Wesley shrugs. “I don’t know, but she was very small. Even malnourished, I don’t think she could be a normal kid stuck waiting for puberty forever. I doubt she was on the suppressant. She was younger than that, young enough not to consider that the branch would snap. She fell toward the river where the water was flowing fast. I wasn’t sure if she could even swim. I ran down the riverbank and finally dove in, desperate to save her, because it was my fault, all of it. I wanted to help her, and I killed her instead. I reached her, and I even grabbed for her hand, but she pulled my glove off and went under.”
I remember he’s wearing shiny gloves I’ve never seen, and now I know why. He lost his in the river.
He drops his head in his hands. “Now I’m Marked, and she died anyway.”
I understand breaking the rules to give her food. I might have done the same, but to risk being Marked when she fell? That I don’t understand.
“Why dive in the river?” I ask. “You didn’t know she’d go over the tree branches, so it’s not your fault.”
“It was stupid, obviously, but I felt desperate not to lose her too.” He stands and paces the width of the shed, two steps in either direction. Back and forth, back and forth. “My sister Adonnia was only five years old when my dad left her with his sister. Aunt Valerie was Marked too. We didn’t know. We had no idea what would happen, but that was no excuse. He shouldn’t have left her.”
No one knew at the beginning. That Tercera impacts children differently than adults. Within the first few hours of infection on anyone, a faint but noticeable rash appears, high on the infected person’s forehead. After that, nothing happens for more than a year. It’s transmittable as soon as the Mark appears, or sometimes shortly thereafter.
It spread like wildfire in the first few weeks after it first surfaced, mostly because no one knew it portended something serious. In year two, infected people began to have sores on their skin. They started out small, but by the end of the year, the sores weeped and burned, or so they say. In year three, organs stop working slowly, and at some point during that third year the Marked die, usually from failure to process food. It’s a horrible and slow death.
Unless you’re a kid.
Kids get the Mark just the same, and they can transmit it too, but none of the second year symptoms begin until they hit puberty. By the time the world realized pre-pubescents weren’t progressing the same, almost every Marked adult was on death’s door. Most of the kids in their care died of starvation after the adults passed. It wasn’t pretty. A few of the older kids survived, the ones who could forage and fend for themselves. In many cases, starvation delayed the onset of puberty, prolonging their lives before anyone thought to intentionally suppress their development.
Eventually, a team of scientists developed a hormone suppressant for the Marked kids that prevents the onset of puberty, extending their lives indefinitely. Of course, everything has a price. The goal at the time was to find a cure in a few years so all the kids could go off the suppressant. That part never happened, mostly because all the scientists working on it died. Those who are left, like my Aunt, are living in places so afraid of contamination they can’t study Tercera properly. The kids on the suppressant formed a Marked society that still exists today. They have a few leaders and a handful of laws. They aren’t thriving, but they’re alive. No one’s quite sure how many there are, but judging by the amount of suppressant they take, quite a few.
“Maybe your sister’s still alive,” I say. “She could be on the suppressant.”
“Yeah,” he says, “but she was only five when my aunt died. So probably not.”
“You never looked?”
“No,” he says. “I wanted to, but Dad refused.”
His dad’s refusal probably saved his life. I don’t know anyone who has returned from a search and rescue trip. I hope it’s because no one can come back to rejoin Unmarked society with a Marked kid. I hope they’ve all found their loved ones and are living with them in the woods, but it seems unlikely we haven’t heard from any of them. Especially since we allow scheduled visitation over the wall once a month for loved ones who get Marked. They can’t rejoin us, but they can talk from fifty feet away. It’s not perfect, but we’re too afraid to do anything else.
“I hated my dad for years,” Wesley says. “He still hasn’t ever tried to find her. I thought he was chicken, but now I wonder. Maybe he did it for us, for my mom and me. He couldn’t save Adonnia without abandoning us.”
