Remembering the first time he’d set eyes on Kalisha, and perhaps to commemorate the occasion, Luke went inside, sat down next to the ice machine, and put one of the candy cigarettes in his mouth. He was on his second Round-Up when Maureen came trundling along with her basket, now filled with fresh sheets and pillowcases.

“How’s your back?” Luke asked her.

“Worse than ever.”

“Sorry. That sucks.”

“I got my pills. They help.” She leaned over and grasped her shins, which put her face near Luke’s.

He whispered, “They took my friend Kalisha. Nicky and George. Helen, just today.” Most of his friends were gone. And who had become the Institute’s long-timer? Why, nobody but Luke Ellis.

“I know.” She was also whispering. “I been in Back Half. We can’t keep meeting here and talking, Luke. They’ll get suspicious.”

This seemed to make sense, but there was something odd about it, just the same. Like Joe and Hadad, Maureen talked to the kids all the time, and gave them tokens when she had them to give. And weren’t there other places, dead zones, where the audio surveillance didn’t work? Certainly Kalisha had thought so.

Maureen stood up and stretched, bracing her hands against the small of her back. She spoke in a normal voice now. “Are you just going to sit there all day?”

Luke sucked in the candy cigarette currently dangling from his lower lip, crunched it up, and got to his feet.

“Wait, here’s a token.” She pulled it from the pocket of her dress and handed it to him. “Use it for something tasty.”

Luke ambled back to his room and sprawled on his bed. He curled up and unfolded the tight square of note-paper she had given him along with the token. Maureen’s hand was shaky and old-fashioned, but that was only part of the reason it was hard to read. The writing was small. She had packed the whole sheet from side to side, top to bottom, all of one side and part of the other. It made Luke think of something Mr. Sirois had said in English class, about Ernest Hemingway’s best short stories: They are miracles of compression. That was true of this communique. How many drafts had it taken her to boil down what she had to tell him to these essentials, written on one small piece of paper? He admired her brevity even as he began to understand what Maureen had been doing. What she was.

Luke, You have to get rid of this Note after you read it. It is like God sent you to me as a Last Chance to atone for some of the Wrongs I have done. I talked to Leah Fink in Burlington. Everything you said was True and everything is going to be All Right w/ the money I owe. Not so All Right w/ me, as my back pain is what I feared. BUT now that the $$$ I put away is safe, I “cashed out.” There is a way to get it to my Son, so he can go to College. He will never know it came from me & that is the way I want it. I owe you so much!! Luke you have to get out of here. You will go to Back Half soon. You are a “pink” and when they stop testing, you might only have 3 days. I have something to give you and much Important Things to tell you but dont know how, only Ice Machine is safe & we have been there Too Much. I dont care for me but dont want you to lose your Only Chance. I wish I hadnt done what I have done or had never seen this Place. I was thinking of the child I gave up but that is no Excuse. Too late now. I wish our Talk didnt have to be at Ice Machine but may have to risk it. PLEASE get rid of this note Luke and BE CAREFUL, not for me, my life will be over soon, but for you. THANK YOU FOR HELPING ME. Maureen A.

So Maureen was a snitch, listening to kids in places that were supposed to be safe, then running to Sigsby (or Stackhouse) with little bits of info given to her in whispers. She might not be the only one, either; the two friendly caretakers, Joe and Hadad, might also be snitching. In June, Luke would have hated her for this, but now it was July, and he was much older.

He went into the bathroom and dropped Maureen’s note into the john when he lowered his pants, just as he’d done with Kalisha’s. That seemed like a hundred years ago.

10

That afternoon, Stevie Whipple got up a game of dodgeball. Most of the kids played, but Luke declined. He went to the games cabinet for the chessboard (in memory of Nicky) and replayed what many considered the best game ever, Yakov Estrin versus Hans Berliner, Copenhagen, 1965. Forty-two moves, a classic. He went back and forth, white-black, white-black, white-black, his memory doing the work while most of his mind remained on Maureen’s note.

