Downsiders

  “Lindsay, are you listening to me? Honestly, if you want to know everybody, you’ve got to pay attention.”

  Lindsay had already developed the habit of dropping by the library rather than suffering Todd’s slings and arrows at home, but the library was no sanctuary because Becky always followed, and her motormouth never ran out of gas.

  As they crossed Third Avenue, Lindsay’s attention was drawn to a rain gutter in the curb across the street. She could swear she saw someone looking out at her. Normally she would chalk it up to her imagination, but recent events made such a sighting much more plausible. She continued across the street, careful not to let on what she had seen.

  “Lindsay, do you hear me?” droned Becky. “Hello, Earth to Lindsay.”

  Now they stood just above the metal ridge where she had seen the pair of lurking eyes. If she was going to make her move, she had to do it now.

  “Excuse me, Becky.” Lindsay got down on the ground and peeked into the slit in the curb...

  ...Only to be faced with the surprised eyes of Talon. Ha! She knew it!

  “Why are you following me?” she asked, her ear to the asphalt and her face pressing into the rain gutter. “How long have you been watching me? Do you have a problem? Do I have to call the police?”

  Caught red-handed, Talon just stammered.

  Becky, not catching any of this, cackled her fool barnacle head off, but Lindsay didn’t take her eyes off Talon for fear that he might disappear into the shadows again. Talon did try to back away, but couldn’t—and for good reason. Whatever else that metallic vest of his was good for, it was excellent for snaring large clumps of long hair—enough hair in this case to make them inseparable. As Talon backed away, Lindsay was pulled into the drain up to her neck.

  “Ow!” shouted Lindsay. “Stop it! Stop it now!”

  “I can’t!”

  It was one of those no-win situations. The angrier Lindsay got, the harder Talon tried to pull away, but he only succeeded in pulling Lindsay deeper and deeper into the narrow slit of the drain until she was in up to her waist. With her hips painfully wedged in the ten-inch-wide slit, Lindsay found herself wearing Third Avenue like a tight-fitting skirt.

  “Lindsay!” yelled Becky, who obviously had not seen Talon. “What are you doing down there? Come out now! The light’s changed!”

  But it was no use. All Lindsay could do was kick her legs futilely against the potholed asphalt.

  “There’s a bus coming!” shouted Becky.

  It was the horror in Talon’s eyes that made Lindsay panic. In the Book of Unpleasant Deaths, being run over by a bus while stuck in a rain gutter ranked right up there with midair collisions and fast-food snipers.

  Talon gripped her tightly under her armpits. “This is going to hurt a bit,” he said. “I’m sorry.” And then he tugged on her three times until her hips finally squeezed through and she fell headfirst into the five-foot-high concrete chamber. A brake squealed, Becky screamed, and when Lindsay looked up, a big black tire rested where her thighs had been a moment before.

  Talon let loose a breath of relief.

  For an instant Lindsay was furious at him for putting her in this predicament, but then she realized that he had also just saved her life. The feelings of fury and gratitude canceled each other out, leaving Lindsay numb.

  They stood there awkwardly in the half-light of the drain, Lindsay’s body aching from her curious birth into this place. While Becky continued to scream up above, Talon stepped closer to Lindsay—but only so he could work her hair free from his metallic vest.

  “My grandmother made it for me,” Talon said. “It’s kind of useless, but I’ve got to wear it, you know?”

  Lindsay nodded. “I’ve got a sweater like that.”

  Becky was now crouched in the gutter next to the worn wheel of the bus, peering into the drain. Lindsay stepped back so she couldn’t be seen.

  “Lindsay? Lindsay, are you there?”

  Lindsay turned her attention to Talon. “How’s your sister?” she asked.

  “Better,” said Talon. “Your medicine worked.”

  “I’m glad.”

  He studied her for a moment. “You look different.”

  “I lost the gator-tail,” she told him. It occurred to her that, had she kept it, her hair never would have gotten caught in his vest, and she never would have been dragged into the storm drain. She wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that.