“Like you have to leave now?” I turn away from him and clench my fists. “Like I have to?” I breathe in and out and try to relax my hands, to stop the shaking. “Why’d you come tonight at all, Wesley? You know the rules better than anyone. If you get Marked, you turn yourself in and go to quarantine to say your goodbyes. You certainly don’t act like nothing happened. You leave and never return.”
Never return. It feels like a knife in my gut. I’m Marked now. I’ve passed puberty so the hormonal suppressant won’t work on me. I have three years left, tops.
Sickness and anger, terror and hatred, misery and fury flood me and I’m drowning. Wesley might not have been thinking when he grabbed the little girl, but that was hours ago, in the heat of the moment.
“You Marked me.” I clench my fists until my nails bite into my skin through the knit of my mittens. “How could you?” I stand up and shove him back. It feels good to hurt him. Somehow, causing him pain eases mine. “You’ve killed me. Intentionally Marking someone’s a capital offense, ya know.”
He looks like he wants to defend himself, which pisses me off even more.
“What a joke, right?” I snort. “I wouldn’t punish someone standing in a freaking downpour with a bucket of water. If you’re Marked, you’re already dead.” I scowl. “Shooting you in the head would speed it up, but why should I? You’ve doomed me to a miserable and protracted death. Why not leave you to the same? Instead of shooting you, they should shoot everyone you infected and make you watch. That would be more just. That would be mercy.”
“I’m sorry.” He falls to his knees in front of me. “I’m so sorry I came tonight. Sorrier than you’ll ever know, but it all happened so fast. I grabbed for her hand and she pulled my glove off.” He pulls a lone black glove, a familiar, worn glove, from his pocket. “I didn’t think she’d actually Marked me. I never felt her touch me, not my skin. I ran straight home, terrified I might have been Marked, that I might be doomed, but then three hours passed. I checked before I left and I was still fine. No Mark. I figured I was safe, that I was good to go.”
“So you figured, ‘hey, why not? I’m supposed to be in quarantine, because I had contact with a Marked girl, but instead I’ll go infect Ruby, too?’ I hate you.”
He flinches. “Look, you know my parents run the First Supper, so they weren’t home. They sent Frank by the house to make sure I was ready for the Last Supper.”
“No one has to come to the Last Supper.” I shake my head and step away. “Even you.”
“Yeah, right.” Wesley stands up and brushes off his pants. “Now who’s being an idiot? It wasn’t optional, not for me. My parents said I had to come and I swear, Frank was going to grab me and force me when I tried to tell him I wanted to sit it out.”
“Why didn’t you tell him what happened? Report your incident? Follow protocol? They wouldn’t have made you come then.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know, okay? Because it didn’t feel real. Because I’m a jerk, I guess. I didn’t want to admit to myself that I might be Marked.” He runs his hands through his hair again. “I swear I didn’t think she’d touched me. Not my skin. How would I lose my glove, and her, if she had touched me? It’s like some cruel cosmic joke. She dies, and now I will, too.”
“And me.” He flinches again, but I push on. “You came here, knowing it was possible, however unlikely, and then you kissed me.”
He shakes his head, his boyish grin back. “Actually, I begged off, and I backed away. You kissed me.”
I love his grin like a bear loves honey, but not right now. Right now I want to slap it off his face.
“Don’t. Just don’t.”
He throws his hands up as if defending himself from a physical attack. “I should’ve stayed home, okay? If I could go back and change everything I would, but I can’t. It’s too late now, and you know I didn’t kiss you. I told you we didn’t have to do anything.”
“You should’ve told me why you didn’t want to kiss me. You should’ve stopped me.”
“I had no idea you’d jump on me like that!”
I blush. He’s not completely wrong. A jerk, inconsiderate, in denial, yes, but not completely wrong about the jumping bit.
“The thing is,” he says, “I’ve been looking forward to tonight. Everything’s about to change. We choose our Paths in a few days.” He looks down at his hands and I can barely hear his next words. “I’ve been wanting to kiss you for a while, so when that bottle stopped on you, well, it seemed too good to be true.”
