The Perfect World (The Perfect World Series Book 1) (15 page)

Cyrus looked out at it, and his tears dried up. He wiped at his face again and sighed as he continued to look at the wall before him. Ms. Linda had been taken away, supposedly to that Quarantine Dome. She had always helped him, indulged him in his questions. Though she might have been strict, and she wasn’t always friendly, he knew that she was good. He knew that there was nothing wrong with her and maybe, just maybe, whatever was behind that wall knew it too.

Maybe she would find peace there as Cyrus never had. Maybe she would be happier than she ever would have been here with him. The thought made him sad, but it also gave him strength. He would remember her, and he would wish for her happiness behind that wall. As long as she was happy, he was okay.

Maybe, one day, I can see it for myself.

He blinked his eyes. The thought surprised him for a moment, but then it felt so right to him that he thought about it again and again.

Maybe, one day, I’ll see her again, and I can go there too. Maybe it will be better that way.

The lock clicked on his door, bringing him back to reality. He looked at the door, then glanced back at the glowing wall. Part of him didn’t want to leave its comfort, but part of him also knew it would be there when he got back. Getting up, he slowly opened the door and shut it behind him.

He walked down the long hallway, slowly, still thinking about Ms. Linda’s fate. His mind wandered to Scott, and he had the sudden urge to see him. Cyrus knew if anyone were going to understand how he felt, it would be Scott. He hurried his steps and entered the bathroom.

At first, he was disappointed that he didn’t see Scott by his usual place by the sink, but it lifted when Scott emerged from one of the stalls. He had a wad of tissue paper in his hand and his small, His eyes were puffy and pink. Cyrus felt the sadness well up inside him again at the sight. He knew what Scott was feeling, but he didn’t know what to say or do to make it better.

“She’s gone,” Scott whispered shakily. He was rubbing his eyes with the tissues as Cyrus had rubbed his eyes back in the room. “I can’t believe it. I don’t want to.”

“I know …” Cyrus whispered back, and without knowing why he did so, he approached Scott. He wrapped his arms around his friend, just like Ms. Linda used to when she lifted him from bed when he was little. Scott seemed unsure of the move at first, but eventually he wrapped his arms around Cyrus and leaned his head against his shoulder. His last tears were shed on Cyrus’s shoulder before he closed his eyes and breathed deeply to calm himself.

When Scott had finally stopped shaking and had regained control of himself, he let go of Cyrus and took a step back. He rubbed his face again to get some of the wetness off of it.

“Thanks …” Scott whispered in a small voice.

“You’re welcome,” Cyrus spoke just as quietly. He was having a hard time keeping control of himself as it was. He understood how Scott was feeling and was happy if he could make it a little better.

“I think she knew …” his friend said in a soft, firm voice.

Cyrus looked up in surprise at this. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that she was involved with what happened yesterday, somehow,” Scott replied slowly as if unsure of how to phrase what he wanted to say. “The day before she was acting kind of funny. It seemed like she was really nervous about something. I asked her what was wrong, and she didn’t speak for a while. Then, before she left, she said, ‘Whatever happens, make sure you don’t lose that dictionary. Promise me that you’ll be careful with it.’ I told her I would and then she left.”

“And now she’s gone …” Cyrus trailed off, staring at the ground. “Hey, Scott?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think it was because I asked her so many questions? Is that why she’s gone?”

“No.” Scott’s voice was adamant. “I asked her questions too. We’ve been doing that for years. If it were what made her sick, she would have gotten sick a long time ago.”

Cyrus looked up at the words. He wanted to believe them so badly, but he still had his doubts. “But—”

“No ‘buts,’” Scott said, giving him a soft punch on the shoulder. “I think Ms. Linda had something to do with that video that happened yesterday. That’s why she’s not here now, but …” Scott’s voice shook a little, and he swallowed again before saying, “But she left us the dictionary. We still have a way to get some answers.”

“She wanted us to get those answers, didn’t she?” Cyrus reflected to himself. “Even if it made her sick.”

“I think she did. That’s why we have to keep using that dictionary,” Scott said firmly. “She may not be here to answer our questions anymore, but she would still want us to try and learn for ourselves.”

“You’re right.” Cyrus felt himself perk up a bit. “We have to keep using it for her sake. She’d get so mad if we didn’t.”

“Right?” Scott said with a small grin. “So, I’ll finish up comparing the definitions of the words I got this week. Then, I’ll give it to you, okay?”

“Okay,” Cyrus confirmed with a nod, and Scott walked past him to exit the bathroom.

“Bye Cyrus. I’ll see you tomorrow for school.” Scott made a face as he said those last words. Cyrus reciprocated it, making Scott grin again before he left.

