The Shadow, Page 2

  I’ve seen these two go at it before. Renny’s dad works for the government, and it makes her crazy to be mixed in with the daughter of an irrigation worker.

  Class warfare at its finest. Their last fight turned into a full-scale riot, and the whole class got work duty all morning.

  That can’t happen today. Not to me. I have plans.

  I reach out and grab Renny’s shirt and yank it hard. She’s bigger than I am, but I catch her off-balance. When she falls backward, we’re nose to nose.

  “Enough, Renny!” I say. “Leave it!” In a few seconds, it’s all over.

  Renny gets to her feet, breathing hard, and slumps back into her chair.

  Lisa is still on the floor, her face red and splotchy.

  “Ass polisher!” she mutters to Renny’s back. One last shot.

  “Seats! Now!” shouts Baynes. She has her hand on her red pendant button, ready to call the guards. But I know she’d rather let things calm down on their own. Another disturbance report wouldn’t look so good on her record, seeing as class control is her main job.

  Everybody settles. Baynes shuffles her notes on the lectern and starts to drone away. But I’m not listening to her. I’m not looking at her.

  I can’t keep my eyes off the clock.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE NEXT TWENTY minutes feel like twenty hours.

  Sometimes I wish was born in the age of smart boards and tablets.

  I bet they made classes go faster. But that was before the Confiscation, ten years back. Now teachers are stuck with notes and lectures, like in the Dark Ages. I’m old enough to remember cell phones. I had one until I was eight. Then one day they just shut down the com grid and that was that. We were all supposed to turn in our devices and most people did. I still keep mine hidden at home, like a fossil.

  I feel my foot tapping against the bolted steel base of my desk and I try to control it. No use. The clock says 9:22. Almost time to bust out of here. I’ve got a meeting in midtown that I cannot miss. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and I’m really pumped about it. I don’t have all the facts yet, but it’s a meeting that could completely change my life. And my life definitely needs changing.

  The only challenge is getting out. Leaving class without an armed escort, even to go to the bathroom, is not in the picture. This is the routine: When you feel the need, you raise your hand and say “Permission for lavatory?” The teacher presses the blue button on her pendant and a guard shows up to walk you there and back. It can be really embarrassing on days when you have stomach issues, or your period. But I’ve got things scoped out, and I think I can make it work.

  9:25. Time to move. I shoot my hand up like I’m launching a rocket. Baynes looks up from her notes. “Gomes?”

  “Permission for lavatory?” I ask. I wince a little to look desperate. Otherwise she might make me hold out to the end of the lesson. She can be a real hard-ass that way. But waiting for the class switch is not an option. I need the halls to be empty. Or nearly empty. That’s the only way this is going to happen. Baynes presses the button and goes back to her lecture. I fidget in my seat. But not for long.

  About ten seconds later, the door unlatches and the guard steps in, rifle across her chest. She’s in tac gear, head to toe. Her eyes are hidden behind a one-way lens panel. Bulletproof, no doubt. It’s a bit extreme for keeping a bunch of schoolkids in line, but I guess they’re not taking any chances.

  She doesn’t speak. They never do. Not to us, anyway. I get up from my seat and walk to the front of the room. She holds the door open as I pass through. She follows me down the hall toward the bathroom. More guards are pacing the corridor in teams of two or four. Like I said, they’re everywhere.

  I push open the bathroom door and head for stall number three. This part is not a total scam, because I actually do have to pee, and toilet three is the only one that actually flushes. When I’m done, I wash my hands and splash some water onto my face.

  “Piece of cake,” I mumble to my reflection in the mirror.

  When I open the bathroom door, my personal armed escort is waiting outside. But instead of following her back toward the classroom, I walk the other way—toward a door that leads to a locked corridor. I see the guard tense up. She knows this is a restricted zone, and she knows I know it too.

  “Open the door,” I say softly.

  The guard starts to move toward me. I see her finger twitching over the rifle safety. I look her straight in the helmet and say it again, a little louder.

