A Time to Die

by Nadine Brandes

  All three of us sigh at once. Mother puts the kettle on the wood stove instead of making a fire, and plops a cloth pouch of coffee grounds into the water. “Your father is going to fetch Reid from the Nether Hospital tonight.”

  “No.” I shake my head. “Reid shouldn’t come. He shouldn’t even know.” If he knows what I’ve done, he’ll do anything to stop the Enforcers. He’ll tell about our Clock or try and convince me to escape. He’ll doom himself to an identical fate or kill himself trying.

  “He has a right to know,” Father grunts. “This involves him, too. He’ll be questioned anyway—they may even be doing it now.” He stands. “I’m going to get him.”

  I open my mouth, but he squeezes my shoulder and strides from the kitchen into the morning rays. Mother doesn’t even wait for coffee before she announces, “I’m going to organize your Farewell party.” So saying, she leaves the house, too.

  Are they afraid to be with me? I don’t blame them, I’ve transformed into some sort of purpose-crazed monster in my Last Year. I don’t make sense. Even when my life was purposeless I still felt logical. Now? I can’t understand myself. My desires and determination change daily.

  I’m frightened, despite my outward desire to know Skelley Chase’s plan and to stand up for Reid. My Clock has just been reduced to a single day, that much I know. I can’t survive twenty-four hours across that Wall.

  I’ve heard too many rumors—there’s a paradise on the other side, it’s a wasteland of dirt and rocks, the Independents have a lifestyle free from corrupt power or greed, the Independents caught a widespread disease that turned them deranged and feral.

  Tomorrow, I’ll find out the truth.

  Right before I die.

  1o

  000.174.16.25.59

  Reid lifts Mother’s expensive toast glass. “To my little Brielle.” He sports multiple bandages and a sling with one of my ribbons tied to it—the reddish-brown lace one. Apparently it reminded him of my hair.

  “You didn’t have hide all day, Parvin.” Mother lifts her glass. “Some people stopped to visit. Even that young Enforcer, Hawke, came for a moment.”

  “He just came to inspect her nanobook.” Reid hands his glass to Father. “The Enforcers are suspicious.”

  I take Mother’s glass for my sip. “It’s done with.”

  Our foursome toast feels like freedom and captivity all at the same time. I ingest the bubbly-something with trembling lips. We will never be together in this house again.

  The fire pops. Chills sweep up my body and down again with the liquid I swallow, like soap on a washboard. The Numbers tick on the mantel. I wish they weren’t displayed.

  000.174.16.21.13

  One hundred and seventy-four days, sixteen hours, and twenty-one minutes. I’ll spend tomorrow with an Enforcer on the train. No one else is allowed to accompany me to the Wall. I’ll cross and then die.

  Alone.

  Gifts from my family rest on the table—I don’t know why we give presents at Farewell parties. Those with Good-byes can never enjoy or use them.

  Reid gave me his own handmade canvas shoulder-pack with wool padding sewn into the straps. Father gave me a knife the length of my forearm and a wooden sheath. It will be useful if I survive long enough to encounter monsters or cannibals.

  Mother’s gift is an elegant mixture of practical and lovely—black leggings and a skirt with a fur hem and triple layered with brown, green, and grey wool. It’s knee-length with a high waist and pockets around the wide band.

  The colors are for camouflage and the skirt can be untied to spread like a blanket. She made it last night after a visit from Skelley Chase, while I was in the containment center.

  My hands clench my glass as I’m seized by an instant of sorrow and longing. “I want to live to make you all proud.”

  What I don’t say is how I also wish to die and leave Mother happy with her faultless son . . . how I want to avoid the terrors and trials of the mysterious West, to apologize to God for a wasted life . . . how I hope He still allows me a glimpse of polished gold streets.

  Mother hastily wipes away a tear. Her sorrow comforts me. Am I being too hard on everyone? She lifts her chin and relapses into poised indifference.

  Reid squeezes my hand. “It’s okay to be afraid.”

