Strega’s eyes are still on me. He’s waiting, I sense, for me to look back. It’s difficult not to be a little afraid, even though I genuinely want him to trace me, and I genuinely want to trace him.
“Are you sure?” he asks, breaking the silence between us.
I nod and turn off the viewer.
“Have you…?” his eyebrows lift.
I shake my head. Ritter’s never asked. I don’t know whether I would let him even if he did. Even though I understand that friends and family and even acquaintances can trace for different reasons, the Attero in me sees it as something too intimate for just anyone.
Strega shifts his body on the sofa, and I do the same so we’re facing each other. He rests his left arm on his leg, and I align my left arm with his. I close my eyes at first, unable to watch him as his fingertips ease over my wrist and begin to trace along the silvery threads fused to my arm. But I realize I need to see my fingers if I’m going to trace him.
Keeping my eyes locked on his muscled forearm, I suck in a breath as all at once I feel him in my head. Like he’s leapt out of his body into mine, except at the same time, impossibly, I feel myself surge into him, and he’s there, too.
I could talk all day long and never be able to express or explain how it feels to rub up against someone else’s consciousness, to feel it in your own. It’s a mind trip of epic proportions. I instantly understand why it would be a violation of the abuse standard for someone to trace you without your consent. Mind rape doesn’t even come close to describing what it would feel like.
But with Strega it is solemn and playful both at once. It exhilarates me and terrifies me. I hear the whooshing of breath, and I don’t know if it is me that’s breathless with wonder or if it’s Strega or both of us. The things I reach in him and the things he reaches in me are not just memories or the emotions attached to them but the most basic foundation of who we are. There’s no hiding from it.
At first, there’s just a series of flashes in my mind, like an introduction of sorts. An abbreviated reel like a movie montage of images. I see things from his eyes…his parents, places he knows and loves, random things he’s done like hike the rugged terrain just inside the Outer Territory, the land occupying the far north portion of this zone. Through his eyes, I dance with a girl, feeling shy. I sit staring at questions on the viewer. Before I sat down, I was certain being a caretaker was the future I’m meant for, but now I wish desperately for more time. I’m not ready to choose my function…
And as I’ve been moving through those pieces of Strega, he’s been whirling through my childhood of one move after another, several of those awkward, “Class, this is Davinney Keith. She just moved here from—” mornings, and many instances of tears. Thankfully, however, he also gets to see me giggling with Amy Finn in an igloo-like fort made from blankets, clothesline, and a card table. He sees me dancing with a boy I had my first fierce crush on. He sees me rolling around on the ground with Shamu, laughing wildly as I try to duck and dodge her sloppy dog kisses.
My heart lurches in my chest as I’m catapulted away from those visions into my living room, sitting beside my parents. It’s hard to explain, but Strega is living the moment as if he was always there all along. But he’s not just in the room with us. He’s me, and I am him. There’s no separation, yet I’m aware of Strega as a separate person.
It’s an ordinary night, one I once would have considered a little on the boring side. We’re all in our pajamas, and Dad has Mom’s feet in his lap. She’s been standing all day, and she’s teased him into giving her a foot rub. It’s a tenderness that I can’t help but notice even though I don’t really want to see them doing stuff like that…kissing, hugging, or any kind of touching that reminds me they are sexual beings just like anyone else. Because that’s just…ew.
I keep my eyes on the movie. It was my mother’s turn to pick tonight, and she enjoys torturing my dad with romantic, often bittersweet movies. This one is from a Nicholas Sparks novel. Mom and I try not to giggle when my father begins to sniffle, growling gruffly about his allergies, easing out from under her feet. As he leaves the room, allegedly in search of the allergy medicine, Mom and I snicker and snort until our heads are tipped together and we’re clutching our popcorn-filled stomachs.
Dad, watching us from the doorway, reacts the way he always reacts when we catch him having any sort of emotion. “Knock it off,” he says, a hint of grudging laughter in his voice. “If you tell anyone Dad cried watching this movie, I will disavow all knowledge of this night and my presence here.”
