Fierce Reads

by Ann Aguirre

  Nine hours, ten. The smell of sweat and exhaustion, thickening in the room like a snowdrift. “You’re pushing her too hard—”

  “We have to know. How else can Comrade Secretary make the right choice? We must know what they will do if we attack!”

  Apologies and excuses fill the future, transmitted across red phones. Warnings. Accusations, negotiations, begging, threatening, screaming—

  No, the screaming is from me. I am screaming because it feels like my skin is on fire, my hair is falling out, my insides are thickening into a cancerous soup. Someone tries to touch me, but their fingers sting like lemon on a wound.

  “First strike,” I scream. “They’ll hit us first if we don’t stop!”

  Everything pauses—and then everyone speaks at once, pointing and barking out commands.

  I blink, and fling myself back into the future, a world where the KGB officers’ faces run like wax. Our mansion slides down its embankment into the Moskva River, now thickened like stew with debris and blood as the bombs rain down. Get me out of this future. No—I can’t escape. This is real, this is happening, they wouldn’t listen to me.

  “Sedative,” a voice calls, sparking a thousand futures. Do I fight—claw my nails into that face, push at this chest, kick those knees. Or do I succumb? I try to weigh the possibilities but it’s all so useless. We’re all going to die. Isn’t that the possibility that no one wants to hear but everyone knows is true? Every branch has an end, a point where it will split no more. But does it have to end like this? With fire in my veins and poison on my skin?

  The futures retreat as a soft white nothing settles around me, quiet as snowfall, soft as fresh-spun wool.

  * * *

  I awaken twisted in my bed sheets, blankets cast off, bare toes jutting out into the sharp cold of nighttime. My mouth bears the distinctive aftertaste of standard-issue sedatives, cottony and tinged with a hungry ache. How long have I been out? I glance at Masha in her cot to my left, issuing soft sighs with each exhale, and Anastasia to my right, her whole body curled tight as a fist under the covers. I like my teammates best when they’re asleep. It’s the only time Masha’s mouth stops moving. The only time I don’t see the flash of possibilities running through Anastasia’s head, glinting as if against the edge of a knife. No matter what future I see, Anastasia craves the only certain escape from our prison—the kind where they carry you out in a bag.

  As prisons go, ours isn’t so bad. I have a bed to myself and warm clothes up to the task of the winter already frosting across our windowpanes. I rummage around in the chest at the foot of my bed and pull on two pairs of socks, add another sweater, and twist my hair into a bun at the back of my head. I glide down the second floor hallway, kept company only by the roaches and rats as they skitter out of my way. All but the nightshift guards and the vermin are asleep now, and I can come up for breath—stop worrying about what might come and pretend that anything could happen. I might even feel real surprise, genuine anticipation—that dual-edged blade of excitement tempered with nerves. It never turns out that way, but I like to pretend.

  I reach the linen closet and push open the side panel that leads into the secret vault—a gift from the imperialists who built the mansion. Futures spin and coalesce in my mind as they become more tangible—glimpses of smiles and winking blue eyes and things yet to come, awaiting me at the tunnel’s end—but I ignore them as I walk down the dark passageway. An amber glow up ahead fills the vault. The future presses in on me, but I try to push it away. Let me cling to this moment of candy-sweet ignorance before whatever future awaits me becomes right now—

  “Oh. Hi. Sorry, I didn’t think anyone was awake…,” he says. It’s the new boy, Ivan, stomach down on the cold stone floor, a book spread open before him. An illustrated collection of folktales—not the sort of thing boys like to be seen reading. But he’s looking at me, not trying to hide it away. The possibility doesn’t even register in his mind. I smile.

  “Sorry to intrude.” I perch on the edge of a sheet-covered sofa and draw my knees up under my chin. I wonder whether he’s going to ask me about my screaming episode—surely the whole house heard—but he doesn’t look too interested in anything besides his book. “I suppose Sergei showed you this place?”

