The Fight for Kidsboro (32 page)

“Yeah, I bet,” Scott said, with an unnatural chuckle.

As he read on, lips moving, I glanced at his desk and noticed a Bettertown brochure. I hadn't seen Scott pick one up when we were there, so I wondered if he went back for it. I lifted it, and Scott looked horrified.

“I, uh,” he stumbled, “I didn't … somebody gave that to me. I was going to throw it away.”

He saw my face and must have sensed a look of disapproval. I tried to hide it. “It's okay, Scott. Go ahead and be curious.
I
am. And don't worry about going over, spending time there, whatever. It's a fun place. I'm even thinking of taking a class at the school. I've always wanted to learn how to do magic tricks.” Actually, the thought
had
crossed my mind to learn magic, but I was hesitant to spend even one dime in Bettertown. Far be it from me to help their economy.

Scott's shoulders were still tense, as though he felt no relief that I wasn't mad at him. He stared at me like he expected me to do something, and then opened the newspaper back up.

I glanced through the brochure, and then I noticed something on the back page of the newspaper. I sat down on the opposite side of the desk and read it while Scott read a page in the middle.

It was a full-page advertisement, paid for by Max. It read:

Are you tired of being a lower-class citizen?
Living in a run-down clubhouse?
Having trouble making ends meet?
THEN BE A CITIZEN OF
***** BETTERTOWN *****
WHERE
EVERYONE IS RICH!!!
Come to an informational meeting at the meeting hall in Bettertown
5:30
P.M.
Tuesday night
See a multimedia presentation about
THE TOWN OF THE FUTURE
*****BETTERTOWN*****
PAID FOR BY KING MAX I OF BETTERTOWN

The first thing that struck me was the appeal to the lower class—the people who didn't have much money to spend. Kidsboro did sort of have a lower class, though there weren't too many people in it. These were the people who had trouble finding work for themselves. They didn't have their own businesses, or if they did, their businesses weren't very profitable. These people either had to work for someone else, or they had to get by on small incomes.

Kidsboro had had an economic boom the summer before, with new businesses springing up everywhere, but these businesses could employ only a few. Scott was one of the people who didn't have a real job. He ran a detective agency, but he had only investigated two cases since we'd started Kidsboro eleven months earlier. Other jobs had come and gone, but Scott usually had no money. He also made poor choices about spending what money he did have. I guess you could say he was part of the Kidsboro lower class.

But how would Max eliminate the lower class? What did he mean by saying that everyone would be rich? That was impossible. How in the world did he think he would get people to believe this?

Something told me that I needed to show up at this meeting.

Obviously, I didn't want anyone to see me at the meeting. Max would think I was spying and change his presentation. I wanted to hear it just as it was, with no editing. I looked at the advertisement again, and noticed that It was going to be a multimedia presentation. I had seen Max's computer presentations before, and the lights were always turned off. I figured I would wait until the lights were down, and then sneak in and watch from the back. I would sneak out before the lights went back up.

I went in just as someone turned the lights down, and I peered around the room. I couldn't make out many of the faces, but I could see silhouettes … lots of them. The place was packed! Max moved to his computer and began typing things in. His presentation began.

A thundering
boom!
shook the whole building, and everybody jumped in their seats. It was followed by embarrassed laughter. Fireworks filled the screen, and red, white, and blue letters swooped down from the upper right and, with majestic fanfare, spelled out “BETTERTOWN.” Max's voice echoed, saying, “Bettertown. The town of the future.”

Very
impressive.

After a lot more of the echoing stuff, a short video came on. On-screen, Edward, a boy from Odyssey Middle School, came out of his Bettertown creek-view house. Edward was a loner. He didn't have many friends at school. In fact, he sat alone at lunch every day. I always thought it was kind of sad, and that if I ever had the same lunch period he did, I would sit next to him.

But here he was in Max's video. I couldn't believe Max got him to do it. Edward didn't seem to be the dramatic type.

Then Valerie Swanson came on-screen. Valerie was Nelson's sister and a citizen of Kidsboro, though not a very loyal one. It didn't surprise me that she was doing a video for Max. Valerie will be a shoo-in for the football team's annual “Most Beautiful Girls” poll when she gets to high school. She'll probably take the top spot as a freshman and hold onto it until she graduates. She flipped her long, brown hair away from her face as she turned toward Edward. Max must have paid her an awful lot to get her to be in this video with him.

Edward awkwardly looked past the camera, as if a director was behind it urging him to say his line. He cleared his throat and began, “Hi, Honey.”

“Hi, Sweetie,” Valerie said, and they patted each other on the back.

This was beyond unrealistic. This was science fiction. Edward and Valerie?

A girl I didn't recognize came on-screen looking surprised. “Joe? Is that you?”

