All Fall Down

by Carter, Ally

  My first thought as I hit the ground is that I’m free. My second is that I am anything but safe. And I know the worst thing that Ms. Chancellor and the Scarred Man have taken from me. It wasn’t my freedom. It was my confidence. They made me doubt myself. And now the whole world doubts me, too.

  I am the Girl Who Cried Wolf. And now I am the only one who can save the lambs.

  My feet ache as I run down the hill toward the park. One lands between the cobblestones and my ankle turns. But I don’t fall. I just keep running.

  The crowd is growing thicker now, the closer that I get to the bleachers and the grassy lawn. I can hear the music stop. The speeches are starting. Soon, the president and all the other world leaders will take the stage. The Secret Service will be there, yes, but they won’t be looking to protect the president from their counterparts from Adria. After what happened at the embassy, they probably won’t dare challenge the Scarred Man in any way, lest they risk another international incident.

  So I run faster.

  There are barricades. People fill the street. I push and claw, but I can’t get closer.

  “Let me through!” I try. “I have to get through!”

  But it’s no use. Even if I could fight the crowds, there would be no getting behind the barriers, no pleading with the Secret Service. I have to reach my grandfather. I have to warn him about Ms. Chancellor and the Scarred Man. I have to make him see. Somehow.

  I know exactly where the nearest tunnel entrance is. I’m not afraid as I slip inside the darkness and feel my way along the tunnel, to a place that will probably be behind the barricades. There is an opening overhead. I have no idea what lies above me, but I know it’s my only way. So I climb and open it, peek slowly out, take a deep breath and try to get my bearings.

  Even with the setting sun, it’s too dark here. I must be underneath the bleachers because there are rafters above me. I can hear the muffled sound of the prime minister’s amplified voice. To my right, there is something of a staging area in the distance. I can see cars coming and going, lots of big guys in dark suits. Everyone in that area either moves with incredible efficiency and purpose or stands perfectly still. No loitering. No lingering. This is where the Important People gather, and now I am among them.

  There is some applause from the masses. When it dies down, I can hear the flags that line the promenade cracking in the breeze.

  There is only one thing to do — one thing that matters. I will find the Scarred Man. I will find him and then —

  I don’t let myself think about that.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Grace.”

  I feel the Scarred Man’s breath on my neck, hear his voice in my ear. And I know I haven’t found him; he’s found me.

  I know it is far too late to run.

  But somehow I’m not terrified. I don’t tremble with fear but with rage.

  “You can’t kill me, can you?” I ask, proud that I have figured out that much.

  “No.” I can feel him shake his head slowly. “I can’t kill you.”

  “Because, if you could, I’d be dead already.”

  “Yes. I’m afraid you would be.”

  The words should sound menacing. Terrifying. They should make me want to run, but I just stand there, demanding answers. I feel that I have earned them.

  But the Scarred Man doesn’t give me answers. Instead, he picks me up. Faster than Jamie, stronger than my father when he tries to teach me to punch and kick. The Scarred Man isn’t playing, and before I can stop him, I’m over his shoulder and he is carrying me away from the people who fill the staging area, from the Secret Service and the guards.

  When I push up on his shoulder, I can see the stage getting smaller. I can hear the speeches getting softer. The Scarred Man is carrying me farther and farther from help.

  But to me, there is only one fact that matters.

  My grandfather is on that stage. The Russian president will be nearby. Whoever the Scarred Man’s target is, we are getting farther and farther away from them as well. And I am grateful for the distance. It might be the only way that I can keep them safe.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  His voice is cold. “Away.”

  When we turn a corner, he drops me then points toward one of the tunnel entrances, and says, “In there. Hurry.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

  “Grace,” he snaps, holding me still, making me look him in the eye. “Stop fighting. Please. Just listen. Look. See?” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handful of papers. There’s a US passport with my picture, but somebody else’s name. Someone else’s address. A birth certificate. And a second passport, this one with his picture.

