by Stacey Mac
“Tessa, come on, get your head in the game,” he says on this particular morning in the training room (top floor), trying to restart my fire once again, “You have to do this.”
“I know, I know,” I say in whispers. The thing is, I just really don’t want to. Maybe failing to start a fire will land me in isolation right next to Adriel. Some time to myself would be helpful. I wouldn’t even complain about the lack of blankets and food.
Reeves walks past, observes my now smoking bundle of sticks and kindle. He gives a curt nod and moves on.
“Thanks,” I tell Vincent.
He mouths the words you owe me, and then puts his head down, adding more kindle to his own fire.
If anyone else grieves for Tilly, they hide it well. There seems to be an unspoken rule at our lunch table: we aren’t to talk about it. I lasted one full day – breakfast, lunch and dinner, before I could no longer hack it. For the last few days I have proceeded to shovel food down my throat without sitting, and then leave the cafeteria as soon as I can ditch my plates and cups. I am the first one to reach my bed at night, the first one to be fake-asleep, and so, no one has the opportunity to talk to me unless they set their mind to it.
There are two things that fight for attention in my thoughts: the first being the most inescapable: that I could have saved Tilly from being shot in the face. The second is healthier, but problematic: that I have to get to Tilly’s sister and make sure she is okay. I just have to make sure she is alive and well – that she has enough food and water. Tilly asked for my help, and I feel as though I’m bound to honour the last wishes of my dead friend. Isn’t that what the living do?
Obviously, I’m not resourceful enough to gaol-break alone. I need Dean, but I’m doing such a fantastic job of avoiding everyone that I can’t bring myself to look for him, to ask him to help me. So I fall asleep hours after I retire, picturing scenarios where I manage Tilly’s last mission alone, and find Julie, alive and safe and well-fed, and not lying face-down in the snow, her skin dead cold. In the morning I won’t remember why I’m thinking of Julie, and then it will hit my anew, and the hole will be reopened.
*
I walk into the cafeteria after another wasted day in survival training. I manage to get Vincent to walk on without me with no argument this time. He’s learning quickly. Either that, or he’s sick of me. Tired of trying to help me. I would be, too.
I spoon my rationed dinner in my mouth hurriedly, and then dump the bowl into a collection bucket, heading for the exit again. I fold my arms as I walk out of the double doors and down the hall, thinking about my jacket that I left in my dorm this morning, and wishing I had it. I’m forgetting lots of odd things like that lately; forgetting that it is cold, forgetting to turn the water on in the shower.
“Hey,” Dean says, almost colliding with me. I’ve barely noticed where I was walking, but I’m practically on top of him now in the stairwell. He has to grab my middle and step backwards a little to actually see me. “Whoa, hold on. Where have you been?”
I sigh. Sighing is now a full-time job for me. “I’ve been around,” I say shortly. If he thinks I’ve forgotten our last conversation, the one where he didn’t want me around, he’s wrong. “What about you?”
“You mean when I’m not trying to accidentally find you? Nothing, Tessa, Christ. Do you know how hard it is to look for someone you’re not supposed to be looking for?” He hisses. The shadows under his eyes are large and dark again, he frowns, annoyed, exasperated.
I raise my eyebrows at him, “And what did you have to say to me?”
He huffs and runs his hands through his hair, as though I’ve infuriated him (which I clearly haven’t). “I don’t know, Tessa. That I’m sorry we fought, that I’m sorry your friend…our friend…died. Don’t you think those are things we should talk about?”
I avert my eyes to the ground, because they are becoming too moist for my liking. This is exactly what I’ve been trying to avoid: sad conversations. Or worse: more angry ones. “I’m not really the talking type,” I tell him, trying hard to control my voice. “I didn’t have anything to say. Besides, last time we ‘talked’, you made it pretty clear I was breaking the rules.”
“Yeah, I was an asshole. I get it. Like I said, I’m sorry.” He sighs this time, putting a tentative hand on my shoulder. “Look, let’s go somewhere else.” He is looking over his shoulder repeatedly, lowering his voice further.
