Out

by Laura Preble

  In the moonlight, the plate on the leather bracelet shines silver. Etched into the surface is a Perpendicular sign, like an L inverted. “Where did you get this?”

  “Your sister,” she says proudly.

  I fold the braided leather band in on itself and stuff it into my pocket. “So, this means we’re going steady?”

  “It does.” She kisses me full on the mouth.

  Leaving her by the tree—one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I want to just leave with her, run like animals following the river, but then things will never change. I’ll be running for the rest of my life.

  Jana’s waiting at the edge of the driveway, behind a tree. “How’d it go?” she asks, then puts her hand on my shoulder, turns me this way and that. “You did it, huh?”

  “Christ, Jana.” I march away from her, embarrassed.

  She jogs to catch up. “But you did. Wasn’t it amazing?”

  I don’t say anything. But I can’t help it—I smile.

  “See? I knew it. I knew it!” She hums a tune as we jog up the stairs. “Oh…you should wash up. Just in case they can… you know…”

  “Yeah. Okay.” She opens the door and I go left into the tiny water closet off the kitchen, while she goes ahead. I hear her voice concocting some story about our wonderful book club.

  I look in the mirror. Something distinctly different…I wonder if anyone will be able to tell? I scrub my face, trying to wash any trace of her away, even though I want to hold onto it like it’s sacred. I pat my pocket to be sure the bracelet is still there.

  I’m starving! God, it’s like somebody took everything I had inside and emptied it out, leaving me hollow! Is that what sex does to people?

  “Chris!” David taps at the door. “Good book club?”

  “Yep.” I want to giggle. I want to laugh out loud. I want to strip off my clothes and run around like a wild animal, growling and roaring and clawing the furniture. Instead, flush the toilet, run some water, and exit the bathroom. “Is there any more pizza?”

  “I think so,” David says absently. “So, Jim and I were talking about what you mentioned. About Indian Lake.”

  “Mmmm.” I rout in the fridge and find the leftovers. I eat a piece the same way Jana did, caveman style.

  David grabs me gently by the elbow as I close the refrigerator, and steers me toward the dining room, where McFarland sits, sipping a brandy. Warren’s sitting there too, looking pretty disenchanted as he polishes silver. He only does that when he’s really, really frustrated. “So, Jim. Indian Lake?” David says.

  McFarland runs with it. “I’d really like to see it,” he says casually. “Maybe Chris and I could take a little trip up there. Would you like that?”

  The idea of being alone with him makes me want to hurl up all the food I’ve just wolfed down, but I have to remember the greater good. Carmen. Me. Us. Away from here. I planted this seed and I have to run with it. Especially when it means being able to do that all day, every day, whenever we want…I grin an unreasonably ridiculous grin, which I’m sure he takes as a green light.

  Warren drops a fork heavily, and I glance over at him. He looks furious, in an understated Warren kind of way. “It’s a bad time to be going away,” he says. “School’s going to start again in a week, so when would you go?”

  “I guess on the weekend,” I offer, as if the idea just occurred to me. Warren’s eyes get wide; looks like he might burst a vein or something. I wish I could tell him what just happened, tell him how it felt, what it means, how I’m different. But I can’t.

  “This weekend.” McFarland’s piggish eyes look puzzled. He didn’t expect me to be so easy, I guess. “Well, that sounds great. I’d really love for you to show me some of the astronomical sights of Ohio.”

  Creeper. I am starting to not feel bad about helping get him kidnapped.

  “Then it’s settled,” David says happily. He beams at me, as if I’ve just made him the proudest dad in the world. “I’ll call and make all the arrangements. If you leave here at six, you’ll get there by eight. Perfect time for stargazing.”

  The rest of evening is a blur to me; it’s like I’ve been reduced to nothing but appetite. Food tastes amazing, the water is wetter, the colors are brighter. And images and sensations of Carmen spice up everything I touch, taste, or see. A bubble of happiness surrounds me, and I imagine nothing can pop it.

  Wednesday night. I’m on the balcony with the telescope, trying to locate the constellation Lyra within the blanket of silver stars. My concentration is crap, though; soft lips, skin, curve of her hip, these things infect my mind and float in my consciousness, waking dreams. I’ve hidden the bracelet with the note in my telescope, and I take it out, look at it, put it back.

