Truancy Origins (10 page)

Moments later, Zen was crouched down upon the floor between a set of navy blue jackets and a row of overlarge leather coats. It really wasn't a room so much as it was a glorified clothes closet for garments that no one wore more than once or twice a year (if ever). It smelled odd, but it was quiet, comfortable, and absolutely private. No one, not even the cleaning staff, ever had a reason to open this particular closet. Zen smiled, remembering hiding from Umasi in this closet back when they used to play hide-and-seek. Umasi never did find him.

At that thought, Zen frowned and narrowed his eyes. Umasi, being the curious brother that he was, would come looking for him sooner or later—and it wouldn't be a game, and there wouldn't be any head start. If Umasi managed to find or follow him to the closet . . . well, Zen decided, he would just have to make sure that didn't happen. It wasn't that Zen didn't trust Umasi. When the time came, Zen knew that he could count on his brother's help. After all, no matter how reluctantly, Umasi had
always
gone along with Zen's crazy ideas. The problem in Zen's mind was that Umasi was not as cautious or vigilant as he was, and Zen was taking no chances about letting something slip before he was ready.

And then there was the billboard in their father's study.

Zen shook his head to clear that troublesome thought, then bent down and spread his papers upon the hard wood floor. He began poring over a large map of the City, divided by district. Checking the map against a printed list, Zen began highlighting all the abandoned districts with a red marker. He worked with furious speed, as if seized by a sudden madness. In no time at all, the entire map had been marked, and Zen turned his efforts towards a long roster that he had printed out from the computer in his father's study.

The names on the roster all belonged to students—the worst students, or so they had been flagged by the Educators. These were the underachievers, the troublemakers, the truants of the City. For a whole hour Zen sat there on the floor examining each student's profile, crossing off or circling each name he came upon. Some of the students he determined were genuinely dumb or violent, but on the opposite end of the spectrum there were innocents: students who meant no harm but simply ended up in the wrong situations at the wrong times. Others, however, Zen judged were probably like him—proud spirits at heart, lashing out at an oppressive system.

Now he would give them all an opportunity to lash out together.

Zen had started from the top of the list, which was in alphabetical order, and was eventually startled to discover his own name upon it. Startled, but not displeased. The roster had flagged him as uncooperative, a distractive influence, and, most recently, a truant. Zen smiled grimly. Everyone in the
City spoke the word “truant” with a certain amount of disapproval, if not revulsion, as if that one word summed up all that was scorned by education—and maybe it did. But they didn't know the truth, and he did. Why should he be ashamed to be a truant? If the Educators' system was wrong, then wasn't failing it
right
?

“Yes,” Zen muttered to himself, “ ‘Truant' is a title that I'll be proud to bear.”

At that, Zen froze, contemplating what he had just said. Seized by sudden inspiration, he interrupted his checking of the roster and grabbed a fresh sheet of lined paper. Steadying his hand, which had begun to tremble with excitement, Zen touched a pen to the paper and slowly scribbled a header at the top:

 

The
T
RUANCY

 

Truancy.
The
Truancy. Zen stared down at the word. He knew that no one would yet see on that paper what he saw, but he also knew that it would only be a matter of time. That word, Zen realized, was the seed that he would grow into something powerful and terrible enough to consume the entire corrupt City. Joyous excitement exploded in his chest, prompting him to laugh—and he did so gladly, feeling more thrilled than ever before in his life. His mirth was limited to the closet, thoroughly muffled as it was by the heaps of clothing, but to Zen it felt as though it reverberated throughout the entire world.

An hour later, Zen exited the closet, flipped its lights off, and shut the door. Inside the closet, hidden within the pockets of a large fur coat, were all the documents that Zen had worked with and produced on that fateful day. It was enough to leave the pockets bulging, and Zen knew he would return to work some more that night.

Zen smiled inwardly. He had never been half as productive with his schoolwork.

