by Carrie Mac
“What do I do?”
Phoenix gave her a little push. “Go talk to him.”
“What do I say?”
“You’ve been together forever, so I think you can probably come up with something.”
“No.” Nadia emphatically shook her head. The gesture was not lost on Saul. With his arms open, he started in their direction. “You stop right there, mister!” Nadia pointed a finger at him. He did as he was told, standing still and jamming his hands into his pockets.
“You go talk to him first,” Nadia whispered to Phoenix. “You go tell him how fragile I am and how badly he hurt me today. I want him to get it for once, you know? I want him to realize how his choices hurt me.”
“And you think your theatrics will make him change his mind?”
Nadia shrugged. She pulled out a tissue, and after checking to ensure that Saul was still watching, she dabbed her tears and sucked back a loud sob. “Go. Tell him.”
This time it was Nadia who gave the shove and Phoenix who stumbled forward. She went up to Saul and spoke before he could start. “Look, she loves you, blah, blah, blah. She sent me over here”— she gestured back at Nadia, who was watching while trying to look as if she wasn’t—“so I could tell you a load of crap to make you think she’s still mad at you, even though she’s not. Not mad, anyway. Hurt and sad, yes. Proof in point: she spent the whole afternoon in tears on my bed. Or the bed at my grandma’s, if we’re being specific.”
“Your grandma’s?”
“Gryph hasn’t said anything?”
Saul shook his head, eyebrows lifting into a question.
“Don’t ask. Long story. Back to Nadia.”
Saul shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and stared at his feet. His shoulders slumped forward. “I feel like a complete ass.”
“Okay. Good start.”
“Truth is …” Saul glanced up at her, almost shyly. “I spent the afternoon crying too.”
“What?” Phoenix glanced back at Nadia, who was churning the air with her hand, gesturing for her to speed it up. “You? Crying? I don’t believe it.”
“Look, there’s something that I want to tell you. Something big. But you have to promise not to tell anyone. And I mean it. No one.”
“Why me?”
“Because …” He glanced at Nadia, then again at his feet. “Because I think you’ll understand.”
Phoenix laughed. “That’s a first.”
Saul stared at her, in no joking mood.
“Okay, why me? Why not Nadia?”
“I can’t tell Nadia.”
“Why not?”
“It’ll make sense when I tell you. I can trust you—”
“But not Nadia?”
Saul ignored the comment. “You’re a true friend, Phoenix. And I hope you still will be after I tell you.”
“I will, Saul. Of course I will.”
“You might. You might not. You won’t know until after you hear what I have to say.”
“Then say it, already.” The conversation was going around in a frustrating little circle, one that made her stomach clench. Clearly, he had a secret. A big secret. Phee wanted to know it, of course, but there was a part of her that cautioned against her curiosity.
“I will. First, though”—Saul’s eyes pleaded with her—“you have to promise not to tell Nadia.”
“I can’t promise that. She’s my best friend. I’d be lying to your face if I told you I wouldn’t tell her. You know all about best friends. You pick yours over your girlfriend all the time.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t.”
“Exactly.”
“And maybe, just this once, you can promise to keep something from her.”
“No can do,” said Phee.
“Even if her knowing what I tell you would destroy her? Hurt her?”
Phee felt a shiver creep up her spine. What did he want to tell her that was such a big deal?
Saul read her silence as a refusal to keep a promise. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and ran them over his face. He looked tired. Drained. What was his secret? Cancer or something? In love with someone else? What? Her curiosity could not let it go.
“What if I do promise?” She heard herself say this and immediately wanted to take it back. Her curiosity had gotten her in trouble before. She wished she could just leave well enough alone, but she couldn’t. She wanted to know what he was holding on to. What was pulling him down, weighing on him so heavily?
“For real?”
Phoenix nodded.
“You wouldn’t tell?”
“Promise, Saul.”
“I’m going to tell you”—Saul leaned forward—“but keeping it secret is a matter of life and death. I know that you get what that means, Phee. That’s why I think I can tell you. That’s why I think I can trust you.”
