by Mark Tiro
No one answered.
But Gael was making the faintest sound, his little chest rising and falling with each sweet breath as he slept on my couch.
2
Two
Gael was still sleeping. I didn’t want to wake him, he looked so peaceful there. As long as he wanted to sleep, that was fine with me.
I could almost imagine that my mom was okay, that we lived a normal life here. Almost, but not quite. With things like this, it seemed better to not think of them at all, rather than to live in a world of make-believe. No matter how okay or normal everything might get, dark clouds always seemed to be hovering in the background of my mind, just out of sight. I would never see them. But I’d always know they were there.
Gael talks in his sleep. I’ve sat here a lot of nights, listening to him talk while he lays there on my couch. Mostly he mumbles when he sleeps. Sometimes it’s clear enough to catch what he’s saying. Most times it’s not. I’ve wondered a lot about whether or not I should wake him when he starts doing this, especially when it looks like he’s having a nightmare. Mostly, I decide not to. I figure if I do, whatever dream I’d be waking him up from couldn’t possibly be as bad as the life I’d be waking him up to.
And so I don’t wake him.
He rolled over now, then fell back into a deep sleep. He stopped mumbling and started breathing peacefully again. And so I closed my own eyes and fell back too, not into sleep, but into thinking about Rhys.
Rhys. He looked so happy today when I saw him. Last week, we had gotten to walk together for a bit. He had been leaving the student center building, and I had been walking towards the administration building. That’s where I had found work that week, cleaning up the offices there.
“Hi Sabine!” he bellowed in my direction.
I know! I know that voice, I thought. And I turned back, quick as I could. He was standing there, sweating, still wearing his workout clothes. I think he was actually glistening.
“Hi… uh, hi there,” I stammered. I tried to smile, but the truth is, I’m sure I must’ve looked like a wreck to him, in my work clothes, struggling just to talk.
Also, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t glistening.
It’s just, whenever I see him, my heart goes into my throat. I can’t control it. My stomach tightens, and I get this tight feeling in my chest, like you do when you know people are watching you. It usually stays there until after he’s gone, which is usually when I start with my post-Rhys analysis about how it went. That usually devolves into some form or another of me deciding how slow I was. And how immature, how stupid, how much of a dork, and a whole bunch of other ways I get when I accept the truth about myself. But he still talks to me.
Not many people do that. But Rhys still does.
We’re even going to lunch next week. If things work out. He’s going with me, which means he really loves me. I know he does.
I got up. Then I ate some six-month old ice cream bars that I found pushed back into the freezer so far that my mom must have missed them when she’d go on her periodic eating binges. She did that every now and then when she got this crazy energy. Usually, it was after she’d had no energy at all for a while, and hadn’t come out of her room for days before that.
The ice cream was about to start melting, and so I sat down at my desk. I took a bite, then pulled up a concealed connection and plugged into the network. I may as well see if any talk of Rhys has come up on the network yet. Rhys had asked me to keep an eye on him, and on the other resistance people too, because I could do it without anyone tracing me. If Rhys were to connect with the network, the Committee would know about it in a heartbeat. They’d be at his door in minutes. Same with most of the other resistance people too.
Not with me though. No one knew who I was. Not yet at least, of that much I was still certain. Also, even if the Committee did come across one of my forays into the network, I’d disguised it enough so that it wouldn’t look like anything other than the stray wandering of someone who just got lost.
Just then, I heard the quietest little tapping on the front door.
My heart leapt. Maybe it’s Rhys? Maybe he’s coming over to see me, I thought. It made me smile, and I felt a warm balm rise up, filling my chest.
‘Oh, you shouldn’t have come’, I pictured myself telling him. Not meaning a word of it.
‘But I just wanted to see you Sabine,’ he’d tell me. ‘To see you before I leave for my resistance mission.’
Then, I’d put my arm on his, and say, ‘Be safe my love.’ He’d lean over, sweep me up in his arms and then kiss me.
All this, I pictured before I’d even finished that first ice cream bar.
It was a nice way to pass the time. Sometimes, I’d play out the conversations different ways. But it always worked out the same in the end. It always worked out.
I walked over quietly, towards the almost imperceptible tapping. I was resolved not to wake up Gael. That would be just like me, if I’d clunk over to the door and wake up Gael and then not be able to have an alone conversation with Rhys. If Rhys were at the door.
“Hello?” I asked, activating the outdoor camera.
It was Elias, not Rhys.
My heart sank. I tried to pull my head together though, enough at least to have a normal conversation. Then I opened the door and Elias came quietly in.
“Hi Sabine. I’m sorry to bother you. I hope you weren’t busy.”
“Of course not. What are you doing here? Did Rhys ask you to come over?”
“Rhys?” he asked, as if taken off guard. “Eh, no. No, I haven’t seen him since the tavern. Genius of you by the way—figuring out how to push our message past the network censors.”
“Thank you,” I blushed.
“So I guess you have some experience getting around network protocols?”
“A little,” I said. I still felt flustered, but in a good way now. “I’ve never held down a real job for very long though. Most of what I can do, I kind of taught myself.”
