Concealed in the Shadows

by Gabrielle Arrowsmith

  The unwelcome bell screams throughout the sleeping quarters of the orphanage. Usually, my sister hangs her torso upside down from the top bunk and nags me to get up. I have a terrible headache, so I’m glad she doesn’t pester me this morning.

  Girls race for the changing rooms, their bare feet slapping the cement floor. Some tactically wriggle their clothes on underneath their bed sheets. Others, who have lost their sense of shame from living in the wide-open quarters for years, strip down to nothing and pull on anything from the drawer under their bed.

  I sit up in bed at last, not wanting to withstand another lecture about promptness.

  My sister’s feet should dangle from above by now, her toes wrapping around the rungs of the ladder as she prepares to scoot down it.

  I get out of my bunk and lift myself onto the first step so I can peek at my sister and see what’s keeping her, but she’s not there. Her sheets are still tousled about, so I know she hasn’t gone down to breakfast early. Evvie is not a rule breaker. Her bed is always shipshape before she exits the quarters. Anyway, she never heads downstairs without dragging me with her.

  I call for her among the easy chatter of the girls, but she doesn’t answer me. I search for her face among the girls brushing or washing at the sinks. I scan the lines in front of the bathrooms and the changing rooms, paying attention to the girls who exit them. Where could she be?

  I start to ask some of the girls if they’ve seen her this morning, but they don’t answer me, they only stare back. Why won’t they answer me? I become more and more earnest, sending the lines of girls into fits of giggles. The joke isn’t funny. I demand that they tell me where my sister is, but they only laugh harder.

  Finally, I run from the sleeping quarters in my pajamas to look for Evvie elsewhere in the orphanage. I think I find her in the shower commune, but the shivering little girl with the long, soaking hair isn’t her. I grab a towel off the high shelf that she can’t reach and wrap it around her. The little girl smiles and thanks me kindly. I nod and turn to exit but she calls to me. I turn around to see what she needs.

  “Did you try the dining hall?” she asks with a sinister grin. I cock my head with confusion. How did she know that I was looking for Evvie? Her eyes blacken and she lets out a menacing laugh, more chilling than the other girls giggling in unison. I back away from her slowly and then turn to run to the dining hall.

  Below the split-level stairs, I hear the echoes of marching feet. I duck as I round onto the lower level to see what’s before me.

  All the boys wear hunter-green cargo pants and T-shirts. All at once, they turn their heads and glance at me at the foot of the stairwell. I wouldn’t have noticed her otherwise, but the voice of the one who tells the rest to proceed is a girl just a bit older than me. I know her from somewhere.

  The boys heed to their order and begin filing into the dining hall. I become aware of an African American boy who reaches for the hand of a younger boy with the same colored skin, who marches by his side. The little boy looks up at who appears to be his big brother. The little one reads bravery in his brother’s face, but from my distance I can tell that it’s feigned. The younger brother looks straight ahead and tries to find courage, for both of their sakes, while the older brother swallows hard.

  At first, all that can be heard as they round the corner into the dining hall is the rhythm of their marching feet, but soon screams and wails of agony accompany the drum.

  I run past the brick wall to the glass-pane hallway where I see the director of the orphanage. She wears a pair of black-rimmed, rectangular glasses and a black, ceremonial vestment, similar to a judge’s robe. The director smiles at me and then electrocutes a boy with the click of a button. She holds the button, eyes fixed on me, until he falls motionless on the floor. Then I recognize a shriller scream to the side of me. Evvie.

  She is strapped into a stilted chair, floating high above the action. She begs for the director to stop, but the massacre continues. Evvie cries to the boys, trying to warn them, but they march on, bravely, to their deaths.

  I try to run to my tortured sister, but a thick glass wall stops me. I spin around but I’m engulfed by impenetrable glass. Evvie sees me, but she’s not concerned that I’m trapped. She continues to whimper and plead, but now it’s me that she’s begging to stop.

