The Daybreak Bond

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  “It’s okay.” Ms. Staarsgard held up her hands. “It’s natural that the children are confused. They are just children, after all.”

  Across the table, my parents watched Ms. Staarsgard. Were they really going to go along with this?

  “Ilana led the children out of Old Harmonie. They were unwitting accomplices to this theft, but cannot be blamed. It was like the Pied Piper leading the children from Hamelin.”

  “Because the parents didn’t pay him for getting rid of the rats,” Amnah said.

  I pushed my cup away from me. This could not be happening. They were going to blame Ilana for all of it? She was the one who wanted to go alone. She hadn’t even wanted to go at all, not really. I thought of what Julia had said about why she had come along on the rescue mission: to take responsibility. Now here we were back at the start and the grown-ups were trying to avoid responsibility again. They were trying to shift blame, and that wasn’t right. That wasn’t what scientists did. It wasn’t what good people did.

  “It wasn’t her,” I whispered to my parents.

  Mom shook her head. “Not now, Mori.”

  Not now? But when? When would I be allowed to talk? To clear her name?

  Beside me, Theo wrapped his napkin around his hand, tighter and tighter. He knew it was wrong. So why wasn’t he saying something?

  “It’s a tragedy that the project failed in such a spectacular way, and that our children were so egregiously harmed by it. But now we must move forward. I will be launching an investigation of the lab and the project directors. We will get to the bottom of what went wrong. As for the children, it’s important that we stay on message. Ilana led the escape.”

  I stood up. “No,” I said. Loudly. Clearly.

  “Mori,” Dad warned.

  “No,” I said again. “That’s not how it happened. Not at all.”

  “Mori, dear, you’re confused.”

  “I’m not. And I’m not going to participate in your lies. I’m not going to let Ilana save me yet again. You’re right, though. There was only one person behind this.” I took a deep breath. “It was me.”

  “Shut up,” Theo hissed at me.

  “I heard what was going to happen to her and I had the idea to get her out of here and get her someplace safe. She didn’t want to go. None of them wanted to go. But you did whatever you did to make them want to protect me, so that’s why they came.”

  “Sit down,” Theo said to me.

  “Mori, this isn’t possible,” Dad said.

  “Why not?”

  “What you’re saying doesn’t make any sense,” Dad said. “It would be totally out of character and, frankly, outside of your skill set.”

  The sun cast half of his face in shadow. “Of course you think that. Of course you think I couldn’t do something like this. You figured you’d prevented me from ever doing anything like this. Anything brave.”

  “What are you talking about?” Dad asked.

  “I know about the dampening.”

  “We did that for your own safety,” Mom exclaimed. She clasped her hands in front of her like she was praying.

  “You were so reckless,” Dad said.

  “You’d fly off the swings,” Mom said.

  “Off the merry-go-round,” Dad added.

  “Off everything,” Mom said.

  “I loved flying!” And as I said it, I remembered it. The way it felt when my stomach dropped toward my feet, a strange sort of tickle that electrified me.

  “And that’s why we had to do it, Mori, don’t you see?”

  I didn’t see. I didn’t see why they had to change me. “Baba and Dr. Varden and the rest of them, they didn’t come up with all these advances so you could mold us like Play-Doh. I don’t even understand why you do it, why you mess with us so much.”

  “It’s to keep you safe,” Mom said. “Everything we do is to keep you safe.”

  “Because we’re your most valuable resource,” I scoffed. That’s what Ms. Staarsgard and the rest of the Krita people always said. The children are precious. “All the while you were changing us. I guess we were only precious if we behaved exactly the way you wanted us to—and if we didn’t, you’d fix that.”

  “Because we love you,” Mom said.

  I ignored her. “And I guess I need more protection, right? Because I’m a natural?”

  “What?” Dad said. But he only looked a little confused.

  “That’s what we were thinking. That the designed kids, they look out for the naturals because we hold some of the genetic diversity, and—”

  Mom shook her head and Dad said, “Nothing is so simple.”