“So you’re not working now?”
“Well I am, kind of. It’s just part time, cleaning office buildings around campus. Not the important kind of work you all do.” I was making myself nervous, which is probably why I started talking faster. “I’m not sure how long it’ll last though.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I make a lot of mistakes,” I answered.
“Mistakes in cleaning offices?” he asked, a puzzled look on his face.
“It’s complicated,” I said.
“Uh, okay. Listen, I was meaning to ask you—how is it you were you able to get in so easily, past the network censor protocols to upload our message? We’d had people working on that for a long time now. None of them managed to do what you did. It was so bad that a few of them even got picked up by Committee men. They couldn’t even hide their tracks, less yet actually get in. Like you did.”
“Aw, thank you,” is all I could manage.
“You now, they’re still trying to figure out where the hole is. We’ve intercepted their comms, and they still don’t know how you did it, and they’re terrified you’ll do it again.”
“Do you live here alone?” he asked, looking at Gael curled up on the couch.
“Kind of—with my mom,” I said. “And with whoever else needs a couch to sleep on,” I added, nodding at the couch. “But my mom—she isn’t well a lot.”
Over the years, I had tried to explain my mom’s situation different ways. I always felt sheepish though. Like I wanted to roll up in a ball and disappear so that no one could see me. None of my friends had a mom like mine. They were all normal.
“I had to take care of everyone and everything growing up,” I explained. “I had to take care of her too. Except for school, I stayed in a lot. Stayed in, and I just spent a lot of time trying to find things, and find ways to kind of tiptoe around back parts of the network without being seen. I mean, look at my family,” I said, motioning around to our small flat. “I mean, we don’t have
the status level to access so many of the really great things on the network. Maybe because of that, I’ve always worked on finding ways to make myself like a little mouse.”
“Well thank you, little mouse. For crawling through the cracks,” he smiled. “For helping us fight the Committee.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You know,” he started, looking off toward the ground in front of him, “the nation is suffering greatly at the hands of the Committee. There are a lot of honest and good people waiting for deliverance. Waiting to take back the constitutional liberties the Assembly had rightfully given us. The same liberties the Committee has gone and usurped for itself. Sabine,” he said, looking directly in my eye now for the first time, “we would be honored if you would join us.”
“Sure,” I stammered. He waited for me to go on, but I couldn’t think of any resistance-type slogan to say back. Nothing came to mind. Truth is, I didn’t actually know any resistance slogans at all.
There was a moment of silence and I became uncomfortable just sitting there. I felt like I needed to say something, to break the silence. “So will I be working with Rhys?” I tried to keep a business-like look on my face.
When Elias didn’t answer right away, I nervously bumbled a few more words. “It’s just, I think, I might be able to help him push some more stuff out to the network.”
“Afraid not,” Elias answered. “After that huge push you two did yesterday, there are Committee spies everywhere. It’s just too dangerous for any of us to make a move now. Basically, all of us are going our own separate ways for a while. We’re going underground Sabine. It’s time for all of us to keep a low profile. The Committee has a good idea who most of us are, we think. So we’re going to try to make the best of the situation by riding out their purge, under the radar and off the grid.”
“What about Rhys? Does he have to go into hiding too?”
“He’s well known to the Committee. Just not for the message you pushed yesterday. They don’t know that was him.” He paused, then said, “Him and you. Listen, Sabine, I came here for a reason.”
“What’s that?”
“No one knows who you are yet. Not really. The Committee doesn’t know you from Adam. Will you do something important Sabine?”
I would have jumped at the chance to help Rhys. But there was no Rhys to be seen. Hesitantly—very hesitantly—I said, “Of course I will! Anything!”
“We need someone the Committee doesn’t know to carry messages between where we’ll be hiding.”
“You want me to work on a protocol to encrypt your communications, so you can send them over the—“
“No. We think it’s just too dangerous to use the network at all. At least for now. Sabine—” he said, looking very serious now, “We want you to actually, like I mean—literally—deliver messages on physical scraps of paper around the city.”
“What do you mean? Like, how will you even—I mean, where are you even going to get paper?” I asked. “It’s not like it grows on trees.”
“You’re right,” he said. “But it’s something we’ve been thinking about for a while—preparing for… for a while actually. We’ve been trying to save up old papers just in case. We should be able to use these to write on, if we’re careful. Most of the stuff is nearly a century old, so it should crumble pretty easily too, just in case.”
“In case of what?” I asked.
“Just in case you’re caught.”
I guess it’s ironic, huh? How I went from being the resistance’s network person, which I mainly did sitting in my kitchen in front of my network terminal, to being its foot-courier, running around carrying messages written on scraps of century-old paper.
After that, I spent so much time running around in the off-network world of parks, giant city blocks, and underground sewers, I’d already lost fifteen pounds in the first week and a half.
I looked great. Rhys would love it next time he sees me.
3
Three
“Never read the messages,” Elias had told me. “If you don’t know what’s in them, that might protect you. Somewhat. Maybe.”
