Sleeping Jenny (13 page)

The man came back on the screen. “What do you want with us?”

I cleared my throat and tried to project my most authoritative voice so I didn't sound like some kid. “I want to learn more about you.”

“This isn't a school project.”

“And I'm no normal schoolgirl.”

His eyes narrowed, and I realized he wasn't that much older than me. “What's so special about you?”

I crossed my arms. “Only the fact that I'm three hundred and twenty years old.”

His face softened and he seemed to see me for the first time. “You're a cryosleeper?”

“The richest one in all of New England. Now, are you going to tell me where to find you or do I have to hunt you down?”

He cracked his knuckles, finally looking interested. “Our next meeting is this Friday night. I'm sending the coordinates to your miniscreen. High-rise thirty-two seventeen G, level twenty-four.”
Geez, that seems pretty low. Is it a lower level than where Martha lives? I certainly hope not
.

“Come alone. No recording allowed. Code word paradise.”

“Got—”

He ended the connection and the screen went black. I shook all over, cold sweat dripping from my chin.

Could I do this?

I had until Friday to figure it out.

School seemed trivial compared to the larger issues in my life. I couldn't concentrate in General Relativity, and I sat by myself at lunch, a good seven tables from Maxim and Exara. Whenever Maxim looked in my direction, I pretended to be interested in my soybean mush.

The afternoon was a big boring mishmash of uneventful classes. When the techno jingle finally rang, I shot up, yanked my miniscreen's wire from my screendesk, and bolted out the front doors. I stepped onto the hoverbus in relief, glad the drama of Ridgewood Prep was over for yet another day. I shuffled to the back and plopped down in the last seat, putting my head back and closing my eyes.

“Anyone sitting here?”

I looked up in disbelief. Maxim held onto the center pole, steadying himself as the hoverbus detached from the ramp. It was too late. I had nowhere else to go. “No.”

“No as in no one's sitting here, or
no
I can't sit here?”

I crossed my arms and gave him a nasty look. “Both.”

“Great.” He turned away, then turned back toward me again. “I really need to talk to you.”

I was about to tell him to go to hell when I realized he was my alibi, and I'd need another one if I was going to attend that meeting on Friday. “Okay, but my stop is in twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes isn't a lot of time.”

What did he want to talk about? The last three hundred years?

“That's what we've got.”

“Okay.” He sat next to me, his leg warming the side of mine. The seat wasn't
that
small. He could have spread out, leaned against the window, or kept his thigh to himself.

“I'm sorry about your jaw.”

The entire left side of my face was purple as a plum. I would have gotten a lot of raised eyebrows, except everybody had already heard about the embarrassing fight. “It's nothing.”

He touched my chin, bringing my face up toward his. I felt his breath on my cheek. “This is not nothing.”

I was tired of dancing around the point. Now was as good a time to ask as any. “Why the hell did you ask me to dance?”

Maxim dropped my chin and looked away. “That's what I need to talk to you about.”

The hoverbus reached the first stop and a rush of people walked on and off. Maxim waited until the bus started up again.
Five agonizing stops left
.

“Exara's family and my family have a kind of understanding, an agreement of sorts.” He ran his hand through his silky black hair. “My family lives in her father's high-rise.”

“She owns the whole building?”

“Her father does, yes.”

“Wow.”

“Wow is right. Anyway, my parents got into financial trouble a few years ago, losing billions of people's credits in investments, backing a recycling factory that refused to process living matter for fertilizer.”

“What's living matter?”

Maxim sighed. There were dark circles under his eyes. They were bigger purple-black rings that could give my jaw a run for its money.

“It's people, Jenny. They recycle everything else around here, so it was only a matter of time before they got around to people. There's no place to bury the dead, and it's cheaper than conventionally fertilized food for the people in the lower levels. The government has to do something to keep them fed or they'll revolt.”

“Oh, gosh.” My stomach hollowed and a squirmy feeling crawled over my shoulders.

“My family believes in what's right, and we stuck to our choices even when the factory went out of business and was bought out. My father's had a tough time finding a job since. With my sister's lung condition, living in the smog and mildew choking the lower levels is out of the question. So, extreme measures had to be taken to ensure Rainy could live in a place where she wouldn't get sick.”

Maxim trailed his finger up and down the silver pole. “Exara's father lets us stay in the apartment for free because she and I are going out. It worked fine until I got to know her and realized I didn't like her anymore. If I break up with her, my whole family may have to move to the lower levels. I'd have to quit Ridgewood and go to work in the factories, and Rainy would get sick.”

He looked into my eyes. “I'm not saying it wasn't worth it, but kissing you put all that on the line.”

The thought of a little girl getting sick and dying because of me made me nauseous. The whole situation seemed like something out of a screwed-up soap opera that had run for too many seasons. “You really think Exara's dad would throw you and your family out if you two broke up?”

He leaned back in his seat. “You know Exara. What do you think?”

“That's
so
not fair. It's not fair to her, either. You can't pretend to like someone.”

“It worked out fine for a while. I mean, she's a beautiful girl. Anyone would be excited to go out with her. Everything was fine until I met you.”

I backed up against my side of the seat, like touching him would turn him to stone. This world I'd woken up in was so cold, so cruel. How could life get this bad? “I don't want to get involved. I don't want your family thrown out on my account.”

“I knew that was what you'd say. That's why I debated telling you. I don't want to push you away. I want you to know the kiss we shared was real.”

