The Limit (20 page)

“Do you care?” the girl asked. I looked over and realized it was Paige.

“What?” I asked. She’d spoken so softly—and I’d been paying so little attention—her words hadn’t registered.

“If I change the channel. Do you care?”

“No.” I rocked way back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. Ten-second snatches of conversations filtered to my ears as Paige flipped through the channels. After a few minutes the remote landed on my stomach.

“There’s nothing good on,” she said. “You can have it back.”

I raised my arm high enough to aim the remote and click off the TV. Paige didn’t move—I could tell even without looking at her. Why was she just sitting there?

She started tapping her fingers against the armrests of the recliner. It was made of leather, so the sound came out loud and sharp.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.
It drowned out the dings and bells from Kia and Isaac at the pinball machine in the corner.
Tap-tap-tap.
Burrowing into my brain.
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

I sprang out of the chair.

“Will you knock it off?” I said, glaring down at her.

“Oh.” She slid her hands into her lap and lowered her head. “Sorry. I’m just . . . bored.”

“Go find your little buddy, Madeline. I’m sure she has a new outfit for you to squeal over.” I sank back
into the video rocker chair and, once again, stared at the ceiling.

“She’s . . . doing something,” she said.

“Watch a movie. Play video games. Go swimming. There’s a ton of things you could do.”

“I’ve done them all before. Watched them all. Played them all.”

“Go do whatever it is Madeline is doing.” Having her sit, doing nothing, so close to me put a serious kink in the nothingness I was trying to achieve.

“I can’t,” she said.

“Sure you can. She’ll let you. She doesn’t have anyone else to hang out with.”

Paige made a gasping hiccup sound that made me look at her. Tears filled her eyes, then started dribbling out, one by one.
Great.
I let my head roll back.
I’m a jerk. I made her cry.
What had I said? Did she think I meant that Madeline only hung out with her because, now that Neela was gone, she really didn’t have another choice? Or maybe Madeline really wouldn’t let her hang out with her right now. That was probably it. They were having a fight. Girls did that all the time. I’ve seen it with Lauren. Best friends who can’t spend five seconds apart get mad and decide they hate each other. It lasts for a day, a year, or an hour. Then they’re back connected at the hip again. Don’t ask me to understand.

“You know, I bet if you went and talked to her, you could work out whatever . . . problem you two are having.”

“No. It’s not that. Not really. It’s just—if we were back home, Madeline and I would
never
choose each other as best friends.”

Huh.
Would Coop and I hang out together—out in the real world? Probably not. My main buds had been math and computer fanatics like Brennan and Lester. Coop wouldn’t go with the total muscle heads, but he’d definitely find a group of jocks to spend his hours with.

Paige started sniffing big-time. “I just miss my family so much. I
hate
being stuck in here—unlike some people, like Madeline.”

“And Jeffery,” I added.

“Do you know what she’s doing right now? She’s having a
spa day.
Can you believe it? She turned our dance room into her own private spa, spending tons of money to have the lighting redone and furniture brought in. It’s totally irresponsible.” Her voice grew louder and faster. I’d never heard her speak so much, and she wasn’t even finished. “She brought in a masseuse, and a pricey hairstylist, plus another person to do her nails. It’s costing her an absurd amount of money, and she doesn’t even care.”

She glanced over at me and bit her lip. I think
she’d forgotten I was there. All these thoughts had been accumulating inside her like raindrops in a bucket. She just realized she’d dumped the whole thing over my head.

“At least it will soon be over,” she said in that quiet voice I was more accustomed to hearing from her. “I won’t have to listen to her talk about it anymore, and I won’t have to keep telling her that I’m not interested in going in on it with her. Madeline has been working on this project for more than a month now. It takes a long time to get approval to bring outsiders up to the top floor, longer than getting approval to go outside.”

“We need approval to go outside?” I shook my ankle bracelet at her and spoke with more sarcasm than was necessary. “I thought we were free to go anywhere we wanted.”

She snapped her mouth shut, staring at my ankle, and sank deep into her chair.

My foot came down. “Maybe Madeline and Jeffery have the right idea. What difference is it going to make how much we spend in here? Our parents certainly don’t care how far over the limit we are, so why should we?”

Her voice dropped to an even quieter mouse-whispering level. “My parents care. I care.”

“Your parents care? I don’t think so, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“They couldn’t help it. My little brother . . .
he’s always been really sick. . . . All the hospital bills . . . They couldn’t help it. My dad took on another job, and I came here. We’re all working hard so we can get back under the limit.”

“Sure. That’s what they tell you, so you’ll go along quietly. They raise our families’ limits as soon as we come here. Perfect excuse for them to go shopping and pile up even more debt.”

She shook her head, unbelieving. “Maybe your parents, but mine—”

“What’s so different about yours? Huh? You think your parents love you more? They don’t! They’re all the same.”

She blew out a disgusted breath as she pushed herself out of her chair. “You’ve been sitting in front of the TV too long. It’s scrambled your brains.”

“It’s true,” I said, shooting myself in the head with a finger gun. “Total system meltdown. You’re going to have to reboot me, just like Coop. Reprogram my brain.”

Reprogram my brain.

Staring at the big blank screen in front of me, everything suddenly clicked into place, like sliding that last blue Rubik’s Cube square into position. “Oh. My. Gosh.”

Lauren’s voice:
My work is weird. I mean, I don’t even know how to do it. Still, I have to sit in my little chair and stare at the computer screen for four hours every day. It’s really stupid
.

Blond Gorilla Guard:
It’s okay, Reginald, settle down. You’re fine now. Here, you need to look at your computer screen. Look right there. That’s right. Keep watching while I clean this up.

The headaches. Seizures.

