Regret

by Elana Johnson

  I mentally congratulated myself on making up so much time. The celebration was short-lived, however, as one form separated himself from the fire and walked toward me.

  “Walked” isn’t entirely the right way to describe Jag’s canter. Each step spoke of extreme confidence, with a touch of swagger. I stopped and waited for him to come to me. As he grew more corporeal under the moonlight, I found frustration welling with the admiration in his eyes. He stopped just out of my reach, far enough away to suggest coolness, yet close enough to make me yearn to feel his arms around me.

  “Indy,” he said softly, inviting me to speak.

  Just when I wanted him to rave, he’d gone for the caring, compassionate guy I’d fallen in love with last summer.

  “I want to come,” I said, making my voice strong so it wouldn’t give away my nerves. As if Jag needed to hear to know how I felt.

  “I need you in the Badlands,” he said. He took a step closer and skated his fingers up my forearm. My breath stuttered in my throat at the familiar touch. Way too familiar. I couldn’t stamp down the emotions fast enough, and Jag saw.

  He saw everything.

  “I led last month,” I said, only a slight tremor in my tone. “I have intel you need.”

  “I read your report. More than once.”

  I cursed myself for being so thorough. “I can—”

  “If anything happens to me, you’ll need to take over,” he said, removing his fingers from my arm and regaining the distance he’d closed between us. He looked over my shoulder as if he expected a hovercar to appear and swallow him right then and there.

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” I said, angry he’d played that card. As second-in-command, I’d accompanied him on missions before. It had never been a problem. Until now. I schooled my expression and stared at him coolly.

  “Maybe not,” he said, backing up another step, his face completely blank—the way mine should’ve been. “But I can tell you’re furious with me.”

  “That’s because—”

  “I told you I needed iron on this mission.” He ducked his head and stuffed his hands in his pockets. I had no idea what his body language meant. “If something happens to me, you’ll know what to do.”

  He turned and went back to the fire, leaving me wrestling with my emotions once again. I stood watching the team as they waited for the new day to wake. They extinguished the fire and ran the remaining three hundred yards to the ravine marking the western border of the Goodgrounds.

  Never once did any of them look over their shoulder. I realized, maybe too late, that the reason I wasn’t on the permanent infiltration team had nothing to do with my status as second-in-command.

  No, as Jag had told me several times, I wasn’t sufficiently shut down. I wore my feelings too close to my eyes, too easy for a Thinker to see and hear and know everything. It had only taken Jag four seconds to sense me watching him.

  I waited until the tears didn’t threaten to spill down my cheeks, and then I began the day-long trek back to the Badlands, determined to contain the emotions I knew warred across my face. By midday I’d constructed the first flimsy barrier around my heart, shutting Jag out. But I couldn’t erase his words echoing in my mind.

  You’ll know what to do.

  Three days later I sat at the kitchen table breaking the ends off the beans my mother had brought home from the market. With no Resistance work to be done and school a waste of my energy, my insides squirmed constantly. I needed more than making my bed and the few menial household chores my mother inflicted upon me to keep my mind occupied.

  I began planning what I could do to release some of my pent-up energy and frustration. There had been no word from the infiltration team, and with the closing of the third day, rumors were beginning to circulate. I decided I’d head over to Lex’s house after dinner and ask his little brother if he’d heard anything new.

  A knock interrupted my plans, and I glanced at my mother stirring something on the stove. She waved the wooden spoon at me, her way of saying Go get the door, dear.

  I tossed the beans to the table before moving to the front door. When I opened it, a body fell into my arms, and the weight brought me to my knees.

  “Mom!” I called, turning the person—Lex—so his head lay cradled against my thighs. I quickly rubbed his hair out of his face to find his eyes closed and his breathing labored.

  My mother bustled in from the kitchen, still brandishing the wooden spoon. “I’ll get your father,” she said immediately and left.

  I peered out the front door and found the street empty. A sense of foreboding snaked through me, and I scooted backward, pulling Lex with me, until I could get the door closed.