I blinked as his words sunk in. Then my heart tore. He liked me. He actually liked me more than Exara. Unfortunately, we could never be together. Not with so much on the line. The hoverbus stopped again, and this time Maxim got up.

“Wait!” I grabbed his arm.

He looked at me hopefully, as if I'd figured out some way to trick the universe. If I had, I wouldn't be on the hoverbus—I'd be back in 2012.

“I need you to cover for me again this Friday night.” He looked away, shaking his head, and I wondered how disappointed he was. “I can't keep doing this. You're going to get caught.” “One more time. That's all I ask.”

Everyone had filed off the bus, and he only had a few seconds before he missed the stop. I felt so bad keeping him there, but I needed him. If he truly liked me, he'd help me out. Maxim signaled to the hoverbus driver to buy us more time.

“Okay. One more time. Where do you go, anyway?”

The hoverbus driver got up out of his seat and shouted down the length of the bus. “Do you want to get off or not?”

“Go!” I waved my hand. “I'll tell you later.”

Maxim nodded. “Bye, Jenny.” He ran down the length of the bus and jumped off without looking back. The doors closed and the bus detached from the ramp. I told myself I wouldn't look out the window, but I did anyway. Maxim stood on the platform like a homeless person, staring at me in the seat we had shared, as the hoverbus took off.

Too bad for him I didn't specify when “later” would be.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Paradise

T
he longer I rode the hoverbus to high-rise 3217 G, the sketchier the people became. Some of them had clothes resembling ripped T-shirts and jeans from my generation. I sat next to one woman with more holes than jeans. Were her clothes from my generation? Maybe the new styles just didn't permeate the lower class.

My outfit began to stick out, the exact opposite of what I'd wanted. At the bottom of my pile of hand-me-down clothes, there was a black tunic with a hood and matching black boots that came up to my knees. Len said clothes like those were only worn on formal or solemn occasions, like funerals. So, I had snuck out of the apartment and wore it to the meeting. I wanted to look like I was serious about this, not some rich high-school playgirl doing it for a thrill. But now, all it did was scream
rob this rich girl
.

We traveled farther from the center of the city and closer to this massive cement wall that reminded me of the Great Wall of China. I had no idea what the wall did, because more high-rises were beyond it. Did buildings cover every square inch of the world?

When my stop came, I pulled the hood around my head and signaled the driver. It wasn't a preprogrammed stop on the route. Hopefully he'd honor my request.

The hoverbus stopped, and I stepped onto the platform.

The driver cast me a questioning stare before he left, like I'd gotten off by mistake. I waved him off, pretending to know what I was doing by digging in my backpack. The hoverbus sped away, and I felt abandoned even though I'd chosen this for myself. What was I doing here? Why couldn't I just accept my new life?

Because I'd be living a lie. I'd be ignoring my dreams, and I'd end up just like Martha, an old lady with a replicated cat. Cracking my knuckles, I entered the building.

The temperature in the hall seemed colder than outside. There were no lights, so I opened my miniscreen and used the white background of a new document to light my way. I had two or three hours of battery left. Hopefully, I wouldn't need the light for that long. The air had a wet, mildewy smell, like old dish towels left in the sink for too long. I wrapped my arms around myself and looked for an elevator. Old soybean wafer wrappers, broken glass, and tattered plastic bags lined the hallway. I kicked my way through. How could anyone live like this?

Did anyone live here? I listened for voices, but the walls were as silent as a graveyard. That made me think about conveyor belts carrying bodies into recycling plants, and I shivered and cursed myself for thinking such scary thoughts in such a creepy place.

I reached an elevator and slapped the panel, but nothing happened. The buttons were all blank. Great. I'd have to take the stairs all the way down to level twenty-four. Checking the time, I only had twenty minutes. This didn't seem like the type of thing you could wander in late to.

I found the emergency stairs and booked it, leaping two steps at a time. Debris on the stairs slowed me down, but I kicked it away and kept going, making excellent time. I watched the painted numbers descend from seventy-three down to forty-two.

Only twenty more to go
.

Working up a sweat, I jumped onto the next landing, right in the middle of something squishy.

“Hey! Watch where you're going,”

I scrambled back, covering my mouth with my hand to prevent a scream. My miniscreen bounced on the floor, illuminating the old woman's face in fluorescent light from her hairy chin up. She crawled out from under a pile of sleeping bags, a woven ring of plastic bags on her wispy-haired head.

“I'm sorry, ma'am.” I wanted to keep going, but she blocked the way.
Should I mention the meeting? Does she need a code word, too?
By the look of her tattered clothes and toothless mouth, I didn't think so.

She gave me a suspicious glare. “What are you doing down here?”

“I…I'm going to meet someone.”

She snorted. “Not here you ain't. This building is condemned.”

I felt like the walls would fall in around me, crushing me to death on the spot. “Condemned? How?”

“Mold infestation. They kicked everyone out. Said I couldn't live here no more. This place is all I got, you see.” She paced back and forth, swinging her finger through the air, making me nervous. “I'm not gonna start over, work my way up from level one all over again.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Sorry ain't gonna cut it.” She shot me a nasty pout, her whole bottom jaw extending way past where it should. “I hid here in the stairwell. I was doing fine until you came along.”

“I won't tell anyone.” I put up my hands to show my innocence. “I'm just passing by.”

Meanwhile, seconds ticked by on my miniscreen. I had to get going. I dug in my pockets and brought out a soywafer. She looked like she hadn't eaten in days. “Here, you take this. I have a bunch at home.”