The Best American Mystery Stories 2019

Ted White Burning Down the House

from Welcome to Dystopia

They burned down my block today.

I saw them. They had flamethrowers, big tanks on their backs like backpacks, and black nozzles that spurted flame. I was across the street, just coming home, when I saw them.

They were big men, more than a dozen of them, dressed in black. They’d kick in a door and then torch the place. They were efficient, systematic. In less than ten minutes, that whole side of the street was burning.

I ducked into an alleyway on my side of the street. No sense letting them see me. I saw what they did to the people who ran out of the burning buildings or dropped from windows to the street. They shot them. They do that every time they burn a block.

It was all going up in flames — my little hideaway, with my cache of paper books, so very flammable, tucked away in the center of the block. My home.

Suddenly a grimy arm locked around my neck from behind and I felt myself being yanked backwards and nearly off my feet.

I thought I recognized the arm — and the smell that enveloped me. It was the smell of primroses.

He pulled me into a narrow doorway and whirled around to close the door with his butt, flinging me loose to stumble toward a dilapidated armchair. I almost sat in it before deciding it probably had bugs.

“Well, missy, there it all goes!” he said, gesturing in the direction of the street. “How long till they do this block, huh?”

Rudolph was a deceptively stringy-looking man, shambling in appearance, but very strong. He could probably pick me up with one arm. He dowsed himself with cheap fragrances because he never bathed.

His little hole was no bigger than mine had been, a roofed-in and closed-off space between two older buildings. It’s illegal to do that, but pretty common. I hadn’t built mine; I found it. Someone had died there and it had been abandoned and mostly forgotten. I’m not sentimental and I’m not squeamish, so I moved in. Now I’d have to find a new place. But not Rudolph’s. Among other reasons, it was too close. Odds were it would be burned next.

Rudolph was giving me the eye.

“Yer a scrawny kid,” he told me, “but yer female, and I could use me one.”

“In your poppy dreams,” I said. A knife appeared in my hand. It had a long blade and I kept it sharp.

“Hey, now,” he said, backing away from me. There wasn’t much room. “A simple no would do it.”

“You got it,” I said. “No.” I looked around the dimly lit room. Boxes had been piled, on their sides, against all the walls, creating uneven shelves, filled with objects that looked like and probably were scraps, stolen from dumpsters in the affluent areas — broken appliances, plastic tubs filled with mismatched nuts and bolts, and stuff I couldn’t identify. A battered sofa took up one end of the room. I could see it wasn’t the kind that opened up. I couldn’t imagine sharing it with Rudolph. “You’d have to sleep in the chair,” I said.

“Why don’t you just get the hell on out, then,” he said. “Take your chances with the fire troopers, huh?”

“I think I will,” I said, moving to the door. I could see it was made of planks bolted to crosspieces. I recognized the carriage-bolt heads when I opened the door and saw its outer side.

“It’s yer mistake, missy,” he said as I pulled the door shut.

The alley doglegged just beyond Rudolph’s door, and I moved around the corner quickly. The air was full of smoke, which was a bad sign. The wind could blow embers across the street. This block might be next, and sooner than Rudolph thought. So many old, wooden buildings with tar roofs, crammed together, a tinderbox just waiting for a match. I had to keep going, cross another street, hope for the best.

Dusk was coming. That was both good and bad for me. Good, because I’m stealthy and I can get around without being noticed. Bad, because there’s a whole different crew out on the streets after dark, and my chances wouldn’t be great if I encountered the wrong people. Normally I’m home, holed up, after dark. Now where would I go?

I decided to head for Hooker Street. That’s its real name — I think there was once a General Hooker — but it’s now also a good description. I cut through the alleys that snaked through the blocks. I grew up here. I know them all.

I found Jonny. Or maybe he found me. That prosthetic eye of his has some kind of built-in radar, I think.

“Hey, Shivvy,” he said from somewhere close behind me. That’s his nickname for me, because I’m good with a knife. I didn’t jump. I recognized his voice. “Change ya mind?”

I turned to face him. He’s a kid, like me — but not very much. Jonny got put through the mill when he was twelve and had to be rebuilt. I used to wonder who paid for it. But I figured the reason he started running girls was to pay it off. He looks almost normal, until you realize that all his uninked skin is fake — and that’s his right arm and the right side of his face. Fake skin won’t take tats.

“I been looking for you,” I said. “They burned my block down. I need a new place.”

He grinned at me. “I can fix ya up,” he said. “But wha’choo gonna do fer me?”

“I won’t cut you,” I told him. “How’s that?” I smiled back. Two big guys pushed between us as if neither of us were there, heading for the door of a juice house. Jonny in turn ignored them.

“Choo’know,” he said, “when ya get ridda that scowl, ya don’t look so bad.”

“I’m not gonna work for you, Jonny. You know that.”

“It won’t be work. It’ll be fun.” He laughed, saw my reaction, and held up his hand. “I’m not asking’choo ta work for me.”

“Yeah?”

