The Almost Girl – ebook edition

by The Almost Girl (retail) (epub)

  The thoughtfulness in Mrs Taylor’s eyes wanes to actual distaste, and I squirm in my seat. In a different world, I’m sure she and I could have had a scintillating conversation about sub-quantum theory and gravitational distortion.

  It is the reason I am even able to come here, after all.

  I stare at the floor chewing on my lip until Mrs Taylor says briskly, “Well, thanks for clearing that up. Star Trek aside, I will expect you to perform better on the next quiz. And try to take on your share of the work, will you, Riven?”

  I’m almost home free, but for some reason, I stop at the door. Even though it shouldn’t matter, it bothers me that she thinks I’m some sort of vapid idiot who would use others to get ahead. Failing is just not a part of who I am.

  “I’m sorry. I’ll do better next time. I just want you to know that this isn’t who I am. I pull my own weight and I don’t cheat.”

  Aware that I’m babbling for no reason, I’m already out the door, so I nearly miss the speculative glance she sends in my direction, but I’ve had enough interrogation for one day. Mrs Taylor will be no more than a distant memory in a few days. Maybe as a goodbye present, I’ll leave her a paper on sub-quantum string theory and its practical application to move between universes. Then again, altering the course of history is a big no-no, as in strictly – we’re talking punishable by imprisonment – forbidden.

  Outside, the day has waned to a cool, clear evening. I check my watch. Caden’s meet will be in full swing… and full of more people. I have the biggest urge to race back to my motel room and lay on the bed in the dark for a while where it’s quiet and I am alone, and where I can think. Instead, I sit on a nearby bench and close my eyes just for a moment.

  All of this interaction is tiresome. Remembering what to say and what not to say takes a huge toll after a while, and I’m mentally exhausted, especially after the confrontation with Mrs Taylor. Before, I’d shift in and out, looking for Caden and then move on. Now that I’ve found him, coupled with my hindrance of an injury, I’ve had more interaction with these people than I’d ever intended. And it’s literally draining.

  Plus, too much contact means bad things could happen. It means that my presence could unknowingly set something into motion… a disturbance in the natural course of events. It means that other people – not just the Vectors – could find me, but also the Guardians, who monitor such disturbances.

  I’ve never met a Guardian, but Cale’s father told me that they were there to make sure that people on both sides stayed where they were supposed to be. For centuries, the Guardians have been an elite group bound to the same code on both sides, preventing people from shifting, under the Laws of Eversion after the Great Infection of 1927. They answer only to the Faction, a trio of leaders supposedly older than the monarchy of my world.

  You evert, you die. It’s as simple as that. If the environmental differences don’t get you, the Guardians will.

  Only with Caden, the Guardians had failed. Until recently, everyone thought that Caden was dead. But obviously, he isn’t dead… he is very much alive, a secret that Cale only revealed to me a few months ago when he mysteriously became sick. So, somehow, Caden has managed to outwit them and survive all this time. I can’t quite shake the feeling that there’s something more, something I am missing that’s right in front of my face… something essential to his survival here.

  He told me that his mother had died here, from a seizure. She probably had the pills that my father had given her, but they didn’t help. My father warned that the pills with their brain stabilization agents wouldn’t work for everyone, and everting would only put more pressure on the body’s central nervous system. But the plain truth is that we don’t belong here, and the universe has its own way of righting wrongs, of fixing inconsistencies. Her seizure was just that… nature’s way of dealing with cheaters.

  I take in a few deep breaths and complete a set of mental exercises to clear my head. A quick glance at my watch suggests that the meet should nearly be over, so I start to make my way across the quad. A part of me doesn’t want to watch Caden fence – I don’t want to see what a natural he is, just like Cale.

  Cale.

  For a second, I wonder how he’s doing. Whether he’s surviving in what has become a sea of snakes and traitors. They won’t kill him, that I am sure of, because they need his name too much to control the people of Neospes; loyalty to the monarchy was too hard-won to be usurped by a single coup. We were too careful, too suspicious of sudden changes.

