Criminal Destiny Page 3

  “Whoa!” I breathe. “I didn’t think there were this many people in the world!”

  “Leave the car over there,” Tori instructs Eli. “We’ve got a bus to catch.”

  “A bus to where?” Malik asks.

  “It doesn’t matter so long as the Purples don’t see which one it is.”

  Eli does a terrible job parking the SUV, leaving it at an angle, taking up two spaces. We barely notice. We jump out and run for the buses, keeping our heads low, trying to blend in with the crowd. It’s more city noise than I ever experienced in my life—the whiz of cars passing on the highway, the strain of large bus engines, the chatter of so many conversations blending into a background roar. And, yes, the rotor of the chopper still hovering overhead.

  “Follow me,” Tori hisses.

  Staying close, but not together, we push our way into a line, drawing annoyed stares from the other passengers. We wait until we’re almost at the entrance before she leads us into another line, and then a third, this one partially obscured by a shelter.

  Soon the chopper overhead is going back and forth across the Park-n-Ride, which is how we know they’ve lost us. It’s much easier to keep track of a big black SUV than four tiny heads, bobbing amid thousands of others. That’s our cue to board the nearest bus.

  The driver is collecting tickets, but a few people pay with cash. A small sign says the fare is four dollars. It’s a bargain, I decide. To get away from those Purple People Eaters, we’d gladly hand over every cent we have.

  We find seats wherever we can, hunker down, and wait for departure.

  Several minutes later, when the bus pulls out and merges onto the highway, the chopper is still searching for us over the parking lot.

  My eyes meet Tori’s, and I offer an approving nod. If we’ve truly gotten away, it’s thanks to her.

  For the first time, I notice the video display behind the driver. It announces our destination: Denver: Downtown Terminal.

  “Denver,” I say aloud, as if getting used to the idea. “I’m going to Denver.”

  My seatmate, an older lady, gives me an odd look. “I hope you knew where we were going before you got on the bus.” Her eyes narrow a little. “How old are you, dear?”

  Whoops. A revised to-do list appears in my mind.

  THINGS TO DO TODAY (ABSOLUTELY PRIORITIZED)

  •Be careful what you say—and who you say it to!

  “Sixteen,” I reply airily. “I’m meeting some friends to do research for a school project.”

  Funny. Back in Serenity, they taught us that lying was just about the worst thing you could ever do.

  I wonder how I got so good at it.

  3

  MALIK BRUDER

  Well, it finally happened. I am one million percent out of Happy Valley.

  The bus depot in Denver has to be the most un-Serenity place on the face of the earth. First off, it’s packed. The entire population of Happy Valley must go by every thirty seconds. And they’re not just going by. They’re moving in about a thousand different directions, bumping into each other, bouncing off, pushing, sidestepping, rushing, arguing, muttering, and cursing under their breath. Everyone is either impatient, or angry, or both. There are a few small kids, and they’re all crying. Announcements are blaring over a PA system, in English and Spanish, I think. It’s impossible to be sure. The speakers are crackling and buzzing, and you can’t make out any of it. Somebody has spray-painted stuff on the walls, but it’s too messy to read. There’s garbage all over the floor, including right near the garbage can. And the smell! It’s a combination of sweaty laundry, wet newspaper, and a bathroom right before it gets cleaned.

  I love this place.

  So of course, Tori is the polar opposite. “This is horrible! How do people live like this?”

  “Nobody lives here,” Eli reminds her. “It’s a bus station.”

  “Well, maybe that guy over there,” I add, indicating a ragged man seated against the wall in a huge carton, padded with assorted grimy blankets and pillows.

  Amber emits a little gasp. “He’s homeless! I read about that in USA Today.” She starts toward him.

  Tori pulls her back by her ponytail. “Where are you going?”

  “We have to help him!” she hisses.

  “We can’t even help ourselves!” Eli counters.