They were doing something to us, sending some sort of electrowaves into our brains while we worked on our computers. They were reprogramming our brains without us even knowing about it.

“Paige, wait! Don’t leave. I think I just figured something out.”

“That you’re a rude jerk?” She folded her arms across her chest with a huff, but she did stop and turn toward me. “You’re not very bright for a Top Floor, are you? I figured that out weeks ago.”

“You’re right. I am a jerk. I’m sorry. Maybe your parents aren’t like mine, but listen. I think I just realized what they’re doing to us in here.”

“Who’s doing what to whom?”

“The FDRA. Miss Smoot. Everyone here. To us kids.”

“What do you mean?” Her arms fell out of that tight cross, and her fingers twisted together.

“I’m not sure of the details, but I’ve got the general idea.” I jumped to my feet and started pacing in small circles. “I’ve got to find out. It’d be on their computer,
but I don’t know if I can access it fast enough.” The band around my ankle suddenly felt ten times as heavy. The security guards had most likely started watching my computer activity extra closely after my blanking-out-the-monitors trick. Once they realized I was hacking again, they’d shut me down fast. I couldn’t do this alone. I grabbed Paige by the wrist and pulled her out the rec room door. “Come on, let’s go find Coop and Jeffery. We need help.”

“
BUT WHAT IF WE FIND SOMETHING
incriminating?” Jeffery asked. Paige and I sat cross-legged on the floor with him in a corner of the gym. At the moment it was the best place for a private meeting. Madeline’s spa filled up the dance room. Kia and Isaac were still dinging and pinging on their pinball machine in the rec room. The pool room was too humid, and the cubicles were too exposed.

“We’ll figure how to get a copy of it to outside authorities once we do,” I said.

“No. I mean, what happens to us? Will things change around here? Will we have to move out of the workhouse?”

Oh, yeah. Jeffery didn’t want to go home. Ever.

“To be honest, I don’t know.” I ran the tip of my finger back and forth on the glossy wood floor in front of me. “I don’t know what we’re going to find for sure, and I don’t know what it will mean. I do know this—I’d rather find out the truth about what is going on
around here, no matter what the consequences are.”

“I guess,” he said, not sounding very convinced. Just how bad
had
his home life been?

“Jeffery.” Paige’s soft voice came out a lot more confident than usual. “Do you remember about three months ago—when Miss Smoot sent us an e-mail telling us we were no longer allowed to order any meals from Lily Gardens Chinese Restaurant?”

“She never did tell us why,” said Jeffery with a grumble.

Paige giggled. “Maybe she got a bad fortune cookie from them.”

“They took the link off the workhouse home page and put up blocks.” Jeffery explained to me. He twitched his eyebrows. “I got through anyway. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. I ordered Lily Gardens food every day for a week.”

“I remember seeing fresh cartons of untouched Chinese food in the rec room at lunch and dinnertime,” she said. “You probably would have ordered it for breakfast if they’d been open that early.”

“Yeah.” His eyes were focused on something outside the circle the three of us made. His smile flattened out. “The receptionist finally caught on to where the food deliveries were coming from and blocked them from being brought up.”

“That’s not the point.” Paige’s voice grew even stronger. “Obviously you don’t even like Chinese food, but you kept ordering it just because Miss Smoot told you not to.”

Now I could see where this was going.
Keep at it, Paige. You’re almost there.

He let out a small grunt, and his smile came back. “Yeah. It was sort of like a dare.”

“This is the same thing,” said Paige, “but much more important than Lily Gardens Restaurant. This has to do with right and wrong. It’s a dare too. A challenge. We’re the good guys on a dangerous mission to stop the bad guys.”

“Kind of like a game.” He sat up straight, his eyes bright. “And you want me to play it with you?”

“We’re begging you to play,” I said.

“Okay. I’m in. What’s the plan?”

I popped Paige softly on her thigh with the side of my fist, and she did the same back to me in our own silent
Yes!

I scooted in to make a tighter circle. “I need some help figuring out the details, but here’s what I thought we could do . . .”

One forty-one a.m. A perfectly random time. No one would suspect. If everything went as planned,
Jeffery would leave his room in exactly five minutes. I hoped he’d remembered to set his alarm. I didn’t end up needing mine. I couldn’t sleep. Coop had been out of it the entire evening, after his head-banging diving accident, so we’d been forced to move ahead without him.

Paige met me at the door to the hallway. Her whole body shivered.

“You okay?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Did you bring the lighter?”

“Of course.”

After my last escape Honey Lady had ordered a search of my room and cubicle and confiscated the lighter. She’d made a new rule that the girls had to keep their butane candle lighters in their bedrooms—stashed in a spot inaccessible to me. She’d never counted on me turning Paige into a rebel.

“You don’t have to do this.” I said. “After we set off the smoke detector, you can sneak back to your room. I can cause a distraction by myself.”

She hesitated for a second then shook her head. “I’m all right. Let’s stick with this plan. It’s the most believable.”

I breathed in deeply and nodded. “Let’s go.”

The instant we walked into the hallway to the stairs, we heard the ding of the elevator arriving on the top floor.

Crud. Had they noticed me moving around so quickly because of my ankle monitor? I thought it only gave the alarm when I took my first step off the top floor. The guards had probably picked us up on the video monitors because no other kids in the entire workhouse were moving around. But getting caught right now didn’t fit with the plan. It was too early. I thought we’d have a minute or two before a guard got to us. We couldn’t let him catch us yet. Jeffery hadn’t even left his room.

Paige and I didn’t have time to set off the smoke detector before the elevator door opened. The only thing we could do was dart back into the cubicle room. We couldn’t get caught here, though. Jeffery needed to be alone. I just hoped I was right about my ankle monitor not showing a blip on their screen while I was on the top floor. Otherwise we’d be shut down before we started.