Julia Karr: XVI

“Moon belongs in the sky without people tromping around all over it.” He pushed his crutch out of the way and hobbled to the window. “When I was a boy…” His shoulders slumped and he leaned his forehead on the glass. “Eh… everything’s changed,” he muttered.

Sandy gave me her I-told-you-he’s-weird look. I feigned indifference, but my insides clutched. He looked so wretched.

The door opened behind us and in came Gran. I rushed into her arms, burying my face in the crook between her shoulder and neck. Enveloped in her warmth, I felt five again, when her hugs fixed everything. Part of me could’ve stayed there forever.

“How’s my favorite granddaughter?”

“Fine.” I gave her cheek a peck.

Gran motioned Sandy over and hugged her, then held her out at arm’s length and said, “Does your mother know you’re wearing that? It’s too revealing. It’s not safe.”

“Mom doesn’t mind. And I can take care of myself. Besides, I’m almost sixteen.” All the same, Sandy pulled her sweater closed over her slide top and zipped it partway up.

“Sixteen’s not everything the Media makes it out to be, hon.” Gran shook her head. It wasn’t the first time she’d tried to say something to Sandy about her obsession with all things Media. I could have told her it was a hopeless cause. Sandy was practically a walking sex-teen vert; her clothes, her hair, the way she was insane about boys—exactly the way girls were supposed to be. “And aren’t you applying for FeLS? I was under the impression that the candidates had to be virgins.”

“I’m a virgin.” Sandy looked the teeniest bit hurt at the implication.

“I know you are, dear.” Gran gave her a hug. “It’s just that dressing like that gives boys the impression that you don’t want to be.”

Before Sandy had the chance to confuse Gran with her convoluted reasoning about FeLS and sex-teen, Pops, who had hobbled back to his chair, said, “How’s Harriet?”

Gran shook her head. “It’s her son, Johnny. The Bureau of Safety and Security took him. Found some kind of transmitter, or so they said…” She must’ve noticed Sandy’s expression, and cut her sentence short.

“B.O.S.S.? If I was thirty years younger…” Pops snorted.

“You’d still have only one leg and not a lick of sense in that head of yours.” She gave him a look that could only be interpreted as Don’t-say-another-word. Pops shut up.

“Gran,” I said, “we can’t stay. I just wanted to come by and say hello to my two favorite people.”

“See there? You scared ’em off with your ridiculous antics and whatever nonsense you were spouting.” She swatted at him with a news zine from the end table.

Pops ducked, squawking when a corner of it caught his shoulder.

I planted a kiss on his cheek; his whiskers poked me like a thousand tiny needles. Sandy waved her fingers at him. She was already halfway out the door.

“You girls be careful.” Gran stuffed something in my back pocket and gave me a good-bye squeeze. “Watch out for Sandy,” she whispered. “I worry about her.”

Yeah, I thought, so do I .

At the elport, I pulled out the card Gran snuck me from my jeans. It flashed five credits. “We’ve got lunch.”

Sandy peered over my shoulder. “Your gran’s so ultra.”

“Between this and what your mom gave you we can eat at TJ’s. If Mike’s bust we’ll have to go some place cheaper, though, like Tofu Heaven, ’cause I’ll have to pay for his. And you know how he likes to eat.”

“Yeah, no kidding. Typical welf.”

“Sandy!” I hated that word. I never used insulting slang—Ginnie would have killed me if I did. And everyone has feelings, no matter what tier they are.

Mike’s dad didn’t work and his family got free food from the government store over on Clark. I’d eaten at his house a couple of times when we were little. That stuff tasted like the containers it came in, and I didn’t think it was because of his mom’s cooking. Ginnie claims welfare food is low on nutrition and high on additives to keep welfare recipients overweight, unhealthy, and dependent on the government for menial jobs, like Bio-testers. Ginnie says a lot, but I figured she must be right because Mike’s family is all of those things.

“Sorry, you know I like Mike okay.” She shrugged and two seconds later changed the subject. “I wish we’d been there when the foray happened. Policemen are so cool.”

Maybe if I’d known Sandy’s dad I’d feel differently, but I didn’t know him and I’m not sure I’d really have wanted to anyway. Ever since the time I saw a couple of cops ignore a group of eighteens beating up a homeless person, my opinion of police had been much closer to Pops’s.

When we reached the ground floor, there was a circle of cops standing at the entrance. As we walked by, one of them tipped his checkered hat to Sandy. The officer next to him, an older guy, scrutinized us. I mentally ran through everything about me at that moment. I looked like a typical teenage girl, although not as blatant as Sandy. We weren’t doing anything wrong. Why did I feel guilty? Then I remembered Pops’s tirade upstairs. Had they heard? Did they know?

The officers approached us, and my palms began to sweat. I felt a blush rising. I’d never been stopped in my life. Ginnie’s stories about false arrests and being thrown in jail zinged through my head. If they had an emo-detector, I was in trouble. How would I explain my reaction? Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sandy flouncing her hair. Crap! Didn’t she think about anything except guys?

“Girls,” the older cop said, “let’s see your ID.”

I’d watched enough AV to know the routine. In unison, we presented the back of our left hands to the officer. He ran the scanner over them.

“Wrists.”

We turned over our arms, so they could see we weren’t tattooed. It took everything I had to keep mine from shaking off my body.

“Nina Oberon,” the older one said, examining my ID on the scan screen. “You live in Cementville. What are you doing here?”

“Visiting my grandparents.” I fought to keep the trembling out of my voice.

“Oberon.” He scrutinized my face, looking like he was trying to retrieve a memory. All I could do was quake inside.

Meanwhile, Sandy had launched into the whole story about her father with the other cop. Turned out that he knew someone who knew someone who’d known her dad. After a few moments, and lots of sweating on my part, they warned us about the NonCon activity in the area and advised us to report anything suspicious. Like we would know what “suspicious” was. Moments later we were outside.

I took a deep breath. “I really—” I was going to say hate cops, but caught myself just in time, covering with, “I wonder if Johnny really is a NonCon? He’s always been nice to me.”

“If he is,” Sandy replied, with a look of pure hate in her eyes, “he’ll get what he deserves, reassimilation by B.O.S.S. It’s what they do to criminals. Remember Mr. Dunbar.”

I shuddered. I would never forget Mr. Dunbar. He had been my seventh-grade Ethno Customs and Languages teacher—and one of my favorites. He’d been a friend of Ginnie’s, too.

Before they took Mr. Dunbar away, he was fun—cracking jokes, taking us on field trips, and telling us stuff that wasn’t in our text chips. A month after they took him, he returned. But it might as well have not been him. No more jokes, no more field trips, and he never deviated from our chips again. There were all kinds of rumors about actual reassimilation, but no one really knew the facts about it. That was one thing they didn’t teach us in school.

Anyone who knew Johnny Pace would know he’s no criminal. The last time Ginnie and I were in town together, he and Ginnie got to talking about the government. But that was just talk . It didn’t mean they were NonCons. But if people thought Johnny was a NonCon, what would they think about Ginnie? What if she were mistaken for a NonCon… ? I didn’t want to think about that now. It wasn’t like the thought had never occurred to me. It had, and often. But I knew I had to stop myself now, because whatever I didn’t want to think about is what I couldn’t stop thinking about.