They Set the Fire by Daniel Kraus

Author:Daniel Kraus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

16

Tough times had taught the teddies how to envision their trip to the courthouse: creeping under dribbling boughs, slithering through gutters, hiding beneath globs of dreck.

Instead, they arrived like royalty, zipping through downtown high above a pair of bicycles. Quickly, they arrived at a street lined with thousands of people. The crowd was even more tightly packed than the one Buddy had glimpsed on the underground train with Daddy.

Riders on the train had kept still. Here, the people jumped. They danced. They shook fists. They linked arms and swayed. They sang. They took photos. They laughed. They shook their anti-teddy signs. Music, all kinds, came from everywhere.

Buddy saw people selling food. Other people handed out bottles of water. There was a row of vans with tall radar dishes, outside of which stood the same boring people with cameras Buddy had seen on Smith’s TV. Along the edges of the street were jittery-looking police in blue uniforms and badges.

Missy steered her bike slowly into the crowd, followed by Kidd. From the sign lodged behind Missy’s seat, Buddy, Sunny, Reginald, and Nothing watched as annoyed people turned around, saw the teddies on the signs, and broke into grins. They pointed. They cheered. They parted ways so the bikes could inch forward.

Reginald shouted over the clamor. “People don’t seem to mind us when we’re tied up.”

Buddy knew all these people—young, old, angry, happy—hated him. But for a few seconds, he pretended that he was the one being hoorayed. He’d worked so hard getting his friends this far, all the way from Garden E. Maybe what Kidd and Missy had said was true. He and his friends were warriors. They were survivors.

They were punk-rock.

Anti-teddy signs blocked Buddy’s view until Missy and Kidd reached the front of the crowd and dismounted their bikes. A metal barrier kept the masses from additional police.

Behind the police was the longest set of stairs Buddy had ever seen. They swept upward into a broad building that looked to be carved from white stone. Eight pillars thicker than any trees held up a golden dome, the center of which sprouted a pole with two flapping flags. Along the curve of the dome was carved the one word the teddies had been chasing.

COURTHOUSE

The building’s majesty scared Buddy. He supposed that was intentional. If this courthouse had the power to punish the Suit, it must be mighty indeed.

Buddy tore his eyes away and looked down at his body, the hair ties, the cardboard. How were he and his friends going to get off these signs?

“You see Smith and the others?” Kidd asked.

“Who cares about them?” Missy laughed. “This is amazing!”

Kidd and Missy locked their bikes to the metal barrier, then raised their signs so the whole crowd could see the teddies. People cheered so loudly that snowflakes danced away from their mouths. Hundreds of fists punched the air along to the chant Buddy had heard from the gas station. Now he could make out the words.

His teddies failed!

Throw him in jail!

His teddies failed!

Throw him in jail!

Kidd’s sign was smaller, leaving Proto lower than the other teddies.

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