by Pat Schmatz
Machete is waiting. She signals us to sit in the little clearing there. We’re in a tight arc, Sully to my left and Rasta on my right. The other three arrive soon after with Lacey behind them. Once we’re all seated, Machete starts to pace around us. Lacey leans on a downed tree, arms crossed.
“You’re quick.” Machete stops in front of Sully. “Most camps don’t start with curfew breaks until at least the second week.”
“We didn’t curfew-break,” says Sully. “Gong hadn’t rung yet.”
“We were about to leave,” says Sabi. “If Lacey hadn’t been there talking to us, we would’ve been back in our slices by the gong.”
“Lacey?” Machete turns to her. “Is it true? Was it before gong?”
“They never would have made it by gong.” Lacey glares at Sully. “They weren’t on their way back.”
“So it’s a technicality,” says Machete. “We can’t prove it one way or another, so there will be no culpa.”
A sigh of relief passes among us. Three culpas make an expul.
“But Lacey, since you did such a nice job of rounding up this little group, I think I’ll take the opportunity to explain some things.”
Machete walks again, pacing clockwise. I resist the urge to swivel and keep her in sight.
“My job is not just to record culpas and scores. My first and foremost job is to keep you safe, and to teach you how to keep yourselves safe. Part of that job is to recognize strength and enhance it. What I see here is a unique power cadre. I see brains and intuition, connection and influence. I see steadiness and strength and creativity. I don’t want to lose even one of you.”
She continues to pace around us. It’s been cloudy all afternoon, and the woods settle to a dusky gray. Machete stops in front of me, and I swear I can feel her foot on my tail. I stop breathing but I don’t look away. She shifts her eyes a tick to my left.
“Sully. Do you find your days here uninteresting?”
Sully doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t look away, either. She’s practically begging to be blamed. The air vibrates between them. Machete slowly nods. As if she and Sully are making an agreement. Then Machete resumes her circular prowl.
“I understand your need to bond. Highly predictable, that those of you with some extra lumens seek one another and take a little lark. Form alliances.”
Rasta’s breath hitches.
“You’re each finding and testing your personal capabilities, the reach of your influence. Discovering the intelligence and imagination and personal potency that set you apart. You could explore more productive ways to apply your leadership. I suggest inclusiveness of your comrades in the future — it’ll be better for them, and for you, too. I appreciate this opportunity to have a clear visual on where our potential power base lies so that we can all work together.”
A chill falls across the gathering, and my limbs begin to stiffen. My teeth would chatter if I let them.
“You’ll all have your DM sessions with me from here on out. Rasta and Tylee, check the rosters in the morning for your schedule changes. Return to your slices now, and consider the best possible ways to use your leadership and unique talents for the benefit of the wider citizenry. I realize that you were just on a lark, but the ways in which we choose to have fun say a great deal about us. With power comes responsibility. We will explore this further in DM.”
She turns and leaves. I stand, and my knees crack. I offer a hand to Rasta. Lacey still leans with her arms crossed, watching as we file back out to the main path. I don’t breathe easy until we’re back at our pie. This time, Tylee stops with me and Rasta and Sully.
“That was a big zoom-zoom,” says Sully. “Machete’s selling. Who’s buying?”
“Me,” says Tylee. “I am. From here out, I’m staying with the pack. She made a mistake about me. I’m not any power cadre.”
“Guess you’ll hear about that in DM,” says Sully. “Rasta?”
“The whole thing made me cold,” she says. “Chilly to the core. How about you, Lizard? What did you think of it?”
In the relief of non-culpa for me or anyone else, my attention has wandered back to Sully’s fingers on my ear. I’m glad that it’s too dark for anyone to see my face flush.
“The Lizard speaks not,” says Sully. “Maybe we should all take Lizard lessons.”
“I’m for that,” says Tylee.
Rasta and Tylee leave me and Sully on the dark side of the pie. She turns to face me.
“Sorry I got you in trouble,” she says.
She reaches up, and her fingertips are a kiss of cool on my hot cheek.
“Good night,” she whispers.