  I shudder and sniff. They’re all trying to make this a positive evening, but don’t they realize how frightening a Good-bye is? I expected Reid to understand after the train accident, but he doesn’t show any understanding. In fact, he isn’t showing much emotion except fake pleasantness.

  When he first stepped through the door, he gave me a long hug as best he could against the pain, but he never said, “Let’s switch.” Or “Take the Clock and run.” He just spoke two words:

  “I’m sorry.”

  I wanted to see him upset about the situation. I wanted to see him sad I might die early, but he took it with a brave smile. I had all my arguments ready.

  No, Reid. It’s my choice.

  You can’t go instead. I’m doing this for you.

  You have a better life to live. Keep the Clock.

  They all sounded so heroic, but I didn’t get to use a single one. He doesn’t seem to mind that I’m being shoved through the Wall against my will.

  I am alone.

  During the gift giving, he grew giddy like he does every Christmas. In his excitement, he almost always blurts out the contents before the opener even unwraps it. But tonight I wanted to see him solemn.

  Once I’m gone, maybe he’ll grieve.

  I scan my family. My throat closes. “Thank you.”

  Mother doesn’t meet my eyes and I allow a resigned abandonment to blanket my heart. Everyone has faces on. I want them to be real—to cry and be fearful with me. Beyond all this is a strange desire for them to pray with me—for me. But their false fronts make me feel more flawed and alone than ever.

  “Off to bed.” Father tosses another log into the fire. “The train leaves at six. I’ll wake you at five.”

  There’s no need for him to remind me. I won’t sleep in tomorrow. I’ll be lucky to sleep at all. I was always told the Farewell party is joyous and calm, but that’s from people who’ve had their entire lifetime to accept their Numbers. What would it be like to feel calm at this moment? I can’t even remember calm, not since before Reid’s accident.

  All I feel now is emptiness.

  000.174.08.30.11

  My senses sharpen the moment I wake up. I hear the rush of each raindrop before it crashes against the wood of the shutters. I smell the new fire in the kitchen holding a warm good-bye in its ashes. I breathe in the weight of my life—the memories, the dreams, the mistakes, the regrets. Even now, my life feels thin and light.

  I sit up and swing my feet over the edge of the bed. The sound of my socks brushing the floor kisses my ears and I welcome the goose bumps on my shoulders. I am more alive today than ever before because one phrase repeats in my mind.

  Never again. Never again. Never again. Never again will I feel, see, touch, smell, or hear these things. I run my hand over the smooth desk Father carved. The wood is slick and warm with love and invitation.

  I dress in my new skirt, leggings, boots, and my favorite sturdy, long-sleeved shirt beneath my vest. I don’t know what to pack—how does one prepare for death?

  The first thing to go in after a scan of my room is my Bible, like I’m taking God with me. I toss in a half-used box of matches, some wool socks, underwear, my self-updating Daily Hemisphere, an extra shirt, and—for sentimental reasons—my pocket-sized sewing kit. Last, is Skelley Chase’s electronic journal and watch—not that I’ll use them much.

  I squeeze the watch in my fist, half wishing I could crush it. I think back to the hope I held in my heart that he would even read my autobiography on Assessment Day. Now he’s writing it, both on electric
paper and across my life—taking charge.

  Dressed and packed, I enter the kitchen. Mother sits at the table with a mug between her hands and heavy eyes. She looks up and breathes, “Parvin.”

  My name sounds like a lily spoken into a breeze—soft, treasured. I’m young, new, and hopeful, like I’m ready to start life, not end it.

  She rises from the table and greets me with a tight hug. For the first time she’s not bustling around with everyone’s to-do lists running through her mind. “I love you,” she whispers.

  I’ve never heard her say these words with such meaning. She speaks them while we hug so I can’t see her face. She never liked showing emotion.

  “I love you.” And I mean it. Why did we ever argue when life was this short? I didn’t have time to argue with her. I should have loved her better. I pull away and blurt the one question I must have answered before I die: “Why did you write in your journal that I was your curse?”

  With a sniff, she seems to overcome her weakened state and turns to the wood stove where a pot sits heating. “I didn’t say you were my curse.”