 

T
hat night Umasi found himself restless for the third night in a row, though this time it was worse than ever. He couldn't even shut his eyes, but rather remained upright in bed, transfixed upon the splotch of blackness where his brother should've been sleeping, but wasn't. Zen had vanished for most of the day, and Umasi had no idea where he'd gone. It wasn't like Zen to vanish like that without telling him anything, and Umasi couldn't remember the last time Zen had slipped out of bed for
any
reason. He was sacrificing precious hours of sleep . . . and to do
what
? These
strange new behaviors seemed . . . alien, as if the brother Umasi had always known were now a complete stranger.

Umasi couldn't even begin to imagine what Zen was working on, but he knew that Zen couldn't have just idled the entire day. He had almost asked Zen straight up what he had been doing, but nothing about Zen had invited conversation that day. Umasi knew that it was the uncertainty that was killing him—knowing that something was happening, but not knowing
what.
And so he hung there in the darkness, torturously dangling between ignorance and enlightenment.

Unable to stand it anymore, Umasi got out of bed, shivering slightly as the cool air hit his skin through his thin pajamas. Slowly, he walked over towards Zen's bed. And walked. And walked. Strange, Umasi thought, he didn't remember Zen's bed being so far away. Suddenly, a gust of freezing wind assaulted him, forcing him to shut his eyes to protect them from the sting. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself sitting at a desk in a classroom.

Umasi blinked. The room was empty except for him, Mr. Benjamin, and a silhouetted student sitting in the front row. The teacher was writing something on the blackboard, and Umasi reflexively began to copy it down. But as soon as Umasi seized his pen, he found that he couldn't concentrate. No matter how hard he tried, whatever was on the board just wasn't interesting enough to keep his attention. Frustrated and bored, Umasi began scribbling idly until he felt a hand touch his shoulder. Umasi looked up, and a wave of panic surged through him as he saw Mr. Benjamin glaring down at him.

As Mr. Benjamin began to shout, Umasi found his gaze drawn to the other student in the classroom. The boy seemed not to notice his plight, completely intent on copying down what was on the board. Umasi blinked again, and found that Mr. Benjamin was no longer shouting, but handing back tests. Umasi stared at his score, a sixty, and then glanced over at the other boy, who was smiling ear-to-ear at a hundred. This wasn't fair, Umasi realized. He
knew
that he was smarter than the other boy. All the other boy was doing was repeating what the teacher wanted him to, like a trained parrot.

Angry tears began welling up in his eyes. Umasi blinked them away, and found that he was standing in his room. His father was yelling at him, and though Umasi could not hear the words, he knew that he was being told to be more like the other boy. As his father fell silent, Umasi turned to find the boy looking up at him from his desk, surrounded by piles of finished homework.

“It's really not that hard, you know,” the boy said condescendingly.

“Speak for yourself,” Umasi retorted.

The other boy smiled at that. “Come on, let me help you.”

“Help me do what? Be more like you?”

“Why not?”

“Because I'm
not
you!” Umasi screamed. “I can't be someone I'm not! I can't be like you! I don't
want
to be like you!”

“But don't you see how happy I am? Don't you see how easy things are when you sacrifice your pride? Here, let me show you.”

Umasi was back in school, Ms. Hill screaming that he was an inferior as the other boy sat back at his own desk, unscathed. Then his father appeared, presenting the other boy with a new bike for his outstanding report card. Umasi relived memory upon memory, but from a new perspective. Their first day of high school . . . the last test they had taken . . . their third-grade report cards . . . his own birthday. Always the other boy was there, a model student, an ideal son, a flawless example of mindless obedience. Everyone loved that other boy, everyone showered him with praise and affection—the way one might pet a well-behaved dog.

“Enough!” Umasi shouted. “You're right—it's easy to sacrifice pride, which is why I won't do it!”

“That's too bad for you,” the other boy said sadly. “Because then you'll never be happy in this City.”

The words were like a slap in the face. Umasi heard the truth in them, a truth that robbed him of his breath and flooded him with hopelessness. For a moment Umasi felt certain that he would just give up, that he would just lie down and die . . . but he was not so weak as that. Frustration, bitterness, and hate quickly filled the void in his heart, driving him towards a logical, yet mad, conclusion.

