Amy and Tommy stood in a featureless white room about twelve feet square: white plastic-looking walls, ceiling, floor. No windows. The only hint of cameras was a line of translucent ceiling panels down the center of the room, set flush with the rest of the ceiling. Amy waited, but nothing happened.
“What . . . what are we supposed to do?” Tommy said.
“I don’t know yet. We wait, I guess.”
A voice from the ceiling said, “Game on. Twelve minutes.” Dots appeared on the walls.
Amy spun around, surveying them. Three yellow, three red, three blue, scattered among the four walls. But what was she to do with them? As she wondered, the dots disappeared and then reappeared in different places, on different walls. Tommy trembled.
“It’s OK, Tommy, it’s a game!” Amy said as cheerfully as she could. “Remember that Myra said ‘red yellow’? Let’s press first a red dot and then a yellow one and see what happens.”
Nothing happened. The dots kept disappearing and reappearing. Amy and Tommy each pressed a red one and then raced to press a yellow one; the dots never seemed to appear close together. Nothing made the door open.
After a few minutes of this, the ceiling voice said, “Ten minutes.” And the walls shifted.
Amy gasped. The length of room stretching away from the locked door was still about twelve feet, but now the width was only ten feet. Would it become narrower and narrower until they were crushed? No, that couldn’t happen, this was a game, it had to be safe. . . . Didn’t it?
“The wall moved!” Tommy cried.
“Yes, isn’t that fun?” Amy choked out. “It’s to make us think faster! Tommy, you press a red dot at the same time I press a yellow one. Ready? Go!”
It didn’t open the door. They tried pressing two red ones and two yellow ones at the same time, Amy stretching her body full length against one wall and Tommy contorting himself to use both his bandaged arm and his good one at the same time. That didn’t work either.
“Eight minutes,” the ceiling said, and the wall moved forward another two feet.
Tommy gave a great cry and curled up on the floor in the fetal position, as he had during the alley scenario. Amy, hating Myra Townsend and Alex Everett all over again, knelt beside him. “Tommy, you have to get up. We can do this, we can.”
“No we can’t! The walls will squish us!”
“I promise you they won’t. It’s just a game. Nothing will hurt you—Tommy, I promise!”
He didn’t move. Amy glanced at the ceiling. Was this being filmed? Of course it was: film for the cruel and insensitive to laugh at when it aired on TLN. Last night on the Internet, Amy had read hundreds of comments about the show, from reviewers and bloggers and YouTube commentators. Many had been outraged at putting Tommy’s mental disabilities on display, but more had been either amused or falsely judicious, saying that Tommy must have chosen this and anyway he was making a pile of money off it.
Why had Tommy chosen this public humiliation? Why didn’t he un-choose it?
Now was not the time to ask. Amy went on pleading with him to get up until the ceiling said, “Six minutes,” and the wall moved again. Now the walls were only six feet apart. Amy gave up on Tommy and studied the dots, which seemed to be appearing and reappearing faster than before. Red yellow, red yellow, red yellow. . . . No help in Myra’s “clue.” What else did she notice about the pattern of the dots? Were they somehow connected to mathematical progressions: prime numbers or doubling or Fibonacci sequences or—
No. No connection that she could see. Besides, this had to be a problem that the game company could market to ordinary people, not just to nerds with a weird taste for mathematics. Unless this particular game set had been programmed just for the Lab Rats, which it probably had been to make it difficult enough for the show.
Programmed just for the Lab Rats.
“Tommy, get up!” Amy said. “I have an idea!”
Tommy didn’t move. Amy wanted to kick him, to cradle him, to get him away from a place he found so humiliating and terrifying. Then she had a second idea.
She knelt by Tommy and put her mouth directly over his ear. “Tommy, this is what you have to do. It’s what Cai wants you to do. He told me. You trust Cai, don’t you?”
“Cai,” Tommy murmured.
“Yes, Cai, who takes care of you. This is what Cai wants you to do. Count to ten very slowly—you can do that, can’t you?”
A slight nod of the head.
