Unwind

it was good, but Connor's not much of an artist. It disappoints her, because she desperately wants to find something redeeming about him. If he were an artist they could relate on a creative level. She could talk to him about her passion for music, and he would get it. As it is, she doesn't think he even knows, or cares, that she plays piano.

'Who are you drawing?' she asks.

'Just a girl I knew back home,' he says.

Risa silently suffocates her jealousy in a quick emotional vacuum. 'Someone you cared about?'

'Sort of.'

Risa takes a better look at the sketch. 'Her eyes are too big for her face.'

'I guess that's because it's her eyes that I remember most.'

'And her forehead's too low. The way you've drawn it, she'd have no room for a brain.'

'Yeah, well, she wasn't all that bright.'

Risa laughs at that, and it makes Connor smile. When he smiles, it's hard to imagine he's the same guy who got into all those fights. She gauges whether or not he'd be open to hear what she has to tell him.

He looks away from her. 'Is there something you want, or are you just an art critic today?'

'I . . . was wondering why you're sitting by yourself.'

'Ah, so you're also my shrink.'

'We're supposed to be a couple. If we're going to keep up the image, you can't be entirely antisocial.'

Connor looks out over the groups of kids, busy in various morning activities.

Risa follows his gaze. There's a group of kids who hate the world, and spend all day spewing venom. There's a mouth-breathing kid who does nothing but read the same comic book over and over again. Mai is paired off with a glum spikehaired boy named Vincent, who's all leather and body piercings. He must be her soul mate, because they make out all day long, drawing a cluster of other kids who sit there and watch.

'I don't want to be social,' Connor says. 'I don't like the kids here.'

'Why?' asks Risa, 'They're too much like you?'

'They're losers.'

'Yeah, that's what I mean.'

He gives her a halfhearted dirty look, then looks down at his drawing, but she can tell he's not thinking about the girl—his head is somewhere else. 'If I'm off by myself, then I don't get into fights.' He puts down the nail, giving up on his etching. 'I don't know what gets into me. Maybe it's all the voices. Maybe it's all the bodies moving all around me. It makes me feel like I've got ants crawling inside my brain and I want to scream. I can stand it just so long, then I blow. It happened even at home, everyone was talking at once at the dinner table. One time, we had family over and the talk got me so crazy, I hurled a plate at the china hutch. Glass blew everywhere. Ruined the meal. My parents asked me what got into me, and I couldn't tell them.'

That Connor is willing to share this with her makes her feel good. It makes her feel closer to him. Maybe now that he has opened up, he'll stay open long enough to hear what she has to tell him.

'There's something I want to talk about.'

'Yeah?'

Risa sits beside him, keeping her voice low.

'I want you to watch the other kids. Where they go. Who they talk to.'

'All of them?'

'Yeah, but one at a time. After a while you'll start to notice things.'

'Like what?'

'Like the kids who eat first are the ones who spend the most time with Roland—but he never goes to the front of the line himself. Like the way his closest friends infiltrate the other cliques and get them arguing so they break apart. Like the way Roland is especially nice to the kids that everyone else feels sorry for—but only until nobody feels sorry for them anymore. Then he uses them.'

'Sounds like you're doing a class project on him.'

'I'm being serious. I've seen this before. He's power hungry, he's ruthless, and he's very, very smart.'

Connor laughs at that. 'Roland? He couldn't think himself out of a paper bag.'

'No, but he could think everyone else into one, and then crush it.' Clearly that gives Connor pause for thought. Good, thinks Risa. He needs to think. He needs to strategize.

'Why are you telling me this?'

'Because you're his biggest threat.'

'Me?'

'You're a fighter—everyone knows that. And they also know that you don't take crap from anyone. Have you heard kids mumbling about how someone oughta do something about Roland?'

'Yeah.'

'They only say that when you're close enough to hear. They're expecting you to do something about him—and Roland knows it.'

He tries to wave her off, but she gets in his face.

'Listen to me, because I know what I'm talking about. Back at StaHo there were always dangerous kids who bullied their way into power. They were able to do it because they knew exactly who to take down, and when. And the kid they took down the hardest was the one with the greatest potential for taking them down.'

She can see Connor curling his right hand into a fist. She knows she's not getting through to him. He's getting the wrong message.

'If he wants a fight, he'll get one.'

'No! You can't take the bait! That's what he wants! He'll do everything within his power to pull you into a fight. But you can't do it.'

Connor hardens his jaw. 'You think I can't take him in a fight?'

Risa grabs his wrist and holds it tight. 'A kid like Roland doesn't want to fight you. He wants to kill you.'

23. Connor

As much as Connor hates to admit it, Risa has been right about a lot of things. Her clarity of thought has saved them more than once, and now that he knows to look for it, her take on Roland's secret power structure is right on target.

Roland is a master of structuring life around him for his own benefit. It's not the overt bullying that does it, either. It's the subtle manipulation of the situation.

The bullying almost acts as cover for what's really going on. As long as people see him as a dumb, tough guy, they don't notice the more clever things he does . . . such as endearing himself to one of the Fatigues by making sure the man sees him giving his food to one of the younger kids. Like a master chess player, every move Roland makes has purpose, even if the purpose isn't immediately clear.

Risa wasn't just right about Roland, she was also right about Lev—or at least the way Connor feels about the kid. Connor hasn't been able to get Lev out of his mind. For the longest time he had convinced himself it was merely out of a desire for revenge, as if he couldn't wait to get even with him. But each time a new group of kids shows up and Lev isn't among them, a sense of despair worms its way through Connor's gut. It makes Connor angry that he feels this way, and he suspects this is part of the anger that fuels the fights he gets into.

The fact is, Lev hadn't just turned them in, he had turned himself in as well.

Which means that Lev is probably gone. Unwound into nothing—his bones, his flesh, his mind, shredded and recycled. This is what Connor finds so hard to accept. Connor had risked his life to save Lev, just as Connor had done for the baby on the doorstep. Well, the baby had been saved, but Lev had not, and although he knows he can't be held responsible for Lev's unwinding, he feels as if it is his fault. So he stands there