by Pat Schmatz
“I don’t think so. I think Machete is something bigger than any of us can understand or fight. I’m so scared of her.”
“Rasta, I know you don’t think this, but what if . . . I mean, what if she’s good? What if she’s really trying to help us?”
Rasta wipes her eyes and gives me a long look.
“Lizard. Don’t. I can’t stand it if you go there. Don’t let her change you.”
“I won’t. I just — I don’t know. She makes a lot of sense sometimes.”
“That’s what’s so dangerous about her.”
“Tell me more about your da. The things he says, okay? Please?”
“I should just shut up,” she says. “So I don’t get you in trouble, too. I shouldn’t tell anyone anything, ever.”
“But then you’re letting her change you.”
Rasta’s head falls sideways in a baby-crow tilt, and she caw-laughs.
“Lizard, I knew that I picked right. You’re the strongest alliance ever.”
She wipes her face. I help her up, and walk her all the way back to her slice.
“Tomorrow is Monday,” she says.
“Week Three.”
“Week Three,” she echoes.
She holds up her hand, and we touch fingertips. This time, I meet her eyes. She really is my strong alliance, and it’s time for me to be hers and stop hiding things. I’ll tell her what happened between me and Sully. I’ll tell her soon.
FOOTSTEPS TROT UP BEHIND ME after Block Four. Sully yanks me around to face her with a force that startles me.
“Why the big icy chill? It’s like living with two Nonas. You wouldn’t even look at me in Cleezies last night.”
“What do you care?”
My words spill shaky over us both, and she steps back. She looks down and rubs her hands over her face. Then she stretches her arms out, palms up in a half shrug, opens her face to me, and there are her eyes. Dark and warm, no lights and no jazz.
“Come on,” she says. “Walk with me.”
This Sully I cannot refuse. The secret Sully, the one she reveals to me in private. As I walk with her, my heart practically bursts into song. My heart is stupid. Sully doesn’t speak until we’re well past Lacey’s slice.
“It’s not what you think. It was his idea to have a little sneak-over on our afternoon off, and I couldn’t say no. I mean, not without hurting his feelings, and —”
She stops abruptly. Turns away from me. Shakes her head, squares her shoulders, and turns back.
“The truth is, I asked him to come over here, and he found a way. And yes, I know better, and yes, I did it anyway.”
Why? Why would she do that? And in my grove. Mine. I can’t believe I took her there, let her see me. . . . Did she tell Aaron? Did they make fun of me there?
“Hey. Hey, hey, hey, come on now.”
She steps toward me, hand out. I jerk away.
“If there’s anything I’m not . . .” Sully looks down, shoves her hands in the pockets of her coveralls. “It’s worth any of that.”
How dare she talk to me that way? Her soft words slide through my ribs to my stupid, gullible heart.
“Fine,” I say. “You want to get yourself expulled, do it.”
I start back toward the pies. She runs around and stands in front of me. I look away. She jumps over to where I’m looking, right in my face. I look the other way. She jumps over there. She looks for the smile but she’s getting nothing from me.
“I told you,” she says. “Left on my own, I’ll always do the wrong thing.”
“Not with me, you didn’t.”
I do not want my voice to shake.
“Yes, I did, and I’m trying to fix it.” She steps close, and I’m not strong enough to jerk away again. I cannot refuse her any more than I can refuse kickshaw. “You’re the best friend I have here. Be my friend, okay? Even when I do it wrong?”
Hand on my shoulder, one cool finger on my neck. Holding me in and holding me out at the same time.
“That saurian stuff I told you, it’s just a story.” My voice shakes. “Something Sheila made up.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
Her eyes are so full. Mystery and warmth and jazz and light. I want her to pull me in, to say that I’m irresistible and mean it. I want to do the wrong thing because it’s right and neither of us can stop ourselves.
“Come on,” she says. “Let’s go be good little CropCampers so they’ll let us pick their cucumbers.”