“Count to ten. Then jump up and say, ‘I got an idea!’ Then put your eyeball right up to a red dot. Right up to it. Can you do those three things? Count to ten, say ‘I got an idea!’ and put your eye up to a red dot. For Cai!”
Another nod. Amy jumped up and said with disgust, “Then I’ll try my idea alone!” She raced over to a wall of dots and waited. When the wall moved again, she touched a red dot then a yellow at the exact time the walls moved. And wouldn’t it be weird if that really was the key?
It wasn’t. The ceiling said, “Four minutes,” and the wall moved to four feet away from its opposite side, barely providing enough room for Tommy’s huddled bulk. Amy held her breath. Would he do it? He had to remember the three instructions, he had to overcome his fear, he had to trust her, or at least trust that she really did represent Cai . . . which of course she didn’t. Poor Tommy, everybody lied to him—
“I got an idea!” Tommy yelled, jumping up and smashing into one of the walls. His injured arm hit the hard plastic, he cried out in pain, and Amy grimaced. So much for her plan—
But Tommy turned himself in the narrow space and jammed his eye against a red dot just before it disappeared. Amy immediately did the same to the closest yellow dot. And the door to the Frustration Box swung open just as the ceiling announced “Two minutes” and the wall slid again.
Red yellow. Programmed just for the Lab Rats. And Myra’s insistence that “for security reasons” all their retina scans be on file. Not their fingerprints—just their retina scans.
Tommy whooped and squeezed through the two feet of space to the door. Amy followed, fighting claustrophobia and triumph. She still had to face Myra.
Myra stood just outside the door to the Frustration Box. She looked sour. “So that was Tommy’s idea.”
“Yes. You got it on film,” Amy said innocently. There—let that shut the mouths of all those cruel jerks laughing at Tommy on the Internet.
“Sebastian will take you to the limo.” Myra gestured to one of her flunkies, who led Tommy and Amy out. Amy went with her head high, thinking that at least this episode of the show was one she wouldn’t cringe while watching. Tommy would look like a winner even if, once again, she would not. There were public winners and there were private winners.
Something Myra would never know anything about.
* * *
The limo took Tommy and Amy back to the Fairwood Hotel without waiting for the others. Amy, not knowing if they were being filmed while in the car, waited until she and Tommy were on their floor. Then she led him to a small sitting area she’d discovered on the floor above, an alcove at the end of a hallway with two chairs, a small table, and a spectacular view of the city eighteen stories below.
“Why are we here, Amy? Is it another game?” Tommy looked apprehensive.
“No, no. I just want to talk to you.”
“Did Cai say it was OK?”
“Yes.” Another lie, but Amy didn’t think Cai would object. “Is Cai related to you? Your cousin or something?”
“Cai is my guardian.”
For a moment Amy thought he meant “legal guardian,” but then Tommy burst out, “A real guardian, not like my fucking uncle Sam!”
It was the first time she’d ever heard Tommy curse. His face distorted into fury, and an involuntary jolt of fight-or-flight shot through Amy. Tommy looked scary when angry. And he was so big!
“Sorry,” he said, flushed, and looked like Tommy again.
She pushed on. If she and Tommy were ever teamed again, she needed to know this stuff
. “So Cai is your ‘real guardian’ because he takes care of you, right?”
“People are mean sometimes.”
“I know. Tommy, was your uncle Sam mean to you?”
Tommy panicked. His eyes darted around, and he shoved his fist—practically the whole thing—into his mouth. Around the fingers he mumbled, “I can’t tell!”
She put a hand on his arm. “It’s OK, you don’t have to tell me. But . . . did you tell Cai?”
“I can’t tell anybody!” Tommy looked ready to bolt.
“You don’t have to. You don’t have to tell anybody anything. And Cai is your guardian and I’m your friend, OK?”
Slowly he calmed down. Amy stroked his sleeve, thinking of all that strength coupled with all that fear. What had been done to this poor boy? Then she got a sickening clue.
Tommy said, “I don’t like tiny little places like that game!”
“No, no. But we won, Tommy. You and I won.”
That calmed him a little. He said, with a sudden flash of shrewdness, “But it was your idea, Amy. Not my idea.”
