“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“It is for me. I mean…yes. But I thought I would never see you again.”
James gently tugged my hand toward him. I snuggled closer, laying my head down on his shoulder. “I’m not asking for explanations. Who would have ever thought we would get this time together? I’m not mad. I just don’t want you to feel like you’re trapped with me because of some stolen kisses and late-night Shakespeare.”
I lifted my head to look at James. “Is that all we were?”
“Not to me. Not ever.”
I laid my head back down. “Not to me, either. Things with Henry are complicated. They always have been, and I’m sure they always will be. But he lied to me, James. I understand why he did it, but it was just too big. I can’t pretend it didn’t happen.”
“Do you remember when we talked about soul mates?”
“Yes,” I said, closing my eyes and leaning into his touch. His hand moved down to my neck and he slowly began to trace my collarbone.
“You said Henry had a part of your soul.”
I twisted so I was lying on my side, reaching up and placing my hands on his cheeks. I pulled his face down to mine. “You have my soul, James. No one else. I’m done letting the world get in the way of us.” I lifted my chin forward and brought his mouth down on mine.
Tender.
Slow.
Soft.
His lips moved with mine like music. The piano. The first time he talked to me. Our hands danced together on those keys, and that was how our lips moved. My tongue slowly grazed his and he groaned.
My heart sped up. He began to kiss my neck, moving his way up and stopping to playfully nibble on my ear. I bit down on my bottom lip to suppress the moan that wanted to escape my lips, then reached for his hand and placed it on my waist. He moved his body so we were lying side by side. I pushed myself against him, wanting, needing to feel every inch. He reached down and ran a hand up my leg.
“These pants are ridiculous.” He laughed into my ear.
“You love them.” I giggled.
James laughed louder. “I do love them.”
My smile fell. “Are you scared about going after my sister? There’s no guarantee we’ll make it out of this.”
“Nothing in life is certain. That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth fighting for. I’ll fight for you until they put me in the ground.”
“It’s crazy how much I love you,” I whispered.
“Completely,” he agreed with a small sigh.
“James?”
“Hmm,” he murmured.
“When this is all over, there is something I want to talk about.”
“Like what?” he asked.
“Sex. I want to talk about sex.”
Someone was pounding on the door. I shot up from my bed, clutching as tightly as I could to James, who had slept next to me. If he was worried about our journey, he didn’t show it. I would always be thankful for his strength.
Because I would need it.
The pounding on the door brought up a painful recollection. I remembered the day my father disappeared—the way the council had busted through the door and taken him from me. He had begged me to remember who I was, but all I could feel was disappointment. The image of my father as some invincible hero had forever been destroyed.
No matter who stood on the other side of that door, I wouldn’t let them take anyone from me again.
“Who’s there?” James called out, his voice tight.
“Henry.”
I sighed and reluctantly got out of bed to answer the door. I offered James an apologetic smile before letting Henry in. “What is it?” I asked, hoping he wasn’t there to start a fight. James and I had planned to talk to him and Robert in the morning, and it didn’t seem wise to start our new partnership with an argument and little sleep.
Henry wasted no time on insults. He had a purpose. His brow was covered in sweat, and his face flushed with exertion. I wondered if he had run here. “It’s Louisa. We’ve gotten word through the resistance network. He says he’s going to kill her unless we can arrange a meeting,” he managed to say, clearly out of breath.
Henry began to shift in and out of focus. Louisa. My sister. My family.
“Who…who is going to kill her?”
“George.”
Chapter 28
There are days that change your life, and the most unsettling truth about these days is that more often than not, they start out just like any other day.
No one wakes up expecting one of her parents to die.
The morning my mother killed herself started like any other day. I woke up to find her gone from our room, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary. She often disappeared sometime during the night only to be found by some fellow naturals, wandering or staring at her reflection in the communal restroom. The people who found her always made sure she got back to us, offering small smiles as they did so.
I always hated those smiles. They said so much.
What is wrong with her?
What kind of mother abandons her children in the middle of the night?
Poor Emma, having to take care of her two younger sisters.
Why doesn’t she ask for help? Surely, the council can offer her some sort of aid.
But as much as they put on the disguise of caring, concerned adults, no one really offered to help us. The second they dropped off my mother with Emma, the smiles they plastered on their faces were most assuredly replaced with sighs of relief. Of course they waited around long enough to receive thanks. They wanted to be acknowledged for their good deed, but in reality they hadn’t done anything good at all. I used to wish that everyone would just let her be, let her wander away from the compound.
We would be better off without her.