“Nah. I wan’choo to live with me. Now, hear me out.” His face got serious. “I got respect for ya, li’l Shiv. Ya someone I trust wit’ my back, you know what I’m saying?” He grasped my arm with his left hand, the real one, and pulled me into a barred doorway. I think we both felt exposed on the street.

“I been thinking about’choo. This fire thing just pushed it together. Ya need a place to stay, and I need ya. Win-win, right?”

“Uh-uh,” I said, shaking my head. “Not if you want to sex me.”

“Aw, come on now,” he said, his voice getting all soft and husky, his pimp-voice.

“Not ever,” I said. “No. I’m not one of your girls.”

“Choo breakin’ my heart, girl.”

“You got a crib you’re not using?” I asked. “Some place I can use for a few days?”

“Then what?”

“Then whatever. I’ll move on, quick as I can.”

“Choo don’t wanna crib,” Jonny said, shaking his head. “They trade ’em off, hot beds. One after another. Never empty long.” He squeezed his eyes shut to show me he was thinking. “An’choo not willing to get in my bed, so...” He brightened. “How about a rich man?”

I wasn’t going to tell Jonny that I’d never let any man get my clothes off, nor any woman either. I never had and I could think of no reason why I ever would. But a rich man... that offered new possibilities.

There are two kinds of people in the world: the rich and the rest of us. I think there’s been a genetic drift. I don’t think the rich are quite human anymore. I think they’re a new race.

They think so too. I can read, and I read a lot. Mostly I read books, which I always picked up wherever I found any, but I’ll read anything — even the newscreen captions I spy through windows. And sometimes I sneak into the Closed Zone, where there’s free stuff I catch on my tab. I shouldn’t have had a tab, of course, and now I don’t. It must have been destroyed in the fire. But I had found one somebody lost. They’re useless outside the CeeZee except for what you put in the memory, and basically you can’t access anything to put in the memory unless you’re in the CeeZee, so I used to sneak back in for new ebooks when I got bored with the ones I had. Delete a few, add a few — and then make a quick exit before I was noticed by the cybercops.

But I know what the privileged people think. I eavesdrop on them electronically when I can, and I read all I can. Most of what I read is written by them, for them.

They believe they are superior. They talk about breeding a super race. Past tense. Like they’re already more highly evolved. So “uber.”

Now some of them have decided to get rid of the rest of us. They regard us as vermin, wallowing in filth. They’re exterminating us. They’re burning us out. But there are a lot of us. It’s going to take time.

“They see us as disease-ridden,” old Nellie once told me. “Like we ain’t healthier than them. But we got immunities. So that’s why they use fire and don’t let nobody escape. Disease control.”

“They shouldn’t worry so much about us,” I said. “They should worry about the mosquitoes.”

“The mosquitoes?”

“They’re what carry disease,” I told her. “Like, you know, all those viruses. Zika, dengue fever.”

“Wassat?”

“Tropical diseases. Now that it’s warmer, we got tropical diseases.”

“Yeah? You sure know a lot from them books you reading,” she said, shaking her head. “But that old-times stuff, that won’t do you no good now, here. You gotta get your head outta them books, you want to live to grow up.”

She was shot, out on the avenue, by a block cop who was aiming at somebody else, a few months ago. I hadn’t thought about her since then. But having your block burned down sharpens the memory, I think.

Jonny’s “rich man” was, he said, an infrequent customer, a man who descended from his no-doubt high-rise place in the CeeZee to go slumming in the badlands for some hot sex. I tried to figure out how I could turn him to my advantage.

Actual sex was out, of course, but maybe the lure of sex? Unfortunately, I don’t look much like a street girl. It’s not just that I don’t dress like them. I’m kind of skinny, narrow-hipped and flat-chested for my age. I’m not pretty. And I wear my hair and clothes so that from any distance you’d take me for a boy. Jonny tells me he thinks that’s sexy, but it keeps most of the male predators at bay. Jonny has his own problems.

But Jonny tells me his rich man isn’t looking to sex me. He wants to meet me because Jonny told him I read a lot.

“What is he, some kind of kinky?” I asked.

“He’s smart. And he reads too.”

And, when I met him, he was nothing like what I expected.

We met in an eatery tucked behind a fight club, Jonny introducing us. I was impressed with Jonny, being able to get in touch so quickly with his rich man, and setting things up right away. It was possible I might have a place to sleep tonight. Well, there’s always somewhere to sleep, but I sleep better when there are no rats sniffing around me. But I should have considered the implications of this speedy meeting.

“Don’choo let her looks fool ya, Doc,” Jonny said.

What I wondered was how the looks of this rich guy — Dr. Jones, if you can believe that — would affect me. He was about six and a half tall, somewhere north of his youth, but still very fit, very toned. He looked like a Greek god, or maybe a media star. He had curly blond hair and penetrating blue eyes. I thought he was gorgeous and wondered if that made him a real threat.

We got soy burgers. Jones only had one bite of his, so I finished it off after I’d wolfed mine. I hadn’t eaten since morning.