  “Valentin, actually. I was—I was having trouble shutting off all the voices, you know? My head was full of everyone’s thoughts, and I couldn’t stop hearing it and I couldn’t hear anything else, so I just had to get away—” His cheeks flush red to match the red-and-gold illustration in front of him. They’re good Russian cheeks, angled, but not so sharp you could cut yourself on them. The red brings out the icy sparkle to his eyes. “But I suppose you know what that’s like.”

  Planes and boats, bombs and tanks, threats and pleas … “You aren’t going to ask me what will happen?” I raise one eyebrow at him. “It’s always the first thing people want to know when they learn about my power. Whether or not they’re about to die.”

  He lifts his shoulders. “If you know, then you’ll tell us. No point in pushing you, right?”

  Softer than Sergei, happier than Valentin, kinder than Misha. But carefree boys, incurious boys, don’t belong on this team. We’re in the cruelty business, breaking into heads and futures and lives. I like that he doesn’t belong, but I don’t like to think about what futures it might bring.

  “What are you reading?” I ask.

  He blushes again, and a grin spreads on his face. “Well, I couldn’t find any copies of Midnight at the Moscow Nursing School, so I had to settle for Maksim Gorky stories instead.”

  A laugh bursts out of me before I can suppress it. I remember finding a racy photo book like Midnight at the Moscow Nursing School buried under my brothers’ side of the mattress. All right, so Ivan’s not that good-hearted. I hide my smile behind my knees. “Sure. I’ve heard what they teach at that kind of nursing school.”

  His face is deep crimson now, the color of Rostov’s patriotic medals, but I think he senses that I’m not letting him out of his joke so easily. “Anatomy, mostly.” He waves one hand in the air. “It’s a very serious text. Lots of illustrations, to teach you proper technique.”

  “Well, Gorky must pale in comparison.” I slip down from the sofa and sit across from him on the floor. The future is lighting up, quick-fire, flashing like an aerial bombing in the night, but I shove it aside. I like this moment as it is, isolated, untouched by what’s happened or what’s yet to come.

  Ivan gestures to the illustration. “Why, my dear comrade, nothing can compare to the proper socialist teachings of the legend of Danko. Danko tried to lead his village out of the dark forest when it threatened to consume them, and here he is, selflessly dismembering himself to illuminate the night. Ripping out his heart to light their way. Because, as every good worker knows, your body parts can be used as torches to fend off evil spirits.”

  I lean over the illustration. Sure enough, Danko has wrenched his heart from his chest, and the light from his heart is guiding the rest of his village out of the forest to safety. “What a brave and resourceful comrade he is, to sacrifice himself in such a way,” I say. “I never even would have thought to do such a thing.”

  Ivan nods sagely. “We should drop leaflets with the story of Danko over America. Then I’m sure they will understand the rightness of our cause.”

  Our heads are looming side by side over the gruesome illustrations, made all the more grim for how genuinely happy Danko looks to sacrifice himself. Maybe he secretly was thrilled to find a way out of his village. Maybe after twenty years of cabbage soup and kasha every day, he couldn’t take it anymore. I glance at Ivan from the corner of my eye, wondering whether he’s thinking the same thing. Wondering how long he can live in this mansion, with this team, with the KGB ordering us around, making us into weapons because of an irrational gift we possess.

  I rock back from the book and clutch my knees once more under my chin.

  “How bad is it out there?” I ask, voice mu
ffled by my knees. “What have they said on the news?”

  He shrugs again. Russians shrug for the same reason a baker rolls her dough—to flatten everything out, hide the imperfections. “The Americans declared DEFCON-2. Kruzenko explained this is their second-highest level of military alert.”

  “But no one’s attacking anyone yet.”

  “Not yet,” he says.

  I lean back against the sofa, Ivan watching me, our gazes locked. There’s no aggression in his stare like from Masha’s; no pity or contempt like Sergei’s and Valentin’s. He simply looks at me, and for once I think about the past, about whatever sequence of choices has brought this calm, quick-smiling boy into our midst.

  I’m glad for it.

