Blood Rights (Freedom/Hate Series, Book 2)

by Kyle Andrews

  “I believe you.”

  “We were talking about Sim,” Libby explained.

  “Okay. Libby, listen,” Justin said. He was staring at the floor, talking in a quiet tone that made her feel as if he were delivering bad news. But then he said, “I found Amanda. And I talked with Aaron about bringing her in.”

  “Here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But she's not a member.”

  Justin still wasn't acting as though he were delivering good news. He was doing that quiet, withdrawn thing that he always did. It was annoying.

  Finally, he said, “She's not a threat.”

  “She's—” Libby started to question him, but then the meaning of what he was saying came to her. “Is she alive?”

  “She is, but she's not awake. She's not conscious.”

  Libby started to move toward the door, saying, “I have to see her. Take me.”

  Justin put a hand on her arm and said, “She's coming. We just have to wait.”

  “Wait how long?”

  He shrugged.

  “What do you mean, 'she's not conscious'?”

  “I found her in a home. She can't work anymore. She's sick and cold. She hasn't woken up since I found her,” he said. This time, his tone was oddly comforting. He sounded sad. Who else, besides Libby, would have felt anything for Amanda?

  “She's dying,” Libby told him. “I knew it. I just hoped... I don't know what I hoped.”

  “We have doctors.”

  “What can they do?”

  “I don't know. Maybe nothing. Maybe they can make her feel better, at least for a while.”

  “Long enough to say goodbye?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess that's all I can ask for,” Libby told him. “Truth is, we aren't even that close.”

  “She's still your mother.”

  “Whatever that means,” Libby said. She then looked Justin in the eye and said, “I didn't mean to sound cold.”

  “I know what you meant.”

  “So, I just wait here then?”

  “Yeah,” Justin nodded. “You want me to wait with you?”

  She didn't say anything to him. She just nodded and sat on the bed with Ammo, running her hand over the dog's shiny black coat.

  Justin stood by the door. He wasn't as comfortable with Libby as Rose seemed to be. He didn't take it upon himself to grab a chair and sit down. He just stood there, waiting quietly. Not asking any questions or offering any conversation. And really, what would he say, after the way she'd treated him last time they spoke?

  Minutes passed in silence. It was an awkward silence, as if the two of them were strangers who had no idea how to communicate with each other. They barely acknowledged each other's presence, though the weight of their history hung heavy in the air.

  What was there to say? It was the question that Libby kept asking herself over and over again. He'd saved her life. He went out of his way to track down her mother. He was always there and always reliable, even though she never asked him to be, and she couldn't think of a topic for them to discuss that didn't sound stupid in her head. The weather? High school sports?

  “I'm sorry,” she told him, finally deciding on the topic that she felt the worst about. “I mean, about before. What I said about your beliefs or whatever.”

  “Don't worry about it.”

  “No. Don't do that. Don't pretend I wasn't a complete bitch.”

  “You have beliefs. You're entitled to them.”

  “So are you,” she said, and then pushed, “Just accept the apology.”

  Justin gave her a nod and said, “I accept.”

  “Thank you.”

  Libby looked down to Ammo, whose tongue was hanging out of his mouth, flopped over one of the pages of the Constitution. She rubbed his ear as she told Justin, “I've just never known a theist before.”

  Justin shifted his stance and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked down at his shoes as he quietly told her, “You've known one your entire life.”

  There was a long pause. All she could think to say in response was, “I guess.”

  Was this it? Was this how they would behave around each other for the rest of their lives? It was insane. But she couldn't blame him. Every time he tried being her friend, she snapped at him. She didn't want to, and she didn't even know why she did, but whenever he tried talking to her, anger bubbled up inside of her and she always found a way to start yelling at him.

  She smiled and said, “I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you don't want to talk to me.”

  “It's not that I don't want to. You just seem to prefer silence.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “We don't need to talk. I can just stand here.”

  “My guardian?”

  “Your friend.”

  She chuckled without even realizing it. And there it was. The anger. She clenched her jaw and swallowed hard, trying to suppress that feeling. But she finally knew what she wanted to say to him.

  “I'm mad at you,” she said, in as calm a tone as possible.

  “I noticed.”

  “That's all you have to say?”

  “I understand why you're mad at me. I can't really do anything to change things.”

  Libby stood up and balled her fists. She had to look away from Justin, to keep from yelling as she said, “Stop being so calm. I don't want you to be calm.”

  “I don't know what you want me to say. I'm sorry. I had to lie to you. We both had to lie to you.”

  “Why?” tears flooded into Libby's eyes now, blurring her vision. “I don't understand why. When did I become the person you two couldn't trust? When did I become a person that you whispered about behind my back.”

  “We didn't.”

  “Well, you decided that you couldn't trust me at some point. I just assumed that you decided on it together.”

  Justin didn't say anything, which made Libby even more upset. She walked to him and tried to look him in the eye, but his eyes drifted downward.

  “Speak to me,” she demanded.

  “Why? What can I tell you that you'll want to hear, Lib?”