  “Then it’s because we’re weaker and they need to look out for us! Whatever it is, it isn’t right.” I slapped the table in front of me so hard that my hand stung. “I can’t even be sure if my friends really like me or if it’s just something a little coding tells them to do.”

  “They like you,” Mom said. She tried to make her voice sound calm, but it sounded like it was teetering on a thin wire.

  “I was brave!” I cried. “You took that from me!”

  “Mori,” Mom said in a soft, pleading voice. I was drawing attention to us. The bad kind of attention. That was something else I had never done before.

  “I can’t stand this, Mom! I can’t stand the not knowing what is real and what isn’t. This isn’t what Baba wanted. This isn’t what Old Harmonie is supposed to be. We don’t lie to protect ourselves. We don’t take from other people to make our lives better. We don’t fix or hide or get rid of people when they’re a problem. I’m not doing it anymore.”

  “We told you we won’t be dampening you again,” Dad said.

  “No. I won’t be doing any of it. This is me,” I told my parents—I told all of the families, really, because, of course, everyone was still listening. All of their eyes were on me. “I’m sick of people deciding who I’m going to be.”

  “Stop,” Dad said.

  “You tried to change me, and I changed myself back. You took away my bravery, but I found it. I found it to help Ilana. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? Look out for each other? How can we look out for each other if we aren’t brave?”

  “Calm down,” Mom told me.

  “Our four core values of our community are creativity, ingenuity, experimentation, and order. How can I help with any of those if I’m not brave? Why would you do that to me?” My voice cracked. Theo stood up next to me. Side by side.

  “I don’t want to be changed again. I’m not getting dampened and I’m not having my latency done.”

  People gasped. Sharp intakes of air. Julia stared at me with eyes agog. She shook her head. Even Theo next to me stared in shock.

  “The latency doesn’t change you,” Ms. Staarsgard said. “It enhances you. It’s a customary procedure—every child of Old Harmonie has it done.”

  “Not me,” I said, surprised at the firmness of my own voice. “I was brave. And you took it. You stole it. You can’t do that to a person.”

  “We were trying—” Mom began.

  “But it didn’t work,” I interrupted. “Not all the way. I was able to leave and help Ilana and I need to know where she is. I need to know if she’s okay!”

  “Mori—”

  “She’s fine.” It was Meryl Naughton who spoke.

  “But where is she?”

  “All of this has been quite overwhelming for her,” Greg Naughton said.

  I shook my head. “No, that doesn’t make sense. She was fine before. She wasn’t even glitching or anything.”

  Meryl smiled that same soft, patronizing smile I had found so warm before. “You’re a good friend, Mori. You all are. But there are things going on here that you can’t possibly understand.”

  The light was so bright around us, glinting and glaring like knives.

  “I understand that you want to get rid of her,” I said.

  “Enough!” Ms. Staarsgard said. “Mori, this has clearly been a trying few days for you. I sug
gest you go home and rest and reconsider what you’ve said here.”

  I held still for a moment. I wanted to stand there forever, to stand up for Ilana. But I knew I wasn’t going to win this fight, not right away. I slumped down into my seat.

  “I think we’ve covered all we need to cover. If there are any press inquiries, please direct them to me. You should go about your days in a normal fashion, without drawing too much attention to yourselves.” I felt certain that last bit was directed at me. “Enjoy the rest of your day.”

  My parents were up and on me in a second, hurrying me out of the room. But they weren’t fast enough to stop me from seeing something I’d never expected: Theo Staarsgard was crying.

  26

  Amnah and Mouse rode home with us. They were going to stay in our guest room. It was a relief to have them in the car so my parents couldn’t tell me how disappointed they were or try to convince me to stick to the story that the whole thing had been Ilana’s idea.

  Out the window, the landscape rushed by, but no air hit my face. There was no flying in this safe, sanitary KritaCar. And then we were in Nashoba. There was the old common house—our museum. And there was our school, closed for the summer. Then came Firefly Lane—past Julia’s house and Ilana’s and Theo’s, and then the KritaCar stopped in our driveway.