“If I cannot be happy in this City”—Umasi laughed—“then I'll just destroy it! I'll make a City that suits ME! I will rule the City, and there's not a single soul in it that can stop me!”

The other boy vanished before his rage, and Umasi felt exhilarated, liberated, free for the first time in his life! All the hatred that he had bottled up through his ordeals came pouring out—hatred for the adults, for school, but most of all for the other boy, who he could never be . . . .

And then Umasi woke up in a cold sweat. As he sat up in his own bed, gasping for air, warm tears ran freely down his cheeks—for he knew that other boy was himself.

 

U
masi adjusted his glasses and looked over at Zen's desk. His sleep had hardly been peaceful, but Umasi had awoken on Monday morning with a remarkably clear head, along with some troublesome feelings. Though he couldn't remember precisely the details of his dreams, Umasi had retained enough of the emotions to feel pity for Zen. What's more, for some reason he felt terribly uncomfortable with himself.

Umasi shook his head. While he was somewhat disappointed to return to school, he was glad that he'd have the chance to keep an eye on his brother. Umasi never did see Zen return to bed, and couldn't know exactly how much sleep he'd had gotten—but Zen's general inertness, the dark rings under his eyes, and his sluggish movements all indicated that the answer was “not much.” Umasi's sympathy now outweighed his curiosity, and so during their free period Umasi had dragged Zen to a hallway bench where he could rest—or so Umasi had thought. It hadn't taken long for a pair of security guards to accost them, rudely awaking Zen as they screeched at him for violating student boundaries.

Umasi had forgotten about the recently instituted “free period rooms” simply because it didn't make any sense to him considering that benches had been laid out in the hallways for student use. But in light of Zen's revelation, Umasi now understood the true purpose of the seemingly pointless rule. Some of the bitterness from his dream—Zen's bitterness, Umasi sensed—had followed him into consciousness, and for a moment Umasi considered defying the guards. Ultimately, Umasi decided that it wasn't the right time to make a stand, especially since he was worried that Zen might do something rash. However, Zen merely rose, flashed the guards a chilling “just you wait” smile, and then lumbered off to rest in the nearest bathroom.

It was probably the most unpleasant place in the entire building to take a nap.

Still, Zen didn't seem to mind, and Umasi was glad that he had avoided getting into trouble. The rest of the free period passed without incident, leading them into science class. By this point Zen still looked so tired that Umasi had begun to wonder whether his brother had gotten any sleep the previous night at all. Remembering his ominous dream, Umasi resolved to ask Zen about what he'd been up to when they got home. That decided, Umasi unpacked his binder as the teacher began talking.

“Can anyone tell me what these are?” the teacher asked, gesturing towards a cage placed upon her desk.

“Rats,” came the monotonous, choral reply.

“Yes, but these are not normal rats,” the teacher declared. “Can anyone tell me what's wrong with them?”

Silence.

“Zen, how about you?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Umasi saw Zen jerk up his head, which had been lolling upon his desk like a wayward beach ball. Umasi knew that the teacher was punishing him for being exhausted; putting one's head down in class was an invitation to be called upon, a simple tactic that was uniformly effective in getting students to act awake. Renewed pity surged through Umasi as Zen glared at the cage of rats.

“Their eyes are red,” Zen murmured. Indeed, the rats' eyes
were
blood-red.

“Yes,” the teacher conceded, sounding disappointed as Zen's head dipped a few inches. “Anything else?”

“They're white,” Zen added, his head sinking a bit further.

“Correct,” the teacher admitted. “These are albino rats. Can anyone tell me what that means?”

Seeing a chance to divert the teacher's attention from his brother, Umasi raised his hand—predictably the only one to go up in the entire sleepy classroom. The teacher didn't hesitate to take the bait.

“Yes, Umasi?” The teacher pointed an approving finger at him.