Locked Down

I just stared at him. I went over the question again in my head.

"I'm sorry... What did you want, again?"

"I wanted you to go out with me," he said, still grinning. He was obviously one of those annoying guys that didn't really want me; he just wanted to say he did. It wouldn’t be obvious to anybody else that he was lying to my face, but it was obvious to me. And isn't that all that mattered?

"Gotcha," I said. "Thanks."

I looked back down at my book. The book was very interesting, and he was interrupting my solid hour of reading it in the middle of one of the most gorgeous parks in New Jersey. It could have been one of the least gorgeous, too, but I wouldn't know. My father wouldn't ever let me go anywhere to find out.

"So..." he said, noticing I wasn't going to give him an answer.

"So?"

"So is that a yes?"

I contemplated it. I really considered it for a while. I looked him up and down, not caring whether or not I scared him, and I let myself shrug.

"Alright."

"Awesome! I'll see you tonight!" He ran off.

I rolled my eyes. He asked me to meet him at Mary Gail's party tonight, and I was going to make an appearance anyway. So why not pick my party-guy a couple hours beforehand? He wasn't bad looking. He was probably one of the cuter ones in our district. As I watched him watched him walk away, though, I realized I had no idea what his name was.

That was one of the many things I couldn’t stand about that place. "Districts." Ever since The Lock Down, we didn’t have any towns or communities. We renamed them all to numbered "Districts." What the towns were called probably shouldn't have bothered me, but hell, everything was bothering me back then.

I was almost excited about the party. I say "almost" because my disposition on life was pretty so-so. A plane could have landed in my front yard and a herd of unicorns being ridden by crying Indians could have ridden out, and I would shrug my shoulders and go back in side.

I was like that back then.

So, I was a little excited. Ever since The Lock Down, nobody's parents could go on business trips or vacations that lasted more than a day. Kids couldn’t have any house parties without their parents coming home to see a wreck. House parties were rare in New Jersey. My parents traveled across the state and stayed overnight all the time, with my dad being New Governor, but I didn't want strangers in my house.

But in all honesty, I liked strangers. I went to these parties to see people from all over and to lose myself in the dance music. A blur of faces would go by, and I didn't need to take much notice.
I sat reading my book and trying to pretend I was living the life of the people inside. People stopped writing books since The Lock Down. Music and poetry was still attempted, but the songs never felt as good as the punk-rock stuff they made around 2011.

That was a long time ago. The Lock Down happened when I was four. Living with my parents got pretty frustrating after I turned nineteen. But where could I go that my father couldn't see?

The Lock Down was some big idea that my father had when I was a kid. Back when iPad's and video chat were still the coolest things on earth... until they invented something different.
It was my dad's idea. He said, "Let's stop all of this nonsense. Why do we need to keep adding new gadgets to our pocket's and purses? Why can't things stay the way they are?"
The idea was huge for all of the adults. They wanted their kids to stop needing all new phones and computers and they hated the excitement we would get when the latest video gaming system would come out. The only thing that would satisfy that insatiable thirst was at least three hundred dollars for the new system, and an extra sixty every month when a new game came out; a new game that would be added to the pile of games we already owned, played 60 hours of, and then never picked up again. But when our parents asked if we could sell them, we swore at them and told them: “I play that game all the time! I love that game! You can’t sell it!”

Personally, though, I think it was about the cars.

There were rumors of new legislation that would state that all cars, trucks, and motor vehicles would be destroyed or taken away. They were going to make some kind of transporter by 2013 that would make it possible for people to just ZAP wherever they wanted to go. As a kid, I thought that sounded pretty cool.

Not to the adults. They didn't want to save money on gas, stop the deaths caused by car accidents, and they didn’t want to potentially save the planet. They wanted to be able to ride in their fancy cars after a hard day at the office.

So my dad went on a mission to "save us from the future." He decided to take over an entire state, make it completely unified, and stop the "gadget making." He decided one day, and made the decision for thousands of other people, that technology was perfect the way it was.

Who was going to stop him? Not I. I didn’t really understand at the time. I just thought we were moving again. Back in the good old days, my dad was just a regular politician. He’d grab your attention some big new idea that never really worked out. This one was pretty much the same thing, but on a much larger scale.

People started riots and started putting up the fences around their own states, only to have them taken down. There were still a lot of sane people who didn’t think this was a good idea. Maybe there were some who liked the idea of ending the technology race, but they weren’t so keen to the idea of paying taxes that were almost twice as high to be able to maintain living in a completely guarded state that grew all of it’s own food and manufactured most of it’s own products. So my father’s supporters took over New Jersey, where the taxes were already pretty high. New Jersey was small, and it fit all the people who wanted The Lock Down, but it gave the rest of the world room to grow. New Jersey is pretty, I admit. And it’s roomy. It’s not like the cities I used to move to whenever Dad wanted to start a new campaign and be governor for a new state.