  People trusted Cale’s family. They trusted his father, and now he was dead… assassinated in cold blood by his half-brother, a bloodthirsty man greedy for power. Without a doubt, I know that Cale was next. His life is collateral for the moment… collateral for support. His uncle will keep him alive for as long as it suits his purpose. I have to trust that he is somehow holding on; otherwise, everything I’m doing will be for nothing.

  Fear for Cale’s safety clouds my mind so much that I almost crash into a group of kids standing in a shadowy corner near the gym.

  “Watch where you’re going!” shouts a slurred voice. A foul breath blows into my face, and I almost gag.

  “Sorry,” I say, and then belatedly recognize one of the faces in the crowd: Charisma, the other girl from my physics discussion group. The slurred voice belongs to a dark-haired guy she’s leaning against… the one with the foul breath. He’s obviously drunk or high on something, and she looks dazed but doesn’t say anything.

  “Hey, Charisma,” I say, but she won’t even meet my eyes, as if she’s staring right through me. Something about the way the guy’s arm is wrapped around her shoulders rubs me the wrong way and I hesitate.

  It’s not your problem, my inner voice hisses. None of these people, other than Caden, are. Keep walking.

  I listen, take two steps, and halt. Even though I’ve only had a few classes with Charisma, she’s grown on me with her upbeat personality and her willingness to help others. She’s one of those types of people I wish I could be more like – selfless and caring – but I am so far beyond that person, it’s not even funny. Hardness and cynicism drives me. With so much loss in my world, allowing myself to care about anything other than my own survival is a death sentence. I guess a part of me feels drawn to Charisma for that reason. She seems untouched by anything ugly.

  “Hey, you OK?” I ask her.

  “She’s fine,” the boy says, pulling her away from me in the opposite direction.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” I say to him, and grab Charisma’s shoulders so that she’s facing me. Her eyes are dilated, and she’s looking at me as if she’s trying to focus but can’t. “Charisma, are you OK?”

  “I told you she was fine!” the boy snaps, pushing me backward with one hand. My brain registers two things in immediate succession. One, Charisma is drugged, and two, this boy is lucid enough to shove me backward. My body kicks into battle mode, and everything slows to the point where I can sense the movements of his friends behind me.

  “She’s not fine, and I am going to take her home. Back off; I don’t want to hurt you,” I say quietly. I figure I should prepare him for what’s about to happen.

  “You and what army?” he jeers in a loud voice. Instantly, he has the attention of everyone within ten feet of us. “Look, guys, we have a late addition to the party. Get her a drink before she hurts herself.”

  He laughs, and his friends join in. Someone thrusts a cup in my face, and even without tasting it, I know that there’s something wrong with it. I can smell it. My eyes narrow and I bat the cup away with the back of one hand.

  “You guys don’t go here, do you?” More slurred laughter. They must have come for the meet and then decided to take advantage of girls while they were at their drink fest. “Don’t you know it’s a crime to drug people’s drinks?”

  “Lookit, we got ourselves a deputy,” one of the boys giggles. “You gonna arrest us?”

  “Arrest me, arrest me, Ociffer. I’m underage
!” another says.

  I glare him into silence. Where I come from, there’s no drinking age. Consuming spirits is a rite of passage, and considering it’s cheaper and more accessible than water, people don’t make that much of a big deal over it. It’s mostly consumed in toasts and celebrations. And frankly, people are too busy to risk the effects on their day-to-day responsibilities.

  “I don’t want any trouble. I just want Charisma. Just pass her over, and you can go back to getting yourselves drunk.”

  “Charisma wants to stay,” the dark-haired boy says and turns to her. “Don’t you, baby?”

  “Mm hmm…” Charisma murmurs incoherently. A line of drool has made its way down her chin, and she’s starting to teeter on her feet. The boy glares at me with a vile expression in his eyes and then kisses her while I am watching, his tongue slithering over her mouth. I don’t flinch, not even when he grabs the front of her chest. “You’re my girl, aren’t you baby?”

