Chương 15: The Read

Abe spent about nine hours getting ready for a Monday morning. He did it on the Sunday night, in the yard, in the cold, standing still with his eyes shut while the world sat where it was. He worked out what his face was going to do, and where to stand in the line, and how to walk to the pad, and what to say if Tench asked him anything. He said all of it out loud to a frozen bin about forty times, until it stopped sounding like a lie. The hands took the longest.

His left hand had set crooked and the two fingers didn't sit right anymore, and he had to put them somewhere. Then he worked out what he'd say to Ada Bewley. He never used that one. The last thing he planned was the part after, and it was the only part he was actually looking forward to. Mr. Tench signed for advanced material, and there was a locked cupboard in the cultivation department with things in it that nobody had ever put on a wiki. Mrs.

Ashe had said he'd do it the minute he was allowed to, and after this morning he was going to be allowed to. He got everything right. June was up before him, which never happens. She was at the kitchen table in her school sweater with a bowl of something she wasn't eating, and she had the calendar down off the nail again.

"Today," she said.

"Today."

"Twenty-six days," said June, and turned the calendar round so he could see it. Twenty-six squares crossed off in pencil, starting on the eighth of October and ending on Monday the third of November. She'd done it every night since he told her, and she'd never said a word about it.

"You said top ten."

"I know what I said."

"I'm only checking," said June, "that you haven't gone and got sensible about it overnight." Abe went past the board on his way in, the way he'd gone past it every school day for four weeks. DOLAN, A. · Layer 1 · Body 1 · Mind 1 · Blank at the end. Under the ruled line. TOP 10 BY NOV 3 in the corner, gone furry, with somebody's thumb through the middle of the 3. He stopped in front of it, which he'd never done in the mornings, and then he went to the gym.

The gym on the first Monday of the month is a different building. They run the whole senior year across the pad one at a time, in birthday order, oldest first. The numbers go up on the big screen at the end of the hall where the basketball scores used to go. Nobody pretends it's a ceremony. It's four seconds a person and about two hundred people, and by halfway through, the hall has the noise of a bus station in it. Abe sat on the floor at the end of the row nearest the doors and waited for two hours.

He had not planned for the waiting. He had assumed it would be the easy part of the day. It was not. He sat with his back against the wall bars and watched the year go past him one at a time. Every four seconds the screen changed and the room made a noise, and every four seconds Abe got a little further from being able to breathe properly. Nobody spoke to him. That was normal.

And underneath the not being able to breathe, sitting there against the wall bars, was the thing Abe hadn't let himself look at properly in four weeks. In about two hours everybody in this room was going to want to know how. They were going to ask him today, and tomorrow, and in June, and probably for the rest of his life, and he was never going to be able to show a single one of them anything. There was nothing to see. There never had been.

He'd been invisible in this building for five years, and he had about two hours of it left, and he found that he was going to miss it. Piers Danforth went about ninth. DANFORTH, P. · Layer 5 · Body 5 · Mind 4 The room made the noise it always made for Danforth. Warm, and slightly bored, because Danforth being at the top of things was weather. Nell Mott went at about thirty. MOTT, N.

· Layer 2 · Body 2 · Mind 1 She came off that pad about a foot off the ground, because Nell Mott had a one in every column in October and she didn't have one now, and the group she sat with made a great deal of noise about it. If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. Abe watched her go past and was pleased for her, and couldn't have told anybody why it made his chest hurt. Miles Croft went at forty-something. CROFT, M.

· Layer 4 · Body 6 · Mind 1 Ellis Naylor whooped. Croft came off the pad with his jaw set, and Abe was probably the only person in that hall who understood why. A Body of six was the highest number in the school, but two of those points were not training. They were the bonus his family's sword art paid out when his skill crossed a rank, which is why his Body sat ahead of his depth. He was also still one layer behind Piers Danforth.

He had been one layer behind him in October too, and he had spent every evening of those four weeks in a hall, and the gap had not moved an inch. Ada Bewley went at about a hundred and ten. BEWLEY, A. · Layer 4 · Body 4 · Mind 1 She came off the pad and went straight back to her place on the floor and sat down with her hands in her lap. There was no noise for Ada. Abe watched her sit down, because he knew what she'd been doing every single evening since September to be there.

Then the hall got on with itself for another hour. By the end of it people had stopped watching the screen altogether. The last thirty names went past a room that was mostly having its lunch early, and Tench had to shout twice. Abe was last. He'd been last at everything since the sixth of October. He got up and walked the length of a gym that had stopped paying attention. Somebody behind him said something in a bored voice.