I read the last page of my book, and shut it. I felt immediate remorse that it took me such a short time to finish. It was such a good book. I could read it again, but it wouldn’t be the same. I would know the punch line to every joke and the surprise around every turn. I chuckled to myself, thinking that that was some big metaphor for my boring, Locked Down life.

I put the book in my shoulder bag and walked across the park. I went the long way so that I could stop at the monkey bars and go across them once. I passed the swings and sat on them for a while, too, barely swinging. Sometimes, I liked to be a kid for just a little while. Just to remember what it was like.

I went home to get ready for the party. I was walking straight towards the pink and orange sunset to get to my house. I was in no rush. I appreciated the sky. In such a boring life with not much travel or new people to meet, I took pleasure in the little things. It seems like a depressing reason to like the little things in life, but at least I was enjoying something.

I walked into my front door. We lived in probably the biggest house in Avalon, New Jersey. And if you ever visited that area, that’s a pretty big house. I loathed how long it took me to walk up the stairs to my front door, then down hallways and up an irritating amount of more stairs to get to my bedroom. Lock Governor and his family were allowed to live wherever he wanted. My dad wanted up to live here, because we used to take a vacation here every summer. It’s a seven-mile island, connected to one other town, and I was never allowed to leave the island. Avalon got pretty boring.
I bumped into one of our maids. Linda was my favorite of our maids, even though she didn’t speak much English.

“¿Dónde había estado?” she asked.

“I was at the park, Linda,” I answered.

“Siempre! Always at the park!” She barked at me. She gave me a hug. I hugged her tightly around her waist, resting my head on her shoulder.

“¿Te gustaste el libro?”

“Sí, I loved my book, thank you. Gracias.”

“De nada. Homework! Do homework.”

I laughed again and went upstairs. She knew that I always did my homework on Friday as soon as I got home. She was saying that just in case my mother heard her. Linda was much more of a mother to me than my mother, but I would have never told anybody that.

There was a loud banging noise coming from the bathroom. Renovators again? I ran to the kitchen and got some sodas and brought them to the guys. I knew them all by name. My dad always had the same guys work on our house. I could never understand why my dad needed to change our house so often. Maybe he was getting bored, just like I was.

“Thanks, Lindsay!” They all said to me.

“Do you guys need any sandwiches?” I asked, smiling.

“We’re good. Maybe later?” Greg said. He was the boss. I always admired that all of his workers listened to him, even though he never had to yell at them. I wish my dad was more like Greg.

“Absolutely,” I answered. Greg gave me a wink and said:

“Thanks, kiddo.”

Even though I had been twenty years old for the past few months, which he knew that very well, I smiled at the old nickname. We had known Greg for a while. He was always nice to me. I met him when I was about ten. His workers changed around some, but Greg was always the one leading the construction. He never joked about how much we needed him. I guessed he thought it was disrespectful. I didn’t really want to talk about my dad and his weird behaviors to a random guy working on our bathroom, anyway.

“What are you guys doing in here?” I asked.

“New tile,” he answered, going back to work. I just shrugged and went into my room.
My room was bright green. Greg had just painted it green the week before. Green was my favorite color of the month. I pulled off my jean jacket and threw it onto my clean white carpet. I changed my mind as it hit the ground and put it on a hook on the back of my door. I was the one who cleaned my room. I never let anyone touch it. My room was clean because I wanted it clean. And I wanted it to stay that way.

I sat down on my bed to play video games. I put my headset on and played Xbox Live. Do you remember Xbox? It came out so long ago. But we could never get any new gaming systems, so this is what I was stuck with. When I was seven, I would occasionally hear people on my network from the outside. I would ask them a question, and their voices would be static and my screen would display a message that said, “Player out of our reach.”

The kids of New Jersey still liked it, though.

I played video games for about an hour, and when I looked up at my clock and saw that I was already late, I played for another twenty minutes. I didn’t really think anybody at the party would notice I wasn’t there.

Oh, wait, I thought. The boy.

That kid was going to be waiting for me. I rolled my eyes. Why did I say yes to this? I hate going on dates. I prayed that he wouldn’t try to hold my hand. I couldn’t handle that.

I put on some shiny black jeans, a black tank top, and a huge necklace. It was one of those long necklaces that wrapped around my neck five times. The first wrap went to my belt, the second a little higher on my stomach, and so on. I put on some heels to finish the outfit.

When fashion didn’t grow after a while, the people of New Jersey started picking up styles that were old. I assumed that is what happened on the outside world as well. Innovation was harder now that there was no outside influence. How different could fashion be, anyway?

I walked down all of my steps and into my back yard. I went into my tree house. It wasn’t the most beautiful tree house you would ever see, and in truth it was hardly visible behind all the branches, but it was big. And it had fuzzy carpets over hard wood floors. It was pretty clean in there, too, just how I liked it.

