“It’s not forever. It’s for the rest of the school year—”
“Until I get an Asylum Scholarship? But what if I don’t get it? What do I do then, live in a cocoon for the rest of my life?”
Her voice rises. “You’ll just have to get that scholarship so this won’t be an issue.”
“But Mom, what if I don’t?” I persist. “I’m not a child. I don’t need people to baby-sit me. If someone wants to besiege the house just to get at me for a thousand dollars, then… Then I don’t know what to say. They’d be really desperate, and if they’re so desperate, Mrs. Balustrade can’t possibly stop them. I am not doing this, and I don’t care what you say!”
With that, I whirl around and dash up the stairs.
“Kathryn!” she calls after me, but I’m not in the mood for a lecture.
I lock my bedroom door behind me and sag down to the carpet. The walls seem to be closing in on me like a trap. Suddenly I find myself thinking of another girl, the one who’d also tried to escape her circumstances. I hadn’t understood her at the time.
But now I get her. I finally get Noelle.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Long before I lost citizenship, I lost dance.
I used to be on the school squad with Amanda and Siobhan. It was like cheerleading meets ballet meets gymnastics. I never actually loved dancing, though, not even when I was practicing five hours a day, six days a week at the Cordoba Bay Dance Studio.
What I loved was going to competitions with Amanda and my teammates. I loved my mother’s look of pride whenever I won first place in my age group. I delighted in the long bus rides and the fun hotel stays. By making dance squad as a freshman, I joined a ready-made group of friends—popular ones, too. It wasn’t until sophomore year that Amanda made the school team, but she was already friends with everyone on it thanks to me.
I loved the people. I just never loved dancing.
One day in Junior Year, Siobhan Park fumbled during practice and I slipped through her arms on a high descent. I hit the floor of the studio with a horrific crack. It was my femur, fractured in two places. Life changed in an instant.
I had to wear a cast for six months. For the first time since I was five, I wasn’t dancing. And oddly enough, it felt like being released from some prison.
Evenings became glorious stretches of freedom. I finally saw movies with friends outside dance. I could go to the parties I tended to miss. Amanda always used to go to the parties anyway and show up bleary-eyed at competitions, but that had never been me. I’d been the responsible one, the ‘serious’ dancer. My mother expected nothing less.
Breaking my leg allowed me to become a real teenager.
Every time I drove past the dance studio, I felt this immense lightness in my chest. I didn’t have to go there anymore.
There were so many new possibilities without dance filling my days, away games and competitions on my weekends. I dabbled in French Culture Club, and even the Debate Society. The one activity I enjoyed most was the school newspaper. Writing for the paper was everything I’d most liked about dance. The teamwork. The sense of having created something. The intensity, especially when we were cutting it close to a deadline.
But it was better. No one praised me for something I felt half-hearted about. No mother watched with rapt attention, with more hope hinging on my performance than I had. No jealous rivals like Siobhan eagerly waited for a missed turn, a faltered step. The world did not begin and end with a pirouette. All that mattered were the words I could turn out. I wasn’t the star, just another member of the team.
And a useful one.
As Conrad’s girlfriend, I had exclusive access to the mayor. She liked me back then. I was the wholesome girl Conrad had been dating all of high school, and practically a member of the family. Whenever I needed to make an article more important, she’d smile at me over the salad she was tossing for dinner. Then she’d contribute an official, important mayoral quote I could include in my story.
After a few months of eagerly taking surveys in the hallway and covering local festivals, I was assigned my breakout article: writing the profiles of all the school custodial staff. I thought it would be a fluff article, inconsequential. I was wrong.
“The kids look right through you like you’re not there,” said Lynda, the janitor who worked in the cafeteria. Guilt pinched me because I’d never really met the eyes of the staff or talked to them. No one else did, after all, and my natural instinct was to follow the crowd.
