The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories (16 page)

At High Rise High, a bloodstained note hurtles into the crowd, tied to a rock.
MY STRADIVARIUS
!

The crowd’s rumble rises to a roar. “You’ve got to get them out!”

Heads of State send emissaries to plead with us.
End this terrible siege.

In the nation’s capitol, a prayer vigil begins on the mall.

Because the world is watching, the mayor has to name a blue ribbon task force to investigate. That poor pregnant woman. The Stradivarius! We have no choice.

“It’s clear there’s a way in,” Agent Betsy says at The Big Meeting. “Otherwise, how do they get out?”

The mayor doesn’t like this woman much, but single-handed, she quelled the riot at Attica, so he has hopes. Five feet tall and less than a hundred pounds and she terrifies him. He says as smoothly as he can manage, “Good point.”

She bites the words off and spits them at him like nails. “Don’t. You. Condescend to me.”

“Go ahead,” he snarls. “You have four days.”

The governor makes a better show of it. “May God go with you. You have the thanks of a grateful nation.”

Agent Betsy snaps, “Not yet.”

Daunted, he turns to his aide. “Take it away, Harry. Help make this thing work.”

The governor’s aide assesses the woman operative. Plain, with her straight brown hair and no makeup and the standard issue Navy blue suit. Tough, Harry Klein thinks, and fit. Very fit. Her eyes crackle and his catch fire. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going undercover.”

“You?”

Agent Betsy sweeps her hair back into a Scrunchy and pops a wad of gum. “Think I can pass?”

Harry grins. She looks about twelve. “The place is a fortress. You’ll never make it past the ground floor.”

“You think.” Although Agent Betsy carries herself as though she thinks this is going to be easy, it takes all her strength and intelligence to keep her voice
from trembling. “I’ll need two police matrons and a Juvenile Services van.” Her glare is so sharp that it makes even Harry tremble. She hands him a piece of paper: a list. He smiles. In that moment they are bonded. “Get me this stuff. I’m going in.”

Specially uniformed for the mission she knows would make her father proud of her if he had lived, Agent Betsy has turned over her
ID
; she is holding out her wrists for the matrons to put on the cuffs when the mayor comes to wish her well. Using a fake hug to cover his real intentions, he grates into her ear, “Saturday. You have until Saturday to fix this. Then we nuke the place.”

Inside the school, things aren’t going so well. Before he disappeared, Ace Freewalter the custodian stopped the flooding but there’s swash in the halls and smoke from hidden fires curls up from the air conditioning ducts. Although there are random shots and they hear the occasional scream, the survivors in Wardlaw’s office can’t guess how many colleagues are being held hostage in the gym. Some teachers bailed before the insurrection and the concomitant elevator shutdown, as in, after the riot boiled out of the auditorium and overflowed the halls and the cops were notified, the kids blew up the faculty elevator shafts which, as far as the embattled parents in the city know, are the only way in.

While countless hostages huddle in the gym, the escapees are holed up in here, and Ace? Did the bikers bring him down or is he lying dead at the bottom of the incinerator chute just when they need his military expertise? Who knows what happened to him? Safe, for now: Principal Irving Wardlaw, Harvard PhD, who regrets the day he ever agreed to take this job, never mind the hazardous duty pay, the Hyundai, and the perks. Plump, stately French teacher Beverly Flan—still single, and at her age. To her left is Marva Liu, the beautiful Asiamerican swimming coach. At the window stands the gym teacher Bill Dykstra, a gentleman of color who also taught woodworking until Johnny and his droogs commandeered his immaculate shop and trashed the place. Broken by shock, Edward McShy, who escaped the shop after Johnny’s guys smashed his Stradivarius, hunches in a corner where he gibbers and sobs.

“McShy, stop that!”

“I can’t!”

Wardlaw sighs heavily. The school he worked so hard to build is a shambles. The shame! He’ll never get another job. “What are we going to do?”

At the window Dykstra says, “Come here.”

“Paratroopers?”

“Not exactly.”

“Helicopter?”