He said he’d been looking forward to meeting me, ever since Jonny had mentioned me — he didn’t say how or why my name had come up. “I’m really delighted,” he said to me across the tiny table.

“Why?” I asked. “What am I to you?”

“Well, you’re literate, for one thing — you read.”

“Plenty of people read,” I said.

“How many people do you know,” he asked me, “who actually read for pleasure, who enjoy reading?”

I glanced at Jonny. He looked uncomfortable. “Not many,” I admitted. “But how many do you know?”

Jones grinned. “Touché,” he said. “I think it’s a dying art — writing, especially. Literature. Do you write?”

“Me?” I’d never thought of it. I shrugged. “What would I write about?”

“Your life?” he responded. “Anything you know. Anything you care about.”

“I cared about my home,” I said. “They burned it down today.”

A look that might have been real concern passed briefly over his face. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “Maybe I can help you there.”

I folded my arms and pulled them close, and I think that told him something, so he changed the subject.

“The reason I wanted to meet you — I’d like to give you some tests.”

“Why? What kinda tests?”

“Well, let’s just say that I’ve been in a dispute with some of my colleagues and I think you can help me prove my point.” He picked up a slim case from near his feet. He opened it and removed a large e-tablet. “Just a few basic tests — IQ, aptitude...”

“You want me to take these tests here?”

He looked up and took in his surroundings, maybe for the first time. He shrugged and smiled thinly. “Maybe not,” he said. He turned to Jonny. “You got some place that’s quieter, a little more private?”

Jonny shook his head. “Not less ya wanna try a juice house, hope nobody’s got bad juice, havin’ a fit.”

I frowned and Jones said, “I guess not. Okay, let’s go uptown.” He packed his tab and stood up. He towered over us. Jonny’s not much taller than me.

“Uptown,” I said, “where uptown? How?”

Jones gave me a very boyish grin. “You ask a lot of questions, don’t you? I’ve got a car that’ll pick us up. We’ll go to my place.”

“In the CeeZee?”

“Of course.”

“You don’t need me,” Jonny said. I figured he’d collect his payment later, if it hadn’t been up front. He pushed his chair back, one leg catching on the rough-planked floor, and stood. “I’ll see ya, l’il—” he broke off, maybe not wanting to use his pet name for me in front of Jones. “See ya ’round, Nik,” he said, and left me with Jones.

It didn’t bother me. I didn’t need Jonny for protection. I knew I could handle Jones. He still hadn’t told me why he wanted to test me.

When we got out to the street, there was a black car waiting, all polished and gleaming in the scattered lights, the windows mirrored. Nobody was near it, which struck me as odd, until I saw a juicehead wobble up to it and start to lean against it. There was a visible spark and a yelp and the juicehead staggered quickly away from the car.

Jones said, “The car’s protected,” and worked his remote, springing the doors open. “Get in,” he said, gesturing. “It won’t bite.”

As I got into the car he went around to the other side and got in next to me. He touched a button on the dash and the doors closed. The car pulled out from the curb, executed a neat U-turn, and headed for an avenue uptown.

No one could see in, but we could see out. Not easily, though. From the inside the windows looked tinted, darkened, so that only bright lights could really be seen — and there weren’t many of them left on the avenue. Most had been vandalized years ago, the remaining streetlights bunched together along short stretches in “good” neighborhoods. There were few other lights. Shop owners and residents alike were stingy with their electricity.

Fortunately, the car didn’t need light to go where it was programmed to go.

“This is pretty neat,” I said. “I never been in one of these.”

“Really? It’s just a car.”

“To you, maybe.”

He gave me a searching look in the car’s dim interior light, like he couldn’t figure me out. That was all right. I hadn’t figured him out either.

Jones leaned toward me. “Why do you always wear that fierce look? Do you ever smile?”

“What do I have to smile about?” I pressed my back against the door.

He shrugged. “I don’t know, but life has many little pleasures. Riding in this car, perhaps?”

“Okay.” I let my face relax into a small smile. “How’s that? For your car.”

“Much better,” he said. “Makes you look cuter.”

“I don’t want to look cuter.”

“No? You’re a girl. You need to look cuter, be attractive. It’s going to be your stock in trade, when you’re grown up.”

I lost the smile. What kind of advice was that — from a doctor?

He changed the subject. “How old do you think I am?”

“I don’t know. Older than me. What? Forty maybe?” That seemed like a safe and maybe flattering guess. Younger men like to be taken for five to ten years older. But I was wrong.

Jones chuckled. “In a sense, you’re right. That’s the target age for my treatments. Actually, I’m eighty-six. You couldn’t guess, could you?”

“Is this another test?”

He laughed. “I’ve got the body and, um, the stamina of a forty-year-old man.” He seemed to smile and laugh a lot. “And the wisdom and experience of an older man.”

I wondered what he was selling, and hoped it wasn’t what I thought.

“What kind of a name is Jones? Is that your real name?”

“Why do you ask? Do you think it isn’t?”