She takes her hand away from my shoulder, her finger off my neck, and she turns away from me. She does not feel like I do. She does not. My body pulses with a jumble-jazz of disappointment and wishing-wishing and wanting-wanting. And suddenly, clear as clear, Rasta’s voice is in my head.
Don’t let her change you.
The next morning, I wake before gong and stare at the sunrise rays leaking through the synthie ceiling. It’s too late to not-change. They’re all changing me, whether I let them or not. Sully and Machete, Rasta and Nona and even Lacey and Aaron. And the kickshaw. The dragon lies deep in the earth, and I’m a shake-up of skin and heart and biz. Nothing lizard about me.
I dress quietly, layering with a warmer and a cap against the morning chill, and zip out soft and slow. I creep past Nona’s and Sully’s doors, through the sleeping Pieville, and up to the fields. In the middle of the potatoes, I kneel and push my fingers into the cool, damp earth. The sun tips yellow heat over the treetops, and I face the day. Live in the light. Return to One. Just like everyone else.
It’s disappointing, actually. For all the pain of being different and separate, it’s been a good fantasy. Baby komodo dropped from the cosmos, listening to the saurians on a secret radio, waiting for my moment to rise and make my move. It’s sad to let that go, but it’s time. It’s called growing up.
At CounCircle, I look around at the faces. They don’t look as old as they did only a couple of weeks ago. They look like me. The circle collapses, and we head into the Mealio. Sully is in the crowd ahead of me. I move closer, hoping to sit with her at breakfast, hoping to show her how human I am.
“Hey, pretty boy.”
She reaches up and tweaks Aaron’s ear. He puts an arm around her, something between a hug and a headlock. I override the pain twinge by pounding the lesson to myself. She does not feel like I do. She doesn’t. Grind it in. Make it real.
I will not tell Rasta about me and Sully. I need to forget about me and Sully. I step back and bump into someone behind. It’s Emmett, the blond boy I shared kickshaw with. He smiles just enough to dent his dimple.
We walk into the Mealio together. I take a seat across from Nona, and she nods. Emmett sits next to me, and Tylee and Rasta join us. I pass Emmett the eggs. He pours juice in my glass. Tylee mentions the rumor of a three-Sunday-weekend in early July. Emmett bumps his knee against mine. His eyes hold a soft and gentle shade of kickshaw. Nice, but nothing to jelly my bones.
In my DM session with Machete that morning, his name comes up again.
“A friendship with Emmett will be good for both of you.”
“Why?”
“You tell me. You picked him for kickshaw last Sunday.”
Did I pick him? I thought he picked me.
“Kivali, you seem distracted. Or distant. There’s a change over you. Has something happened?”
Almost involuntarily, I meet her eyes.
“Have you given thought to last week’s question?”
Which was what?
“Leader or follower, Kivali?”
Oh, that. Well, that’s gotten obvious over the past few days.
“Follower,” I say. “Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do here? Follow all the regs and do what we’re told? If we don’t follow, we don’t get certed.”
Machete nods. Pauses. Watches me.
“Do you see me as a leader?” she asks.
“Sure, of course. You’re in charge.”
“But I follow the tenets and the edicts of the SayFree Council and
GovCentral. I answer to someone, always.”
“So you’re a follower?”
“Kivali, would you like to be a leader?”
“It’s easier to just do what I’m told.”
“Yes, of course it’s easier. But does it come naturally? Do you like it?”
I’d like it fine if I knew for sure who to follow.
“What if you could have it all?” asks Machete. “Ease and community, and your independence? Most people move happily with the herd. I don’t think that’s true for you. As a leader, you would carry influence. Not to maverick off on your own but to work with others, to work with what is, to exert your strong will and clever mind for the good of everyone.”
“You mean, to make them change the regs?”
“Who is them? Them is you, and me. We’re all in this world together. If you allow yourself to truly be a part, there is no them.”
But there’s always been a them. Them makes me go to school, and make a decision, and attend post-decision gender training, and get a camp cert, and comply with state standards. . . .
“Kivali, you can be a decision-maker, a leader, an influence in the us. I see that potential in you. But you’ll have to truly join us, and let go of the idea of them.”