Nita Sowerby was sitting cross-legged near the front with the green marker already in her hand and the whole year written out on two sides of a sheet of file paper. She looked up as Abe went past and gave him a small nod. It was the sort of nod you give somebody who has been decent all term and is about to have a bad four seconds in public. His hands were steady, which surprised him. Abe stepped onto the pad. It takes four seconds.

He'd done this once before, on the sixth of October, in front of this same room, and it had taken four seconds then and nothing at all had happened. He looked at the floor. He'd planned that on Sunday night. Look at the floor, count to four, walk off. He got to three. The screen at the end of the hall changed. DOLAN, A. · Layer 6 · Body 5 · Mind 3 Nobody said anything. That's the part Abe remembered afterward, and not the shouting. The shouting came later, and it came in pieces.

The first thing was two hundred people going completely silent in a room that had been a bus station four seconds earlier. He could hear the strip light over the sword racks. He'd been in that hall three times a week for five years and he'd never once heard the strip light. Then one person laughed. One short laugh, the sort you give when a machine has obviously broken. Then it started.

"Sir, it's wrong."

"Sir, run it again." Tench ran it again. Abe stood on a rubber pad in front of the whole senior year with a broken hand behind his back, and two hundred people went quiet for the four seconds it took. DOLAN, A. · Layer 6 · Body 5 · Mind 3 It came up the same. Abe looked at Mr. Tench while it did, because he'd planned to and because it was the only thing he actually wanted to know. Tench wasn't looking at the screen but at Abe, and he didn't look surprised.

That was when they stopped thinking it was wrong, and the noise that went up then wasn't like anything Abe had ever heard in that building. Phones came up all over the hall. Abe watched about thirty of them go up at once, held over people's heads, pointed at a screen with his name on the top line of it. Not one of them was pointed at him. It was on the feeds by the end of lunch, and it was never going to stay in this building, and Abe didn't think about that once all day.

He'd been invisible in that building for five years, and that was the four seconds it ended in. Nell Mott had both hands flat on the floor either side of her and was staring at the screen with her mouth open. Ellis Naylor was already talking. Abe couldn't hear one word of it from where he was standing and didn't need to. Nita Sowerby had gone the color of a sheet. She wasn't looking at the screen. She was looking at her list. Piers Danforth was on his feet with both hands on top of his head.

Four weeks ago he had told Abe, kindly and slowly, that top ten was not possible from Layer 1 in twenty-six days. He had said it as a favor. Every single person in that hall would've agreed with him, and Abe had agreed with him too. Abe stood on a rubber pad and watched Piers Danforth work out how wrong he'd been. And Miles Croft was sitting eight feet from the pad with his arms around his knees, not saying anything whatsoever. That was the second time Abe had seen him do that in a month. Six.

Layer 6 is where the top of a good senior class finishes the year, in June, after the whole of it. Danforth was on Layer 5. Danforth had a coach on Sundays and four hours of training every day and a father who bought him essence, and Danforth had been at this since last November. Their Body columns said the same thing. Five and five. Abe had been Awakened for thirty days. He'd promised the whole year the top ten. He wasn't going to be tenth.

He'd just gone past every single name on that wall, including the one at the top of it, and he'd done it by a whole layer. He got off the pad because Tench told him to get off the pad. He went and stood at the side of the hall with his back against the wall bars, and he didn't smile, because he'd worked out on Sunday night that he mustn't smile. He didn't need the plan. He couldn't have smiled if somebody had paid him for it.

He stood at the side of a gym with the whole year making a noise about him for the first time in his life, and what he actually felt was something enormous arriving with no shape to it at all. There was nowhere to put it down. There was nobody in that building he could say one word of it to. Tench let it run for about a minute. Then he blew the whistle and told them all to get out. Nobody got out. Nell Mott got about four steps toward Abe and then stopped. There was nothing to do when she got there.

Nobody in that building had spoken to Abe Dolan in five years, and there was no way to start in front of the whole room. She went and stood with her friends instead. Then two hundred people went out of that hall in one direction, which was up the corridor toward the board. They weren't going up there to look at his number. The board has two hundred names on it in order. A boy had just gone in at the top of it, which meant every single name under him had moved down one.

Two hundred people wanted to know where they'd landed. Nita Sowerby went with them, walking quickly, with her file paper in one hand and the green marker in the other. Piers Danforth went up behind her with about nine people asking him questions he wasn't answering. Miles Croft went too, and he went fast. He didn't talk to anybody and he didn't look at anybody. He got up that corridor much quicker than a boy who has just been moved down a place has any reason to.

Abe stood in the empty gym for a bit and let all of them go. Then he followed them up, because he'd spent four weeks looking at that board, and he wanted to be standing there when somebody finally had to change it.