I don’t care.
“Throw away my CDs,” I tell her. “Then you’ll see who’s controlling you.”
“I will.” She whispers it. Even looks hurt. “I already stopped listening.”
Maybe I’d have a chance, if I said the right thing right now.
But I’m done.
“It’ll only take a few days, and then you’ll be gone,” I tell her.
“You’re wrong,” Nia says. “I’m too strong for that.”
“Maybe it’ll be a week. Even two. But after that”—I snap my fingers—“I’ll be the only real one left.”
“You and your dad,” she says.
“Yeah. Me and my dad.” It hurts, being lumped in with him. But she’s right. Soon we’ll be the only two people in town who think for themselves.
That’s her fault. Not mine.
“See you.” My feet know where to go: back to school. I take a step away from her. Another. I want to go where I can obey the Messages for the rest of the day. Ignore the hurt boiling inside me.
But she’s not done yet. “Good luck with the next girl. Maybe she’ll be a redhead. You can round out the trifecta.”
“Or maybe she’ll be smart.” I know how to hurt her, too.
I just never wanted to before.
Her eyes are shiny with tears, but her mouth is small and hard. And silent.
“I’d say you’ll be sorry, but soon you won’t even remember this,” I say. Then I let the Messages take me where I’m supposed to be. Toward school. Away from her.
Back to how I’m supposed to live my life.
Safe.
And alone.
WHEN THE DOORBELL rings at six A.M., I think it has to be Nia. Sorry for what she said. Wanting me back. She’ll say she understands what I did.
Maybe I’ll listen.
I’m at the door before Dad can set his coffee cup down.
But it’s not Nia. It’s Mandi, wearing a T-shirt that says TAG PATROL. Her perma-perky smile is missing and she’s tapping her toe.
“Get your father,” she says. “He has to come see.”
“See what? The sun isn’t even up.”
She sighs and looks around me. “Where is he? I mean … please.”
“Dad!” I shout it. I’m too tired to be polite. I stayed at the shed until midnight, looking at pictures of paintings and Oding on M&M’s. Forgetting her isn’t as easy as walking away.
Dad’s loafers click on the wood floor. I smell coffee behind me.
“It’s Mandi,” I say unnecessarily.
He steps next to me so we form a solid Banks man-wall. “I thought you two broke up.”
“This goes beyond romance.” Mandi folds her arms. “There’s more graffiti. We found it on patrol.”
“What color?” I ask.
It wasn’t me. But was it her? Really, who else could it have been?
Dad and Mandi both give me surprised looks. I asked the wrong question.
But Mandi answers anyway. “Orange,” she snaps.
“More coffee.” Dad holds out his cup. “In a travel mug.”
I get it. And follow him into her candy-pink NEV, not asking if it’s okay. She drives toward downtown. Dad takes the jump seat and spends the ride calming Mandi down.
“Graffiti is a blight on our town,” he says. “And it will be dealt with as such.”
“I hope you’re right. Because it’s important to keep our town beautiful,” she tells him.
I love when Dad’s Messages bite him in the butt.
But I’m not feeling any joy this morning. It’s more like fear mixed with a touch of déjà vu. Because I know only one person in Candor who likes collecting cans of orange spray paint. Someone who’s pissed. Who thinks she has nothing to lose by spreading a little blight around.
She’s so wrong.
Mandi pulls up in front of the fountain.
The words are in a perfect circle around the center of the fountain.
BETTER COVER YOUR EARS.
It’s not just graffiti. It’s graffiti that says, Na-na-na-na-boo-boo, I know the secret. Why go halfway? Why not royally screw yourself?
The sun isn’t even up, but there’s already a group of about twenty people standing around. They’re in small clumps, murmuring, staring. But nobody comes up to us. They just talk louder so we can hear them.
“It’s just awful,” one old woman says. She’s got a little white dog on a leash.
Her fat bald buddy slurps coffee from a silver Candor mug. “Classic gang activity. I know all the signs.”
