Chapter Four: Uninvited Guests
“Um . . .
actually, it’s a trick of the light . . . um, there is wire, it’s just very,
very hard to see. . . .” I stammer. Aly,
who came in when Scarlett squealed, is blabbering into her radio to a voice
that sounds a lot like the head soldier’s.
The man in
blue looks at his female comrade questioningly.
She replies, sounding like this with her weird accent: “Ze couch vas not
soospended on vires, eet vas floateeng, I svear.” Sort of like Aly’s, and I’ve heard this
accent in the outside world. (Yes, we’re
that isolated, that even in Russia, the tiny part in Europe, the Russian
accents sound strange.)
“O . . .
kay?” says Colette. “Whatever. You can leave now and never say anything
about this again, or you can stay, and never say anything again, period.”
Just then,
a group of guards push through the two blue-suits and turn on them, guns
loaded. The man in front barks something
in Russian and the officers sprint to their car and floor it, from the sound.
A siren
wails for sixty seconds, then cuts off sharply, giving way to another
sound. The authoritative tone of Mr.
Hitler’s fill-in’s voice tells us, “We are on lockdown until nineteen
hundred. Everyone is to lock their
cabins and do not leave until the designated end of lockdown. All entrance and exit of our property is
forbidden. The doors will be
closed. If anyone is found outside their
cabin, they will be arrested. We are
turning off our INS for lockdown, as we do not want to be tracked. Please remain calm.”
As usual,
(actually this is only the second time in my fourteen years that we’ve had
lockdown) the reason for lockdown isn’t given.
Aly locks and bolts our door and we hook up our notepads to the device
in the lockdown storage area, which is where we put all technology when on
lockdown. Then we plop down on the
“magical” couch and do various things common for outsider fourteen-year-olds,
which includes drawing, writing, reading, and, in my case, sewing.
“Remember
that first lockdown?” asks Colette.
“When we were six, and that crate of gunpowder fell through the school’s
roof?” We laugh at the memory. We were all in kindergarten then, and one
moment, we were singing the alphabet, and the next we’re sitting around a huge
crate with a hole in the ceiling.
“And the
look on Mrs. Ristrova’s face?
Hilarious!” I add. “Who wants a
necklace?” Everyone, apparently. Oh well.
Something to do in the guaranteed boring hours ahead.
Seven
multicolored necklaces later, Mallory disappears upstairs and comes down with a
pack of cookies and eight bottles of root beer.
We usually go to the store every night for the dinner ingredients, but
since we’re on lockdown, we make do with some potato chips and brownies. Finally, seven o’ clock rolls around and one
of the soldiers makes the brief announcement that we’re free.
We head
down to the square, since, after four hours of being cooped up inside, they’re
bound to do something exciting. Besides,
it is Monday, which is square night. At
the square, glow sticks have been tossed into the fountain making the water
greenish yellow. Musicians play and,
along the edges, people sell popped corn, spun sugar, and ice cold cola. Aly buys us all pink spun sugar and we munch
on it while we watch bad karaoke.
Isabel and
her friends Whitney and Tiffany walk onstage and make sounds with their mouths
that are closer to dying humpback whales than girls. We all laugh and mimic their dramatic
expressions. After they finish wailing,
Vickatecht – drunk as usual – stumbles onstage and utters a bunch of gibberish
that is supposed to be to the tune of the music. We laugh harder, until our sides hurt, but
then the curfew bell rings – it must be eleven.
Aly takes us back to the cabin where we dig out our electronics and head
to bed.
Colette –
the reader – pulls out her e-reader and plops on her bed with her jeans still
on. Lois turns some Ella Fitzgerald on
and curls up on her bed. I take my
sketchbook and colored pencils and work on my latest drawing – all eight of us
standing in our cabin doorway, the day after the Ceremony. It’s a real picture, I’m just copying
it. I start on Mal’s face, but I can’t
get the shape of her eyes right, so I groan and scrub her head out with my
eraser. On the next page I draw random
shapes and swirls and fill it in with neon colors. I tear it out and tape it to the wall behind
my bed, struggling to find an empty space.
It’s taken me so long to draw this that everyone else is asleep. I flick my lamp off and focus on the
background music in the song that’s playing and drift off.
“Violet, Violet, wake up,” I hear Lois say. “Can you hear me?”
“No.”
“Very
funny. Wake up! We need help making
bacon pancakes.”
“Fine.” I slide off my bed, stunned to find myself in
the jeans I was wearing last night. I
walk to the kitchen and turn the burners on while Mallory and Katie make the
pancake dough and Scarlett fries bacon.
Bacon pancakes are quite simple – chop some bacon up and put it in
pancake batter and make pancakes. It’s a
strange taste, but everyone’s used to my strange cooking. Colette, who is a late riser, clomps down the
stairs moaning “food” over and over again.
Lois
giggles. “You look like a zombie.”
“Thank
you,” Colette retorts.
Aly walks
in from the den. “Has anyone seen Luna?
She wasn’t in bed when I got up.”
“Yeah. She got up early. Went to see family, she said,” Scarlett answers. Aly nods.
“Oh, guys,
guess what I got!” Aly demands.
“Donuts? Cake?
Asparagus? A car? A horse?
A unicorn?” Lois, Katie, Colette, Scarlett, Mallory, and I guess.
Aly shakes
her head. “Nope. I got pizza making stuff! Guess what you’re having for lunch!”
We’re
excited. Pizza is a treat, because there
are exactly three Italians in our little haven.
At about the same time they say it, I remember.
“Happy
birthday, Violet!”
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