The Loudness Read online

  “You can’t leave. You’re as sick as they are,” she shouted, startling me into silence. “You’re glowing, Henry.” Her face crumpled up as she backed against the front door and slid slowly down to the floor, collapsing into a pile of tears. “Honey, you’re a battery,” she spat, her strangely shrill words almost lost in her heaving sobs.

  The air in the room hung stale between us.

  It was the first time I could remember her snapping at me like that; the first time I’d seen her like this. As Dad ran into the foyer and cradled Mom in an all-encompassing hug, I realized that everything had shocked her more than it had me—the City, the explosion, the escape, Grammy and Mr. Malgré.

  Me.

  And the truth was, she was right.

  I am a battery.

  Dad shot me an apologetic look as he stroked Mom’s head, wiping away her tears. “Stress,” he mouthed, and I nodded blankly while slowly inching backward toward the stairs and then—sensing a way out—advancing.

  “Hey, Mom,” I said, my voice high and conciliatory as I knelt down next to them. “Maybe you’re right.” She nodded, still sobbing softly in Dad’s arms. “Maybe I should go to the doctor, get checked out.”

  “Dr. Singh can come here; we’ll get her,” Dad said, shooing me away with a nod toward the stairs. “Henry, buddy, maybe you could give us a minute?”

  I was on the second-floor landing, hopeless and dragging my feet, when Mom spoke up. “No,” she wailed, her voice raw from crying. “Dr. Singh’s too busy to make house calls. And Hanky should see her, make sure he’s okay. Come here, baby,” she’d called out, her wide-open arms limp but inviting. I ran back down the stairs and threw myself into her hug, casting all three of our faces in my throbbing white glow. “Be safe, Panky,” she’d whispered, her cheek wet against mine.

  I left quickly, squinting my way into the blinding sunlight before they could change their minds. As I was crossing the threshold, Dad offered to bike with me, but Mom caught his wrist, pulling him back into a tight-armed hug. I hadn’t realized how rattled she’d been; how fearful she was of being left alone.

  “Bye, guys,” I’d said shakily, one foot in the dark foyer and one on the front steps outside. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

  Dad nodded, smiling tensely with a strong, locked jaw, and turned back to Mom. The last I saw of them before the door slammed behind me was Dad gently stroking her tear-wet hair out of her face and behind her ears.

  My bike was still where I’d left it, leaning unlocked against the side of our house, the padding on its ripped seat still wet from the last time it rained. As I mounted it, I felt the wetness spread across the seat of my pants and instantly stood on the pedals, the bike swaying back and forth beneath me as I shredded out across the muddy front lawn toward the Avenue and the Hospital beyond. As I pedaled, I tried not to think about leaving my parents so soon after I’d found them; about Mom crying on the dusty floor of the foyer, and Dad, helpless but still trying so hard to help her.

  To bring everything back to the way it was.

  And yet, the Green Zone had already changed so much since we’d gotten back just a few short days before. Our house was far enough from the Avenue that I hadn’t seen or heard much of it from my dirty bedroom window, but as I pedaled toward the Hospital, it seemed impossible that I’d been so bored just a few minutes before. The streets—which had been desolate upon our return and more or less empty for years before that—were streaming with the evacuees I’d heard bits and pieces about through the floorboards.

  My eyes darted across the crowd, scanning for familiar faces—Mr. Moonie, leaning casually on his cane, or Mouse’s bobbing blonde ponytail. But everyone was focused on a sort of makeshift stage in the distance, their backs toward me. And even with so little to go on, I quickly lost hope of finding anyone I knew. It was obvious that this was a sea of haggard but hopeful strangers—construction workers and Pickers; no khaki shorts in sight. Which meant, I realized, my stomach protesting from a sudden emptiness, that the Green Zoners from the federale newspaper might still be missing.

  Still captives.

  We got my parents back and lost everyone else, I thought, clenching my handlebars with whitening knuckles.

  My gut turned again as silence rippled across the murmuring crowd, drawing my attention toward the source of the shushing. Standing on the raised orange platform of an orange crane, lording above the crowd with a blaring megaphone, was Mr. Malgré. I tried to ignore his grating voice as it reverberated down the tree-lined Avenue, but it was too loud, too all-encompassing to tune out.