“Of course,” I stammered. “I would never do—”
“Eh, probably won’t matter anyway. Well,” he said, staring intently—uncomfortably—at the ground. “Good luck then!”
He turned around, slammed the door, and was gone.
That was it—the entire sum of my training.
“See you soon!” I shouted back cheerfully. I don’t think he heard.
‘Probably won’t matter anyway.’ His words just barely registered in my mind.
That night, I delivered my first message for the resistance. Elias had pulled it out of his pocket and given it to me as soon as I’d agreed to run them.
It dawned on me at some point that by delivering these messages, I would come to know everyone in the resistance, where each one of them was hiding, and basically anything any one of them wanted to tell any other one of them.
That would make me an invaluable part of the resistance. Rhys would love it when he found out just how important I was. How could he not?
Of course I was smart enough to figure out that if the Committee caught me, something bad might happen to me. But I didn’t think too much about that. Anyway, nothing bad was going to happen. This whole thing would blow over and be done with soon enough. Then things would go back to normal, and Rhys would really know just how much I care about him because I’m in the resistance now too, just like him.
So naturally, I read the messages. But I didn’t tell anyone. Well, except Gael. I told him. He would have figured it out anyway, even if I didn’t tell him. That boy, I thought and sighed. What am I going to do about that boy? I love you Gael, but you’re always putting yourself in such danger. I wish you would just stay home, or come over to my house, or whatever. Just stay inside, out of trouble.
As soon as Elias had gone, I pulled out the message he’d given me and read it. My heart leapt as soon as I did. It was to him. To Rhys. I get to go deliver a message to my Rhys.
Gael was curled up in a ball, still sleeping on the couch. I went over, pulled the blanket that had fallen onto the floor back up and onto him. I gave him a hug. You’re the closest thing to family I have Gael, I thought. As soon as I’d had the thought, I reflexively turned my head towards my mom’s bedroom. I felt a crippling pang of guilt for having thought that—for feeling closer to Gael than I did to my own actual mom. Anyway, I’ll be back before anyone is up. And then I pushed the whole business down, into the back of my mind, and started thinking about how glad Rhys would be when he saw me.
I pulled on an old raincoat, then bunched up my hair and shoved it under a cap I’d found in the closet where my dad’s things used to be. My mom must have missed it during all her periodic rages when she would tear through everywhere, throwing out (and sometimes burning) every last thing that could have possibly tied me to him.
I couldn’t walk straight to where Rhys was staying, as much as I wanted to. So I took a roundabout instead, and then tried to lose myself every so often, just to make sure no one was following me. Once I was sure, I pulled out the note to Rhys and read it again.
“Comrade Rhys,” it started in shaky writing. Most everyone could barely write for real. The closest you’d ever get to it in school would be designing on a tablet. Other than that, kids learned to type before anything. And even that wasn’t all that necessary. Only if you really didn’t want anyone to hear you dictating and interacting with your assistant through your device or whatever implant you used for that sort of thing.
“Comrade Rhys: I trust you are still well. I have spoken with some of our friends who still have business with the Committee. There is a meeting of the Committee executive next Sunday. Our friends have promised they can get ten, maybe twenty of us inside the Hall, together with weapons they’ve already begun to smuggle inside the place. We should be able to occupy the Hall and take back control there, in the name of the people.
Once word gets out to the nation that we’ve overthrown the usurpers on the Committee and once General de la Barca has returned to save the Assembly for the people, we won’t even need to use the weapons. It will be a revolution of flowers. Flowers and children. That is how we will describe it, once our glorious day is at hand.”
That was the note. I read it, and of course I thought again of how happy Rhys would be to see me when I delivered it. Happy thought. Rhys, that was. I tried to think of him, to draw out the scene in my mind, to place everyone just where they would be, to make everything just perfect in my mind.
But a thought kept popping up, interrupting me. I couldn’t help it. I kept remembering over and over that girl he was talking to. She was like some dark, malevolent, force that was mocking me, getting in between me and Rhys.
I ignored it. At least, I tried to ignore it.
As soon as I remembered her, I pushed the thought right back down, out of mind. I tried again to think about just how nice it would be when Rhys opened the door. I played out what our conversation would be like. And then I played it out again. Over and over, I did this. But each time, I would add little things in that I’d forgotten; each time, I’d fill out what he’d say to me in our conversation just a little more. I made sure I’d said everything just perfect.
I rounded the corner. I was almost there now. Just one more time, I pictured his door opening. Only, this time as I daydreamed it—suddenly, just as it opened, it was that girl who stood there instead of my Rhys.
‘What do you want?’ I pictured her asking me. ‘I have a message for Rhys,’ I heard myself answering. ‘He doesn’t want to talk to you. He doesn’t love you like he loves me,’ she would say back.
I began to tumble. I was almost at his safe house now. Not, I mean, in my head, but really there. But this thought of that other girl answering his door had thrown everything off. It all started to tumble. I became dizzy, and everything started to spin. She won’t be there, I told myself. Focus. She won’t really be there. You’ll see him in a minute here, I told myself. But now that I was about to see him, I wasn’t happy like I thought I’d be.