  “People looking out for one another,” she lectures, “is the definition of community—”

  I cut her off. “If you still believe all that Happy Valley brainwashing, you should have stayed there. Look around—do you see any honesty, harmony, and contentment? This is real life. It’s where we come from that’s fake.”

  The thing about Laska is she never backs down. “Just because Serenity turned out to be evil doesn’t mean the ideas we learned there were all bad.”

  Where do I even start? “The question isn’t whether Serenity’s a good place or a bad place. It’s an un-place, and the lives we lived there weren’t real. We can’t judge here based on there, because there was all fake.”

  Case in point: We’re having this conversation while standing stock-still in the middle of the bus station, with people trying to get around us, over us, under us, and through us.

  “Out of my way, kids. I’ve got a bus to catch!”

  “Lousy tourists!”

  “You got legs inside those jeans?”

  “Sorry,” I mutter, and drag the others out of the way.

  We exit the depot not so much by walking as by allowing ourselves to stumble along with the current of the crowd.

  Outside, there’s more room, but also more chaos to fill it. The sidewalks are teeming with pedestrians. Vehicles whiz by on the streets. Skyscrapers soar all around us. What do you look at first? Faces? Cars? Signs? Stores? The sounds provide as much variety as the sights—sirens, honking horns, squealing brakes, blaring stereos, leaf blowers, jackhammers, excited shouts. It’s like a guy who’s been fed bread and water his whole life suddenly stumbling into a humongous feast with every kind of food and drink imaginable.

  I’m a clone; my whole life up to now has been a big lie; the people I considered my parents are scientists; I’m on the run from purple commandos; my chances of having any kind of future seem uncertain and very slim—I get all that. But I take a moment to drink it in. A city. A real city.

  I’ve spent thirteen years longing for this kind of place. Dreaming about it. And finally, here I am.

  We get bumped around a lot because we’re staring up at tall buildings instead of walking. There are muttered comments about “stupid kids” and “tourists,” which makes no sense, because this is definitely not a vacation. Tori is nearly flattened by a little old lady who looks like somebody’s grandmother. I take a briefcase in the side from a passing businessman.

  I’m not Tori; I ram my shoulder into his chest. Then I stand there defiantly, waiting for him to give me a hard time about it.

  He doesn’t. He just takes his lumps and keeps on going. Maybe this is how you get along here—by standing up for your space.

  “Everybody’s so mean,” Tori complains.

  “I don’t think they are,” Eli muses. “They’re just busy. They’ve got places they have to go and things they need to do.”

  He’s right. People are running for buses, getting into cars and taxis, rushing in and out of stores and office buildings. At least half of them seem to be late, and moving with urgent purpose. Nobody rushes like that in Happy Valley, where anyplace you have to get to is no more than a few minutes away and the last traffic jam was never.

  “In Serenity, it only seemed like people had busy lives,” Amber observes. “Their only real job was watching us.”

  “Am I supposed to be flattered?” I rumble.

  “Let’s get off the main street,” Eli suggests.

  We round the first corner, and turn again down a narrow lane that cuts behind the bus station. At last, quiet—and a chance to stand still without being buffeted from all sides. It’s not quite like bei
ng back in Serenity, of course. There’s a buzz to Denver that never completely goes away. The only buzz in Happy Valley is from the bugs.

  It takes us a minute to realize that we’re not alone in the alley. About thirty feet away are two guys, and at first, I can’t quite figure out what they’re doing. For starters, they’re a mismatched pair—one guy well dressed and groomed, the other scruffy and unshaven.

  Then I catch sight of a glint of metal—a knife!

  Scruffy has the suit guy up against the wall and is holding the knife to his back.

  My heart starts pounding so hard that it echoes in my ears. It’s terrifying, and yet I’ve never been so excited in my life. This is a robbery, a real-life crime!

  “Hey!” Suddenly, Amber is running toward the two men. “You stop that!”

  Scruffy wheels and now the knife is pointing at Amber.

  Eli and Tori are frozen with horror. I have to admit I’m pretty freaked out myself. But Amber is ready to take on the world.