THE GONG RINGS, AND the first thing I think of is Sully’s touch cool-branded on my cheek. Sully doesn’t holler because it’s Saturday — her day off. I miss her on the way up to breakfast, and I miss her at lunch. I miss her all day long. I mean to tune in to Lizard Radio during Solitude, but instead I think about Sully. I think about her fingers, warm on my ear, cool on my cheek. I listen for her breath through the synthie wall.
After Cleezies, I sit on the grass with Tylee and Rasta. Sully is over on the edge of the Quint with Aaron. They’re laughing. I pull my secateurs out of the holster. I open the blades, take a rag from my pocket, and start digging the grit out from the hinge joint. Saxem runs notes on his instrument, and a group of Tuesdays and Thursdays shout through a whuck-chuck game on the other end.
“Do you think Machete will tell our MaDas?” asks Tylee.
“Of course she will,” says Rasta. “My da is not going to like this.”
“We didn’t actually do anything wrong, though. And we didn’t get a culpa.”
“He told me to keep my head down. He said, ‘Do not attract attention in any way, for anything.’ ”
“Power cadre meeting and getting Machete for DM definitely counts as attracting attention,” says Tylee. “But that’s the end of it for me. I’m not risking my future for a ridiculous ha-ha game in the woods.”
I glance over my shoulder. Aaron has Sully’s hands pinned behind her back. She twists and kicks his feet out from under him. He takes an exaggerated fall and lies spread-eagled on the grass. She puts a foot on his chest.
“I’m heading pie-wise.” I turn back to Rasta and Tylee. “See you tomorrow.”
I skirt the whuck-chuck game and the little circle around Saxem. The sinking sun pours its last half-clouded rays across the fields, heightening the green. Not a breath of wind stirs on the humid air.
I stop off at the privo. When I come out, Nona is just outside, waiting.
“I didn’t tell on you,” she says.
“No?”
“No.” Her eyes are rocky-hard fissures. “I know that none of you like me, but at least make it for the right reasons.”
She marches off and zips into her slice. Footsteps come up behind. I turn, and there’s Sully.
“What was that about?” she asks.
“She didn’t tell on us.”
“Says she.”
“I believe her.”
I imagine Nona listening, slitted eyes shifting from my voice to Sully’s.
“Okay then, me, too. Come for a walk with me, would you? I need to talk.”
“Why not talk to Aaron?”
I almost cut my own tongue on the sharp blade of my words. Sully stops and cocks her head with a grin.
“Jealous? No need to be. He’s a toy. Come on. I need a real friend.”
The sudden softening of her expression, the asking in her eyes — it reaches inside and loosens the tight place in my chest. I point into the woods, away from Nona’s ears.
“We don’t have much time before gong,” I say as we walk. “We can’t get caught out late two nights in a row.”
“I know. We never have much time before some gong.”
The humid night air presses down on us. We continue around a bend, out of sight of Lacey’s slice. Sully stops and leans against a tree trunk, arms crossed. I’d like to see her dark form in
the deepening green under Sheila’s paint brush. Sheila can take any visual and amplify it until you can’t stand the beauty.
“I’m looking at the end here,” says Sully. “My whole life I’ve been headed toward Blight, but it always seemed like a long time away. Now it’s smacking me in the face, and I’m not ready.”
“What do you mean, smacking you? We got clear, not even a culpa.”
Sully slides down the trunk. I sink to cross-legged, facing her.
“Machete came down hard on me in DM today. Told me that she rarely expuls comrades, but sometimes has to sacrifice one for the sake of the others. Said she’s not going to let me take a bunch of innocents down with me.”
“That’s not fair. Did you tell her it was Sabi?”
“Of course not. Wouldn’t help, anyway. Machete’s out to chop me. I’m a repeater and she knows it. I got expulled from AstroPhysCamp and then a RepeaterCamp. My da yanked money strings to get me in here, last chance. I turn eighteen in August.”
“You’ll have to mind the regs then. No more messing around. She can’t expul you if you do everything right.”
Sully shakes her head, looking down at her hands.
“Lizard, I’m hardwired to go wrong. Genetic defect, and not much help from the parental people.”