  “Why do you have these?” I shout. “What are you doing?”

  “Take them. Go! Head back to the embassy and wait for —”

  “No! I’m not going to leave and let you kill someone. I’m not … Why do you have a passport with my picture on it?” I can feel my anger fading, confusion rising in its wake.

  “We don’t have time for this, Grace.” When he reaches for me again, his jacket gapes open, revealing the gun in his holster. I’m not thinking now. I’m acting on instinct, driven by fear as I pull the gun from his holster and hold it toward him.

  “Back off. Get away from me. I’ll do it!” I shout. My hands don’t shake. The gun feels light as air. My nerves are steady, even. “I will pull this trigger.”

  The Scarred Man’s eyes are wide. It’s almost like he’s confused, but then his gaze falls to the ground and he whispers, “I know.”

  It’s the way he says it — the look on his face. There is no rage, no guilt. Just pity and … love. He is remembering someone he loved.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” I scream.

  “You really don’t remember, do you?”

  “Remember what?” I say.

  The Scarred Man brings a finger to the jagged line that runs from his eye to his jaw. “The night that I got this.”

  I struggle for words. “The night that you …”

  I flash back to the photograph Ms. Chancellor showed me — the man who had no scar three days before my mother died. It doesn’t make sense, and yet something catches in my mind, like a sweater caught on a nail. I can feel my whole world beginning to unravel.

  “Think, Grace,” he tells me, easing closer. “Think! They’ve spent years filling your head with lies. And maybe they were right to try to make you forget what happened that night. I know I wish I could. I wish that every day. But you can’t forget it, can you, Grace? And you can’t quite remember. Now the truth is like a tightrope that you can’t walk forever. Think! Think before it gets you killed.”

  “Get back!” I tell him. “You can’t hurt me. I have the gun.”

  “No, Grace.” He shakes his head slowly and reaches for my hands. My empty hands. He holds them up for me to see. “You don’t.”

  I look down at my hands and then stupidly glance around at the ground. Where did the gun go? When did I lose it? I don’t know. So I cling to the only thing I know for certain — the only fact that will ever really matter.

  “You killed my mother. You killed her. You —”

  “I came to save her!” The Scarred Man’s voice cuts through the cool night air. “I was there. You’re right. You did see me. People did want her dead, but I would never kill your mother, Grace. She was the last person … I would have never killed her. So I came to get her, to take her away, to hide her. We were going to stage her death, and then —”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Your mother’s death was an accident,” he says softly, but he doesn’t know that they are the exact wrong words. Before I know it, my fists are pounding against his shoulders, glancing blows that do nothing to shake him. I can’t stop trembling.

  “No!” I shout. “It was no accident. I saw her death certificate. She was shot!”

  “Grace” — he grabs my arms and pulls me to his chest, holds me still and
shakes his head very slowly — “it doesn’t have to be one or the other.”

  And then his arms let go, and I’m stepping away, suddenly numb. Even the tears on my cheek seem to freeze.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.

  “You do know, Grace.” He sounds so sad. “They tried to make you forget — to tell you you were seeing things, misremembering things. But you have always known.”

  It’s too much. I can’t think. I can’t feel. I can’t do anything but tremble.

  The Scarred Man is so close to me. Right here. Staring into my eyes. So I kick him as hard as I can. My shoe makes sharp contact with his shin. He doubles over in pain and I strike him in the eye with an elbow.

  And then I start to run.

  Fire streaks across the sky. There’s a sound like cannons booming as the night becomes a kaleidoscope of color and sound and fire.

  There is so much fire.

  I have to outrun the smoke. I have to get help. I have to —

  I stop too quickly — realize too late — that I’ve run into something. Someone. Arms are around me. But the face that is staring into mine does not belong to the Scarred Man.