  “Lindsay, I can’t see you!” whined Becky. “Are you all right down there?”

  Lindsay’s eyes had become accustomed enough to the dark to catch the glint of Talon’s eyes as he watched her. She saw her own curiosity reflected back at her.

  Meanwhile, up above, Becky Peckerling found herself caught in a nasty little dilemma: How was she going to convince people that her friend had just dived headfirst into a storm drain? That sort of claim never flew, and people would likely think she was some weirdo. Even now, as she hung her head upside down off the edge of the curb to peer in, she noticed people staring at her strangely. “Lindsay? Are you alive down there?”

  She saw only darkness, until Lindsay took a step forward. “I’m all right,” she said calmly.

  “Thank goodness. I thought you were unconscious, or had a concussion or—”

  “Becky, I really think I’d like to be alone for a while, okay?”

  Becky opened her mouth, then closed it again, finding herself entirely speechless. Although she had never told Lindsay, Becky’s life was filled with a long list of people who did drastic things to escape her company—but this was the first time anyone had climbed down a storm drain to get away from her. “Oh,” said Becky. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Well...do you want your book bag?”

  “You can keep it for me.”

  “Okay then...good-bye.” Becky rose to her feet, lingered a moment, and then meandered away, not sure whether to feel insulted or impressed by her own ability to move people to extremes.

  Becky’s departure left Talon and Lindsay very much alone, in spite of the hordes of people marching past just a few inches above their heads—and it struck Lindsay how easy it was to slip into one of the many invisible corners of life.

  “Why were you watching me?” she asked again.

  Talon reached into his back pocket. “To give you this.” He handed her the tattered copy of The Time Machine. “I liked it,” he said. “I thought it was funny.”

  “Funny?”

  “Yes. The way he made the Morlocks, who lived Downside, the ugly ones, and made all the Topsiders beautiful, when everyone knows it’s the other way around. I like this Hugg Wells.”

  “It’s H. G.,” she corrected, “not Hugg.”

  “Maybe I could meet him someday.”

  “Not likely—he’s dead.”

  Talon took a step back. “I’m sorry.”

  Lindsay couldn’t help but smile. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s not like we were close or anything.”

  And then she reached into her jacket and pulled out from one of the many compartments a worn sock, which she had laundered more than once before she would dare put it in her pocket.

  “You left it,” she said, and then realized how odd it would seem to him that she was traveling around with his sock. The fact was, she hadn’t dared leave it at home for fear that Todd would discover it while rifling through her things and she’d have to explain it. Lindsay had kept it as a kind of trophy, commemorating her first official traumatic New York experience.

  Talon refused to take it back. “No,” he said, “I didn’t forget it; it was payment for the medicine. It’s customary to leave it in the dryer, but there wasn’t time.”

  “You paid me with a sock?”

  Talon stiffened a bit. “Hey—do you think socks like that grow on walls? That’s a sturdy weave!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Lindsay. “It’s a wonderful sock. Thank you.”

  And she put it back into her pocket, fi
nding herself oddly pleased that she wouldn’t be parting with it.

  “Maybe...Maybe I could help you,” offered Lindsay. “I could help find you a place to live.”

  “I already have one.”

  “No, I mean a real place. With carpeted floors, and nice furniture, and windows...”

  “Why would I want windows?”

  Lindsay sighed. “Listen, forget I asked, okay?”

  “Would you like to see where I live?” Talon asked impulsively. “Would you like to see the Downside?”

  The question caught Lindsay off guard. It wasn’t so much what he’d said, but the way he’d said it—in a potent whisper as if it were dangerous beyond words. And what had he called it? The Downside? It certainly sounded like more than just some tiny niche.

  “Would you like to show me?”

  Talon shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him in the least, but they both knew that it did. “If you want to,” he said.

  Lindsay looked to the narrow slit that led back up to Third Avenue. Up above, the world went about its business. Feet shuffled past, but they already seemed distant to Lindsay. She was in no great hurry to climb back into the tumultuous mobs. Then she turned to look down, into the narrow shaft in the corner of the concrete chamber, where a rusty ladder disappeared into darkness.

