PURE
Teens aren't meant to be Pure, or at least, that's what 15-year- old JT thinks. But since the Collapse, being Pure is the law. Swearing, shouting, laughing too loudly, crying, screaming in pain, lusting...these are the dangerous extremes that are forbidden.For JT, life is shit. His parents split up and his mom lost her job and their house. All he wants to do is ride his dirt bike, get with girls, roll a few smokes, and swear out loud when it all hurts too much.When he messes up one time too many, JT is sent to Rehab to Purify. Inside, he meets the other Anarchs, "wild" kids like him who want to be free to feel pain and pleasure. They create their own virtual utopia by manipulating the technologies used to control them.Then Ruby arrives in Rehab and asks the question: Why settle for virtual utopia? Why not escape and create their own Anarch world away from the SD and the Purists?
Content
Chapter One
Keeping It Simple
I hit the first set and catch sick air for at least three seconds. I spot my landing
before my bike touches down again. This is my fourth lap around the track, and I don’t
want to wash out like the guy I just passed. When he cut the turn and took a hard core
bail and skidded on his face, from what I could see. Good. He kept snaking me on the
track. I wanted to shout a little take that, dickhead but that kind of shit will get me sent to
Rehab for sure. So would using the word shit, actually, or laughing too loud or screaming
in pain or anything else that would make me feel like a fucking human.
I’m flying again after the final turn, and the jolt when I land tests my balance for a
second. I hit the brake and lean back, absorbing the shock with my knees bent and feeling
the wind on my face. It’s super cold today for Tucson, but even so, my jacket is sweaty
soaked. My hair drips under my hood. I finish the race, feeling awesome. I would love to
just shout out or whoop just once, but not with Baynor watching. He’s had his eyes on me
during every lap, but trust me, he isn’t a racing fan. He wants to make sure that I don’t
fuck up again by blowing off one of the Mandates of the SD, the Secular Decalogue.
They drill the SD into our brains from our first stupid breath until we are too brain dead
to think for ourselves or remember for even one second how it feels with our hearts
beating fast or our blood hot in our veins with anger or goddamn lust or anything
awesome like that. Baynor watches me because I’m “highrisk” right now, because my
dad left my mom, and we just lost our house, and mom lost her job, and basically
everything sucks right now. I mean, most Purists wouldn’t get the mentor eye because of
their parents’ lack of ability to hold their own shit together, but like I said, I keep messing
up. They want to make sure that I don’t lose it for good.
Yeah, this has been a rough week. First, I got caught with verboten music; then,
Jenny and I were caught making out behind the gym after school. That was really bad,
because I had a pack of smokes on me too. I mean, at first, it was all pretty great, but
then, it was not great at all when Mr. Hintin came around the corner and caught us with
my tongue in her mouth and her hand in my pants. She was gone after that, sent to Rehab,
which sucks, because she was a really sweet girl, believe it or not, even if she wasn’t a
Purist. I mean, Jenny’s no Karin, but she was cool.
Karin is offthecharts cool, so crazybeautiful, but trust me, she lives by the
book. She breathes the SD, faithful to the letter of the Code. That’s cool, though. For
some people, it works. Just not for me. Not since Dad took off. I can’t believe what an
unforgivable douche he is.
I look at Baynor, and I see that he has already tagged about my laps on his feed.
Good job at the track, JT. He has thousands of followers because of his job. He mentors
the rejects, and most of them are anarchs like me, not that Baynor would know it or even
know what it meant to be one. Almost instantly, anarchs start to tag on my feed, which
Baynor can see framing my head when he gets a look at me. Good job, JT and I hope you
enjoyed your compulsory and See you at school tomorrow. That’s what he sees, but I see
the decoded version in my feed, like Fuck you jerkoff from my buddy, and Roll over,
good dog, from Sam, and Meet you under the bridge in an hour from Nico. Baynor
2
doesn’t have a clue. All he see are the coded tags. His smile says it all; he’s so damn
proud of himself for being a positive influence on today’s youth. So he thinks.
“How are things going, Johnathon?” he asks. I shrug, still out of breath, as I walk
my bike over to a wooden table.
