Perfect

by Cecelia Ahern

  I’m about to scream at her, punch her, kick her, yell that she cannot take me and my granddad, but I stop myself. There is something peculiar about the way she is looking at me.

  She puts the phone in her pocket, fixes me with a long stare as if she’s trying to think of something to say, then decides against it, and turns and leaves.

  “Right, old man,” she calls to Granddad. “We’re taking you in. Judge Crevan needs words with you.”

  Even after I hear the vehicles drive away, I stay where I am. I sit in the cramped and damp conditions of a hollowed-out tree, trying to understand what exactly has happened.

  Why didn’t she take me?

  TEN

  IT’S BEEN ONE hour since Mary May left with my beloved granddad in tow, carting him off as if he’s some kind of criminal. I’m still huddling behind the tree, exhausted, hungry, cold, and very afraid. I can smell the smoke from the pit, smoldering under the earth, cooking the food that probably no one will eat now that Granddad is gone. I feel an overwhelming guilt at his being in this position, and I’m scared of what they’ll do to him in Highland Castle.

  I’m scared, too, of what he might be thinking. Does he fear he burned me alive? I wish there was a way to tell him I wasn’t there, in the pit.

  When all the vehicles left, initially I was afraid to move, thinking it was a test or a tease, that as soon as I came out of the woodwork they’d grab me. Then I waited, thinking perhaps the farmworkers would come for me, but they didn’t, in lockdown at this hour by their Whistleblower, Dan.

  It’s after the 11:00 PM curfew, the time when checkpoints and searches on individuals increase. It’s not a good time to be roaming alone, though at least I can move around under the cover of darkness. I’ve decided that going back to the farmhouse is out of the question, despite its warmth and the welcoming light on the porch.

  Perhaps I can make it to Granddad’s nearest neighbor. Can I trust them for help?

  But then what did Granddad tell me? Rule number one: Don’t trust anybody.

  Suddenly I hear a vehicle return. A door slams. Followed by two more. They’re back. I feel so stupid now. Why didn’t I run? Why did I allow them to return to get me?

  I hear footsteps nearby. Male voices I don’t recognize, and then one that I do, clear as anything.

  “Here’s the pit,” Dahy says. “She was in here.”

  Can I trust Dahy? Or is he the one who called the Whistleblowers in the first place? Has he sold me out, or has he been forced to help another Whistleblower team find me? I don’t know who to believe. I’m cold; I’m scared; I can either jump up and yell “Save me!” and ruin everything I’ve done to get to this point, or I can sit tight. Sit tight. Sit tight.

  “She must have gone into the forest,” another man says.

  I see the light from a flashlight stretch in front of me, illuminating the black forest for what seems like hundreds of miles. Tall, thick tree trunks for as far as the eye can see. Even if I run that way and the Whistleblowers don’t see me, I’ll be lost in no time.

  It’s over, Celestine; it’s over.

  And even though I tell myself that, I’ll never give up. I think of Crevan’s face as he hissed at me in the branding chamber, asking me to repent; I think of Carrick’s hand pressed up against the glass as he watched it all unfold, the offer of friendship. The anger burns through me; I hear the footsteps near my tree and I unfold myself from my cramped position. I stretch my arms and legs, and on one, two … I fire myself out of the hole, catapulting into the woods, startling whatever is living nearby, and sprint with stiff legs.

  The men jump into action straightaway.

  “There!”

  The flashlight moves to find me; I dodge its line of fire and instead use it to see what’s in front of me. I dodge trees’ long, thin pine needles; duck and dive; and hear them closing in fast behind me.

  “Celestine,” a voice hisses angrily, coming close. I keep running, I smack my head against a low branch and feel momentarily dizzy, but I don’t have time to stop and center myself. They’re closing in on me, three of them. Three frenzied flashlights as they run.

  “Celestine!” a voice calls louder, and another hushes him.

  Why are they hushing? I’m dizzy, I think I’ve cut my head, all I know is that I need to keep running, it’s what my mom told me to do. Granddad said don’t trust anyone. Dad said to trust Granddad. I need to keep moving.

