down the camera guy,” I said.

Linus slid a hand in his back pocket. “Why not? Get this, Sinclair,” he said. “I may not watch
The Forge Show
anymore, but I get how it works. It's a
show.
You're a performer on a TV show. That's what matters. Not your fancy education part of it. Your entire value is measured by how popular you are to the viewers.”

“You mean for the banner ads,” I said.

“You won't even be
eligible
for a banner ad unless you pass the fifty cuts,” Linus said. “You have to think about the audience every minute between now and five o'clock. You have to plan for them and calculate their reactions. You need a strategy.”

I straightened away from the spool. “Just because you work here doesn't mean you know what it's like from my side. I've
been
thinking about the cameras. I've followed all the rules, but it doesn't work for me. I can't explain it. I never feel like myself here.”

“You don't understand,” Linus said. “Forget the
cameras.
Think about the
people watching.
That's the difference. The
people
out there care about you, or they would if they felt like they knew the real you.” Linus ran a hand back through his hair. “Look. I can help you. I do know what works here.”

“And what's that?”

“Honesty. Integrity.”

I laughed, thinking of all the Janice types on the campus. They didn't strike me as honest, but they had high blip ranks. “What else?”

“You could take the talent show approach,” he said. “That works if you're phenomenal. What's your art? What did you do to get in?”

“I made a documentary about my sister Dubbs,” I said. “She's seven. I want to make films.”

“Oh,
films,
” he said, in a snobby drawl. “You can't exactly make a film in a day.”

“I could, actually, but it wouldn't be any good,” I said. “Next idea.”

He opened a hand. “Hang out with one of your friends who has a high blip rank,” he said. “You'll get a shadow effect.”

I didn't have any friends. I had acquaintances, but it took me longer than ten days to make what I considered real friends. “Next idea,” I said.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing. What else?” I asked.

“Betray your boyfriend. Or girlfriend. Whoever. Go for personal drama.”

“I don't have a boyfriend,” I said.

“Then find one.” His eyes stayed serious, as if he were testing me. “Think tryst,” he said. “Cut out later and meet up with a humble dishwasher with a festering black eye. It'll add a good ten points to your blip rank.”

He was neither humble nor festering, obviously.

“You are a very misguided person,” I said.

“I'm just right. You know I am.”

“Why would meeting you be worth a spike?” I asked. “Because I'm a student and you're on the staff? Is that supposed to make us special?”

“Don't be dense.”

I searched back and forth between his mismatched eyes, waiting for something in his words to make sense.

He smiled slightly and spun a hand back and forth between us. “We have this,” he said.

“This what?”

“You know,” he said softly.

I did not know. The fine, expectant buzzing in my chest had nothing to do with him.

And then it did.

His eyes warmed. “See?”

I took a step back. The buzzing had exploded into wild wings of surprise.

“You're smiling,” he said.

“I'm not.”

“I'll be here at quarter to five,” he said. “Just in case. I'm telling you, personal drama's good. It gets viewers to care about you.”

I backed up some more. “Get your eye checked.”

“You do bossy very well, Sinclair,” he said, covering his heart. “Irresistible.”

He was impossible. But he was also right about one thing. As I turned and ran for the film building, I was grinning and primed with hope.

 

3

FISTER

“
TARDINESS IS A
sign of disrespect or overinflated ego,” Mr. DeCoster said as I stepped into my Media Convergence classroom.

“I'm sorry,” I said. Out of breath from running, I started toward the back where I usually sat.

“No, sit here,” Mr. DeCoster said, clearing a box off a desk in the front row. It was closest to the windows, directly in front of the teacher's station where hiding was impossible. Great.

I plopped in my wheelie chair and turned on my computer. The large screen above was controlled by a smaller touch screen below. The guy on my right glanced over. I peeked at his screen, which briefly showed the green and gray terrain of a game world before he switched windows to an editing program.

Forge students took three classes and a practicum daily, six days a week. I had Media Convergence, a required class for all incoming sophomores, followed by The Masters, where we studied artistic geniuses of the past, and then Space, my Math/Science elective. My practicum followed after lunch. Since everything had to be crammed into twelve waking hours per day, every minute counted. On Sundays, we were encouraged to call home, attend a religious service on campus, and relax, which didn't come naturally to many. We also had myriad performances scheduled on Sundays, not to mention impromptu ones, like when students started singing in the laundry room.