  I look down to find the remote in my hand. My thumb presses the button. I drop it, but the groans of the tortured boys continue. The glass thickens and becomes foggy. I can’t see what’s happening. I can’t see Evvie. The faces of the giggling girls upstairs suddenly surround the glass. They push the glass closer and closer, pinching my hand against the button on the remote that is again in my hand. I can’t breathe, nor can I stop the screams or the laughter. I gasp for air, but find none.

  Something light and cool strokes my cheek. Finally, air rushes into my lungs. I spin around and the girls are gone. So is the glass that trapped me.

  “Sorry,” a voice says. I roll over on the cold floor to see Crewe sitting beside me. He is dressed in camouflage again, and a gun lies across his lap. “You were having a nightmare. I just thought… sorry.”

  It was just a nightmare, but then so is the reality I’ve awoken to. I peer around the dark room to find it empty of its prior occupants.

  “Where are the others?” I ask Crewe.

  “With their families. Cy and Rico tapped into a signal. Merick called the captain and he told all of us to rest until he arrives. Merick tried to argue, but the captain didn’t give him much opportunity. He’ll be here soon, and he wants all of us ready for whatever he decides when he arrives.”

  “There’s something important I didn’t think to tell Merick before,” I tell Crewe. “I didn’t have the chance, I guess.”

  “What is it?” Crewe asks, praying there are no more surprises from me.

  “I think I may have known Braves’ daughters,” I tell him.

  “That’s impossible,” he says.

  “Braves is the man’s last name, right?” Crewe doesn’t disagree so I continue. “Well, I didn’t actually know them, but I knew of them. Were their names Tuli and Tigonee?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve heard the story before, but I don’t know if their names have ever been included. How did you know of them?”

  “I told Cy about this when I woke up and remembered who I was. You weren’t in the car then.” Crewe shakes his head a little, remembering how he stormed from the car to keep away from me. He’s sorry that I ever had to fear him. I don’t stop to tell him it’s okay, that I trust him now. There is no time for that.

  “The reason Evvie had been outside Miles County with me the day before she made the jump on her own is because she was afraid our mother was still alive.”

  “Cy mentioned something about that,” Crewe recollects. “He said the court database had your mother listed as a foster?”

  “There were two non-biological children listed on her parenting account, and Evvie didn’t appear to exist. The names were Tuli and Tigonee Braves.”

  “I have to make a call. I’ll be back,” Crewe says. This news warrants a phone call, but nothing of the urgency he had when I told him my real name was Sydney Harter. “There’s toast on the table, and gear for you over there,” he points.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Sydney,” he protests. “You need to eat. Please.” I don’t offer any indication that I will. “Do it for her, okay?” I don’t answer or nod, but he knows I’ll do anything for my sister. “I’ll be right back.”

  Since I’m awake, Crewe flicks on the light before he descends the stairs. The light aggravates my eyes and my head. I finger the stitches Galvesten had to give me in the wee hours of the morning. It was obvious that he too knows something about who I am that I don’t know, but I couldn’t break him. The more I tried, the more nitrous oxide he pumped into the concentration mask. I don’t remember feeling the stitches at all due to this, but I feel them a little now with tissues still swelling beneath th
e seam.

  I decide to change first in case Crewe comes back quickly. The gear is heavy with the weight of its history and the mystery of the precarious future from which it aims to protect me.

  I stroke the padding of a bulletproof vest and think of my sister. I think of everything I have sacrificed for her, only to ultimately fail her in the worst imaginable way. I remember her as a chipper little thing, the way she should have been in the dream I had almost forgotten.

  Will Evvie hate me if any of these people are killed in effort to save her? If she could weigh in on the discussion, would she wish that we stay so that we could each live long, happy lives in Sheridan?

  My heart tells me she would. As brave and selfless as she is, she wouldn’t want anyone of us, including me, to trade in his or her life to save her. Maybe knowing what she would ask is part of what keeps me from feeling fully ready, as Merick suggested I be, to die for her. If I knew for certain that Evvie would either die at the hand of the county or live through my bravery, I would step onto the unstable ground to challenge the fire. I would find the courage to be a hero that Sheridan would not soon forget.