Every morning when Louisa woke up, the first thing her tiny eyes looked for was our mother. And the mornings when she wasn’t to be found, Louisa cried. Like clockwork. Emma would pull her into an embrace and whisper in her ear. I never did know exactly what she said to calm Louisa down, but it always worked. It was only a matter of time before Louisa was smiling again, bouncing around the room.
Emma held out her hand for Louisa, and the two walked together to the mess hall. I followed behind, running my fingers along the wall next to me.
My hand always felt empty on these walks to breakfast.
The only time Louisa was ever quiet was during mealtime. The girl prattled on and on most of the day, but when it came to food, she piled it in her mouth like it would disappear if she didn’t eat fast enough. I was always surprised that her young mind could remember the days when this was true. Emma always made sure to get Louisa seconds.
This particular morning I watched as Emma laughed with a man who was in line with her. I’d never noticed him before, and I wondered if he was the new one everyone kept whispering about. Transfers weren’t unheard of, but they weren’t common, either. Emma’s cheeks were pink, and I watched as she kept touching her hair.
When she returned to the table, she nearly knocked over the glass of juice she had gone back in line to get for Louisa. Her hands were shaking, and she couldn’t stop smiling. I watched as the man walked across the mess hall to a seat on the other end of the room. He wasn’t able to keep his eyes off of her. Louisa reached forward for the juice and began to gulp it down.
“Not so fast, love,” Emma softly chided.
My younger sister, much like our mother, didn’t understand the idea of temperance. But despite her ravenous appetite, Louisa was as thin as a rail. She was sickly, like many of the later children born to those who lived in the compound. No matter how many times these children were sent to the inspection centers, no cure could be found.
Even with Louisa’s never-ending hunger, she always made a point of saving a small portion of her food for our mother on the mornings she wasn’t with us. Emma would wrap it in some napkins for her and slide it over to me.
“You’ll make sure Mo
mmy gets it, right? You won’t eat it?” Louisa asked me, wide eyed. She always asked this question, and I always rolled my eyes. Emma would take Louisa’s hand and they would walk back to our room, swinging their arms back and forth like they didn’t have a care in the world. There was an unspoken agreement between Emma and me that I would go in search of our mother while she distracted Louisa. I never told Emma that I stopped my part of the routine months ago.
I was tired of spending my mornings searching for a woman who didn’t want to be found, and who, to be honest, I didn’t want to find. Anytime I did manage to track her down, she was either crawling on the floor, complaining that her body was on fire and she needed a drink, or berating me like I was the one to blame for the lack of alcohol in the compound. Either way, I ended up covered in her sick or clutching my hands together as tightly as possible to stop myself from slapping her.
I chucked the food in the first trashcan I saw. I should have given it to someone, but I had no friends at the compound back then. I wouldn’t have even known how to offer it.
I spent the rest of the morning outside in a little courtyard. I wrote my name over and over again in the dirt, quickly erasing it anytime someone came out. I wanted to make sure I still knew how to write it.
There wasn’t much else I could do, especially on mornings like this. On the rare day that my mother actually acted normally, she and Louisa would whisper and giggle, disappearing inside some secret world that I had never gained access to. I loved those days. Those were the days I would follow Emma around, helping her wash and mend clothes, talking and dreaming about what life was like before the Great War.
It was our time together, and when my mother disappeared, I cursed her for taking it away from us.
A few hours later, I returned to our room. Louisa, who was curled up against my sister taking a nap, snored peacefully. Emma looked up at me. “Did you find her?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I made sure she ate, and now she’s taking a shower. I told her she should get some fresh air. She’ll be back soon,” I promised. I lied. Because even though Emma had been taking care of us for so long, always trying so hard to mask her own fears in front of us, I knew she hated when my mother was gone. I didn’t feel like there was any need to worry her. Her worry wouldn’t stop my mother from pulling the same stunt a few days later.
The rest of the day went as tediously slow as any other. There was no activity to fill our time. Nothing was expected of us. Louisa continued to whine, and Emma tried, often in vain, to preoccupy her by distracting her with stories and games. I counted the minutes until I could go to sleep. It was only there that I was brave enough to rest, drop my walls, and allow my mind to go wherever it wanted.
“Tess.” Emma’s whisper woke me up that night. It was difficult to say what time it was, as there were no clocks in the compound. What did you need clocks for when you had nowhere to go and nothing to do? “She’s still not back?”
I looked over to the empty bed my mother shared with Louisa. While her disappearing act wasn’t new, this was. She had never been gone for such a prolonged amount of time.
