UnBound - Neal Shusterman Page 0,6
not possible.
His mother gasps then bursts into tears when she sees him. His father’s anger at him being AWOL for the evening quickly fades when Jasper tells them the horrible, terrible thing that happened to him. That while he was feeding the neighbor’s pets, two men broke in and kidnapped him. They stole the neighbor’s car, beat Jasper real good, and were going to hold him for ransom, but Jasper slipped out of his bonds and jumped out of the moving car, and the kidnappers were so freaked, they took off. He ran all the way home.
He’s taken to the hospital and treated for his wounds. He makes an official statement for the police. He looks at mug shots but can’t identify either of his kidnappers. His parents idly talk about moving to an electrified-gated community—but all those communities are run by either Lifers or Choicers, and since his parents are notoriously nonpolitical, they don’t want to associate with either side of the war. The incident fades. Jasper goes back to school. Life goes on. It’s forgotten.
But not by Jasper.
• • •
“Unwinding,” not “unwiring.” It should be all over the news, but it isn’t. People whisper about it, though. Jasper hears kids talk about it in school. He hears adults mumbling about it in the street.
And then there’s the war. There are rumors that the war isn’t coming to an end, but that it’s already over. Yet an official statement is never made by either side. Usually the end of a war is a big deal. Parades, and strangers kissing in the street. But this war was different. This time both sides just slipped shamefully into the shadows when no one was looking. It’s as if part of the armistice was to not talk about it. The armies just stopped fighting. The rhetoric stopped flying. Out of nowhere sanity now appears to prevail.
And bad kids are disappearing.
• • •
On a warm afternoon, less than a month after the Unwind Accord is signed, Jasper T. Nelson, looking sharp in his school uniform, shows up at a house just a few blocks away from his own. He knows who lives there. Kids always remember the homes of their childhood friends.
The woman who opens the door looks slightly hunched, as if the weight of her life is simply too much for her. She couldn’t be any older than Jasper’s mother, and yet she seems much worse for the wear.
“Can I help you?” she asks. “If you’re selling something, I’m not buying. Sorry.”
“No, I’m not selling anything,” Jasper says. “It’s about your son. It’s about Kevin. Can I come in?”
At the mention of her son’s name, the very skin on her face seems to sag. She takes a moment. Jasper can see her weighing in her mind whether to invite him in or slam the door in his face. The latter is not a possibility, however, because Jasper has surreptitiously slipped his foot over the corner of the threshold, so she couldn’t slam the door on him if she tried. And if she does try, he’ll scream so that all the neighbors will hear how the nasty neighbor woman just slammed a poor schoolboy’s foot in her door.
But instead she chooses wisely and lets him in.
He sits in the living room. She sits across from him.
“Is he dead?” the woman asks. “Is that why you’re here? To tell me he’s dead?”
“No,” Jasper tells her. “He’s not dead.”
She seems both relieved and disappointed—and miserable about both of those feelings. “He went feral almost two years ago,” the woman tells him. “He’s only been back once. Didn’t even say why. He had something to eat, left without saying good-bye, and never came back again.” Then she looks Jasper over. “You don’t look like the kind of boy Kevin would hang out with.”
Jasper smiles. “I’m not, but even so, I do want to help him.”
She looks at him, guarded. “How?”
Then he spreads out a document in front of her, all written in legalese. In triplicate. White, yellow, and pink. “There’s this new program to help ferals,” Jasper explains. “It allows them to contribute to society in a meaningful way. I joined a club at my school, and we’re going around talking to the parents of feral kids because we can’t help those kids without permission.”
“Permission,” she repeats. She takes the document and starts to look it over. “What is this thing ‘unwinding’? I hear people talking about it, but I don’t know what it is.”
Now Jasper gets