He hated the thought of Maureen snitching, but understood her reasons. There were other people here with at least some shreds of decency left, but working in a place like this destroyed your moral compass. They were damned, whether they knew it or not. Maureen might be, too. The only thing that mattered now was whether or not she really knew a way he might be able to get out of here. To do that she needed to give him information without arousing the suspicions of Mrs. Sigsby and that guy Stackhouse (first name: Trevor). There was also the corollary question of whether or not she could be trusted. Luke thought she could. Not just because he had helped her in her time of need, but because the note had a desperate quality, the feel of a woman who had decided to bet all her chips on one turn of the wheel. Besides, what choice did he have?

Avery was one of the dodgers running around inside the circle, and now someone bonked him right in the face with the ball. He sat down and began to cry. Stevie Whipple helped him to his feet and examined his nose. “No blood, you’re okay. Why don’t you go over there and sit with Luke?”

“Out of the game is what you mean,” Avery said, still sniffling. “That’s okay. I can still—”

“Avery!” Luke called. He held up a couple of tokens. “You want some peanut butter crackers and a Coke?”

Avery trotted over, smack in the face forgotten. “Sure!”

They went inside to the canteen. Avery dropped a token into the snack machine slot, and when he bent over to fish the package from the tray, Luke bent over with him and whispered in his ear. “You want to help me get out of here?”

Avery held up the package of Nabs. “Want one?” And in Luke’s mind, the word lit up and faded: How?

“I’ll just take one, you have the rest,” Luke said, and sent back three words: Tell you tonight.

Two conversations going on, one aloud, one between their minds. And that was how it would work with Maureen.

He hoped.

11

After breakfast the next day, Gladys and Hadad took Luke down to the immersion tank. There they left him with Zeke and Dave.

Zeke Ionidis said, “We do tests here, but it’s also where we dunk bad boys and girls who don’t tell the truth. Do you tell the truth, Luke?”

“Yes,” Luke said.

“Have you got the telep?”

“The what?” Knowing perfectly well what Zeke the Freak meant.

“The telep. The TP. You got it?”

“No. I’m TK, remember? Move spoons and stuff?” He tried a smile. “Can’t bend them, though. I’ve tried.”

Zeke shook his head. “If you’re TK and see the dots, you get the telep. You’re TP and see the dots, you move the spoons. That’s how it works.”

You don’t know how it works, Luke thought. None of you do. He remembered someone—maybe Kalisha, maybe George—telling him they’d know if he lied about seeing the dots. He guessed that was true, maybe the EEG readings showed them, but did they know this? They did not. Zeke was bluffing.

“I have seen the dots a couple of times, but I can’t read minds.”

“Hendricks and Evans think you can,” Dave said.

“I really can’t.” He looked at them with his very best honest-to-God eyes.

“We’re going to find out if that’s the truth,” Dave said. “Strip down, sport.”

With no choice, Luke took off his clothes and stepped into the tank. It was about four feet deep and eight feet across. The water was cool and pleasant; so far, so good.

“I’m thinking of an animal,” Zeke said. “What is it?”

It was a cat. Luke got no image, just the word, as big and bright as a Budweiser sign in a bar window.

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, sport, if that’s how you want to play it. Take a deep breath, go under, and count to fifteen. Put a howdy-do between each number. One howdy-do, two howdy-do, three howdy-do, like that.”

Luke did it. When he emerged, Dave (last name unknown, at least so far) asked him what animal he was thinking of. The word in his mind was KANGAROO.

“I don’t know. I told you, I’m TK, not TP. And not even TK-pos.”

“Down you go,” Zeke said. “Thirty seconds, with a howdy-do between each number. I’ll be timing you, sport.”

The third dip was forty-five seconds, the fourth a full minute. He was questioned after each one. They switched from animals to the names of various caretakers: Gladys, Norma, Pete, Priscilla.