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
I’m not made of stone, believe me. A very large part of me wants nothing more than to fall on top of him in this stairwell and let him carry me away to safety. I’m tired. I’m sick of resisting. I don’t want to be here. But there is really nowhere else to be…
Suddenly I’m being pulled up the stairwell. Dean has one hand firmly around my upper arm, and the other is around my waist and he tows me upwards. “What are you doing?” I ask petulantly.
Dean says nothing, just continues to push me up the flights of stairs in silence, with me protesting and grumbling, until we reach the exit to the roof, and then he shoves me through that, too.
Once I am released, I walk away, desperate to create some distance between us. Tears are now streaming down my face. Weird, because I didn’t cry when Tilly was shot, or afterwards, but now I’m crying. Why? Because I don’t like being hauled onto the roof by a mean boy. It really pisses me off, in fact, but I’m not strong enough to fight him.
“Tess, stop. Just look at me, alright?”
I look. After a few seconds, I drop. I kneel onto the hard gravel and let my shoulders sag. I feel the spot in my chest where the anger and tiredness have collided. The hole in my gut is still there, and I let myself be overcome by it. There is a certain amount of relief to be found in letting yourself drown.
Dean comes over and kneels too. His dark eyes watch me carefully. I give him a small smile. “Isn’t this the most fucked up world you’ve ever seen?”
I’ve stolen his line. It is supposed to make him smile. Instead, he just nods. “Yeah.”
Chapter Nineteen
“But she’s only seven, Dean. And she’s alone.”
Each time I say it, it seems to penetrate Dean a little deeper. I can see him wavering, he wants to do this for me, for Tilly. If I keep pushing, he’ll bend.
We are still on the rooftop. I’m wearing Dean’s jacket now, while he suffers against the wind. I want to leave the compound, now. Not tomorrow. Now. Tomorrow, Julie could be dead, if she isn’t already. Dean is being difficult. He wants to wait until we have a plan.
He rubs his eyes. It’s late, and I’ve spent the better part of three hours either crying on him, or begging him to help me. Twice he has suggested we go back to our dorms.
“If she is still alive, that means she has been able to look after herself up until now. She can survive another week. One more week, and we need a plan!” He says. Again.
“I’ve already given you one! We go to my house, take the food from the bunker in our fields, and take it to Julie. We make sure she’s okay; that she has enough wood and water, and then we come back.”
Dean shakes his head. He doesn’t think I should come. “I’m not taking you with me, Tessa. If you’re caught, you’ll be shot.”
“Dean, would you shut up with that already? Believe me, I’m not suicidal, but you don’t have a clue where either of our houses are. You need me.”
He taps his knee absentmindedly. “One week. You can wait one week.”
“What is with the ‘one week’ thing? What is going to be so much easier a week from now?”
Dean grimaces. “That’s when we leave…the Resolutes. We leave in a week.”
My mouth snaps shut, swallowing my next argument. I meet his gaze. Have I ever mentioned how easy it is to stare at Dean’s face? Perhaps others would pick out the flaws: the way his eyes give him the appearance of being constantly tired, or how his brow furrows a little too often to appear approachable. But sweet lord, if it isn’t the best thing to look
at around this godforsaken place, then show me what is. I’ll have only one more week to drink this face in.
“When we leave, maybe I can find a way to smuggle you out. If I can, we can help Julie before we leave Galore. It’s the only way I can get both of us out of here together. There are Galore fronters every few feet outside that fence line now.”
I shake my head, and press my eyes into my hands. One week is too long. Tilly knew that. She scaled a six-foot fence knowing it. “Tilly will have died for nothing if we can’t help her sister.”
Dean rubs his face, irritated. “Tilly died because a savage shot her in the head. She did die for nothing. It isn’t fair, but it’s true.”