“You know, things are okay.” That’s what he wants to hear, that everything is
okay, not bad, not great. Steady.
“Just okay?” he asks. I try hard not to glare at him.
“That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Keeping things even?” I ask him, hiding the
irony in my voice as much as I can.
“Well, the SD is about helping people to be happy by eliminating dangerous
ardor, JT,” he explains. God, with this guy, everything is a lame teachable moment.
“Right, right. Thanks, Baynor, for the refresher.” He isn’t sure what to do with my
sarcasm, but he lets it go. I can feel my muscles tightening up in the cold. I’m not
supposed to push that much. No one is. It would be nice if a guy could get a painkiller or
something. One of the anarchs showed me this crazy advertisement for acetaminophen in
an old paper magazine. The drug wasn’t called acetaminophen, though. They had code
names for different drugs, and people could walk into any store and buy them, even kids
like me. That was before the Collapse, though.
“You know, Johnathon, everyone wants you to be happy. I want to help you live a
good life, a pure life. And this exercise is an important part of that.” Seriously, everything
that comes out of his mouth could go on a billboard. He’s a walking public service
announcement. The thing is, I know he really does want me to be happy. I read his Feed;
3
I can see what he thinks. His tags are all positive and glowing. All of that positivity is
already setting off a ton of coded responses from my friends again, each of them getting
in their digs about his squeaky clean pep talk. Still, he’s cool for caring. It’s his job, and
he isn’t phony about it, like other adults. Purists are at such a disadvantage. Everyone can
see their Feeds, and they can’t code their tags, like anarchs can.
That’s how I found out that Karin is into me. In class yesterday, she tagged me
with I wish that you would do what the teacher asks. I don’t want you to get sent away. I
tagged back, Why not?
Because I would miss you. That was her answer, the fucking sweetest thing that
anyone has ever tagged to me. I didn’t know what to do. I got all flustered, and my heart
started beating like crazy, exactly what we’re supposed to shut down. So then, I just
didn’t look at her, and when I saw Nico after class, we got really loud, and I got a
hallway warning. Some people are better at keeping it cooled out, I guess.
Back to reality now, though, courtesy of our friend, Baynor. “You know what will
happen if you get caught again, JT,” Baynor sighs. He taps his temple one time to turn off
his feed. One of the only advantages of being an adult, as far as I can see. It sucks that I
can’t turn off my feed. Well, not if an adult is around, anyway.
“Yeah.” I know what will happen. I’m starting to catch my breath after the riding.
“So, this week, you’re going to watch your mouth?”
Fuck yeah, I think.
“Yeah,” I say.
“And stay away from girls?”
4
Only if they stay away from me.
“Yeah, okay,” I answer, grinning a little. Hard not to grin when I think about girls
like Jenny. Whatever. It’s like rock, paper, scissors for me, only instead, it’s fear, lust,
anger. Fear beats lust. Anger beats fear. Lust beats Anger. Even mostly pure guys and
girls like to be touched, but their fear is greater than their lust. I’m too angry to be afraid.
Baynor keeps going with his purity checklist.
“No smoking, no music from the verboten? Got it?”
Give me a break, seriously. In my feed, I tag Can anyone believe this shit?
Baynor reads this message and smiles. Of course, he can only see my coded tag that reads
Thanks for all your help, sir. Gotta love technology.
“Yes sir,” and I beam him my greatest smile. “I have to get home to help my
mom, Baynor. See you around,” I say, and pull my hood up before I jump on the bike.
Sam and Joey are going to be waiting for me, and I hope somebody brings some smokes.
The thing is, I know that Baynor is right, just like I know that my mom is right
when she talks to me about keeping it together and following the SD and all of that. Just
like all of the teachers and politicians say, I guess people are happier when they keep
everything even, the stasis that all the adults talk about. I just can’t do it. It takes so much
energy just to keep it together. I thought things were bad when my mom and dad were
yelling at each other all the time. Then, it was mom weeping and crying all day and night
after he left us. And now, no house, no place to live of our own. How can I keep static
when I just want to punch a wall? I’m not even allowed to listen to decent music, because
it might make me feel too much? As if I could feel less…
5
I ride my bike down the riverside path, then jump off the trail, down the dirt hill
of the riverbank and under the bridge. This dry riverbed only has water in it during the
monsoon. Nico sits on an overturned shopping cart, headphones on like always, feed
turned off, which is cool if there aren’t adults around. Sam leans against the concrete
wall, asleep, I think. Nico sees me and nods, reaches into his pocket and pulls out some
loose tobacco and rolling papers.