The tree house was where I kept my alcohol. I needed to hide it from my parents, and Linda would never allow me to drink. I never wasted my good stuff on parties in which it would just go to waste, but I thought that I would at least bring a bottle of Patrón so I could drink it. I hated beer. It was all brewed in New Jersey, and it wasn’t very good. Laws were followed to the T in New Jersey. Cops did not have much to do anymore. The electric cars that were created so that we no longer were dependent on outsider gasoline were physically not able to speed. They would lock onto your coordinates and adjust your speed to the limit of the road. I found a way to break that device in my car, but cops were no longer looking for road violations, so they hung around bars and stores that sold alcohol to keep busy. Unless someone was 21 at your party, you were not having alcohol.
I climbed down the latter, and bumped into somebody in the dark. I yelped a little bit.

“What the-!”

“I’m sorry!” A kid said.

“Wait… you’re…”

“Alex,” the kid said. I didn’t say anything. “The kid from earlier?”

“Oh. My date for tonight.” At least I knew his name now.

“Yeah, I assumed since you said that you were going and that you were going to walk that I would meet you there, but when the party started getting busy and I couldn’t find you…”

He paused. I didn’t really know if the pause was there for my benefit, but I just decided to wait and let him finish.

“…And?” I said.

“And I thought you bailed.”

“No,” I said. “I was on my way. I was grabbing some booze.”

He looked down at my hand and lightly grabbed my wrist to pull the bottle closer. My automatic reaction was to flinch away. He didn’t seem that intimidating, but I didn’t like being grabbed by the wrist. It reminded me of being scolded by my parents. Sometimes I would rub my wrists lightly and slowly, remembering the bruises that used to be there.

Alex shied away a little. He grabbed the bottle slowly instead.

“Patrón?” He asked.

“What does it look like?”

I think in the dark I saw him smile.

“It looks like Patrón.”

What an idiot, I thought.

“Yeah,” I said. I was almost hoping that my sarcastic tone showed, but in a way I didn’t really want to offend him. Alex hadn’t done anything wrong or bad to me. Yet.

“So, you were coming to the party?” He asked me.

“I was planning on it. People were expecting me.”

“Are you still going?” He asked.

“Are you?”

That one was a little harsher than I expected.

“I was planning on it…”

He had obviously wanted to be alone together, or else he wouldn’t have come. I didn’t have any ambition to walk with him all the way to the party. The point of meeting him there was so that I didn’t have to talk to him while I was sober, and while we were dancing, I wouldn’t have to talk to him at all.

“Do you want to come up?” I asked him.

He looked as if I asked him if he wanted Santa Claus to visit his house every day. I climbed up the latter before him, Patrón in hand. When I sat down on the floor, I opened the bottle and took a long drink.

“Straight?” he asked.

“Oh no, I was just going to use my blender to whip us up some smoothies to put it in.”

He laughed. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. But then again, he was a guy.

A few drinks later, we were cracking up. He was actually a fun guy. And I was getting really drunk with almost all of the alcohol gone.

“So, what made you ask me out, Alex?” I said, leaning on him. I grabbed his knee. He noticed.

“I think you’re really sarcastic.”

I laughed.

“No, really!” he said. “I think it’s funny when you read those sarcastic poems to us in English class.”
I laughed again, but not as hard. I couldn’t tell whether or not he was lying, so I just ignored the comment. I kept giggling.

He kissed me.

The kiss was nice. Or something. It was the kind of kiss that reached the edges of my face, but it didn’t tickle all the way down to my toes. He seemed to know what he was doing, but he was still new enough to kissing that it was still an exciting experience for him. Ten minutes later, we were lying down on the floor together, and I had no idea where my shirt was.

Apparently he had more experience than he let on. He had even brought a condom with him. How thoughtful.

Another ten minutes, I turned on my battery-powered television without much warning. I flipped through a few channels on the TV and stopped on a comedy show. He sat up, pants unbuttoned, and still not wearing his shirt.

“Wow,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“So…”

“We don’t have to talk about it.” I was pretty sober now, and I didn’t really want to have the What Does This Mean conversation. “Do you want to watch this with me?”

“Don’t you want to go to the party?”

I paused.

“I guess.”

“It’s only ten.”

He kept looking at me.

“Do you want to go to the party?” I asked him.

He didn’t speak, but he nodded and started to stand and put his shirt back on. I noticed now that his shirt had rhinestones on it.

Oh, Lord.

We left the tree house. My yard was very dark because my parents were out of the district again and there were no lights on in the back of the house. Linda was probably in her study in the front of the house.

“Wow, it’s dark out!” Alex said. He tried to grab my hand. I pulled my hand out of reach as fast as possible. I didn’t even try to cover it up. I made it clear that I didn’t want him touching my hand.

“Let’s go to the party, okay?” I said.

“Do you want to bring any more tequila?”

I looked him up and down as best as I could in the dark, and then back at the tree house. I thought about the bottles of alcohol up there, and I remembered that this boy was going to be following me around for a while now.

“No. I think I’ll be okay without it.”