  Mom opened the door. I couldn’t move.

  “Come on in. We have a surprise for you!” she cooed.

  I pushed myself off the seat and out into the hot summer air. I hadn’t felt the heat of the sun in days.

  Mom took me by the hand and pulled me into the house, giddy as I was on Christmas morning. The air inside was still and cold. The gray tile floor gleamed and clicked under Mom’s sandals. My own sneakers seemed toxic in all this clean. A picture of me—an old picture—stared right back at me and I almost couldn’t recognize the girl.

  Amnah and Mouse took it all in, their gaze flitting around the entryway and hallway. They glanced into the kitchen as we passed by.

  The lines of the tiles seem to warp and swoop. I put a hand out to steady myself. Mom didn’t seem to notice. She said, “Come on, come on,” and dragged me into the living room with Dad right behind.

  There, curled up on our couch, was a tiny kitten. It was asleep and its little chest went up and down as it breathed.

  The air cooler hitched on and I shivered.

  Did they really think they could replace my best friend with a kitten?

  “We’re going to the playground,” I told them.

  Mom and Dad exchanged a look but they didn’t try to stop us, probably thinking of Ms. Staarsgard’s instructions that we live our lives as normally as possible. Or maybe they wanted to escape me as much as I wanted to escape them.

  “It’s just around this way,” I said as I led Mouse and Amnah away from my house.

  “All the houses are the same,” Amnah said.

  “Not exactly the same,” Mouse said.

  “On the inside they are,” I told her. “Different colors on the outside, different furniture on the inside.”

  “All through Old Harmonie?” Amnah asked. She turned and looked up and down the road.

  “No, just certain streets. It depends when they were built,” I explained. “This is the oldest part of Old Harmonie, but one of the newer neighborhoods.”

  “It’s actually pretty smart,” she said. “You could do everything in bulk—saves a lot of resources.”

  “I guess,” I replied. It was a hot day. The sun beat down on us as we walked around the cul-de-sac. “When Benji was younger he used to go into people’s houses and pretend he thought he was at home. He just wanted to see what the food delivery had brought for snacks. He said his mom never chose the good stuff.”

  Mouse smiled at that. She had a wry little smile that I liked. Amnah said, “They deliver food to your house?”

  “Every day.”

  Amnah spun around as she walked. “Where are the woods?”

  “You’ll see. They’re over by the playground.”

  We rounded the lower half of the circle and saw the big, black space where number 9 had been.

  “Whoa,” Mouse whispered.

  “That’s where Dr. Varden’s house used to be. She left it behind. They burned it when we found out about Ilana.”

  “They burned it right to the ground?” Mouse asked.

  “That surprises you?” Amnah asked in return. She was right. It wasn’t the first time Krita had burned homes to the ground.

  We passed Mr. Quist’s house. Tiger lilies swayed in the breeze like an invitation.

  And then we were at the playground. Theo sat on the dome climber. He looked like he’d been waiting there a long time. Julia sat on the ground with her bad leg propped up by the lowest rung of the climber. She stretched over her leg. Tommy sat beside her, eating an apple. Benji had his skateboard and was rocking the front end up and down, up and down.

  Theo jumped down as soon as he saw me. “I’m sorry, Mori. Really, I am.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “I knew what my mom was going to do, how she wanted to play it. She told me that if we were all willing to put our lives on the line for Ilana, then Ilana would surely be willing to shoulder the blame for this.”

  That made a certain sense. But only if Ilana’s fate was so tightly sealed that there could be no redemption for her, no chance of her coming back to us.

  “It’s okay,” I told him.

  “No, it isn’t.” He shook his head. “She said she was trying to help us. To protect us and to make sure no one else got hurt. But it’s not right. None of this is.”

  Julia pushed herself up with a wince. It was like I felt her pain in my leg. “You were joking, right? I mean, you can’t not get a latency, Mori.”

