The Limit (18 page)

“Yeah, but that’s not what I’m getting at. You’re a Top Floor. You’re a genius in . . . whatever that electronic-simulations stuff is that you do for your job. I’m just . . . lost when it comes to all this.” I lifted my arms out wide, gesturing to the mountains of stuff.

Deep lines appeared on his forehead. “What do you mean?”

“You know—I
know
you know—that if you keep ordering stuff like this, you’re never going to make it out of here.”

He tossed the paddles down on his bed. Hard. “Yeah? You know what? You
are
right. I
do
know that.”
Weaving around the boxes, he made his way over to me and stood, puffing up his chest as he faced me. A lot of hot air came out of that little guy. “Who says I want to get out?”

I was so surprised, my brain blipped out, and I had to reboot it to get it thinking again.

“You don’t want to go home?” I asked. “Ever?”

“Why would I want to leave a place like this?” Stepping back and spreading his arms out wide, he turned in a slow circle. “Look at the setup we’ve got, Matt. Work is cool. School is even interesting here. In a few years we’ll have moved completely into college-level classes. Once we turn eighteen, we’ll be able to write our own tickets in life. We’ll get tons of scholarship offers, or even job offers right off the bat. We’ll be floating in money.” His thumbnail scraped at the packing tape holding a nearby box tightly closed. “If I feel like it, I’ll sell off some of this stuff when I get out. Live off the cash for a while, maybe. It
is
getting crowded in here, though. I’m going to have to move away from electronics and go to something smaller, like diamonds. Or gold. Bars of solid gold. The PMC I bought will go a long way toward keeping me here.”

“PMC? You mean you bought one of those little personal helicopters?”

“Personal Mini Copter. Yeah. It’s so cool. Miss Smoot
won’t let me fly it yet—since I can’t get a license until I’m sixteen. She lets me store it on the roof, but
she’s
keeping the keys locked up somewhere.”

I’ve seen PMCs in action a couple of times. The image of Jeffery flying around in one of those little helicopters brought a smile to my face. If he could buy that now to use later, what was stopping me from ordering a great sports car? Oh, yeah. Reality. “Those PMCs cost almost as much as a car. Don’t you care about your family? They’ll get stuck with all that debt.”

He shrugged. “Serves them right.”

“But . . .” I had to stop for a second and admit that I’d been heading down that exact same road not five minutes earlier. “Okay, but don’t you miss them? And what about your friends on the outside? Don’t you ever want to see them again?”

“Guys like me don’t do well in the friend department.” He slumped down on an arm of his sofa, hanging his head so I couldn’t see his face. “You want to hear about my family?”

I felt my feet taking me a step backward, closer to the door.

His straight black hair hung down over his face. “My dad sits around on his butt all day, watching TV. My mom spends all her waking hours trying to earn money to keep the family going. You’ll never believe
her brilliant plan to do it. Online slot machines. Now there’s a solid career path for anybody, huh?”

He looked up at me for a second and smiled—a weak, miserable smile.

“I have two older brothers. One’s in jail, and the other’s headed there.” Leaning forward with his elbows on his thighs, he clasped his hands together. His knuckles had gone white. “Why would I want to see any of their faces again?”

I found myself backing away another couple of steps.

“I’m just glad my brothers were too messed up to come here, so the FDRA took me. That’s the one good thing my brothers did. I have no desire to be in the same room with any of them ever again, and it’s cake to make sure I don’t have to. My family will never see the underside of their limit again in their lifetimes, and I get to live on the top floor in the meantime.” When he tilted his head up to look at me, his lips were trembling all over the place. Small pools of tears had collected at the inner corners of his eyes. “So to answer your question, no. I don’t miss my family.”

“
HELLO, BOYS.” THE FEMALE VOICE
sent a slice of cold fear into my chest. Jeffery slid an arm across the top half of his face as he did a quick turn to sit on the seat of his sofa, facing the back wall. Girls weren’t allowed in the boys’ bedrooms. Except one girl. One woman. She sounded too bubbly and syrupy for the lecture I knew she’d come up here to give me. What kind of punishments did they give Top Floors anyway?

I hadn’t heard her walk inside the room, so the sensation of her hand slithering onto my shoulder as she came up behind me gave me the creeps more than if someone had dumped a jar of spiders down my arm.

“Quite the collection you’ve got going here, Jeffery,” said Honey Lady.

Not making a sound, he nodded his head.

The shoulder hand slid down to grasp me tight above the elbow. Her long fingernails dug into my skin the tiniest bit. “All right, Matt. Time for our little chat. We’ll see you later, Jeffery.
Don’t buy everything on one website!” She chuckled, as if she’d just made a joke. After closing the door on Jeffery, she forced out another laugh. “And don’t you worry, Matt. We’re just going to talk. That’s it.” Her smile was too calm. She seemed too happy as we headed toward my bedroom.

I hitched my thumb back toward Jeffery’s room. “Does that bother you at all?”

“Well, of course!”

Good. She
was
a rational person.

She grimaced, completely exposing all of her big, white teeth. “I, personally, would go crazy living among all that clutter.”

Maybe not.

“No, I mean, shouldn’t you say something to Jeffery?” I tried to pull my arm out of her claws as we walked to my room, but she hung on even tighter. “Is it really right for him to keep buying all that stuff and sabotaging his family’s limit?”

“That’s something Jeffery is going to have to work out with his family. I have no jurisdiction, and—frankly—it’s not my business how other people spend their money. Let’s go in.” She pointed to my door, waiting for me to open it for her—like I had any choice whether or not I wanted to invite her in.