  “Well, hello, Grace,” the man says. “Do you remember me? We met at the palace. I’m —”

  “The prime minister,” I say. Or I think I say. How am I supposed to know what’s real? “Have you seen my grandfather?” I ask, then think about Ms. Chancellor, the person closest to him, and I know that he’s not safe. “I have to see my grandfather!”

  “Grace, dear.” The prime minister looks at me, concern in his eyes. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes!” I yell, even though I honestly feel like I am breaking.

  I am breaking free.

  There are barricades up ahead. Signs shout Caution! Explosives! in three different languages. I have no idea how far I’ve run, but there is no one around. Long lines of cables stretch across the cobblestones. I see stacks of equipment. Scaffolding reaches toward the sky. The yells of the crowd still echo in the distance, but I am a far cry from safety.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” the prime minister says, and suddenly I know he’s not talking about the restricted area filled with pyrotechnics, not the closing ceremonies. Not even Adria. He means here. Alive.

  I shouldn’t be alive.

  Slowly, I start to back away. When he reaches for me, I recoil.

  “You don’t trust me?” The prime minister actually laughs.

  “I don’t trust anyone.”

  “Smart girl,” the prime minister says. There’s a fence at my back. I can’t move any farther, and that is when the prime minister lunges for me, grabbing my arms in his massive hands, squeezing like a tourniquet.

  I can’t think anymore, so I just start kicking, screaming. My training is gone, instinct and raw emotion are taking over, pounding through me. Finally there is something I can hit. There is someone I can make bleed. When my elbow makes contact with his nose, I hear a sickening snap and feel the warm gush of blood on the back of my neck. I feel somehow vindicated.

  I want to do it again.

  “Let her go.” The Scarred Man’s voice is cold and hard and even, and that is the only thing that stops me.

  “It was supposed to be done by now!” the prime minister shouts at him. Then recognition seems to dawn. “Why isn’t it done, Dominic?”

  But the Scarred Man doesn’t answer. He just stands, unwavering, holding his gun with a remarkably steady hand. For the first time, I realize it isn’t pointed at me.

  “Come here, Grace,” the Scarred Man says. “Now!”

  “No. I’m not going anywhere with you!” I shout.

  The prime minister laughs. “It seems the lady has spoken. She’s right not to trust you, you know.”

  But nothing can make the Scarred Man flinch.

  “Step away from him, Grace. He can’t hurt you. He isn’t the type to get his own hands dirty. Never was.”

  “Why should I?” The prime minister laughs. “That was always your specialty.” Then he’s whispering in my ear, saying, “He killed your mother, Grace,” but the words are too far away. When the fireworks sound, I shudder. The smoke is all around me. I hear someone calling my name.

  “Grace! Grace, sweetheart, no!”

  “Let her go, sir,” the Scarred Man shouts, ever the respectful servant.

  “No.”

  And then my mother is on the ground in front of me. She lies at the bottom of the stairs, her body mangled, broken. I see Dominic standing on the balcony overhead. He’s actually taking a picture of her, like she is some kind of prize.

  “Grace, no!” the voice comes again.

  There is a bag at my feet. I see knives and gloves and gasoline. A gun. I reach down and get it.

  “Get away from her,” I tell him.

  “Grace, it’s okay,” the Scarred Man says. I feel his hand on my arm but I see him at the top of the stairs. Both.

  “You killed my mother!” I scream.

  “Grace —” the Scarred Man starts.

  I feel a push, and suddenly I’m falling, landing too hard on the ground. My head swims. My eyes blur. And breath comes harder than it should.

  The smoke is growing heavier. I see the fire whipping up the stairs. The crowded shelves of my mother’s shop are igniting, item by dusty item. The dominoes are falling now, sweeping through the room.

  “I can’t breathe,” I say beneath the sounds of struggling and cursing and fighting.

  I close my eyes and see my mother move. I watch her sit up and look at me, her face morphing from confusion to terror. Dominic is starting down the stairs toward my mother.

  “Get away from her!” I yell, struggling to my feet.

  “Grace, no!” the woman screams again.