When Cyrus returned to his room, he laid down on his bed. His green eyes studied the dull white ceiling as he had so many other times before. His thoughts inevitably wandered to Ms. Linda, and he pictured her floating above him on the ceiling.

Cyrus maintained the image as long as he possibly could. He tried to memorize every detail of her, never wanting to forget her. The person who had been with him for as long as he had remembered. The person who’d put up with him for so long and had been patient with him even when he hadn’t deserved it.

A smile touched his lips as he remembered an old memory of him and his caretaker. He had been young at the time, maybe four or five, but he remembered this particular instance very well. He had wanted Ms. Linda to stay longer, and the morning’s breakfast had been the nasty, lumpy oatmeal that he loathed so much. Angry at having to eat the stuff again, he took hunks of it and threw them across the room.

The food had splattered on the walls, sink, floor and even a little gob had managed to stay on the ceiling. He had sat down in a lump on his bed, his arms crossed over his chest in a fierce pout. When Ms. Linda finally came in, his bad mood evaporated a little as he realized that his caretaker was probably going to be very angry at him for the mess.

She had stopped a little past the doorway and her mouth fell slightly ajar at the mess that awaited her. Cyrus had laughed a little at her funny expression, which earned him a stern, no-nonsense glare from the severe woman. The laughter immediately ended as Ms. Linda examined the room again, then closed her eyes and placed a hand to her forehead. She rubbed it a little as she let the bag she had been carrying drop to the floor.

“What are you doing, Ms. Linda?” Cyrus had asked as the silence became uncomfortable to him.

“I’m going to my happy place, Cyrus,” she had told him in a flat, neutral tone as she started rubbing her temples.

“But, Ms. Linda,” he had protested in dismay, “I’m right here.”

Then, something happened that he had never expected. The flat line of the small woman’s mouth curved upward and she let out a sound that he had never heard from her before. He had been stunned to realize that she was laughing.

It took her a moment to stop herself, but when she finally looked at him again, she was smiling. In that moment, she looked so different to him. Her face was warm, her eyes were glowing, and her mouth was turned upward. All of that warmth had been directed at him, for just that short instance before it faded away again. It departed suddenly as if Ms. Linda had remembered something important. She went about cleaning up the mess with her typical efficiency, yet every so often Cyrus thought he saw a small glimmer of that warmth in her eyes.

Even when she was leaving that day, he thought he still saw that warmth tucked away within her. He’d never forgotten that moment where he not only made her smile, but also laugh.

He closed his eyes, feeling warm tears in his green eyes again. They slid down on his cheeks, onto his pillow. Then he remembered the book she had left him and Scott. He remembered the Quarantine Dome, where she probably was now. In his mind, he hoped that Ms. Linda was someplace where she could be happy, even without him there.

The thought comforted him a little as he finally drifted into sleep’s blissful oblivion.

On the surface, not much changed in Cyrus’s schedule after Ms. Linda’s disappearance. Ms. Mary performed all the tasks that Ms. Linda had, only with an air of impenetrable coldness. Unlike Ms. Linda, who was always stern, but Cyrus always felt there was a bit of warmth underneath the surface, Ms. Mary was always distant with him and sometimes hostile. He tried to keep his mouth shut around her as much as possible to avoid unnecessary trouble.

In fact, for the next year or so, both Cyrus and Scott did their best to keep a low profile. They had tried to control their outbursts as best as they could after what they had seen in those old videos.  It seemed to Cyrus his class had come to some unspoken agreement about this as there was very little of note going on in the classroom behavior wise.

There was so little going on at all, behavior or school-wise, that Cyrus found himself moving back and forth in almost a perpetual daze. His classes went over the same material for weeks at a time, with only the occasional interesting tidbit being shared to alleviate the boredom. Cyrus’s only relief from the monotony came from his conversations with Scott, the use of the dictionary, and the occasional exchange of facial expressions from Melody.

The only class that ever remotely interested him in his time at school was social studies class. It was the only class where they were given the slightest bit of history about the world they now lived in. Granted, since getting the dictionary from Ms. Linda, Cyrus always took everything he was told by his teachers with a grain of salt.

As the time finally came for social studies class, Cyrus sat up in his chair a bit. He had gotten taller again over the past year and found sitting in the small chairs provided by the school to be increasingly uncomfortable. He grimaced at the ache in his back as Mr. Johnson waddled into the classroom.

Mr. Johnson was a hunched, balding brown-haired man whose brown eyes were always half closed. His belly stuck out a bit, and the skin around his neck sagged, giving him the appearance of a fat frog. His voice was flat and dull, never rising and never falling. It was always the same steady droll, no matter what they were talking about.