Doing a quick scan of my room, she noticed my
computer—exactly as I had left it in the middle of ordering a lawn mower.

“You doing a little shopping yourself?” she asked, lifting one corner of her mouth in a teasing smile.

“No.” I reached around her and clicked cancel. “Not anymore.”

“It makes no difference to me.” Shrugging, with her arms out wide, she sauntered over to one of the chairs at the table. “Order whatever you want.”

I sat in the chair across from her. “Maybe later.”
Or not.

“All right, Matt. We’ve got a problem here.”

“I know. I ran off. But I’m back. I
had
to talk to my mom, and you wouldn’t let me.”

Her eyebrows bunched together, and she leaned forward, taking one of my hands gently in hers. “What are you talking about?”

“No cell phone. No e-mail. How do you expect me to talk to my parents?”

“Guess what? I know for certain that your e-mail problem is being looked at right this very minute. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were able to communicate with your parents by tonight!” She beamed at me with so much enthusiasm I almost expected her to pull out her cheerleader pom-poms.

I sat back in my chair, pulling my hand away. “That would be . . . good.” I wasn’t sure if I bought her story.
“It feels like you’re cutting us off from our families on purpose.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Well, I guess for now it doesn’t matter either way. I talked to my mom and found out what I needed to know. I’m back. I’ll stay as long as you make me. End of story.”

She tilted her head, smiling that sweet smile of hers that had a tendency to turn my brains into sugar crystals. “Oh, Matt. If only it were that simple. I’m afraid you’re a security risk now.” She dug into the front pocket of her suit jacket and, holding up her index finger, said, “Just one minute.” She disappeared, ducking to the side and under the table. Before I could lean over to see what she was doing I felt her hand and something cold and hard around my ankle.

I jerked my leg to the side. “What are you doing?”

“I’m so sorry, Matt.” The honey voice stayed just as sugary sweet.

A thick, heavy, metal band was fastened around my ankle. I yanked on it, but it was too tight to slip off and it wouldn’t unfasten.

“It’s regulation. You’re a runner risk now. It’s our responsibility to know where every single one of our children is at all times. I’m sure you understand, a smart Top Floor like you.”

The rounded edges of the metal band hurt as they dug into my hand, but that didn’t make me stop tugging.

“The only way it will unlatch is if I activate a special remote, which is kept locked in a safe in my office. The remote can only be activated by me, after a retina scan.”

“There’s some sort of tracking device in here?” I banged it against the side of the table.

“Matt. Relax. It’s not like you’re going to go anywhere anyway. Just pretend it isn’t even there. It’s not heavy. It’s completely waterproof. You can still go swimming!”

Rah! Rah! Matt’s on a leash now. Go, fight, win!

My leg froze for a minute, hanging in the air. “It’s just for my protection. Right?”

She beamed. “Exactly.”

Slowly, my leg sank to the floor. “I can just stay on the top floor and do my work and hang with my buddies and absolutely nothing will happen. It won’t send an alarm unless I do something stupid, like try to go down to another floor—which I’ll
never
do again, since I know it prevents you from keeping me safe.”

She shoved my arm playfully. “You’ve got it now.”

“If I stop trying to take it off, and do exactly what I’m supposed to do, it will come off someday, won’t it?”

“We’ll see.”

“I’ll be happy here! I’ll work hard and get As on
all my school assignments. I’ll even order lots of fun things so I’ll never want to leave the top floor.”

Patting me on the arm, she stood up. “Let’s see how things are going in a few weeks. If you can live up to that high standard you just set for yourself, then I don’t see any reason why we won’t be able to talk about a potential removal date. Okay?”

I smiled what I hoped looked like a sincere, cooperative smile. “Okay.”

I sat staring out my window for a long time after she left. Three things I knew for sure now.

(1) Honey Lady didn’t care how much stuff we bought. She liked it if we bought enough to keep us distracted from thinking about life on the outside. (2) I was going to have to pretend that I was being a good, compliant little Top Floor until I could figure out exactly what was going on. And (3) When the time was right, ankle monitor or not, I was out of here.

I received my first e-mail from my dad that night, exactly as Honey Lady predicted.

It didn’t make me feel connected to him or the outside world at all. In fact, it made me annoyed. He sounded like he was in league with Honey Lady, encouraging me to spend money. A weird thing for him to say when we were supposed to be watching our account. Was Dad as clueless about money as Mom? If so, then my family was really in trouble.

For four days I played the part of a carefree teen king having a great ol’ time living on the top floor, where imagination—and certainly not money—was the only thing holding us back.

Today was the day Jeffery had been dreaming of. He finally talked Coop and me into promising to come out of the gym and into the pool for some jousting. Although we’d been pumped over the idea when we first came up with it, the excitement had worn off for Coop and
me, and we’d sort of forgotten about it. That wasn’t the case with Jeffery. The minute work was over, he headed straight for the water. I
was
starting to get into the idea again. It could be fun. I was ready to take him on.

Okay, so I wasn’t completely ready. I had to change into my swimming trunks, and my floating island still sat folded up in a box. Twenty minutes later, with Coop’s help, I finished pumping it.

“For two brilliant top-floor dudes we sure are stupid,” said Coop after we tipped the inflated island on its side. It stood four inches taller than my bedroom door. “Way to go, fool.”

“Here, hold it up.” I jumped and grabbed the top of the island, letting my weight squeeze it down. “Push!”

My body swung forward, and the three of us—me, Coop, and the island—popped through the door. Getting the island out of the hall wasn’t a breeze either. How had Jeffery done it? He’d probably been smart enough to inflate his island in the pool room. He kept it there all the time. I’d do the same with this one, once I managed to get it in.