seem to care about testing the limits of what we’ve got.”
“None of it makes any sense, Lukey-Loo. Starting with being here. Let’s get some chow.”
Most of the kids were eating lunch in the caff, but Kalisha and Avery were in the playground. They were sitting on the gravel with their backs against the chainlink fence, looking at each other. Luke told George to go on to lunch and went outside. The pretty black girl and the little white boy weren’t talking . . . and yet they were. Luke knew that much, but not what the conversation was about.
He flashed back to the SATs, and the girl who’d asked him about the math equation having to do with some guy named Aaron and how much he would have to pay for a hotel room. That seemed to be in another life, but Luke clearly remembered not being able to understand how a problem so simple for him could be so hard for her. He understood it now. Whatever was going on between Kalisha and Avery over there by the fence was far beyond him.
Kalisha looked around and waved him away. “I’ll talk to you later, Luke. Go on and eat.”
“Okay,” he said, but he didn’t talk to her at lunch, because she skipped it. Later, after a heavy nap (he finally broke down and took one of the pain pills), he walked down the hallway toward the lounge and the playground and stopped at her door, which was standing open. The pink bedspread and the pillows with the frou-frou flounces were gone. So was the framed photo of Martin Luther King. Luke stood there, hand over his mouth, eyes wide, letting it sink in.
If she’d fought, as Nicky had, Luke thought the noise would have awakened him in spite of the pill. The other alternative, that she had gone with them willingly, was less palatable but—he had to admit this—more likely. Either way, the girl who had kissed him twice was gone.
He went back to his room and put his face in his pillow.
28
That night, Luke flashed one of his tokens at the laptop’s camera to wake it up, then went to Mr. Griffin. That he still could go there was hopeful. Of course the shitheads running this place might know all about his back door, but what would be the point of that? This led to a conclusion that seemed sturdy enough, at least to him: the Minions of Sigsby might catch him peering into the outside world eventually, in fact that was likely, but so far they hadn’t. They weren’t mirroring his computer. They’re lax about some things, he thought. Maybe about a lot of things, and why wouldn’t they be? They’re not dealing with military prisoners, just a bunch of scared, disoriented kids.
Staging from the Mr. Griffin site, he accessed the Star Tribune. Today’s headline had to do with the continuing fight over health care, which had been going on for years now. The familiar terror of what he might find beyond the front page set in, and he almost exited to the desktop screen. Then he could erase his recent history, shut down, go to bed. Maybe take another pill. What you didn’t know wouldn’t hurt you, that was another saying, and hadn’t he been hurt enough for one day?
Then he thought of Nick. Would Nicky Wilholm have backed out, had he known about a back door like Mr. Griffin? Probably not, almost certainly not, only he wasn’t brave like Nicky.
He remembered Winona handing him that bunch of tokens and how, when he dropped one, she called him butterfingers and told him to pick it up. He had, without so much as a peep of protest. Nicky wouldn’t have done that, either. Luke could almost hear him saying Pick it up yourself, Winnie, and taking the hit that would follow. Maybe even hitting back.
But Luke Ellis wasn’t that guy. Luke Ellis was your basic good boy, doing what he was told, whether it was chores at home or going out for band at school. He hated his goddam trumpet, every third note was a sourball, but he stuck with it because Mr. Greer said he needed at least one extracurricular activity that wasn’t intramural sports. Luke Ellis was the guy who went out of his way to be social so people wouldn’t think he was a weirdo as well as a brainiac. He checked all the correct interaction boxes and then went back to his books.