Cyberpunk

leave. We’ll call my mom’s car.” She did not look happy. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
    “But we just got here. Give it a chance.”
    “I’ve been to too many of these things.”
    “Then you shouldn’t have come.”
    Silence. I wanted to tell her about Montross—everything—but not here. Anyone could come along and the tube was so hot. I was desperate to get her away, so I lied. “Believe me, you’re not going to like this. I know.” I tugged at her waist. “Sometimes even I think smash parties are too much.”
    “We’ve had this discussion before,” she said. “Obviously you weren’t listening. I don’t need you to decide for me whether I’m going to like something, Mr. Boy. I have two parents too many; I don’t need another.” She stepped away from me. “Hey, I’m sorry if you’re having a bad time. But do you really need to spoil it for me?” She turned and strode down the tube toward the gallery, her beautiful hair slapping against her back. I watched her go.
    “But I’m in trouble,” I muttered to the empty tube—and then was disgusted with myself because I did not have the guts to say it to Tree. I was too scared she would not care. I stood there, sweating. For a moment the stink of doubt filled my nostrils. Then I followed her in. I could not abandon her to the extremists.
    The gallery was jammed now; maybe a hundred kids swarmed across the balconies and down the stairs. Some perched along the edges, their feet scuffing the white brick. Happy had turned up the volume.
    “. . . according to Guinness , was set at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma, in 2012. Three minutes and fourteen seconds.” The crowd rumbled in disbelief. “The challenge states each piece must be small enough to pass through a hole thirty centimeters in diameter.”
    I worked my way to an opening beside a rubber tree. Happy posed on the keyboard of the piano. Freddy the Teddy and the gorilla brothers, Mike and Bubba, lined up beside her. “No mechanical tools are allowed.” She gestured at an armory of axes, sledgehammers, spikes, and crowbars laid out on the floor. A paper plate spun across the room. I could not see Tree.
    “This piano is over two hundred years old,” Happy continued, “which means the white keys are ivory.” She plunked a note. “Dead elephants!” Everybody heaved a sympathetic aumrw . “The blacks are ebony, hacked from the rain forest.” Another note, less reaction. “It deserves to die.”
    Applause. Comrade and I spotted each other at almost the same time. He and Montross stood toward the rear of the lower balcony. He gestured for me to come down; I ignored him.
    “Do you boys have anything to say?” Happy said.
    “Yeah.” Freddy hefted an ax. “Let’s make landfill.”
    I ducked around the rubber tree and heard the crack of splitting wood, the iron groan of a piano frame yielding its last music. The spectators hooted approval. As I bumped past kids, searching for Tree, the instrument’s death cry made me think of taking a hammer to Montross. If fights broke out, no one would care if Comrade and I dragged him outside. I wanted to beat him until he shuddered and came unstrung and his works glinted in the thudding August light. It would make me feel extreme again. Crunch! Kids shrieked, “Go, go, go!” The party was lifting off and taking me with it.
    “You are Mr. Boy Cage.” Abruptly Shikibu’s microcam eyes were in my face. “We know your famous mother.” He had to shout to be heard. “I have a question.”
    “Go away.”
    “ Thirty seconds .” A girl’s voice boomed over the speakers.
    “US and Japan are very different, yes?” He pressed closer. “We honor ancestors, our past. You seem to hate so much.” He gestured at the gallery. “Why?”
    “Maybe we’re spoiled.” I barged past him.
    I saw Freddy swing a sledgehammer at the exposed frame. Clang! A chunk of twisted iron clattered across the brick floor, trailing broken strings. Happy scooped the mess up and shoved it through a thirty-centimeter hole drilled in an upright sheet of particle board.
    The timekeeper called out again. “One minute.” I had come far enough around the curve of the stairs to see her.
    “Treemonisha!”
    She glanced up, her face alight with pleasure, and waved. I was frightened for her. She was climbing into the same box I needed to break out of. So I rushed down the stairs to rescue her—little boy knight in shining armor—and ran