Wheel of Fortune (2 page)

It’s true that I don’t have enough time to find Woo, but I am sure I will. To find Woo – that’s if he is still alive – I’ll have to stay alive.

But if he is still alive in here, why doesn’t he contact me? Maybe he doesn’t want to be exposed to the Summit. If there is a way to survive the Playa by hiding in it, he wouldn’t want the Summit to know with all those cameras everywhere, or they will kill him.

Had Eva Hutchinson been a Monster, she would have enjoyed killing the bullies today. I enjoyed it. I am not going to lie. If the law prohibits you from fighting back against a bully in real life, then the best place to lay it on the line is here in the Playa. We gave’m hell in the dome, and oh, it felt good.

Bellona sits next to Leo, showing him her family photos which she has popped out of her military wallet. I turn away and occupy myself with something else.

I am surprised Shoegirl survived the dome. She believes that what happens to us is our destiny, and that it’s for the best interest of the nation. It turns out that Shoegirl’s real name is Pepper.

“So what’s everyone’s story?” I ask.

“We’re all Monsters.” Bellona sharpens the edges of her sword with a rock, now that Leo seems uninterested in her photos. Leo and a photo album? Are you kidding me? “That’s everyone’s story,” she says.

“I am not,” I snap. I wish I could take it back. Claiming I am not a Bad Kid might sound offensive. Besides, why would I expose myself? Who would believe me?

“Is that what your iAm says?” Pepper is curious. “Because you don’t—”

“What?” I feel defensive. “I don’t look like one?” I wish I could take this back too. Pepper is the least good-looking, the least educated, and the least enthusiastic. Her skin is covered with some sticky brown stuff as if she hasn’t washed for years. She has yellow teeth, and her stiff hair looks like a broom’s bristles on top of her head. Plus, the ear-to-ear dental bracing she wears. I feel for her in a world where she could be bullied and hurt repeatedly for wearing those.

“You don’t behave like one,” remarks Bellona. “I saw what you did in the Breathing Dome.”

Leo is silent and observant.

“I think most of you don’t behave like Monsters,” Pepper elaborates. “Bellona and the skaters, too.”

“How about Leo?” Bellona puts a slight smile on her face.

“Leo is a Nine. We all know that,” intercepts Pepper, almost envious, chewing on jelly cola she has found in a dead kid’s pockets. She is not sharing with anyone. “I just don’t know why he is here with us.” She stares at him suspiciously.

We look at Leo. We want to know, but he doesn’t flinch. He isn’t surprised or embarrassed, not showing the slightest need to explain himself. He glances at me for a second though. I am surprised, unable to interpret the meaning of that look.

“He is exhausted,” says Bellona. “Let me tell you about us, the ones you call the skaters.” She addresses Pepper.

Six of the eleven survivors are skaters.

“Were you in the army?” asks Pepper.

“Yes,” Bellona confirms. “We were ranked Sixes two years ago. We spent six months in the military and found out what horrible things the Summit makes the Sixes do as soldiers. We invaded cities outside Faya to conquer one more town and add it to Prophet Xitler’s empire. We were ordered to kill women, children, execute and burn, without the right to ask why. All in the name of the Burning Man. They told us these people were our enemies, and that they threatened the survival of our nation, like Bad Kidz do.” I swallow hard. Did my dad do any of that? “The world outside Faya is mostly wastelands, all sands and dust. Still, there is something precious out there that Xitler is looking for. We just don’t know what.”

“But the world outside isn’t like that,” objects Pepper. “I have seen it on TV. The world is so big. There are countries of different ethnicities in every continent. They watch our games and pay for it. They have technology, not necessarily like ours, but enough to let them watch the games.”

“That’s the world beyond the oceans,” explains Bellona. “Faya is located in a continent that was once called North Amerika. We occupy the west coast only – our country is designed after the shape of a Decagon. The rest of the continent is deserted and has a harsh climate. We’re not allowed out there. It’s called the Wastelands, and they never talk about it. This is where the real rebels are. Sometimes, they’d send us to the Wastelands to find certain people who the Summit were interested in. They seemed to be regular teens. We arrested them. The Summit tested them or something, and then we never heard about them again.”

“Oh. Sounds creepy.” Pepper isn’t convinced. If I didn’t want to
sleep so badly, I would ask Bellona to elaborate, but since no one asks, I pass. “So back to you. What’s your story? I have had friends who were Sixes. They all died,” Pepper says.

“Sixes and their families barely make a decent living. If you disobey orders as a soldier, you and your family get punished.” Bellona gazes into nowhere for a moment, as if daydreaming, as if she is seeing an invisible ghost, then she comes back to life. “We skaters are a faction of soldiers who refuse to cooperate. We have decided to oppose and expose the Summit, but we couldn’t find help. Since everyone in Faya’s main concern is getting ranked, no one pays attention to such things. That’s when we heard about the Breakfast Club.”

“You know about them?” Pepper sounds eager.

“What is the Breakfast Club?” I ask, remembering Timmy claiming Leo was from the Breakfast Club at Grand School.

“The Breakfast Club is the revolution,” says Pepper. “The Breakfast Club is our only hope. You could call them the real Bad Kidz. Prophet Xitler and the Summit are afraid of them. It’s rumored that they live in the Wastelands.”

“True. That’s why we were ordered to hunt them and kill them and their families,” says Bellona. “They are led by a great leader who is as young as we are. They’re building an army of youngsters, real Bad Kidz, who want to unlearn the bad ideas and habits of Faya. They talk about things I have never even heard about.”