So I tried to atone. I focused on that in the story, on the snobbish impulse by Cordoba Bay students to ignore the people who kept our school running. I tried to humanize staffers who were treated like scenery.
The article went to press. And then something remarkable happened. People liked the story. People talked about it. It had an impact. I noticed Conrad nodding a greeting to Richard, the Gulf War Veteran behind the cash register, and I was sure I’d never noticed that before. But soon, more and more students began acknowledging school staff like they’d just woken up to the fact that they were people, too.
Sure, maybe it wasn’t all me.
But I played at least a part in it.
That’s what made me realize this was what I’d been looking for. I could put words to paper and those words could make a difference. I could do this my whole life.
My last evening of physical therapy, I broke it to my mother. “Even once my leg heals, I’m not going back. I don’t like dancing anymore. I haven’t for a long time.”
Maybe my mother knew me better than I thought, because she didn’t look surprised. Dismayed, sad, but not surprised. “That was your ticket to a college scholarship, Kathryn. I hope you have a backup plan.”
“I’ll figure out something. Actually, I think I already have a backup plan.”
I didn’t lose my friends, not the ones who mattered. I still went to the away games, but as a spectator, not as a cheerleader. Amanda grew a little exasperated from time to time when I kept dragging us to the dumb community events I was supposed to cover, but she went along with it. I’d run off to interview homeless guys, tourists, or old people in walkers. I always returned to find her waiting with a second latte for me, or a tale of chatting up the band.
At the town’s Autumn Arts Festival, she was flirting with a drummer from out of town while I combed the crowd for interesting faces. My eyes lit upon the skinny brunette girl in an overlarge sweatshirt. She stood alone at the fringe of the crowd. I didn’t recognize her, but our paths were crossing, so I waved.
“Hi!”
My cheerful voice startled her. Wide, doe-like brown eyes shot up to mine.
“I’m Kathryn Grant. I go to Cordoba Bay High School. I write for the school paper,” I said, holding out my hand.
She just stared at me. After a moment, her cold palm touched mine. “Hi.”
“I wanted to gather people’s impressions of the festival. What do you think so far?”
She blinked. “It’s great.” Her voice was the barest whisper. “The art’s amazing.”
“Awesome,” I said, flipping on my phone. I planned to read off the questions I’d prepared, trusting myself to remember her answers… But just the act of turning on my phone changed everything.
Like most phones in the continental United States, mine was hard wired with a ‘Crime Avoidance’ app—a facial recognition program that ID’s any nearby anathemas. As soon as the girl’s face appeared in its digital sight, an alert icon popped up in the corner of the screen. My brows knit together as I stared at it, uncomprehending, wondering what my phone was doing.
The girl knew before I did. She shrank down as the words blinked on the screen: Anathema identified.
My heart froze.
An anathema.
This girl wasn’t a citizen.
My eyes lifted to hers. For a long moment we just stared at each other.
This was a girl my age. A skinny girl with frightened eyes. She looked nothing like the anathemas in movies.
She had none of the calm, cold composure of Alexander Metz. She was an ordinary girl. I couldn’t reconcile what I was seeing with what I’d always believed of anathemas.
They were dangerous. Dangerous, scary criminals.
Weren’t they?
The crowd seemed to fade into some distant part of my awareness. The girl ducked her head, her urgent whisper barely reaching my ears. “Please don’t shout it to anyone. I’ll go. I promise.”
She turned. I caught her skinny arm automatically, and her face swung around. I saw it all on her expression. Terror. Sheer, blinding terror that I was going to harm her. Turn on her. Invite others to notice the anathema in our midst.
Her life had to be a nightmare. An ache of pity spread through me, and I forgot all about the dumb festival I’d come to write some fluffy piece about.
Here was the real story.
“I won’t hurt you,” I told her softly. “I promise. I won’t tell anyone.”
She eyed me, still looking uncertain. “I just wanted to see the festival. I’m not doing anything wrong right now.”
My God, what is your life like? I wondered.