  It was a good question, but she didn't care. She said, “Just say it.”

  Justin looked up at her and seemed to be in pain as he tried to find the words. He failed and wound up staring at her with that expression on his face. The fact that she felt sympathy for him made her all the more angry.

  “When we were kids, you trusted me. You liked me. You...” she couldn't say the words out loud, but they both knew that he had been in love with her at some point, even if she never returned the feelings. Instead of saying that word, she just asked, “What changed? When did you start hating me?”

  She didn't realize how much it hurt her until just then. She genuinely believed that he hated her at some point, and that was more offensive than his lies and secrets.

  “I never hated you,” he said, barely above a whisper. “I just...”

  Justin paused, struggling to find the right words for several seconds before finishing, “I just stopped loving you, I guess. Or, maybe just stopped loving you that way. I don't know. I don't know what I felt.”

  “Why?”

  A tear fell down his cheek as he was forced to say what he never wanted to say to her. She could tell that it hurt him to hurt her, but she gave him no choice.

  He said, “You're smart. You always seemed to question the world around you, even if you didn't do it out loud. You defied the system. Family mattered. Friends mattered. No matter what they wanted you to believe or how they wanted you to act, you never really bought into it.”

  For some reason, the memory of Libby's meeting with the school counselor flashed through her mind. The way Libby was urged to 'live life to its fullest', rather than worry about her sick mother. The way Libby ignored that advice. Justin wasn't wrong.

  “You saw the world,” Justin continued. “But you didn't care. You didn't do anything about it. You allowed yourself to be a part of
it. And the more I realized how much you knew, deep down inside, the more I realized how selfish you really were.”

  Libby took a step back. It was what she wanted him to tell her, but that didn't make it easier for her to hear. The worst part was, he was right. If she hadn't been pulled out of that life, she probably would have kept her head down and kept going along with it. It was easy to say nothing.

  Justin grabbed her arms and looked her in the eye as he said, “But that was wrong. I was wrong. Maybe if we told you...”

  She shook her head and said, “No, you weren't. If you told me, I would have turned you in.”

  “You never turned Uly in.”

  “I didn't have the chance.”

  “Yeah, you did.”

  It didn't matter what Justin said from that point on. Libby knew why they didn't tell her about Freedom and she knew why he stopped loving her. And they were all good reasons. She couldn't even yell at him anymore, and that said a lot.

  “I was mad at you,” Justin told her. “But I'm not anymore.”

  “Cool,” was all she could think to say.

  “You want me to leave you alone now?” he asked.

  Libby shook her head. She was not very happy in that moment, and she could really use her friend.

  27

  Justin stayed with Libby for hours. What was an emotional conversation eventually became silence. She sat on the floor, sometimes reading through pages and sometimes not. He stood by the door, arms crossed, staring at Ammo as his mind raced with hundreds of thoughts and questions. About the world. About his life. About Libby. But no matter how many questions he asked, he never came up with any answers.

  After a while, Libby fell asleep. Her head was leaning back on her bed and she had papers all over her. Justin watched her, trying to decide whether or not he should take the papers and cover her with a blanket. He wanted to, but he decided against it. Instead, he continued to stand and wait.

  Libby gasped and her eyes shot open sometime after midnight. She looked around the room, to the dog in her bed, and then to Justin. He had been staring at his shoes for almost an hour, but looked up at her as she took a deep breath and stretched an arm.

  “What time is it?” she asked him.

  Justin looked at his watch and told her, “Twelve thirty-two.”

  “Geez. You don't have to just stand there. You can sit. I mean, you can leave if you want, obviously. But if you want to stay, you can sit. My roommates really never come back here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Boyfriends? Other homes, maybe,” Libby said, then she looked down at her hands and said, “Plus I think they hate me.”

  “Why would they hate you?” Justin asked, moving to one of the beds and sitting down. He'd been standing for so long that his legs hurt as he bent them.

  “I get the feeling that a lot of people do. They could have saved Collin Powers. I guess a lot of people think they should have.”

  “If they did, I doubt they do now.”

  Libby smiled.

  The room fell into silence again. Justin started following tile joints on the floor with his eyes, trying to think of something that he could say, but everything he thought of seemed like dangerous territory. The past was off limits. The future could go either way. And the present... What would he say?

  Finally, he thought of asking Libby what she was dreaming about. She looked startled when she woke up, as though it might have been a nightmare. He took a breath and was just about to ask her about it, but stopped himself. What business was it of his? His eyes went back to the floor.

  “What?” she asked.

  He looked up at her and said, “Hmm?”

  “What were you going to say?”

  “Oh, it wasn't anything. I was going to try to make conversation. I'm not really good at it.”

  “Try.”

  Justin shifted, suddenly feeling uncomfortable, and then asked her, “Were you having a bad dream?”

  If he could have gone back, he would have rephrased the question, so that it didn't sound like he was prying into her personal business. He would have expressed concern, rather than demand to know.

  When she didn't answer right away, he said, “It's none of my business.”

  “No, it's fine. I was just trying to remember,” she told him. “I think I was falling down stairs.”