  “Why not?” Theo asked. “I wish it had occurred to me to say no.” He looked down at his feet. “No. It did occur to me. I wish I had been brave enough to say I wouldn’t.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Julia said. “You’re just mad about everything.”

  “He should be mad,” I said. “We all should. The things that Krita has done—that Old Harmonie has done—it’s not okay. That town under the reservoir, that was Amnah and Mouse’s home.” I pointed to the sisters. Mouse looked away, but Amnah looked right back at me. “We took it and what did they get in return?”

  “You not getting your latency isn’t going to give them their town back,” Julia said. She turned to Amnah and Mouse. “I mean, I’m sorry, but it isn’t. You can’t expect us to throw away good things just because you don’t have them.”

  Amnah held up her hands. “I never asked anyone to give up anything.”

  Benji chewed on the side of his thumb.

  “Anyway,” I said. “That’s not why I’m doing it. Or not the whole reason. I’m trying to get Old Harmonie back. Back where it was, what it was supposed to be. It wasn’t about shortcuts and quick fixes. It was about the process, the discovery.” I took a deep breath. “I want to make myself. I worked so hard to be brave again. And that felt good. That felt really good. Whatever I’m going to become, I want to do it myself. And I want to know that it’s really me.”

  Benji stopped rocking his skateboard. “I see what you’re saying,” he said. “At least I think I do. But I’m not changing my mind. I want my latency.”

  “I’m not asking you not to get it.”

  He continued with a soft voice, “The things I’m going to be able to do with my latency, the people I’m going to be able to help—in here and out there—I can’t not do it. That wouldn’t be right.”

  “You can’t make a choice like that for other people,” Theo said. “It has to be what you want for you.”

  “Well, I guess I do want to do it for me. I want to know what that’s going to feel like. I mean, what does it feel like?”

  “Strange,” Theo said, while Julia said, “Wonderful.”

  Mouse, Amnah, and Tommy had been still through the whole conversation, as if they knew t
his was something between us. Now, though, Tommy tapped his foot against the climber. “You think she’s okay?” he asked.

  “I hope so, but even if she is, I don’t know how long she’ll be safe,” I said.

  “So what are we going to do about it?” Benji asked.

  “Are you kidding?” Julia asked.

  “She’s still around somewhere,” Benji said. “We can’t just leave her to be—well, you know.”

  “How do you know they haven’t done it already?” Julia asked.

  “Geez, Julia, come on,” Theo said.

  “I’m trying to be realistic.”

  Amnah leaned against the climber, watching our conversation. She was thinking something, but kept it to herself. Her brown eyes flicked their attention from person to person.

  “Seems to me you guys are jumping in at the wrong point in the process,” Tommy said.

  “Meaning?” Theo prompted.

  “Any good plan starts with problem definition.”

  “We know what the problem is: they took Ilana away.”

  “Exactly. You guys are jumping to step three, define a plan, when you haven’t done step two, gather all relevant information. You need to know where she is—or if she is—in order to help her.”

  “How are we going to find that out?” Julia asked. “Just go up to Theo’s mom and ask her?”

  “No,” I said. “Mr. Quist.” Mr. Quist had been more honest with us than any grown-up. He’d even tried to warn me about Ilana. I thought he’d been trying to warn me away from her, but he’d been trying to tell me that she wasn’t safe. If he knew anything, he would tell us.

  “Who’s Mr. Quist?” Amnah asked.

  “He’s Theo’s neighbor. He’s a crotchety old man. Sort of. He worked in the Idea Box.”

  Tommy held up both of his hands. “Wait. The Idea Box? For real?”

  “So you know about it?” Julia asked. She tugged her sock up so it covered the lower edge of her bandage.

  “Oh yeah, totally. Well, maybe not totally totally, but enough to know that is the place for me. No one there will laugh about reusing saliva.”

  “I think people everywhere laugh about reusing saliva,” Amnah told him.

  “Fair enough,” Tommy said. “But still. Idea Box. Far out.”