The Vault of Dreamers (10 page)

My nose was scratched across the bridge and swollen, too, but it wasn’t broken. I
could hold a cold cloth to my face and eat cookies at the same time without too much
trouble, though the cookies took on a damp taste.

“Any better?” my mom asked.

“Yeah.” I sounded muffled. “Why doesn’t Larry get a job?”

“The workers are still technically on strike,” Ma said. “If he gets a different job,
they’ll take his name off the roll, and he won’t get any of his back pay if they rehire
again.”

“But it’s been a year.”

“It’s our problem to worry about, Rosie. Not yours,” Ma said. “Just try not to exasperate
him, okay? You want the rest of this?”

She passed me the mixing bowl before she turned back to the kitchen area. I ran my
finger inside for a gob of cookie dough, and Dubbs crowded over to poke her finger
in, too. I licked down smooth heaven: buttery, sweet, and chocolaty. Sometimes, it
felt good to let my mom indulge me like a kid, but it didn’t erase what had happened.
She might want me to leave the problems to her, but my parents’ problems had become
mine, too. Whatever trapped them trapped me.

I’d been running errands for the McLellens as long as I could remember. If I couldn’t
get a decent education, I’d end up working at their pot bar and sundries shop for
the rest of my life, or turning into my mother, which terrified me. I loved her, but
still. I didn’t want her life. She’d loved my birth father, her first husband, and
they’d been saving up to move before he went MIA in the Greenland War. Then, after
my dad had been declared PD—Presumed Dead—she’d ended up marrying his best friend,
Larry, and having Dubbs.

Sometimes, like tonight when my nose hurt, I looked up through the skylight and dreamed
about how my life would have been different if my own dad had never died. The only
thing was, I’d never give up my little sister.

“Where’d you get that, Dubbs?” my mother asked.

“From the school library,” Dubbs said. She had pulled out a tablet and, with layers
of red strips still woven through her little fingers, was skimming the touch screen.
“Remember you signed the permission slip? I get it for one night for free.”

“Don’t let your father see that.”

“It’s not a phone,” Dubbs said. “He won’t care.”

Larry was paranoid about cell phones. He thought the government used them to track
every citizen, so he refused to have one. We had to be the last family in town with
a landline phone, and half the time it was disconnected because we didn’t pay our
bill.

I sat up slowly, and Dubbs settled close enough that our arms bumped. She tapped up
The Forge Show
, which I hadn’t watched since our TV broke. A menu along the bottom of the screen
ran a tally of the top ten students in each grade, in blip rank order, so it was easy
to track the popular students. Another menu listed links to spin-off commentary, interviews,
and merchandise. Since the hour was after six, the show was on its repeat cycle, looping
through the feeds from earlier in the day. It was showing that morning, around 8:00
a.m., when the students were dancing, singing, and studying in their classes.

“Who should we watch?” Dubbs asked. Each time she clicked on a student profile, it
enlarged to fill three quarters of the screen, shrinking the other profiles to smaller
boxes along the margin and muting their audios.

“Him,” I said, pointing to a senior student with a goatee.

He was standing in a recording booth with a female student, coaching her on how to
sing. He wanted her to be more internal and private with her characterization of a
voice she was doing for a cartoon he was animating. As they talked, he urged her to
feel it more, and he warned her that the mic was picking up her extra breaths. He
left the booth for the other side of the glass while she gave the song another try.

The whole process fascinated me.

Dubbs flipped through different feeds, following her scattershot whims into ballet
studios, art ateliers, and music practice rooms. Ma looked over the back of the couch.

“Do they ever take regular classes?” Ma asked.

“They have to take some electives in lit, history, science, and math,” Dubbs said.

I laughed. “You know a lot about it.”

“My friends watch it all the time,” Dubbs said. “You’d be great there, Rosie, except
it’s too far away.”

“Thousands of people apply every year,” I said.

“So? You should at least try,” Dubbs said.

“We could never afford it,” Ma said.

“They have scholarships,” Dubbs said. “They won’t care if you’re in N.I.P. It’s based
on talent.”

“What would you study there? Film?” Ma asked.