  “Hey.” Jana is suddenly there; startled, I whack my forehead on the edge of the telescope. I guess my concentration really was bad, because I didn’t even hear her come in. “Want to go for a ride?”

  “To where?” I sit up, stretch my neck, and realize it’s actually pretty cold, and I’m shivering in an old t-shirt and jeans. I cover the scope and go back into my room, Jana trailing behind me.

  “I need to get some air,” she says. She makes a Perpendicular sign with her two index fingers. “Warren already said we can borrow his car.”

  So, we’re going back out to the woods. Maybe I have to report in to the Underground. Maybe they want to know, firsthand, what I said to McFarland.

  David’s gone, at some church meeting, so we just have to check out with Warren before going off on our secret mission. “We’ll be back in a bit,” Jana says breezily, as if she’s stepping out for ice cream.

  “Careful,” Warren says, giving us owl-eyes over the tops of his reading glasses. He drops the newspaper he’s reading. Careful? Why? Does he know what we’re up to? “I don’t want my car scratched, dented, or pooped on.”

  “I promise I won’t poop on it, but I won’t vouch for Chris.” Jana wraps herself in a red ski parka and I follow her wordlessly, grabbing my old brown bomber jacket. One glance back, and I see Warren has already gone back to his newspaper.

  I can see my breath outside, so as soon as we get in the Escalade, I crank up the heat. “I assume we’re going back to Camp Dirtyshack?” I ask.

  “Yep.” She pulls the car onto the road and steers away from home. “Magnus wants to see you.”

  “So how does Magnus communicate with you? Secret carrier pigeon or bat signal?”

  I expect at least a chuckle, but nothing. Jana stares straight ahead, a statue.

  “I said, how does—”

  She jams on the brakes, tires squeal, I pitch forward and nearly hit my head on the rim of the windshield. We’re dead in the middle of the road.

  “What the hell are you doing?” The engine idles, purring patiently.

  She turns to me, and I swear if she could’ve stabbed me, she would’ve. But her voice is dead calm, flat, totally terrifying. “I don’t think you understand what’s going on. You’re going to do something that could potentially kill you. Do you get that?”

  I stare at her.

  “This, all of this, is no joke, no spy movie. This is real life, and even if you’re playing the hero, it doesn’t mean you’re going to come out of it with the medal for valor and the girl of your dreams. It’s a lot more likely that you’ll end up dead in a ditch somewhere.”

  She grips the steering wheel, her hands white in the moonlight, eyes focused on the road ahead.

  “I’m sorry.” I touch her hand, and it stiffens slightly, but doesn’t look at me. “I’m just nervous. This just…isn’t what I’m used to.”

  A choking laugh, a lowering of the chin and a shaking of the head as if she can’t believe we’re related, which I can’t believe either. “Chris, who would ever be used to this?”

  “I guess Magnus. Sam. They seem to be all about the secret dirt shack in the woods, covert operations, secret messages, plots. I don’t think I’m smart enough to keep it all straight, to be honest
.”

  “But you’re still going to do it?” She turns her face to me, and gazes intently at me as if I might take away something expensive she got for Christmas. “You’re going to do it, right?”

  I stare down at my shoes. “Yes. I will.” I hope I will. I hope I don’t chicken out or screw up or have a heart attack. No guarantees.

  Jana takes the Escalade out of park and steps on the gas, bulleting our little rebel caravan into the night.

  We do the same routine as last time; park the car, move the brush, soundlessly drive in dark. Soon we see the small bobbing lights of the men as they trudge soundlessly toward us. Ben’s with them, and he runs to Jana, grabs her and lifts her up like he doesn’t want to let her go. I know what that feels like now.

  Sam claps me on the shoulder. “Chris.” He motions for us to follow, and we trek down the same path we took last time, onward to the hideout. We don’t go in, though. Outside, the only sign that anyone is there is a small red firefly of a cigarette glowing and receding as someone puffs.

  We get closer; it’s Magnus. “Tell me,” he says. “What’s the plan with McFarland?”