  “You’re poor and you’re hungry,” he yelled, his jowls quivering with the effort. “But it don’t have to be that way.” The crowd cheered, shouts of assent rippling down the Avenue like firecrackers. “They stepped on you, and they told you what to do and how to do it. They did the same to us, too.” Mr. Malgré chuckled into the megaphone. “Isn’t that right, boys?”

  The crowd laughed along with Mr. Malgré as I craned my neck to see who he was talking to. Standing behind him on the cherry picker were two of his goons, and wedged between them were three heavily-restrained federales, their ragged suits hanging loosely from their bodies. The gags on their mouths ensured they couldn’t respond.

  “Mayor Long don’t take too kindly to these sorts,” Mr. Malgré sermonized to the rapt crowd, obviously swayed by his own rhetoric, and I felt my gorge rising as I remembered Mom weeping on the floor. Despite her own internment in the City, those tears were for the federales Mr. Malgré had taken prisoner as much as they were for me—and I would’ve shouted to that effect if Grammy hadn’t stepped forward from behind the wide-eyed federales and reached for Mr. Malgré’s megaphone. “Mayor Long, everybody,” Mr. Malgré shouted to thunderous applause as he handed it to her, the clicking of her rings against its hard plastic handle magnified ten thousand times across the Green.

  Shocked, I turned quickly off of the Avenue and onto a side street, not wanting to hear Grammy betray her own daughter. So much for the Charter, I thought cynically, settling onto the bike seat as my hands flared hotly on the handlebars at the thought of Grammy stealing Mom’s title. So much for family.

  I don’t know how long it took for the crashing waves of anger to subside; for me to remember what I was supposed to be doing. Growing pains, Grammy had said so many times; I’d even heard her say it just now—despite my best efforts to out-pedal her resounding voice—to the gathered crowd, and wondered bitterly how much the Green would have to grow to turn into exactly what we were supposed to hate.

  Into federales.

  The sky was its impossible Mayan blue again, and the trees above were filled with the carefree songs of migratory birds, but there was nothing I wanted to do more than lay down on the recently paved asphalt and wait for the bloodcurdling cheers from the Avenue to pass. For everything to pass. Reacting against my sudden exhaustion, the electricity continued to course through my body, energizing despite my instincts. As another burst of cheers erupted, I stood on the pedals again, a hot wind drying my tear-streaked face.

  I could have doubled back to the Avenue and started another storm, washed the Green—my Green—of Malgré and his screaming fans. The thought crossed my mind . . . but that’s not what I did, as much I wanted to.

  The people weren’t the problem.

  Grammy was.

  So I let them have their hateful rally and continued to the Hospital, pedaling so hard and fast that my bike’s frame shook beneath me. Not for a checkup, like I’d told my parents, but to follow up on a hunch. Even though Grammy and the federales had killed the Charter with their underhanded machinations, that didn’t mean we had to become federales to be free. If Carel was alive like I hoped he was—if it was him who brought back Rachel’s painting—he’d understand, and he’d help us take the power back here, too.

  Like he did in the City.

  He had to. He owed us.

  Anxious, adrenalin pumping, I tried to cut through the university
quad, where all the reclaimed federale cars had been parked. But in the few days since I’d been there, someone had erected a rough blockade—charred black cars, burnt down to their frames and stacked menacingly across the entrance: all that remained of Malgré’s federale spoils, burnt for spite and showmanship.

  I knew, as I tried to avoid crashing into the blocked entrance, that I was going too fast.

  That, with my newfound strength, I was going faster than humanly possible.

  That I wouldn’t make it.

  As the skinny wheels wobbled under the pressure, then slid out of my control, artlessly tossing me into what would soon be a quivering mass of nasty scraps and fractured bones, I realized I had jinxed myself.

  I never should have said I was going to the Hospital for a checkup.

  The pain was instant and sharp, and I heard myself moaning—as if from a distance—as another megaphone squealed from inside the compound, a voice I didn’t recognize running through military-sounding drills.