I close my eyes, as I had when the shot rang out in the Arena, and I hear it again now. The gunfire ripping the silence apart. I see her small form, still and broken and face-down on the earth.
I’m suddenly in dire need to run…anywhere. I reach up and yank off Dean’s jacket, my skin violently rejecting the icy wind. “We all have to die in this war at some point, right?” I say tonelessly. I drop Dean’s jacket on the ground beside him and walk for the door.
*
I decide to re-join my usual table the next morning. Vincent looks pleased about it, and I can see why. With Dean busy, Adriel on lockdown, and Tilly buried, the conversation is full of holes. Mia claims Vincent’s attention after a while, and then it is just Delilah and I.
She looks like shit. Her face and hair are both dull. She swirls water around her tin mug, like she might find her future in it.
“Del?” I ask. She doesn’t look up. “Del?”
“Hmm?” Her eyes finally focus on me, as though she hadn’t realised I’d ever sat down.
“You okay?”
She shrugs in response. “Worried, I guess.”
“’bout what?”
“Adriel. They took him out of isolation last night.”
My heartbeats quicken. “He’s out?”
Again she shrugs. Creases appear around her eyes as they tighten.
“Del, tell me what’s wrong. How do you know Adriel is out?”
She sighs, but then leans in closer, and whispers, “I was awake last night. I saw a group of people go out to that bunker in the grounds. That has to be the one Adriel is in, right? Anyway, I couldn’t see exactly who it was, but I’m sure it was him. Why would they pull him out of there in the middle of the night?”
I rush to calm her, “Maybe they were bringing him inside to save him from the cold, Del. It doesn’t have to mean something bad happened to him. Perhaps Trey realised what a dick he is and pulled Adriel inside for the night.”
“They weren’t leading him back into the compound,” Del says in hushed tones. By now, the urgency in her voice has caught Vincent and Mia’s attention. “They were taking him further away, into the rifle range. I didn’t see them come back.”
My throat closes over.
Tilly is dead, and now Adriel, too. There is no other explanation for what Delilah saw, and we all know it. “Maybe…there might be another reason. Maybe they were moving him to a different bunker?”
Delilah glares dubiously at me. I exhale loudly over my bowl and put my face in my hands. I’m suddenly tired. The late nights, the inadequate food, the grief… it all presses against me. My body is thinner than usual, the skin paler. The circles under my eyes are putting Dean’s to shame. Dean. I can’t imagine that he knows that Adriel is likely dead. I doubt any of the Resolutes know what we now do, because Trey doesn’t carry out executions in the dark unless he doesn’t want anyone to see.
And if the Resolutes found out, there would be an uprising.
It didn’t make any sense to any of us. Even after a half-hour of debating and conspiring, our brain trust was coming up with no valid reason for Trey’s decision to kill Adriel.
If it was, in fact, Trey who killed him.
*
That evening I wait impatiently for someone inside the Resolute dorms to hear my knocking. The sound coming from inside is the usual: chaotic, offensively loud. Certainly not the sounds one would hear from a room full of mourners. It occurs to me that if I turned around and walked away no one would be any the wiser, and it could be someone else’s wretched duty to tell Dean about his dead friend. I have often fancied myself a coward, after all. But no, for all my faults, I can’t be a weasel as well.
The door opens. “Oh,” says the younger boy who answers my persistent knocking. “Dean!” he shouts over his shoulder. “The missus wants you.”
“The missus?” I ask him, my eyebrow raised.
The boy winks. “I wouldn’t tell a soul.”
“Get out of here,” Dean says, appearing suddenly and shoving the boy away. The kid puts his hands in the air and backs away as Dean slips through the opening and closes the door behind him.
He grins at me. For god’s sake… How do you look at this face and deliver evil?
“Hey, I was about to come and find you. You seemed extra pissed at me last night. More-than-usual-pissed,” he says conversationally.
This makes me smile. The bastard. I’m about to break his heart, and he’s making jokes. “Not to add anything else to your list, but why is it that your initiates think we are an item?”
