On a Clear Day by Walter Dean Myers

looked at it
     and at me.
    “Nice picture,” he said. There was a map of my home area
     with code numbers next to it, which I imagined told him something about what group I
     belonged to.
    “You’re travelling with a band?” he asked next.
     “What do you play?”
    “I sing.”
    “Oh? Sing something for me.”
    “No.”
    “Gotta pay to hear you, huh?” He grinned. His wand gave him
     the only power he had.
    He waved me through and we went to the gate. Another check of our papers,
     another chip scan. Drego was pulled aside and Mei-Mei was told to move on. We entered
     the cabin, and found our seats in business class. The flight attendant started serving
     drinks, and nobody was talking about Drego. Mei-Mei took her seat, but she was looking
     anxiously toward the door.
    Anja was doing a crossword puzzle. I bet she was nervous. Good. I
     wasn’t the only one.
    I’d flown plenty of times, mostly to Santo Domingo. The flight was
     three hours, about the same as our flight to London. Then it would take me hours to get
     to my relatives’ home. Flying didn’t bother me as much as going someplace
     and not being sure of what I was doing. I thought of Mrs. Rosario. Would I rather be
     home in the Bronx?
    No. I was excited to be part of something. My palms were sweaty and I
     wanted to move on.
    From the corner of my eye, I saw Mei-Mei shift position. I looked up and
     she was looking out the window; then I saw Drego coming into the cabin.
    “They give you a hard time?” I asked him.
    “They had to check to see if I had any hidden truths in my hand
     luggage,” he said. He sat next to Mei-Mei. Yep, something was definitely going on
     over there.
    The first hour I downloaded the
Times
of London,the
Guardian
,
Der Spiegel
, and
El Diario
. Michael and
     Javier mostly talked to each other. Tristan slept, and Mei-Mei talked at Drego. Anja was
     watching a movie. I decided that she would be the one I would pal around with.
    I fell asleep after an hour and woke up to the flight attendant telling me
     that we would be landing shortly and offering me a hot towel. For some reason I said
     yes, and she gave me a rolled-up towel that was too hot to do anything with. I saw
     Javier wiping his face with his, and so I did the same. It wasn’t refreshing, and
     it didn’t get my face that clean. It was just hot.
    Customs at Heathrow meant walking through a screening device that looked
     like a metal detector. If they could pick up all your information just by having you
     walk between two sensors, it meant that they could find you anywhere by placing enough
     sensors around. I wondered if I should cover my chips again.
    The Brits were waiting for us just outside the security area. They looked
     geeky and pale. My first thought was that they were probably super-bright kids. I also
     noticed that the girls were a little taller than the boys.
    A van took us to the Chelsea Cloisters hotel on Sloane Avenue. It was one
     of those driverless things that worked okay, but I didn’t like them because I was
     looking out the window thinking we were going to hit something. All the while, the Brits
     were talking about how glad they werethat we had come over and how
     we were going to make a difference.
    “The hands-across-the-sea thing really works, you know,” a
     thin dude with big teeth said.
    Anja nodded and smiled, and Michael reached over and shook the
     guy’s hand.
    At the hotel we got our key cards, and Javier said we’d be going to
     the first meeting at one o’clock the next afternoon.
    My rooms were small, really just a teeny bedroom and a living room with a
     small stove, a few pots and pans, a countertop oven, and a kettle to boil water in. I
     started hanging up my stuff when Anja called. She said she was trying to get people to
     walk around the neighborhood but nobody wanted to go with her.
    “I’ll go,” I said. “Maybe we can find some
     food.”
    We met in the lobby, and the clerk told us where the local