Stray

by Evan Fuller

  16.

  A Friend Indeed

  “So Dogeye gives him the key to the exit. They step into the shop and almost see me, but I knock the amulet out of the shopkeeper’s hand and there’s this big explosion and I get out before either of them can recognize me.”

  He was scrambling, he knew, giddy. So much had happened in the past day that he was struggling to remember it all and probably forgetting some details. They’d covered the hole in the wall, and when at last they made it back inside the manse, Emery had fallen promptly into bed. He’d slept till midday, showered, eaten, reflected upon the events of the evening and showered again, then hurried to Juliet’s house when he figured she must be finished her classes. She had sat patiently through the torrent of information, never interrupting except to ask for clarification, withholding comment even when she appeared shocked. It was time to see what she thought of all this. “So that’s where I need to ask you an enormous favor, and I feel terrible for even asking. But we need that key, and since you and Hanssen are together at the Engals’ for dinner every week…” He fished a key out of his pocket. It was a copy of the key to the estate’s top floor; he’d probably need to replace the knob anyhow. He pressed it into her hand. “It’s a regular Anselm key; you can swap it for this one.”

  He waited. Juliet turned away. She stared at her hands, turning the key over a few times.

  “I know it’s not fair, and I really wish there was any other way. But we have to get that medicine.”

  A long silence.

  “If it’s too dangerous—”

  “It’s not about the danger.”

  He nodded, drew a breath. “What is it about?”

  “A few weeks ago I told you there was line between me helping you because I’m your friend and me trying to stop you from ruining your life because I’m your friend.” She turned to face him again, her demeanor surprisingly stern. “I need you to take a minute to think about everything you’ve just told me, everything that’s happened since this tunnel and this whole medicine thing started. Emery, this is the line.”

  “Is there something you need to say?”

  Juliet pursed her lips. “I’ve been trying to say it since the day Timothy died.”

  “I understand that you’re worried about me. I know that. And yes, I was definitely happier and better-rested before I was neck-deep in all this. But you need to believe that this is bigger than either of us.” He had to make her see.

  “No. You want to keep thinking that because getting away from yourself makes it feel simple. But it all comes back to you.”

  He didn’t want to be defensive, but Emery felt the muscles in his mouth tighten. “Say what you mean.”

  “I mean you can do the right thing for the wrong reasons, and if you do that enough it gets to a point where the thing itself isn’t even right anymore. It’s like…” she sighed. “I’m sorry, but I can’t just let you keep going without hearing this. Green told you not to take this Salvador kid, didn’t he? If you were doing this with anything approaching a healthy sense of self, you might have realized that there’s a limit to how much you should take on, just like with the tunnel.”

  “The tunnel ended up leading me—”

  “And where did Salvador end up leading you? What the hell is the point of offering these kids a safe haven if you’re so motivated by your savior complex and your guilt that you’ll let people like that into it? The new girl might have gotten roughed up a bit, but face it, you got lucky compared to what could have happened. And Green told you.”

  A crack in the armor. He scrambled for a defense. “Why is it that someone calls it a ‘savior complex’ when I try to do better than everyone else in this godforsaken city?”

  He looked pointedly at her, but she didn’t take the bait. “Because you don’t know what a healthy limit is, Emery. Because when Timothy died, of course you felt terrible, but you should eventually have realized that you did everything you could. Like you said, that you did better than everyone else in this godforsaken city. Instead, you took every ounce of guilt you felt and you strapped it to your back, right next to what happened with your cousin in Ambler and every other awful thing you’ve been through and thought for some reason that you could have fixed. And not only has it made you miserable, but it’s made you stupid. It made you let Salvador in against good advice, it made you do terribly in school and finally drop out, and now your counselor and your instructors all have confirmation that you must be hiding something. All this baggage isn’t just bad for you personally. It’s become the biggest danger to every good thing you’ve managed to do.”

  Everything in the room was pressing in; the knot in his gut pulled taut. He couldn’t look her words in the face. “So you aren’t going to help me.”

  “Damnit, Emery, could you maybe for one moment listen to what I’m saying and think about your own well-being?”

  “I don’t have time for that.” There was the slightest tremor in his voice, the sound of something hollow.

  “It has nothing to do with time. I think you’re scared of it.” Her tone was earnest, not attacking, but nonetheless he wanted to crawl behind the bed. “All that blaming yourself has made spending time inside your own head pretty ugly, and you’re so against focusing on your own health that you feel guiltier when you take even a moment for introspection. But like I said, it’s hurting your noble efforts as much as it’s hurting you. You need to stare this stuff in the face, because you can’t go on the way you’ve been going. You might feel ecstatic now because you’ve made this big breakthrough, but look at it as a whole, Emery. You haven’t been doing well and you’ve been screwing up. If you’re not willing to think about yourself for your own sake, do it for your strays. They’re not going to be safe until you find some balance and clarity, and that won’t happen until you learn to stop blaming yourself for everything and start taking care of yourself first and foremost.”