  Surely there were a million reasons not to go, but those reasons felt less important with each passing second. All her life she had lived in fear that her world would be invaded by dark unknowns. Well, it already had. Her mother was off in the wilds half a world away, leaving her with a workaholic father she barely knew and a Neanderthal “brother” who defined himself by his dislike of others.

  Lindsay was scared—not of anything coming in through her window, but of the things that were already inside. She was terrified of being a victim of her own life.

  At this moment, it seemed the only way out...was down.

  She took Talon’s hand, surprised by her own boldness. “Take me there,” she said, and as they descended down those rust-mangled rungs, she realized that she didn’t care in the least if she ever came back.

  Topsider Down

  Lindsay lost her bearings in seconds, and with it, any sense of control. Still, she found strength in her choice to plummet head-on into this unknown. Even as her sense of helplessness grew, so did her resolve not to turn back. Talon drew her through grunge-ridden passageways void of light and filled with sour, befouled air. Sounds were mutated and magnified as if the tunnels were the chambers of an instrument, resonating all around her. Drips of water sounded like a heavy ball being bounced; skittering pebbles seemed more like a flood of rats; and the walls themselves moaned in oppressive sorrow. Lindsay could only assume their ultimate destination would be even more desolate, and it filled her with deep sadness to think that Talon could find comfort in such a bleak, hopeless existence.

  He led her through the darkness with a confidence that made Lindsay grip his hand tighter. “How can you see?” Lindsay asked.

  “I can’t,” he answered so matter-of-factly that Lindsay took it to be a joke at first...but then she began to wonder if people who lived down below might not have evolved some sort of echolocation, like a dolphin or bat.

  “You don’t need to see,” he continued, “if you can follow the breeze.”

  He made another sharp turn, and Lindsay reached out to feel the damp wall he had just avoided.

  “The feel of the air on the hairs of your arms tells you as much as your eyes can,” he told her.

  “It doesn’t work for me. I’m wearing a jacket.”

  Talon slowed his pace as he considered this. “Why do you people keep your arms covered so much of the time?”

  Lindsay stiffened. It was the second time he had placed her in that questionable group known as “you people.” Exactly who did he mean by that?

  “The same reason as anybody else,” she said. “To keep warm.”

  “But how can you move in the dark without being able to feel the air?”

  “I don’t. I just turn on a light.”

  “But isn’t that wasteful?”

  Lindsay had no comment, so she just shrugged, and wondered if he could feel that on the hairs of his arm as well. Then, in the silence that followed, it occurred to Lindsay who “you people” must have been. Could it be that Talon meant everyone who lived normal lives in the world above?

  “How long have you lived down here?” she asked.

  Talon stopped in his tracks at the question. “Are you asking me if I’m a faller?”

  She had no clue what he meant but didn’t want to let on, so she said nothing.

  “I was born Down,” he finally said, “and to an important family, too.”

  “Important to whom?”

  “To everyone who knows us, I guess. I even had a great-aunt who was Most-Beloved.”

  “Most-beloved what?”

  “You know,” Talon said. “The leader. The chosen leader.”

  “Oh. Kind of like the mayor.”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s right,” he said, but from his tone of voice, Lindsay knew he didn’t know a mayor from a minstrel.

  They went down a long flight of stairs to a place where the feel of the breeze changed. Lindsay could hear it whistling beneath a doorway where a sliver of light escaped. Talon took a deep, shuddering breath, as if something was troubling him. He hesitated at the door.

  “Why are we stopping?” she asked. In the dim light, she could now see him in gray-on-gray. His pupils were wide and vulnerable. She could feel his apprehension as goose-flesh on the fine hairs of her arm, just as surely as Talon could feel the tunnel drafts.

  “We’ve just crossed through the High Perimeter. Through there is the Downside,” Talon said, taking another uneasy breath. “No Topsider has ever entered with their clothes, or with their name.”

