by Talis Jones
Nyx pauses in playing with the hologram, flipping through three-dimensional blueprints of the Akeley Building, to nod in confirmation of her orders.
“Frocket,” he says and she almost visibly shrinks at the attention. “You’ll be going in as part of the children’s choir hired as part of the entertainment for the evening. Arcas will be monitoring all of us via camera but I want you to be eyes on the main floor keeping a watch on Maddy. Simple job and with any luck you’ll have nothing to do but sing a few carols with the other kids. Because of the music volume, your mic will be muted but if you need to communicate with us then brush your hair back behind your ears with both hands at the same time and Arcas will turn on your mic.”
As Yosef rattles off the plan and everyone’s part in the play my lungs squeeze tighter and tighter. We’re about to do a job on Charlie, a job I can’t get out of. Each minute brings closer Yosef’s plan for how exactly I will betray Charlie and I can’t decide if it’s better to tell him that I’ve been hanging out and pinging him for the past week or not. It would mean he finds out I’ve been hiding it from him which is basically lying and if there’s one thing he hates most it’s a liar. No, he can’t find out. He can’t.
“Maddy,” Yosef yanks my attention to the cool calculation of his eyes. “Your job, as our most talented pretender, not to mention that Frocket is too young and Nyx has other uses, will be to go to the ball as Osman’s guest.”
Talented pretender? I pray I’m reading too much into his words.
“How the hell is she supposed to manage that?” Castor protests. “She has, what, a week? A week to kick his plus one to the curb and take their place on his arm? The security on this guy is insane, his guards barely even pick up on the cameras and you know Arcas doesn’t miss anything the cameras see. There’s no way a random low-level stranger is going to get anywhere near the Eurasian diplomat.”
“He’s right,” Nyx sighs. “Osman is a tough mark.”
Yosef doesn’t take his eyes off of mine. “Maybe it could be as simple as accidentally bumping into him on the street,” he suggests and I know he knows and he’s just waiting to see how long I’ll try to deny it.
Shit.
“I met him,” I confess, my voice quieter than I’d like. “He even gave me his number.”
Everyone’s mouth fall open except Yosef’s. Instead he smiles and it’s a cold, angry thing.
“Damn,” Nyx laughs. “How did you ever manage that?”
My eyes flit towards Arcas guiltily and he instantly puts it together. “The guy who knocked you over in the bakery,” he guesses. “Is he the same guy who I saw…” his voice trails off as he lunges for Yosef’s tablet and pulls up footage too recent to have been deleted.
The screen lights up with footage of Charlie and me ice-skating and everyone leans in for a look. Except Yosef.
“I tried to brush him off but he offered to pay me to show him around the city and give him a break from politicians and meetings,” I explain quickly.
“And he just gave you his number to ping him whenever you want?” KJ asks suspiciously. “You don’t even have a phone.”
Heart in my throat I press back against my chair as if distancing myself from the footage could make it less real. Except that it was fun and there’s nothing to feel guilty about because I’d done nothing wrong…besides go against direct orders then hide it and lie about it. It wouldn’t be a big deal, no one seems to care much other than to be impressed and surprised, but the way Yosef looks at me has guilt burning my bones anyway.
“I didn’t ask for it,” I snap. “I don’t even know why he’d bother.”
“Exactly,” Yosef growls. “Why would he bother wasting his time with you? You could be anyone and yet he chose to spend any free moment he could spare with you. You never thought to ask why?”
“No, I didn’t,” I growl right back. “It isn’t a big deal!”
“What if he knows who you fucking are, Maddy! He could take you back! You still have nightmares about that place! What the fuck were you thinking?!” Yosef shouts and that has everyone frozen wide-eyed though mine pool with tears.
Chest heaving he blinks, realizing that for once he’s causing the scene, and shoves away from the table storming outside. None of us move until the door slams making us all jump. Before anyone can interrogate me or utter anything about what the hell just happened, I shove my headphones over my ears and crank the music to blast away everything I’m trying very hard not to feel right now. Castor reaches for me but I jerk my arm out of reach and race for the stairs.