  * * *

  Sometimes, the question is more important than the answer. Ask me, Lara, what’s going to happen with the Americans? and don’t expect anything brilliant in reply. They’ll eat hamburgers, probably, or listen to their rock and roll. Someone will say something funny on a TV show and the Yankees will win it again. I’ve told Rostov before—ask with the answer in mind. But he never sees what he’s not looking for.

  Someday, though I don’t yet know how, this will be useful to me.

  “How do we stop the Americans from invading Cuba?” Rostov’s boss asks, a thick-skulled man, KGB something or other, colonel, major general, I forget. Sometimes when I look at him, I see a glimpse—just a glimpse—of him hunched over a desk, worry deepening the folds of his face, a shadow in the doorway catching his eye. But no one ever asks me about that.

  How do we stop the Americans? How isn’t relevant to me. I’m no military planner; I’m a girl with a pinhole peek into the future. Point me in the right direction. “It doesn’t work that way.” I rub at my eyes. “Give me a scenario, a possibility—something to explore.”

  He peels off his hat and dabs away the thick smear of sweat across his forehead. Consults a well-loved notepad in his breast pocket. “What if we agreed to remove the missiles?”

  Rostov steps forward, lip twitching into a sneer. “Comrade, that is not a feasible option—”

  “Comrade First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev wants to know,” the other man says, the words pointed like a gun. “If we remove our missiles from Cuba, will it keep the Americans from invading? Will it keep us safe? Will it keep Comrade Castro’s Cuban people safe?”

  “Castro himself asked for us to strike the Americans first,” Rostov says.

  But they are fading, fading away as I sink into the depths, letting the new future that’s arisen drag me in.

  The tang of frying Chinese food floods my nose as the scene coalesces around me. Only a few hours ahead of right now—this one’s a near certainty. Two men, emissaries both of their respective countries, hunch over the crusty diner table deep in Washington, gesturing at the dark silhouettes that freckle the maps in front of them. Soviet missiles in Cuba, just beyond the American shoreline. American missiles in Turkey, butting up against the Soviet Union. Each pressing like a knife into the other’s back.

  The diners around them chatter away in English, oblivious to the nuclear weapons being plucked off the table one by one, like pawns eliminated in an aggressive game of chess.

  “Offer to remove the missiles from Cuba,” I say.

  Rostov stares at me, slack-jawed, darkness smoldering in his eyes.

  “If you offer it, then the Americans will take their missiles from Turkey. They will agree to the trade.”

  Rostov and his commander face each other, neither breathing. Slowly, Rostov’s shoulders shrink back until he stands at military posture. Deferent. But his clenched fists show how it pains him to submit.

  “Thank you, comrade, for your service,” the commander says to me with a quick nod. Then, to Rostov: “Fetch my car. I must head straight to the Kremlin.”

  Rostov’s dark eyes burn through me as he holds the door open for his boss.

  * * *

  Everyone’s gathered in the old ballroom. Misha and Masha press up against the monolithic radio, Valentin practices his scales at the baby grand, Anastasia clings to the piano like a piece of driftwood saving her from a shipwreck, and Ivan and Sergei speak in hushed tones on the sofa. When I enter, however, all heads swivel toward me, as if I were magnetic north, the only way out of this mess. I tug my cardigan tight around me and lower my head.

  “Well?” Misha asks, as he and his sister rise to their feet. “Have you managed not to kill us all?”

  I shuffle toward the couch, but they step into my path. I glance up, quick, then duck around them. “It’ll be fine. Everything’s fine now.”

  Somehow this does nothing to ease the thick pressure in the hall.

  “How do you mean, it’s fine? Last time you were screaming that we were all about to be nuked into oblivion.” Masha trails me to the sofa. “How can you be sure? You’ve missed things before.”

  I bite my lower lip. No, I’ve chosen not to see things before. But the difference would be lost on her. “Well, it’s fine now.”

  “This is a matter of life and death! I know you don’t give a damn about the rest of us, but if you could think of someone besides yourself for once, you selfish capitalist swine—”

  Ivan hops up from the sofa. He’s a few inches shorter than the twins, and wirier than Sergei, but the future spreads out from him, containing several possible endings in which he puts his fist through Misha’s nose. “And what have the rest of you done to help? I may be new here, but I’m pretty sure moping around listening to radio dramas isn’t helping us dodge the capitalists’ bombs.”