Cyrus watched as Mr. Johnson slowly sat down in his chair and suppressed a sigh when he started talking about how positive emotions were essential to a healthy society. This man had given this speech to them so many times that Cyrus could have repeated the entire thing to him word for word on his own. He noticed that Scott was rolling his pen back and forth across his desk with an annoyed expression while the speech went on. Looking across the room, he saw that Melody seemed to be dying of boredom.

When it was finally over, Mr. Johnson opened his book and started speaking in his slow, familiar droll. “Today, we will be discussing two unjust practices from Uncivilized Times. Those practices are property ownership and jobs.”

As Mr. Johnson flipped to another page in his book, both Cyrus and Scott sat up in their chairs, knowing it might be a chance to learn some new words to look up in the dictionary.

“Property ownership was a flawed concept, as were many concepts in Uncivilized Times,” Mr. Johnson drawled on, while Cyrus scribbled down the words ‘property’ and ‘ownership.’ “During Uncivilized Times, every person was allowed to own pieces of land that they could put under their names. The major problem with this idea was that only some people could own property.             

“Property was very expensive, and only people who had good jobs were allowed to own property. This happened because back in Uncivilized Times people needed a currency known as money to trade for the things they wanted. They obtained money through getting jobs, only there were two major problems with that system. The first was that sometimes there weren’t enough jobs for every person in the society. The second was that jobs paid different amounts for the work done, so not everyone had the same amount of money. Thus, those with little money could not get any property, causing a vast inequality between people.

“In today’s Enlightened Society, there are still jobs, but every person is guaranteed to have a job that will give them no more and no less than any other person. In addition, every person is given the same amount of property as everybody else so there will be no inequality. The Experts believed that this was the best way to create positive emotions among the people and put an end to the strife that had plagued Uncivilized Times.”

Cyrus frowned at the words as he sat in his uncomfortable chair. His fingers twitched for a minute, several questions on his mind. Finally, he lifted his arm into the air, hoping to get Mr. Johnson’s attention. When he continued to drone off without noticing Cyrus’s raised hand, Cyrus decided to do something he rarely did: speak up.

“Mr. Johnson!” Cyrus finally cut in, waving both of his arms in the air. Their droning teacher visibly started and looked at him with his half-lidded eyes. There was an emptiness there that unnerved Cyrus, but he was glad that he had finally gotten the old man’s attention. He was half expecting to get the usual reprimand for his interruption, but instead his teacher continued on as if nothing unusual had happened.

“Yes, Mr. Wright?” their social studies teacher asked with no enthusiasm.

“Sorry to interrupt you, sir, but I wanted to know more about these jobs. How do these jobs give us all the same amount of property? Do we all do the same amount of work for whatever job we have?” Cyrus spoke as fast as he could, past experience telling him that he should try to get all of his questions out before he could be told to stop.

“Pertinent questions,” Mr. Johnson said after a moment of silence. Cyrus couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw something flash in the old man’s eyes. A small spark lit in the pools of dark apathy. “However, they can only be questions if everyone asks them. Does every person in this class want to know the answer to these questions?”

The little flash of excitement Cyrus felt at not being silenced from the start died as soon as the words left Mr. Johnson’s lips. A third of the class had fallen asleep during the lecture and were still asleep as Mr. Johnson addressed them. Scott, of course, raised his hand, Melody also did so on the other side of the room, and he saw that the blond-haired boy named Will had as well. Then the husky boy sitting beside Will raised his hand a little and bumped the guy next to him to get his hand up. Melody nudged the people around her who were awake, and they also raised their hands. Unfortunately, the people who were asleep couldn’t be woken up in time to be part of the vote. Cyrus crossed his arms over his chest in annoyance, cursing the people who had fallen asleep.

“It seems there were no questions,” Mr. Johnson responded without looking at Cyrus. Whatever spark he had seen in the old teacher’s eyes had vanished as he gazed blankly back down at his book.

The young man fumed silently in his chair, digging his nails into his arms at being foiled again. His eyes wandered across the room, and he noticed that Melody was staring at him. She gave him a sympathetic look and a shrug of her shoulders as if to say it couldn’t be helped. Then she tilted her head to the side towards some of the other students, whose eyes were on him. As he looked at them, Will and a few others gave him nods of acknowledgment. It was such a small thing, yet it meant a lot to Cyrus to have his effort noticed in even a tiny way. 

Smiling, Cyrus turned to Scott to point out this hopeful sign of support and stopped short. Scott was ripping out pages of his notebook, rolling them into balls and stabbing them with his pen. When the ball became too disfigured to continue, he made another one to take its place. Tentatively, Cyrus reached a hand out to tap Scott on the shoulder.

Scott turned to him, and the dark look on his face almost made him recoil. He knew that Scott hated being denied information worse than he did, but he had never reacted this badly before. Worried for the other boy, Cyrus mouthed, “Stop,” to him and gestured towards the stabbed rolls of paper. When that didn’t seem to appease Scott, he mouthed, “It’s fine.”