Edward looked surprised that someone called him “Joe.” His name was, in fact, Edward. Edward glanced toward the director again, and then said to the girl, “Yes. Is that you,Marcia?”

“Yes. I can't believe it. Are you and Grace together?”

Valerie smiled and flipped her hair back again. “That's right, Marcia. Joe and I are a couple.” That line alone had probably cost Max 30 bucks.

“Wow, Joe,” Marcia said. “You used to be such a geek. What happened?”

“I'll tell you what happened, Tara … I mean, Marcia,” Edward said. “I became a citizen of Bettertown.”

“Really?” Marcia said. “So did I.” Then she went on about how she had been broke, hungry, and lying in the gutter when Max Darby came along and told her about Bettertown. Now she had a house with a balcony, she was continuing her education at the Bettertown Community School (to be a juggler, maybe?), and she felt like she had a future.

Then Edward smiled at Valerie and said, “I used to be the laughingstock of my school. But now, I'm the envy. In fact, I've got the entire eighth-grade class coming over for a barbecue tomorrow. I'm so thankful for Bettertown.”

Then they both looked into the camera, and, with big cheesy smiles, they said in unison, “Thanks, King Max.”

Finally, the real message of the presentation came on: the explanation of how Bettertown would work, how there were no social classes, and how everyone was equal.

Max's voice narrated, accompanied by words flying onto the screen in different colors and fonts.

The gist of It was this: Everyone would get a
free
house. The house would be owned by the city, but no one would pay rent. Everyone would work in Bettertown—whether at the bakery, the recreation center, the school, or wherever—for the exact same wage. No one received more for doing a harder or more complicated job. This way, there would be no class system, no low-income people, and everyone would be a team.

At the end of the presentation, a magnificent shot of the creek filled the background, and the flag of Bettertown—five red stick figures holding hands as a show of unity, with a green star above them (probably representing Max, though he didn't say it)—dissolved up into the foreground. The music stopped.

I quickly stood up and reached for the door. Nobody had seen me. But before I could get out, the lights came back on, and I saw a few of the people inside. And just before I closed the door, I saw something I couldn't believe. Sitting in the front of the meeting room, with a pen and paper … was Scott.

4

BETRAYAL

I
WANTED TO GIVE
Scott the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was there for the same reason I was there—to find out what Max was up to. Maybe he was just curious. But he had seemed awfully guilty when I'd found that brochure in his clubhouse. And why would he have a pen and paper with him, apparently taking notes?

I met Nelson at Whit's End, and I told him about the meeting. He called Eugene Meltsner over. Eugene was a college student and Odyssey's resident genius. Nelson and I told him about Bettertown's economic system.

“That's communism,” Eugene said, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “Or at least a rudimentary version of it. It is based on the notion that there's no such thing as personal property. Everything is owned by the government, and everyone is paid exactly what they need, no more, no less. It's Marxism.”

I had heard of communism before, but all that I remembered was that it was a bad thing, as if people who were communists were evil.

“There's nothing wrong with communism in theory,” Eugene said. “Its goal is to create a society in which the working class operates the government. But it also limits freedom. Citizens cannot own anything or start their own businesses. It opens itself up to corruption because the government officials control everything, and they can become power-hungry and start ruling for their
own
benefit, as opposed to the people's.”

Nelson and I both raised our eyebrows. Max was the government, and if there was ever a leader who was capable of corruption, It was him. Bettertown and its people were doomed.

“Scott was at the meeting,” I told them.

“Why? To spy?” Nelson asked.

“I don't know. I didn't know he was going to be there. But he took notes, like he was interested in it.”

“In becoming a citizen?”

“I don't know.”

“You gotta talk to him.”

A special edition of the
Chronicle
reported that 17 people had applied for citizenship in Bettertown. I was surprised at the high number, so I went to Jill to find out who they were. She said that Max wouldn't give her specific names. I wondered how many of the 17 were Kidsborians who were defecting.

The traffic in Kidsborow as high, but It was mainly because tourists were heading through to get to Bettertown. I stopped at Sid's Bakery, and he was visibly miffed by the potential customers who passed by his store without even a whiff. Signs in front of his bakery advertised muffins. Prices had been slashed twice, from five tokens to four tokens to two tokens. Sid had a marker at the ready when I came up; apparently ready to make the muffins two for a token.

“Did you taste those donuts over there?” he asked.

“No.”

“They're dry and way too sweet. Whoever bakes those things needs to take it easy on the sugar.”

“Your customers will figure it out at some point, Sid.”

“I'm practically giving these muffins away. I'm making no profit. I sent a spy over there an hour ago, and he hasn't come back yet. He's probably sampling their cream puffs—which, by the way, are much too flaky.”