When both her hands started to flap up on their own, Rosa gave it no mind. In the beginning, it only happened once, maybe twice a day. Soon, it became once or twice an hour, and it progressed to her elbows and on to her shoulders, and it happened all the time. Now, Rosa’s arms went up and down constantly in a rush to keep pace with her heartbeat.
These days, Rosa reported to the factory to work, but only because her department manager was kind. He gave her work that only required walking, things that she could handle without hands. Rosa’s hands were no longer hers; they belonged to YUM.
Rosa could feel her hands rising and falling in her sleep. At home, she left the shower running so she could drink from the spray; she was incapable of holding a cup without flinging water around. Her friends fed her the daily dose of YUM. Her neighbor clothed her, bathed her, and helped Rosa quietly exist and keep a roof over her head.
Now, Rosa’s eyes rested on Madam, who stood stock still without a tic, without bags of exhaustion under her eyes or shame bowing her stance.
Before Rosa could think about the aftermath of what she would do, she had done it. Arms that were no longer hers shot up, down, and up again as she threw herself towards Madam, silently begging her hands to for once listen to her and grab that witch by the throat so she could take Madam’s last breath for herself, a payment for taking the use of Rosa’s hands with the false promises of YUM.
But Rosa never reached Madam.
The Nutri-Corp police shot Rosa with their Shakies when she was a few feet away from Madam.
The Shaky was the police’s favorite weapon. Though it had a military designation, Shaky was the nickname the cops had given it because the weapon shot thousands of small, vibrating beads. When the beads struck their target, they vibrated so fast they burrowed through the skin. In seconds, the beads spread throughout the victim’s body, continuing to vibrate, effectively liquefying everything—bone, muscle, sinew—from the inside. Nothing remained but a perforated bag of skin, bloody ooze seeping through the holes left by the beads.
Madam had created the Shaky, same as she’d created YUM.
She saw the need for something more devastating than a conventional gun, but making special guns and ammunition was not in the experience of a biochemist. Madam ignored that. She studied metallurgy, gun manufacture, gunsmithing, ammunition fabrication, physics, and whatever else she’d needed to know to modify the standard P90 rifle into Nutri-Corps’ “Personal Protection and Security Weapon”—PPSW.
Madam was the one who saw that altering the P90 to spray a directed stream of the vibrating beads wasn’t practical. The beads vibrated against each other, and stray ones would head off in errant directions, much to the dismay of her employees who’d tested the prototype.
Madam went back into the laboratory in her head and emerged with a special cartridge containing the beads. A sensor at its tip activated within a specific distance of the intended target and dispensed the beads. Once free of the cartridge, the vibrations started, and the outcome was exactly as she’d envisioned it.
After testing it on stray cats and dogs, she switched to pigs because their bodies most resembled human ones.
After YUM, her greatest accomplishment, the PPSW was the innovation she treasured. She didn’t even mind when her police started calling it a Shaky. It was…appropriate.
When the police fired their Shakies at Rosa, Madam was the first to move aside, not wanting any of Rosa’s liquefied insides to stain her beautifully tailored dress.
Screams exploded among the factory workers, and still ticcing, many ran into the factory before they became a Shaky target.
The Nutri-Corp police surrounded Danny and picked him up as if a child. They hustled him into one of their vehicles. Others did the same for Madam. Doors slammed closed on the vehicles, and they sped away.
Chandler was glad for the screams because they not only drowned out Jen’s screaming but they also diverted attention from the cliff. Chandler threw herself on top of Jen, pinning her to the ground. She clamped a hand over Jen’s mouth, feeling the girl’s screams vibrate against her palm.
“Stop it!” Chandler hissed. She pressed her other arm against Jen’s neck, trying to still her. “We can’t do anything right now. If you run down there, they’ll shoot you, too.”
Jen’s screams faded, but she panted, her eyes wide. After nearly a minute, Chandler felt Jen’s tense body relax. Chandler eased the pressure on Jen’s throat but stayed on top of Jen, still keeping her pinned to the ground.