  “I prefer to keep both, thank you.” She spoke glibly, trying to mask her own growing unease. Talon didn’t speak like a homeless boy who had taken refuge in the tunnels, but like one whose home—whose whole way of life—was every bit as rich and complex as her own. She found herself frightened by the sudden magnitude of the unknown beyond the door.

  Talon listened for sounds on the other side, and then he leaned against the heavy metal door, which labored open under his weight.

  A world, regardless of which one it happens to be, is rather ordinary to the souls who inhabit it. A Topsider could see a spray of a billion stars across the heavens each night, and think nothing of their wonder...or sit on the beach before an ocean stretched out to the razor edge of the horizon and be more concerned with the sand that has gotten between their ham on rye than with the majesty of the seas.

  It is human nature to take the most magical of worlds for granted, turning each one into a blank canvas upon which to paint the lives of those who would live there. Only an outsider can see a world’s wonders for what they truly are. And so it was with Lindsay as Talon brought her into the Downside.

  The moment Lindsay crossed the threshold, she was quick to realize that this place was as different from the “High Perimeter” as her own world was. She had come through the rabbit hole into a realm of beauty.

  Before her was an old train station—perhaps from one of the first subways almost one hundred years before. But the station was now far more beautiful than when it had been a part of the surface world, for upon the stones and girders of this old station were painted a magnificent feast of hieroglyphics, a multicolored spectacle of lines and texture, like the walls of an ancient temple. Images within words, words within images, intertwined until the whole place seemed to glow with the captured light of an Impressionist painting. Lindsay was surprised to find that the entire chamber, bright as it seemed, was lit by a single bulb dangling from a long cord above them—and even the cord had writing on it.

  “What is this place?” Lindsay said, scarcely able to catch her breath.

  “Oh, this?” Talon glanced around as if it were nothing. “This is one
of the Rune Chambers.”

  “Who painted all this?”

  “We all have Tagging rotation,” Talon said as nonchalantly as a mechanic explaining a car engine. “Sometime between twelve years and sixteen, we spend three months in one of the Rune Chambers. We write our dreams, or things that have happened—or things that we wished would happen. What we think about. What we fear. And when we’re done, it’s here for all time, for anyone who wants to come and read.”

  “A library!” Lindsay approached a girder where the words and images grew out of a spiral painted so microscopically fine, they could have been done with a single hair of a paint-brush. She tried to read it, but found only some of the words and letters were English. Some seemed Russian, others Chinese, and some were word-pictures—but taken as a whole, the effect was dazzling. If this was Tagging, then it was the graffiti of the gods.

  She turned to Talon. “Where’s yours?”

  He quickly looked away. “I haven’t had Tagging rotation.” Then he hopped down to the word-painted tracks of the ancient station, pointing at the mouth of the tunnel. “This way.”

  The air flowing through the tunnel was warm and tropical, with a clean, earthy smell. It was the same scent Talon had brought to her room on New Year’s Eve—and Lindsay now found herself regretting that the tunnel had enough light to see, for now she had no excuse to hold his hand.

  So taken was Lindsay with these first glimpses of the Downside that she never noticed how uneasy Talon had gotten. He hadn’t planned to bring her to the Downside, not in his wildest dreams—well, maybe in his wildest dreams—but now that she was here, Talon was septic-deep. This sort of thing simply didn’t happen. Aside from the fallers, no Topsider had ever set foot on Downside soil. Of course, there were legends of Topsiders infiltrating many years ago. Such legends always ended with beheadings and other equally bloody business—but then, just about every old legend left someone without a major body part. These were modern times, Talon told himself, and besides, there was no one in power who could order a beheading. Such punishment could only be doled out by the Most-Beloved.

  Still, the Wise Advisors—and even worse, his parents— would not be pleased if they found out. Today, however, was market day, which meant that most people were in the Floodgate Concourse buying and selling food and wares. If Talon was discreet, he could give Lindsay a whirlwind tour and no one would be the wiser.