Chương 4: Four Weeks

Abe ate his lunch. Then he ate June's crusts. Then at ten after one he went back and bought a second roll with the money he'd been keeping for the bus.

"You're eating like a horse," June said.

"I'm growing."

"You're eighteen. You've finished growing." She watched him take the whole end off the roll in one go.

"You slept about four hours and you look like you've been up for a week." Abe had been up for about a week. He'd gone out to the yard on Tuesday night at twenty after eleven and come back in at 11: 31. Somewhere in the middle of those eleven minutes he'd worked until his arms wouldn't close a door.

"Long night," he said.

"Doing what?"

"Push-ups." June looked at him for slightly too long. Then she took her tray over to sit with Ellis Naylor, and Abe finished the roll and thought about how badly he wanted another one. Cultivation class was at half past two. Abe got to mat four early and started on the slow holds from page fourteen. He had now done them more times than anybody alive had ever done them. On Monday he had held it for forty seconds.

Today he held it for fifty-one, and he lay on the mat afterward looking at the ceiling, because nothing had happened in between except a rainstorm and a bread bag. Croft was down the far end running the sword form, and people stopped to watch him without meaning to, exactly like always. Then Mr. Tench blew the whistle, and everybody sat down along the wall, and he told them the date.

"Monday the third of November," Tench said.

"The whole year, across the pad, one at a time. Nita will write the board out again the same night." He let that sit. The room started making a noise.

"Quiet. There is a reason I am telling you now instead of in three weeks." Tench put his good hand behind his back.

"Amrit turns eighteen on the twenty-fourth. Sowerby on the thirty-first. After that there is nobody left, so the third of November is the first time this year that board will have every single one of you on it." Two hundred people worked that out at the same moment. Abe felt the room change around him. Same people, same places, and every one of them suddenly working out where they stood. Danforth was going to be top. Everybody knew that. Nobody knew the rest of it.

The rest of it was about a hundred and ninety people who had spent five weeks quietly deciding they were better than whoever was sitting next to them. Four weeks. Twenty-six days, counting properly, and Abe had counted properly before Tench finished the sentence.

"It is a read," Tench said.

"You cannot revise for it. All it does is tell everybody the truth about where you have gotten to." Then he sent them off to warm up. Miles Croft came all the way down the gym to mat four. He did it slowly, and he did it in front of people, on purpose.

"Dolan."

"Croft."

"Twenty-six days." Croft crouched down on his heels beside the mat, friendly as anything. He was close enough that Abe could see the stitching on his practice jacket was a family crest, raised thread, three lines and a bird.

"What are we hoping for?" Abe kept his elbows in and kept going. He'd spent a year in this building keeping his head down, and it'd worked. He was the poorest kid in the room, with no method and no coach and a shift at four, and the only thing he'd ever found to do about that was stay quiet and stay out of the way. He'd gotten extremely good at it. Two days ago he'd done sixty push-ups on this floor while two hundred people watched nothing happen. Last night he'd knelt in a stopped rainstorm behind the trash cans.

He'd found out that the world would hold still for him for as long as he was willing to work.

"Because I'll be honest with you," Croft said, "I have a bet on with Ellis about whether you move at all." He said it like he was telling somebody their shoelace was undone.

"I'm not being unkind. I've watched you for five weeks." Croft said the rest of it kindly, and the kindness made it worse.

"You're going to be standing on this mat on the third of November with those same numbers by your name. There's no shame in it. Ask Ellis, I've got money on it." Abe stopped doing holds. Two days ago it would've been true. It would've been the truest thing anybody had said about him all year, and he would've tucked his elbows in and counted and waited for Croft to get bored and go away. Last night the sky had stopped over his head because he'd asked it to.

And Croft was crouching there in his family's jacket, being completely honest with him, and being completely wrong, and there was no way on earth to tell him so. Abe was tired, and he was hungry, and for the first time in his life he was absolutely sure of something. It came out of his mouth before he decided to say it. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Top ten." Croft blinked.