  The flashlights suddenly go off and I’m running in pitch blackness. I stop still, my breathing all I can hear. I don’t know which way is forward or which is back the way I came; I am utterly disoriented in the dense forest. Panic descends again, then I take control. I close my eyes, allowing calm to encapsulate me. I can do this. I turn around, trying to see light from the farmhouse in the distance, or any clues. As I move, twigs snap beneath my feet.

  Then I feel strong arms around my waist, a smell of sweat.

  “Got her,” he says.

  I fight against his grip, but it’s no use: There’s no room to move. I keep trying anyway, wriggling with all my energy to hopefully exhaust him, hit him, scratch him, kick him.

  A flashlight goes on, someone is shining it in my face. Both my captor and I look away from the harsh light.

  “Let her go, Lennox,” says the man holding the flashlight, and I stop wriggling immediately.

  The arms release me, and the flashlight is passed to Dahy, who holds it so that the speaker is illuminated.

  The man is amused.

  The man is Carrick.

  ELEVEN

  I’M BUZZING AS I follow Dahy back to the farmhouse. Carrick and his friend Lennox are behind me. I want to keep turning around to get a look at Carrick, but with Lennox there, I can’t. I’ve done it twice already, and Lennox caught me both times. I feel nervous, happy, surprisingly giddy at being reunited with Carrick. Finally something is going my way. My birthday wish came true.

  I bite my lip to hide my smile as we walk single file back to the farmhouse; now is not a time for smiling, though they couldn’t possibly understand my relief.

  “Any word from Granddad?” I ask Dahy quietly.

  “No,” he says, turning around briefly so I can catch the worried look on his face. “But Dan is doing everything he can to find out.”

  I’m skeptical of trusting Dan. His arrangement with Granddad to loosen the reins on the Flawed workers was based on feeding his alcohol addiction through gifts from Granddad’s home whiskey distillery rather than common decency.

  “You’ll let me know when you hear something?” I ask Dahy.

  “You’ll be the first to know.”

  “You’ll make sure Granddad knows that I’m safe?”

  Dan never knew I was here at the farmhouse—their arrangement was never that sweet—and so he can’t possibly relay the message to Granddad that I’m alive. Maybe the Whistleblower Kate told Granddad, but placing my faith in any Whistleblower is the last possible move, regardless of whether she let me go or not. I reach out to grab Dahy’s arm so that he stops walking, and my hand grips his Flawed armband. Lennox and Carrick stall behind me.

  “Dahy, can you contact my family? Tell them Granddad’s at the castle? Tell my parents that I’m okay?”

  “They already know he’s at the castle, but it’s too risky to tell them about you over the phone, Celestine. You know the Guild is probably listening in on the phone lines.”

  Members of the Guild aren’t super spies, but if Juniper and I figured out a way to overhear our neighbors’ phone conversations through Ewan’s baby monitor years ago, and a journalist can tap phones, then the Guild certainly can.

  “You have to find a way to tell them. And you have to tell him I’m okay.”

  “Celestine—”

  “No, Dahy, listen.” I raise my voice and I hear the tremor in it. “I cannot have Granddad sitting in a cell, or wherever they’ve put him, thinking that he has just burned his granddaughter alive.” My voice cracks. “You need to get word to him
.”

  Dahy finally understands. He softens. “Of course. I’ll find a way to tell him.”

  I let go of his arm.

  “He’ll be okay, Celestine, you know he’s made of tough stuff.” Dahy adds, “If anything, they’ll want to let him go quickly, before he conspiracy theories them to death.”

  I smile weakly at his attempt at humor and nod my thanks. I try to ignore the tears that are welling, try not to picture the terrible scenarios for Granddad that my mind keeps wanting to create. Granddad being booed and heckled as he walks across the cobblestoned courtyard of Highland Castle. People looking at him and shouting at him like he’s scum, throwing and spitting while he tries to keep his chin up. Granddad locked in a cell. Granddad having to answer to Crevan in the Guild court. Granddad in the branding chamber. Granddad being put through all the things that happened to me. When it’s yourself, you can take it; when it’s happening to the people you love, it can break you.

