BRINK
Book 1 - The Passing
By Arienna Rivers Black
Kindle Edition - Copyright ©2016 Arienna Rivers Black
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For Clark and Val, who made all the difference.
"On the brink of disaster, the soul discovers its truest form."
THE PASSING
I.
We're walking past the towering Seventh Street business offices, headed to City Hall – me, Johanna, Harlow, and around two hundred other young adults with two dramatic commonalities: one, we're all about ten hours away from all of our 25th birthday – June 17th, to be precise. And two, when the sun rises tomorrow morning, every single one of us will either be married - most likely to a complete stranger - or dead.
We're all aware of this fact, and yet everyone is chatting and joking with each other in small groups. Like friends walking to a baseball game, or heading downtown for drinks. Perhaps our outward nonchalance is born of a nurtured sense of propriety. This is just how things are now. This is life after The Great War. After the Curse. After everything became singular and capitalized. “The City”, “The University”, “The Algorithm.” Without books, glitch-y web articles, and the stories told to us by the few elders who care to recount them, we wouldn't even know life could be any different.
I'm wearing ballet flats and a demure, knee-length cotton dress. Yellow. My mother insisted on the buttery hue, despite my suggestion that a cornflower blue might better suit my pale skin.
“But yellow is the traditional color of The Passing,” she reminded me, holding up the bolt of fabric she'd already purchased and nodding her round face in the way that she does when she just wants the conflict to go away. “It represents hope, and friendship, and new life – isn't that lovely? And it's what all the other girls will be wearing. You'll fit right in.”
In the end I had agreed with her, mostly because I knew she wanted it so badly, and because, after all, it was she who was making me the dress. My mother loved creating things with her ancient sewing machine the way I loved a good adventure novel – it lit her up from the inside and made her every sentence just short of a song. She'd constructed a majority of my wardrobe my entire life, despite the fact that my father's position in the government made it easy for us to afford factory-made clothing. Everything she made me was beautiful; not everything looked as nice as I would have liked on my short-ish, dumpy-ish frame. But I had a hard time telling my mother “no”. I had a hard time telling anyone “no”.
She was right about fitting in, however. In the fluid mass of people of which we are a part tonight, most of the girls are dressed partially, if not entirely, in yellow. Except Johanna, of course, who, tradition be damned, has sewn herself into a crimson number with plenty of shimmer and slink. She looks fantastic in red. It's her color. Yellow is most definitely not mine. A particularly reflective office window reminds me of this fact, and I purse my lips together.
“Knock it off, Brynn,” Johanna chides me, catching my grimace. “You look great.”
“I should have tried harder to lose that last ten pounds,” I mutter gloomily.
“Don't be ridiculous. Those curves are going to be the reason some guy leaves the building thinking he's the luckiest man on God's green earth.”
“Or the reason I end up being a statistic.”
“We're all statistics,” interjects Harlow distractedly, his black, falcon-sharp eyes following the people on the other side of the street. One of the girls, a nymph-like creature with vibrant purple hair, is riding on some guy's shoulders, laughing hysterically, reminding me of junior year of high school, when skipping class to hang out at the lake (despite the countless laws against such an activity) was the thing to do. Maybe the stress of what's about to happen is finally getting to us. Making us all act like kids again. I must admit, before leaving my apartment half an hour ago, I myself experienced a bizarre urge to bring along something soft and comforting to cuddle with, like a velvety, plush blanket or my stuffed hippo, Hercules.
Johanna groans. “Shoot. I forgot how far it is from the subway station to the Hall.”
I glance down at her stilettos. She could skewer a coconut with those things.
“Want a ride, babe?” says Harlow with a wink and a nod at the purple-haired girl across the street. “Looks like all the cool kids are doing it.”
Johanna lifts her chin in lofty indignation. “Real women accept the consequences of their footwear decisions.” But she smiles and returns his wink.
I shake my head, amazed, as always, by the awesomeness that is my best friend. If the shoes hurt (and they look like they must), Johanna never lets the pain register on her face. She also manages to walk like a cross between an Elven warrior and a Disney princess – fierce, elegant strides, radiant smile, long, straight blond hair swirling around her shoulders. No mincing steps. No frown lines on her forehead. That's my Johanna. Fearlessness embodied in human form.