"Sorry?"

"I'll be in the top ten by the third of November." Abe could feel how far out of the window that sentence had gone. He could feel exactly how impossible it was going to be to get it back. He didn't want it back, and that frightened him. He looked at Croft crouching there in his family's jacket, and he wanted it so much that his ears rang. Croft didn't laugh, and Abe should have taken the warning. Croft stood up, dusted off his knees, and turned around to face the rest of the gym.

"Dolan says he's top ten by November," he said, in his corridor voice. The nearest twenty people looked over.

"Say it again, Dolan."

"Top ten by the third of November."

"He says top ten."

"He never."

"He said it to my face about a minute ago," said Croft. A boy at the back asked who Dolan was. His friend told him. He said "oh," and everybody heard it. Croft was grinning now. It was a real grin, delighted, the grin of somebody who has just been handed a present.

"Top ten. By November. Everybody hear that?" They heard that. Tench heard it too, from the far end. He looked over, and he didn't say anything. By lunch tomorrow it would be all over the year. Croft wasn't going to wait for that, because Croft never waited for anything. At the end of class he collected Nita Sowerby on the way out. Abe watched it from twenty feet back with his bag on his shoulder and his heart going. Croft was talking, bright and reasonable. Nita shook her head, and then she shrugged.

Then she got the green marker out of the side pocket of her bag, because Nita kept the board, and the board was for things people said out loud. She wrote it small, up in the corner beside his row. She wrote it neatly, because she wrote everything neatly. TOP 10 BY NOV 3 Then she put the cap back on the pen and looked at Abe. Her mouth went tight, like she wished somebody else had asked her. Then she went off down the corridor after her friends. Abe walked up and stood in front of the board. DOLAN, A.

· Layer 1 · Body 1 · Mind 1 · Under the ruled line, with the blank where his Talent went, and now with four green words in the corner telling four hundred people exactly what to laugh at and exactly when. Abe stood there and felt sick. He also felt important, and that was a brand new thing to feel inside this building. Four hundred people were going to walk past his name every day for twenty-six days and think about him on purpose. He was going to have to do it now. That was all of it.

He'd put it on a wall where the entire school could read it, and there was no quiet way out of it anymore. He found that he was glad about that. He looked at the gladness carefully, the way he'd looked at the raindrop, and it was still there when he checked. Then Danforth said, "That was Croft, was it," and Abe nearly went through the ceiling.

"I didn't hear you come up."

"Nobody ever does. I've been told it's unsettling." Danforth was looking at the corner of the board with his hands in his pockets.

"Did you say it, or did he say you said it?"

"I said it."

"Right." Danforth nodded slowly.

"Then that was brave, and I wouldn't have done it." Abe waited for the rest. There was always a rest.

"I want to say something and I'm going to do it badly," Danforth said.

"I have a coach on Sundays. Two till five, at the hall on Fenner Street."

"Danforth."

"My father pays for that room whether I use all of it or not. I only ever use two of the three hours, because after two hours I'm no good to anybody." Abe stopped breathing for a second.

"You're offering me an hour."

"I'm offering you an hour a week for four weeks. Marek is very good and it won't cost you anything, and I've already asked him." Danforth said it fast, like a boy getting a rehearsed thing out before he lost his nerve.

"I'm not doing it to be nice. I'd quite like the top ten to be difficult this year." And Abe's whole body wanted to say no. He could hear exactly how it'd sound in the corridor by Friday. Dolan goes to Danforth's coach now. Dolan gets carried. He was already the charity case in this building, and here was a chance to be the charity case in a much nicer one. Then he made himself stop and think about it properly. Because he'd spent last night finding out that he had all the hours in the world.