  What Crevan did to me was rare, at least I think it was; it was a moment of stress, of his utter loss of control. All I can do is hope that he won’t treat Granddad as he’s treated me.

  We walk back to the Jeep they parked at the farmhouse. There is no time for catching up on old times; I sense that the three of them are all anxious to get back to safety. It’s after 11:00 PM, we’re all Flawed and should be indoors. Three of us are “evaders” who have disobeyed the Guild.

  I have time to very quickly gather some of my things from the house, the small amount of clothes Granddad managed to successfully retrieve from Mom on a recent visit to her, the longest day of my life when he left me at the farm alone. It’s not much, a small backpack, and I suppose it’s all I need, but I think of all my clothes in my wardrobe at home, each item that meant so much to me, every one a part of me, a way of expressing who I was. I’m stripped of those now, realize I have nothing but my own words and actions to truly show who I am.

  We say good-bye to Dahy, he wishes us luck, and I beg him again to get word to me about Granddad as quickly as possible, and vice versa.

  Carrick holds the door open for me. Our eyes meet and my heart pounds.

  “We need to see to that cut,” he says, focusing on my forehead, the small wound from where I slammed into a branch moments ago. With the surge of adrenaline I didn’t feel the pain, but now I feel it sting in the breeze. As Carrick studies my forehead, I’m able to take in his face. This is the closest I’ve ever been to him, in the flesh; every other time was behind glass, or when I was comatose after the supermarket riot. It’s like I know him so well, and yet we’re perfect strangers at the same time.

  Feeling flustered, I step into the Jeep and bang the top of my head on the doorframe.

  “I’m okay,” I mumble, hiding my flushed face in the darkness of the Jeep.

  Carrick drives and I sit behind him, our eyes meeting often in the rearview mirror. Lennox sits beside him in the passenger seat, equally large in stature. Both of them looking like soldiers.

  “Where are we going?” I finally ask.

  Carrick’s eyes meet mine in the mirror and my stomach flips. “Home.”

  TWELVE

  “HOME” TAKES US through back roads and trails, away from towns and main roads. Every lamppost and billboard is covered in election campaign posters. I see Enya Sleepwell from the Vital Party, a politician who attended my trial. I didn’t know it at the time, but she was there to support me. I didn’t even know who she was until journalist Pia Wang questioned me about her. Enya Sleepwell recently became leader of the Vital Party and one of the main items on her campaign agenda is to discuss rights for the Flawed. It’s a risky topic for a politician: The Guild and the government go hand in hand. But despite her choice of issues, her popularity is growing week by week.

  On the poster, her cropped hair and reassuring smile stand above the slogan COMPASSION AND LOGIC. These are my words from the trial, when explaining why I aided the old Flawed man on the bus.

  Why did I help him? All the confused faces kept asking me during the trial. It was beyond belief, incomprehensible, that anyone would want to aid a Flawed, a second-class citizen.

  I helped him because I had compassion and logic. I felt for him, and helping him made sense. They were the first words that came to me in the court, I hadn’t planned them. The only story that had been planned was the lie that Crevan had wanted me to tell. It feels so peculiar to me to see those words in big, bold writing on posters, like they’ve been stolen from me, and have been bent to someone else’s purpose.

  I want to ask Carrick and Lennox a million questions, but I know not to ask anything. The atmosphere is tense in the car, even between Carrick and Lennox as they decide which way to traverse.

  The Guild has increased the number of Whistleblowers on the ground. Judge Crevan is in a panic trying to find me; the most Flawed person in the history of the Guild is not allowed to just disappear. Crevan has widened searches to all public and private properties, the hope being that there will be less support for me when members of the public are made to look like Flawed aiders in front of their neighbors.

  Crevan has even started delaying the Flawed curfew buses. Designed to bring the Flawed population home in time for their 11:00 PM curfew, people are now missing their curfews at the hands of the Guild, and they’re being punished. This is all in my name. Crevan is playing a game with me. I will continue to punish the innocent until you come out of your hiding place.