  “‘I have a daughter. I’m cursed.’ Why did you write that?”

  Her shoulders rise and fall with a breath. “The midwife told me I was cursed. I wrote her words.”

  I plop at the table and glance at the clock—5:00 a.m. We have time for this discussion. “What did her words mean to you? Why were they so important?”

  Mother stirs the contents of the pot and I inhale cinnamon oatmeal with a hint of honey. “I never wanted to forget,” she mutters. “I never wanted to forget to appreciate you.”

  My mind reels backward. “But . . . I thought you regretted having me.”

  The slam of the cast-iron lid onto the pot startles me, and she turns with eyes as hot as the fire. “You are my blessing, Parvin. You were the hope that saved me from despair that night. Don’t ever think I regretted you.”

  “But . . .” I bite my lip. You always seemed to love Reid more. “Why say you’re cursed?”

  “I’m cursed because I have to lose three children instead of two.”

  Things start to make sense. Mother’s harshness this past year stemmed from her fear of losing another child. She felt cursed knowing she’d probably watch us all die before her Clock even showed a single permanent zero.

  Father bursts from his room and strides to my door before spotting me at the table.

  “Good morning,” I say.

  He smiles, but a second later his chin quivers and his face crumples into tearful wrinkles. He strides right back into his own room. I pound my fist once against the table followed by my head. I groan.

  “Don’t give yourself brain damage,” Mother says from the stove. “It’s a hard morning. Just bear through it.”

  “That’s easy coming from your heart of steel,” I mutter from my arms. “You can bear through anything with a deep breath and soap suds. I don’t have as much practice.”

  She hands me a spoon. “Today’s a perfect day to practice.”

  I mope and stab the table with my spoon. “Today is not a perfect day.” But the playful grumblings between us lighten my heart. The day may not be perfect, but it suddenly feels normal.

  She nudges my chin with the knuckle of her forefinger and places a tiny bowl of chocolate puff cereal in front of me. I gasp. “Did you make this? Where did you get wheat?” I inhale the chocolate puffs like they’re my last meal. I guess they kind of are.

  “I found a cereal bag at the Newtons,” she says in a somber voice. “Mrs. Newton would have . . . wanted us to use their food.”

  My cereal sticks to my throat. I knew something was wrong when I first saw the Enforcers outside their door. Why didn’t I do anything?

  Reid enters the house. The chill from his entrance lingers in the doorway. He sits at a kitchen chair, taking slow breaths against his cracked ribs. He scans my face with hollow eyes, then stares at the wood.

  Looks like I’m going to have to be the strong one. Today, my feelings and emotions don’t matter. They’ll be snuffed out all too soon. I might as well suck it up and leave this world with backbone.

  Once Father collects his tears, he emerges from his room with a coat, a coiled rope, and a walking stick. “Time to go.”

  “Almost.” Mother hands me several bundles wrapped in clean rags and tied with thick cords. “Banana bread and some of my butter spreads. The other rags hold herbs for sickness, tea leaves, and a paste for rashes and burns.”

  She holds up the largest bundle. “Dried corn kernels, beans, noodles, beef, and a cupful of salt. The salt and corn will preserve the meat. Noodles will fill your stomach.” She pulls out a leather water pouch with a wooden stopper and places it beneath the sink pump.

  “You don’t even know if I’ll live,” I say, numb. “We don’t know what’s on the other side of the Wall.”

  Mother loads her medley of supplies into my bag and includes the coffee pot. I don’t bother asking how she got noodles—maybe the Newtons had those, too.

  Her eyes fill with tears, Father coughs, and I feel very grown-up. I kiss Mother on the cheek, place the canteen in my pack, and pat Reid on the shoulder because he doesn’t move to get up. I pull my most sturdy coat off the loose wall peg and relish the weight and comfort it brings.

  “Parvin.”

  I turn at Reid’s voice, but don’t get a chance to see his face before he’s out of his chair and I’m enveloped in the warmth of his coat, breathing in his forest-travel scent. Will my dead body take on that smell as I lie in the unknown behind the Wall?

