No Passengers Beyond This Point(48)

“No, it’s her number. I saw,” Skye insists.

“It’s because of the screen,” somebody shouts.

What do you do when your number is called? I stare stupidly at my ticket.

Phyllis’s bulky shoulders shove in front of me. “You won’t need that now.” She grabs my wrist with her large man hands, works her fingers under the strap, and snaps the wrist screen off my arm.

But I am not a victim. I am not going to stay in Passengers Waiting. I am India Tompkins and I’m a fighter. I jump on her back like a mountain lion, kicking her under the arm so hard it surprises her and for a second she loosens her grip on the wrist screen. That second is all I need. I snatch it back and jerk my arm out of her reach. Skye, the singing dude, and the little boy with the superpig all cheer. Skye is holding the white cat. The cat looks different now, as if she’s finally content. That’s the last thing I notice when the smoked glass door slides open, and I walk through with the wrist screen in my hand.





CHAPTER 27

PERMANENT RESIDENT

A woman with blue gloves, thick shoulders, and short hair the color of white chocolate stands at the door. Mary Carol, her name badge reads. She checks my ticket, nods, and tells me to follow her down a long hall with corrugated aluminum walls and smooth, shiny, handle-less doors.

Where is she taking me?

I’m gripping my wrist screen so tightly my fingers ache from the effort. The band is broken, but while I’m walking I figure a way to fix it by poking another hole in the band with the buckle sprocket. It’s still loose, but at least it’s on now.

The doors are numbered with a strange series of letters and numbers I don’t understand. E-10K-28L, one says. E-8K-14L another. At G-19K-1L, the woman stops and pushes open the smooth metal door in the corrugated wall.

The room inside is sleek and silver with shiny walls and smooth handles inlaid into the metal. The woman slides her fingers in and clicks out a handle that flips down a seat from the wall. She moves to another handle and another seat falls out. When she has four seats, a table, a drawer full of soft drinks and another of peanuts, she invites me to sit down.

“Chuck wants to see you,” she explains, offering me a soft drink.

“Chuck? The taxi driver?” I ask. Somehow this seems like good news, as if Chuck is an old friend.

Mary Carol nods. “Everybody likes Chuck. We don’t want to lose him. Training is expensive and even after we’re done there’s no guarantee we’ll end up with an employee of Chuck’s caliber.” She sighs. “But he’s become a little too personally involved this time.”

She waits as if to measure my response.

“Involved with what?” I ask.

A pained smile darts across her lips. “Your family,” she explains. “We need you to let him know you decided fully of your own accord. In exchange, you will be restored to your welcomer position. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” she asks, watching me intently.

“I decided what of my own accord?”

“To come back.”

“I don’t feel the same way now,” I say cautiously, fishing for information.

She shrugs. “Now isn’t so important.”

“Why?”

She grinds her teeth. “Some decisions you don’t have a chance to make again, India. They time out.”

That’s what happened to my mom. She made a decision about the house and she couldn’t get out of it and then we ran out of time. I feel suddenly so sad for my mom. This must be how she felt.

Mary Carol watches me carefully. “But if you’re caught between the two . . . which was the decision General Operations made about you . . .”

At school I don’t like to ask questions. I’m afraid people will think I’m stupid. But I don’t care now. I have to understand this. “What does that mean?”

“We like things to run smoothly is all. When we have someone who doesn’t want to . . . settle down—a malcontent I guess you’d call it—we try to keep them away from the general population. Dissatisfaction is infectious. Of course there are pockets of discontent in every society . . . no city is perfect. But with you it was more that you didn’t seem sure you wanted to give up your passenger status.”

“So you put me in Passengers Waiting?”

“Yes,” she says. “Passenger status is a tumultuous time. During the downward motion euphoria, our citizens generate positive feelings for the passengers. But interaction much beyond that . . . seems to incite troubling feelings for our residents. Chuck is a perfect example.”

“He is?” The Chuckinator seemed pretty mellow to me. I’m having a hard time following this.