  Scruffy takes a threatening step toward her. “Back off, little girl!”

  “You back off!” she spits at him.

  Believe it or not, the first sign of fear comes from the criminal. “You think I won’t cut you because you’re a kid?” His voice comes out a little high.

  Amber doesn’t seem frightened at all. She starts lecturing the crook in what sounds eerily like her mother’s teacher voice. “You don’t even know who you’re robbing. This is a crime against yourself!”

  We’re all pretty scared, especially the victim, who’s pressed up to the wall, unsure if his mugging is still on.

  Scruffy’s eyes widen even farther. “Now you’re telling me my business?”

  “Without honesty and harmony,” Amber demands, “what chance will you ever have at contentment?”

  If the situation wasn’t so dangerous, I’d laugh out loud. Leave it to Laska to spout classic Happy Valley garbage to a criminal with a knife!

  “Amber . . . ,” Eli croaks warningly.

  The blade swings in his direction and he clams up. Then Scruffy wields his weapon at his intended victim, who has been inching away from the wall. Finally, he spins to threaten Amber. She doesn’t move a muscle, ramrod straight in her fury.

  “You’re nuts,” the crook tells her, and runs out of the alley, disappearing from view.

  The rest of us are still quaking in our shoes, too cowed to speak.

  “He did the right thing,” Amber approves, her anger lifting.

  “Maybe he did,” says the victim, dusting himself off. “Did you?”

  “I couldn’t let him rob you,” she retorts. “What would you have done if nobody stood up for you?”

  “I would have done this.” He makes an elaborate show of handing her his watch, his wallet, his cell phone, and a gold pinkie ring.

  Laska stares at the stash in her open palms. “But you’d lose everything!”

  He shakes his head vigorously. “Not everything. I’d still have my life, so I could go out and buy new things. But you—you could have gotten yourself killed! A young kid with everything still ahead of you! Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to stick your neck out?”

  We gawk at the guy—not just Amber, but all of us. If there was ever a conversation Happy Valley didn’t prepare us for, it’s this one.

  He looks us over, and I can tell he sees how clueless we are. “Let me guess—you kids aren’t from around here.”

  I shuffle uncomfortably. “Not really.”

  “Where are your parents?”

  “We’re meeting up with them later,” Tori supplies.

  The guy thinks it over. He isn’t satisfied with what we’re telling him, but he seems pressed for time. When he takes his stuff back from Amber, he keeps glancing at the watch.

  “A word of advice,” he says finally. “Denver can be a tough town. So when your folks aren’t around, don’t stick your noses into other people’s business—especially rough business down some alley. Think about what could have happened to both of us.”

  “But we—helped you,” Amber protests feebly.

  “And I’m grateful.” He reaches into his wallet, and hands her a twenty-dollar-bill. “For your trouble. Don’t ever do it again.”

  We stand in silence for a few seconds as he hurries out of the alley.

  “That’s it?” I call at his receding back. “That’s all your life is worth? Twenty bucks?”

  Eli finds his voice at last. “You know, Amber, that guy’s right. That was way too risky.”

  She’s stubborn. “It’s never wrong to do what’s right.”

  “It is if it gets you stabbed,” Tori reasons.

  “He wouldn’t have done that.”

  “Maybe he would; maybe he wouldn’t,” Eli insists. “You can’t take that chance. All this proves is that we’re like aliens in the outside world. We have to feel our way through every minute of every day, because it’ll only take one mistake to sink us. If you got stabbed and wound up in the hospital, it could make the papers. You think Purple People Eaters can’t read?”

  “And you could have died,” Tori adds emotionally. “If we’re going to have a chance to have any kind of future, we all have to pull together.”

  A discordant note sounds in my head, one that extinguishes any exhilaration I might feel at my first glimpse of a real city. “It’s a little late for that,” I remind everyone. “We’ve already lost somebody.”