Dad lifts his walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Why hasn’t this been taken care of?” he barks.
Static. Then Bart, sounding scared. “Good morning, sir.”
“Hardly,” Dad spits.
“We’re halfway through,” the voice says. “But there’s some kind of shellac on top.”
“Did you take a coffee break? You’re not here.” Dad manages to smile at the crowd. Everyone’s watching him, wanting him to make it better.
Now Bart speaks slowly. “Mr. Banks. Where are you?”
“The fountain.”
“We’re at the welcome sign.”
Mandi’s eyes get big. “Let’s go.”
The welcome sign isn’t your typical “Population 6,230” sign. It’s some ankle biter’s art, blown up to sign size. It’s a drawing of people walking a dog—or maybe a bobcat; it’s hard to say for sure. The sign reads, DRIVE SLOW, CHILDREN AT PLAY.
When we get there, four men in Candor polos are scrubbing the sign. The crowd is even bigger here.
“What’s it say?” Dad growls.
The men stand back.
YOU ARE WHAT YOU HEAR.
He touches it with his thumb. Shakes his head. “We’ll fix this,” he says.
“When will it be gone?” somebody shouts from the crowd.
Dad looks at the crowd and says it louder. “We’ll fix this.”
I don’t think he’s talking about the spray paint.
The worker guys are arguing about something. Two are shaking their heads. One has his arms crossed, staring at his feet. The brave one looks at Dad.
“Chris just radioed from the flagpole,” he says. “There’s more.”
“Not the bricks.” Dad strides to Mandi’s NEV and waits for us to catch up. His arm snakes up to touch the roof of the NEV. His fingers are drumming against it all the way to the flagpole.
Mandi actually goes three miles over the speed limit.
The crowd is standing in a circle around the flagpole, three people deep. You’d think there wouldn’t be room for us. But when people see it’s Dad, they step back and forward and to the side until we have a prime viewing spot.
The letters are in a precise checkerboard pattern across the bricks.
YOU ARE NOT IN CHARGE.
Two polo shirt guys are on their knees, scrubbing. Everyone else watches them and whispers.
They stop when Dad’s shiny shoes get close. “Tell me it’s coming off.”
“We tried everything,” one says. “Except sandblasting.”
“Or taking them out,” the other mutters.
Dad stands up tall and puts his hands on his hips. “Whoever did this,” he says loudly, “will pay.”
And then he gets down on his knees. “Get me a crowbar,” he says.
Someone gasps in the crowd.
Crowbar guy double-times it.
Dad sticks the curved end under the brick with the Y on it. It’s six years old. HOLMES FAMILY. FINALLY AT HOME! it reads.
“Good choice,” I mutter.
Mandi takes time off from grimacing righteously to give me a suspicious look. “What did you say?”
“It’s devastating, et cetera,” I tell her.
“Excuse me, please. I think I know who did this,” Mandi says loudly.
The crowd goes quiet. Dad’s crowbar freezes.
“I know, too,” I say. Because there’s someone else who deserves to be hurt. Someone who ruined more than
a few bricks. Someone I need to fix, permanently.
And I still want to protect her.
Mandi stares straight at me when she says it. “It was Nia Silva.”
I answer her fast. “No way. It was Sherman Golub.”
We both look at Dad. He presses his lips together and nods grimly. “Kids,” he says, “I think you’re both right.”
WE GO TO school like it’s any other day.
There was no choice. It was almost seven. The Messages make sure every good girl and boy is headed for first period.
And as King Good Boy, how could I do anything different?
I looked for her everywhere. Study hall. Lunch. Founder’s Park.
But Nia doesn’t come to school. Neither does Sherman. It should be good news that he’s not here. But I can’t be happy. If both are missing, they probably went to the same place.
The Listening Room.
All I can do is wait. I wait through school and dinner and dishes and three hours of staring at the same page of my chem book.
Still the light under my father’s door is on. It’s nearly midnight. Isn’t he going to go to bed? Let him go to bed. I don’t want him leaving. Not tonight.