“Jones— Smith—” I said. “Bogus names, scam artist names. Meet Mister Smith, wink-wink.” What I didn’t say was that half of Jonny’s customers were Smith or Jones. I’d made a natural assumption.

“Well, it’s the name I was born with. And there are lots of real Smiths and Joneses, you know. Common names, really.”

“Okay, so what’s your first—”

I was interrupted. Somebody shot at us in one of the unlit patches. I heard a bell-like sound from the left front fender, and a moment later another bullet hit the window next to Jones’s head with a thwack. The window didn’t break. It just grew a scar. “Don’t worry,” Jones told me. “The car’s armored — bulletproof.” I didn’t relax until we got to the next stretch of lights.

That was my mistake, and I was caught off guard when the car suddenly leapt into the air and came down on my side, skidding to a quick stop, dumping Jones on me, half-crushing me, my ears still ringing from the explosion. It had to have been right under the car when it went off. I wondered if it had been in the street or attached to the underside of the car.

Jones stepped on me with a muttered apology as he attempted to stand up. He threw himself, shoulder first, against what had been the floor in front of his seat. I had no idea what he was doing until the car teetered on its rounded side and fell back onto its wheels, rocking on its springs. I fell back into my seat and Jones caught himself before he fell on his face into his.

He seated himself and we exchanged looks. “You okay?” he asked.

“Sure. You?”

“A little battered. Nothing serious.”

I looked out my window. “Company,” I said. A group of four or five men were converging from the darkness. They were carrying big pry-bars, the kind you can use to bash someone’s head in. They looked purposeful. Not random sightseers, curious about the explosion.

“Let’s see if this thing still works,” Jones said, and punched a button on the dash. The nearest man swung his pry-bar at my window, but it bounced off, leaving no mark, and the car didn’t give him a second chance. Tires chirping, it scooted us up the avenue.

“This is a rough area,” Jones said, looking back at the frustrated attackers as they disappeared from sight, abandoning the road as quickly as they’d appeared in it.

“They’re all rough areas, until you’re in the CeeZee,” I told him. “What did you expect?” I retracted its blade and put my knife away.

“I’m not usually down here after dark,” he said. He hadn’t noticed the knife.

“No kidding,” I said.

We came to another burning block. The car plowed through the smoke without slowing. “Why do your people do that?” I asked. “Set fires.”

“My people? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Those fires are caused by the deplorable conditions in which some people live. I’m amazed they haven’t burned the whole city down by now. I guess we have the firefighters to thank for that.”

I stared at him, incredulous. “Firefighters?” I said. “You see any firefighters back there? You see anybody trying to put out that fire?”

“It was too smoky to see anything back there,” he said, turning around to peer out the back window too late.

“Let me tell you something,” I said. “I watched the fires being set on my block. Big men, in black uniforms, with flamethrowers. And you know what they did when people tried to get out, escape the fire?”

“What?”

“They shot them. Killed them, those who weren’t killed by the fire. Who do you think they were working for?”

“I don’t know,” Jones said, shaking his head. “It certainly wasn’t me.”

Twice the car turned off the avenue to take side streets to a parallel avenue. Jones said some kind of problems forced the detours. “It’s all automatic. The car knows. I don’t.”

“So, okay,” I said after the second detour, “why do you want to give me those tests? What’re you trying to prove?”

“Well,” he said, “I don’t know what you know about the One Percent, but we are not monolithic. We don’t all think alike. We have disagreements, even controversies.”

I shrugged. “Like everyone else, huh?”

“Pretty much.”

“But you guys don’t think you’re like everyone else though, do you?”

“What do you know about that?” His tone became sharp.

“I read, you know,” I said, folding my arms again.

“Right. Well, I’ve gotten into a disagreement with several of my colleagues. It’s about human intelligence.”

“Which side are you on? Race-based intelligence quotients, or—”

His mouth fell open.

“It’s not a new argument,” I told him. “Goes back centuries.”

He closed his mouth and then opened it again to say, “You’re quite right. But our argument isn’t over racial variations in IQ — an old and pretty dead issue, really. Our argument is different and concerns the growing genetic gap between the One Percent and the, um, others — between me and you.” He gestured at each of us in turn.

“A genetic gap? Can we still crossbreed?” I let a trace of sarcasm creep into my voice.

Color rose in his face. “It’s — not that great a gap,” he said. “Not yet.”

“So—?”

“So I think you’re as intelligent as most of us — in the One Percent, I mean. I want to prove it.”

“You must know you’ll lose,” I told him. “You think I’m an idiot.”

He stared at me, his mouth working, no words coming out.

“You know one high-scoring IQ from my side of the fence means nothing. You know it’s statistically worthless — no matter how high I tested it wouldn’t win your argument for you. You know that. And I know that. Maybe I’d ace your tests, but so what? You know I like to read, so you think I must be smart? How smart does that make you?” I felt my voice rising, and I stopped. I shouldn’t have said a single word. I realized that, too late to take any of them back. So I leaned back against my side of the car and glared at him.