  Riots have begun to break out in the city. The Guild is characterizing them as random outbursts from Flawed groups, but Granddad believes it’s not just Flawed who are feeling angry about the Guild. He believes regular people are feeling uncomfortable about Flawed rules, too, and that they’re starting to speak out. I know now that there is sense in what I once considered Granddad’s nonsensical rants. Whatever excuses the Guild gave to the public, I know that Crevan’s real reason for this surge in Whistleblower activity is to find me.

  There are times when I’ve wanted to give myself up, for the sake of others, but Granddad always stops me. He tells me that I can do more for people over time and they will appreciate it then. It just takes patience.

  We see a Whistleblowers’ checkpoint up ahead, and take a sharp left down the back of a cluster of shops, an alley so narrow we have to squeeze by the Dumpsters. Carrick stops the car and they pore over the map some more in search of a new route. This happens a few times. The relief that I experienced on seeing Carrick has now dissipated as I realize I’m still not safe. I yearn for that feeling of not having to constantly look over my shoulder.

  Beads of sweat glisten on Carrick’s brow. I take the opportunity of sitting behind him to study him. His black hair is closely shaven; his neck, shoulders, everything wide, muscular, and strong. Soldier is what I named him in the castle cells before I knew his real name. His cheekbones and jaw are perfectly defined, all hard edges. His eyes, a color I’ve never been able to work out, still look black in the rearview mirror. I study them: hard, intense, quick, always analyzing, looking for new angles. He catches my stare and, embarrassed, I quickly avert my eyes. When I finally glimpse back I catch him looking at me.

  “Home, sweet home,” Lennox says, and I can see them both visibly relax. But I look out the window at our destination and I tense even more. This is not the “home” I was expecting. Or hoping for.

  We drive toward a compound surrounded by twenty-foot-high fences with rows of barbed wire. It looks like a prison. Carrick looks back at me again, to gauge my reaction, his black eyes fixed on me.

  I have broken the most basic rule that Granddad taught me. Don’t trust anyone.

  And for the first time ever, I doubt Carrick.

  THIRTEEN

  FLOODLIGHTS LIGHT THE SKY, I can barely see past the front window they’re so bright, and a man with a machine gun charges angrily to the door of the car.

  “Uh-oh,” Lennox says. He throws a blanket at me and tells me to cover up and lie down. I do it immediately.

 
Carrick lowers the window. “Good evening, boss.”

  “Good evening?” he splutters. “It’s midnight. What the hell are you thinking? The city is crawling with Whistleblowers, and my guys here are loyal, but they’ll start to ask questions if we have too many comings and goings between shift hours. Do you have any idea how much trouble you could have caused being out here at this hour?”

  “Could have, but didn’t,” Lennox says.

  “Sorry, Eddie. You know we wouldn’t have been out unless it was extremely important.”

  He curses under his breath. “You’re good workers, but not that good. I could find replacements for you at a moment’s notice.”

  “Yes, us Flawed should always be grateful for every opportunity,” Lennox says sarcastically.

  “Len.” Carrick silences him. “It won’t happen again,” Carrick says. “And you know that if anything did happen out there we would never be linked back to here. You have both our words.”

  “Scout’s honor,” Lennox adds. “How about you let us in now? I don’t know if you heard, but it’s dangerous out here with Whistleblowers sniffing around the place.”

  There’s a long silence as Eddie thinks it over and I feel the tension again. If he cuts us loose, we won’t survive one night out here, off the radar, three Flawed. No more than two Flawed are allowed to travel or be together, and it’s after curfew, and we’re evaders.

  “Okay. Don’t think I can’t see a body under the blanket. I just hope it’s alive. I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’m not running a refugee camp here; he just better be a good worker.”

  “The best,” Carrick says, and I smile under the blanket.

  * * *

  “What is this place?” I ask after we’ve driven through the front gates and they tell me it’s safe to remove the blanket. I look out the window and strain my neck to take in the height of what looks like a nuclear plant.