We just laugh harder as he returns to the sofa with a bowl of freshly air-popped kernels, reduced to grunts for the rest of the movie. When it is over, he insists on watching an action show on cable. Usually my mother would clear out of the living room by now, clutching the popcorn bowl with one hand and pinching glasses together with the other. This time she stays put. As Dad and I are discussing the show during a commercial, a piece of popcorn bounces off my nose.
My eyes narrow, and I look accusingly at Dad just in time to see him flinch back in surprise from his own popcorn assault, right in the jaw. Gape mouthed, we laugh incredulously as my mother clamps her lips down hard to keep from laughing, too.
“This is war!” Dad jokes, lunging for the popcorn bowl.
Suddenly there’s popcorn flying everywhere, and Shamu has roused from her nap to munch on the wayward pieces that hit the floor. Aware that Mom will come to her senses any second, Dad and I make the most of the moment. We team up against her, snatching the bowl, darting around the room, firing kernels until there are only the unpopped ones left. We stop there, knowing she won’t like it if we throw those.
With no ammo left, Dad resorts to recycling kernels he finds littering the couch, and I scoop up a few from the floor that Shamu hasn’t found yet. Mom laughs helplessly, breathlessly, and begs for mercy.
“Oh,” she gasps, clutching her sides, “oh, God, we need to stop…this place is a mess. We’ll never get it clean…”
Dad tosses one last kernel onto her belly before heading back into the kitchen for, I suspect, the dust pan and the whisk broom. With a last chuckle, I start gathering what I can with just my two hands. Mom plays Queen and instead of helping, just watches me.
It’s so strange to feel elated, light and bubbly inside while also feeling so hollow and homesick. The memory is a gift, and I feel huge gratitude toward Strega for happening upon it with his wandering fingers.
But this moment of bittersweet bliss is happening at the same time my fingers wander along Strega’s forearm. We are simultaneously fighting a popcorn war in my living room while also on the lawn outside the Challenge onboard. We’re younger. He’s four years old by Concordia’s calendar. Twelve by Attero’s.
I am in his mind, seeing the lawn through his eyes, feeling everything he feels as he feels it, like we are one person. We’re angry and afraid. No one told us Challenge would be so hard, make us feel so unsure of ourselves when we normally reside quietly in confidence, knowing we are ahead of so many of our peers.
We feel misled somehow, and we’re not sure why. But if our parents misled us like that, why? Maybe they thought we’d Challenge poorly if we’d ever suspected how hard it was, how difficult the questions would be.
We stare together at the slide as it appears in the distance. In most areas, the slide rises from underground only to exit a station, dipping under again almost instantly. This is one of only a few sections in the entire area where the slide surfaces and stays above ground for almost a mile, turning slightly to run alongside another of the function halls before dropping back underground around the corner.
We watch the tiny bluish dot that is the slide grow larger and larger as it approaches. It will spit out Ritter’s parents but not ours, we think bitterly, because our own parents are too busy with their functions today to make it to one of the most important days of our life.
We wonder, just for a second, what it would be like if the slide were to
suddenly careen out of control at an excess of 100 miles per hour and smash into the function hall instead of turning to run alongside it.
For just a few mean seconds we pretend it is our parents’ function hall. Wouldn’t they be sorry they left us standing here in this horrible silence alone instead of standing with us?
But they wouldn’t be sorry, we realize guiltily, our stomachs churning and our faces burning with shame. They’d be ended.
That is all it takes for our little vengeance fantasy to lose its appeal. We’re flooded with nothing but relief knowing that the screaming of brakes, shattering of glass, loud explosion of brick, and the split second echoes of screams followed by eerie silence was just imagination, all an illusion brought about by our discomfort, our disillusionment over this day, this day that was supposed to be so exhilarating, one of the best days of our life.
Except it wasn’t.
It wasn’t a good day, and it wasn’t imagination.