He'd spent about eleven minutes of it finding out that he had no idea whether he was doing any of it right. He had his father's paperback, and his father's underlining in the margins of it. Nobody alive had ever stood over Abe Dolan while he trained and told him he was doing it wrong. One person had. Once. Five weeks ago, for about four seconds, about his elbows, and he still thought about it.

"Yes," Abe said. Danforth had a whole second sentence ready and had to put it away again.

"Yes?"

"Yes. Sunday. Two o'clock." Abe's ears had gone hot.

"And I'm going to be embarrassed about it the entire time, so don't be kind to me about it or I won't come back."

"Understood," said Danforth.

"I'm extremely good at not being kind to people."

"That's a lie. You're terrible at it."

"I'm working on it." Abe couldn't tell whether he'd just made a friend or a much better enemy, and he was too tired to work it out standing up. Abe's hands had started shaking. Marek would show him something for an hour, and then Abe would go away and practice it for what felt like a month, and nobody would ever work out why he came back so much better. That was the one thing he could never say out loud. Danforth was going to get an hour with Marek.

He'd take whatever Marek told him home with him, and think about it for a week, and get one afternoon to try it out. Abe was going to get the same hour. Then he was going to walk out of that hall, find somewhere quiet to stand, and work on it for a month before anybody else had gotten home.

"You do know that top ten is still not possible," Danforth said.

"From Layer 1, with nothing, in twenty-six days."

"I know what I said."

"An hour a week with Marek doesn't change that. I'm not going to pretend it does." Abe noticed something then, and put it away with everything else he was carrying. Danforth had said top ten four times now, but he had never said first. It hadn't occurred to Piers Danforth, at any point in this conversation, that anybody in this school might be coming for him.

"I know that's what it looks like," Abe said. They stood there in the corridor a moment longer with the board on the wall beside them. Four hundred names on it. One of them ruled off at the bottom with a green note in the corner. Danforth looked at him for a long time. Then he did something Abe thought about for a long while afterward. He stopped arguing.

"Sunday, then," he said.

"Bring something to eat. Marek doesn't care if you're tired. He just keeps going until the hour's up."

"Danforth."

"Yes?"

"Why?" Danforth thought about that for long enough that Abe nearly took the question back.

"Because you did sixty push-ups on Monday," he said, "and every single person in that room was waiting for you to stop at twenty. I was counting. I got to about forty and started feeling sick about it." Abe couldn't think of one single thing to say to that.

"Sunday," he managed.

"Sunday," said Danforth. He held the stairwell door open with his foot, and the two of them went down together into the four o'clock noise, with four green words on the wall behind them. He told her that night. Peg was on lates. June was at the kitchen table with her homework spread out and the radio on low, and Abe stood in the doorway with a plate in his hand and didn't say anything for a while. Then it came out on its own.

"It stops," Abe said. June looked up from her homework.

"When I train. Everything stops. The rain and the cars and all of it, and I keep going, and it doesn't use up any time out here at all." Abe stood in that doorway and got ready for the part where his sister was kind to him.

"How long can you keep going?" June said.

"What?"

"How long. Is it minutes. Is it a night." Abe stared at her.

"You're not going to tell me to prove it."

"Why would I do that?" June put her pen down and looked at him as though he had said something stupid, which he had.

"You've never lied to me about anything that mattered in your life." Abe thought about the third of October, four minutes after midnight, and a screen that said his Talent had no measured effect on the world, and telling his sister it was a training one.

"Eleven minutes on the kitchen clock," he said.

"Last night. It was hours in there. My arms went before the clock did." June sat with that for a bit. Then she got up and took the calendar down off the kitchen wall, and Abe watched his sister count the days to the third of November with her finger, twice.

"You told Croft you'd be top ten," she said.

"Yes."

"In front of everybody."

"Yes." June put the calendar back on its nail and straightened it.

"You're going to be insufferable," she said. Neither of them asked what it took out of him. He was eating like three people and sleeping like a dead man, and both of them blamed the training.