“Jen, we need to go, but I won’t get up until I can trust you’ll walk away with me.” She eased her hand from Jen’s mouth.
Jen did not answer. She continued to breathe hard and fast, and Chandler could feel Jen’s heart pounding. Heat pulsed from Jen, and Chandler could feel Jen’s anger surrounding them, mixing with the dirt, clinging to every molecule of air.
“Did they shoot your mom? Was that your mom?” Chandler asked, afraid almost to hear the answer.
“No,” Jen responded, still panting, “that wasn’t her. She… She was next in line, but that wasn’t her.”
“Good.” Chandler slid off Jen and helped her sit up. Chandler draped an arm around Jen’s shoulders. “Then, we still have a chance.”
Her face marred by rape, Jen looked at Chandler. From between clenched teeth, she snapped, “A chance at what?”
Chandler eased her arm from Jen’s shoulders and replied, “Everything.” She sighed, and her words were heavy not with doubt but with determination. “Anything,” she added.
Chapter Thirteen
Maybe
Suzy sat in the center of a wildflower field. Being in the middle felt right. It felt tucked in. It didn’t feel as good as the library couch, but she took what she could get in life.
Book on her lap, Suzy glanced over at Jacob. Jacob, the gentle red-haired giant, was busy smiling at a breeze that ruffled his hair. Jacob, like the library, was safety, a place she could go to laugh, cry, or dance.
Lying on his side, Jacob propped up his head and waited for Suzy to start reading aloud. Suzy couldn’t refuse him anything when he gave her one of his soft smiles and crinkled his small eyes at her.
She wasn’t sure how much he understood of what she read, but that didn’t matter. The story flowing from her mouth was music to their ears.
What Suzy loved most about Jacob was he treated her books with love and care, as if they were newborn babies. She thought he did this because he knew how important they were to her. His love was pure like that from an angel. Jacob was Suzy’s true friend.
This afternoon in the wildflower field, Suzy tried to feel right but couldn’t. The hurt from not remembering what her mother looked like still sat in her brain. She was trying hard to let that go, but the hurt of it kept popping back up like a Jack-in-the-Box.
Suzy opened her book, something that always gave her a little thrill, but today she felt nothing when she opened the book. Not a chill down her back or a smile on her lips as the book popped open and the pages fluttered in the breeze. All she could think about was trying to remember her mom’s face. For once, the answers she needed weren’t in a book, and Suzy felt betrayed because of it.
Today, though, the book she held was one she idolized, a book she escaped to when times were bad, when life wasn’t cutting it. Even Harry and all his magical friends weren’t helping her forget the bad, bad feeling in her stomach.
Jacob sat up, took his sandwich from their bag, and began to eat, stopping only for a second to smile at a butterfly that flitted by him. Putting down his lunch Jacob nudged Suzy, pointed, nudged, and pointed again. Enveloped in her sadness, Suzy paid him no mind. She thought he wanted her to look at the butterfly, but she felt too sad for that. Too sad for beauty.
Finally, when she heard a voice call out her name, she looked up to see Ami.
“Message,” said Ami shoving a piece of paper into Suzy’s hand. Ami stared at Suzy’s and Jacob’s lunch. Suzy didn’t want Ami around. Ami made he
r nervous. She reminded Suzy of a rash, itchy, red, sore, uncomfortable.
Swallowing, Suzy muttered a “Thank you” to Ami, remembering what Lola had said about her.
“Ami is different, like Jacob is different. Not the same way Jacob is different. Just…different.” Lola said. “She lives by herself, outside of Old Town. She won’t take YUM. She isn’t bad. She’s…different.”
“She’s an old lady,” replied Suzy, the words almost a snarl. “She never really talks. Only says one word then stands there staring.”
“She’s harmless. She’s different. The world is full of different. Learn to recognize the different good and the different bad for what it is. Ami is different good. She’s no threat.” Lola kissed the top of Suzy’s head and continued, “Whenever you see her, feed her. She won’t ask for food, but she needs it.”