  Hector. Poor stupid, pain-in-the-butt little Hector, who died during our escape from Happy Valley. When you discover that you’ve got no family, your friends mean that much more to you. We “all” can’t pull together, because there’s no “all” without Hector. Even if we manage to beat the odds and carve out a place for ourselves in this world, Hector will still be gone.

  Tori pats my shoulder. “We miss him too, Malik.”

  They probably do, but not as much as me.

  “But we’re still here,” Eli persists. “We have to go on. We have to eat. We need someplace to sleep.”

  “Clean clothes,” adds Tori. “If we look too grubby, we’ll attract attention. And I bet we don’t smell so hot too. How much money do we have?”

  “Twenty bucks more than before, thanks to Laska,” I put in sourly.

  “Less than three hundred,” Eli reports.

  They’re getting on my nerves. I’m not done mourning Hector yet. But the future has to be faced—a brand-new city, and a lot of brand-new challenges.

  And the Purples are out there still looking for us. We can’t forget about that either.

  4

  AMBER LASKA

  It’s the biggest piece of plate glass I’ve ever seen—a window that must be a million feet wide by a million feet high. In it, there’s a beach. A whole beach made of plastic—plastic sand, plastic water. And plastic people wearing bathing suits, wraps, shorts, flip-flops, hats, and sunglasses. The clothes are the only part that’s real—plus the umbrella and the beach ball.

  “I don’t get it,” says Malik. “What’s this supposed to be? Why are the people all fake?”

  “It must be some kind of art gallery,” Tori suggests. She wrinkles her nose, disappointed. “It isn’t very good.”

  “I think it’s a store,” Eli puts in. “Look—there are price tags on all the clothes. Not the people, though.”

  “It can’t be a store,” I tell them. “This building takes up a whole block.” In Serenity, our general store fits in one room, and that includes the lunch counter, our only restaurant.

  Well, if it is a store, they can’t be doing much business, because there’s no way to go in. We stand, staring for a while, until we notice people entering and exiting what looks like a giant glass paddlewheel on its side.

  “That’s messed up,” Malik announces. “I’m not walking into that thing.”

  I glare at him. “Don’t be such a baby.” I step into a wedge-shaped compartment and wait for the contraption to move. It doesn’t.

  “Is it broken?” Eli wo
nders.

  At that moment, a large lady carrying several shopping bags barrels into the wedge opposite mine on the inside, and gives the glass a shove. The “paddlewheel” turns, whacking me on the behind and tossing me into the store. I stagger into a rack of leather handbags, knocking three of them to the floor.

  While I’m straightening up after myself, the others find the courage to navigate the strange entrance and join me. The place is like a kind of fantasyland. The ceiling must be forty feet high, and everything is chrome and crystal and gleaming. Aisles of merchandise stretch as far as the eye can see. And that’s just the main floor. They have staircases that move, taking people to upper levels, each one probably just as spectacular and jam-packed with products for sale.

  “Well”—you can almost see Eli working it out in his mind—“if our store serves less than two hundred people, when you’ve got a whole city, you need a bigger one to sell that much more stuff.”

  “That doesn’t explain everything,” Tori puts in. “This isn’t just more. It’s beautiful. Better.”

  I’m not convinced. “I don’t know. How many different kinds of coffeepots do you need? All you want is something to make coffee.”

  “It’s about choice,” Tori explains, peering up at the mezzanine at rack after rack of colorful dresses. “That’s something we never had.”

  “It’s pointless,” I insist. “The outside world has problems—crime, poverty, homelessness. What’s more important? Solving them or making lots of junk to sell in gigantic stores?”

  The most stunning young woman I’ve ever seen comes up to Tori and me and shoots a cloud of strong perfume over us.

  I start to choke. “What was that for?”

  “Melody,” she says silkily. “A new fragrance by Bertrand St. Rene.” She drifts off to spray some other poor, unsuspecting soul.

  “Man, you guys stink,” Malik observes.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Eli decides. “We’ve got no use for perfume and coffeepots. The things we need are way more basic than that. Food. Shelter.”