  I thought they knew already. Didn’t they tell me what to do? “We’re going to Indian Lake Friday night. Leaving here at about six, getting there about 8.”

  “Take Decatur Road,” Magnus instructs. “When you check in, our connection will be sure you get the Deer Creek cabin. Remember that. Deer Creek.”

  “Deer Creek.” I repeat it. It feels ominous on my tongue, an evil spell.

  Magnus continues. “You’ll go into the cabin. Set your bags down, excuse yourself to use the bathroom. Ask him to go out to the car to get a bag you left on the passenger seat.”

  “What bag will I leave on the passenger seat?”

  Magnus sighs heavily. “You won’t. It’s just so we can get him outside so we can grab him. You’ll be in the bathroom. You won’t see or hear anything. Stay in there for at least half an hour. When you come out, just do whatever you’d normally do. Watch television, read a book, take a bath. At midnight, someone will knock on the back door of the cabin. That’s when you’ll go.”

  Go. As in, leave the country. As in, ditch anything of my old life to start somewhere totally foreign with someone I barely know. Nausea creeps into my gut, and it must show on my face, because silence blankets us, quiet as before, but heavy with something no one can see.

  Jana touches my shoulder. “Chris. Are you sure you can do this?”

  Oh, God. I’m not sure. Not at all. Images of Carmen swim in front of my eyes, images of David and Warren and our house, my house. Andi. I won’t ever see her again. Jana? I won’t see her for who knows how long. No school. No graduation. Where will I live? And, ridiculously, I wonder: where will I buy stuff like food and toilet paper? God.

  “Why does it have to be McFarland? And me?”

  From behind me, Sam’s jagged voiced jars my ear. “He is one of the highest profile targets in the country at the moment. And he just happens to desperately want you. And you happen to desperately want a girl. It’s fate.”

  “But what’s going to happen to him?”

  “Chris?” Sam hisses. “We’ve got to know now. You have to commit to this or forget it. There’s no going back once you say yes.”

  “This is a mistake,” Magnus says, disgust in his voice. “He’s too tied in to Bryant and the rest of them, the Anglicants. He won’t do it.”

  “Hey, fuck you!” Jana spits, and takes a threatening step toward him. This is the same terrifying person I saw in the car. “If he says he can do it, he can. Don’t you ever say that my brother is part of that fucking church. Never. And if he doesn’t do it, I’ll do it. I’ll kill that bastard McFarland myself.” She hisses, a frightening, sibilant curse. “I will gut him. And I don’t care if I get caught. So, yeah. You can count on him. Because he won’t want that on his conscience. Will you, Chris?”

  Moonlit eyes alive with rage, hate, fuel coming from somewhere deep inside, a furnace stoked by years of resentment and anger. I don’t know her. I guess I never did.

  “No.” I answer, and I mean it. “No, I don’t want that on my conscience.”

  Magnus frowns, and then motions for me to follow him. “I thought this might happen. We can’t have you feeling any doubts. We’ve got to be sure we can trust you. You’re gonna talk to Mary.”

  “Mary?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  We trudge through the dark forest, and I keep my eyes on the boots in front of me.

  “Who’s Mary?” I try again. Magnus puts a hand up to silence me. I glance back at Jana, who shrugs but keeps marching with Sam bringing up the rear.

  The dirt fort is harder to find in the dark, which is I guess the point of having a dirt fort. Ben walks hip to hip with Jana, and she buries her head in his shoulder. She keeps her eyes on me. Magnus taps on the door three times, glaring into the woods like a paranoid maniac.

  A middle-aged lady who looks like she works at a school cafeteria emerges. Her white hair pokes out at odd angles from a beanie, and even in the dark, I can tell she’s wrinkly and shaped like a pear. “Chris, Jana,” she says in a voice that belongs to someone’s grandma.

  “Mary, we’ll guard the perimeter. How much time do you need with them?” Magnus’s voice is respectful. She must be a big honcho.

  “Oh, depends on them. Probably about twenty minutes. That okay with you?” she asks me, and I just nod. “Alrighty, then. Come on in. Sorry the place isn’t set up for company, but I do have some tea. Gotta remember we’re still civilized people living in an uncivilized world.”

