The Limit (10 page)

“Ta-da!” The gloating, high-pitched voice floated over all the cubicles.

“Not again,” I moaned.

“Hey, man, get used to it,” Coop called from his side of our shared cubicle wall.

It’d happened every day since I arrived. Each morning Madeline made a grand entrance and strutted around like she was the coolest, best-looking thing alive. She actually thought we cared.

“Today’s outfit is a VonClossen creation,” she announced. “Notice the beadwork on this cord belt.” What she called a belt looked like ten red cords with various beads stuck here and there. The end of it hung practically to her knees. I don’t know why she was wearing that belt, but it definitely wasn’t to hold up her pants. On top she wore a white shirt covered by a red shirt covered by a white jacket. I’d sweat under that many clothes. “I found the VonClossen website when I noticed the company’s stock had doubled in the last nine months. I’m happy, and my clients are happy!” She threw her arms in the air and froze in a one-hip-forward pose right at the opening of my cubicle.

I gave her a weak smile and a nod as she continued on her course around the cubicles, pausing to turn and pose a few more times.

“It never ends?” I called to Coop. “Just how big is her closet?”

“Same size as yours.” She’d retreated to stick her sneering face back in my cubicle. “Some of us know how to organize our wardrobes better than others.”

“Some of us don’t care!”

With a huff and a nose-in-the-air, hair-flipping turn, she strutted away.

Two seconds later screams of delight shot over the top of the cubicles. Neela and Paige were getting their first glimpses of today’s fashion statement. Their high-pitched squeals grated on my ears like a painful whistle to a dog.

“Shut up, already!” Kia’s response was as predictable as Madeline’s daily show.

With or without Kia’s warning I knew everyone would settle down within the next few seconds and get going on their four hours of computerized schoolwork. We would’ve done it even without the threat of a guard watching on the monitor and coming up to crack down on us. I don’t care who you are—whether you’re a model wannabe, a paddle-wall-ball fanatic, or an Indian princess—if you’re smart enough to be a
Top Floor, you’ve got enough nerd in you to love the challenge of ripping through the assignments that pop up on your screen and seeing how close to a perfect score you can get. I was actually
learning
something when I didn’t have to wait for days on end until everyone else in the class caught on. The computer science projects I got on the top floor stretched me beyond anything available at my middle school. What I loved most were the math lessons. They taught me new theories and strategies. And an added bonus to computerized learning—I never had to eat school lunch.

I rubbed my hands together.
Come on, Mr. Computer Teacher, let’s see if you’ve got anything worthy of my brain today.

Five p.m. Free time.

Already? The paying work I did in the afternoon was hard, but that made it all the more satisfying when I clawed my way through it. They had me doing math modeling. Two days ago I’d finished a mathematical model for a marketing company, to predict how consumers would react under a specific situation. My current project was for a chemical company, to optimize one part of the process for manufacturing a certain type of plastic.

I’d get so into my work—fascinated by the way I could manipulate numbers and equations—I’d
lose all track of time. Usually Coop peeked around the edge of the cubicle to call me to paddle-wall-ball before I had any idea it was close to quitting time.

It happened again.

“Let’s hit the court, cuz,” he said.

“Hold up. I’ve almost figured out this part.”

“Five o’clock, man. You gotta shut it down or the feds’ll come here and quote codes and laws at us till our ears bleed.”

“Reginald always works longer. He works all the time.”

“What makes you think that? You’ve got X-ray eyes now and can see through those closed blinds of his?”

I didn’t have to answer, but I did anyway. “No.”

“Free time, fool. It means you’re free to do what you want. If your pants aren’t itching after sitting eight hours a day pounding on a computer and you want to goof around on the Internet or play some games or invent a new programming language just for the fun of it, then free time says you’re free to do it.”

“He’s not working overtime?”

“Not allowed. Go in and see for yourself if you don’t believe me.”

“No, I believe you,” I said fast. Go in there? Disturb Reginald? Unthinkable. Besides, Gorilla Man or one of the other guards—who all looked so much alike from the
neck down they could’ve been clones—would come and grab me if I even knocked on that glass door of his.