The butterflies are back. Swarming. Swooping. I wave them off. Stupid butterflies. Go away.
He looks at his boots and breathes in and out a few times. “Look, all of this sucks, but make the best of it . . . and come with me.”
“What?” I ask, dumbfounded again. This whole conversation feels like a free fall. “Come with you where?”
“To Marked territory. I have to go now, and I’m guessing you do too. I hear they have a whole society out there. Some of them have been taking hormone suppressants for ten years. They have leaders, scientists even. Maybe we can help them figure out the cure. You had years of Science, and I heard you were a natural, like a duck in water my dad said. You’d be invaluable.”
I roll my eyes. I’m sure a sixteen-year-old wannabe scientist who washed out will crack the puzzle no one could solve. There’ve been rumors about a supposed cure as long as I can remember. Heck, my aunt and cousin are in charge of most of that research for the Unmarked, which is how I know we aren’t any closer now than we were a decade ago. The suggestion that maybe I’d come up with the magical solution in the next few years is complete delusion.
“There’s no cure,” I say, “and there won’t be any time soon. I also know hormone suppressants won’t work for us. We’re both past that point.”
“We have two good years to figure something else out, then,” he says. “Together.”
My heart lurches. Together, me and Wesley, like I wanted. Almost what I wanted. “Right. You and me—neither of us actual scientists—are going to figure this out when millions of educated, funded, accomplished, and sophisticated researchers couldn’t do it with much better equipment?” I snort. “Thanks for that brilliant plan. I can’t wait to give it a go.”
“It could happen,” he says. “I heard about you, before we ever met. You were a rising star before you quit Science. You had the best aptitude for it they’d ever seen. Some guy from Nashville came to talk to my dad about you, about how soon you’d be ready to move there for advanced training. Everyone always wondered why you quit.”
I want to punch him again, as hard as I can. I’m shaking with anger. “Wesley, stop. You’re missing the point or changing the subject, and I’m not sure which pisses me off more. You knew you might be Marked, and you stood here and Marked me anyway.”
There isn’t much light but I see the blood drain from his face.
He reaches for my hand and I let him take it. No point in stopping him now, especially since we’re both still wearing gloves. There’s a tiny part of me, in spite of it all, that thrills at the prospect of being touched by him. I mash it down.
“I’m sorry. Sorrier than I can ever say. It was never my intention to Mark anyone else, especially not you. I had no idea that coming here would . . .”
He pulls away and presses both hands against his eyes. When he removes them, a single tear rolls down his cheek. “When the bottle spun and stopped right on you, I should’ve walked away, or begged off. But I thought, what if I’m not Marked, and I swear I thought I wasn’t, and what if you thought it meant I didn’t like you? This was my chance to finally kiss you, only when we came into the shed, I reached my hand in my pocket and felt my glove. I remembered that I wasn’t one hundred percent sure . . . ”
He covers his face with his hands again. “I didn’t know you liked me. I hoped you liked me, but I had no way of knowing, and no reason to imagine that you’d leap up and kiss me. I stepped back, begged off like I should have to begin with, but then you grabbed me and pressed your lips to mine. It shocked me, but once you did, you were already exposed. It seemed stupid not to really kiss you. Although I’d be lying if I say I was thinking rationally at that point.”
I don’t know if it’s his tone, my feelings, or the earnest look in his eyes and the tear track on his cheek. Maybe it’s all of it, but I believe him. I don’t entirely forgive him, but I believe he meant me no harm.
“Please come with me,” he says urgently. “I’m leaving tonight. I’ll write my mom a note and pack some provisions. You don’t have to accept my apology, and you don’t even have to like me anymore, but at least we won’t be alone out there.”
“Any port in a storm?” I ask, a little bitterly.
“No.” He stands. “Not at all. I never meant to Mark you, but if I had to Mark someone . . . if I could pick anyone in the whole town to Mark, even in the whole world . . . this is coming out all wrong.” He pauses. “Do you remember that first day we met?”