Suzy picked up her sandwich and apple and handed them to Ami. “For you,” Suzy said.
Ami snatched them from Suzy’s hands before walking away quickly, her head bowed as if in prayer.
Suzy looked over at Jacob, who tore his sandwich in two and handed half to Suzy. He held his hand up for a high five. Suzy took the half of sandwich and gently slapped his palm with hers and stared at him probably longer than she should have, but she only wanted to memorize his face. She never wanted to forget what the people she loved looked like again.
“Message,” Suzy sang out when she entered the trailer.
Both Jen and Lola were home along with Chandler. Chandler, Suzy supposed, would stay a long while, maybe forever. She made herself a mental note to get Chandler’s book order so Suzy could get her something to read on the next library trip. Having a book always helped.
Lola stomped over to Suzy and took the crumbled piece of paper from her hand. Messages carried by Ami always looked like forgotten trash someone had tossed on the street.
“Three lines. Circle the second. Six boxes,” Lola announced this to the room, hoping her words fell to Jen’s ears. Go to him, Lola thought. Maybe Danny would talk sense into Jen about trying to save their parents. Danny might convince her not to try anything.
“What does it mean?” Chandler asked as she gently took the paper from Lola.
Lola watched Chandler’s actions and frowned. Since Chandler had come here, Suzy wondered why Chandler always treated Lola with such care, almost like Chandler thought Lola would break in two if handled roughly. Did Chandler think Lola was weak, nothing but an injured bird?
Jen walked over to them, pausing to run her hands through Suzy’s hair. Jen rested her arm on her little sister’s shoulder.
“Three lines. Three sisters. Circle the second.” Jen looked at Lola. “He’s asking to see me. The boxes mean--”
“He’s hungry,” Lola said.
All three sisters softly laughed then, as if it was an inside joke dipped in grief.
Looking at Chandler, Jen said, “Danny fakes taking YUM. He eats real food we’ve snuck to him for years.” Jen ripped the crumbled paper into pieces and buried them in the soil of a houseplant.
“Danny and Jen are in kinda like, maybe, in love,” Suzy chirped, nudging Jen’s side and got what she’d hoped for: a flush on Jen’s cheeks. “Danny wants besitos,” Suzy teased, making kissing noises. She pretended to vomit loudly.
“I know a rotten cabroncita who needs to go to bed,” Jen said, giving Suzy a playful glare.
Suzy stopped joking and put on her well-practiced serious face. “Can I go? When you try to find our parents? I need to go to the library. I won’t bother you. Drop me off at the library.” Suzy’s face gleamed with hope at her sister, but Jen only shrugged in response.
Chandler looked from Suzy to Jen, pointing at Suzy then herself. Chandler said, “Same. I’ll go with Suzy.”
Lola looked at Jen with, Suzy knew, a feigned air of indifference. “You going?” asked Lola, “‘cause one of us better get cooking.”
Jen felt stupid, stuck, stubborn but she couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t, just couldn’t be logical about things right now. Maybe later, Jen told herself, looking down at her black jeans, making sure they were clean, not a mark on them. She thought of how sharp Danny looked in that expensive suit he’d worn at the factory. The “I’m less than” feeling sat in Jen’s stomach along with the desire to run and hide from the world.
Would she ever feel good enough not only for him but for everything?
Jen sat on the back porch of one of Old Town’s abandoned homes, punishing herself with memories of her mother’s skip, step, skip playing on a loop in her head from the day she saw her mother stand in the factory line, the day she’d seen Danny with Madam. In a way, it was like a movie comedy, but one that was nothing but cruel. The memories stabbed at Jen’s every breath.
Jen felt the full weight of her anguish. Seeing her mother had made Jen sink so low, to the point where all she could do was to fall face-first into her mental mud—almost as if her mother had pushed her into it.
To Jen, her mother was now also “less than.” She swallowed a sob. Her mother had always been her reina, her queen. Now, she was an “It,” what everyone called Poppers.