  “Mount,” it screeched. “Aim. Hold it.”

  I breathed in deeply, steeling myself for whatever might come next, then cringed in agony as something tore in my chest; a fractured rib, I hoped, and nothing worse. Even if it was worse, I couldn’t lay there, splayed out on the asphalt, waiting for Malgré to find me. Pulling myself agonizingly up onto loosened fists and bloodied knees, I wiped the gravel out of my hands, one of which hung limply by a swelling wrist. The military drills continued inside the quad, nails on the chalkboard of my throbbing head, and—despite the pain—my hands blazed furiously in response to the braying orders.

  Despite the pain, but also . . .

  Healing it.

  As the power coursed through my broken body, pulsing, I flexed my limp hand, surprised that it was no longer limp, then took a deep, painless breath. Almost imperceptibly, the rest of my wounds closed, leaving fresh pink skin where moments before there had only been dirt and blood. And even that had been burned away by the light, leaving almost no evidence of the crash except for a ripped shirt and mangled handlebars.

  “Hey,” someone shouted roughly from atop the charred barricade as I made my way back to my bike, which had skid a good twenty feet beyond the quad. “You. Stop!”

  I didn’t stop, though.

  Without looking back, I sprinted the rest of the distance to my bike and quickly mounted it, shaking my head in amazement as I stood in the pedals and took off toward Dr. Singh, who I realized—screaming triumphantly into the wind—I wouldn’t need to be seeing anymore. The wheels, slightly bent from the fall, wobbled unsteadily beneath me . . . but I kept screaming, reveling in my newfound powers for the first time since the explosion, until I was in sight of the Hospital.

  The parking lot in front of the Hospital was packed with Pickers, who’d set up a sort of makeshift camp—and it was immediately obvious why Mom said Dr. Singh was too busy to make house calls. Unlike the crowd on the Avenue, these evacuees weren’t cheering. Instead, the air was thick with the sound of labored breathing, an almost suffocating colloquy of sickness. Everywhere I looked, sallow faces stared blankly back at me, their skin almost translucent from spending so many years living off of federale waste.

  Squeezing through them—apologizing in whispers as I brushed against their brittle bodies—I headed for the lobby, which was also packed. In deference to the sickness, I tiptoed through the Pickers, holding my breath until I made it through two double doors marked “Hospital Staff Only” and into an empty hallway. Exhaling, I gave quiet thanks for my good health—something I’d never done before, especially not in the Hospital—and started searching for Carel.

  The first room I checked had four cots, all occupied by cadaverous Pickers. And the second. And the third. Slowly jogging down the hallway, my footsteps resonating against the dirty white tiles, I checked every room; they were all the same, with no sign of Carel anywhere. He’s dead, of course he’s dead, I’d thought, the hopelessness of the Hospital weighing down on me so heavily that I felt short of breath. With so many sick people and Grammy starting wars, it was no wonder Mom was crying on the floor.

  You should have stayed with her.

  You shouldn’t have come.

  That’s when I started running, quickly checking the rooms as I passed them, even though I was increasingly sure that Carel wouldn’t be there; that I was stupid to think he might be. I picked up speed, careening around corners in search of an exit that I just couldn’t seem to find. And still, even after I’d given up, Rachel’s self-portrait nagged at the back of my mind. We’d definitely left it behind in our hasty exit from the City, and there was no other way it would have gotten back to the Green Zone.

  To my house . . .

  “Oh,” Dr. Singh exclaimed in surprise, looking up from her charts just in time for me to literally run right into her. “Henry!”

  “Dr. S-Singh,” I stutter, startled back into the present. “I was, um . . . looking for you?”

  She nods, staring clinically at my hands. “Yes, I’d heard you were back,” she says, flipping a page on her charts. “Interesting development, Mr. Long.” She licks the tip of her ballpoint pen, then starts writing. I’d gotten so used to it that I barely pay it any mind now, but as the scratches of her pen echo through the empty hallway, I notice the fluorescent lights flickering overhead.

  “Fascinating,” Dr. Singh says, tapping her pen against her teeth, coolly professional in the face of my strangeness. “And how do you feel, Henry?”