His seriousness unnerved her, so she went for a joke. “Well, we all know you’re not gay.” She laughed. Saul didn’t. “Okay, that fell flat. So what is it?” Phoenix glanced over her shoulder again. Nadia was starting toward them, walking slowly, ever the injured princess.
“I’m a one-per.”
“She’s coming this way, Saul. Get on with it.”
“I just told you.”
“Told me what?” She’d heard him, but her brain had refused to process his words.
“I’m a one-per.” He leaned closer still, his voice barely a whisper. “No one knows. Except you now.”
“You … you can’t be.” He’d been Gryph’s best friend since kindergarten. He lived in a three-per community, went to a three-per high school. It made no sense. He might as well have been talking gibberish.
Nadia was getting closer. Panicking, Phoenix gripped Saul’s arm and marched him in the opposite direction.
“Where are you going?” Nadia flung her arms down at her sides and stamped a foot as a train pulled up and a swarm of commuters flooded the platform.
“Just a sec, Nadia!” Phoenix lifted a hand. “Hang on.”
As suited and briefcased men and women bustled past them to the escalators, Phoenix stood on tiptoe to be eye to eye with Saul. She jabbed him on the chest with each word she said.
“Tell me that you’re lying.”
“I’m not lying. God’s honest truth.” Saul raised one hand and placed the other over his heart. “I solemnly swear.”
Phoenix jabbed him once more, this time hard. “If you think this is funny, you’re wrong, Saul.”
“I’m dead serious, Phoenix. I swear.”
“Then how do you live in this sector? How can you go to our school? Your family is registered as a three-per, right?”
“Officially, yes. We have an assumed identity. It’s a long, long story, and I wouldn’t get into it here, even if it was safe to. But I can assure you I won’t get caught unless I land at Chrysalis for a recon. They’d find out when they checked my DNA. So this morning, when it was such a close call, I kind of freaked out. That’s why I was shaking so bad.”
“But Saul—” Phoenix’s stomach flung itself against her rib cage. He had to be making it up. There was no way he could be telling the truth. But … but if he was? If he really was only a one-per, she did not want this knowledge. And how could she not tell Nadia? He’d been lying to them all along. He wasn’t who he said he was! All these years, thinking he was one of them, only to find out he’d just been some low-life pretending to be like them. Phoenix was going to throw up. It had to be a joke. “All I can say is that this better be your sick, twisted idea of a prank. You can go tell Gryph and the guys that they got me good. Ha, ha. Very funny.”
“Wait!” He gripped her wrist hard as she turned to walk away. “You promised you wouldn’t tell! You can’t go back on your word. And you can’t tell Nadia. You can’t. You promised!”
“How can you expect me to keep this kind of secret?” Her unease leaped from her stomach to her head and pounded at her temples. “If you’re even telling the truth.” She wanted to give it back. She did not want t
o know this. She couldn’t know this! She shouldn’t.
“She’s coming.” Saul glanced over the crowd at Nadia’s black head bobbing in their direction. “You promised, Phee. Don’t forget. I know you won’t betray me like that.”
“Me betray you?” She rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe you’d even say that after what you’ve just told me.”
“You promised.”
“I heard you. I get it, okay?”
“Okay.” Saul’s reply was tiny, just a nervous whisper. “Thank you.”
Nadia dodged between commuters as the crowd thinned and the platform finally cleared. She stopped a short distance away and planted her hands on her hips. With a practised swish of her head she sent her long, dark curls behind her shoulders.
“Well?”
Saul stepped forward and pulled her to him. “I’m sorry, Nadia.” He looked at Phee as he said it. “I’m so sorry.”
Of course it made sense for him to apologize to Nadia for his behaviour earlier, but to Phee there was no doubt that he was apologizing to her. Or regretting his decision to tell her his secret.
Nadia, with a quick wink in Phoenix’s direction, clasped her hands behind Saul’s neck, leaned up, and kissed him long and hard, pressing herself against him in a way that was not exactly appropriate for the train station.
