The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

smiles at her. “That’s my girl.” This is the way they take care of each other. Each guards the other against complacency, against sleep. They keep the other’s anger stoked.

Carrie spots Hayden on the other side of the crowd. For all the noise they make about hating children, Hayden served as a musical director for the pageant, even writing a couple of nondenominational winter-themed songs. They’re thanked in the program and everything. They wouldn’t have missed this. All this is becoming normal; people are finding ways to live like this. They make sense of the nonsensical because a year is made up of days and the days are made of hours and small units of time have to be endured and survived. Carrie’s worry, one she and Bryce share, is that the goals will become subsumed in the day-to-day. Once they realize they can find joy within misery, they’ll forget the misery is there.

The lights go down, and the stage lights come up. A flurry of children crosses the stage, dressed as snowflakes. They sing one of Hayden’s songs, a bouncing number about blizzards. Carrie catches the look on Hayden’s face as they sing. They’re in wonder.

A heavyset teenage girl Carrie knows from the commissary steps to the center of the stage. She looks around nervously at the crowd. Silence hangs around her, bright as the spotlight. Miquel rushes out and pretends to adjust the microphone stand. He puts a hand on the girl’s shoulder and whispers something to her, then darts off the stage. The girl takes a deep breath. She looks at Hayden in the crowd, who gives the girl a thumbs-up and then quickly tucks her hand away. The girl nods at the accompanist, who starts in, laying down thick, slow chords. It’s a departure for Hayden, whose songs are usually kinetic and shifting, but it works immediately. Carrie feels the weight of the song before the lyrics begin. The girl sways behind the mic stand, her eyes closed. The room is fading away, leaving her by herself with the song. Her voice is strong and big, the kind that fills a room. Carrie wishes she’d step away from the mic. She doesn’t need it.

The lyrics are strange and playful, a riddle game. A list of contradictions and possibilities. The song builds toward an answer, lifts into a major key, but before it can resolve, the lights sputter and die, leaving the room dark. The inhibitor lights in this section stay on, their pale green glow coming through the high windows. Carrie starts the count in her head, knowing that Bryce and Hayden are doing the same thing. She wishes that this didn’t have to happen right now, that the girl could have finished her song first. Sometimes minutes need to be sacrificed for the sake of years.

After a pause, the accompanist continues, tentative. In the dark, he watches the singer to see if she’s shaken, if she’ll continue. He sustains the chord that brings in the chorus, and the singer comes in, a half beat behind. Without amplification or light, the song continues, the singer invisible. The song is the only thing, and each person in the room is alone with it. The singer is giving them the resolution they want, but Carrie’s mind is somewhere else. Her count climbs, approaching a full minute. It’s more than they hoped for. At eighty seconds, the lights flicker back to life. The singer’s voice becomes shockingly loud, and she draws away from the mic. It’s beautiful, but the momentary spell cast in the dark is broken.

“Was that enough time?” Bryce whispers under the applause.

“We’ll see,” Carrie says.

The back doors of the hall burst open, and guards come pouring in, rifles drawn. Some of the guards think the people here should be liquidated. They’re keeping tigers in cages, pretending they’re tame. The kids on stage flinch as weapons are pointed at them, aware of themselves as targets. At the piano, the accompanist starts playing “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime,” bouncing B-flat chords. Mister Benavidez kicks him in the side, knocking him off the piano bench. Shouting profanity and threats, they force people to the ground, shove them to the exits. They separate parents from children, break couples apart. Carrie doesn’t bother to look for Miquel in the scrum. They’ve been through this before. Later, they’ll reassemble. They’ll be okay, if a little more broken. She has to believe this. For now at least, she needs it.

—

Carrie lies in bed with Miquel long enough to doze off herself, skimming the surface of sleep like a bird. She wakes quickly, worried she’s missed her opportunity. Mister Wentworth, the guard on this sector on Thursday nights, passes Hall H at 11:20, then again at 11:50. In between, when he’s at the apogee of his orbit, there’s an open path to the laundry. This assumes that patrols aren’t doubled tonight. Carrie untwines herself from Miquel and hurries out into the cold without a jacket.

Hayden’s waiting inside the laundry, scowling at their cigarette. The lights in the room are always on, and Carrie can see every hair she and Miquel missed sweeping up this morning, clinging to the wet tiles.

“They got Rafa,” says Hayden. “Guzman says they beat him up pretty bad.”

“Fuck,” Carrie says, taking the cigarette. We’ll get him out, she thinks. We’re going to get them all out. “Did Siu send the message?”

“He thinks so,” Hayden says. “He told people, but he can’t be sure it was anyone who could do anything for us.” They picked Siu because he claimed he was a ninja when it came to Hivecraft. They needed to get the location and conditions of the camp out to somebody in the very limited time the inhibitor lights on the northeast quad went down, after Rafa disabled the generators. It got complicated because none of them knew where they were. Siu said he’d be able to locate himself from inside the Hive. Triangulate, he said. It rang of