Chapter 6
Nef and I stay with Lyceum to finish another batch of pamphlets. We then sign up to take a route with Lena to drop them off—the
dangerous part of the job. Uri and I both tell Nef that she doesn’t have to go, but she’s set on it.
So we stuff some satchels full of pamphlets and make our way to the weed-covered parking lot.
The only people out past curfew are the delivery drivers and law enforcement. We can’t pretend to be Hammers, but we’re dropping
things off, so we just lean into that, hoods pulled low, packages in front of our bodies. And no one stops us. Since the trains
don’t run into the city center, we grabbed some solar-powered electric bikes from the parking lot outside the emergency exit—hidden
behind pieces of molding cardboard by the last Lyceum shift—and take off toward Beverly Hills.
Rodeo Drive used to be the crème de la crème of fancy shit. I’ve seen the pictures, and I’ve seen footage of the re-creation they built in Washington, D.C. Rodeo Two, it’s called. They built it after one of the bigger earthquakes, when the rich left this one to crumble.
Rodeo One is now stacked with housing, families packed close together in buildings that alternate between fire-charred and
earthquake-scarred.
My tires roll to a stop in the middle of the weed-covered asphalt. The buildings that used to be pure white are streaked with
ash and graffiti. All the glass windows are long gone, replaced by sheet metal or plywood thrown up by cheap landlords. Music
blares from an open window, bass vibrating the street beneath us.
Even though curfew is fully in effect, a few people wander the streets: a man with a gray beard braided and tucked into his
stained T-shirt; a woman with a baby wrapped to her chest. But neither of them stop to ask us any questions. They don’t even
look at us.
Lena snaps her fingers at me, then jabs a finger across the street.
Nef and I work together. A couple of the front doors require a code to get inside, but most of them creak open without any resistance.
The stores inside have long since been converted into housing, drywall thrown up haphazardly, leaving a barely straight hallway down the middle.
Nef and I inch along, hearing everything through the thin walls—babies crying, arguments raging, screens blaring—as we quickly slip the pamphlets under apartment doors.
For the first few, I half wonder if anyone will notice the sound, the paper appearing in their doorway.
But if anyone notices, they don’t open the door.
Once our satchels are much lighter, we meet Lena back at the bikes and silently race off, hitting two other neighborhoods
before returning the bikes.
Nef says goodbye—Uri offers to walk her home, but I don’t feel the need for an escort. I take my time, slipping the oxygen
mask from my nose to cautiously breathe a few lungfuls of the night air. It’s just me and the crickets as I consider the fact
that I am officially part of Lyceum. I’ve created and distributed anti-Graves material. I’m a rebel. I even have a pamphlet
on me, in my own handwriting. If the administration finds out, they will make me pay.
I wait for the panic to set in as I turn onto my street, but it doesn’t. I broke the law. In a big way. And I brought Nef
into it! What would my parents think? What am I doing?
That should suffice to brew up a good ol’ anxiety attack, and I actually stop walking, going still as though to give my body
a moment to deliver.
But it doesn’t come.
I heard my best friend’s real laugh for the first time tonight, a sound I haven’t heard since we were kids on the playground, making up stories and talking about cute boys.
Tonight had been like that again, except we aren’t playing pretend anymore.
We talked about what we’d do, at eighteen, at nineteen, and it didn’t involve dying or killing.
We talked about our hopes. I told her about a boy I had kissed, even though it was fake.
And it felt good to talk about it—and hear someone else’s take on it.
Even if that meant listening to Nef discuss Hux’s tongue in great detail and ask if that was just for show too.
I’m blushing, thinking about Hux’s tongue, when it—and the rest of Hux—swings into my vision. He’s a familiar figure, a shadow
against the easing night sky, on the roof again. As I stare, he drops into the yard below in that move that’s almost a dance.
Then Hux is on another roof, dropping into a different yard.
Before I know it, I’m running. I can’t lose sight of him, not this time.
He goes over the wall, and I jump the fence and sprint across the yard, following closely, making sure to steer clear of the
ancient pool that is now caked with algae and God knows what else.
I jump that fence, too, and manage to catch sight of Hux just before he turns down a narrow alley behind another row of houses
to the south.
Another thought bubbles to the front of my brain, hand in hand with the memory of his breath on my face and the feel of his
nose bumping against mine: Hux turns eighteen in two months.