Oh, God.
Oh, God.
It wasn’t.
We made it happen. Somehow, we thought it, and we made it happen. We pictured it like we’ve pictured a million similar things before…those stupid little fantasies you have when you’re in trouble and your parents are mad at you and you picture yourself being punished in your unit and a tree suddenly falling into it, pinning you on your rift. Their anger at you instantly turns to worry and sorrow. If only you’re okay, they’ll never punish you again! Ever!
It isn’t our parents, though. It’s Ritter’s. Ritter’s parents were on that slide, and now they’re gone. Just…gone. Forever. Just like we pictured. The unholy screeching, the horrible thunderclap of collision, the split second screams of those toward the rear of the slide before they met the same jarring fate of those in the front. The lucky ones. The ones that didn’t have that split second of knowing what was about to happen.
And now, nothing. Nothing except the swarming, tinkling rush of glass and metal pluming out toward the Challenge onboard like a wave lapping at shore. We don’t notice her, the woman grabbing at us, snatching us out of harm’s way. We don’t notice our blood and our tears mating and mingling, in a race against each other for our toes. What we notice with startling clarity for a boy of four is that it is our fault that our best friend’s parents are dead. Somehow, some way, we made this happen. Us.
I can’t breathe. That’s the first thing I am aware of, before I even begin to feel my own fingers and try to rip them from Strega’s arm to disconnect myself from him, from the twin crush of horror and sorrow. From the scream echoing in my head as we separate back into our two selves again: I did this! Me! I did this!
And there the hands are, grabbing at me. They know it, too. I willed it, and it happened. I violated the kill standard. The guardians, it is their hands I feel. They’re coming for me, to take me to the Disposal launch.
I call out for Strega. But suddenly I can’t find him. He’s not there. I’m alone outside the Challenge onboard, stuck in the Concordia of his four year-old memory, the guardians in their shadowy dress, reaching for me. Reaching…
But just as suddenly, Strega gasps, his eyes locked on mine, the lines I was tracing oddly hot under my fingertips. His free hand, the right one, is clamped around my chin.
I can’t decide which of us is gasping louder, shaking harder. I think he recognizes me at the same time as I recognize him and where we really are, safe on Ritter’s sofa. But even laid bare as we had been, he’s managed to keep some of his composure where I have not. I launch myself into him, burying my face in his neck.
“It’s not your fault, Strega!” I sob wildly into the heat of his skin, over and over. There’s one little flinch, just a flicker, and then the ever calm Strega takes over.
“I know,” he says so that I feel the rumble of his voice against my lips, my nose. “I know,” he soothes. “I’m sorry, Davinney. I’m sorry that’s what you found for your trace.” Such deep regret tinges his voice that I begin to refocus. It was just a memory, a really, really bad one. He couldn’t control it. He didn’t give it to me intentionally. And how must he feel, having me see what must have been the worst day of his life, his worst memory?
I take a deep breath, determined to shrug it off when I notice the look in Strega’s eyes. Concerned, of course, but also sad. In them, I can see the twelve year-old boy who, contrary to his words of assurance, still believes on some level that he killed Ritter’s parents. I deny the question I want to ask, which is whether he’s psychic. He appears to read my thoughts sometimes, like during those first days in holding. I wondered if I’d been speaking out loud but knew I hadn’t. It’s a little too coincidental, I think, that he had his childish revenge fantasy just before the imaginary crash became reality. But rather than causing it, I wonder if he merely sensed it was coming.
I am so wrung out by what just happened that I want to beg Strega not to leave. Ritter’s not home yet, and I don’t want to be left alone in the keeping because I’m pretty sure I’ll be replaying the whole thing, from my movie night popcorn fight to the death of Ritter’s parents, over and over and over again.
Strega makes no move to leave, however. I sit shoulder to shoulder with him. It’s dark in the keeping with only moonlight pressing on the glass now. Night fell as we traced.