“Of course film!” Dubbs said. “Really, Ma.”

My inner longing expanded at the idea, and my gaze shot automatically to the top of
the refrigerator where I’d stashed my video camera. I mentally framed up the shot
of my sister and my mother together, with Ma leaning over the back of the couch, watching
me, and Dubbs all pink-cheeked. A second later, I jumped over the back of the couch
and grabbed my video camera to start shooting.

Dubbs took another bite of cookie and stuck out her tongue at the camera.

“That’s the charm,” I said. “Give me more.”

“Where’d you get that old thing, anyway?” Ma asked.

“My science teacher gave it to me. He said I could keep it if I could fix it,” I said.

I’d found a way to rig a penny in the battery pack. It wasn’t perfect, but I loved
that video camera. It gave me an excuse to stare close up at whatever I wanted, but
it allowed me some distance, too, because I was never quite in the scene when I was
filming.

I turned the video camera upside down as I aimed it at Dubbs and focused in on one
of her eyes. Her lashes were huge. “Say something brilliant, Dubbs,” I said.

“I need to fart,” she said.

“That’s good,” I said, laughing. I zoomed out again to frame up both of her eyes.
Her lashes were still huge.

“No! I’ve got it!” she said. She made her little voice serious. “This is my brilliant
message: you have to dream.”

My sister said that. My little sister.

I lowered my video camera so I could see her in real life. She killed me sometimes
when she was right.

Then she farted.

We both laughed. I set my video camera aside so I could wrestle her into a squashed,
squirming shape beneath me. “You’re disgusting!” I said, and exhaled cookie breath
in her face.

“Stop!” she said, laughing harder.

I did. Eventually.

9

THE FURNITURE MOVERS

MY FIRST ELATION
at passing the fifty cuts soon faded. I paused as I stepped into our dorm room that
Monday evening. It had always been a large, uncomfortable space, more like a drafty
barn than a bedroom, but now it veered toward the ominous. With their lids dim and
closed, the sleep shells of the cut girls were interspersed among the remaining ones
like great, hulking coffins.

“This is creepy,” I said.

“Forgive us if we can’t move twenty-five sleep shells out of your room in under an
hour,” Orly said dryly. “They’ll be gone by morning. Hurry, now, and get ready for
bed. Pills in ten minutes.”

I hadn’t seen her standing by the door. Orly was a big-boned woman who favored gray,
high-necked blouses, and she retained a dour air despite the general cheer of the
rest of the staff. I glanced toward the other girls who were getting ready for bed,
and then back to Orly.

“I didn’t mean to criticize,” I said.

“You, of all people, should be grateful you’re still here,” she said. “That was quite
ruthless, making a project of all those losers. Not to mention using that kitchen
boy like you did.”

Her words stung.

“I didn’t use Linus,” I said.

“No? What was that, then? Spontaneous chemistry?”

Orly was laying out small white paper cups on a tray for the evening pill-taking routine.
I didn’t understand why she had a grudge against me, but wittingly or not, she was
giving me a chance to defend myself before the cameras.

“I had no idea what I’d find when I went to take footage of Anna and the others. I
was just trying to capture an important time,” I said. “And I happen to like Linus.”

“I’m sure you do,” Orly said. “I’ve seen it all before, believe me. You’re certainly
not the first to stage an opportunistic romance.”

I squared my feet. “What’s bothering you? That I filmed those other students, or that
I kissed Linus?”

Her mouth went prim as if she weren’t going to answer. Then her eyes went snappish.
“That kiss was trashy,” Orly said. “It cheapened both the school and the show. Maybe
nobody else will tell you so, but it’s the truth. And Linus is little better than
catnip for that old goat in the tower.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“It’s their business, I’m sure,” Orly said. “Not mine.”

My thoughts leapt and just as instantly reversed. I couldn’t believe she’d said such
a thing on camera. Orly turned her back before I could respond, and I looked awkwardly
around at the other girls. The nearest ones were acting like they hadn’t overheard,
but they weren’t chatting like normal, either.

