The Wire Hanger

Chapter Twelve

We crossed the main street, which supposedly once had been full of strip joints and cheap souvenir stands, but for the last fifty years or so had been made over and squeaky clean. A PharmaSaves was on three different street corners that I could see, its bright green logo and welcoming glass fronts anchoring the street. The street, like all the other streets we’d been on, was packed with cars. Noah steered me away from the main intersection with the ghost of a touch on my elbow; when I looked up at him, confused, he motioned with barely a nod to the ID monitor perched at the top of each streetlight.

            “An experiment,” he said quietly. “Instead of red light cameras.” We crossed, instead, at a smaller intersection, further north.

            I was feeling a blister grow on the back of my heel – my mother had been saying, before she disappeared, that I needed new school shoes – and asked, “So how far is your school?”

            He almost smiled, or at least, he thought about almost smiling. “Not long now,” he said, and then with a hard jerk on my elbow pulled me into a coffee joint.

            “Hungry?” I asked, nonplussed, but he wasn’t paying me any attention. Instead he was studying the sign advertising doughnuts, or at least appeared to be. His eyes kept darting to the windows flanking the front door, and when I turned to look I saw a Protector walking past – but something was wrong. Before I could explain the sudden pit of dread in my stomach the door pushed inwards, and two Protectors walked in. They didn’t look like the Protectors I was used to, the Protectors my father belonged to. Instead of blue striping their chests, they had dark silver, like the sky right before a storm, and there was something different about the set of their jaws. I was beginning to understand why other people were afraid of them.

            Noah didn’t say a word, just moved up in line and bought the two of us coffees. When he handed over the cash I could see that his hand was shaking, just the tiniest bit. It was hard to imagine him being scared of anything. He handed me a paper cup without speaking, and we turned to walk out the doors.

            Then one of the Protectors spoke. “Excuse me, young man.”

            Noah stopped so quickly I nearly walked on the back of his heels. “Yes, sir?”

            “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

            “On our way,” said Noah. “Free period.”

            The Protector paused for a bit, then nodded sternly. “Education is important, don’t forget that.”

            “Yes, sir,” said Noah, and we walked out the door at a deliberate pace.

I decided asking questions could probably wait. We plunged more quickly than I could have imagined back into a residential neighborhood. The faint glow of the PharmaSaves signs could hardly be seen two blocks in, and I felt some pressure lift off my shoulders, just faintly.

            After a couple of turns, Noah walked up a sidewalk to what looked like it might have been once a grand mansion, but now had the unmistakable air of shabbiness. The porch had been recently repainted, but the windows were old and warped, and the grass hadn’t been cut in a while.

            “He should get on that,” said Noah, eyeing the grass. “Last thing we need is the bylaw cops coming down on him.”

            I shifted my weight nervously from foot to foot as Noah knocked on the door – three raps, a pause, then two. The door swung open and a loud voice boomed out, “Ah, my wayward grandchildren, it’s about time!” The owner of the voice, who looked a bit like Santa Claus, ushered us in. As we crossed the threshold his ID monitor gave out two cheerful beeps; I held my breath for a second, but nothing else happened.