“Where’d you get that?” I ask. I was buying smoke from Jenny, but now that she
is being “rehabilitated,” I don’t have her as a source anymore.
“Some of the anarchs from Sunnyside. We met up to battle the other night.” Nico
is a complete dance addict, but the only kind of dance that is allowed looks like dated
90’s boy band crap. The edgy shit in the battles is totally verboten, especially when they
dance to underground music.
“Yeah, battle? Where?” I ask.
“At this guy’s house. His parents work late, and they have a huge garage, like
three cars wide. We moved all the cars out, and it was off the hook.” He takes a drag of
his smoke. “I won, of course. So I got to keep this.” He holds up the bag of smoke. So
modest.
“Wow, is that ego a symptom of greed or delusion? I think I need to consult my
textbook,” I laugh.
“Fuck you,” he answers, and I sit down in the dirt next to my bike, rolling a
smoke. Sam still hasn’t moved or opened his eyes.
“What’s with him?” I ask Nico.
6
“Just tired. Not sleeping at night, he said. Bad dreams.”
I nod.
Last year, Sam went to rehab after he was caught selling hash. He didn’t give any
of us up, and he kept his mouth shut about the coded feeds and the Anarchs. He rehabbed
for three months. His feed was cut the whole time. We were really worried about him. I
mean, no one really knew what went on inside those places. Who knows why or how, but
it mostly works. When someone gets out, talking against the Central Power is impure, so
the newly pure people stay quiet about rehab, and it all remains a fucking mystery.
I thought that Sam was a smart guy before he went away, but he must be a
fucking genius. He fooled everyone in that joint. They believed he was rehabilitated and
let him out. He told us all what they did to him, and we sent it around to the coded feeds.
Pretty much everything that anyone knows about rehab is out there because of Sam.
They fucked him up in there. He isn’t pure, but he isn’t the same either. He is
darker than when he went in.
“So tell me more about what happened with Jenny?” Nico asks, and I whistle a
low whistle.
“Nothing pure about that one. Except that she listens to that shit music. ”
“It isn’t all bad,” Joey protests.“What about Tamara? Her shit is pretty good,” he
argues. I shake my head.
“Only the stuff that’s coded. She just changed all the codes on her latest playlist,
did you hear it?” It is pretty cool how musicians can change up their lyrics through the
feed. I mean, you still hear the crappy, singsong shit about sunshine and rainbows and
7
whatever won’t land on the verboten list. But then, musicians tag their lyrics on their
feeds, and the decoders go to work. The words stay the same, but you can see in your
feed new lyrics. Stuff that actually makes sense in our lives. Of course, adults and purists
have no idea. Pretty fabulous, if you ask me.
“Yeah, so Jenny?” he insists. I laugh. Nico is a purist when it comes to girls and
sex, but he is an anarch, so I’m not sure if he really believes in the passion restrictions in
the SD, or if he just can’t get laid.
“Well, I think she would have jerked me off if Hintin hadn’t come around the
corner.” Nico laughs like crazy, and I have to join him. “He took his time busting us,
though, after he got a good look.” I think about Jenny in Rehab, though, and it isn’t cool,
talking about her like this. I mean, yeah, she likes guys a lot, but she isn’t a slut. She just
isn’t down with the SD thing.
“You know, maybe she really liked me?” I say to Nico, and he keeps laughing
like it is the biggest joke.
“Yeah? What makes you think?” he asks. He stands up and floats up into a
handstand, balancing, walking on his hands, legs in the air. This is as natural as breathing
for him. Nothing, not even the PurEnforce can keep him from moving like that. He
doesn’t even think about it. It isn’t second nature, it’s his first nature.