I headed down the length of the room, toward my wardrobe. I was acutely uncomfortable.
Orly obviously didn’t think I deserved to stay, but my blip rank proved her wrong.
My viewers had multiplied enough for me to stay. That was all the vindication I needed.

It wasn’t until I had changed into my nightie and brushed my teeth that I realized
I was judging myself by my blip rank, using that to bolster my confidence. I wasn’t
any better than Paige.

I was supposed to take my pill and go to sleep like everyone else, but I didn’t want
to. I had too much to contemplate. I needed time alone, to think, to settle, and I
couldn’t do that properly with the pressure of the cameras. So, after Orly distributed
the pills, I climbed into my sleep shell and closed my lid. Then I curled into my
pillow, shifted my quilt around my face, and took the pill out of my cheek where I
had hidden it. I slid it into my pillowcase.

“Good night, girls,” Orly said from the far end of the room. “Sleep well.”

The vaulted room dropped into murky twilight as she turned off the lights, and half
of the sleep shell lids glowed with brink lessons. The one to my right side stayed
dark. My brink lesson showed a pair of hands folding a square of silver paper into
an origami shape, and at the end, the person blew into the paper to expand it into
a cube. It was a clever play on dimensions, and it made me smile.

Dubbs would like a cube like that
, I thought. I missed my sister. I wanted to make her proud. When my brink lesson
ended, I slid my lid open and listened to the hush in the room. I vowed to do everything
I could to make the most of my time at Forge, and I wouldn’t do anything reckless
again like go out on the roof at night, no matter how tempted I was. I was incredibly
lucky that Dr. Ash had given me another chance. I wouldn’t ignore her warning.

The rain stopped, leaving drops clinging to the glass of the nearest window like colorless
ladybugs.

I didn’t realize I had dropped into a doze until a low, rolling noise awakened me.
The overhead lights were on again, but it wasn’t morning. I listened, hearing more
rumbling from the other end of the room, near the door. Without rising, I shifted
just enough to take a peek.

Workers were quietly moving the extra furniture out of the dorm. Pairs of people rolled
the sleep shells and eased them, one at a time, out the doorway and around the corner.
Others tilted the dressers on dollies to guide them out. I counted six movers, plus
Orly, who was giving directions.

The process was marked by extended gaps, and I guessed that the elevator couldn’t
handle more than one sleep shell at a time. The movers were also bringing in simple
wooden chairs and rugs, like midnight magicians or the set crew for a play.

I closed my eyes to feign sleep as the noises gradually worked their way down the
room toward me. When I heard Linus’s voice nearby, I nearly jumped.

“Touch her and you’re dead,” Linus said.

“Come on,” said another guy. Some nasal quality of his speech reminded me of a weasel.
“She’d never know. They’re completely asleep.”

A brief squeak came from a rolling wheel.

“All right,” said the same weasel voice. “I was only curious. Take it easy.”

“I don’t even know what you’re doing here,” Linus said. “I thought you stuck to the
fifth floor.”

“It’s good extra money. Besides, I wanted to see my girl in person. Check her out,”
said the weasel guy. “Why do you suppose she leaves her lid open?”

“I don’t know. Don’t touch it.”

“It has been one crazy run. Victor couldn’t believe it when I came in at fifty. You
heard about my bonus, right?”

“I don’t care about your pissant competition,” Linus asked. “Watch your foot there.”

“Victor sure cares,” said the weasel guy. “This was the first time in three years
he wasn’t in the top fifty. Bummer.”

“You got lucky being assigned to Rosie,” Linus said.

I was surprised to hear him use my first name.

“No,
she
was lucky to get
me
,” said the other voice. “Picking the angles is an art form. It’s so ironic, filming
a girl who calls herself a filmmaker. The students get all the credit, but they wouldn’t
be stars without us.”

Okay, he was a jerk, but still, it was totally cool to realize this guy was one of
the techies who managed my profile for
The Forge Show
.

“Is that so,” Linus said.

“The better I know her, it’s like I can read which way she’s going to turn, and then
she does,” the weasel guy said. “She moves right into my picks, like we’re dancing
together. Except she doesn’t know it. She beamed that smile at her mother last night?
And bam, I was right there to get the gap and all.”