  “Lex,” I whispered, “what happened?”

  His eyelids fluttered and he made a strangled noise. Mom returned with a glass of water and the promise that Dad was on his way. He’d bring his bag of herbs and be able to diagnose Lex’s condition with a few touches of his fingertips.

  I tipped Lex’s head up and ordered him to drink. He complied, indicating that he could at least hear and process directions. I threaded my fingers through his. “Squeeze once for yes, and twice for no,” I said. “Is Jag with you?”

  Two squeezes, and I jerked my eyes to my mother’s. I saw the same fear I felt inside.

  “Irvine?” my mother whispered.

  “Did anyone else make it out of the Goodgrounds?” I asked.

  Two squeezes. My heart skipped two beats.

  “Did anyone else make it out?”

  Two squeezes. I couldn’t breathe for two seconds. My skin didn’t quite feel right over my bones—not without Irvine and not without Jag. I took a deep breath to force logic back into my brain.

  As the border control, Lex wouldn’t have actually crossed into the Goodgrounds with the rest of the infiltration team. That must’ve been the only reason he hadn’t been captured with everyone else.

  “Do you know how they were caught?”

  “Hov—” Lex coughed, a dry rasping hack that sounded like it hurt something fierce. “Hover—”

  “Hovercopters?” I asked.

  One squeeze. This couldn’t be happening. Irvine can’t be hurt.

  “Did you see any lights? Iris recognizers? Anything?”

  Two squeezes. Jag couldn’t be gone/captured/dead. I can’t lead the Resistance.

  “Just lots of hovercopters,” I supplied, my voice ghosting into the room. My head felt so light.

  One squeeze. And now the weight of the world—or at least the Resistance—settled on me, and everything felt too heavy, including Lex’s hand in mine.

  “Okay, rest now, Lexile,” my mother said, holding the glass to his lips again. He drank and settled back into my lap. We sat that way until my father burst through the door with his bag of medicines.

  You’ll know what to do. You’ll know what to do.

  But I didn’t know what to do. I paced the length of my room, feeling more and more caged as the seconds clicked by. Lex rested on the couch in my living room, a poultice of something green and foul-smelling smeared across his throat and face. My father had also applied the paste to the inside of Lex’s wrists and pronounced that he hadn’t been injured. He’d simply been too long in the desert without anything to eat or drink. All he needed was a nice long nap and plenty of food and water when he woke.

  If my mother knew how to do one thing, it was cook. She’d been in the kitchen for the past two hours, baking and deboning and sautéing. I had sat with Lex for the first hour, but when tears had threatened, I’d retreated to my room so I could cry in private. So not the picture of nonemotional.

  I strode from one end of the small room to the other, caged by more than walls. On one turn, I felt a profound, desperate sadness at the thought of Irvine and Jag in prison. Or worse. On the next, anger blossomed. Anger was an emotion I’d been dealing with more and more lately, but it still felt foreign to me. I didn’t know how to stuff it back inside myself so I could think clea
rly.

  Contact Zenn. The thought came to my mind unbidden, and I shoved it away. Zenn Bower used to work for the Resistance, and he’d implemented our communication lines inside the Goodgrounds. His father worked in the teleportation unit in the Transportation Department and supplied the Resistance with coordinates, maps, and invaluable information we’d be blind without. I’d once served a mission with Zenn where we’d hidden from a hovercar by submerging ourselves in the river that flowed through the forest in the Goodgrounds. Zenn held his breath for over four minutes. I’d sputtered and choked after only three.

  But he’d defected over a year ago. I hadn’t heard from him since Jag cut him off. I couldn’t contact Zenn, even if I knew how, until I knew exactly where his loyalty lay. I stared out the window as a helplessness I could not endure engulfed me. Before when bad things happened, I’d relied on the steadiness of Irvine. A hole gaped in the house, as if the heart of it had been ripped out and all that remained was a shell.