“Ms. Mischetti, who is Donovan Freer?”
Machete flinches — just the tiniest twitch. Then she pulls the blanket of authority and leadership — of them — back over her face and her features.
“Kivali, I’d like you to tell me more about your home life.” The change of subject is so obvious. “Do you enjoy school?”
I play along but my mind is on rapid fire. Why did I ask that? I didn’t plan to — it just came out. The name clearly means something to Machete. She asks banal questions, and I give empty answers until my time is up.
“We had a miss there,” she says as she stands. “You startled me. I responded from the startle, rather than the truth. Donovan Freer was the bender boy that you saw at orientation, the one who left and won’t be back.”
The bender boy! That was Nona’s Donovan Freer?
“It’s important that you and I be truthful with each other, Kivali. We both need to be responsible. An irresponsible leader can do widespread, irreparable damage. Neither one of us wants that. Now get on back to the fields — we’ve gone over our time.”
I FINALLY MANAGE TO pull Nona aside from our pie that night, a few minutes before curfew gong.
“Tell me about Donovan,” I say.
She does the same flinch-and-cover as Machete, but instead of pulling power she pulls a deep breath and looks me in the eye.
“I thought you didn’t know him.”
“Machete told me that he’s the guy who was here the first night and then gone. I saw him.”
Nona relaxes. It’s subtle, but it’s there.
“He really was here, then,” she says. “I thought maybe I dreamed it.”
“He was here,” I say. “He vaped, that first night. I saw it, almost. I saw him, and then he was gone.”
Nona’s mouth makes an o. Then her face softens.
“He did it,” she whispers.
“Nona, who is he?”
“We were kidlets together. He was my best friend. We had a bad time, both of us. We stuck together.”
“Why you? You’re not a bender.”
“You don’t have to be a bender to have a bad time. It’s easy for you. You get along.”
“Only here.”
“I’m telling you about Donovan. He didn’t want to T, and no matter how much PDGT they rammed down his throat, he kept coming up Donovan. He flunked, so they took him away. Put him with a foster in another sector. I didn’t see him after that. Not until here.”
The gong rings, and she immediately heads for the pie.
“Nona, wait!”
She stops, shakes her head no, and zips into her slice. I stand alone in the dark. What else don’t I know about Nona?
The next day, I enter the quiet of the ayvee pod, put my chip in, and hit PLAY. Sheila’s face leaps onto the screen. She rambles on through three ticks, then four. It’s all rinkety-dink. At four and a half ticks I hit PAUSE and study her image. Her eyes angle down to the right. This is the longest inflow she’s done, but she hasn’t looked at the cam once. I’d rather have a half tick of real than all of this blattery-blat.
I punch PLAY to finish the inflow.
“My beautiful Kivali-dragon, I miss you every day. When you come home, you can teach me about potatoes and cucumbers and spinach and all the other things you’re learning.”
I’m reaching to turn it off when the Sheila image turns fully to the cam, and I catch my breath.
“Remember. No matter what happens, beware the fly pepper.”
Her lip stud rises when she smiles, and the screen goes blank. I watch the last bit again, and then again. She always says, “You have to learn to tell the fly shit from the pepper.” When I was a kidlet I used to get mixed up and call it fly pepper. And then she’d fall to the floor covering her head and yelling, “Fly pepper! Fly pepper!” Sometimes I’d do it, too, and we’d both laugh like lunars. It no longer seems funny.
After lunch, the sun blazes a direct ray on our pie, and my slice is a steam bath. I can’t even draw a deep breath, and I pour sweat with every movement. I make the slow-tickiest of all exits. No runaround allowed during Solitude, but even if I get caught, Machete won’t expul me over this. I doubt she’d even give me a culpa. For whatever reason, she likes me. She thinks I’m a leader. My independence is an asset.
I barefoot along the path. Still hot, but better than steaming in that sweaty pie. I ease past Lacey’s slice and take the right fork. The little clearing is perfect — all shady with a breath of breeze.
