Empty Streets (3 page)

Eri had raised her hand inadvertently, caught up in imagining a world different from hers. She took a deep breath, struggling to turn her mental discomfort into a question.

"Um, I…might a basic belief be that safety is more important than liberty?" Eri asked. She realized too late that her question could be construed as critical of The People and shrank back in her seat uncertainly. No one was critical of The People.

Her heart raced as the room remained silent, Ms. Fritz standing at the front of the room with her mouth slightly open.

"I'm sorry, I think what Eri was asking was-would it be correct to say our Constitution was written to guarantee the safety of all citizens?" A male voice emerged from the back of the classroom. Eri started at the sound of her name, and then remembered they could all access each other's log-on names through the Sims. Ms. Fritz exhaled with a large smile.

"Of course! That is exactly the theme we will be exploring tomorrow." Ms. Fritz laughed a high, tense laugh. "I guess you are a quick group. You are already ahead of me." She laughed again before continuing the lecture.

Eri stared hard at her desk, willing her fingers to type enough of the lesson to make it appear as though she were paying attention. The words of that other student, the boy, rang in her mind. Safety of all citizens. Safety…of all…citizens. Something about the way he said it made her shiver.

The bell rang. Her laptop folded up and disappeared as she stood to walk out. She looked around the room, curious about the boy who had said her name. No one made eye contact with her.

She absently tucked her hair behind her ear as she left the building. She sat down in a patch of bright sunlight, its delayed warmth pushing against her shirt. Grass poked at her legs, the blades all exactly the same shade of green and identical lengths. She imagined the sun was real, that it was the sun she had seen yesterday and this morning, the sun that energized her and left her feeling like she'd swallowed the rays and they had warmed her soul. This sun, this simulated sun, provided her with nothing.

"Hey," a voice said, as a dark silhouette towered over her and stole her sunshine. She squinted up at him; he was tall and all shadows except for bright, impossibly blue eyes.

"Hey?" She raised an eyebrow uncertainly.

The boy sat down next to her, staring off into the distance as he picked at the grass. He held one blade between his fingers, running the tip of his index finger down its smooth sides absently.

"Do I know you?" she asked. She hovered her hand over his face and saw the name Bodhi appear. His log-on. She blinked at him, his unfamiliar face juxtaposed with his comfortable disposition.

"I don't know. Do you?" It was the same voice she had heard in the classroom, saying her name comfortably, rephrasing her question.

"You are in my history class," she said, nodding with satisfaction.

"Yes." He nodded, too, dropping the blade of grass and turning his head to look at her. A thick silence meandered between them, her thoughts and his swaying and mingling, unspoken.

Eri cleared her throat. "You are the one who reworded my question for me, right?" He nodded. She continued, "Um, thank you. I realized after I asked it that it came out wrong."

Bodhi smiled slightly. "Did it?" He let the question linger between them. "I guess that is what I do…Save people." His eyes flickered to hers.

Eri's heart stopped before stuttering back to life. It all came together the way dreams and reality sometimes do. His voice, his mannerisms, even his stare-he was the boy from this morning. She'd met Bodhi. Outside.

"Have you been in my class all semester?" she asked, trying to sound nonchalant. She knew it didn't matter how loudly they spoke, that everything they said was fair game for a million ears. How could she ask him about this morning without giving herself away?

"Yes." He focused his attention on a tree near them. "Have you ever felt the bark of a tree? Like, really felt it? The hard twists and turns, its strong texture, the way it moves away from the core it protects as you push on it."

She reached out and touched the bark. She could feel it, and smell it, and hear the leaves rustling above her. But it all felt distant, muffled somehow. She could almost enjoy the experience as her own but was too aware this was not a real tree.

She looked at him, wanting to ask the million questions: how do you get outside and not get caught? Why is this so secretive? Who are street cleaners? What do they do? Why did I wake up yesterday feeling so frustrated by all of this? Who are you?

Instead, she said, "The bark is strong, but easily broken at the same time. And here… it is not mine to feel."