Sure enough, the sax solo was interrupted and a tinny voice recited the rules and regulations against loitering while the thin blue light scanned across their faces, matching them up to their profiles.
“Nadia Balkashan, Saul Morrisey, and Phoenix Nicholson-Lalonde, you have been identified as being in violation of loitering; bylaw C58, section one. Proceed to the nearest exit immediately or tickets will be issued to your parental accounts, with fines due within forty-eight hours.”
“They missed the train,” Phoenix said as the happy couple pulled apart. “And I live in this sector. You should know that.”
There was a pause as the system processed the information. “Phoenix Nicholson-Lalonde, proceed to the nearest exit immediately. Saul Morrisey and Nadia Balkashan, the next train will be arriving in three minutes and twelve seconds.”
“I better go,” Phoenix said as the familiar countdown started. She had one minute to get off the platform or the loitering ticket would be waiting in her parents’ inbox online by the time she got home.
Nadia pecked her cheek and hugged her. “Thanks, Phee.”
“… thirty-four, thirty-three, thirty-two …”
Saul gave her a quick hug too, whispering as he did. “No matter what you think about me, no matter what you think about any of it … you promised.”
“… eleven, ten, nine …”
“Run!” Nadia laughed as Phoenix made a dash for the stairs. Phoenix took them two at a time. At the bottom, she leaned against the wall and tried to calm down. She had to slow her breathing. She sat on the bottom step and dropped her head into her lap.
“In through the nose,” she told herself. “Out through the mouth.” She dug in her pockets but knew she didn’t have her inhaler with her. This was no time for an asthma attack. If her parents had known about her asthma before she’d died the second time, they could’ve requested that her recon include a built-in ventolin response system. But the asthma had only really cropped up since she was ten. So in the absence of her puffer, she’d have to calm herself down.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Inhale, exhale.
She could hear the train draw into the station above her, the musical chime of the doors sliding open. The footsteps of another wave of commuters hurrying home. She scooted to the edge of the step to get out of the way, but she couldn’t quite stand just yet.
Saul. Saul. A one-per!
It wasn’t possible.
Was it?
But how?
How could this have happened?
How could his family get away with living in the three-per sector?
Was his whole family one-per, or had they taken him in?
Her father had a friend, a missionary who worked in the no-per zone and who had sneaked an orphan home to raise as his own. The child fell off a cliff while on a field trip at school and was whisked to the hospital where Chrysalis came to do a check of his DNA profile in preparation of his recon. The results, of course, exposed him as a no-per. They took him off life-support almost immediately. Oscar’s friend went to jail. And there he remained, over a decade later.
No wonder Saul freaked out that morning when Gryph pulled that stunt with the train doors. What an idiot. If she were only a one-per, she wouldn’t hang out with Gryph and the boys. She’d keep to herself. Wary of danger. If she were a one-per she’d never tell anyone. Not ever.
She caught herself. If she were a one-per? She was a one-per in actuality, if not status! She might’ve been born a three-per and live in a three-per world, but she had only one left now. Still, she tried to make sense of it all. “I’m not really.”
“Not really what?”
Phoenix turned at the sound of her father’s voice. He stood behind her, protecting her from the mass of people pushing down the stairs.
“Daddy!” Phoenix leaped up and hugged her father. She pulled back and frowned at him. “How long were you standing there?”
“Long enough to know that you’re worrying about something, as usual.” They started down the steps together, Phoenix’s arm linked with her father’s. “Do you know that you’ve always done that, nodded and shook your head and furrowed your brow as if having a very serious conversation with an invisible friend. God, maybe?”
“Maybe I should be talking to God.” Phee already felt better even just being in her father’s company. “But I was only having a very serious conversation with myself.”
“About what?”
What Saul had told her, of course.
“Nothing, really.”
“‘A very serious conversation with myself,’” Oscar quoted her in a funny falsetto before returning to his fatherly voice. “Such a conversation is rarely about nothing.”