“What do you really want from me?” I asked, finally breaking the silence.

The car’s interior was only lit with little glowing lights on the dash, so it was hard to make out Jones’s expression when he said, “I’ll explain it to you upstairs. We’re here.”

I hadn’t been paying attention. We’d entered the CeeZee without my noticing the brighter lights and cleaner streets. Now the car pulled into a building entrance, a portico just off the street. Jones did something and both doors swung open. Warily, I climbed out.

He took my arm gently and led me through the big, bank-vault doors, through an air-lock-like vestibule, and into the building’s lobby.

As we went through the first doors I glanced back at the car. My side was scraped up and dented. “What about your car?” I asked.

He laughed. “It’s not my car. It’s a public car.”

I didn’t know what that meant. “Won’t somebody get mad about the damage?”

“No, it’s pretty much expected now — when they’re taken out of this zone.”

The lobby surprised me. I’d expected better. It was all chrome or maybe stainless steel and glass and it probably looked really good fifty or a hundred years ago. Now, like its faded carpet, it looked almost shabby and it smelled musty.

Jones hurried me through the lobby to a bank of elevators. The door to one of them opened as we approached. We entered, the door closed, and we started up. I’ve been in elevators before and I looked without success for the floor buttons, or even a floor indicator. Nothing. Just smooth paneled walls and a glowing ceiling.

Jones saw me turning around, scanning the elevator’s blank interior, and chuckled. “It knows me automatically and it knows where to take us.”

“What if you wanted to visit someone else?” I asked.

“I have a remote,” he said, as if that answered everything. Maybe it did. But I felt a stab of fear, the kind a trapped animal feels.

The elevator stopped and the door opened onto a clean undecorated corridor. Jones led me down the plain but well-lit hallway to one of the unmarked doors we were passing, and when he stepped up to it, it opened.

“How’d you know which door was yours?”

“I’ve lived here a long time. And of course only this door opens for me.”

Inside his apartment things were very different. In a curious way I was reminded of Rudolph’s place. Both were full of stuff and dimly lit. Jones’s stuff was undoubtedly better and on nice built-in shelves, but it still amounted to clutter. And instead of Rudolph’s cheap fragrances, this place had a cinnamon-incense odor — pleasant, but odd.

I turned slowly around as I took in the big room, finally coming to the shelves on the wall that had been behind me as I’d walked in.

Books! Lots of books! More than I’d ever seen in one place, a whole wall of books, floor to ceiling, the shelves even running over the door, and the ceiling more than nine feet high. I saw a funny-looking ladder, its top resting on wheels that ran in a track along an upper shelf. Handy. It was hard to read any of the books’ spines in the dim light, so I couldn’t tell what they were about — but there were so many! For that moment I completely forgot Jones.

A stab of adrenaline brought me back to reality. All those books were great, but I had walked into a chrome-and-glass trap, with no way to get out on my own. I shouldn’t let myself be distracted. I slipped my hand into my pants and fingered my knife for reassurance.

It was a big, irregular room, with alcoves, heavily draped windows, and doors to other rooms, and filled with things. There was a lot of furniture — upholstered easy chairs and lounge-recliners, a big L-shaped couch that could seat half a dozen and little tables scattered between the chairs. Standing on pedestals were an ancient suit of armor that looked like it might have been worn by somebody my size, and a bigger space suit, probably a replica, but maybe real. It was white, but looked grimy, the face plate fogged.

Then I saw her. She was standing in an alcove, shadowed, and looking directly at me. She didn’t move. She was dressed as I was, her hair short and uneven, a small cowlick falling over her forehead, a sullen look on her narrow face.

I turned and stared at Jones. “That’s me.”

He grinned at me. “A hologram. I shot it when we came in.”

“Why? What’re you doing with it?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”

“Is that why you brought me here?”

“Of course not. It’s just a memento, something to remember you by.”

“I think it’s creepy.”

I walked over to it. It continued to stare coldly at me. I reached out to touch it, but my hand passed right through the image, like it was a ghost. Maybe it was. Maybe it was my ghost.

Jones opened a refrigerated cabinet and removed two glass bottles. “Something to drink?”

“What is it?” I asked. I couldn’t make out the labels on the bottles.

“Just water,” he said, twisting off their caps and pouring one with each hand into two tall glasses.

“It’s green,” I pointed out. “And fizzy.”

“Vitamin water,” he said. “A little flavor, a little color, and some carbon dioxide for the bubbles.” He set down the empty bottles and handed me a glass. “Cheers,” he said, and took a sip from his glass.

It was cold and didn’t have much flavor. I’d once had something called club soda, which was just carbonated water, and this wasn’t very different. I was thirsty, so I drank the glassful in several swallows, and burped.

Jones had gotten out his tab again, and I could see the first page of the IQ test on it — multiple choice, five choices per question, just touch the correct answer.

“I’m tired,” I said. “I don’t want to do that.” And I realized that I really was tired. I couldn’t smother a major yawn.