Eri saw him nod, just once. He knew she was the same girl he had seen this morning. His eyes narrowed as he searched for words.

"I…wonder sometimes about the workers who cut down trees on the outskirts of town. I wonder if they ever feel bad when they cut down trees. Is that weird?" He looked at her, his mouth turned up in an impossibly perfect smile.

"No, that isn't weird. Trees are alive." Some of them are alive. This one isn't.

"I don't think the trees know they're alive, though, is the difference." He took a deep breath, standing up and reaching down for her hand. "Do you?"

"Um, I'm not sure." He had worded his question intentionally…did he mean did she think the trees know they're alive? Or did he mean did she know she was alive? She let him help her up, her hand lingering in his before she put her hands in her pockets. She desperately wanted to touch him again. Talk to him more.

She looked around at the people walking around them, some talking on devices, some eating lunch, some sitting on blankets. She watched a girl running to class, certain she would be late. She watched a boy appear out of thin air, having just logged on, jogging in shorts and a tank top, dark sunglasses covering his eyes.

She turned to him, eyebrows raised. "So, what now?"

"I have class," he said, as he turned to walk away. After several steps, he turned and walked back to her. "But, well…you can't really ask the trees, can you?"

"No." She listened hard to his words, his inflection, for clues as to what he might be saying.

"But, maybe, we could start by asking the flowers. But I have heard that flowers only tell their secrets at midnight, so unless you have a night class, we might be out of luck." He winked at her, one time, in the kind of charming, flirtatious way that a kid might wink. She furrowed her brow, her mind racing. Flowers. Midnight.

"Yeah, I guess we are out of luck." She winked back at him, awkwardly. She wasn't sure if she had ever winked at someone before.

"I am off to math three-seventeen. See you around?" Bodhi waited for her answer. Other than his unnaturally blue eyes, she thought his Sims persona looked a lot like he did in real life.

"Math three-seventeen?" She thought math three-oh-one was the highest math someone could take at the high school level. He shrugged at her. "Jeez, you must be a math genius," she muttered. More loudly she said, "Yeah, I will see you…later."

He turned, walking quickly away from her.

She walked to her next class, pushing away the potential plan she was hatching, allowing her subconscious to work on it while she focused on math, literature and organic chemistry. She didn't speak to anyone else for the rest of the afternoon.

Lies

Eri spent four hours and twenty-six minutes on the Sims machine. Afterwards, she laid her head back against the headrest, exhausted. She hadn't walked much today, and hadn't participated in any social events that required exercise. Why did she feel so exhausted? She toyed with the thought of a nap. Her lids drooped while she thought about what she might say to her parents based on Bodhi's warning. She felt wary of him. Perhaps he was tricking her, trapping her, seeking out teenagers who were too curious and too interested in things The People didn't want them to be curious about.

Eri dozed, still strapped into the Sims. The sound of the front door opening jarred her out of her doze, and she quickly removed her gear. She slipped out of the Sims, powering it down and locking it in off-mode before scrambling up the stairs.

Her parents stood by the front door, shaking water off of their clothes. A rainstorm had stumbled upon the city, a rare occurrence for this time of year. Her parents looked outside, eyes cast upward toward the dark clouds and whirling rain. They might have been smiling.

"Remember the rain, when we were younger? It happened more frequently then. And we still could go outside in it," her mom said. Her dad reached out and touched her shoulder.

Eri was uncertain if her parents liked each other. Those interested in having children and moving into family housing were allowed to apply for a mate, and you could even put in requests, if they had dated someone through the Sims network and The People found the match to be genetically favorable. As she saw a moment of tenderness pass between her parents, she wondered how it was they had been paired together. What question had they answered similarly? Had they gotten similar grades in school? Were they both from poor families, neither able to afford more schooling after the Achievement Exam?

Eri couldn't ask. Their relationship was cordial, but careful. Eri suspected this was due to the eminent separation of parent from child once the child took the AE. If a child went on to college, they left home to pursue a professional career. If a child was placed on an immediate career pathway, it meant beginning a job elsewhere, moving out from their parents' home, applying for a partner. She hadn't decided if she wanted to apply for a partner.