  When he lets go, I look up and wish I hadn’t. His face is scrunched and tears blur his irises. I’ve seen this face once before, when he found me in the mud with a broken leg after I’d fled from the school bullies. Yet here I am, about to die, and those bullies all have greater Numbers than I do.

  He holds out a brown book stuffed to the fullest with papers and items taped inside. “It’s my journal.”

  I frown and sniff at the same time, fighting the pout of my lower lip. “How did you get all this paper? I didn’t even know you kept a journal.”

  “There’s a lot you may find you don’t know about me,” he says with forced cheer.

  I’m realizing that.

  “And this”—he pulls out a thin, familiar, electronic gadget—“is a sentra. It takes emotigraphs.” He points to a button on the top. “You don’t even have to aim, but if you want a photograph to come out along with the emotigraph, you hold down the button when you aim.”

  “I’ve used one before.” But I avoid saying Skelley Chase’s name.

  Reid holds it up to the morning light coming through the window and clicks the button. “When the emotigraph comes out of here”—he points to a slit on one side of the sentra as a thin electrosheet emerges—“it will have a tiny button for you to push to feel the emotion you recorded. This was the gift I brought back for you.”

  “I’ve never seen it spit out a sheet like that before.”

  Reid pulls the emotigraph from the slot and shoves it in his journal before I can press the flat grey button on the corner. “It’s an older generation sentra. I got it in an Upper City.”

  “You’ve been to an Upper City?” I place the strange object in my pack. “When?”

  He taps my pack. “Journal, little Brielle. Read the journal.”

  My throat makes a funny sound, like a kitten’s cry. God, why are You making this harder? I won’t live long enough to discover the Reid I thought I knew. “Reid, no one will remember me.”

  Reid makes no move to comfort me, but Mother quotes from behind us, “`He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion . . . ’”

  “But God hasn’t started anything in me.” My shoulders sag. “There’s nothing to complete.”

  “Ah, little Brielle.” Reid flicks a stray eyelash from
my cheek. “I love you, sis.” This is all he says. Somehow, it’s all I need.

  Mother snatches a hairbrush from her room and brushes my hair until it’s fluffier than an autumn dandelion. For once, I don’t fight, though I do pocket a few hair ties for later. Father opens the door. It’s not raining anymore. We step outside, leaving Mother behind, still holding the hairbrush. Reid stands behind her, solemn and bleak.

  Two Enforcers step from their posts to intersect us. Everything in my throat and eyes tightens, squeezing out tears hotter than winter tea. My quivering lips prevent any final words as Father and I walk down Straight Street for the last time.

  Mother speaks in a whisper more precious to my heart than embroidered gold. “Good-bye.”

  11

  000.174.05.48.04

  The shoulder of my coat still holds the stain of Father’s tears. His sobbing cracked my already fragile heart and I don’t think I’ll ever recover. I kissed him on the cheek—a small token that will never repay what I owe for his endless love and care.

  I now face Wall Opening Three out of the four circling the globe. This one is placed in the top west corner of my own state of Missouri—one of the remaining thirty-one states. The wide Missouri River lies behind me, flowing with a hushed whisper. I want to jump off the arched bridge we just crossed—jump into the river’s brownish-red waters and let it carry me back toward Unity Village.

  My Enforcer holds each of my arms at the wrist with a grip like human handcuffs. My heartbeat has long since abandoned the word steady and pumps blood like a frantic firehose trying to douse the crackle in my nerves.

  Some people on the train blew me kisses and squeezed my arm as I exited—clearly not residents of Unity. Some people fear death, but everyone fears the Wall. The unknown. The passengers had a special grace I needed. This is the only stop in a stretch of two hundred miles North and it feels abandoned—like my future.

  Father demanded I bring a thin coil of rope. A loop slips off my shoulder as I walk, so I readjust. The black Enforcer and I follow a marked path toward the towering stone structure. I’ve seen the top edge of the Wall all my life. The sun sets behind it every night, leaving a menacing orange-red glow. I now stand at its base for the first time.