But then I hear the door alarm squeal. He’s left. And that means Nia might not be safe. There’s only one place he’d go at this hour.
I wait fifteen minutes. Stuff the bed with pillows and wet my toothbrush. Just in case he beats me home.
Then I walk downtown, staying in any shadows I can find.
Dad built the Listening Room after Mom left. Maybe he thought he could have kept her if he’d put her there. Or maybe he was hoping to find her. Bring her back.
Then he could have made her love us enough to stay.
It doesn’t look like a place where people’s every independent thought is erased. You’d expect it to be hidden away, in a warehouse on the edge of town or in a basement. But Candor doesn’t have warehouses (too ugly) or basements (we’re built on top of a swamp; they’d flood), and Dad thinks the Listening Room is just swell. Why hide away one of his most genius inventions?
So it’s on Candor Avenue, the road that cuts through the heart of town. There’s a row of little shops—dog bakery, picture-framing place, a realtor’s office—and then the Listening Room. Frosted glass door. Gold letters on the front:
CANDOR SPA. BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.
Nobody goes there for pedicures.
It’s not hidden, but it’s discreet. Kids don’t know about it. Neither do our visitors. Dad tells people about it only after they’ve moved in and something isn’t right. Can’t quit smoking in a week? Come for a few hours. Drug habit? Maybe an overnight would be best.
I go to the alley behind the shops. His NEV is parked there.
I hurry up the fire stairs to the roof. One easy pull-up and I’m on the clay roof tiles.
The smart thing would be to go home. I’m supposed to be done with her. That’s what I told her. The Room can fix the rest.
But I can’t go home. I thought all I’d ever remember are the horrible things she said. But all I can think about are the good parts. Black toenails under blue water. Laughing at the pathetic clones we were so different from. How she tasted like vanilla. All I remember are the things I miss. And that she loved me.
There are dormer windows tucked in along the slope of the roof. I belly-crawl until I can see the fronts of the windows. There are four. Two are lit up.
Just enough for Sherman and Nia.
I ease over to the first one. It’s not hard. The roof is nearly flat, with ridged clay tiles that give me something to hold on to.
I peer inside.
It looks like a five-star hotel room. Big bed with a million fluffy pillows. An enormous chair with a blanket draped over one arm. But the walls don’t have any pictures on them, and there isn’t a TV. Everything is white.
You can’t see the speakers. There are thirty of them. Behind the walls. In the ceiling. Under the rug. It’s impossible to touch them. Or to stop the music that’s playing.
Someone is lying on the bed facedown. T-shirt stretched tight over back blubber. Khakis slipping down his butt. Greasy hair that’s probably leaving a mark on that snow-white pillow.
Beautiful. It’s Sherman.
He has his hands over his ears. His body is still. I wonder if he’s trying to fight it.
This is exactly what I needed to happen. And it’s what he deserves. Sherman will be erased. Molded into a nice Candor boy. There won’t be any room in his brain to remember me. And he definitely won’t feel like making any kind of mischief.
I can’t feel happy, even though this is what I wanted. More than that: it’s what I made happen. But it means that maybe Mandi got what she wanted, too.
Until I check the other window, the only thing I’ll feel is terror. Please let it be a housewife who can’t stop eating. Or a chain-smoker workaholic asshole. Somebody, anybody, except Nia.
I see headlights coming down the street. Somebody’s out late.
I flatten my body against the roof and hold on to the tile tight.
Then I hear the hum. It’s the mosquito truck. A white cloud follows behind it: harmless orange citrus spray, Dad tells people. The finest in pest control.
He doesn’t mention the Messages that play from speakers hidden in the roof. Whenever everybody needs to forget something, Dad sends out the truck. It drives all night long. The brain is most receptive at night.
I brought my iPod, just in case. I pull the earphones out of my front pocket and jam them in my ears. Hit play.
These are my emergency Messages. They keep me strong when the truck is out. Or when I feel myself slipping.
I close my eyes as it goes by.