“I’m sorry,” Jones said. “It is pretty late. Sometimes I forget the time when I get into a project.” He gestured at the test. “This can wait for morning. Let me show you a room where you can sleep.”

Vague alarm spread through me, but I felt foggy with fatigue. I couldn’t stop yawning. I followed him through several doors to a small room with a single bed. He didn’t turn on any lights in the room, but I could see the bed in the light from the doorway, and I went straight for it and collapsed on it, facedown.

Sunlight on my face woke me up. I was lying on my back, under covers, in a girl’s bedroom. I knew immediately it had to be. Everything was in bright cheerful colors, and stuffed animals sat in a small easy chair across from the bed. My clothes were tossed over them. I did not remember taking them off.

The bedroom door was closed. I scrambled out of the bed and then stopped, transfixed by the sight of the sheet I’d been lying on. It was blood-smeared in one area, in the middle of the bed.

I looked and found a little dried blood on my upper inner left thigh.

I knew exactly what that meant.

I started for the door and then stopped and turned back to my clothes. I needed to get dressed first. I ached in a new place as I pulled my clothes on. They smelled, but they were all I had now.

I couldn’t help looking out the window. It faced east and the early sun. I was high up and I could look out great distances, but I couldn’t see much — just the vast city extending into the haze, the horizon indistinct. There were other tall towers nearby, and I could tell that they defined the area of the CeeZee.

The bedroom door wasn’t locked. I opened it and ventured out, not sure which way to go. But I found the next door I came to was to a bathroom, which I realized I needed. I went in and locked the door behind me.

It was spare but had all the necessities. I showered thoroughly, after which putting my clothes back on again felt disgusting. I examined myself while I sat on the toilet, but learned nothing new. Finally I wiped the steam off the mirror and stared at myself. Did I look different now? The hologram’s twin stared back at me. If I did, it wasn’t obvious.

When I opened the bathroom door I found myself face to face with Jones.

“Hi. Sleep well? Ready for breakfast?”

I just stared at him. He looked unchanged, still the Greek god, his hair a little tousled, morning-fresh, a dimpled smile for me.

“You drugged me,” I said. Start small and work up, I decided.

“Just a mildly opiated relaxant, same as I had,” he said.

“Why lie about it? We both know what you did.”

I waited for him to deny it, but he just smiled, as if dismissing my accusation, and said, “Come on. Let’s eat. Let’s get some food in you. The way you ate those burgers, I’ll bet you don’t eat well. You need to put a little flesh on your bones.” He turned and casually walked down the hall, almost sauntering, like he hadn’t a care in the world, leaving me to follow.

Put a little flesh on my bones, huh? He’d seen my scrawny body naked and didn’t care that I knew it. He exposed his back to me, I thought. He’s a fool.

Unwillingly, I followed him into his dining room. It was a relatively small room — but bigger than the bedroom I’d used — dominated by a large table in the middle. A chandelier hung over the table and cast a warm light. There were chairs along the walls and one already pulled up to the table.

He swung out another, placing it next to his, but I ignored the gesture and went to the other side of the table, opposite him, and pulled up a chair. We both sat, facing each other, Jones with a shrug and a disarmingly rueful smile.

“What would you like for breakfast?” he asked.

“Whatever you’re having,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slim black object, putting it on the table. While he held it in place with his left hand, he jabbed his middle right-hand finger at it repeatedly, then stopped. He looked up at me. “On the way,” he said genially. He put the black thing back in his pocket.

A discreet chime sounded. Jones rose and went to a cabinet on the wall behind him. When he opened it I could see two plates of food sitting there. A mouthwatering aroma wafted out with the steam. I realized how hungry I was.

Jones set one plate in front of me and one at his place and turned back to get two cups of what smelled like first-rate coffee. I stood up and reached across the table to swap our plates.

He saw me doing it and laughed heartily. I was starting to truly hate his laughter. “They’re exactly the same,” he said, still laughing at me. “I don’t care which one I have.” And to prove it, he picked up a fork and took his first bite of his eggs.

A large omelet, slices of toast, sausages, coffee — it was a decent breakfast and I ate all of it. I also drank all my coffee, after switching cups while Jones watched, grinning. I drank it black because Jones did.

When I put down my fork on my empty plate he asked me, “Feeling better now? How about a smile?”

“I’m no longer hungry,” I said, “but I don’t feel like smiling at you.”

“You did last night,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

“What are you talking about?”

“Last night. I made you happy then.”

I pushed to my feet, the chair catching on the rug and falling over. I didn’t care. “You miserable smug bastard!” I glared at him. “You raped me. You raped me!”

“I didn’t,” he said, shaking his head but still smiling. “You loved it. I had trouble keeping up with you. So demanding!”

I stared at him. I couldn’t believe his gall, his calm denial.

“What’s the matter? Didn’t I measure up to your usual lovers? You told me I was better than Jonny.” The words seemed to ooze out of him.

“You lie,” I told him. “You drugged me and you raped me. You are the first man to ever sex me.”

