Chapter 21 : Nobody Moves

Chapter 21: Chapter 21 : Nobody Moves

And then nothing happened.

Thirty people stood in a ring around the car with their hands on it, each one better behaved than the last. For the first hour, nobody said a word. Eventually a few of them started talking quietly about classes, and by then close to half the crowd had wandered off.

Maya had shown up first thing that morning. She came across from the parking lot hugging her laptop, and Ethan, who happened to be at the gate, said hi. She made a sound that might have been "mm," didn’t look up, brushed right past him, and disappeared into the editing room. They hadn’t exchanged a single word since.

Right now she was sitting in a corner of the editing room, watching the site’s back end. The number of people online had jumped at the start, then leveled off, and kept leveling until it ran almost straight across the screen. She turned the laptop around to show Sam. Sam took one look and sighed.

Noah, cradling the A camera, had paced the edge of the lot more times than he could count. Finally he couldn’t take it anymore and came over to Ethan.

"This isn’t working." He kept his voice down. "The site needs a clip every hour. Sam’s already cut three, and all three are a bunch of people just standing there! Identical! My mom would fall asleep watching it."

"They’ve all seen the first video." Ethan watched the ring of people. "They know whoever gets antsy first loses, so nobody’s moving. And have you noticed? Not one of them is playing to the camera. They didn’t come here to get famous. They just want the car."

"So what do we do?"

"Relax." Ethan tipped his chin at him. "Point that thing at me."

Noah hesitated, then hoisted the A camera onto his shoulder. The second the red light came on, Ethan grinned into the lens and jerked a thumb at the ring of people behind him. "Folks, looks like these thirty plan to stand here till the end of time. Fine by us. Let’s go find them something to do."

He turned and rounded up four of Kevin’s volunteers, and they huddled for a minute. Inside of five minutes, all four were holding neon-green water cannons with barrels thicker than their arms.

The four of them circled the car, aiming for faces. Ethan followed along behind with a copy of the Daily Breeze rolled into a microphone, doing his best sportscaster voice. "Number nine, folks, keep an eye on number nine, he just yawned, that is a wide-open mouth, and here’s the shot!"

Number nine took it square in the face. He coughed and sputtered with his eyes screwed shut, and his hand came up on reflex to wipe them. It was about to leave the roof when he slapped it back down at the last instant, his face going beet red with the effort. The sidelines roared.

Tyler stood ramrod straight with his chin up, determined to keep his dignity. A stream caught him right in the ear. He didn’t so much as blink while the water dripped off the end of his nose. "Doesn’t bother me at all," he said, his voice wobbling a little.

When it was Mac’s turn, he didn’t dodge. He tipped his head back and opened wide. "Right here, man. I was getting thirsty." The volunteer obliged. Mac gargled, spat on the ground, and gave the camera a thumbs-up.

When the nozzle swung toward Sierra, she was quicker. Her free hand shot out, grabbed Dylan by the collar, and yanked him in front of her. Dylan took the whole blast in the face, his hair plastered flat to his forehead.

"Does this count toward what I owe you?" He wiped his face.

"It counts," said Sierra.

Half an hour later, the clip was cut and up on the site. Maya watched as the line that had been flat all morning bent upward for the first time, and kept getting steeper.

Sam stood behind her with his arms folded until he couldn’t keep quiet any longer. "I’ve been in that media building over ten years. Start of shooting to release, even the fast ones take a year." He pointed at the number still ticking upward on the screen. "Something we shot half an hour ago, and right now a few thousand people are watching it. And every one of them is waiting for the next one."

Maya didn’t say anything. She hit refresh. Three hundred more.

Lunch came on a cart, courtesy of the Subway down the street. The rule was you ate with one hand, and the other never left the car. One guy clamped his sandwich in his teeth to free up a hand while he shifted his stance. Another dropped half his lettuce on the ground and started to bend for it before the guy next to him grabbed his arm. "Are you crazy?"

That clip had barely gone up when someone in the comments was already asking: what’s next?

Noah came jogging back with the camera on his shoulder and a light in his eyes. "I get it now. As long as there’s always something to shoot, there’s always somebody watching, and the more people watching..."

"The more the sponsors want to send stuff over, and the more we’ve got to shoot." Ethan finished it for him. "So we don’t let them sit still for a single hour."

