UnBound (3 page)

Alph appraises him, then says calmly, “Come inside.”

Once they're in, Alph, with a couple of the others, leads Jasper to an area separate from the rest of the theater. A broken display case. Rusted popcorn maker. It was once the theater's concession stand.

“You want to be one of us?” Alph asks.

Jasper nods.

“You think it's fun to scrounge for food and fight just to stay alive?” Then Alph lifts his shirt, showing half a dozen healed scars even worse than the one on his face. “Do you know how many knife fights I've been in? How many flash riots? Do you think I was in them for fun? Do you, for one minute, think I wouldn't change places with your lousy stinking schoolie ass?”

“You're free, Alph!” Jasper shouts. “You get to do what you want when you want.”

Then Alph pushes him so hard, he hits the wall behind him. “Can't you see? I don't get to do ANYTHING I want! Because I'm too busy just trying to stay alive. And you come here with your fancy school uniform and your mother's jewelry and your neighbor's freaking car, and you think you can buy your way in? What kind of idiot buys his way into the bottom?”

Now Jasper finds himself stammering. “But—but it's not like that. I wanna—I wanna help. I wanna help all of you. I can be important to you!”

“What you need, Nelson, is to see what you have for what it is. You won life's lottery, and you want to throw it away? Why would I ever want to associate with anyone that stupid?”

The others back away, sensing what's about to happen. Jasper has no idea what to do now, what to say, other than “Kevin, I'm sorry!”

“And I told you to NEVER call me that!”

Then Alph takes a deep breath, calming himself down. Jasper thinks it's over, until Alph rolls up his sleeves.

“Clearly your skull is so dense, there's only one way to get through to you.”

And then he begins pounding on Jasper. Not fighting him, but hitting him, kicking him, beating him to a bloody pulp. And what makes it all the worse is that Alph does it with such emotional detachment. He's not angry. He hasn't lost control. He's simply doing his job.

When it's over, and Jasper lies on the ground sobbing, Alph has Raf haul him to his feet. Then Alph gets in his face, speaking gently, but with a threat beneath his words as deadly as an undertow.

“You'll tell your parents you were beaten up on the other side of town. You'll say it wasn't ferals. You'll make them believe it. And then you'll go back to your lucky little life that the rest of us wish we could have, and you will make something of yourself. Outta respect for the rest of us who can't. And if you ever think about spitting out that silver spoon again, remember what happened here today. Because the next time you show up here, I'll kill you.”

And then they hurl Jasper out into the street.

•  •  •

Jasper's parents come back early from their dinner party. Their car is in the driveway when he gets home. He knows he'll be in trouble, but his battered face will buy him clemency if he plays it right. He stumbles in the front door, wishing he could just slip into bed and pretend he'd been there all night, but he knows it's not possible.

His mother gasps then bursts into tears when she sees him. His father's anger at him being AWOL for the evening quickly fades when Jasper tells them the horrible, terrible thing that happened to him. That while he was feeding the neighbor's pets, two men broke in and kidnapped him. They stole the neighbor's car, beat Jasper real good, and were going to hold him for ransom, but Jasper slipped out of his bonds and jumped out of the moving car, and the kidnappers were so freaked, they took off. He ran all the way home.

He's taken to the hospital and treated for his wounds. He makes an official statement for the police. He looks at mug shots but can't identify either of his kidnappers. His parents idly talk about moving to an electrified-gated community—but all those communities are run by either Lifers or Choicers, and since his parents are notoriously nonpolitical, they don't want to associate with either side of the war. The incident fades. Jasper goes back to school. Life goes on. It's forgotten.

But not by Jasper.

•  •  •

“Unwinding,” not “unwiring.” It should be all over the news, but it isn't. People whisper about it, though. Jasper hears kids talk about it in school. He hears adults mumbling about it in the street.