Once, a long time ago, I'd overheard my parents talking about my friendship with Johanna, trying to figure out why we were drawn together.
“They're nothing alike,” my father was saying between sips of his nightly glass of whiskey. “The Nelson girl...she's a hoot. Pretty as can be, with a mouth that could talk Bradbury into switching parties.”
“She's lively,” agreed my mother. “Infectious." There was a pause. "She does this thing with her hair - the way she tosses it over her shoulder like she couldn't care less. It always makes me think...I mean to say...well...just, that she reminds me a lot of...”
"Shut up!" shouted my father, in a voice that was a strange cross between a hiss and a growl.
"Stupid woman - what the hell is wrong with you? We've had this discussion; the subject is closed. I thought you understood that.”
“I just thought....perhaps enough time had passed...I just want to talk about her...”
“Drop it, Leah. That's not a request.”
From my place in the darkness of the hallway, I could just see my mother ducking her head in silent apology, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. My father cleared his throat and continued as though nothing had happened.
“Brynn can barely recite poetry to herself in front of a mirror without turning red.”
Mother swallowed and took a breath. “She's shy, Perry."
“She's scared. There's a difference. She should learn from Johanna.”
“They balance each other,” my mother said mildly as she finished matching the last two socks in her pile of laundry. “They're complements.”
“Defend her all you like - makes no difference to me. Regardless, I suppose the relationship works for them. I'm just not sure what they see in each other.”
I remember how my heart wept at my father's words and my mother's concession, even as my mind nodded agreement. I knew I was nothing like Johanna – I was the shade to her sunlight, in both coloring and demeanor. Given the warmth of my father's praise for my best friend, anyone might have expected that I would be jealous, but I found that I couldn't dredge up any ill will toward her. We had chosen each other as friends – as sisters – and I could never hate someone that belonged to me that much, even if loving her made no sense to anyone else.
II.
Of course Harlow sees it first. He sees everything first. The answer to a math equation. The stray twenty-dollar coin beneath a park bench. The Waldo in Where's Waldo.
“Hey guys,” he says, nudging Johanna. “There it is.”
Our destination. The place where we will ch
oose our fate, or let it choose us. City Hall.
It's shaped like a huge dome and extends deep into the earth. Supposedly, it can house the entire population of The City – all eight million of us - in miles of subterranean tunnels, as well as enough food and water to sustain everyone for two years. It's made of steel and concrete and energy fields and unicorn tears...or at least that's the kind of mystical awe we've held about the place since childhood. According to the experts, it's everything-proof – hurricane, flood, fire, EMP, earthquake, computer virus, real virus, pipe-bomb, slip-bomb, atom bomb...though why such protection is necessary, I really couldn't say. If we're the only humans left on earth, who's going to try blowing us up?
Still, I suppose it is comforting to know that such a refuge exists, should we ever need it. The fear of utter destruction is something my generation, with it's walled city and fierce police force, knows very little about. But I've paid close attention to my father when he talks about the Great War. He was all of seven years old when it happened, and yet, when the subject is brought up, his skin still pales, his breath still catches, his eyes, beneath his surly shelf of brow, still widen. Haunted. It is startling to me. I'm aware that he lost his parents in the first attack, and that he spent the next three years hidden in a half-destroyed basement with his three brothers. A members of a construction crew, the one building the massive wall of the City stumbled upon them in the nick of time, bringing them to the children's home at the University, where they were finally safe. Indeed, it sounds like a tragic childhood. But even so...my entire life, my father has been an emotional fortress, accepting death and loss without flinching, thriving on challenges. If someone as stoic and impenetrable as he cannot speak about his own past without a tremble creeping into his huge, steady hands, then it must have been terrifying beyond imagination.