  I felt my worry permeate the air, pressing the walls closer. Not able to stand another second in the now-suffocating house, I shoved up my window and climbed out. My stomach growled, but even my mother’s cooking could not ease my discomfort.

  My feet led me to Jag’s house, the hot spot for the Resistance. Any files he might have kept would be there. Both the front and back doors were locked. The windows were dark patches reflecting the moonlight. But I knew Jag and Jag knew me, and I shuffled into the narrow corridor separating his house from the neighbor’s.

  I could barely slide between the walls, but I moved with unfailing precision, my senses on high alert. Something felt off, but I couldn’t tell if it came from the street, the Resistance headquarters, or somewhere else.

  Halfway along the house, I stopped and scanned what little of the street I could see. The orange streetlamps burned steadily, with no unwarranted shadows. My pulse quickened as I neared the window set in the corner of the living room, about a third of the way back from the front corner of the house. Jag never locked it, something only a handful of people knew.

  With the disappearance of the infiltration team, I was the only one left who did know. My fingers found the miniscule seam in the wood and hefted the window open. The familiar scent of burnt tech and something fried escaped. I hoisted myself over the sill and landed with a grunt inside the house.

  I eased the window down and crouched in the corner by the couch. My heart beat wildly, muffling any other sound I might have been able to discern. I took several calming breaths and forced myself to settle down. As the panic faded from my system, I heard the familiar sounds of the refrigerator humming and the clock ticking in the hall.

  The headquarters provided me with a sense of safety, so I stood and made my way through the sparsely furnished living room and down the hall. Two doors led into two bedrooms on the right side, and one door opened into a bathroom on the left. The kitchen took up the back end of the small house, and that’s where I went.

  I found a dirty cup in the sink and rinsed it out in the semi-darkness. Then I filled it with cool water and gulped it. The chill sliding down my throat calmed me further, and I managed to flip on the light.

  The kitchen sat dormant, complete in its normalcy. The faucet dripped, and the fridge housed only the most meager of supplies. Jag never was one for cooking, and he almost always ate at my house or at another Resistance member’s table.

  I turned on the lights in every room, my fear easing out with the shadows. I entered Jag’s room last, knowing it would hurt the most. And it did. I couldn’t help but breathe in the piney scent of his hair gel.

  I’d been in his room before. Many times. Jag didn’t own a lot, and what he did, he kept organized. His bed was made; his clothes had been draped over a desk chair; a bare bulb already burned in the closet. Some called him a neat freak. I’d once called him OCD as he’d consulted a list of equipment we needed for a mission to Seaside. He’d been there countless times and didn’t need a list. We’d laughed, and he’d pulled me close and planted a kiss near the corner of my eye.

  My chest constricted with the memory as I moved to the brightly lit closet. Two pairs of jeans sat in a pristine stack. Four semitattered shirts hung on black hangers. An extra pair of boots lingered on the floor. Typical Jag.

  The spare bedroom where I’d spent more than one night had been empty as well. The only piece of furniture in the living room—a couch—didn’t even have garbage under the cushions. I sat down on the floor in Jag’s room and did the only thing I could think of.

  I cried.

  Ten minutes later, I limped toward the door as the blood rushed back into my legs. I flipped the light off and was halfway into the hall before I realized the light from the closet still shone.

  I hadn’t turned it on, but I wondered if I ought to turn it off. As I took the few steps to the closet, I had the thought that it was odd for Jag to leave the light on at all. What with his OCD and all. Unfailingly meticulous about details, Jag didn’t do anything without a reason.

  You’ll know what to do.

  Without thinking, I slid into the closet and swung the door around to seal myself inside. From this vantage point, I discovered a shelf nailed on the back side of the door. It rattled when I pushed the door shut, drawing my attention to a stack of notebooks and a smattering of writing utensils.

  I almost laughed. Jag and his stupid notebooks. He was forever writing something down, but I’d never seen him show anything to anyone. Not even me. There had been many barriers I’d tried to get him to break, and he had refused. I sympathized—no, empathized—with him on many things, but I didn’t know the pain of losing both parents, or of losing one brother and living apart from another.