“Do you have any happy memories in there?” I ask him softly, just to make conversation. Fatigue rolls over me like a wave I didn’t see coming. I drop my head to the sofa cushions, wondering if this is normal after tracing someone.
“Sure,” he answers sleepily, and I can all but feel him smile in the dark. I wait. He offers nothing further, and I realize his breathing has become deep and even.
I close my eyes and don’t try to wake him.
16
“DAVINNEY,” LYDER GESTURES to me as everyone else enters the reaction center, passing under a viewer which reads, Day 28. Instead of our usual morning classes at the onboard, we’ve gone straight to the reaction center.
I move to stand beside Lyder just outside the center’s meld. I wait. The thing about Lyder is she remains silent until you’re really sweating whatever she’s about to say, and then she says it. Sometimes it is worthy of the build-up, sometimes it isn’t.
She motions to me to follow, returning to the hallway that leads to her office. Once I sit down across the desk, she gestures to the wall behind me. When I turn, she plays footage of Kate talking to someone in the library.
Me, I realize, my abdomen suddenly clenching. It was the day we talked about erasing. There’s audio, but it’s only of Kate’s end of the conversation. My replies aren’t heard. They’ve been muted or scrubbed. I am nowhere on the video, apparently out of reach of the camera.
As soon as Lyder clicks off the footage, I turn back to her, forcing my face to remain blank. I’ve cultivated this blankness very carefully since the beginning of Assimilation. Others have commented on it more than once, asking how I do it. I just tell them, with the same flat expression, that I can’t teach them. They have to learn it on their own. And it’s true. I couldn’t explain it if you paid me. I just know it’s important. I feel it.
Lyder realizes I won’t react. She blinks slowly. “Have you seen Kate today? Or Farthing Stanton from Belgrade Minor’s team?”
“No,” I shake my head. I recognize the name Farthing Stanton. He’s the bouncing knee guy who sat next to me on Day One, before we were split off into teams. Several times a week we’re matched with other teams for hand-to-hand combat and other drills. He’s pretty good, but he’s not ruthless enough with us girls, so I’ve beaten him every time we’ve faced off. “They aren’t in the reaction center?”
“No,” she replies. She blinks again. “Do you know who Kate was talking to in the library?”
“No,” I lie smoothly, hoping to God she’s not going to pull a BAU out to test my answers.
“Any idea where Kate or Farthing might be?”
“No,” I say again, this time truthfully.
Lyder bli
nks at me. “Consider very carefully what you’ve just seen. It’s extremely strange that the footage doesn’t reveal Kate’s conversation partner.”
“It is,” I agree, wondering what Lyder’s angle is. Maybe Kate isn’t really gone. Maybe Lyder will play her a video of me talking. Maybe in this version, Kate will be the one off screen. Lyder will tell her I’m missing and ask where I am. Maybe this is all one big set up.
Her lips fade into a tight line. “You’re on thin ice, Davinney. Your attitudes about Concordia’s technology, customs, and practices are less than accepting in many cases. You complete the tasks that are given to you, yes, and while you do not openly defy the spirit and the nature of the exercises, your derision is abundantly clear. On paper, so to speak, by the numbers, you’ve done well with Assimilation so far. I’d hate to see you throw it all away with the sort of mistake Kate made here.”
“And Farthing?”
“A similar mistake,” Lyder replies.
I wait, sensing there’s something else she wants to say.
“On Day 30, there will be a redistribution bid,” she explains coolly. “The teams will be recast. High ranking facilitators will option the strongest candidates from the teams of lower ranking facilitators to increase the strength of their own. In turn, they can dump their poor performers on lower ranked facilitators. Just like any function, a facilitator’s function level is affected by all aspects of their performance. My function level relies at least partly upon my ability to produce successful Assimilation candidates.”
There’s a long pause while, I imagine, she waits for her words to register. She must be telling me this out of fear for her function level.
“You’d better hope no one options you,” she says. Her voice is even colder now than it was seconds ago. “I’ve been lenient where others would be firm.”
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