We're nearing the first gate to the Hall, a tall, old-fashioned iron structure flanked by two armed service-men in gray government uniforms. One, a meaty, red-faced, balding man, is scanning the throng of people. The other, a slightly younger, slightly hairier version of the first, is checking our identification bracelets. When Johanna steps up to him, his eyes trail leisurely over her whole body, landing on the lines of exotic-looking characters that grace the inside of her forearm.
“Hey, sexy,” he says to her. “I like your tattoo.” His words are slimy and dank, like the mildewed walls of an old sewer, making me recoil from him even though, next to Johanna, I'm all but invisible.
Johanna smiles at him sweetly. “Thank you. It's Arabic for, 'You're a creep. Get the hell away from me.'”
I nearly choke on my chewing gum.
“Johanna!” I chide after we're safely through the gate and out of the scowling guard's hearing. “What were you thinking back there? You humiliated him! What if he hadn't let us through? What if he'd grabbed you and taken you somewhere to.....to....have his way with you?”
My best friend snorts at me. “Right. And risk the Curse striking him dead where he stood. He wouldn't dare. You read too much.”
I look to Harlow for help, but he just shrugs at me. There's not a great deal that can be done when Johanna makes up her mind about something. And anyway, she's probably right. Divorce, rape, general promiscuity...all of these are things of a distant past, one I only worry about because of my precious collection of fiction and my general distrust of human nature. Sure, kids mess around in their teens and early twenties, but nobody dares cross the line. Everyone in our world assumes that any higher power who punishes mere singleness with death would have a similarly negative reaction to infidelity. There are rumors that the few citizens corrupt enough (or miserable enough) to engage in affairs have met with ends far more painful than the one we will encounter tomorrow if we take no vows tonight.
Still.
“I wish you didn't attract so much...inappropriate attention.”
Johanna laughs at me, the pure, bell-clear tone of a girl completely at peace with who she is, completely satisfied with the world she lives in. “It's not my fault,” she says, grinning. “It's the tattoo. And...ahem...whose idea was it to get one?”
I roll my eyes at her. It was mine. Sort of.
I'd found the phrase eight years ago in an obscure novel I pulled from a box of twenty other obscure novels I had purchased at an attic sale.
“Johanna, listen to this!” I called down to her from my perch on my lofted bed. “'On the brink of disaster, the soul discovers its truest form.' - isn't that gorgeous?”
“Mmm,” said Johanna, squinting at her Physics homework.
“I'm telling you, the books from before the war have so much more feeling than the crap we have to read in school,” I continued, fully aware that Johanna wasn't really paying attention but too caught up in the romance of the words I was reading to care. “Nothing Dr. Mandrell assigns makes me feel so much like jumping up and doing something...creating something. This stuff...it's like...I don't just want to read it...I want to make it a part of me.”
At that, Johanna's head whipped up from her studies. “You mean like a tattoo?”
Blinking, I looked back at her. “I...no. Not a tattoo. That's not what I meant at all...”
“Because that would be a fantastic tattoo, you know. Really meaningful.” Her eyes had begun to take on an over-bright sheen that I knew well. It was like shining a flashlight on a reflective yard ornament, or catching a ray of sunshine bouncing off the wading pool in the Park. It meant we were nearing a place of no return.
“Johanna,” I said warily, “you know we can't do that.”
“Why?” she said, all Audrey Hepburn innocence mixed with demonic intent. “It's not illegal, or they wouldn't have let Maria Nuventhal start up a parlor on Patriot Boulevard, of all places. She's so talented by the way...”
“It's like a big middle finger to society. The world ended because a group of people covered in those things pressed the big red button.”
“First off, the world didn't end. We're here, aren't we? Second, just because atrocious acts are sometimes committed by people who may or may not have scribbled all over themselves, doesn't mean the tattoos themselves are inherently bad...."
"What are you, reciting a textbook?"
"...Third, this is the perfect opportunity to do something that will royally piss off your father.”
She sat back and beamed at me, delighted with herself.
“Jo, I don't want to piss off my father. You're the one who can't stand him.”
“Come onnnnn, Brynn. Every seventeen-year-old wants to piss off her father.”
I shook my head. “I don't.”
“Yes, you do,” Johanna insisted knowingly. “You just don't know it yet.