“Selflessness, fearlessness, hope, abundance, strength, courage, loyalty, honor—” Pepper counts on her fingers. “I know a little about them. My brother was once arrested for downloading the Breakfast Club’s manifesto on his iAm.” I have underestimated Pepper. She knows a lot.

“Bravery, unity, and belief,” Bellona continues. “There is much more actually. The bottom line is that they believe in a no-rank, no-Monster society. They know that Utopia is a lie.”

“My brother used to say that they don’t live in the Wastelands,” says Pepper. “It’s just a rumor. In fact, it is said that their hideout is so clever you wouldn’t figure it out.”

“Sounds crazy,” I say. Leo screws up his face at my comment.

“It’s not. They have inspired us to oppose the Summit. To say no to what we don’t believe is right,” says Bellona.

“So were you punished and downgraded to Monsters?” asks Pepper.

“Yes,” says Bellona. She doesn’t seem to regret it in any way.

“You fools,” says Pepper.

Bellona chuckles. “What’s with you, girlie? You sounded like you liked the idea seconds ago.”

“I do, but I don’t like it when someone does something brave and finds out it was only foolish. Either you have a real solution, or you stick to the system.”

“We are no fools,” says Bellona. I notice the many tattoos on her arms. Leo has a couple of tattoos. “Although we know we’ll probably die in here, a soldier dies with honor, standing, not on her knees, never ashamed as long as she stands for what she believes is right. We know the Summit is an evil dictatorship. We believe that repeated actions of oppositions and uprisings will lead to salvation. Honestly, you don’t know how good it feels being here.” Bellona exchanges serene looks with the other skaters. “We will give’m hell.”

Sometimes I feel like I am the only one upset that I am going to die in here. Not that I am in any way saner than them. I have changed the iAm’s results, for God’s sake.

“That’s exactly why they call every sixteen-year-old under the rank of Five a Bad Kid,” a skater-friend of Bellona explains. “Because if the iAm ranks you low enough to cause trouble, then you’re a threat to the Summit. The slightest hint of you being a teen capable of speaking your mind freely endangers the Summit’s existence. Look at the things they sell while broadcasting the games. Look at everything they make money from. It’s sold basically to the teens. We, the teens, are the number one consumers of their products in the whole world. How can they control us if we have free minds of our own? The iAm knows how to spot a rebel.”

“Since you Sixes seem to know a lot…” Pepper picks up the jelly she spat out earlier. Yuck. “What’s Generation Z?”

“Good question,” says Bellona. “You know the Amerikaz ended with what we call the Great Disease, right? The Great Disease started as a war, a one-hundred-year-long war between the governments of the Amerikaz and Generation Z.”

“Generation Z,” the boy follows on, “was the last generation of youngsters before the Great Disease. They were born with the latest technologies around. They were smart, effective, and powerful. Most of all, they started opposing governments all over the world using technologies similar to the iAm to communicate with each other. In fact, the Amerikaz was the last government of all. At sixteen, each teen of Generation Z had the knowledge and experience of a fifty-year-old of the time.”

“How was that possible?” I ask.

“Because there were no cell phones, no internet, and no networks before Generation Z. The elders never really comprehended the sudden and fast changes the youngsters had learned. When the elders were teens themselves, it was much harder to communicate and spread information, harder than all of us could imagine.”

“What do you mean they had no internet?” I ask again, not minding if I sound like an idiot.

“It’s hard to imagine. I know,” Roger This says. Although he seems invisible sometimes, I am astonished that he is still alive. “Before the internet, they had to go to a library full of stuffed books and keep on searching for days for whatever they wanted to know about. Can you imagine flipping through papers to find what you’re searching for without search engines like Zoogle and sites like Zikipedia?”

”Come on,” Bellona says to me. “It’s not like the internet grew up like trees when elephants first roamed the earth.”

“It’s not elephants that first roamed the earth,” Pepper objects. “That’s a rumor. It was dinosaurs.”

“I don’t care if it was Michael Zackson who first roamed the earth. Stop being so picky,” Bellona fires back at her. I don’t see a friendship ever happening between those two.

“Easy, girls.” I wave the tip of my white t-shirt as a flag in the air — why I am not surprised it’s covered in blood? “So there was this Great Disease war between Generation Z and the elders. And?” I ask.

“Generation Z changed everything in terms of taste in music, movies, arts, politics, free thinking, and free knowledge. Generation Z, in every country in the world, continued to be a major threat to the governments who claimed they were practicing something called democracy, which is just another disguise for a totalitarian system like ours.”

“Wow,” I say. “How do you know all this?” I don’t understand half of what she just said.

“That’s why we’re here,” the skater boy says. “Because we know all of this. You’re not meant to know stuff like that, not when you occupy yourself with getting ranked.”

“I am starting to see why you don’t belong here,” Bellona tells me. “You’re just like every other teen out there, working desperately for approval, so your mommy, daddy, teachers, and friends think highly of you. In short, you’re a slave to your rank, which shows me that Prophet Xitler’s plan is working.”

“Is that why everything usually has a letter Z in it?” I ask, ignoring Bellona’s army-girl aggressiveness. Should I reveal my heroic act of entering the show to save my best friend? I want to tell Bellona that pink hair and green army outfits don’t really match. But if I do, she might stick a knife in me. Didn’t I just save her life, or was I dreaming? “Xitler being pronounced Zitler, Dizny, Zeinstein, all those words that start with a Z?” I have no idea what’s wrong with these names, but Woo said the Summit was fond of the letter Z. My favorite oldie musician is called David Zowie. Woo said his name was Bowie.