Scott gave a little huff and turned away, but he did stop rolling up the paper. Cyrus glanced at Scott from time to time as the class went on. He noticed that the other boy seemed less angry than before, but the fire in his dark eyes was not completely gone.

The rest of social studies class passed without incident, and the science class that followed was as boring as usual. Scott had laid his head down on his desk early on and Cyrus, whose eyes were closing on their own, was debating whether or not to do the same. The decision was made for him as class ended a few minutes later, and they were all lined up to go to their PE class. Yawning, Cyrus followed Mr. Alvy and his peers outside to the grassy, fenced field.

Mr. Warden took the class inside the field once the gate was locked and informed them they would be playing soccer today. Cyrus fought to suppress a groan and failed. Soccer had to be his least favorite “game” that they played. For starters, Cyrus had zero coordination between his foot and the soccer ball, often kicking it out of bounds instead of down the field. He would like the game more, however if it wasn’t for the way the game itself was played.

The point of the game was to kick the ball into the other team’s goal to score points. This was made remarkably easy by the fact that the opposing team couldn’t move. They could only kick the ball if it came within their vicinity, but even then they couldn’t move after the ball once they kicked it. Thus, it followed that the first team would score a point, then the second team would score a point while the first team stood still. This continued until both teams had the same number of points and the game was finished.

Which is why I spend the entire game looking at clouds and trying to figure out what shape they are, he thought as he walked to his defensive position. It’s far more entertaining than this “game” ever could be.

When everyone was divided into teams and given their position, Mr. Warden blew the whistle, and the soccer game began. Cyrus watched the other team briefly as they tried to move the ball down the field. They seemed to have one girl on their team who could move the ball down the field with ease while everyone else struggled with kicking the ball straight. He watched for as long as it took him to know that the ball wasn’t coming anywhere towards him and then he went back to staring at the clouds.

The other team easily scored a point, and Cyrus’s team received the ball. Yawning noisily, he made his way over to where his team had huddled. His curiosity was sparked when he noticed how animated Scott looked as he talked to the other members of their team. He was speaking quickly to both Melody and Will, the two people on their team that showed the most prowess moving the soccer ball down the field.

When Cyrus reached the group, Scott turned to him with a grin on his face. “Okay, Cyrus, you and I are going to stay back and guard our goal. This guy’s going to be our goalie.” He pointed to a boy who had darker skin and was a little heavier than their other teammates.  “The others are going to charge forward and pass the ball between themselves. The other team has wide gaps between them, so they’re going to be easy to avoid. Got it?”

“Uh, sure,” Cyrus replied, never having seen his friend so fired up during PE class. Normally, he loathed the entire hour.

When they were ready, their teacher blew the whistle and threw the ball on their side of the field. Will took the ball first and raced down the field as fast as he could. He kicked it to the right side towards Melody, who had started running as soon as the whistle had blown. The pair moved the ball down the field with an ease that Cyrus envied. Then Will drove it quickly up to the goal and kicked it as hard as he could. It whipped past their stunned goalie for one point.

Scott clapped his hands at the successful ploy, and even Cyrus cracked a small smile. At least, that had been a little more entertaining than normal. Soon, the other team was given the ball and they made their slow descent towards the other side of the field.

Cyrus tapped his foot impatiently as he waited for the ball to come closer. To his surprise, one of the boys accidentally kicked it in his vicinity. Not thinking about it too much, he kicked the ball forward and it landed right next to Melody. She gave him a big smile, one that made him extremely happy for no good reason, and she started running the ball forward to the other team’s goal. Surprised, the other team had no time to recover and soon Melody had scored another goal. Cyrus and her teammates gave some cheers as she ran back to their side.

The ball was given back to Cyrus’s side and they used the same ploy as they had before to score a goal. To their team’s benefit, the ball kept coming into their range as soon as it was the other team’s turn, and thus they were able to keep scoring every round. This allowed them to score two more points easily.

After these two points had been scored, something unexpected happened. Will and Melody were passing the ball back and forth as they had been when one of the girls on the opposing team moved from her place and took the ball from them. Everyone on Cyrus’s team looked stunned as she moved towards their goal. Then, grinning, Cyrus, Scott, Melody, Will and the rest of the class joined in the fray. The ball was kicked every which way as the two teams struggled to get it up and down the field. Even more surprising was the amount of entertainment that was garnered from this event. Cyrus stopped to catch his breath and saw that the entire class looked so happy, happier than Cyrus had ever seen any of them.

Maybe this soccer thing isn’t so bad after all,
he thought as their team scored their seventh point. He clapped for Melody as she came back to their side.