  Masha’s mouth flaps open and shut. “Why, I’ve been trying to remotely view the White House, see what Jack and Bobby Kennedy are plotting—”

  “Trying,” Ivan echoes. “And how successful have you been?”

  Sergei saunters toward us, hands in his pockets. “Hey, now, remote viewing’s tough work. I wouldn’t expect a meager mind reader like you to understand.”

  “We all have a role to play. Isn’t that what Marx, Engels, Lenin were all about? Doing our part?” Ivan’s eyes flick toward mine. “Maybe you should worry about what you’re doing—or not doing. Let Larissa worry about herself.”

  A high-pitched flurry of beeps cuts through the droning voices on the radio set, indicating breaking news. Then the cheery, waddling brass chords of “The Internationale” fill the ballroom. As one, we crowd around the wooden radio, wordless, transfixed. The future looms large before me, but I push it away; I drop to the floor beside Ivan, shoulder pressing against his.

  “Comrades. Workers of the world. We interrupt this Radio Moscow broadcast to read you a letter from the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Comrade Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev.” The announcer clears his throat. “‘The Soviet government has given a new order to dismantle the weapons in Cuba that the Americans have described as offensive, and to crate and return them to the Soviet Union.’”

  Anastasia and Sergei cheer, and briefly embrace; Valentin slumps forward with a relieved sigh. “What?” Masha screeches. “We’re pulling our missiles back?” She and Misha turn their rage on me, chattering back and forth with each other about my incompetence.

  My heart is hammering in my throat; my nails dig into my palms. I stare forward, beyond this moment, feeling the cold water of another future flood around me. I have to be sure. I find the image—the pillar of smoke, the radioactive rain, the corpses that crumble to ash. It’s still there, but faded now, as if washed over with bleach. Maybe it will never be gone entirely. But the details are gone, the pain, the smell.

  For now, we are safe.

  I surface again to find Ivan watching me with a tentative smile. “Well done,” he tells me. His arm is now pressed against the length of mine, and it feels like a million new possibilities blooming on the horizon.

  I curl my fingers around his. “And I didn’t even have to tear out my heart.”

  * * *

  Of course, it’s weeks before anything is
official, but after the requisite rounds of bluster and speeches and hollowed-out threats, the missiles are removed. Rostov gets promoted, to colonel—for what, I’m not sure. Proper handling and employment of his weapon, I suppose, and I’m the weapon of choice. For my service, I’m given a color television with which to watch black-and-white Russian broadcasts, with the occasional burst of color from films like Five Days, Five Nights.

  I’m of little use in fieldwork, but I knew it would be only a matter of time before Rostov and Kruzenko deemed Ivan ready. For a time, we could curl up on the couch and watch the Soviet variety shows on TV while the others trained in the field, but after lunch one day, he sits down beside me, boots in hand, and begins to lace them up. “I’m afraid I’ll have to miss the new episode.” His face is soft as he looks into my eyes, but the frost in his gaze has returned. “My first big mission. I suppose I should feel honored.”

  Honored. I shrug, and try not to see the ache that an afternoon without him holds, but that future is right here in front of me, unavoidable. I like this boy who smiles, who believes in things like honor and loyalty but never believes in them too much. I reach out and grab his hand before I have a chance to see what consequences such a future would hold. Don’t think, Lara, just savor this moment. No future, no past. The present is his warm skin against mine and his dark blond hair on his forehead just begging for me to brush it back.

  “Lara,” he murmurs, and it sounds well rehearsed. Like this moment is a future he’s dreamed about.

  I press my lips to his, and everything else retreats. We are now: soft flesh, warming against the dead of winter. Hot breath to melt away fear. Two hearts that beat, defiant of the future that could have been. Fingers tangled in honey-gold hair.

  He gasps for air and plants one last kiss on my forehead. “Maybe we can revisit this when I get back, huh?” he asks.