  Of the two of us, Evvie has always had a better chance of living a happy life. The fullness of my future was constantly diminished by the hardships I faced. I carried the burdens myself so they wouldn’t steal the lightness of Evvie’s heart.

  Through her capture, years of my effort have already been undone. If a hand has been laid on my sister to give me up, then my entire life has turned to waste in a night. My soul will certainly be lost if she dies that way. Guilt would shadow the little light left inside of me.

  I take a deep breath and decide to eat. I need to be fueled so I can put forth one last fight, my fiercest yet. I’m glad Merick and Galvesten teamed up to force sleep on me too, unless it’s already all done in vain. Don’t do that. Believe Cy. She’s still alive, and she needs me.

  A slice of peanut butter toast lies on a towel. Fittingly, there is a glass filled with orange juice from the restaurant downstairs. I laugh out loud for a moment, being that this is the breakfast I fixed for us for years when our mother was inept at taking care of us. It’s also what we ate the morning before I showed her the way out of Miles.

  My unbefitting laughter quickly turns to a burning in my throat and the pain’s desire to leak from my eyes. I tuck the feelings away and sink my teeth into the toast. I’m done crying. Tears aren’t going to get me anywhere, but there are steps I can take toward regaining my sister. Eating and hydrating are a start. Planning comes next.

  “You were right,” Crewe says as he barges into the room. I’m glad I decided to change first and then eat. “The twins’ names were Tuli and Tigonee.”

  “Does that change anything?” I ask with my mouth full. Warm orange juice slides down my throat.

  “It proves that they’ve been planning all of this. Everything. I don’t think it was any accident that your sister came by those names. They wanted us to take notice. They’ve been waiting for this, which means they’re ready to challenge our existence. This goes far beyond you and your sister.”

  “What do you mean they wanted you to take notice? Why would you or anyone in Sheridan take notice of what was listed on my mother’s parenting account?”

  “Because we’ve always watched that account. Not all of us, but at least one of us.”

  “Why?” I drop the toast back onto the table and demand answers from Crewe. “Why is my mother significant?”

  A horn is honked a number of times down at The Lot, kitty-corner from the restaurant.

  “That’s the captain. You stay here,” Crewe tells me, though he goes nowhere. He lingers a moment and swallows hard. He takes a step toward me and squats in front of me. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes, tentatively touching my fingers that rest on my lap. He turns and leaves abruptly.

  What is he sorry for? Have decisions been made that he knows I will disapprove of, or has he been hiding knowledge about why Evvie was taken, why they hoped to take me? I want to run after him and make him tell me, but this time I’m so fearful that their knowledge or plan will prevent me from saving my sister that I’m paralyzed in the chair.

  The captain is younger than I imagined, though he has deep-set wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. I expected his entrance to increase my anxiety but, oddly, his presence comforts me.

  “Hello,” he whispers as he comes over and reaches for my hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you and your sister.” His throat is tighter than mine as he tries to speak. I reach out and shake his hand, but he doesn’t let it go.

  The feeling in the air puzzles me. I look to Crewe, who stands rigidly against the doorframe. He watches ominously.

  The captain follows my gaze to Crewe, and he too notices the stiffness of Crewe’s demeanor. Crewe’s eyes are locked intently on the leader. In doing so, Crewe conveys something of meaning to him the same way he did after he kicked the door into Cy and told his brother that my last name matters. This one matters, he said.

  The captain takes another timid and uncertain glance at me, and looks back to Crewe once again, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “It’s her sir,” Crewe says shakily. “We found her.”

  The man turns slowly back toward me and kneels down to see me at eye level. His eyes flood as he stares deep into my soul.

  “Sydney?” he questions again, barely managing the word.

  He takes both of my hands in his to say something else, but he can’t. And then I feel what I know can’t possibly be true. “Dad?”