Chapter 4 - Part 1

Friday was always a day that Howell enjoyed.  Gatelock Academy was well known for its academics, but most of the students enjoyed the extra-curricular activities held on Friday.  Some activities were held after school, but Friday’s schedule was different every weekend.

Students had to check-in in the morning and once in the afternoon, but aside from that there was really no set schedule.  Students went to the activities that they wanted, or else did some makeup work or science labs.  A student’s Friday told a lot about their personality.

Amber preferred the martial arts clubs or else weight training.  Shelly was occasionally in one of the music rooms, but more often than not she was found studying to get into one of the top medical schools.  Jordan was usually found in one of the shop classes, either building something or hacking on a computer.  Callie preferred home economics or else the art rooms.

Howell, for the most part, never had a specific activity.  He would go with his friends to their favorite clubs or else spend his time in the library getting far ahead on his homework.  Amber had tried to grab Howell to spar with her, but in the end Shelly won because she wanted someone to help her as she memorized the bones in the body.  All two hundred and six of them.  Two hundred and seventy in an infant.

“Seven cervical, twelve thoracic, and five lumbar,” Shelly said, naming all the vertebrae.  “Sometimes an extra lumbar can form, depending on genetic defect.”

“Really?” Howell said as he looked at the data book Shelly had given him.

Literature he could read, but give Howell an entirely factual book and he only bothered to retain the necessary information to pass a test.  He would read textbooks if there was nothing else to read.  Of course, Howell preferred to reread even the sappiest of romances if he had a choice between that and a textbook.

“Where’s your cousin, anyway?” Shelly asked.  “We need to meet as a group for our history project.”

“He’ll be back Monday,” Howell told her.  “Had to go visit his father.”

Shelly nodded in quiet understanding and then demanded that he quiz her on the bones in the skull.  When the day was over, Howell immediately headed toward his library locker and was soon weaving his way through the lower levels of the city.  He started reciting some poetry out loud and was ignored by most everyone.

In the upper levels or richer districts, everyone walked or road the trains everywhere.  It was supposedly too crowded.  It was more crowded in the poorer areas, but that never seemed to stop anyone from using bikes, rollerblades, or whatever improvised mode of transportation they wanted.  Mostly, though, people walked because that was all they could afford to do.

Howell did not go straight home.  He almost never did.  There were always plenty of odd jobs that he could do to earn money or some other useful item that he could not obtain through dumpster diving.  The rainbow haired teen, who had used a purple tinted gel to randomly spike his hair, smiled as he quickly hocked the goods he had obtained through his latest dumpster raid.

He sometimes got money for his junk, but more often than not everything was just traded.  Everyone in the ghettos found their own way of living.  It was a fringe society where only about fifty percent of what went on was legal, while the other fifty was ignored.  Like Howell was when he wanted to be.

Even the library on the bottom level was a little questionable at times.  It probably had been abandoned by the government years ago, but that had not stopped the librarians from still running it.  It was one of those rare, safe havens for everyone in the lower levels.

“Oh, Ash,” the older woman smiled as the teen came in.  “How are you doing?”

“Good,” came the standard response.  “I would like to check out a book.  What can I do for it?”

“You know you don’t have to do something in order to check out a book,” the librarian teased.  “But if you don’t mind, I do have one small favor.”

“I’d love to,” Howell assured.

“My husband was trying to fix something in the maintenance room and he found a crawlspace,” she explained.  “Do you think you could try to clean it out a little?  You don’t have to get all of it at one time.  I certainly don’t think my husband or I will be crawling down there.”

“Not a problem,” Howell said.  “I know you don’t actually care if it gets cleaned or not.  You’re just finding me something to do.”

“Well, you got me,” the librarian laughed.  “Tell you what, you can keep anything you find as payment.”

“Deal.”

The crawlspace was little, and hidden behind a furnace.  In fact, getting to it was a tight squeeze, but Howell managed by just climbing over the broken down furnace.  The crawlspace was not actually a space as it was more access to the space between building walls.  It had more qualities of a secret passage than it did of a storage space.

Cleaning gave way to exploration as Howell did his best to see in the dark.  He actually had decent night vision and the shaft of light coming through the opening helped to outline the graying corridor for a little ways.  Howell decided that he would have to come back with a flashlight and turned to leave.

A flash of silvery light caught his attention and Howell turned from the entrance and looked down the hallway.  The flash was coming from the darker end of the hallway, but Howell ignored all rationality of safety and went toward it.  He felt drawn to it, like he was finding something he had lost a long time ago.

The object itself was not very impressive.  It was a metal box, probably a little bigger than a data book.  It stopped flashing once Howell had picked it up, but it felt warm in his hands.  The silvery metal looked like oil had been mixed in with it and Howell tried to remember where he had seen it before.  With a shrug, Howell shoved the metal box in his patched bag and he crawled out of the hidden space and went to check out his book.