“Why not? I’m a likeable guy,” I joke, but then, I continue. “You know, she was
sweet. It felt good to kiss her, and she told me she liked it too. What’s wrong with that,
seriously?” I ask.
“Nothing’s wrong with it until something is. You know how it goes…”
8
“No, I have no idea, because we’ve never had a real, like, relationship or
whatever, or we’d be locked up right now,” I interrupt.
“Bullshit. There might not be anything restricted happening, but it can still suck.
Like when you like a girl, and she doesn’t like you back, it definitely sends you into a bad
place, JT.” His face gets dark, and I know that he is thinking about Shelby, this girl he’s
been friends with forever. He’s totally into her, but last weekend, she went on a
chaperoned date with some other guy. Nico’s feed has been very dark since he found out.
“Okay, but this is my point, Nic. If we are going to feel like shit over girls
anyway, that’s not stasis either. You can’t avoid the shit, whether you look at girls or
fuck them. You’re going to feel like shit if they don’t like you back, and you’re going to
feel like a fucking king if they do. So you might as well get some, that’s all I’m saying.”
Nico shakes his head.
“You’re a nutjob, did you know that?” he replies, and I know that he is probably
right. I’m just trying to make some sense for myself in this messedup postCollapse
world.
We chainsmoke a few more homerolls, and then I have to get home, whatever
that is, for real. Mom and I are living with Aunt Ashley’s right now, and mom is a
headcase lately, so sad and messed up. I’m afraid they’re going to put her away if she
can’t get things even again. I know that she doesn’t care anymore. She just misses my
dad. I kind of miss him too, but not the asshole who left his family. I miss the dad that I
grew up with, not perfect, sometimes angr but not a coward like the jerkoff who left us. I
hate that motherfucker.
9
And then, I take a few breaths to clear my mind. The breathing thing is something
that Baynor taught me to control my anger, and it works sometimes, believe it or not.
Nico and I give each other the nod before I take off. As I’m walking away, I see
him shake Sam, waking him. He’ll make sure that Sam gets home before his curfew. We
all take care of each other.
Nico’s my only brother, not a real brother but almost better. We chose each other,
and being brothers isn’t about the bullshit that the Task Force developed to make us all
happier after the Collapse. Being a brother is all about feeling someone else’s pain,
something that is illegal and immoral and everything else in between.
It isn’t supposed to be like this. According to the SD, everything should fall into a
natural order, clean and simple, not crazy and dark and confusing like how things feel
right now. Somehow, keeping it simple seems like the craziest thing of all.
10
Keeping It Simple
I hit the first set and catch sick air for at least three seconds. I spot my landing
before my bike touches down again. This is my fourth lap around the track, and I don’t
want to wash out like the guy I just passed. When he cut the turn and took a hard core
bail and skidded on his face, from what I could see. Good. He kept snaking me on the
track. I wanted to shout a little take that, dickhead but that kind of shit will get me sent to
Rehab for sure. So would using the word shit, actually, or laughing too loud or screaming
in pain or anything else that would make me feel like a fucking human.
I’m flying again after the final turn, and the jolt when I land tests my balance for a
second. I hit the brake and lean back, absorbing the shock with my knees bent and feeling
the wind on my face. It’s super cold today for Tucson, but even so, my jacket is sweaty
soaked. My hair drips under my hood. I finish the race, feeling awesome. I would love to
just shout out or whoop just once, but not with Baynor watching. He’s had his eyes on me
during every lap, but trust me, he isn’t a racing fan. He wants to make sure that I don’t
fuck up again by blowing off one of the Mandates of the SD, the Secular Decalogue.
They drill the SD into our brains from our first stupid breath until we are too brain dead
to think for ourselves or remember for even one second how it feels with our hearts
beating fast or our blood hot in our veins with anger or goddamn lust or anything
awesome like that. Baynor watches me because I’m “highrisk” right now, because my
dad left my mom, and we just lost our house, and mom lost her job, and basically
everything sucks right now. I mean, most Purists wouldn’t get the mentor eye because of
their parents’ lack of ability to hold their own shit together, but like I said, I keep messing
up. They want to make sure that I don’t lose it for good.