  “I want to,” he heard himself say. “But I don’t know how to do that without being selfish.”

  “You can’t do much good without being a little selfish.” Her tone was softening as he offered less resistance. “You have to look after yourself if you want to have anything to give. You have to pace yourself. You’re already feeling burnt out; I’ve been able to tell by looking at you. The only way you’ll be doing this a year from now is if you keep it manageable—and, obviously, if you don’t keep being so conspicuous that you get found out by Unity. You’re the most self-sacrificing person I know, and that’s gotten way past the point of being a good thing.”

  He finally nodded. “What do you think I should do? I can’t just stop now, I’ve already taken all these people on, and the tunnel and the medicine…”

  “That’s fine. It’s your mindset that needs to change more than anything. You might as well see if you can get this medicine at this point, but how are you going to react if things don’t go as planned? Are you going to be able to live with that or will it be one more reason to subtly hate yourself and push yourself even harder? And you know I’ve always thought the tunnel was a bad idea. You’ll find yourself with twice as many residents in no time, and another Salvador sooner or later.

  “Just accept the limits of what you can reasonably do, and maybe even be happy with yourself for doing it. Most people our age aren’t tying themselves down with all this. Yeah, you always say someone has to do it, but you have a future to consider. You can keep doing what you’re doing now till you get caught or the money you inherited runs out, or you can learn to be a functioning member of this city with a real chance of impacting how it functions.”

  “If you’re suggesting I should go back to school, I just can’t do that right now. Dr. Mari—”

  “Shouldn’t scare you after looking Three Dogs and Dr. Hanssen in the eye. And I’m not suggesting. That’s my condition. I’ll do my best to get that stupid key for you, Emery, but you’re going to re-enroll. I told you how stupid dropping out was when you first suggested it.”

>   What choice did he have? “Alright.”

  “I obviously can’t force you to give a damn or to listen to anything I’m saying, but I really hope you’re paying attention.” Juliet’s voice was even softer now, and Emery finally brought himself to meet her gaze again. “It’s really self-absorbed, you know, being so selfless. The same way you care about other people, there are other people who care about you, man. And as your best friend, it hurts me to see you not taking care of yourself.”

  He’d never thought of it like that before. “Wow.” He slowly began to nod, not knowing what else to say. “Yeah. Okay. Okay.”

  “Good.” The energy of the room was calmer again. “Getting to the key shouldn’t be too hard if he leaves it in his coat pocket. But he just might never bring it to the Engals’, in which case I’d have no other way of getting to it. Will you be able to live with that if it happens?”

  “I suppose so.” He tried to smile; even Green had said it wouldn’t be the end of the world if they failed to find a way.

  “Okay. Then I’m going to try as hard as I can to get the key, and you’re going to try as hard as you can to get this medication without taking any stupid risks, and then you’re going to calm down, focus on what’s already on your plate, and go see about getting back into your classes, even if it means seeing the counselor who you insist is from hell.”

  “Deal.” He exhaled a chestful of tension. “I never got around to voting, you know.”

  “Idiot.” She smiled. “The good news is that we got what I think will be the right people. Paige Petrou, the maestra you had in linguistics last term, just barely got edged out, and I think she would have sealed it for us, but we still have more people for Rizzo than Gullini at this point. There’s this expedition about to go out too, and Rizzo’s pretty much the key figure in putting it together, so that should also help our chances. There’s really no telling which way it’ll go till the final decision comes down, but I’m pretty confident. They convene starting three days from now.”

  “That’s good to hear.” The change of subject was a welcome one. “If he does win, how much do you think will really change?”

  Juliet shrugged. “I’m not sure. I’d like to think we’ll get to a place where circle divisions aren’t such a hang-up that someone’s romantic involvements can earn lifelong exile, but Rittenhouse is built on those principles.” She smiled to herself a little. “I don’t want to be unrealistic. But, you know, I’m hopeful.”

  “Yeah,” Emery murmured, “we can hope. Juliet…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I guess I tend to gravitate toward the dramatic, the horror stories, the really drastic things. I just want to say I’m sorry that I haven’t really been there much for you over the last several months, and I’m sorry that I wasn’t willing to listen to your advice. It was a mistake.”

  She rested a hand on his. “It’s alright. It’s more about seeing you do better than anything. It’s been a bit hard to watch.”

  “Yeah. I—” he tried to think of how to say it. “I don’t really feel very grateful right now, given that I still have to face Dr. Mari and I’m not looking forward to that. But you do deserve my thanks, and I’ll probably be able to offer them with sincerity in the near future. So thanks, in advance.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Jerk. You’re totally welcome, in advance.”