“Please, I’m not going to hurt you,” I said softly, my voice as gentle as I could make it. “What’s your name?”
“Check your phone.” A note of bitterness crept into her voice.
Very deliberately, I dismissed the warning on my phone, erasing the data. “I only want to know if you’re willing to tell me.”
For a long moment, she just stared at me. Then, “I’m Noelle.”
“My friends call me Kat.” I kept speaking softly, gently. “You really are safe around me. I’m not going to tell anyone or try to hurt you or anything. Can I just ask you some questions? Not about the festival. About you. About what it’s like being you. As… You know.”
“An anathema?”
I flinched. The word sounded so ugly. “Yeah. An anathema.”
Noelle barely moved her lips. “Why do you care?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that for a long moment. “I just don’t know anything about what your life must be like. I think it could be really good to spread awareness about your experience.”
And suddenly her eyes snapped up to mine. “Yes.” Her voice sounded steadier. “I’ll tell you about being me.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
She was so grateful when I bought her a hamburger. We sat together on the beach under the pier, waves roaring against the rocks.
“I know it’s a huge risk going out in public like this,” Noelle told me, her mouth full. “And for a dumb town event. It’s just that you start to feel like you’re not a part of civilization anymore when you’re in my situation.”
I didn’t understand the risk she’d willingly taken. Not back then.
“I bet you’re wondering what I did,” Noelle said, squinting at me against the sunlight.
I was. My guess was shoplifting over a hundred dollars in merchandise.
“I killed someone.”
Shock sprang through me. I grew aware that we were alone under this pier together.
She swallowed the last bites of her burger and licked her fingers. “My father. He was a pervert. He deserved it.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
“I’m not sorry. Child molesters are supposed to be anathemas. So I treated him like an anathema and killed him.” She mournfully surveyed the empty wrapper that remained of her burger. I handed her the bag with my untouched lunch. She tore it open eagerly. “The only thing I’m sorry about is that I didn’t do it sooner. Oh, and my brother.”
“You killed your brother, too?” I said, aghast.
Her eyes flickered with annoyance, and I realized she must not have. It occurred to me suddenly that she might’ve been pretty if she hadn’t been so gaunt, so hunted. Her eyes were large and long-lashed, her lips full. Everything else about her was sharp edges, spindly arms. Whatever life as an anathema had been like for her, it had robbed her of all outward softness.
“My brother tried to take the blame. He confessed to the crime. He told me to stay quiet. I wouldn’t let him do it.” Bitterness crept into her voice. “It didn’t matter. We were both convicted. We’re both anathemas now.”
“How were you both convicted of the same crime?”
She shook her head. “Our judge was corrupt. He became an anathema himself a year later for trading kids for cash.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You didn’t hear the scandal about the ‘Honorable’ Mark Cavahan?” Noelle’s lips twist bitterly. “It was big news when it came out. This local hunting guild was bribing him to declare people anathemas over the most minor offenses. It turned out that Cavahan was taking a percentage of every bounty claimed on his courthouse steps.”
I’d heard rumors of corrupt judges doing stuff like this. It was the problem with privatized justice. Some said that monetizing any public service led the worst sort of people to take charge of it, the type who gleefully enriched themselves no matter the cost to society. It still shocked me to hear of a man ruining the lives of kids just for his wallet.
Suddenly I felt foolish cornering this tormented girl over an article for the school newspaper. This wasn’t a profile on the custodial staff, an attack on snobbishness. This was very real. The very real consequences on a very real girl of a great evil in our society.
“Looking back, I shouldn’t have just acted on impulse and killed him,” Noelle said distantly. “If he’d lost citizenship, I could have done it legally. Dad wouldn’t have lasted long as an anathema.”
Various stories I’d read flickered through my mind. Child molesters didn’t last long once they lost citizenship. There were special hunting guilds dedicated just to them. The kind that didn’t care about the size of a person’s bounty.