All the thoughts pounding around inside Jen’s head made her brain foggy. Nothing made sense. Her mother’s condition meant she was no longer human, nothing more than a thing.
No, that couldn’t be true. She was in there somewhere. Her mother had to be more than an “It.” Didn’t she? If Jen could wash the YUM away…
The look on her father’s face in the factory workers line had stunned Jen. The slack, disembodied expression seemed pasted on. Where was his spirit, his temper? Where was the man who sang loudly in the backyard while grilling meat and sipping beer? Jen wondered if she had stood next to him and looked him in the eyes what would have stared back at her? Nothing? Was he gone, or was he in there somewhere screaming for help but silenced by his body’s craving for YUM?
YUM had made the world an ugly place. What would it take to make the world beautiful again? Jen didn’t think such a thing was possible.
Squeezing her eyes closed, Jen knew everyone was broken in some way, whether by YUM or something else, and everyone seemed to be a liar. Herself included.
“Why the porch?”
Danny. Right on time to pull Jen up from her stupor of dismal thoughts.
Danny entered the screened-in porch, careful to close the porch door quietly behind him. He knew he’d find her here. This was her favorite house. She’d told him once that when she was a child, she’d ride her bike by this house on purpose to stare at it and wonder what kind of people lived there?
“I’d sit there,” Jen had told him, “imaging how the people who lived there looked. I was sure they had blonde hair, blue eyes, that they were tall, thin, and always smiling. How could they not smile? They had the best house in town. One thing I did know, the people who owned this house didn’t look like my family—short, brown, dark hair and eyes.”
The house was abandoned, Danny suspected, because its owners had left for Nutri-Corp City, deserting its warmth and character for YUM and the sleek, clinically sterile luxury condos offered to those with money by Madam. When Danny had said that, Jen replied, “Do you suppose YUM has been kind to them?”
In the aftermath of YUM, Jen had claimed this house. This was where she came when she wanted Danny to find her. It was no tower in a castle, but it would do.
Jen looked up and smiled at Danny. She wanted to tell him the truth, that she was sitting on the porch because she was mad at him, didn’t trust him, and he was Madam’s son. Jen wanted to scream into Danny’s face, “I saw you. I saw you.”
I saw how handsome you looked standing by Madam. I watched you be by her side.
“I saw you. I saw you.”
But you didn’t see me.
But she didn’t scream. The porch didn’t offer much protection from the Poppers of Old Town. Jen and Danny could easily be heard and caught.
Jen had done that on purpose. A suicidal action. If they caught
her. If the Nutri-Corp police took her to Madam that would hurt Danny in so many ways, and Jen wanted Danny to hurt.
Instead, Jen lied, something she’d told herself to get used to. Everyone lied, what was the big deal?
“I needed the fresh air,” Jen responded. The words emerged from her mouth flatly, heavily, as if gravity would pull them down to the floor.
Danny didn’t answer but sat on the bench, too close to Jen. He took her hand and rested his head on her shoulder. Almost like a child, he pressed his face into her neck, as if trying to bury himself under her thick, dark brown hair. Danny sighed with content.
Jen stared ahead beyond the screens of the porch’s windows. She stared at the overgrown grass and dead flowers in the yard. The yard had once held a plush garden. She realized she felt like the dead flowers on the inside.
“I saw you,” she whispered; the words she thought she’d locked up slid from her mouth, as if alive with their own heartbeat and rage to deal with.
Danny raised his head. “When?” he asked. He still held her hand. He would not let go.
“At the factory,” Jen answered, trying not to hold her anger back. What she felt today might not be what she felt tomorrow.
Danny’s eyes looked down. “Madam, she wants to send YUM across the borders. She wants to go into other countries, and I don’t know what to do,” Danny said, voice quivering.
That unsettled Jen enough she lifted his head and finally faced him. Looking into Danny’s face, Jen remembered how her wayward heart had wanted to run down the mountain to him when he was at the factory. She knew she could only stifle herself so much before she’d lose herself in him.
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