The least popular wall floppy is Literature. Only a handful of young women are scrolling through a copy of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. They’re struggling with the language more than my classmates did in ninth grade, but I wonder if, when they do get past the thees and thous and I bite my thumb at you, sirs, will they walk away thinking that is love? I consider pausing here and telling them about the debate we had in class where I argued that Romeo and Juliet weren’t really in love. In ninth grade, I was so sure of myself I won the debate (and a prize of a free homework pass), and I remember shooting down the opposing side so passionately that the entire class was in an uproar. But now… now I can’t remember a single argument from the debate on either side, and I can think of nothing to say to these people. How can I argue that Romeo and Juliet doesn’t really show love to a group of people who have no concept of what love really is? When I don’t know what love really is — just what it isn’t.

Suddenly, all the wall floppies go black.

“Hey!” one of the girls reading Shakespeare shouts.

“What’s going on?” a burly man at the Agriculture wall floppy growls.

Giant words in bright white letters scroll across the darkened screens, filling the hall with one phrase, repeated over and over.

LEAD YOURSELF

My eyes widen, and I pull my hood even farther down over my face, so hard that the seams strain against the back of my head. While everyone else is distracted, reading the words and puzzling about how they flashed on their floppies, I rush to the back of the hall, toward the book rooms. Something like this was bound to happen. Elder’s been spending all his free time with me in the Recorder Hall, reading up on civics and police forces, but I don’t think he really understood that some people are going to want to rebel just because, for the very first time, they can.