She smiled. “True. But that will be our secret.”
“OK.” Tommy’s smile vanished. “Cai’s brother died.”
“Oh.” She couldn’t think what else to say.
“Cai was his guardian, too. His name was Josh. But Josh couldn’t even read and I can.”
Waverly had said that Cai had a mentally challenged brother who died. And now Cai had taken over protecting and guiding Tommy. Amy’s heart ached. Cai was such a good guy—far too good for Kaylie.
That’s just jealousy talking.
Ashamed of herself, Amy stood. Tommy followed her lead. “Where are we going now?”
“I have to check on my grandmother. She’s sick.”
“Is she going to die? Like Cai’s brother?”
Amy looked at Tommy. He didn’t know to not ask stark questions; neither Rafe nor Violet had actually asked her that. Amy said, “Yes. She’s going to die.”
“I’m sorry,” Tommy said simply. “That’s sad.”
“Yes, it is. Let’s go back to our rooms, Tommy.”
“I’ll wait in my room for Cai.”
“Good plan.” And Kaylie had better be with Gran, as she’d promised.
She was, watching music videos on TV. The sisters smiled falsely at each other. Kaylie said, “Monday I need to start back to school, so you’ll have to get a nurse or something to watch Gran.”
“OK.” And then, out of doubt or concern or malice or some unknowable combination of the them all, Amy said in a tone she knew was nasty, “Are you really going to school? Or just getting out of here because it’s boring?”
Kaylie refused to rise to the bait. “To school.” And then, “Cai wants me to.”
“Oh,” Amy said, and went in to check on Gran.
* * *
“We might need to replace Tommy,” Myra said, pushing back a strand of hair that had fallen forward as she peered into the editing machine. “His responses are too predictable. They’ll skew the voting.”
“He wasn’t predictable in today’s Frustration Box scenario.”
“That was Amy’s doing and you know it.”
Alex said, “He doesn’t like being here. Myra, you hired him outside of our audition process—how exactly did that happen? You’ve never told me.”
Myra shrugged.
“He clearly doesn’t want to be here. What’s our hold on him? Because if you—”
Mark Meyer burst into the room. “Who the fuck set up that lame Frustration Box scenario?”
Myra said levelly, “I did.”
“I do tech around here! I thought that was understood! Christ, a lame video parlor prototype—what’s next, we have them play Monopoly?”
“Mr. Taunton likes it.”
“Mr. Taunton hardly falls into our target demographic, Myra. And he won’t like it when he sees the ratings. And he knows jack shit about tech! You’re treading on my territory!”
She said pleasantly, “I think you should remember your manners, Mark. This show is my territory, mine and Alex’s, and you create the tech we agree on. You do it superbly, but the responsibility for this show is mine, and I will use whatever scenarios make it a success.”
“I’m going to Taunton with this!”
Myra looked at Mark, running her gaze deliberately and distastefully over his artfully torn jeans, running shoes, and tee that said THINK OUTSIDE THE QUADRILATERAL PARALLELOGRAM. Taunton liked old-school polish. But he also had his unpredictable side; after all, he’d insisted on that little bitch Amy Kent. Sudden doubt flickered in Myra’s eyes. Alex saw it; Mark did not.
But all she said, still in that pleasant calm voice, was, “All right, Mark. Take your objection to Mr. Taunton.”
Mark slammed out of the room with the same force he’d exploded into it, and Alex rubbed his chin, thoughtfully eyeing Myra.
Twenty
SATURDAY
SATURDAY NIGHT THE second scenario played on Who Knows People, Baby—You?, now referred to on the Internet as Who–You. Gran, who seemed to have had a bad day although she wouldn’t say so, had fallen heavily asleep just after dinner and Amy didn’t wanted to wake her. A nursing aide now stayed with Gran full-time, sleeping on the second bed in the larger of the hotel suite’s bedrooms. That left Amy and Kaylie sharing the smaller room, but Kaylie hadn’t come to bed last night. Amy knew she was with Cai, and tried not to think about that, and couldn’t help thinking about it.