We made our way down to Maria's tattoo parlor a week later, after I finally gave in to Johanna's constant wheedling. I had to admit, I was excited to be doing something that felt almost-wrong, especially since it was just me and Johanna. She hadn't even invited Harlow. Most of the time I loved being a trio – loved the paper, rock, scissors, sentence-finishing connection the three of us had - but every once in a while it was nice to do something with my best friend that was just us. I wondered if she knew this about me, and had used it to her advantage.
The door to the parlor was well-marked; the interior was surprisingly bright and clean. Maria, a thin, ropy woman with colorful ink dancing across every inch of exposed skin except her face, greeted us at the door with a huge smile and bony hugs for both of us.
“Come in, come in – I have been expecting you!” she said, traces of an accent I'd never heard before dusting the edges of her words. “So pleased to meet you. What a beautiful friend you have, Johanna. Those curls!”
I was immediately entranced, and not only because she'd called me beautiful. Most of the people living in the City had chosen to speak exclusively in English for ease of communication, and differences in speech patterns were rapidly dissolving. But I had always loved the surprising sounds of rolled 'R's and softened 'T's and vowels that started one wa
y and ended another - they delighted me and gave me an almost irresistible urge to reproduce them. So I listened with rapt attention while Maria showed us her books of sample scripts and various shading techniques, my silly smile only faltering when she turned to me and asked if I wanted to go first.
“Ah...” I stammered, feeling hot and cold all at the same time. “Maybe it would be best if , ah...if Johanna...?”
But my friend was one step ahead of me – she'd already jumped into the chair, grinning and holding out her forearm. “Are you kidding?” she said to Maria. “There's no way I'm going to wait any longer for this. Brynn'll have to go second.” I silently smiled her my thanks, thinking I just needed a little more time to be ready.
But two hours later, after watching Johanna act practically bored throughout the entire creation of her tattoo, I was no closer to being okay with the idea of submitting myself to the same procedure. In fact, I had almost completely talked myself out of it.
“It really doesn't hurt much at all,” Johanna assured me. “And I'll be right here to distract you.”
I eyed her slender forearm, now puffy and red and oh-so-permanently marked.
“It's not the pain I'm worried about,” I told her. “It's just....it's so visible.”
Maria laughed kindly. “Perhaps somewhere out of sight, just for you? Above your hip-bone, maybe?”
Lord knew that part of my body never saw the light of day. I hadn't worn a bathing suit without a t-shirt over it since I was twelve. I considered her suggestion.
“It would have to be smaller, then. Maybe a symbol instead of a phrase.”
“A heart,” said Johanna, nodding. “It's simple and small. And it's close enough to “soul” that it kind of matches my tattoo.”
It was a stretch, but I agreed, and let Maria start on a tiny, outlined character a few inches below and to the left of my belly button. The needle hurt enough to make my eyes water, but I barely noticed. I was concentrating on pushing down the rising wave of panic in my chest. I kept seeing a memory of my father, dressed in a charcoal gray suit with a red tie, dashing out onto the back porch with a look of the utmost fury on his face while my five-year-old self stared up at him from the mud puddle in which he had expressly forbidden me to play. Even at that age, I had known that it was not so much the clay dripping from my hair or the stains on my dress that had caused his anger, it was my utter defiance of his will. He hadn't yelled at me then, nor administered any kind of punishment. He just turned around, walked back into the house....and pretended I wasn't there for the next three weeks. No greetings when he arrived home from work. No invitations to go with him to watch the birds in the park. No cheap, glittery plastic trinkets from one of the town markets. For me, his cold, impassive distance was worse than death. I pleaded with him to talk to me, hug me, play with me. I danced in front of him, scribbled him pages of drawings, told him I loved him, and I was sorry I was a bad girl, and I would never disobey him again. Like a chastised yellow lab puppy, I was completely unable to do anything but bounce around in a manic attempt to receive the tiniest consoling pat on the head. A pat that, for me, didn't come until I had decided I simply didn't deserve it. I saw his angry face in my nightmares for months after he started speaking to me again.
BRINK: Book 1 - The Passing Page 1