And then there's the war. There are rumors that the war isn't coming to an end, but that it's already over. Yet an official statement is never made by either side. Usually the end of a war is a big deal. Parades, and strangers kissing in the street. But this war was different. This time both sides just slipped shamefully into the shadows when no one was looking. It's as if part of the armistice was to not talk about it. The armies just stopped fighting. The rhetoric stopped flying. Out of nowhere sanity now appears to prevail.

And bad kids are disappearing.

•  •  •

On a warm afternoon, less than a month after the Unwind Accord is signed, Jasper T. Nelson, looking sharp in his school uniform, shows up at a house just a few blocks away from his own. He knows who lives there. Kids always remember the homes of their childhood friends.

The woman who opens the door looks slightly hunched, as if the weight of her life is simply too much for her. She couldn't be any older than Jasper's mother, and yet she seems much worse for the wear.

“Can I help you?” she asks. “If you're selling something, I'm not buying. Sorry.”

“No, I'm not selling anything,” Jasper says. “It's about your son. It's about Kevin. Can I come in?”

At the mention of her son's name, the very skin on her face seems to sag. She takes a moment. Jasper can see her weighing in her mind whether to invite him in or slam the door in his face. The latter is not a possibility, however, because Jasper has surreptitiously slipped his foot over the corner of the threshold, so she couldn't slam the door on him if she tried. And if she does try, he'll scream so that all the neighbors will hear how the nasty neighbor woman just slammed a poor schoolboy's foot in her door.

But instead she chooses wisely and lets him in.

He sits in the living room. She sits across from him.

“Is he dead?” the woman asks. “Is that why you're here? To tell me he's dead?”

“No,” Jasper tells her. “He's not dead.”

She seems both relieved and disappointed—and miserable about both of those feelings. “He went feral almost two years ago,” the woman tells him. “He's only been back once. Didn't even say why. He had something to eat, left without saying good-bye, and never came back again.” Then she looks Jasper over. “You don't look like the kind of boy Kevin would hang out with.”

Jasper smiles. “I'm not, but even so, I do want to help him.”

She looks at him, guarded. “How?”

Then he spreads out a document in front of her, all written in legalese. In triplicate. White, yellow, and pink. “There's this new program to help ferals,” Jasper explains. “It allows them to contribute to society in a meaningful way. I joined a club at my school, and we're going around talking to the parents of feral kids because we can't help those kids without permission.”

“Permission,” she repeats. She takes the document and starts to look it over. “What is this thing ‘unwinding'? I hear people talking about it, but I don't know what it is.”

Now Jasper gets to the point. “I understand the courts found you and your husband liable for the things that Kevin stole.”

She leans back in her chair, suddenly seeing Jasper through a much darker lens. “How do you know that?”

“It's all public record—I looked it up on my phone. I could show you the app.” He holds up his phone to her, but she doesn't take it. “Isn't there also a family that's suing you for another kid's medical expenses, because Alph—uh, I mean Kevin—broke the kid's jaw? You'll probably be paying damages for years.”

Now she doesn't say anything. Good. Stunned into silence. Now to go in for the kill. Jasper smiles. “I'm sorry; I don't mean to upset you or anything. In fact, I'm here with good news. You can make all that go away! Paragraph Nine-B of the unwind order states that the liability for any offenses made by your son from seven days postconception until now falls upon the state. You won't owe anyone anything!”

She looks at the order again. Jasper can see her eyes darting over it, but he knows she's not reading. She's thinking. Weighing. Pitting her conscience against what's practical. So Jasper adds another weight on the scale.

“The court will even remove the lien they've placed on your house.”

Now she stares at him as if she hasn't heard him right. “What lien?”

“You mean your husband didn't tell you? That kid with the broken jaw's got sharks for lawyers. They're trying to take away your house.”

She holds eye contact with him for a moment longer. Of all the things he's said, this is the only one that isn't true, but a white lie can be justified if it leads to the proper end. The woman looks over the unwind order again, this time actually reading it. Then she looks up at Jasper with those eyes so old before their time.

“You got a pen?”