His mouth dropped open, the phony smile gone at last.

“Your first?” A sly look spread across his face. “You were a virgin? Delightful! Well, good thing that’s behind you now. You should thank me. You will thank me.”

I sighed. A total disconnect. I picked up the chair and returned it to its spot at the wall.

“I started to ask you last night — in the car,” I said. “What’s your first name?”

“My first name? Euclid. Euclid Jones.” He mock-bowed. “At your service. And yours is Nicole, isn’t it?”

He seemed happy with the change of subject. Like what he had done to me the night before had no consequences, no real meaning. And like my moving on to something totally different was the most natural thing in the world. I felt cold inside.

“No. Jonny told you, but you got it wrong. It’s Nikola. Do you — did you have a daughter?”

“Why do you ask?”

“That room, that was a girl’s room.”

He gave me a lazy smile. “It is a girl’s room.”

“Whose?”

“It could be yours. Think about it. You said you needed a place.” He gave me a considering look. “We’ll have to get rid of that body hair — your underarms, your legs...”

I didn’t want to go there. “How many of those books have you read?” I gestured through the doorway to his big front room.

“Most. Well, some. I inherited them with the apartment.” Another smile. “I’ll call you Nicky.”

“Show me. I love books.” Nobody calls me Nicky.

He led the way to the front room and the books. “What would you like to see?”

I looked around and noticed his tab where he’d left it the night before. The display screen was blank. No more IQ test. No longer needed, I guessed.

“What’s up there?” I gestured at the upper shelves, which held fat volumes that looked like sets of books, uniformly bound.

“Let’s see,” he said, sliding the ladder over to the area I’d pointed out, and mounting it with lithe grace, totally confident of himself.

I waited until he was reaching to his right to pull free a book, complaining that these books were wedged in and hard to pull out, leaning over the edge of the ladder. Then I yanked the ladder hard to his left.

As I’d hoped, he lost his balance, dropping the book to the floor, flailing with his arms and falling. What I hadn’t expected was that his left leg got entangled with the ladder, between the rungs, causing him to hit the floor headfirst with a solid thud.

I approached him with my knife out. His leg was still hooked in the ladder, his head and shoulders on the floor. His head seemed to be at an awkward angle.

His eyes followed me, but the rest of him didn’t move.

I nudged his body with my foot. No resistance, limp.

“I think you broke your neck. What do you think?”

He blinked at me, rapidly. Then a tear formed at the corner of his left eye. His lips seemed to quiver, but no words came out. He was breathing shallowly.

“I can’t leave you like this,” I told him.

He blinked slowly.

I gestured with my knife. “I’m gonna have to kill you,” I said. “That was my intention anyway.”

His lips opened, formed an O.

“Why? You’re wondering why I want to kill you?” I laughed, a short humorless bark. The first and last time he would hear me laugh.

“I want to kill you because you’re such a clueless arrogant fool.”

He blinked several times.

“I want to kill you because you’re the enemy — an enabler of the fire troopers, a user of girls.”

I wanted him to argue with me, to defend himself, to justify himself, but he said nothing. Not even his lips moved now. But he was looking directly at me, giving me his full attention.

“But most of all I want to kill you because you stole from me the only thing I had left that I valued. You raped me. And you didn’t even care.” I wanted to work myself up into a rage, but instead I felt a cold knot forming within me.

He closed his eyes — in resignation? In defeat?

“Open your eyes, damn you!”

His lips compressed and his eyes stayed shut. Denying me to the end.

I slit his throat and watched his blood and his last breaths gurgle out and then stop.

It was strangely unsatisfying. I knew I had done what I had to do, but I didn’t feel triumphant. I felt defeated.

I sat down in one of the big chairs and cried. That didn’t make me feel much better, but gave me the necessary resolve to finish what I’d started.

I went through his pockets until I found his remote, that black object. It felt oddly comfortable in my hand, like it had been molded to fit it, and I guess it had.

I looked over at the alcove. My hologram was still there, still watching me.

“One of us is damned,” I said. I looked at Jones’s remote. There were a variety of buttons of different sizes, shapes, and colors. Some had letters or numbers. Some had pictograms. One showed a dotted stick figure. I touched it. The hologram disappeared. Satisfied, I stowed the remote in my pants.

Then I started pulling the books off the shelves, dumping them in a growing pile on the floor, fallen open, any which way. This felt sacrilegious to me until I realized that none of these books called out to be read. They were dusty and old, with fine print and dull titles. None seemed to be fiction. I doubted Jones had looked at even one. The book he’d pulled out was titled Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers. Another was about “stray shopping carts,” whatever they might be. I grabbed them with a growing frenzy. They made a huge pile on the floor before I’d pulled half of them off the shelves.

I stopped then, my heart pounding. I was feeling a touch of hysteria. I needed to calm myself. I had to act deliberately, think things through — although I’d made my plans hours earlier and I knew what I had to do.

All those books! My breath caught in my throat as I considered my plan for them. The air was full of dust now. I’d never thought of myself as a book burner.