Of course I remember.
“I knew then, three years ago. You were so intense, so smart and quiet. I felt drawn to you, like a moth to a flame.”
I arch one brow. “At least I’m not the bug in this analogy.”
Wesley rolls his eyes. “I couldn’t help but notice you that day because you sparkled, like some energy inside you was clawing its way out. Then you showed up at every single Special Project. At first I thought maybe you loved helping people. I was telling my mom how great you were last year, right after the perimeter fence repair project.”
I stayed until long past dark on that one. So did Wesley.
“I told my mom how your aunt and uncle didn’t make you go—that you signed up on your own. I told her you were this amazing human being.” He laughs. “That was the first time I thought you might like me, because my mom said, ‘I’m sure she’s great, but don’t you think she’s getting a little something out of it?’ Then she smiled at me.”
“Why didn’t you say something then?” My heart aches with might-have-beens. If he’d been less unsure, if I’d been less scared, if we’d talked about any of this before now, maybe he wouldn’t have been so cavalier during Perimeter Duty. Maybe we wouldn’t be Marked.
He clears his throat and I realize might-have-beens aren’t helpful. Reality is reality. We’re both dead.
“I have to say goodbye to my family. I owe them that.” I think about it for a minute. “In fact, if I don’t go explain, they’ll probably come after us.”
“I like the sound of ‘us’.” He smiles. “I’ll wait however long you need. Go tell them what happened.”
“I’ll be put in quarantine. I’m following every rule. I’ll never, ever Mark someone else, not even by mistake.”
Someone bangs on the door.
A voice asks, “You guys alive in there?”
I want to say, “Not entirely,” but I don’t. I keep quiet.
“One minute.” Wesley turns to me. “Please meet me,” he whispers. “I’ll wait for you in the woods by the willow tree on the other side of the river. If you don’t show in three days, I’ll assume that means that somehow you didn’t contract Tercera.”
“Sure.” I wipe an errant tear with one gloved hand and open the door with the other. We leave the shed to the sound of jeers and calls. I guess we deserve that. We were inside a long time. I walk with Wesley to the edge of the clearing. Gemette waves at me and I shake my head. I’m not sure what she’ll think that means, but I can’t go talk to her now
. I won’t risk it.
Before we part ways a few feet down the wooded path, Wesley squeezes my hand one last time. “I honestly hope I don’t see you again,” he says.
If I somehow don’t have Tercera, he’ll leave without me. I’d probably never see him again, just like he said. I think about that second kiss and a life with Wesley, however short.
I almost hope I do see him soon.
3
I climb up the tree behind our back porch and sneak into my own window so I have time to think about how to tell my family the news. It’s a waste of effort since it turns out no one else is even home.
I stare at my forehead in the mirror of the bathroom I share with Rhonda and Job. Now that I’m infected, shouldn’t I feel different? A sense of my own impending doom, or tingling, or a sinking feeling in my stomach? I should look different, too, but no matter how long I stare, my forehead remains clear. No rash. It might be a little early to cue the celebration though, since it’s been less than an hour and it’s been known to take as long as three.
I finally wrench myself away from the mirror and grab a bag. I slide my summer gloves on, and start throwing things in there, things I’ll want if I’m leaving to live in the wild. A pocketknife, hair ties, a toothbrush and toothpowder. Every bar of soap we have, which is a lot because we made a new batch last month. I’m not sure how organized the Marked kids are, or what they’ll have, but they never look very clean. Just because I’m dying doesn’t mean I need to smell all maggoty.
I’m packed and tiptoeing down the stairs when it occurs to me I should check my Aunt’s office. Maybe I should take a few of her science texts with me. Wesley’s idea is far fetched, but who knows? With enough motivation, maybe he and I could make progress on a cure before we die. At least, unlike the Unmarked scientists, we’d have access to active viral cells.
Sins of Our Ancestors Boxed Set Page 3