“In your dreams.”

“
SWAT
team? What?”

Dykstra is not looking up; he’s looking down. He points. “Special delivery. Get a load.”

At this height it’s hard to make out what’s going on, but Dykstra has liberated the custodian’s binoculars from the utility closet. Before he burned out in the Gulf War, Ace Freewalter the don’t-call-me-a-janitor was a Green Beret. Wardlaw grabs the glasses and takes a squint. There is a disturbance in the street below. Crowds scatter as a van painted Juvenile Detention Center blue noses in to the razor wire and stops. Two matrons step down, straight-arming a struggling teenager who slashes at their shins with chunky alligator boots. They undo the handcuffs, drop the teen on the sidewalk, and get in the van and leave. Wardlaw says, “What?”

“Looks like a new student to me. Unless it’s a diversionary tactic. They open the doors for this kid and Commandos rush in.”

“Then we’re saved,” Beverly Flan flutes with a hopeful smile.

Coach grins. “Not so’s you’d notice.”

The principal sighs. “The entrance is sealed, we saw it on
TV
. Dykstra, what’s going on?”

“Too soon to tell.”

Nothing happens for a very long time. Night falls. Arc lights bathe the main entrance. The Detention Center drop-off sits on the sidewalk, hugging her knees. They see her on
TV
. She’s a girl with silver wire woven into green cornrows and studs everywhere and the greatest of all possible tattoos. The girl shakes her fist at the Fox Nightly News camera, but it isn’t us she is talking to. She is talking to
them
. Your children! She says, “Let me the fuck in.”

The remaining staff clusters around Principal Wardlaw’s Watchman, which doesn’t show them much. Later they take turns watching while the others sleep. Near dawn, Dykstra sees it. The razor wire at ground-floor level is stirring. A door opens where even the principal didn’t know there was a door.

Dykstra says in a low voice, “They’re coming out.”

“No, somebody’s taking her in.”

“Give me those.” Beverly Flan looks. “It’s Johnny Slater!”

“How do you know?”

“I know Johnny when I see him. Why, I had him in French!”

The group in the office roars, “Get the bastard!”

Edward McShy cries, “My Stradivarius!”

The crowd below begins to part like grain when the rats run through it. They see it on
TV
. Snipers’ bullets strike sparks on the razor wire.

Marva Liu says, “If Johnny’s down there, maybe we can sneak over to the shop and rescue poor Bruce’s wife!”

Dykstra reaches for her hand. “That’s not a job for civilians, dear.”

Dear
. For the moment, Marva is glad they’re under siege. Later, she thinks joyfully, something will come of this. “Oh, Bill.”

Below, men in helmets like mushrooms break cover and swarm the entrance steps. Wardlaw’s breath explodes into words. “Thank God, Marines!”

But Johnny and his gang yank the girl inside and before the first wave of jarheads can reach the pediment an explosion seals the door.

The new kid is squirming in Johnny Slater’s grasp. Johnny is tall, stringy and good-looking with the blond Mohawk and piercing green eyes.
Cute
. The girl snarls, “What took you, meathead?”

She doesn’t look so bad herself: Day-Glo green hair, skinny pants and a skimpy, spangled top. He is leading her through a maze of generators and steam pipes to the hidden elevator, the one you in the city don’t know about. There’s a lot you don’t know. These two, alone! It is love at first sight. “We had to be sure. The name is Johnny, you skank.”

Agent Betsy thinks for a moment. “I’m Trinket.” Johnny slips a silver Scrunchy on her wrist: invitation to the Tinsel Prom. Her voice ripples with surprise.
Yo, Trinket
. “I am!”