"Hey…mom and dad," Eri said.

They looked over at her, shutting the door quickly behind them. Eri's mom came over and pecked her cheek with a kiss. Her dad squeezed her shoulder lightly, sitting down at the dining room table that Eri now leaned against.

"Eri…what is this?" Eri's mom looked at her, eyebrows raised, gesturing towards the crate of food that sat on the counter. Eri was not going to have to find a clever way to address her jailbreak after all.

"Oh, that. I heard the groceries get delivered and opened the door to get them." She tried to sound casual. Her father's eyes widened.

"How did you know the code?" Her father was a patient, intelligent man. She had often wondered why exactly he had ended up at the factory.

Eri hesitated. She never lied, so she had no preferred strategy. It seemed safest to tell the truth as much as possible.

"I watched you…I didn't know I wasn't supposed to…I just wanted to get the food before it was stolen. They have been talking about food getting stolen at school." This was sort of true. It hadn't been around here, but there had been rumors.

Her dad nodded. "How long were you outside?"

Her head whipped up. Did he know she wasn't allowed outside? That The People were keeping track? "About three or four minutes?" She cringed, knowing it was longer.

Her mom's face hardened. "What took you three or four minutes?"

Eri took a deep breath. She'd have to lie. "I stubbed my toe, so I sat on the top step to look at it."

Her dad took a breath, but before he could speak the phone rang.

Her dad looked at the number that appeared on the screen and then at Eri, a nervous fear causing his lips to twitch imperceptibly. Eri's eyes darted to her mother, who sat down calmly at the table. Eri sat down, too.

Her father cleared his throat as he answered the phone. "Yes?" He tapped the table with his index finger.

Eri watched with a mixture of fear and fascination as her father paled slightly. He nodded at whoever was talking.

"Yes, we are aware. We did instruct her to get the groceries. Rumors of grocery thef-yes, I know they are rumors." Her father bit a cuticle that was tearing down the side of his finger.

Her father sighed into the phone. "Seven minutes? She stubbed her toe when she went out there and sat on the step to tend to it. Yes, I can see the injury." He glanced at her foot and shook his head in irritation.

"No, I don't think that will be necessary. I will speak with her." The voice on the other end of the line droned on with inflectionless banter. She held her breath, mentally preparing for her dad's wrath. She had never seen him angry.

He hung up and sat at the table in silence, staring at his clasped hands. Finally, he looked at her.

"Eri," he said, quietly. "You are never to open that door again."

"Yes, sir," Eri mumbled, her chin on her chest. Her parents got up and went to their bedroom. Eri could hear them talking, their voices climbing before falling into whispers. She crept towards the door, but could only make out her name in their hushed conversation.

"Hey," a solemn voice greeted her from behind. Eri yelped in surprise and dashed away from her parent's door, dragging Ezra behind her.

"You scared me!" she scolded him.

He smiled at her. "What did you do? Is this about the window?" He could tell she was worked up about something. Red blotches spotted her neck.

"No! Shhhhh!" She pulled him farther towards the living room. "You are going to get me in more trouble. I didn't really do anything, I just…got the groceries in today." Eri shrugged her shoulders, trying to remain calm, and then looked at Ezra anxiously. "They are going to kill me, aren't they?"

"You…what? You went outside? Through your window?" Ezra seemed both shocked and impressed.

Eri winced. "No! Jeez! I went through the front door."

Ezra furrowed his dark eyebrows, looking at her with a new level of respect. "So…what was it like? Same as what you saw yesterday?"

Eri shrugged. "It was… more like it is in the Sims. It isn't a big deal." This was the biggest lie she had told all evening.

Eri looked closely at Ezra. He was better looking than her, with a smooth complexion, a straight, strong nose and green flecks in his eyes. His dark hair curled around his ears and hung softly across his forehead. The dark circles under his eyes had grown more pronounced, though, giving him a haunted look. His gaze looked unfocused, disconnected slightly from hers.