The next round was cash, a stack of crisp twenties the tutoring center and the used textbook store had put up together. Ethan strolled around the car with the stack pinched between his fingers, and every time he reached someone, he fanned it under their nose a couple of times.

"A hundred bucks," he said. "Let go right now and it’s yours. Take it to the tutoring center, get tutored, ace your exams, and then..." He paused. "Then you can come right back and touch the car some more."

Nobody moved. One guy said quietly, "Could you put it in my pocket first? I’ll think about it."

"Nope," said Ethan. "This money only goes to empty hands."

At three hundred, nobody even looked. At five hundred, one girl’s fingers curled on the roof, and she pinned them down with her other hand. Ethan riffled the bills loudly, adding them one at a time and calling the count as he went. "Six hundred... seven hundred... My hand’s getting tired. Aren’t your hands tired?"

At eight hundred, somebody finally moved. A big guy in a basketball jersey took a deep breath, bent down, and planted a loud smack of a kiss on the roof. Only then did he slowly lift his hand and spread both palms at the camera. "BMW, I love you. But my landlord doesn’t take BMWs. He takes cash." He plucked the stack out of Ethan’s hand, hoisted it over his head, and waved it at the sidelines.

The sidelines broke into applause. Noah nearly dropped the A camera. In the editing room, Sam was cutting and yelling at the same time. "That’s the one! Give me that one!"

Ethan, for his part, didn’t join in the clapping. He glanced toward the showroom door. Kyle was standing there with his arms folded, saying something to one of the salesmen and laughing easily.

Ethan looked away and went back to the ring. The next temptation, he left up to the audience.

Maya’s voting system went live on the site: three options, and the viewers decided. A few minutes after the polls opened, the comments section was at war. The winner was a whole pepperoni pizza fresh out of the oven. Let go now, sit down at the folding table off to the side, eat the entire thing yourself, and walk away with two hundred bucks on top.

When the box came open, the smell drifted across half the lot. Ethan carried it around the car, taking his sweet time. One girl turned her face the other way entirely and muttered under her breath, "If I don’t look, I’m not hungry. If I don’t look, I’m not hungry."

Mac, on the other hand, watched it closely, his eyes following the pizza all the way around. When it came back to him, he swallowed and told Ethan, "Make it double cheese next time and I’ll seriously consider it."

The one who finally let go was a skinny guy in glasses. He sat down at the folding table, opened the box, raised the first slice to the camera, and said, "Worth it."

After the first two, the rest started to give. Four more dropped out before sundown, one at a time. One had a night shift to get to. One guy took a phone call, said his girlfriend was crying on the other end, and let go while he was still apologizing to her. Kevin crossed the last name off the whiteboard. Thirty people, twenty-four left.

After dark, most of the crowd drifted home. Outside the tape, all that was left were a few dorm buddies holding up their phones and an old man dozing in a folding chair under a blanket. Kevin’s people hauled over a stack of sleeping bags and handed them out one by one. The rule was you could sit or lie down however you liked, as long as one hand stayed on the car.

The most wide-awake person on the lot, of all people, was Gus.

He was practically draped across the car, one hand pressed to the roof while the other traced the fender inch by inch. He leaned in to sniff it, muttering to himself.

"This fender. This beltline." His eyes were closed, his face blissful. "Now this is an M3."

Next to him, Sierra, bundled in her sleeping bag, didn’t even open her eyes. "Do you two want a minute alone?"

Little by little, the ring around the car went quiet. Some had crawled into their sleeping bags and were lying on the asphalt, one arm stretched straight up, palm flat against the bottom of a door. Others sat propped against the wheels, heads sinking by degrees. Owen wasn’t sleeping. He sat by the front bumper wrapped in his sleeping bag with his eyes open, watching his own reflection in the windshield. Noah had set the A camera on a tripod and was slumped against an equipment case, his eyes closed too.

Sometime after midnight, the sound of an engine came from behind the dealership.

It grew louder, then rolled over the speed bump at the back gate with a thump. Headlights swung around the corner of the service bay and swept across the whole lot, over one bleary face after another.

Someone jerked awake, his hand skidding down the door before he caught it. Noah shot up off the equipment case.

Every head turned, squinting into the two beams of light coming closer.