  –

  The illustration of the watch was flawlessly done. Though Emery was a painter himself, if somewhat less so recently, he couldn’t imagine how much time and effort it would have taken to fill a book with such precise drawings. He examined the watch itself against the diagram and description, trying to ensure that nothing was damaged. It was enough of a liability even in one piece. Finally he concluded that there was no discernible damage; it appeared to be in perfect order. At the turn of every minute, the hand clicked forward in near-silence.

  As he turned to deposit it in the safe, he found Miren in the doorway. “Oh,” he greeted her. “You’re not supposed to be up here.”

  “I’m not supposed to enter the top level. You left the door open; I’m on the staircase.”

  He sighed. “Give me a minute.” He walked toward the door and closed it partway, enough to obscure his work. When the pocket watch was in the safe he opened it again.

  “Can I come up?”

  “I really don’t feel you need much more leeway with the house rules than you’ve already taken.” She looked crushed, but the statement wasn’t unfair. “You can go downstairs and wait for me, or you can sit right there on the top stair and we can talk. I have to fix this door.”

  Oliver had helpfully procured a long strip of scrap metal from the rubble in the tunnel and had somehow managed to create two holes in either end. Emery held it against the doorjamb: it wasn’t pretty, but it should keep the deadbolt more or less in place and allow him to lock the door. He carefully set his first nail.

  “I was just coming by to see how you’re doing,” Miren said as he groped around for the hammer. “Oliver told me a lot of intense stuff happened in Redemption.”

  “Last time you came to see how I was doing, it ended up being more to inform me that you’d lied to me and endangered all of us.”

  “Yeah.” She stared at her hands; he swung at the nail. “I wanted to apologize about that again. I don’t have any other bad news this time, I promise.”

  Tap. Tap. He felt every strike in his side. His work in the tunnel had upset the wound in a lingering way. “That’s good, at least.”

  “Yeah. So how was it down there?”

  “Unbelievable. But I’m not sure anything should be unbelievable anymore. The first person to mention Redemption to me was this Chukwu kid who was my classmate last term. He was the most conspicuous dealer you could imagine—he couldn’t be more obvious, you know? And the whole time I was wondering how he hadn’t been caught.”

  “Did you figure it out?”

  “I think so. He hasn’t been caught because no one is looking to catch anyone. Unity has one little jailhouse for short-term incarcerations, and the circle governments each fine their respective lawbreakers, but the punishment for major crimes is exile from the city. And that almost never happens. The only people who get thrown out are those who break the law in such obvious ways that it’s impossible to ignore. But willful ignorance is standard procedure up until that point. These Low Doors the Farsi are using? People in their government have to be onto that; it’s too complex to be a very well-kept secret. And Redemption is run by both Vorteil and Roccetti businessmen. Everyone has their hands in the black markets somehow; nobody is getting found out because everyone is guilty.”

  “Is it realistic to expect a city without crime, though?”

  “Not completely without crime, I guess, but we can do better than this.” He shivered. “They’re trafficking people down there.”

  “They do that outside too. I don’t know if there’s anywhere you can get away from it.”

  He nodded. For a while neither of them spoke; the only sounds were the tap-tap-tap of the hammer and the echoes of the children squabbling downstairs. “Those kids,” he sighed. “I just can’t get them to follow some simple rules.”

  “Emery—do you think you can forgive me?” He glanced at her between swings; there was a pitiable expression of remorse in her enormous eyes.

  He missed the nail. He’d been counting the minutes to this confrontation. “Miren, I’m still debating whether I should allow you to stay. I’m not entirely convinced you’re any less dangerous than Salvador was.”

  She looked ready to cry. “That’s not fair.”

  “Isn’t it?” He felt it hard to summon much sympathy. “What he did to Leila would never have happened, if you hadn’t decided to hide him. As for this whole thing between us, whatever it was—it’s out of the question now. Any kind of relationship needs honesty to work, and the past couple weeks haven’t really done a lot for your record on that front. Really, you’ve never been very forward with me
. You’ve never even told me where you’re from.”

  Desperation. “I can do better.”

  “What are the names of your parents—their full names—and of the place where you lived until you came here?”

  She bit her lip.

  “I’m sure you can do better, if you really want to. But so far you haven’t chosen to do that. I’m not going to keep worrying about what you’re hiding from me. It’s exhausting, and I really have enough on my plate without it.” He shrugged. “Juliet says I have a savior complex. The truth is I ended things with Lydia because there wasn’t an even give-and-take in that relationship, if anything, and you and I have done worse. The next time I get involved with someone, whenever that is, I want a relationship of equality and trust. Nothing I’ve seen from you suggests you’re capable of that.”

  Her pleading eyes welled with tears; she began to reply but aborted the attempt. Finally she spun and descended the staircase without another word. A minute later the bar was in place. He locked the door behind him as he left.