Читать книгу Thrive - Mary Borsellino - Страница 12

People in her class at school say that Sam, the boy who works at the souvlaki shop near the train station, is a grey market dealer. He can get just about anything: drugs, passwords, swipecards, signal-blocking fabric. So long as you've got enough money to pay him, he can set you up.

Olivia thinks she should feel afraid, or at least nervous, at the prospect of doing something so blatantly illegal. But she isn't. She doesn't feel much of anything. She hasn't since she was rescued.

The only times she's felt real since that night have been when she's lost in words, and none of the books she can get on her reader make her feel real enough. They're too nice, too safe. They don't have any challenge in them.

Olivia wants a book that makes her feel the way that Hannah's smirks did, dangerous and dared and ready for the adventure coming. A promise and a threat all at once.

Before the kidnapping, it was no big deal to tell her parents that she was going out after school and then get the train home, instead of getting picked up by a driver as she always is these days. Now her parents are super-paranoid about everything. It isn't like it's one of the scary train lines where bad stuff happens, or she's planning to be out late.

The best plan she can think of to stop them from worrying is to make up a half-truth. She tells them that she won't need the driver that afternoon; the school provides transport for kids in after-school clubs to get home from campus. This is all true, and if she doesn't actually tell them that she isn't in a club and has no plans to join one, well, it's not her fault that they interpreted her general statement of fact to be specifics about her afternoon, is it?

Olivia doesn't feel guilty for the lie. She doesn't think she'd feel guilty for it even if she were feeling things properly.

To give the lie a faint patina of truth, she hangs around the school for a while after classes end before heading towards the café where this Sam guy works.

The neighbourhoods around her school and her home are all nice ones, of course. They're clean and expensive and almost completely rebuilt. Her house is in an estate, where there isn't much garden between the houses but all of the houses are big and tall. Her school's in a more urban area, the grounds a blot of green among the endless stretch of high-rises.

To be honest, Olivia's looking forward to her train ride home almost as much as she's looking forward to buying a book. The route the tracks take, between the station near the souvlaki place and the station near her house, goes through one of the last pockets of ruin in the area. Block after block of flattened rubble, nothing but empty space and broken streetlights.

She heard her father talking about it once, about how the permits are in place and that building will start soon. She wants to see the empty space at least once before it's gone.

But that'll come later. First, she steps into the little café, and looks for the person who can give her words.

Sam is small and slightly-built, not as tall as her (though that's not uncommon; she's the tallest kid in her class at school and Sam doesn't seem to be any older than her and her schoolmates). His features remind her of the marble statues that decorate the outskirts of her parents' ballroom. Not only because his face is even-set and beautiful, but because there is something remote and still about him. She wonders if the lushness of his lip would yield to the touch of her fingertips, or if his olive skin would be smooth and implacable as stone.

A leather band is on his right wrist, black and unadorned, the kind that people wear when they want to hide ports.

'Can you get books?' she asks as soon as they're done exchanging names.

'Of course,' he answers straight away, his tone flat and matter-of-fact. If someone at school talked to her like that, she'd think they were being kind of rude and sort of an asshole, but she can see that Sam's twisting his hand and wrist at his side as he's talking to her. Olivia's pretty sure that when people fidget like that it means that they're nervous, so she isn't annoyed at him.

'Sorry, I phrased that stupidly,' she concedes. 'Can I buy a book, please?'

He nods and disappears into the kitchen area out the back of the café.

At a loss — is she meant to wait for him; should she follow — Olivia sits on the edge of a booth seat and looks around. Everything is brightly coloured and cheerful-looking, but worn down, like it's been a long time since anything was replaced or refreshed. She wonders how easy or difficult it is, working here instead of going to school.

One of the girls from her school, from an older grade than Olivia's, steps into the café and joins some out-of-uniform kids in the next booth over from where Olivia sits.

'The station's all closed down,' the girl tells her friends. 'Some loser jumped in front of the train and made a huge gory mess. It's gonna be hours before stuff's cleaned up and moving again.'

'Ugh, what a drag,' one of her friends answers.

Olivia feels faintly ill. It's not the death, exactly — her much more immediate brush with dead bodies is still a recent memory, after all. It's the idea of somebody being so close by to so many other people and nobody knowing that this person wanted to die, thought being dead was better than being alive. That the train driver would always remember that horrible, hideous second when they realised what was happening.

It makes her want to cry. It's the first real feeing she's had in months, and it's a lousy one.

Sam comes back into view, approaching her and handing her a small paper bag. She shoves it into her schoolbag and gets out her wallet, handing him the money.

'Thanks,' she says.

'Your hands are shaking, and you're pale,' he notes.

'Yeah, uh, turns out that the train station's shut down,' she tells him. 'I'm gonna have to walk home. My parents are going to murder me if they find out.'

'My shift ends soon. If you wait, I can walk you home.'

Olivia wants to tell him that he doesn't have to, that it's fine, she'll be fine, but she's actually very grateful that he offered and so just nods. 'Okay. Thanks.'

Sam nods and goes behind the counter to serve the customers.

The package in her schoolbag is more exciting than any birthday-morning gift has ever been. The anticipation of opening it makes her giddy. Olivia can't help but think wryly that this is probably how girls her age are supposed to feel about crushes, rather than about secret books.

'All right, we can go now,' Sam says, walking to the door without waiting for her to gather her things and follow.

The air's sharp outside, one of the bad briny winds that promises water contamination with the next rain. Olivia wonders if the souvlaki café puts its prices up when that happens. The canteen at her school puts a 20% levy on everything to make up for the higher cost of the water, but Olivia doesn't know if people who buy food from the café can pay that much extra, even for a week or two.

Maybe she could offer to calculate some different price plans for them, to find a balance between charging enough without charging too much. Sam might think that's weird for her to suggest, though.

'I give this list to my new customers,' Sam tells her, handing over a folded slip of paper as they walk side-by-side down the darkening footpath. 'It's fifty books you won't have heard of, but that are sanctioned for download. In case you need something new to read before you make it back to me.'

'That's not good business practice on your part, is it?' Olivia asks, tucking the list into the pocket of her coat. 'Giving people things to read that they don't pay you for?'

Sam shrugs. 'I've never aspired to be an economist.'

'I have,' admits Olivia. 'I had a whole reader full of economy books. They were the only kind I liked to read, until…' She trails off. Until she'd lost the reader in a little cement room. Until a girl in a red rabbit mask had dumped a stack of paperbacks on the floor next to her and demanded she choose one.

'Thank you,' she says, instead of finishing her sentence. 'I'll check it out.'

'You like it out here,' Sam remarks, looking at her and then around them. 'Even though it's ruins. Your posture is more confident. You look happier. You're not a town mouse. You like it better in the open.'

Olivia remembers that story from when she was young. The town mouse and the country mouse are friends, but each hates everything about where the other lives. They try to compromise for the sake of affection, but neither is really happy visiting the other. She always thought it was a sad story.

'What about you?' she asks Sam. 'Are you a town mouse or a country mouse?'

He scuffs at the ground with his foot. 'Neither, really. I'm a robot mouse.'