Yeah, this has been a rough week. First, I got caught with verboten music; then,
Jenny and I were caught making out behind the gym after school. That was really bad,
because I had a pack of smokes on me too. I mean, at first, it was all pretty great, but
then, it was not great at all when Mr. Hintin came around the corner and caught us with
my tongue in her mouth and her hand in my pants. She was gone after that, sent to Rehab,
which sucks, because she was a really sweet girl, believe it or not, even if she wasn’t a
Purist. I mean, Jenny’s no Karin, but she was cool.
Karin is offthecharts cool, so crazybeautiful, but trust me, she lives by the
book. She breathes the SD, faithful to the letter of the Code. That’s cool, though. For
some people, it works. Just not for me. Not since Dad took off. I can’t believe what an
unforgivable douche he is.
I look at Baynor, and I see that he has already tagged about my laps on his feed.
Good job at the track, JT. He has thousands of followers because of his job. He mentors
the rejects, and most of them are anarchs like me, not that Baynor would know it or even
know what it meant to be one. Almost instantly, anarchs start to tag on my feed, which
Baynor can see framing my head when he gets a look at me. Good job, JT and I hope you
enjoyed your compulsory and See you at school tomorrow. That’s what he sees, but I see
the decoded version in my feed, like Fuck you jerkoff from my buddy, and Roll over,
good dog, from Sam, and Meet you under the bridge in an hour from Nico. Baynor
2
doesn’t have a clue. All he see are the coded tags. His smile says it all; he’s so damn
proud of himself for being a positive influence on today’s youth. So he thinks.
“How are things going, Johnathon?” he asks. I shrug, still out of breath, as I walk
my bike over to a wooden table.
“You know, things are okay.” That’s what he wants to hear, that everything is
okay, not bad, not great. Steady.
“Just okay?” he asks. I try hard not to glare at him.
“That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Keeping things even?” I ask him, hiding the
irony in my voice as much as I can.
“Well, the SD is about helping people to be happy by eliminating dangerous
ardor, JT,” he explains. God, with this guy, everything is a lame teachable moment.
“Right, right. Thanks, Baynor, for the refresher.” He isn’t sure what to do with my
sarcasm, but he lets it go. I can feel my muscles tightening up in the cold. I’m not
supposed to push that much. No one is. It would be nice if a guy could get a painkiller or
something. One of the anarchs showed me this crazy advertisement for acetaminophen in
an old paper magazine. The drug wasn’t called acetaminophen, though. They had code
names for different drugs, and people could walk into any store and buy them, even kids
like me. That was before the Collapse, though.
“You know, Johnathon, everyone wants you to be happy. I want to help you live a
good life, a pure life. And this exercise is an important part of that.” Seriously, everything
that comes out of his mouth could go on a billboard. He’s a walking public service
announcement. The thing is, I know he really does want me to be happy. I read his Feed;
3
I can see what he thinks. His tags are all positive and glowing. All of that positivity is
already setting off a ton of coded responses from my friends again, each of them getting
in their digs about his squeaky clean pep talk. Still, he’s cool for caring. It’s his job, and
he isn’t phony about it, like other adults. Purists are at such a disadvantage. Everyone can
see their Feeds, and they can’t code their tags, like anarchs can.
That’s how I found out that Karin is into me. In class yesterday, she tagged me
with I wish that you would do what the teacher asks. I don’t want you to get sent away. I
tagged back, Why not?
Because I would miss you. That was her answer, the fucking sweetest thing that
anyone has ever tagged to me. I didn’t know what to do. I got all flustered, and my heart
started beating like crazy, exactly what we’re supposed to shut down. So then, I just
didn’t look at her, and when I saw Nico after class, we got really loud, and I got a
hallway warning. Some people are better at keeping it cooled out, I guess.
Back to reality now, though, courtesy of our friend, Baynor. “You know what will
happen if you get caught again, JT,” Baynor sighs. He taps his temple one time to turn off
his feed. One of the only advantages of being an adult, as far as I can see. It sucks that I
can’t turn off my feed. Well, not if an adult is around, anyway.
“Yeah.” I know what will happen. I’m starting to catch my breath after the riding.