  “Touch her again, and it will be the last thing you do.”

  “You mean like this–”

  I break his fingers with a single flex of my own before he can even touch the front of her dress, and then I’m on the move, spinning backward and knocking two of the guys behind me off their feet. The fourth boy takes one look at me and flees in the opposite direction.

  I turn back to where Charisma is still standing near the dark-haired boy, who is screaming on his knees and clutching his mauled fingers. With his uninjured hand, he removes a switchblade from his pocket and brandishes it, weaving unsteadily to his feet. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice that Charisma has teetered her way to a tree and has slumped down against its trunk. At least she’s out of harm’s way, but I know that I don’t have a lot of time. She can’t fall asleep before I can get her some help.

  “You’re going to be sorry,” the boy snarls, pointing the knife at me.

  This time, I can’t stop from laughing. “Someone once told me that if you point a knife, you’d better be prepared to use it,” I inform him. His answer is to swipe at my face, an attack that I dodge easily. “You should know that where I come from, I graduated the top of my class in hand-to-hand combat.”

  “What are you? Some kind of army grunt?”

  “Something like that. Bet you’re wishing that you’d just let her go when I’d asked you, right?” I know my lack of fear must be aggravating him, but honestly, it’s like fighting an uncoordinated toddler. Given the odds, I could quite conceivably fight him blindfolded.

  “Shut up. Who has the knife, anyway?” he taunts lunging blindly at me.

  I spin again and clip the knife out of his hand with the heel of my boot so that it flies upward and lands in my own fist. “This knife?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I don’t need it,” he says with forced bravado. His eyes dart to the motionless forms of his friends. I can see the fear in his eyes and a dawning understanding of what he has gotten himself into, underscored by sheer disbelief that a girl is somehow getting the best of all of them. It is the same fear that makes him charge toward me in a football-type tackle.

  I dance out of the way and laugh again. I’m exhilarated. It’s the first real combat exercise I’ve had in weeks, this coming from someone who typically trains three hours a day in a rigorous simulation mode and then another hour in actual combat. I should be sluggish, but I’m wired. Ever since the clinic, it’s as if I can feel the neurons firing inside of me, getting stronger. And now, my body feels wired, like it’s plugged in to a giant electrical outlet, every move charged with lethal fire. I am invincible.

  My last move has brought me near to where Charisma is sitting, and I notice that her head is slumping forward onto her knees. She’s nearly unconscious. A surge of anger rips through me and I advance on the boy. His eyes widen because now I am no longer laughing. My face is dead, emotionless. It is a look that has been partially responsible for the rank I hold in my own world.

  “You like to take advantage of defenseless girls?” His head snaps back as my fist makes contact with his right cheek. It’s barely a touch, but he stumbles backward. “You put something in their drinks, and then what do you do? Pretend to care about them? Then you hurt them?”

  Each word is a staccato of fury. Fury at what girls here had to put up with over and over again. I’ve seen it at almost every school I’ve been to, and until now, I’d always walked away, telling myself that there was nothing I could do.

  Where I come from, girls – women – know how to defend themselves from everything and everyone: human, animal, or machine. Drugged or not, any girl from my world would have had this guy, or one three times his size, on his backside before he could even lay a finger on her.

  In this world, in neighborhood high schools, others like this boy prey on innocent girls, and more often than not get away with it because the girls are too ashamed or humiliated or aren’t able to remember to do anything about it. It sickens me. Drugging another person in my world for something as revolting as sexual gratification is an offense punishable by exile – a fate more feared than death. Let’s just say it doesn’t happen too often. Exile is not a gentle end.

  Someone needs to teach this boy a lesson. For Charisma, I’d be that person.

  I grab the boy by the front of his shirt and pull him close to me. He’s a fair head taller than I am, but I am practically holding him off the ground. I press the butt of his knife against his crotch so deeply that I can see the water spring into his eyes. My voice is a low snarl. “I ever see you near her, I will end you. Got it?”

