The Limit by Kristen Landon Page B

all the time.”
    “What makes you think that? You’ve got X-ray eyes now and can see through those closed blinds of his?”
    I didn’t have to answer, but I did anyway. “No.”
    “Free time, fool. It means you’re free to do what you want. If your pants aren’t itching after sitting eight hours a day pounding on a computer and you want to goof around on the Internet or play some games or invent a new programming language just for the fun of it, then free time says you’re free to do it.”
    “He’s not working overtime?”
    “Not allowed. Go in and see for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
    “No, I believe you,” I said fast. Go in there? Disturb Reginald? Unthinkable. Besides, Gorilla Man or one of the other guards—who all looked so much alike from theneck down they could’ve been clones—would come and grab me if I even knocked on that glass door of his.
    I typed in a few more keystrokes.
    “I hate this! I’m never going to get it right!” The voice blasted from several cubicles down and carried throughout the entire room. It sounded like Neela, but I couldn’t be totally positive, since none of the girls ever spent much time talking to me. A pounding noise followed from the same direction that sounded like the girl slamming her fists into her keyboard.
    “Forget about it for today.” This snooty voice I recognized. Madeline. “Come on. Let’s go order dinner. Paige, log off now! What’s with you two today?”
    “Just a minute,” Paige called back from her own cubicle.
    “I can’t quit. I can’t!” Neela’s wailing voice cried.
    “You guys know they don’t pay you extra for working overtime,” said Madeline. Her voice moved from over by Neela’s cubicle, the first girls’ cubicle across from Reginald’s, to Paige’s cubicle, across from Coop’s, and back again. “You’re going to make the guards come up here, and you know how smelly they can be. How can you even stand that programming stuff, Paige?”
    “I’ve almost got this,” said Paige.
    “Well I don’t, and my deadline was three days ago! Miss Smoot is going to kill me. I just. Can’t. Get. It!”
    I logged off my computer and smirked at Coop. “Always a drama, huh.”
    He nodded. “With girls around. Come on, man.” He practically dragged me out of my cubicle. “As much as I love designing databases—and I do, don’t get me wrong—I gotta move. Now. Let’s hit the court.”
    “Check that.”
    The voice startled us and made us look around. We’d passed Jeffery’s cubicle—which he’d already vacated—and made it as far as Isaac’s, but the voice belonged to Kia.
    “Isaac, tell the little boys you and I have dibs on the court today,” she said. It took us a few seconds to find her—well, her head anyway. She was standing on something, her desk or a chair maybe, so her black curly hair and dark face stuck over the top of the middle cubicle wall. I wondered if she often talked to Isaac that way. I also wondered if Reginald ever opened his ceiling blinds and if Kia had gotten a peek at him. Not likely.
    “We have dibs on the court today, little boys,” said Isaac, leaning back in his chair with his feet propped on his desk. He held a model spaceship and kept his eyes on it as he twisted it slowly in his hands. “Like it?” he asked, holding it up for Coop and me to admire—although we didn’t. I really couldn’t see much difference between the model he was holding and the dozens of others that crowded his desk and shelves. It was a miracle theguy could still fit his computer in that sci-fi collector’s shop—although the computer was covered with aliens too. “I just got this one today. You know what it is?”
    “No, and we don’t care,” said Coop. “You can’t dibs the court. It’s first come, first served. Always has been. And since Isaac is busy playing with his little toys, Matt and I are going to get there first.”
    “Sorry to crash your hard drive,” said Kia. “I already