“So, this week, you’re going to watch your mouth?”
Fuck yeah, I think.
“Yeah,” I say.
“And stay away from girls?”
4
Only if they stay away from me.
“Yeah, okay,” I answer, grinning a little. Hard not to grin when I think about girls
like Jenny. Whatever. It’s like rock, paper, scissors for me, only instead, it’s fear, lust,
anger. Fear beats lust. Anger beats fear. Lust beats Anger. Even mostly pure guys and
girls like to be touched, but their fear is greater than their lust. I’m too angry to be afraid.
Baynor keeps going with his purity checklist.
“No smoking, no music from the verboten? Got it?”
Give me a break, seriously. In my feed, I tag Can anyone believe this shit?
Baynor reads this message and smiles. Of course, he can only see my coded tag that reads
Thanks for all your help, sir. Gotta love technology.
“Yes sir,” and I beam him my greatest smile. “I have to get home to help my
mom, Baynor. See you around,” I say, and pull my hood up before I jump on the bike.
Sam and Joey are going to be waiting for me, and I hope somebody brings some smokes.
The thing is, I know that Baynor is right, just like I know that my mom is right
when she talks to me about keeping it together and following the SD and all of that. Just
like all of the teachers and politicians say, I guess people are happier when they keep
everything even, the stasis that all the adults talk about. I just can’t do it. It takes so much
energy just to keep it together. I thought things were bad when my mom and dad were
yelling at each other all the time. Then, it was mom weeping and crying all day and night
after he left us. And now, no house, no place to live of our own. How can I keep static
when I just want to punch a wall? I’m not even allowed to listen to decent music, because
it might make me feel too much? As if I could feel less…
5
I ride my bike down the riverside path, then jump off the trail, down the dirt hill
of the riverbank and under the bridge. This dry riverbed only has water in it during the
monsoon. Nico sits on an overturned shopping cart, headphones on like always, feed
turned off, which is cool if there aren’t adults around. Sam leans against the concrete
wall, asleep, I think. Nico sees me and nods, reaches into his pocket and pulls out some
loose tobacco and rolling papers.
“Where’d you get that?” I ask. I was buying smoke from Jenny, but now that she
is being “rehabilitated,” I don’t have her as a source anymore.
“Some of the anarchs from Sunnyside. We met up to battle the other night.” Nico
is a complete dance addict, but the only kind of dance that is allowed looks like dated
90’s boy band crap. The edgy shit in the battles is totally verboten, especially when they
dance to underground music.
“Yeah, battle? Where?” I ask.
“At this guy’s house. His parents work late, and they have a huge garage, like
three cars wide. We moved all the cars out, and it was off the hook.” He takes a drag of
his smoke. “I won, of course. So I got to keep this.” He holds up the bag of smoke. So
modest.
“Wow, is that ego a symptom of greed or delusion? I think I need to consult my
textbook,” I laugh.
“Fuck you,” he answers, and I sit down in the dirt next to my bike, rolling a
smoke. Sam still hasn’t moved or opened his eyes.
“What’s with him?” I ask Nico.
6
“Just tired. Not sleeping at night, he said. Bad dreams.”
I nod.
Last year, Sam went to rehab after he was caught selling hash. He didn’t give any
of us up, and he kept his mouth shut about the coded feeds and the Anarchs. He rehabbed
for three months. His feed was cut the whole time. We were really worried about him. I
mean, no one really knew what went on inside those places. Who knows why or how, but
it mostly works. When someone gets out, talking against the Central Power is impure, so
the newly pure people stay quiet about rehab, and it all remains a fucking mystery.
I thought that Sam was a smart guy before he went away, but he must be a
fucking genius. He fooled everyone in that joint. They believed he was rehabilitated and
let him out. He told us all what they did to him, and we sent it around to the coded feeds.
Pretty much everything that anyone knows about rehab is out there because of Sam.
They fucked him up in there. He isn’t pure, but he isn’t the same either. He is
darker than when he went in.
“So tell me more about what happened with Jenny?” Nico asks, and I whistle a
low whistle.