  “I said, open the door.”

  This time, she reaches for the keycard chained to her belt and swipes it over the lockpad. I yank the door open and look down the empty corridor.

  “Stay right here,” I say. And she does.

  Don’t ask me why it works. To tell you the truth, I’m still kind of surprised that I can control people this way, one on one. It’s been part of me since I was a little kid. Maybe someday I’ll figure it out. But I can’t really think about it now. After the door closes behind me, I take a couple of short steps to make sure the guard isn’t raising her rifle. She doesn’t move. All good.

  At the end of the corridor is a metal ladder leading to a hatch in the ceiling. I noticed it through the window on the door my very first day. And since it’s in a hallway with no classrooms, it only gets patrolled once every five minutes. I counted.

  The bottom of the ladder is about seven feet off the floor, which means I can just reach it when I stand on tiptoes. I stretch up and grab the bottom rung, then kick-swing my feet up to a small ledge in the tile wall. My arms aren’t strong enough to do a legit pull-up, but my legs are pretty fit, and once I get some traction on the ledge, I muscle myself up to the second rung. The metal of the ladder makes a hollow banging sound, and it echoes against the walls. Shit!

  The next sound I hear is footsteps in the outer corridor. Not running. But definitely coming this way. Move your butt, Gomes! I swing one knee up to the bottom rung. From there, it’s a one-two-three climb to the hatch.

  By the time the guards pass through, the hall is empty and I’m on the roof. Just one rusty fire escape from freedom.

  CHAPTER 3

  MY SCOOTER IS stashed in the usual spot. It’s covered with a tarp so filthy nobody would ever want to touch it, and locked underneath with the thickest chain I could steal. I pull the scooter out and head downtown. I love my scooter. It’s a real relic, but I’ve tuned it to the max. Fresh brake. New wheels. Dense foam grips. I’ve seen pictures of kids from fifty years ago wearing helmets to ride, but that’s not for me. I love feeling the wind in my hair—the way it tickles my neck and whips back over my ears. It feels like flying.

  I timed my breakout pretty close to the end of class, so they might not wise up until third period. Of course, sooner or later, they’ll realize I’m missing. For sure, I’ll get another write-up and another mark on my record. But at this point, does one more really matter? I already made it to the last semester of my senior year without getting totally expelled.

  Besides, this meeting today might be my way out. The lawyer’s letter said that something had been “bequeathed” to me. The mystery is: from who? As far as I know, my family is just me and Grandma. I barely remember my parents, and they sure as hell didn’t have anything to leave me. So it looks like I have a mysterious benefactor. Who knows? Maybe I’m the long-lost heir to a Caribbean island or a big juicy yacht. If so, I’m definitely getting out—assuming I can escape the city, that is. Dropping out in the last half of my last year of high school would make me a legend!

  The city police are on almost every corner, as usual. They’re a notch up from the school guard variety. Better trained and a lot more dangerous. They wear all black and their helmets have some kind of weird crosshatch pattern at the bottom. Whoever designed it was probably going for “evil skull.” But it ended up looking more like braces. TinGrins. That’s what everybody calls them. Just not to their faces. They eye me as I roll by, more curious than anything else. I’m no
t worth a stop—or a bullet.

  Being locked up in school all day is a pain for sure. But being out on the street reminds me how bad things are everywhere. The only businesses still left for us are little shops selling basic foods and stuff like batteries, soap, and candles.

  The rich people and government types get everything they need in their neat daily deliveries. They don’t even need to step outside of their mansions. And mostly, they don’t. The only books I ever see are in the library, and they’ve whittled the approved list down to almost nothing. Basically, history before the Alignment doesn’t exist. Kids in kindergarten now will grow up thinking this is all normal. But I know it’s not.

  “Have a beautiful day!” A man’s voice.

  It’s a guy on the corner selling bootleg magazines from a cardboard box.

