Chapter 8
Tam
I put my helmet on its stand, making sure to turn the camera towards the wall before I pick up the note. My hand is shaking as I open it up to see what’s written inside. I’m unsure of what it’s going to say, but with everything that’s been going on with the reveal party, it’s probably not good.
Meet me at the rock—you know the one. 8 a.m. tomorrow morning.
—V
Electricity passes up my spine. The note is obviously from Veritas, whom I very much want to see again. At the same time, I’m worried. Did the Identity Police pick up some more people from our group? Is she trying to warn me that they’re closing in?
Calm down, Tam. You’ve read too many detective stories. Just . . . chill.
I take a few deep breaths as I walk over to the paper shredder and dispose of the note. Can’t have it lying about.
A dozen different reasons run through my mind about why she might want to contact me, and, along with them, a dozen scenarios of what might happen play out like miniature movies. In one, we’re meeting at the rock, and the Identity Police suddenly spring up from everywhere and put us in handcuffs before speeding us away to jail. In another, Veritas is shot through the heart right before she’s about to give me the crucial piece of information she came to deliver. In another, she tells me she can’t live without me, and we throw off our helmets and kiss each other passionately.
Okay, so I admit it, I think she’s hot. It’s not like I go on many dates—or ANY dates, for that matter.
Once my frenzied mind calms down enough to think logically, I realize that none of these scenarios are likely. The Identity Police probably wouldn’t send out an entire team to capture two high school students who went to a reveal party. They certainly wouldn’t kill a student over it, and as much as I’d like to think Veritas is into me, she probably doesn’t want to meet up to ask me on a date.
Regardless, my curiosity is still running high when I turn in for the night. But no matter how much I want to know the reason she wants to meet, I’m just going to have to wait until tomorrow morning to find out.
* * * * *
It’s 8 a.m. on Saturday morning, and I’m at the rock—the same rock where we last parted on the night of the reveal party. There’s no sign of Veritas. I reach my hand up to my helmet, checking to make sure the tape is still in place over my camera. I tried to make it small enough that it won’t arouse suspicion if someone else sees me, but I’m worried I might have made it so small that it could fall off. Thankfully, I feel the coarse surface of the grey utility tape as my fingers pass over the camera port.
I’m pacing back and forth in front of the rock when I’m startled as I turn around to find Veritas standing right in front of me. She holds up a finger in front of her viewscreen, warning me to keep quiet. Glancing up at the tape on my camera, she smiles slightly. I notice she’s taped her own camera, too, and smile back. She nods towards the rock, then looks around—I suppose to make sure no one is paying any particular attention to us—before leading me behind it.
We follow a trail into the woods. It’s the same trail we used when running away from the police, but it looks completely different in the daylight. Gone are the sinister shadows, absent is the adrenaline-fueled fear that the police might somehow divine our location and jump out of the shadows at any moment to place us under arrest. It almost looks peaceful.
Soon, we’ve passed through the woods and are in a section of town that I’ve never seen before. The whole area looks like a ghost town, without a single car, shuttle, or person in sight. We’re headed for what looks like an abandoned building made of red brick with lots of windows, and aged, crumbling shingles on the steeply sloped roof. It’s a large, single-story structure, with the remnants of a playground off to one end—bearing testimony to the long absent children. The playground contains a merry-go-round, a see-saw with one of the two see-saw planks broken in-two by the limb of an oak tree that has fallen across it, some rusted monkey-bars, and an old swing set. Two of the three swings remain intact, the third has only one chain still attached. The fallen chain is crumpled on the ground with grass growing through the links. As we get closer, I can see numerous pieces of glass missing from the lattice-like patchwork of window panes.
Several steps lead up what is obviously the back of the building to two, large metal doors, each with a single rectangular window positioned longways close to where the doors join in the middle. I’m thinking it might have been an old school building from maybe a hundred years ago. Before we reach the building, Veritas stops beside a dilapidated shed.
She opens the shed door, looking around before removing her helmet and stowing it inside. She nods to indicate I should do the same, which I do. I’m cringing inside as I think about how my hair is probably standing straight up. Veritas runs a hand through her own hair, and it looks perfect. I don’t even bother; it wouldn’t help. She points away from the shed towards the school, and I follow her up the steps and inside.
We go into what appears to have been the band room. Tall, multi-paned windows line the curved outer wall, the ancient wooden floorboards creaking as we walk through the room. She shuts the door before she speaks.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“Well, despite visions of being busted by the cops the moment I showed up, curiosity got the best of me.”
There’s that sliver of a smile again on just the one side of her mouth, and it gives me goosebumps.
Focus, Tam. Just be cool.
“Did you hear about the students who got arrested from our group?” she asks.
“Yeah, I read about it. Do you know who they were, or if they’ve picked up anyone else?”
“No. Nothing yet. Listen,” she says as she reaches out and puts a hand on my forearm, “I wanted to thank you again for tackling that police officer. If you hadn’t, there’d be four people who got expelled instead of three.”
“Sure. No problem.” I can feel the warmth of her hand through the sleeve of my suit.
“I’m serious. That was a brave thing you did. You could’ve turned the other way and made your escape, but you risked getting caught to help me. I want you to know I won’t forget that.”
Her dark brown eyes are gazing into mine, and I feel like she’s staring straight into my soul. As awkward as it is, I don’t want to look away. Unsure what to say, I just nod my head.
To my disappointment, she drops her hand away from my arm as she continues talking.
“There’s another meeting next week—not a reveal party, but something bigger. It’s more like a community of like-minded people who’ve all been to at least one reveal party. A lot of the organizers will be there. I think I might sign up to help. Do you want to go?” she asks with a sparkle in her eyes.
I barely escaped getting expelled last week, and now I’m being invited to go to a meeting that will almost ensure I have that same opportunity again. Part of me wants to turn around and run back to my dorm room and forget the whole thing. But part of me remembers what this girl in front of me said at the reveal party about us all being a bunch of government drones, and how she wants to be part of a revolution. It was inspiring to hear her talk about it. Something inside of me wants to know more, and part of me very much wants to spend more time with this cute, passionate, purple-haired girl. So, I answer her before I can talk myself out of it.
“Yeah.”
“That’s great,” she says as she places her hand on my forearm again. This time, I see a full smile. “We need to go over a few things about how we should communicate moving forward. We can’t afford to get caught.”
For the next half-hour, we talk about spy stuff—about dead-drops and how to lose someone who’s following you—stuff I vaguely remember from some movies I’ve watched. She seems to really know what she’s talking about. I’m impressed.
It’s easy talking with her, almost like we’ve been friends for a while. When we’re done with the spycraft lesson, she asks me if I want a tour of the rest of the school. Apparently, she’s been here before. I say yes, and we spend the next hour touring old classrooms, an auditorium, a science lab that still has some pickled dissection specimens in jars of formaldehyde that look like aliens from another planet, and finally looking at some old textbooks that were left in what used to be the library.
We laugh and talk about stuff, sharing some stories from our pre-high school days and generally having a good time. The last time I felt this good was when I was at home on break. It makes me think. I wonder—not for the first time—if all of this stuff we do to supposedly ensure we’re all treated equally is actually taking away something even more precious—the opportunity to be known by others for who we really are and share what we really think without fear of being put in jail or expelled. I think about questions like, if we’re all so equal, why can’t some opinions be shared? Why can’t I be the one to decide if I want to wear this helmet or not? Why does the government get to decide for me?
We make a plan to go to the meeting together, and then we retrieve our helmets and make our way back to campus. I have a lot to think about now . . . a lot to think about.