  Inside, an LED lantern illuminates the space, giving everything a cold blue-white glow. Jana parks on a crate and Mary takes the single real chair. I lean against a wall as the woman hands us stoneware mugs steaming something fragrant. It’s just the three of us.

  “So,” she says, sipping. “Magnus thinks you need to be persuaded of the righteousness of our cause.” She chuckles, then sprinkles a packet of sweetener into the tea. “I do like it sweet. Probably get the diabetes at some point.”

  Jana sighs heavily. “We’ve never met before.”

  “True enough.” Mary sips her tea. “I’m on what you call a ‘need to know’ basis. You didn’t need to know. Till now.”

  “What do we need to know now?” Jana puts her tea on the floor. “We really don’t have time to visit.”

  Mary nods. “Right. First thing you should know, I’m Parallel. I’ve been a practicing Anglicant my whole life. I know your daddy. Used to go to church over there.”

  “But…if you’re Parallel, why are you here?” I ask.

  “I’ll do the talking. You listen, and then if you have questions, you can ask. Can’t guarantee I’ll answer, but you can ask.” She crosses her legs, and I notice she has on those big, over-furred Ugg boots. She doesn’t look like a rebel leader, at least, not to me.

  “Here’s something you probably didn’t know. This thing about Parallel and Perpendicular, that wasn’t always the way it was.” She pours another sugar into her tea. “Used to be—and I’m talking a few hundred years—that people lived both ways, no worse for the wear.”

  “They…they let us be Perpendicular?”

  Mary snorts, amused. “They didn’t let you be anything. It’s just how it was. Does anybody let you be seventeen years old? Anyway…I’m not gonna give you a whole history lesson here, and you won’t be able to find anything out there to back it up. It falls under the same category as Atlantis and the Bigfoot, an urban legend. But it’s true. Perpendiculars were no more deviant than Parallels at one time.”

  “Perpendiculars could just get together, have children, live out their lives? Why would they give that up?” Jana asks. She didn’t even know this. She looks stunned.

  “They didn’t give it up.” Mary purses her lips, sighs. “It was taken from them. From you.”

  “Why? How did it get taken?” My brain is about to explode.

  “Well, Perpendicula
rs did one thing real well that Parallels did not. Can you guess what it was?”

  “No,” I say desperately.

  “Reproduce.” She nods as if she’s just said something profound. “Perpendiculars can just reproduce at will. And they can rape, and there can be offspring from that rape. They can accidentally make a baby in the heat of passion. These are all things that a can make society…a little bit unmanageable.” Mary smiles sympathetically. “I know it’s a lot to take in. You can learn all the details later, once you’ve done what you need to do. But think about this: if the majority of people have a structured life, orderly, totally engineered and controlled, would they want a tiny handful of other people messing it up, doing whatever they want, having babies all over the place without the proper documentation and planning?” She shakes her head. “It’s about control. Parallels have to plan a pregnancy, choose genetic donors or surrogates, consciously want to raise a child. All genetic defects are screened out—except for Perpendicularism, which can’t be detected genetically, although they’ve tried. Believe me.”

  “They’ve tried?” I shiver involuntarily. “How do you know that?”

  Mary drains the last of her tea. “I used to work for them. I did a lot of the genetic experimentation to try and locate the Perpendicular gene. That’s why I’m here today. Doing penance for the evil I’ve helped create.”

  Jana stares down at the floor. “We’re a minority,” she whispers. “So it’s easier to control us. Doesn’t anybody think it’s wrong?”

  “Some people do,” Mary says, standing. “There have been quite a few people working quietly for many years to stop this torture, this inhumane treatment. Other countries have already been liberalized; ours is just too ass-backward to see the truth. The time is right. You are going to help us start this fire, and it’s going to spread all across the country. There are more Parallels like me, people who, if they knew what happened to you, would object and stop it. But we have to show them. Nobody believes there’s a Bigfoot unless you show ‘em the carcass.”

  “Why hasn’t anyone heard of this? Why isn’t it on the news?”

  “Media is controlled by the government and Church.”