  I’ve seen him before. The expected response to “Have a beautiful day” is “And you as well.” It’s just what people say. Not a law exactly. More like a strong suggestion passed down from on high, which I almost always ignore. I decide to do the vendor a favor though.

  “Patrol squad. Two blocks up,” I tell him. He nods, then folds up his stuff in about two seconds and starts to move out. He doesn’t want to get caught with historical material. People get disappeared for that. I kick hard against the pavement and I’m off again toward midtown. Like flying.

  The avenue is a crazy patchwork of the haves and have-nots. On one block, gated estates with irrigated lawns. On the next block, people in tents and plywood shacks. Some of the slum-dwellers wear masks to throw off the facial recognition cameras. Cartoon bunnies, frogs, foxes, stuff like that. It’s a small way of protesting, I guess. Or “acting out,” as the school shrink would say. I’ve been known to wear a mask myself when I’m out and about, but never when I’m riding. Messes with my peripheral vision.

  Most of the old skyscrapers in this part of town are empty now or just used for government offices or surveillance towers, so I’m curious about the address in my pocket. But mostly, I can’t wait to collect my inheritance. It better be something great!

  CHAPTER 4

  CREIGHTON POOLE, ATTORNEY at Law, plucked a plump cigar from the humidor on his desk. He had been looking forward to this morning’s meeting for a long time. The truth was, he didn’t have much else to do.

  His practice had dwindled to a single client, passed down from the firm he had inherited from his father—and he from his—going back generations, all the way to the 1920s.

  For Poole’s first few years out of law school, the world still dealt in torts and motions, arguments and settlements, guilt or innocence. But that was all gone now. At this point, having a legal practice was about as useful as running a shoeshine stand.

  Poole’s office, a glass-walled corner in a Fifth Avenue high-rise, was paid for through the next decade. No worries there. But he had no staff, no associates, and no assistant. His last admin was taken last year to work for a manager in bridge maintenance. So Poole was by himself, preparing for his one and only meeting of the day.

  The phone on his desk buzzed. It was the intercom from the front door, street level, thirty flights down. At least he still had a phone, even if it didn’t always work. He picked up the handset.

  “Creighton Poole,” he said.

  “Hey!” said a female voice. “It’s me. I’m here. Maddy. Maddy Gomes.”

  Poole was thrilled that she actually showed up. But he didn’t reveal any of that in his voice.

  “I’ll buzz you in,” he said. “I’m on thirty.”

  “Thirty?” came the voice from the speaker box. “As in three zero? Please tell me there’s an elevator.”

  “Sorry,” said Poole. The elevators in the building only worked for an hour in the morning and an hour at night. Otherwise, the electricity was diverted elsewhere for more essential functions. “Enjoy the hike.”

  Thirty flights would take her at least ten minutes. Poole lit his cigar and stared out over midtown. Below, small cooking and trash fires burned on street corners and empty lots, clouding the sky with sooty smoke. The ashy haze blew across the lawns of the pillared mansions nearby. There was no escaping it, even for the rich.

  This was a delicate matter he had to handle today. Ostensibly, he was there to provide a girl with information about her inheritance. But first, he planned to get information on her—information that he might be able to use for his own benefit. He had wanted to meet this girl for a long time. But the agreement, written in 1937, was quite specific about the age at which she was entitled to the inheritance. Eighteen. So Creighton Poole had waited patiently. For eighteen years.

  He heard pounding on the outer door of his office. Already? Athletic.

  He walked past the desk of his nonexistent assistant. He held his cigar between two fingers and undid the locks. One latch. Three bolts. He opened the door.

  “Mr. Poole?”

  “Miss Gomes?”

  “You should really think about moving to a lower floor.”

  CHAPTER 5

  POOLE EVALUATED HIS guest. She wasn’t as sweaty as he expected for somebody who had just walked up thirty flights, but she was no prize in the appearance department. Her hair was blond, and it was a tangled mess. Her clothes were definitely secondhand. Over her shoulder, she held an antique metal scooter.