  Jag’s feelings and inner thoughts weren’t high on his list of things to share. He didn’t let anyone all the way into his life. I’d hoped to be the first, and I’d been very disappointed.

  Now I ran my fingertips along the spines of his journals, almost afraid to touch them in case he suddenly burst into the closet with that knowing glare on his face. Somehow, though, I felt as though he’d left this light on just for me. Maybe he did trust me. I immediately chastised myself. Of course he trusted me—with Resistance information. I was the second-in-command.

  That’s when I knew these weren’t his personal journals. I gathered them into my arms, desperately hoping they’d provide some insight into what I should do next.

  3.

  The journey from Jag’s house to mine felt eternal. Every noise spooked me until I found myself clutching the notebooks to my chest and avoiding the dangerous pools of light on the corners.

  By the time I climbed through my bedroom window, my fingers ached and I felt drained. I stowed the notebooks under my mattress and went to check on Lex. I found my father spooning thin broth past his swollen lips. He smiled at the sight of me, and I returned the gesture.

  “Can he talk?” I asked my father as I sat on the arm of the couch.

  “Not tonight, Indiarina. We will convene in the morning.” The broth seemed to need his utmost attention.

  “We?” I asked.

  “With Jag’s disappearance, we’ll need to decide how to proceed.”

  “We?” I asked again, a brick of dread settling in my stomach. The way my father wouldn’t look at me spoke volumes.

  “The second-in-command will decide,” he said.

  “Dad,” I choked out.

  Finally, my father looked at me. A fierceness I only saw when he was worried resided in his eyes. “Not now, Indy. We’ll talk after I finish here, all right?”

  I nodded and cradled my head in my hands, hoping to fall asleep in the few minutes it would take for him to finish up with Lex. But my mind churned, and I hoped that when my father said “we’ll talk” he meant “I’ll tell you exactly what to do.”

  I soon found that wasn’t what he meant. At all. I convened with my parents in the kitchen, where my mother placed no less than four dishes in front of me and sat down without her
usual, “Eat up, Indiarina. You’re much too thin,” which only added to the worry seething in my gut.

  “What’s the last thing Jag said to you?” my father asked.

  I told him everything. How I’d snuck out three nights ago and crossed the desert (I noted the exchanged parental glances); the last conversation with Jag (my mother sighed); the brief cry-fest in his bedroom (nobody blinked); and the discovery of the notebooks.

  “Ah, perfect,” Dad said, pulling a bowl of steamed rice toward him. He piled it on his plate and doused it in tandoori chicken. “You’ll know what to do, then.”

  The way he mimicked Jag wasn’t lost on me. I wasn’t sure if I should feel angry or dissolve into tears again. “That’s it? You’re not going to advise me?”

  Dad waved his fork at me. “The notebooks will advise you. We’ll be here if you have any questions.”

  I locked eyes with my mother, who patted my arm. “I will make up a plate for you, Indiarina. You’re much too thin.”

  I watched, numb, as my mom piled pork, chicken, rice, and vegetables onto a plate. I let her guide me by the elbow to my bedroom. The only thing I noticed was the tightly closed door to Irv’s room.

  After my mother left, I sat in the armchair with my plate of food, and I felt like screaming. Instead, I did what I should’ve been doing all along. I swallowed all emotion and looked at myself in the mirror on the back of my closet door. My face gave nothing away, just as I’d hoped.

  After all, the leader of the Resistance is an enigma. Unreadable. Unpredictable. Jag had provided a perfect example for me over the years. As I stared at myself in the mirror, I thought I’d never become the leader he was.

  Is, I corrected myself, but that thought disintegrated as fast as it had come.

  The next morning found me already awake. In fact, I hadn’t yet gone to sleep. I knew Jag had slept very little as leader of the Resistance, and I figured I might as well start adapting to my new role.