I went to the front door. When I was only two steps away, it silently unlatched and stood ajar a few inches. Okay. I’d needed to know that, be sure of that. I couldn’t allow myself to be trapped in Jones’s apartment. As I’d hoped, his remote worked automatically for doors, and, I assumed, the elevator.

I went back to the pile of books. Some of them had fallen on and around Jones. That gave me an idea, and I stacked more of them on him. “Because you really loved books,” I muttered at him. Was there anything he hadn’t lied about?

I used my lighter to start the fire, near the base of the books. It would be his funeral pyre, I figured.

I waited until the fire was well established and it was getting smoky, making me cough and my eyes tear up. I wanted to stay longer and see the fire grow, but I knew I shouldn’t.

A drop of water hit me on my head. Startled, I looked up. In the center of the high ceiling was some kind of a knob. Water was dripping from it. I suddenly realized what it was — a sprinkler, activated by the fire. But water wasn’t spraying out. It was dribbling. More drops fell on me and I caught one in my hand. It was dark-colored, and when I let it run off my hand it left behind tiny flakes of rust. The sprinkler head must have been clogged up. It served Jones right, I thought, for living in such an old building.

I couldn’t wait any longer. I went out into the hallway and pulled the door shut. I could still smell the smoke when I got to the elevators, but then the elevator door opened and I escaped that floor.

The remote got me back to the lobby and out the doors without incident. I saw two women in the lobby, coming in. One of them gave me an odd look, but they continued past me. I looked like some street kid, but I was leaving. I was no threat.

Out on the street, I crossed the avenue and looked back and up. I was facing west and the late-morning sun gleamed brightly in reflections from the building’s glass outer walls, which seemed to ripple. The building was over a hundred floors tall. I had no idea where to look, but just then I heard a faint explosion and then the much closer sounds of glass hitting the pavement and high up I saw a thin plume of black smoke which got bigger as I watched. I didn’t watch long.

I still had unfinished business.

Big Lou was lounging in Jonny’s place when he let me in. She took one look at me and got up and left.

“Hey, girl,” Jonny said when I came in. “How’d it go? Ya do good?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“That Doc is somethin’ else, ain’t he?”

“He is now,” I said.

“I knew’choo comin’ back to me,” Jonny said, purring. “That Doc, he showed ya the error of ya ways, now he broke ya in, made’choo a woman.”

“That what you wanted, Jonny? For him to — how’d you put it? — break me in?”

He grinned, full of himself. “I knew, once ya broke yer cherry, ya’d get over being like that. I got big plans for ya. This yer new home, li’l Shiv.”

“I’d like that,” I said, cuddling up to him. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the remote. “Of course, I could live uptown.”

Jonny’s eyes narrowed. “Wassat? Where ya get it?”

“This?” I gave Jonny one of my rare smiles. “Oh, this is just a little thing I picked up. Jones called it his remote. You ever see one before?”

“A remote? Sure. But the Doc? Don’t he need it—?”

I watched the expressions chase themselves across his face as I said, “Not anymore, he doesn’t.”

His expression settled into anguish. “You didn’t—”

“What did you think I’d do? The bastard raped me. Drugged and raped me. No man does that.”

“You did him?”

“And set his place on fire. Poetic justice. Burned him out.”

“Gawd,” Jonny said. “I never thought—”

I interrupted him. I slid the blade of my knife — which I’d taken out while distracting him with the remote — into his side, just under his rib cage. He didn’t have his protective vest on, relaxed in his own place. The knife is very sharp and I don’t think he even felt it at first. Then I twisted it viciously, rotating it and scrambling his insides.

Jonny gave me a look of disbelief and great disappointment, opened his mouth and coughed out blood. He tried to pull away from me, but he didn’t hit me or try to attack me.

I told him I was sorry, and I really was. We’d shared a lot together, grown up together. “I knew you got money from Jones for me, for connecting us up. But you shouldn’t have sold me out, Jonny. You knew what he was going to do. You wanted him to. You betrayed me.”

I’m not sure he heard that last. His eyes got a glassy look and he folded over on himself, clutching his gut, doubled up.

He didn’t make much of a mess. I got it cleaned up. Then I thoroughly searched his place and found his money stash. I used very little of it to pay two juiceheads to take his body out and dump it in an alleyway. I knew it would be found first by the locals, and what it would tell them.

I’ve taken over his place. I live there now. It’s better than my old place — there’s electricity for one thing — but he had no books. I’m going to have to start a new collection.

He did have a newscreen. I turned it on and watched a report on the fire and murder uptown. Tiny surveillance holos of me with Jones in the big lobby, and me by myself leaving. I looked like a boy, and that’s who they think it was. Apparently Jones had brought boys up to his apartment before. Both boys and girls. I was far from his first victim, but I didn’t find that news reassuring.

I’m running Jonny’s girls now. Big Lou has been a real help. It’s not the life I wanted for myself, but you take what you can get and I need to survive.

I guess I’m really grown up now. Next week I turn fifteen.