Free UnDivided by Neal Shusterman

It’s good that they’re talking about mandatory unwinding of juvenile undesirables. If the law passes, maybe the problem will take care of itself. And if it doesn’t, I’ve got a cousin who knows a guy, who knows a guy, who could put me in touch with a parts pirate. Someone who’ll come in, take the kid, and be done with it. The thing is, I know I don’t have the guts to make the call.
    â€œIt’s looking pretty from down here. How’s it hanging, Frank?” And the foreman laughs. “How’s it hanging!” Probably didn’t even notice his own joke until after he said it.
    â€œI could use a hand,” Frank tells him, and the foreman laughs some more. Frank increases the angle to eighty degrees. The torch is almost upright now as it dangles from multiple sets of cables on the massive crane.
    Without her right arm, the statue’s been looking a bit like the Venus de Milo. Sullen and vaguely impotent. Not the vision of liberty the early immigrants saw before disembarking at nearby Ellis Island—but the original arm had to go. The copper shell and interior framework of the torch arm were simply too heavy and had grown too weak over the years. Rather than allowing the arm to succumb to metal fatigue in one storm or another, it was decided to replace the torch and arm with a lighter, sturdier alloy. Aluminum/titanium. Something like that. Only problem is that the replacement arm is silver-gray, not pale green. Supposedly, the brainiacs in the design office have a plan to paint it to match the rest of the statue, but that’s not Frank’s problem.
    No, the snotbag dating my daughter is my problem. And my wife yells at me, like it’s my fault. Like I can do something about it.
    â€œYa shoulda never let her have so much freedom, Frank. And what if she gets pregnant? What then?”
    What? She’ll stork it, that’s what. Learn her lesson the hard way. Or she’ll marry the imbecile. It’s all the stuff of nightmares.
    â€œEasy now!” calls the foreman. “Just kiss it into place, Frank.”
    Now he engages the laser guidance system and sits back. It’s out of his hands now. Like the docking of a spacecraft, it’s all computerized down to the millimeter with surgical precision. He watches on various screens as the arm docks into the notches cut into the copper folds of Miss Liberty’s gown, with a deep but gentle clank, and a vibration he can feel in his bones. Applause from the whole construction crew.
    Now the assembly team takes over—a group of shipbuilders—because at this stage, fastening the arm is more like attaching the bow of a ship. There’ll be a week of welding, brazing, and molecular bonding to get the steel and copper to fuse to the new alloy. Again, not his problem. Tomorrow he’s back to work on a luxury high-rise on the Upper West Side. A regular sky jockey running a simple crane, lifting I beams to the eighty-eighth floor. Low profile, low stress.
    Now if he can only get rid of his daughter’s imbecile boyfriend and lower the stress at home, he’ll be in business.

8 • Cam
    Camus Comprix is a very happy young man. Yet not.
    Camus is a highly driven young man. But he’s not certain he’s the one driving.
    He sits alone on a balcony overlooking the ocean, high on a Molokai bluff, pondering his existence, which began a few short months ago. Prior to that he was part of ninety-nine other kids, although he suspects the number is greater. Ninety-nine is a nice alliterative number. Good for the media. Good for publicity. When it comes to Cam, his whole “life” is about publicspin, and he’s yet to figure out why. Why is Proactive Citizenry putting so much money behind him? Why has the United States military “purchased” him like a piece of property? Valuable, yes, but property nonetheless. It used to bother him, but it doesn’t anymore. For some