•  •  •

The raid happens two days later. Jasper's in a Juvey-cop car, on a ride-along. It's a perk of being part of his school's SDS club: Students for a Divisional Solution. So far Jasper is the only member, but he expects his club's popularity will grow.

Juvies descend on the old theater like a SWAT team. Kids scatter like rats. Some get away, but more are captured. Once Jasper hears the squad captain give the all clear over the police radio, he gets out of the cruiser and slips inside. He was told to wait in the car, and said that he would, but of course he was lying.

Inside, the Juvies have about a dozen kids cuffed and seated. About a dozen others are being laid out in a neat row as if they're dead, but Jasper knows they're just tranq'd.

The captain spots Jasper and frowns. “What the hell are you doing in here? Didn't I tell you to wait in the car?”

“It was my lead that made this happen, Officer,” Jasper says respectfully. “The least you could do is let me see how it went down.”

“It's still not safe, kid.”

“Looks safe to me. Where's the leader?”

The cop glares at him a bit more, then gives up, shaking his head. “Over there.”

Jasper turns to see Alph sitting alone, separated from the others, with his hands cuffed behind his head. Jasper approaches, waiting for the moment Alph looks up and sees him. The astonished look on Alph's face is perfect. At that moment Jasper decides there is no feeling in life better than revenge.

“Hi, Kevin,” Jasper says with a condescending wave.

Alph's astonishment resolves into his cool poker face. “You did this?”

Jasper shrugs. “I helped,” he says. “School project. Extracurricular actually, but it'll look good on college applications.”

Behind Jasper, the Juvey-cops take care of business.

“Are they all going to the North Detention Center?” he hears one of the officers ask the squad captain.

“No, North Detention is full up. They're going to East.”

Hearing this, Alph looks up at Jasper and smiles. “Oh well,” he says, mocking. “Guess I have detention.”

“Not you,” says the squad captain. “You're going to a different facility.”

The smile leaves Alph's face even more quickly than it had arrived. “What kind of facility?”

“For unwinding!” Jasper says brightly. “Haven't you read about it? Oh, right, you can't read!”

Alph squirms like a fish with a hook firmly lodged deep down its throat.

“I decided to take your advice, Kevin,” Jasper says. “I'm learning to appreciate all the things I have and working hard to become a productive member of society. Out of respect for those of you who can't. Oh, and here's the best part! In return for exposing a nest of ferals,
and
for getting your mom to sign the unwind order, they've moved my dad to the top of the list for a heart transplant. Isn't that great?” Then he leans in a little closer. “Hey, wouldn't it be funny if he got yours?”

“Nelson!” grunts the squad captain. “Leave the kid alone and get back out to the car. This is a ride-along, not a squawk-along.”

That's when Alph makes his move. He rises in a single smooth motion and bolts toward the nearest exit. Jasper acts quickly. He grabs the tranq pistol from the captain's holster even before the officer can, aims at Alph's back, and fires. He meant to hit Alph in the same spot that Alph had hit Jasper with the snow globe, but instead the tranq hits him high on the shoulder. Good enough—it does the job. Alph goes down and is out cold in seconds.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” The captain rips the gun away, understandably furious, but Jasper is unfazed.

“Sorry—he was trying to escape—grabbing the gun was, like, I don't know, instinct or something.”

The captain turns to one of the other officers. “Get him out of here!”

The officer grabs Jasper firmly by the upper arm and briskly escorts him out. They pass Kevin O'Donnell, aka Alph, aka nobody anymore, unconscious on the ground, his forehead bruised from where he hit the concrete.
That's what you get for beating the hell out of me,
Jasper thinks.
That's what you get for humiliating me. You think being feral was tough? Let's see how this works out for you.

Outside, the officer puts Jasper in the back of the squad car, but before closing the door, he looks at Jasper, shaking his head. “You shouldn't have done that, kid.”

“What's the big deal? It was only a tranq gun—it wasn't like it was gonna kill him.”