  I don’t know what is real and what’s remembered, what is true and what is imagined. All I know is that air is precious and fleeting. I know the all-consuming rush as it leaves my lungs and sends me crashing to the ground, clawing for oxygen and space and sanity.

  I see the gun. I can feel it in my hand.

  There are cries and pleas and panic. And smoke. There is so much smoke.

  “Grace, run!” the woman yells, but my mother doesn’t sound like herself.

  I fire the gun once. Twice. I keep shooting until the gun won’t fire anymore.

  But the man doesn’t fall because my mother is standing, running toward him until she can’t run anymore. And I’m just standing there, watching my mother fall, bloody and broken, into Dominic’s arms.

  The smoke is heavier now.

  I see the balcony shift, fall.

  Dominic should raise his hands to protect himself, but he holds my mother’s body instead, hunched over her while the balcony crashes down upon him. His right cheek presses against the top of her head — one last embrace — as fire and debris rain down on his left.

  “No.” I can feel myself backing away. “No. No. No.”

  I see the prime minister stumble backward, but for a moment I don’t recognize the blurry figure who stands behind him as he falls, bloody, to the ground. I just stand there, waiting for the smoke to clear.

  “Grace, are you okay?” Ms. Chancellor holds the gun at the ready in case she has to fire again, but she doesn’t.

  In my head I keep hearing the shots, over and over and over. In my mind, it’s another figure on the ground. And in my heart, I know I’ve always been the one to blame.

  I look at where the prime minister lies, and then I see the Scarred Man. I see him as if from a very great distance. I watch him rise like a phoenix. I see him in two places at once.

  There is a man in a suit in front of me, crouching in the shadows.

  And there’s a man in a brown leather jacket slowly standing in a swell of smoke. Blood rains down his face. His left eye is swollen shut. And the skin on this left cheek is almost black with blood, singed skin, and a rugged cut that runs from brow to jaw.

  That is going to leave a scar.

/>   “Are you getting any sleep, Grace?” Dr. Rainier asks me. I nod. It’s not a lie. I am sleeping. I sleep all the time. It’s waking up I have a hard time bringing myself to do. Because as long as I can sleep, I can dream. And as long as I can dream, I can live in a place where that night might have a different ending.

  But it never, ever does.

  “How do you feel?” the doctor asks.

  My clothes feel too big. I can’t remember the last time I washed my hair. My friends try to come see me, but I can’t face them. Not yet. Ms. Chancellor brings me food, and I think I eat it. But maybe not. I don’t remember, and even if I could, I wouldn’t trust my memories anyway. I don’t trust anything — anyone. Least of all myself.

  Mostly I lie in my bed, smelling smoke.

  Mostly I try to go back in time.

  “I shot my mother.” I say the words that have been haunting me for days. But longer than that, really. Years. They have been haunting me for years. The weeks in the hospital come back to me slowly. I remember in bits and pieces why Dad put in for a transfer when he’d sworn just months before that we would never have to move again. I know why my grandfather can’t look at me, his granddaughter — the selfish, reckless teenager who shot and killed his only child.

  And I know the Scarred Man was right — the truth was like a tightrope and eventually I had to fall. Part of me just wishes the fall had killed me. Part of me rejoices that I am achingly alive.

  “I’m the reason she’s dead.”

  “No.”

  I’ve never heard Dr. Rainier sound so firm before, so resolute. Almost like I’ve made her angry.

  “It was an accident.” I can’t believe the words until they are out of my mouth, spilling forth in painful, sloppy sobs. The very words I have spent the last three years despising. But they were right, weren’t they? My family didn’t lie to me. They just never actually told me the truth.

  “Does Jamie know?” I finally ask the question that I fear the most. “Does he … does he hate me, too?”

  “Your brother does not hate you, Grace.” The doctor smiles sadly, nods slowly. “And yes, he has always known you fired the gun.”

  “I killed his mother,” I say.