“Well,” he smirks, “For one, we are…and two, you don’t need to worry about that, they would never sell you out.”
“Humph,” I grumble, “unless they accidentally run their mouths in front of the wrong person.”
“They won’t,” Dean says easily, sure of himself, of his militia.
“Right, well,” I say awkwardly, realising that Dean is waiting for me to speak, to say what I came to say. “Dean, something happened last night, something that Delilah saw…” I have to tell him, even if it does start an uprising. “We think Adriel was taken from his bunker last night. At least, that’s what it looked like. He was marched into the rifle range, and they didn’t bring him back.”
I wait for awareness to darken him, but it doesn’t come. “I’m sorry, Dean. I’m so sorry.”
Dean chews the inside of his cheek for a few minutes while I wait. His brow furrows, but still, the truth doesn’t settle in him. Instead, he lets out a low whistle, “It doesn’t look good, but I’m sure he’s fine. They probably just moved him somewhere else.”
He is unperturbed. He doesn’t believe. I realise that denial keeps him from reacting, and decide to do the kind thing and shatter it, “Don’t…don’t you think it’s more likely that they…that he’s…been shot?”
Again, Dean seems to chew on something, his jaw tensing. “I’m sure it’s nothing,” he says, coming closer. “But thanks for telling me. I’ll look into it.”
“You’ll look into it?” I ask incredulously.
“Don’t worry about it, Tess.” He grabs my hand then, averting my attention. “Come somewhere with me.”
“Where?”
He grins with mischief, “Who cares?”
We end up on the rooftop. We joke and kiss and I’m too blissfully distracted to try and bring up Adriel or Julie or anyone else, much as I should. I put Dean’s refusal to believe what I told him down to self-preservation, but if Adriel is dead (which he has to be), Dean will find out soon enough. So instead I tease him about his overgrown hair, and he picks me up with absurd ease and threatens to throw me off the roof until I take it back. I grip his jacket with distasteful need when he leans down to kiss me. I lay against his shoulder and look up at the great nothing in the sky and pretend to listen while he talks about Resolute, but instead I hear his breathe rattling cold air into his lungs, I hear the pulse of his blood moving under my cheek, and I banish uninvited thoughts of the dead, which seem to be piling up too quickly. I meet his eyes whenever he looks down to check I heard what he said, and I try to memorise the colour, the shape. I pretend we have a future. I tell myself to be selfish and use up as much of him as I can. I tell myself that our days are numbered. Later, I’ll thank myself for this moment of greed, because the day after to
morrow, our numbers run out.
Chapter Twenty
I awaken with dread in my stomach.
There is no relief in vomiting – you need sustenance to vomit and I have none. Mercifully, only two more weeks of maltreatment must be undergone, so I’ll be walking out of here before I become ill enough to die. The glass is half full.
I have taken to counting as a way of passing the time in survival training. So while my fingers are busy crafting makeshift weapons out of wood, my brain is tracking numbers:
2 – The number of parents who won’t be waiting for me when I leave.
3 – The number of people who have died in the compound this year.
4 – The number of days until the Resolutes retreat to their sector.
5 – The number of minutes I have to finish this spear.
“Initiate.”
I rise to a hasty attention. Reeves is towering over me, his nostrils flaring like he smells something distasteful. “What the hell do you call this?”
He has my spear in his hands, I don’t even remember him taking it from me. He waits for an answer while the other initiates look up expectantly from their own tasks behind Reeves’ back. As always, I know better than to answer. I find a spot on the wall over his shoulder and let his face blur, distorting the scene. He speaks, words merging and parting like waves, and I barely hear.
“Piece of shit…like an infant…wasting my fucking time...”
3 – The number of times Reeves has likened me to human waste in the last fortnight.
“Are you naturally this incompetent?…small female brain…”
4 – The fourth rib covers the heart.
2 – The number of seconds it would take to retrieve the spear and force it through his chest cavity.