Maybe then he can join Lyceum. Maybe Banks joined Lyceum too.
Maybe there’s hope for us all. We’ll spend nights writing to inspire people to vote, and we’ll race the night to deliver hope before the sun rises, side by side.
Maybe we can’t be friends. But we don’t have to be enemies.
We can go back to something else, something like allies.
Which is why I’m chasing him now, as the first fingers of dawn tickle the sickly sky.
He’s fast. Within minutes, we’re at the end of the windy road that leads up to the houses, which spills out into a three-way intersection.
Hux doesn’t even hesitate as he crosses the street, slowing his pace down just a little to look more nonchalant. He tucks
his hands in his pockets and saunters like he has all the time in the world.
I linger across the street, holding a stitch in my side. Why couldn’t he have sauntered all the way here?
Just opposite where I’m standing, there’s the shell of a burned-out gas station. And looming above it are the raised, bridge-like
tracks of the concrete overpass, its sharp angle the last of the roadway before the hovercars cut into the sky above downtown
Post Angeles. Fluorescent lights are mounted along the bottom, casting the whole area in a weird bluish-white glow.
Hux looks both ways when he gets to the gas station—but not before crossing the street; how is this boy still alive—and then
continues on. Realization dawns, a pit in my stomach.
“Huxley Finn, no fucking way,” I gasp.
But with one leap, he’s up on the leg of the overpass, managing to grab the bottom of a maintenance ladder with one hand.
He yanks it down, tuns his face up toward the bridge above him, and then climbs.
Overhead, the superhighway whizzes with light and sound, rush hour coming with the day.
Hovercars rocket into the sky, engines roaring with the extra effort.
I press my lips together, looking over my shoulder. I know it’s now or never—if I’m going to follow him, I have to move.
After checking both ways—because I, unlike some people, have survival instincts—I sprint across the intersection, muttering
insults under my breath the whole time.
By the time I reach the ladder, I’ve run out of curse words. I crane my neck upward. It’s so much higher than it looks from
across the street. I make myself stare forward as I climb, wincing once I leave the blue light and enter the shadowed side.
Up here, hovercars blow my hair back, the scent of exhaust managing to slip past my mask. At the top, the ladder bends, ending
in two handles and one step that leads directly to the roadway. A roadway that cuts off abruptly in a few yards, disappearing
into air. Along the seam of that drop-off, I barely catch Hux’s figure.
I could yell after him. What would I say? Tell him to stop, tell him not to—
But he’s running toward the edge.
“Huxley!” His name rips out of me in surprise, because I blink and he’s gone, the hovercars around him taking off into the sky.
The roar of engines steals my cry, but I scan the street frantically until I spot him, in the sky, clinging to a self-driving delivery hovercar, positioned expertly between the rear and side cameras.
They zoom off toward downtown, a blur of fiberglass and the boy I just kissed.
I don’t have a second to stop and think this through. If I did, I’d probably decide against what I do next, which is take
off in a sprint.
I speed up, sprinting as hard as I can toward the end of the road.
Ten feet.
Seven.
I have no idea how to time this. The automated hovercars whip around the corner, speeding up as they near the ramp. I have
to run faster, something tells me. My lungs scream in protest as I fight like hell to close the gap—
Five feet.
Three. Two.
It’s now or never.
I jump. My arms pinwheel wildly, and I kick my feet. I land hard on the back bumper, letting out a very unladylike groan as
my face hits the black matte finish.
I freeze, hoping that my landing wasn’t jarring enough to raise any red flags. This is a delivery vehicle, so there’s no one
to hear me, but these have cameras and sensors, right?
I get my answer as the hovercar rockets on and up, leaving me scrambling to find my grip as we take off into the night sky.
Clinging painfully by my fingers to the seam of the fender, I pull myself up. A handful of cars ahead, Hux is perched on his ride, the wind lifting his hair as he holds on to a bar mounted on the side of the vehicle.
I peer around on mine, finding that same bar but keeping my body toward the back, just in case Hux decides to look over his
shoulder.
My breath catches as we lurch upward, the air getting colder the higher we go. Our cars soar into the sky, threading on invisible
roads half a mile above the city. I’ve never been in a hovercar—in the Before times, my parents preferred an earthbound self-driving