“What do you mean, wrong? You don’t seem wrong to me.”
“When I was a kid, I could skate through everything. People laughed, let stuff go. But the camps are different. I can’t do it.”
“You have to. You can’t go to Blight.”
“I know. They’ll eat me up and spit me out there. I guess it’ll have to be underground.”
People are always threatening to underground but it’s not so easy. I know because of Korm, and she says it gets harder all the time. Even if Sully could manage it, I’d never see her again.
“I’ll help you comply. We’ll cert through together, we will.”
Sully picks up her head. In this moment, meeting her eyes in the fall of night with the memory of her fingers in my hair, I’d do anything for her. She smiles, but it’s not a happy smile.
“You’re lured in by my jazz-wise wiles, right?”
“Wrong.” I stand, brush off my bum, swallow the vague taste of lie. “We have to get back. Gong will ring any second. You need to be more careful. We both do. Come on.”
I turn toward the pie. Sully stops me with a hand on my shoulder. She pulls me around to face her, tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. Her touch blasts my skin, jazzes through my blood, liquefies my legs. Our faces draw close, and then closer.
Dark envelops me, sweet and rich, no vision and no sound, just the electric velvet sensation of tender skin meeting skin, Sully’s breath in my mouth, her hand on the back of my neck. I lose time and form the way I do in the depths of Lizard Radio.
Then Sully draws back. Not far. Just enough to put space and air between our lips and our hearts.
“See,” she whispers. “I’m nothing but trouble.”
I shake my head, and she puts her hand on my cheek, holding my face still.
“This is exactly what Machete means,” she says. “Corrupting innocence.”
Her fingers trail slowly across my skin as she turns. I move to follow, and my lizard skin splits, first at the chest where it can’t contain my hammering heart, and then across my face, undone by the new chemical wash rising to the surface. It peels down over my hips, melting in the heat, scaling off of my knees. I step out, leaving it in a dark crumple on the ground, and I follow Sully.
I LIE IN THE DARK, wide awake and open-eyed. Clippity-clop heartbeat and shallow breath. My stomach has taken on a life of its own, spinning and dipping in a tilt-o-swirl. I’m skinless. Raw and open and naked to the world.
A tree frog calls. Again. And again. Scratchy solo chirp in the night. Finally, another answers. Back and forth. Chirp — pause — chirp. There is no moon. There is no wind. The trees are silent.
Back around decision time, they warned us about midrange benders becoming samers. Especially if they don’t T. I was only ten. I didn’t like boys or girls. I didn’t much like anyone. I planned to be asolo, like Sheila or Korm. Never thought for a second what that might mean. What I’d miss.
I can’t be a samer. It’s bad enough being a bender. I won’t be a samer, too. I just won’t.
But what’s this feeling, this twist and drop in my gut, this surge through my chest and the shake in my fingers and breath? Is this what people mean by falling in love? Because it feels like a fall. It’s the same stomach-drop half-sick feeling. Velocity, no control, everything in a twist. It’s incredibly disturbing. I might never be able to eat again. Or sleep, either. All I want is that fluid electric connect. I run the full-sensory memory through my body, over and over again.
The chirpers go silent. A light flashes, and I jerk up in a panic, listening hard. Did someone see us? Any jazz contact is grounds for expul. Samer jazz contact, that’s fifty culpas and ten expuls all rolled into one. A low rumble moves through the trees, and I let my breath out.
Not a leddie. Lightning. Now I smell storm, and wonder how I didn’t notice it before. I lie back down, force my eyes closed. Squinch them tight. I suck in the deepest breath that I can manage, move my lips as I count, search for familiarity, for peace, for the Radio. But the only thing on the back of my eyelids is a cinematic stereo replay of Sully sensation.
I put my finger in my mouth, run it around the inside of my lips where her tongue ventured and her breath touched. What is Sully? How can she shake me like that? The pie walls ripple as the treetops begin to twitch and shiver. I’ve always loved the dark and the magic that rides on a storm wind, dancing with lightning. But that was with the protection of a lizard skin, real or imagined.