  “I hate those dreams.”

  Libby smiled and said, “I've always kinda liked them. Before, I mean. When I was younger. It was a thrill, to believe that you're going to die for that split second before you wake up. And then your eyes open and you don't quite get that it was a dream at first.”

  “I guess,” Justin shrugged. “To me, they were always just scary.”

  “Not a thrill seeker?”

  “The world is dangerous enough as it is, without my own mind trying to scare me.”

  “Maybe,” Libby nodded. She then took a breath as though she was going to say something, but stopped herself.

  This time, Justin said, “What?”

  Libby shook her head and said, “It's nothing. Stupid, really.”

  “I've seen you do some pretty stupid things,” Justin reminded her. He then smiled and asked, “Remember the time you took that can of gravy and tried to—”

  Libby put a hand up and said, “I remember. No need to say it out loud.”

  “It was funny.”

  “It was stupid.”

  He was going to tell her that he thought it was cute, but pushed the thought aside and simply said, “That too.”

  Libby smiled for just a second before it faded and she picked up one of the papers on the ground. She said, “I was thinking about Sim. I haven't spoken to him since that night.”

  Justin didn't say anything right away. He wasn't sure whether he should say anything about seeing Sim in school, or that Sim was looking for her.

  “Do you think he'd understand any of this?” she asked, and then she turned to Justin and he could see by the look in her eyes that she wanted him to say yes.

  Instead, Justin shook his head and then looked down again. The tile joints were still there. Good to know.

  “I keep going back and forth. Part of me thinks that if I could just explain things to him. If I could just lay it out...”

  “He wouldn't let you. He'd freak out the second you brought it up.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It's what you did.”

  Libby fell silent.

  Justin wondered if this would have been a good moment to tell her that he'd seen Sim, and that Sim was concerned about her. Maybe it would ease her pain a little bit. But it might make things worse. He just didn't know.

  Before he could decide, she said, “I've had the conversation with him a hundred times in my head.”

  Justin nodded, “I used to do that. When I was younger.”

  “With who?”

  Justin's eyes met hers, but he didn't answer. It must have been obvious who he was talking about, so she didn't push the subject. He was thankful for that.

  “Have you seen him at school?” she asked him, and there it was. This was the time to tell her, if he was going to tell her at all. Selfishly, he didn't want to. He'd have to figure out why that was later, once things had settled down.

  “Yeah,” he told her.

  “Does he seem okay?”

  “He's looking for you.”

  “Wait, what?” Libby asked, looking at Justin more sharply. “Why didn't you tell me?”

  “I was going to. I just... He saw you in the hospital.”

  “You've been having conversations with him?”

  “He wanted to know if I'd seen you. He wanted help finding you. He saw me looking for Amanda and figured that I might help him.”

  “So, he hasn't just moved on? He hasn't stopped asking questions?”

  “They're not the right questions.”

  “What questions are they?”

  “He wanted to know if you'd been kidnapped. He wanted to kno
w what Hate has done to you.”

  Justin was waiting for Libby to start yelling. It was, after all, the point in the conversation when that usually happened. But she remained remarkably calm.

  “I'm sorry,” he told her.

  “I know,” she nodded, but her mind was somewhere else, with someone else. She then looked back to Justin and said, “Maybe he's starting to wonder.”

  “A lot of people are starting to wonder. People are tagging the city with that phrase from the Collin Powers letter. But none of them refer to us as Hate anymore. He does.”

  Libby went quiet again, still thinking. He hoped that she would drop the subject and move on, but he knew that it wasn't likely. She loved Sim and wanted to believe the best of him. But Justin knew the truth of the matter. Sim was being conditioned to not just work under the system, but to be a part of the system. Questioning the coach was not the job of a good team player.

  There was a knock on the door. Libby and Justin both looked over to it as though Sim might walk into the room before remembering that they were waiting for something else entirely.

  The door opened and a young girl that Justin barely knew poked her head into the room. She smiled politely before saying, “Aaron is asking to see you in the ER.”

  “Thanks,” Justin said, getting to his feet. He turned to Libby and extended a hand to help her up as he said, “I'll take you.”

  They left Ammo still sleeping in Libby's room as they made their way through the Garden, toward the ER. The emergency room of the Garden was not, as one might expect, the same as the emergency room of the hospital that the building had once been. Since the building's primary function was no longer as a hospital, the medical facilities had been reduced in size and moved off to the back of the building. They had space on different floors for different reasons, but the ER was still on the ground floor.

  Libby didn't say much as they walked. She was obviously nervous. She didn't know what to expect, so she was undoubtedly imagining the worst possible scenario. Unfortunately, the picture in her head was not too far off from the reality. Justin wasn't sure that she could be ready for it, no matter how hard she tried.

  As they approached the ER, they found Aaron waiting for them. As soon as he was close enough to speak to Libby, he told her, “Your mother is stable. The doctors are looking at her now. Hydrating her. Giving her medication. I've also asked them to see about scanning her and checking on the progress of the cancer. If we can help, we will.”