They go up a dozen floors. The doors open on a cluttered kid room, the kind we all wanted back then: Indian mirrorwork pillows, Astroturf and Furbys, posters and plastic shit from record stores, eight generations of PlayStation, windup toys and model rockets and action figures, you name it, fox fur with the head and dangling feet and the chattering vinyl skull with skeleton attached, ripped off from the bio lab. Trinket lets her voice go soft with wonder. “Is this your
place?
”

Deep in the school subbasement where you can’t go, Lance Corporal Ace Freewalter
USA
(retired) considers his options. He outran the bike gang on
HRH
3, but he barely escaped the motorized razor scooters on
HRH
2; the enemy took out after him with blowtorches, intent on burning him alive. Trained in survival tactics, Ace has gone to ground where even the toughest kids don’t have the guts to follow. He is holed up behind the generator on
HRH1Z
, where he keeps his war diary. Iraq was Kissinger’s fault. This defeat is his. Opening a metal chest he keeps concealed here, Ace studies his arsenal. Tactical weapons.
Smart bombs. You name it. Scowling, he blackens his face. The
HRH
shutdown is his fault. With gritted teeth, he ties a black band around his head, tucking in the ends with a determined glare. It’s up to him to win the building back.

“Hakuna Matata.” The mayor has been awake for forty-eight hours now and is getting a little schizzy. “Sorry. Good evening. I am taking this opportunity to let you know that the situation at High Rise High is under control and we will make every effort to keep it contained. We have armed guards securing the perimeter and, rest assured, the neighborhood raids have ceased.”

Unfortunately the live feed suggests otherwise, but His Honor can’t know what the networks have chosen to put on our screens. There are flameouts in the Greenmont and Springdale areas, explosions in Parkhurst, and person or persons unknown have brought down a police helicopter in the park.

“We will not rest until the faculty and Mrs. Um. Bruce’s wife and unborn baby are safe.” He rests his knuckles on his desk and leans into the camera. “And we will search and destroy if we have to, to rescue the innocent. We will get them out at all costs.”

Mayor Patton looks deep into the camera, trying to lock eyes with us. “We have made these young savages an extraordinary offer. A chance to release the hostages and walk free. And we are prepared to back it up with cash. If the students of High Rise High don’t settle this peacefully and give themselves up we will be forced to invade, and if the invasion fails …”

Rage opens its red jaws and without meaning to, the mayor accidentally tips his hand. He snarls, “Well, we will take drastic steps to stem this human plague.”

Somewhere in the city, a thousand mothers groan, but the mayor is too mad at you to hear.

“Explosives. ICBMs. We’re prepared to take a few prisoners and kill a lot more but …” He is speaking for us, remember, the exhausted parents of these terrible kids, but
in extremis
as he is, Mayor Patton forgets who he’s talking to. “If that doesn’t work we’ll blow the building and everybody in it straight to hell.”

Mayor Patton, the city’s mothers are listening. “My baby!” a woman in the Hill District shouts and women everywhere take up the cry. Pressed though they were by their children’s demands and glad as they were to get rid of them, the mayor’s threats bite deep. They remind these women what they used to do.

“Billy, please don’t hurt Billy,” someone sobs, and a block away another
mother cries, “Nobody touches Maryann!” The voices spill out of open windows and fill the streets. “Not Lizzy.” “Not my Dave!” The chorus overflows your buildings, it swells until the vibration drowns out thought. “
Don’t you dare touch our children!
” You fobbed your teenaged children off on the city but they are still yours, and you are resolute.

In a barren, freshly scoured apartment in the projects, one woman in particular hears. “You better not lay a hand on my kid!” Rolling up her sleeves, she looks around her tiny apartment for weapons. She’s a decent woman. Except for a steak knife and sewing shears, there is nothing at hand. Never mind. She picks up her mobile phone and grabs her late husband’s safari jacket. Unarmed, Marybeth Slater will take on anybody and everything that threatens her son. “I’m getting Johnny out. If I have to, I’ll kill.”

The studio switchboard lights up like a fireworks finale. The women get an open mike. “Patton you bastard. Murderer!”

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry for any confusion. When I say blow them up it isn’t an exact meaning.” Caught in the act, Mayor Patton is getting shrill. “It’s just a matter of speaking.” His press officer mutters into his ear: too late. He screeches, “It’s a metaphor!”

Agent Betsy looks up from the locket Johnny just gave her. “I guess you’re not having school in here any more.”