“Nothing pure about that one. Except that she listens to that shit music. ”
“It isn’t all bad,” Joey protests.“What about Tamara? Her shit is pretty good,” he
argues. I shake my head.
“Only the stuff that’s coded. She just changed all the codes on her latest playlist,
did you hear it?” It is pretty cool how musicians can change up their lyrics through the
feed. I mean, you still hear the crappy, singsong shit about sunshine and rainbows and
7
whatever won’t land on the verboten list. But then, musicians tag their lyrics on their
feeds, and the decoders go to work. The words stay the same, but you can see in your
feed new lyrics. Stuff that actually makes sense in our lives. Of course, adults and purists
have no idea. Pretty fabulous, if you ask me.
“Yeah, so Jenny?” he insists. I laugh. Nico is a purist when it comes to girls and
sex, but he is an anarch, so I’m not sure if he really believes in the passion restrictions in
the SD, or if he just can’t get laid.
“Well, I think she would have jerked me off if Hintin hadn’t come around the
corner.” Nico laughs like crazy, and I have to join him. “He took his time busting us,
though, after he got a good look.” I think about Jenny in Rehab, though, and it isn’t cool,
talking about her like this. I mean, yeah, she likes guys a lot, but she isn’t a slut. She just
isn’t down with the SD thing.
“You know, maybe she really liked me?” I say to Nico, and he keeps laughing
like it is the biggest joke.
“Yeah? What makes you think?” he asks. He stands up and floats up into a
handstand, balancing, walking on his hands, legs in the air. This is as natural as breathing
for him. Nothing, not even the PurEnforce can keep him from moving like that. He
doesn’t even think about it. It isn’t second nature, it’s his first nature.
“Why not? I’m a likeable guy,” I joke, but then, I continue. “You know, she was
sweet. It felt good to kiss her, and she told me she liked it too. What’s wrong with that,
seriously?” I ask.
“Nothing’s wrong with it until something is. You know how it goes…”
8
“No, I have no idea, because we’ve never had a real, like, relationship or
whatever, or we’d be locked up right now,” I interrupt.
“Bullshit. There might not be anything restricted happening, but it can still suck.
Like when you like a girl, and she doesn’t like you back, it definitely sends you into a bad
place, JT.” His face gets dark, and I know that he is thinking about Shelby, this girl he’s
been friends with forever. He’s totally into her, but last weekend, she went on a
chaperoned date with some other guy. Nico’s feed has been very dark since he found out.
“Okay, but this is my point, Nic. If we are going to feel like shit over girls
anyway, that’s not stasis either. You can’t avoid the shit, whether you look at girls or
fuck them. You’re going to feel like shit if they don’t like you back, and you’re going to
feel like a fucking king if they do. So you might as well get some, that’s all I’m saying.”
Nico shakes his head.
“You’re a nutjob, did you know that?” he replies, and I know that he is probably
right. I’m just trying to make some sense for myself in this messedup postCollapse
world.
We chainsmoke a few more homerolls, and then I have to get home, whatever
that is, for real. Mom and I are living with Aunt Ashley’s right now, and mom is a
headcase lately, so sad and messed up. I’m afraid they’re going to put her away if she
can’t get things even again. I know that she doesn’t care anymore. She just misses my
dad. I kind of miss him too, but not the asshole who left his family. I miss the dad that I
grew up with, not perfect, sometimes angr but not a coward like the jerkoff who left us. I
hate that motherfucker.
9
And then, I take a few breaths to clear my mind. The breathing thing is something
that Baynor taught me to control my anger, and it works sometimes, believe it or not.
Nico and I give each other the nod before I take off. As I’m walking away, I see
him shake Sam, waking him. He’ll make sure that Sam gets home before his curfew. We
all take care of each other.
Nico’s my only brother, not a real brother but almost better. We chose each other,
and being brothers isn’t about the bullshit that the Task Force developed to make us all
happier after the Collapse. Being a brother is all about feeling someone else’s pain,
something that is illegal and immoral and everything else in between.
It isn’t supposed to be like this. According to the SD, everything should fall into a
natural order, clean and simple, not crazy and dark and confusing like how things feel
right now. Somehow, keeping it simple seems like the craziest thing of all.
10