“The whipping post is all I see but it’s only my self that’s holding me…”
Part Two
Little Drummer Boy
Eleven
6 YEARS AGO
Two years have passed. I know because they keep track for us. Sometimes I imagine the ink on my chin is laced with fire that burns if I relax. My identification, they say, is that number alone. I have little else. They took my hair that my mother so admired. They took the name my parents so loved. They took my family that I once relied on for everything and replaced it with white walls, white coats, white smiles, and white noise.
I stare at my clothes, a deep ocean blue that somehow brings me calm in this sterile, unfeeling, colorless nightmare, despite it being a prison uniform. It reminds me of my dream to visit the sea. I’ve always wanted to visit the sea…
42 sits next to me in the cafeteria focused on the energy-fueled food that is pointless in taste, supping on it like it’s the only food that has ever been and ever will be. She doesn’t show the signs of struggle I see flit across the rest of us whether in the eyes, the shoulders, the step…but never the words. They don’t like to hear the words.
I glance over at 42 again. Only a year older but a lot smaller and yet she’s a veteran in this place. Her identification stands out in bluish lines on her chin for all to see like my own. I wish they’d tucked them away. To see it in the mirror each day when I brush my teeth, impossible to hide, is far worse, requiring an acceptance I don’t want to give.
“Hi ho the mourners go, crying over little lambs lost. Hee Haw the swine all huff, railing ‘tis the cause and cost,” 42 sings just loud enough to brush my ears. “The lambs all cry but no one will come. One by one they stand or die to the beat of the rat-a-tat drum.”
“42,” I murmur, a chill running down my spine. “You’re doing it again.” Her voice is lovely with a depth it shouldn’t have and yet there’s a creepiness in it that gives me nightmares.
“I know,” she smiles in her unsettling way. “It’s for you.” She finally turns to face me and her eyes look too deep, a sharpened drill digging for…for whatever it is she hunts. “What will you do, Maddy?” she asks curiously. “Rat-a-tat rat-a-tat rat-a-tat…”
“Stop it,” I snap. My palms sweat and my hands shake as I try to sip from my cup.
“What will you do, Maddy?” she asks again, invoking my forbidden name again.
“I don’t know,” I hiss.
“Stand or sit? Stand or sit?” she singsongs in that way I fear. Veteran perhaps, but madness has become her armor of survival. She holds on, firmly, but at what cost? There is no escape. We arrive, we suffer, and one by one I watch us die.
“What are you talking about?” I shouldn’t have said anything, indulging her only encourages her. Perhaps that’s why she seeks me out, because no one else will even meet her eye. I like to think I’m her friend because I’m a nice person, but if I examine myself too closely I think it might be because mad or not she exudes a strength I can cower behind.
“Look,” is all 42 says to my question.
I frown in puzzlement then the growing sounds begin to reach me and I pivot in my seat. Three tables down a boy seems to be getting upset. His friends try to calm him with desperate hushes while not wanting to gain any attention themselves. They don’t like to hear our words. We keep those locked up tight. This boy looks to be maybe sixteen. He should know better or maybe he’
s new. Maybe he doesn’t realize the truth yet but he will learn soon enough.
“Stand or sit? Stand or sit?”
I whip my head around to glare at 42 but she’s resumed tucking into her meal. “Why don’t you stand or sit?” I throw back at her.
She looks me dead in the eyes and says, “I’m sitting today. It’s too soon to stand.”
I don’t even bother to begin to understand her. My attention is dragged back over to the boy starting to gesture and exude enough agitation to catch the attention of one of the Martials guarding the room. I should go over there and talk to him, maybe I can calm him down, explain things, something to help. He doesn’t know, he can’t possibly know what he risks by acting out. I hesitate because if I do I risk garnering the Martials’ attention as well and I do know what that means. The others at his table give up on him, returning to an almost robotic eating of their meal, their eyes locked onto the table.
I can’t make out what he’s saying but it’s obvious now that he’s sobbing and struggling to get it under control. He needs comfort and I yearn to stand up, walk over, and give it to him. He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know…
I will stand up.
I will walk over there.
I will help him calm down before–
Too late.