  “Hold that thought,” she says, cutting me off just as I start to answer; pointing with her pen to the flickering overheads, she quickly walks away. “Probably best,” she calls over her shoulder, already halfway to down the hallway, “to do this in the x-ray room. Don’t want to finish anyone off, do you?”

  Jogging after her, I’m sheepishly aware of the haywire buzzing following me to the lead-lined room, where Dr. Singh waits for me, a thermometer ready in her hand. I’m tempted to tell her that I’m not here for a checkup, that I’m probably invincible now, but she looks like she hasn’t slept in days and I don’t have the heart. Instead, I start to tell her that I’m fine—that she should focus on the Pickers—but as soon as I open my mouth to dissuade her, she shoves the thermometer beneath my tongue.

  “So,” Dr. Singh says, gesturing toward my hands with her pen. “How’d this happen?”

  “Actually, I’m okay,” I say, the thermometer slipping out of my mouth and onto the floor. Pursing her lips in disbelief, she drops the contaminated thermometer into one of her lab coat’s voluminous pockets. On the counter behind her is a glass jar filled with more thermometers and neon blue disinfectant; she takes a new one out of the jar and shakes it dry before I have a chance to explain.

  “So, wait,” she says, positioning the new thermometer against the soft underside of my tongue. “You came to the Hospital because you feel fine?”

  Twenty minutes later, Dr. Singh walks me back to the waiting room with a clean bill of health. “A good diagnosis, Dr. Long,” she says by way of goodbye. “You do seem fine. Good, even . . . Maybe don’t come back too soon, though,” she whispers conspiratorially. “We only have one generator—can’t have you blowing it up.”

  I laugh nervously, not sure if she’s referring to the flickering lights or if she thinks I had something to do with the explosion in the City; that I’m responsible for these legions of sickly Pickers. I leave without finding out, tiptoeing quickly back to my bike through the wan-faced crowd; wondering what my next move should be.

  Now that everything’s changed, though, the real question is whether my next move is going to be what I think it should be, or if it’s going to be what I want it to be. Because I should go home to my parents before they start to worry and let them know that Dr. Singh said I’m okay; tell them everything I saw on the Avenue: Mr. Malgré taunting the prisoners, Grammy stepping in as Mayor.

  But they already know all that.

  Mom almost said as much when she was blocking the door, try
ing to make me understand how important it was to stay inside.

  Still, it should be easy to just go home. Dr. Singh said she hadn’t seen anyone fitting Carel’s description, and that’s why I left my house in the first place. She’d squeezed my wrist when I described how I’d left him, but the last bullet wound she treated was Ben’s, she’d said—pointing to an x-ray of his shattered shoulder on the wall—and before that, the last one had been Before.

  And yet . . .

  I start pedaling to Conor’s house, guessing that he and Ben are still with Ava—that they can put me back in the loop, that we can find Carel together. But there’s no way they’re still in the Green Zone, I realize, not now that it’s turned into what I saw this afternoon. Changing direction, I find myself following the bend in the river; coasting in smooth, wide arcs through the bigger estates of the Green and into the more spottily paved Grey, the fading orange machinery of abandoned construction sites becoming less and less frequent as my resolve grows. Just because we left the Other Side with the federales doesn’t mean they still have it, and if Carel’s alive, of course he’ll already be there with Conor and Ben, and maybe—hopefully—Ava.

  With everyone.

  I try not to get my hopes up, but I can’t help but think that if Mr. Moonie and the rest of them made it back, they’ll have headed for the Other Side, too. Especially if they’d caught wind of Mr. Malgré’s power grab in the Green . . . and with Malgré giving amplified speeches in the middle of the Avenue, I don’t see how they could miss it.

  My stomach growls with a sudden anticipation. I haven’t eaten much of anything for days. Even if he’s feeling better, Carel probably won’t be behind the counter of Food Eats . . . but it’ll be open all the same, with a few familiar Other Siders, haggard but alive, propping up the elbow-worn Formica counters, eating mounds of steaming biscuits smothered in salted butter and drinking coffee so black it stains your tongue. That is, if Grammy hasn’t shut it down.