I typed in a few more keystrokes.

“I hate this! I’m never going to get it right!” The voice blasted from several cubicles down and carried throughout the entire room. It sounded like Neela, but I couldn’t be totally positive, since none of the girls ever spent much time talking to me. A pounding noise followed from the same direction that sounded like the girl slamming her fists into her keyboard.

“Forget about it for today.” This snooty voice I recognized. Madeline. “Come on. Let’s go order dinner. Paige, log off now! What’s with you two today?”

“Just a minute,” Paige called back from her own cubicle.

“I can’t quit. I can’t!” Neela’s wailing voice cried.

“You guys know they don’t pay you extra for working overtime,” said Madeline. Her voice moved from over by Neela’s cubicle, the first girls’ cubicle across from Reginald’s, to Paige’s cubicle, across from Coop’s, and back again. “You’re going to make the guards come up here, and you know how smelly they can be. How can you even stand that programming stuff, Paige?”

“I’ve almost got this,” said Paige.

“Well I don’t, and my deadline was three days ago! Miss Smoot is going to kill me. I just. Can’t. Get. It!”

I logged off my computer and smirked at Coop. “Always a drama, huh.”

He nodded. “With girls around. Come on, man.” He practically dragged me out of my cubicle. “As much as I love designing databases—and I do, don’t get me wrong—I gotta move. Now. Let’s hit the court.”

“Check that.”

The voice startled us and made us look around. We’d passed Jeffery’s cubicle—which he’d already vacated—and made it as far as Isaac’s, but the voice belonged to Kia.

“Isaac, tell the little boys you and I have dibs on the court today,” she said. It took us a few seconds to find her—well, her head anyway. She was standing on something, her desk or a chair maybe, so her black curly hair and dark face stuck over the top of the middle cubicle wall. I wondered if she often talked to Isaac that way. I also wondered if Reginald ever opened his ceiling blinds and if Kia had gotten a peek at him. Not likely.

“We have dibs on the court today, little boys,” said Isaac, leaning back in his chair with his feet propped on his desk. He held a model spaceship and kept his eyes on it as he twisted it slowly in his hands. “Like it?” he asked, holding it up for Coop and me to admire—although we didn’t. I really couldn’t see much difference between the model he was holding and the dozens of others that crowded his desk and shelves. It was a miracle the
guy could still fit his computer in that sci-fi collector’s shop—although the computer was covered with aliens too. “I just got this one today. You know what it is?”

“No, and we don’t care,” said Coop. “You can’t dibs the court. It’s first come, first served. Always has been. And since Isaac is busy playing with his little toys, Matt and I are going to get there first.”

“Sorry to crash your hard drive,” said Kia. “I already talked to Miss Smoot about how you hog the court all the time with your stupid paddle-wall-ball game.”

“And what would you choose to play in there? Something lame like basketball or volleyball?” Coop made his voice go up about two octaves. “Oh, Isaac, will you make that shot for me? I think I need to file my nails.”

She didn’t flinch. “You are so lame. Miss Smoot said I could write a sign-up schedule, which I did last night. I e-mailed a copy to everyone first thing this morning. Didn’t you read it?”

Oops.
I guess I’d deleted it, thinking it was an extra rah-rah message from Honey Lady. It must have been the message that had “Top Floor Cooperation” in the subject line.

“I have better ways to waste my time than reading e-mail from lowly animators like you two,” Coop said, nudging me with his elbow.

Kia rolled her eyes and stuck her chin in the air. “It doesn’t matter if you read it or not. Isaac and I are signed up for the gym from five fifteen until eight.”

“It’s the only room we can totally black out.” Isaac sat up straight, getting excited. “We’re making a movie with all these laser special effects. There will be tons of spaceships flying everywhere, and battles. It’s going to be awesome. It’s got everything.”

“Yeah? How about a plot? Has it got one of those?” asked Coop with a sneer.

“Of course it does,” said Kia from above.