“But I’m still not sorry about what happened. It’s just my brother I feel bad about. He doesn’t deserve this life and he’s in it because of me.”
I felt so sorry for her, I couldn’t breathe.
“Sooner or later,” Noelle said, drawing a shaky breath, “we’re both going to be killed. People will just think we’re two more dead anathemas. But we were good people. He definitely was. Is. He doesn’t deserve this.”
“I’m so sorry.”
She jounced to her feet, the wind fluttering her dark hair. “It is what it is. Thanks for the burgers.”
Maybe it was naïve of me, but I’d always believed the world should be fair. The injustice of her situation gripped me like a hand around my heart. I followed her soberly back up to the boardwalk, my mind racing.
I wanted to help her. I imagined asking my parents to adopt her. They’d feel as bad as I did, hearing her story. We’d take Noelle in and keep her safe. She could go to my school. We’d become like sisters and she’d have all the opportunities she didn’t have now. Then we’d help her brother, too. Maybe hire a lawyer and get their charges dropped. I don’t know how we’d pay for it, but maybe Dad could talk someone into doing it for free…
I was so busy spinning plots in my head that I nearly missed it when a man in his thirties looked up abruptly from his phone. His attention riveted to Noelle like a hawk’s. At my side, Noelle gave a strangled gasp, realizing way before I did just what was about to happen.
The man reached into his shirt and drew a blade. I froze instinctively, seeing it.
A hunter.
My steps halted, my mind going still. Noelle gave a thin cry, “No, wait! Don’t!” And stumbled back from him.
“Leave her alone!” The words escaped me, my throat growing tight with panic.
“I’ll be very quick,” he assured Noelle. A kind murderer.
She cowered down because there was nowhere for her to run—he was blocking her escape. His shadow swam across the boardwalk as he stalked toward her. I was about to see a grown man murder a helpless girl.
A girl I could save.
I didn’t think about it.
“I said leave her alone.” I pu
nctuated the words by shoving him.
It wasn’t like I used very much force. Just my shoulder, my body weight. Had we been on the sidewalk, he would’ve fallen. He wouldn’t have cracked his head against the railing behind him.
He wouldn’t have fallen to his hands and knees, disoriented. And Noelle wouldn’t have had time to lance forward and jam an ice-pick through his throat.
But that’s just what she did.
The scream escaped me. I stumbled back and lost my balance, the world upending before me. Noelle reared up from where she’d planted the ice-pick in the soft flesh under his chin, her sleeves coated in dark blood.
“Here for an easy kill?” Noelle said maliciously. “Big mistake.”
Horror rocked me, the world seeming to spin around me, as the hunter gurgled, clutching his throat.
And then with one kick, Noelle sent him careening off the side of the boardwalk. Below us the rocks foamed with water. He plunged straight down. There was no cry, no scream. Maybe there was too much blood in his throat, his lungs, for that. I still have a blank in my memory, because I can never seem to recall the moment he hit.
All I remember is staring at that puddle of blood on the boardwalk. Such a bright, vivid red. And the girl above me in the sun-washed daylight, wind whipping her clothes about her thin body.
My hands clamped over my temples, the thought, Oh my God oh my God oh my God, beating over and over again through my head.
“Easy there.” Her eyes riveted to me. Like a distant dream. “Try to calm down.”
I couldn’t. I couldn’t calm down.
“This sucks. You really didn’t need to do that,” Noelle said. “I was just playing the helpless, scared girl so he’d get close enough for me to get to. I really wish you hadn’t done that.”
I looked at her, in shock. She wiped off the ice-pick on her sweatshirt. Then she ripped the whole blood sodden garment off her head and tossed it into the surf below us. I saw then that her arms were knotted with muscle.
I tried to make sense of what had happened. This girl who’d reminded me of some tall, wilting flower had teeth and venom all along. How easily she’d played the role of a frightened, helpless girl in the moments before impaling a man through the throat. Before taunting him as he died.
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