  “You carried that thing up thirty floors?” asked Poole.

  “Versus leaving it downstairs and having it sold for scrap?” said Maddy. “I sure did.” She stepped past Poole into the outer office. Then she caught a glimpse of the view outside. She set her scooter down on the carpet and walked to the window, pressing her hands and nose against the tinted glass.

  “Whoa!” she said. “You’ve got a crazy view from up here!” She looked to her left. “And a balcony?” Sure enough, Poole’s office wall had a sliding glass door leading onto a small cement platform edged with a thick iron railing. Maddy reached for the door handle.

  “Don’t open that!” said Poole sharply. “You’ll let the smoke in.”

  “As opposed to the smoke that’s already here?” said Maddy, waving her hand in front of her nose to clear the cigar fumes. She turned and flopped herself down in a chair. Poole made a show of walking behind his desk and taking a power position, back straight, head up, arms folded. He tapped his cigar ash into an antique ceramic bowl.

  “Maddy Gomes,” he said, like an official pronouncement. Then, more casually, “Is Maddy short for Madelyn? Or maybe Madison?”

  “Just Maddy, as far as I know.”

  “I see.”

  Maddy considered herself an expert judge of character, and she instinctively distrusted Creighton Poole. Her eyes darted to the exit, planning her getaway in case the need arose. She was pretty sure she could get the jump on this dumpy lawyer. If he even was a lawyer. But for now, she decided to play along. Just in case he was for real. It would be a shame if she’d climbed Mount Everest for nothing.

  “Somebody left me something, right? That’s what you said in the letter.”

  “That’s what we’re here to discuss,” Poole confirmed. Maddy scooted forward until she was literally on the edge of her seat.

  “Okay, I’m hooked. What is it?”

  “Miss Gomes,” he began. Then, with a smile, “Maddy.” A little trick. Implied intimacy. I’m on your side. You can trust me.

  Maddy didn’t. Not for one second.

  “Maddy, your inheritance is somewhat unusual, to say the least, and I want to be certain that you fully comprehend the implications and responsibilities it may entail. After all—forgive me—you are still a teenager.”

  She’d thought about this angle, and she was ready for it.

  “The age of majority in New York is still eighteen,” she said. “General Obligations, Section One, Domestic Relations, Section Two, Public Health Law, Section Two-Five-Zero-Four. I’m legally an adult. So let’s get on with it.”

  Poole studied his guest with new interest. He tapped another ash into the bowl. “Indeed,” he said.
“You seem like a very self-possessed young lady.”

  And a bit more knowledgable about the law than he had anticipated.

  “I can take care of myself,” said Maddy, “and whatever it is you still haven’t told me about.”

  Poole decided to plunge ahead. He needed to find out how much Maddy knew about her past. He was gambling that she didn’t know as much as he did.

  And knowledge, as always, was power. He was hoping to use his position to gain some advantage. But for now, he knew the object of the game was to just keep talking. And he was a world-class talker. “Let’s start with some background so I can fill in some details on you. I know where you go to school, obviously. That’s where I sent the letter. Let’s review a bit about your family history.” He picked up an expensive-looking pen and pulled a sheet of paper in front of his belly. “Then we can get into the specifics about your inheritance.”

  He settled in his chair as if he expected this to be a lengthy and cordial discussion, mostly one way, guided by him.

  Maddy felt a flicker in her gut. One thing she knew for certain is that when people started writing things down about your family, it never led anywhere good. Enough. She stood up and leaned forward, her hands pressed hard against the front edge of Poole’s massive desk. It was her turn to talk. She looked through Poole’s bloodshot eyes and directly into his mind.

  “I want my inheritance now,” said Maddy. “Where is it?”

  Maddy thought Poole might produce a check or document from a drawer, or write down the number of a safe-deposit box. Instead, he looked back at her, blinking slowly.

  “Water Street,” he said. “Last warehouse on the left. East River side.”