“Just stuff.”
“I’m good at ‘just stuff.’” Oscar leaned in conspiratorially. “And ‘nothing really’ too. It’s part of my job.”
“I don’t need a minister, but thanks.”
“I meant part of my job as your father.”
“Really, Dad. It’s just boy stuff.” And it truly was, in a way. “Nadia and Saul. You know. Same old.”
“Suit yourself,” Oscar said with a wink. “But you know where to find me if you change your mind and want to talk.”
They were crossing the green now, the lush grass so inviting that Phee kicked off her flip-flops to feel the warm carpet of it underfoot.
“Brilliant idea, kiddo.” Phee watched her dad as he undid his shoes and peeled off his socks. Could she tell him? Not so much as a father, but as a minister? Did that count as tattletaling? Ministers were like lawyers; they had to honour confidentiality.
But no. She knew in her heart that Saul would never forgive her if she told her dad. Even if he never found out, Phee worried that her guilt would be stamped across her face every time she saw him.
She’d promised Saul. And a promise was a promise, plain and simple. And she knew her dad wasn’t buying her “boy trouble” line, so she gave him something more believable.
“Actually, I was worrying about you and Mom,” she finally said. “Your silly little spat, if you have to know.”
“It’s not silly.” Oscar frowned. “And I fear it may not be little, either.”
“But it’ll blow over, right?” Phoenix squeezed her father’s arm. “Come on, let’s go home and I’ll make us a pot of tea and you can tell me about how the ladies auxiliary committee simply cannot decide on what colour bunting to have for the strawberry tea.”
“It’s true,” Oscar said with a sad little smile that had nothing to do with the ladies auxiliary. “Red or white, the debate rages on.”
“They’re only battling over two colours? Not green or blue o
r orange too? Purple? Silver? Pink?”
“Helen Whitting is not going to budge.” She and her father fell into step together. “She’s already purchased enough red bunting to decorate the entire sector. The mistake was putting her in charge of shopping.”
“Helen Whitting is a bully.” Phoenix and her father made their way to the house across the green, both of them still barefoot. She imagined Helen Whitting—that’s Dr. Whitting, if you please— tanned an unearthly orange hue after decades of fake ’n’ bake salons; she was always perfectly coiffed, her lipstick always matched her slacks, which were always pressed and always capris ending halfway down her calves, revealing her liver-spotted legs and a blurry tattoo of a butterfly on one ankle from a time when she must’ve been far more interesting than she was now. It was working: Saul’s shocking revelation was growing smaller and smaller behind her, as if she’d left it like a backpack bomb, abandoned on the bottom step of the train station. She concentrated on the tickle of grass underfoot, the perfume from the lilac bushes that lined the green. “Therefore, I vote for white bunting.”
FAMILY MEETING
That night Phoenix dreamed a different version of the events on the train platform. She dreamed that Saul hadn’t cornered her. She dreamed that he hadn’t told her about being a one-per. The dream was so real that it was almost boring, except for how good it felt to wake up thinking it hadn’t happened. But then it was almost as if it truly hadn’t.
Saul acted as if he hadn’t told her. Maybe he regretted telling her, or maybe he wasn’t sure what to say next about it. Either way, Phoenix didn’t care. She’d just as soon put it out of her mind anyway.
At school the next day he didn’t even say hello, and after when they all went to the mall he didn’t talk to her. Usually she and Saul competed at Mortal Kombat, but he stayed on the other side of the arcade with Tariq, playing NASCAR with Nadia hanging off him the way a prep wears a sweater draped over his shoulders. A couple of times, once when he headed for the bathroom and then again when he was standing at the concession buying hot dogs for him and Nadia, Phoenix thought he might come up to her and say something. Each time her heartbeat raced and she scrambled to think of what to say to him. But both times, he passed her with a glazed-over look on his face. She knew that he saw her, but rather than meet her eye, he deliberately looked right through her and carried on past her without even slowing his pace.