“Hey, you know what? You don’t need the gym.” Coop was getting excited himself. “The girls’ dance room doesn’t have windows. You can use it!”

A high-pitched shriek came from the other side of the cubicles. Ten seconds later Madeline raced around.

“No way,” she said, twirling the long red cords of her belt like a cowboy’s lasso. “They are not allowed to use our dance room.”

Coop was twitching all over the place, his muscles itching to get moving. I was anxious to get going too.

“Why not?” Coop asked. “You aren’t using it. You don’t own it!”

“Isaac, just how are you going to make your little spaceships fly for your movie?” Madeline asked, crossing her arms across the layers of clothing covering her chest.

“Wires. Gravity,” Isaac said. “We’ll throw a few, to see how that looks on film.”

“See?” said Madeline, her stuck-up nose all crinkled. “Flying toys are not allowed in our dance room.”

Coop’s hands clenched into fists.
Easy there, bud. Hitting girls is not cool.

He was able to keep his anger under control. “Give me one good reason.”

“You’re such a dunce, I don’t know how you ever made top floor,” she said. “The walls in there are covered with mirrors. Flying spaceships and mirrors don’t mix.”

“We can’t use a room covered with mirrors anyway,” said Kia. “The reflection would mess up all our shots.”

“But . . . but . . .” Coop’s hair flipped into his face as he jerked his head, searching the room for the solution that didn’t exist.

“Bye-bye, little boys,” said Kia as her head dropped out of sight.

“Bye-bye.” Madeline waved, scrunched up her nose, and gave us a fake smile. Her voice deepened into a growl. “Neela! Paige! Now!”

“Just a minute!” The duet of girls’ voices cried out.

“Fine. I’ll just go make movie magic with Isaac and Kia.”

“You will?” Isaac popped up in his chair, gripping the armrests. I couldn’t tell if he was excited or terrified.

“No, she won’t.” Kia sauntered up to the group gathering outside Isaac’s cubicle.

Madeline rolled her eyes dramatically. “Okay. Fine.”

“I’m finished.” Paige appeared at the edge of the row of cubicles. She pointed back toward the girls’ side. “But something’s wrong with Neela.”

All six of us, every Top Floor except Reginald and Jeffery, rushed around to the girls’ side. Neela was sitting at her desk, her head cradled in her hands and her shoulders shaking.

“Neela?” Madeline said. None of us dared cross through the invisible door and into the cubicle.

“I can’t do it,” Neela sobbed. Turning with her chair, she looked up and noticed the large group that had assembled.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“No.” She wiped at the tears streaming down her face.

“You should just knock off for today,” I said. “Sleep on it. Let your subconscious work out the problems while you sleep. It works all the time for me when I’m stuck in the middle of a killer calculus problem. Just make sure you leave a pen, paper, and flashlight close to your bed so you can write down the answer when it comes to you in the middle of the night.”

“I guess that’s as good as anything else I’ve tried.”
She jabbed the button that logged her off. “Thanks, Matt.” She smiled a little, and then winced, squeezing her eyes together tight. “Madeline, you and Paige go on without me. I’ve got a really bad headache. I think I’m just going to go to my room and lie down.”

“A headache? Again?” Madeline sighed. “Take some ibuprofen and get over it already.”

“I have.” Neela winced, as if something sharp had just jabbed her from inside her brain. Slowly, she pushed herself out of her chair. She started crying harder. “This one is the worst ever. Excuse me.”

We moved aside as Neela passed through us and groped her way the short distance to the girls’ hall.

“We should e-mail Hon—Miss Smoot,” I said. “Neela needs a doctor or something.”

“She’s going to her room,” said Madeline. “They’ll monitor her condition while she’s in there and come get her if she really needs it.
I
think she’s being a drama queen over such a little headache.”

I’m not buying that
, I thought as the group broke up. Neela was in real pain. Headaches.

That was it. Tonight I would split from Coop an hour before lights-out and go data collecting. Time to put my hacking skills to use and figure out what was really going on here.