I sink down to the pine-needle carpet and stretch out on my back, inhaling the deep hot scent of the pine needles. I roll over and press my skin to the ground. The earth and my heart beat in rhythm, and the treetops murmur sweetness overhead, shifting the shadows. It feels so good to relax, turn off my brain, listen to the trees, and drift.
Something nips the rim of my ear. I startle and collide with a human body, lengthwise over mine.
“Shh-sh-sh, it’s okay. It’s just me.”
My body knows Sully’s smell and touch before I’m even awake.
“Why is the lizard sleeping in the woods?” she whispers in my ear. “Culpa-worthy.”
She rolls away and props on an elbow alongside me. I drop my face in my arms, close my eyes again. Sun heat, Sully heat. Her presence still completely shakes me, no matter how much I want it not to. She puts a hand on my back.
“Lizard. What’s wrong?”
I shake my head, face hidden.
“S’okay. Don’t talk.”
Hand in my hair now, rubbing, fingers down to my scalp. Setting off small, soft explosions in my stomach and my biz. Off-guard and human-skinned.
“Don’t.”
I push her hand away and sit up, scooting back against a tree. Draw my knees up and wrap my arms around them.
“Come on, Lizard. Don’t be mad. I’m not jazzing you, I’m just —”
A stick cracks, and we both freeze. Nona clumps fast along the narrow path, not even trying to be quiet.
“Lizard, Lacey knows you’re out,” she puffs. Her cheeks are high red. “She’s looking for you. When you weren’t there, she took off. Probably to go tell Machete.”
We scrabble up as Nona lumbers off. She looks like someone just learning how to run, like she’s never done it before. Sully grabs my arm.
“Can we trust her?”
“What’s not to trust about that?”
I pull my arm free and take off after Nona. We all three arrive back at the pie together and dive in with a chorus of zip-zip. I try to slow my breathing. Wipe the sweat from my forehead, rebraid my hair, and wait. Eventually, footsteps approach.
“Kivali?”
I step up to the window screen. Machete and Lacey stand just outside my slice.
&
nbsp; “Where were you a few ticks ago?” Lacey asks.
“Privo.”
“Kivali, come with me, please.”
“I checked the privo,” Lacey says to Machete as I zip out. “Checked every stall, and the showers, too.”
“I guess you missed her, then,” says Machete. “Thank you, Lacey. I’ll take over now.”
I follow Machete. Eyes watch from behind slice screens as we pass the pies. The air presses heavy. We climb the steep path, and sweat runs down my ribs. My stomach is wet, and so is the back of my neck. Did Lacey see Sully on top of me? That’ll make it an expul for sure, no matter how much potential Machete thinks I have. But what about Sully? Why didn’t Machete get her, too?
Stepping onto the shaded porch gives instant relief from the heat. Inside, it’s cooler still. Machete leads me into her office and closes the door behind her. I go directly to the comfy chair as she sits at her desk.
She leans forward, eyes full of concern, and I don’t have a chance to pull together any excuse or explanation before she speaks.
“I’m afraid that I have some bad news. Your guardian, Sheila, has gone missing.”
A sudden chill clammers my sweaty T-shirt to my skin.
“What do you mean, missing?”
“She didn’t show up for her refresher course on Monday. Nobody has seen her since Sunday morning.”
“But I just saw —” I point toward the Study Center, the ayvee pod.
“She made that on Sunday for a Tuesday delivery. Kivali, do you know where she might go? She has no associations on Deega other than her art coordinator. Do you know of anyone else? Friends? Acquaintances?”
I shake my head. Korm isn’t exactly a friend. Besides, Korm doesn’t officially exist.
“She hasn’t crossed any sector borders, and no body has been found.”
Body? Body?
“I know that this is a shock, but please try to focus. Any ideas you have, any at all, might help us find her.”
The shivers start somewhere in my stomach and spread across my body. I draw my feet up on the chair, hugging my knees. Clench my teeth so they won’t chatter.
“There’s food in the fridge,” says Machete. “Half-finished work on her desk.”