“The Messages don’t own me,” I mutter. “I control my own thoughts.”
Nothing floods my brain. But I wonder what it was. Something about forgetting the graffiti, I bet. Maybe even something about Sherman.
Or Nia.
The truck is gone. I slither to the other lit window.
Nia. Sitting on the edge of her chair, with her head in her hands. She’s rocking. Rocking, like a crazy monkey in a zoo.
“No.” I slam my fist on the tile. It makes a useless thud. She won’t hear it. She wouldn’t hear me if I shouted at the top of my lungs. The music is loud inside. And there’s never a break.
Still I try. I bang on the window. But she doesn’t look up.
Just keeps rocking.
What would I do, anyway? What if she looked up and saw me here?
A long time ago, I found Dad’s folders about the Listening Room. They filled an entire drawer in his office at home. Blueprints. Papers about extreme brainwashing—“mind control,” they called it. Case studies. And a long list of side effects.
It’s bad enough that he’s erasing her. But what comes after will be worse. Migraines. Amnesia. Tremors. Cravings to eat things that aren’t food. Usually those fade away in a few weeks. But a few people have it worse. Strokes. Psychosis. An uncontrollable urge to hurt yourself.
I study the blueprints every few weeks, to see if I’m missing something. A way out. Just in case. I haven’t found it yet.
“Fight it.” I say it like she can hear me. I spread my hand against the window. Slices of white room glow between each finger.
She’s pacing now. How long will it take before she gives in?
I remember how her lips felt on mine. How she stared at me. And then she drew the real me, right on a flat piece of paper.
And now I’m losing her. It’s all being wiped away. Everything special. Maybe—probably—her memories of us.
I shouldn’t have walked away. I shouldn’t have said I was done.
I should have begged her to understand. Made her listen until she wasn’t mad, mad enough to do something stupid.
Something that would guarantee we’d never be together.
Then I find the right words to say. If I’d told her this, maybe things would be different. It’s too late. But I sa
y it anyway.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I love you.”
She pauses for a second and tugs at her hair. Like she heard me.
I know she didn’t. But I can’t leave, not yet. I’ll stay with her until sunrise. If I brace my feet, I won’t slide. I can rest my cheek on the roof tile and still see her. Pacing. Pulling her hair.
“I’ll fix you,” I tell her. “I promise.”
Even though I don’t know how.
It’s better than good-bye.
DAD SENDS ME grocery shopping on Saturday morning. Like it’s a normal week. Like before. Before I loved Nia. Before he ruined her.
“If they don’t have skim, skip it. And don’t forget: organic.” Dad slaps the grocery list in my hand, along with some cash.
He doesn’t bother telling me to give him the change back. In his mind I’m still perfect. I’m not a kid who sneaks out every night and crawls onto the roof of the Listening Room. Watches his girl get slowly erased.
He doesn’t even notice my bloodshot eyes.
It’s been four nights. Nia isn’t pacing anymore. She’s sitting, mostly. Last night she took an hour to brush her hair before she went to sleep.
Sleep. She didn’t do that the first three nights. Does that mean she’s nearly broken? Nobody stays strong forever in the Listening Room.
Even I would break eventually.
“Why don’t you pick up some frozen yogurt? A special treat,” he says. Dad’s been in a great mood since he sent Nia and Sherman to the Listening Room.
“You’re the best,” I say. It’s easiest to act grateful, even if I hate him. Without sleep it’s hard to fight all the time.
McKennon’s is grocery-store porn. The produce is stacked in glistening pyramids. It always smells like fresh-baked bread, even by the fish counter. The cans and boxes are on shallow wood shelves. Nothing is too high or deep. There’s always jazz music playing.
As usual it’s full of ponytail mommies in yoga pants with shiny-faced babies. One of them gives me an approving smile.
“Cookie!” The kid holds up a carrot with the feathery green still attached to the top.
“Seriously?” I ask.
The woman gives me a wide-eyed don’t say anything look and walks away fast. I watch her go. Yoga pants are the tightest pants you see in Candor.