To avoid waking Gran, the six Lab Rats plus Kaylie crowded into Rafe’s room. Even Waverly joined them, probably bored with being sequestered in the hotel. She wore clothes that, Amy would have bet, Serena had not picked out: an all-but-transparent calf-length skirt, a top made mostly of intricately woven chains, and combat boots. Amy didn’t like the outfit, but on Waverly it looked spectacular. Kaylie eyed it enviously.
All of them had spent hours reading the endless comments about the show in the blogosphere. The hype was building, and Myra was feeding it by deliberately granting no more access to the participants. Or maybe she just wanted the misinformation to build so that it would be harder to vote correctly. However, the lack of facts deterred none of the loonier fans. Various sites on the Internet said that:
Waverly was a lesbian in love with Violet.
Violet was transgendered.
Cai, with his unplaceable dark good looks, was a terrorist recruited in Afghanistan.
Waverly was a lesbian in love with Amy.
Tommy had run away from a circus, where he had performed as Silas the Strongman.
Amy had a criminal record that had disqualified her from the Olympics in gymnastics.
Lynn was a renegade nun from the order of the Poor Clares.
Rafe was “really” a thirty-year-old genius dropout from Harvard.
Waverly was a lesbian in love with Lynn.
Amy had been raised on an elephant farm.
Was there even such a thing as an elephant farm? Amy pondered this as she settled into a chair as far from Cai and Kaylie as possible. They were holding hands. The very air in the hotel room felt thick, clogged with anticipation and dread.
Violet said, “So which scenario will they use? I’m betting on the trees in Myra’s office. I mean, I’m really betting—here.” She tossed a dollar bill onto the floor in front of the TV.
“No,” Rafe said, “they’ll save that one for later. Myra will want the drama to build—won’t you, Myra?” he shouted at the ceiling. “It’ll be Mark Meyer’s fake rats.”
Tommy said, “I don’t have a dollar.”
“I’ve got you covered,” Cai said, tossing two dollars onto the heap. “Which scenario do you think will be next?”
Tommy screwed up his face. “That box with dots.”
Amy said, “I pick the lobby attack.”
Rafe said, “Too much like the predator in the alley. TV feeds on variety.”
He was right. After the initial hyped explanations, the screen s
howed Cai coming out of what must be his apartment building. It looked even worse than Amy’s. Cai took a shortcut through an alley, and all at once rats swarmed toward him from both ends. A close-up of his horrified face and then back to the raucous music and overexcited hosts presenting this week’s list of options:
CAI:
Fights off the rats!
Tries to run—and escapes the rats!
Picks up a rat to eat it!
Is saved by someone else!
Freezes and cries!
Violet said, “‘Picks up a rat and eats it’? Who are they kidding?”
Rafe grinned at her.
Amy said, “You didn’t.” Then it dawned on her. “You knew right away they were fake.”
“Guilty,” Rafe said.
“And that means that by then you’d guessed that these are faked scenarios.”
“Guilty twice.”
He was so smart. But in turning to look at Rafe, Amy had caught a glimpse of Cai. His face had gone white; his dark eyes looked huge; his hand had gone limp in Kaylie’s. All at once, and without the aid of any phantom, Amy knew that he was even more terrified of rats than she was, and that he’d frozen and cried. It hurt her to even picture it. She turned back to the TV.
Each of them encountered the rats in a different place, and each but Cai was with another person, making possible the option “Is saved by somebody else!” Which described Amy’s behavior. When the second half of this scenario aired on Wednesday night, Kaylie was going to be the hero. That would make the second time in a row that Amy had ended up looking like a wimp.
All at once she didn’t want to watch any longer. The rest of the show was going to be filler anyway; the Wednesday-night segments, which revealed both how people behaved and the winners, were stronger. She said, “I’m going to check on Gran.”
The nursing aide was watching the show in the suite’s main room, texting her votes on her cell. She said guiltily, “Mrs. Whitcomb is asleep.”
“That’s good,” Amy said, going into Gran’s bedroom and shutting the door. Her face slack in sleep, Gran looked older than ever. She breathed heavily, as if the effort cost her, but she didn’t seem to be in pain.