I’d envisioned it perfectly, every step I’d take, every gesture I’d offer, every word I’d murmur…but imagining the right thing isn’t the same as having the courage to actually do it.
Two Martials march over to the boy and haul him from the table. His friends, or whomever he sits with, don’t so much as flinch so focused on the table with fear to ice their veins. Thick tears of desperation, confusion, and hurt stain his face, his neck, his shirt. He tries to curl up into a ball but the Martials are too strong to let him curl up and weep so he’s carried out and he begins to scream, the tendons in his neck standing out in sharp protest, and I watch it all unfold with my mouth open and horror in my eyes, with good intentions in my heart and guilt in my lungs.
Tears threaten to spill but a delicate hand closes over mine. I look at 42 and see knowing in her gaze.
“Today you sat,” she says as if my doing so doesn’t mean a boy is being horribly punished for it. “I saw you fight to stand, but today you sat. One day you will stand.”
She says it with such confidence in me I don’t know how to take it.
The boy’s face…the faces of others whom I’ve watched be hauled away only to return empty…it haunts me and I know somehow she’s right. I take care of people, it’s my instinct, and denying it only makes the drive grow stronger. I might not stand today or tomorrow, but each day I’ll fight against my fear a little bit more until at last, even if on wobbly legs like a baby deer’s, I stand.
I focus on the color of my clothing to calm my breaths and try to allow 42’s confidence to fill me with hope. The sea. Think of the sea, I tell myself. I close my eyes and think of the deep blue ocean, of bright colored candies, of hands that hold instead of hurt, of laughter and wind and music. I think of it all and in the middle of this vision I chant my name over and over. You’d be amazed at how quickly people can forget their own name, who they are, what they dream. There may be no escaping from Hell, but I’ll be damned if I just hand over everything else.
They can’t have it.
They can’t have me.
I smile in my head and I dream of the sea.
Twelve
Mentally shaking off the last icy tendrils gripping me from my past I reach for the phone Charlie gave me. Even after Yosef’s fit over my association with Charlie, or maybe in spite of it, or perhaps just simply because I wanted to, I’ve been sending pings back and forth with growing frequency and it’s a wonder Charlie hasn’t tried to abort this friendship he began.
Charlie is like a breath of fresh air, born to a foreign world of posh wealth, naïve in so many ways yet more acquainted with the world than I ever could be, and best of all he has such a sweetness about him that I can’t seem to resist. Or maybe I can, but don’t want to. I don’t want to, I admit to myself. Yet every time I pick up the little device to send a ping, a zing of guilt hums in my gut despite having no right to be there.
No matter how early or late I ping him, Charlie is always quick to respond. <
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I can’t help the roll of my eyes.
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I protest.
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My gut suddenly recoils as the truth of the date reasserts itself in my mind and the panic at securing a place by Charlie’s side for the ball turns my hands cold. The week flew by and while we’ve been talking more and more, hanging out in person when we can, he’s not once brought up the ball and a reluctance to swindle this Prince Charming creature who’s become a friend has kept me from figuring out how to bring it up. Time has run out.
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Heat rushes to my cheeks from unfounded embarrassment. I often feel off balance and childish around Charlie.
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A gust of breath pushes out from between my lips in relief that he’s brought it up so I won’t seem so nosy and desperate.
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Refusing to hope I reply
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I stare at the screen lit up with the offer we’ve all been waiting for (and mentally skip over this mention of a missing person).
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My fingers tap furiously at the screen but before I can send any more of my worry his way his number turns gray. He must’ve turned off his device, the bastard. Tossing my own onto my cot I skip down the stairs at a heavy-footed trot sure to get everyone’s attention in a house where stealth is in constant practice.
“Oh it’s you, Maddy,” Arcas smiles. “When did you turn into an elephant?”
“Ha. Ha,” I snark back. “I have finally managed to secure a place as Cha– uh Osman’s guest for the ball tonight.”
“Leaving things a bit last minute, aren’t you,” complains KJ from behind his desk.
“You can’t just walk up to some big important politician and say ‘Oh please won’t you take me to the ball?’” I sigh.