I zip my window closed. As I get back in bed, I grab the komodo from the shelf. I curl the familiar metal curves and sharps into my palm and put the fisted lizard to my heart. I feel nothing. No comfort, no connection. Everything is different now. One dusky twilight moment changed it all.
Thunder cracks through the grumble, and I pull the covers over my head, wrapping myself into an unprotected ball of human shiver. Irregular drops of rain chase the front of the wind and smatter on the fabric walls. The drops call in reinforcements, and the storm throws itself at me. It hammers on all sides, trying to get in. Flash and crash, louder, closer, everywhere. The storm is on me and in me, crack and bash. Every rumble, every thrash of wind and every howl moves through me as if I’m not only skinless but formless.
I sit up and the cot is a juggernaut flying through space, a swirl of sensation and emotion. I shallow-pant, staring wide-eyed at the flashing light, waiting for the explosion of lightning to split me open. It goes on and on, faster and faster, top speed, flash-crash after flash-crash.
And then flash-pause-crash. And flash and rumble. More space, more breath. The light stops stabbing my eyes and gentles to an irregular shimmer. The thunder crashes and complains through the trees, across the fields, and away. The wind dies, leaving behind a steady rain.
I manage a deep inhale. My breath shakes all the way in and all the way out. My eyes are wet, my throat thick and swollen, my chest compressed. I hear nothing from the other slices. Maybe Sully is scared, too. Maybe she’s been waiting this whole time for me to come to her, be with her. I throw off the blankets and pick up my coveralls from the floor.
Another light flashes. A small light. This time it’s a leddie beam, moving on the path outside.
“Everyone okay in there?” Lacey calls. “Did you stay dry?”
“Yes.” Nona’s voice is so flat, so earthly, so regular. “Dry.”
“Lizard? Sully?”
I strain my ears for Sully’s reply. Nothing. My heart beats faster. Where is she? Why doesn’t she answer?
Slappity-slap, against my slice wall. I jump.
“Lizard!” Lacey’s voice is sharp. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I manage.
Lacey slaps the synthie again on Sully’
s side.
“Sully?”
“Whuh?”
“You okay?”
“Mmm.”
Her voice is full of sleep. Even without the storm, how could she sleep?
I drop my coveralls and slip back into bed. I stare at the dark. I might never sleep again.
BUT I DO SLEEP. Or maybe I just drift through muted sensation for a few hours. Either way, the sun is in my eyes. I unzip my window. The trees drip with sun-dazzled green. A light breeze touches my cheek. I feel everything.
I step into clean boxers and reach for a shirt. I can’t imagine the day. How will it be? How will Sully be? Does she feel all of this, too? No. Not like this. She probably kisses people all the time. People like Aaron — and at that I stop, T-shirt halfway over my head.
Has she? Has she kissed Aaron like that?
I drop my shirt and sink to my cot, face in my hands. I’m so far over my head, I can’t even see the surface. Maybe she kisses lots of people. Maybe that’s what she means by being bad. But wait — Aaron isn’t allowed on the girls’ side. They have no privacy, never. So it can’t happen. But maybe Sully wants it to. Maybe she’d rather.
The gong.
“Morning, comrades!”
Sully hollers, the same as every morning. I finish dressing and walk around to her door. She zips herself out, turns, and faces me.
“Hello, young Lizard.”
“Hello.”
My face is fiery hot, and my voice doesn’t even sound like me.
“Lizard, Sully! Did you survive the storm okay?”
Rasta trots over from the spigot, carrying her toothbrush and towel.
“I slept through it until Lacey came and banged me awake,” says Sully.
“You slept through that?” Rasta’s voice cracks. “I thought we were all going to die. Lizard, did you sleep?”
“I didn’t sleep.”
I look directly into Sully’s eyes as I say it, wanting her to know. She winks, and sensation flash-floods through my body. Sully is a sweet-fisted miracle, and her every breath hits me like a hurricane.
With a bird-tip of the head, Rasta checks me, and then Sully. I drop my eyes to the ground. My feelings threaten to leak out my pores and spill everywhere.