  Without waiting for any acknowledgement, I spear my knee into his groin, feeling the immediate grunt radiating up through his entire body as he collapses against me, crying. I shove him away, a whimper from Charisma drawing my attention. The boy is curled into a fetal ball on the ground, but I still send his knife spinning behind me without a backward glance. I know without looking that it thumps right into the sliver of space on the ground between his stomach and his thighs. The sudden sour odor of urine permeates the night air.

  I lift Charisma easily. “It’s OK; you’re safe now,” I tell her. “But you need to stay awake for just a few more minutes, OK?”

  “Mmm… OK.”

  After I file a report with school security with a condensed version of the events and accompany Charisma in the ambulance to the local hospital, where she will stay overnight – apparently, the boy had used some kind of hypnotic sedative in an excessive amount – I catch a cab back to Horrow. But the parking lot is empty, and it looks like I’ve missed the whole meet, and Caden, too.

  A sense of exhaustion overcomes me, and I rest my head against the handlebars of my bike. I want to leave this place as fast as I can. Everything about it unnerves me. I want to go back to where I belong, where I feel whole. Here, I am starting to feel broken, the natural result of living in a broken world. Although they have more landmass, water, and people than we do, I have no doubt that this world is far more lost than mine.

  Gritting my teeth, I rev the bike with one thing on my mind. Come hell or high water, we are leaving tomorrow. With a sense of rejuvenated intent, I ride to Caden’s house. I don’t let the fact that his car isn’t in the driveway or that there aren’t lights on in the house deter my new sense of purpose. I’ll wait. Throwing a jacket across my shoulders, I make my way to the front porch, but there’s already someone there.

  My heart plummets to my stomach in a free fall that is magnified by the fact that time has slowed to abnormal proportions. My blood thunders in my ears like a solid force.

  “Shae,” I breathe.

  My sister. My family. My enemy.

  CONFLICT ARISING

  “I knew they’d send you sooner or later.”

  The breath that leaves my lips in response to the husky familiarity of her voice is deflating and harsh, taking with it every bone in my body.

  “No one… sent me. I came alone,” I manage in a shaky voice.

  Shae looks more or less the same as when I saw he
r last, right before she caught me off-guard, armed with a double electro-rod, except that there’s an oozing red gash across her face. Hair in blond dreadlocks, tanned face, if thinner, and eyes the color of a glacial sky. Those cold eyes were the last thing I’d seen before she’d everted.

  Seeing her now is like being dunked in a bucket of ice until my entire body feels like it’s going to peel out of my skin. I want to run to her so badly it hurts, but underneath it all her betrayal is as fresh as it was thirteen years before, and the pain just as sharp. She left me with no regrets and no explanations. The monarchy had branded her a traitor, and I had to live with her shame until I built myself into something large and powerful enough to eclipse it.

  I hate her. That isn’t going to change. Not now, not ever.

  “So you’re the one helping Caden,” I say. “I should have guessed. I learned everything I know about covering up the marks of eversion from you.”

  “And yet you found me.”

  I laugh, a hollow sound made harsh with a coil of emotions I can’t begin to unravel. “It wasn’t easy to track you, trust me. You were careful, I’ll give you that… everting and then traveling by their transportation. Smart. But my coming here was just pure luck.”

  “Luck,” Shae repeats, a small frown creasing her brow. I notice that there are more bruises and cuts along her arms, all of them fresh.

  “Maybe I sensed you in my subconscious?” I offer snidely. I can’t keep the sarcasm from my voice. “So who’s June, really? Does she know who you are?”

  “No.” Shae shrugs her shoulders, not giving up much. I raise a skeptical eyebrow, and Shae continues. “She’s part of an organization here that helps with supervised independent living until Caden turns eighteen.”

  I return her shrug, thinking of the gun I found. It makes no difference to me whether Shae’s lying about June or not. She’s not my target. “Is Caden here?” I ask abruptly.