“Didn’t you say you saw—”
“I’ll go look for her,” I interrupted. I didn’t want to have to tell Emma that I had lied earlier. I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and stumbled into the hallway. The brightness of the fluorescent lights above burned my eyes.
The first place I always looked was the bathroom. It was her favorite hiding place. Every step I took, my anger grew more and more monstrous. I was tired of her charades, mentally and physically tired.
A few days prior, my mother had punched her fist through the glass of one of the mirrors in the bathroom. Apparently, she didn’t like what she saw.
They found her sitting on the floor wailing, begging someone to bring her a drink. She needed it. She had to have it. She couldn’t survive without it.
I only wished she thought of her family that way, but she never did.
They stitched her up and replaced the glass with some unbreakable material. And everyone returned back to his or her lives. So did I. She was no different than Louisa who screamed and threw herself on the floor when she lost some game she was playing with the other children of the compound.
I should have seen the signs. We all should have, but you only ever see what you want to. I was prepared for another one of my mother’s episodes when I entered the bathroom, but I would never have to deal with them again.
She was dead.
Her wrists were slit.
At least my mother was efficient.
I dropped the blanket I’d been holding. A warm sensation spread across the bottom half of my body and down my leg. As I stumbled back away from her, I fell with a thud to the floor. I grasped for the blanket next to me and began to furiously wipe it against my wet dress and legs, blinking as fast and as hard as I could to keep the tears in.
I counted to ten hundreds of times. Each time trying to stop the panic attack that wanted to consume me. My breath clawed its way down into my chest, burying itself, hiding from what lay outside the protection of my body. A thousand questions entered my mind.
Why would she do this?
How did no one find her body before me?
Why?
How was I going to tell Emma and Louisa?
Why?
Each question slithered into the next until all I could hear was a deafening buzz that filled my ears and caused my head to pound. I covered my ears with my hands and tried counting to ten again. When I finally found it a bit easier to breathe, I dragged myself to my feet, pulling the soaked blanket behind me. For some reason, I couldn’t lose hold of it. If I could just hold onto it, everything would be all right. I could hold onto myself.
I stood inches from her body. If I reached out, I could touch her. But there wasn’t anything left in there. It was just a body. No soul. That, if it ever existed, was long gone. It was a small miracle that her eyes were closed. I don’t think I could have handled it otherwise.
My father had once told me the story of Hamlet. I never did understand why Ophelia killed herself, though my father tried to explain it was because she had a broken heart. I always wondered why the council never used Ophelia as an example when they talked about our weaknesses.
Did my mother have a broken heart?
I could hear voices down the hall. This would be the last moment I would ever have with her. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, and so I stood there staring, the smell of urine and blood wafting up to my nose. My hand was close enough to touch her, but I never did.
I had never heard Louisa scream as much as she did that night. She curled herself in a ball on the floor, crying out for my mother in the most agonizing tone I’d ever heard. Emma, too broken up, couldn’t bring herself to comfort her. She sat on the cot, her knees tucked under her chin, silently crying.
I sat between them on the cement floor. I was helpless. I didn’t know how to console either of them, because I didn’t know how to console myself. Affection and compassion were something my mother was supposed to teach me, but she never did. There were never hugs or I love yous. She didn’t wipe the tears from my eyes when I cried. She didn’t allow me to cry at all.
Louisa.
I had abandoned Louisa.
I wasn’t there for her when our mother died or even when Emma left us. I hadn’t been emphatic enough in my attempts to convince the people of the community that she should be allowed to come and live among us. I was too busy trying to find myself. I had lost myself in that journey of self-discovery. What I never realized was that she was a part of my self—she was my family. My blood. She was a part of me, as all the women who came before me were.
I would have to do whatever it took to get her back.
I wouldn’t let her cries go unanswered.
I would have to meet with George.
Chapter 29
I walked as quickly as I could through the streets of the community. Luckily for me, most of the m
embers were at supper, and it was easy to make my way to where McNair and Eric lodged. Henry and I had agreed that we should split up. Under the guise of a temporary and fragile truce, we decided he would gather supplies, and I would talk to anyone who I thought might be sympathetic to our cause. James had gone off to inform Lockwood and let Robert know we were ready to leave.
In fact, it was Robert who’d received the information. Besides instructing members of the community in combat, he had attached himself to a small sect of people who were connected to the resistance movement, a movement that apparently ran across both the eastern and western sectors. Henry explained that he didn’t know the identity of the members of this sect. While the community allowed this connection, they watched over it carefully, only approving activities that didn’t put the settlement at risk. Henry had been begging Robert for months to get him in, but he explained that after the stunt at Templeton, the sect was worried he was too hotheaded to be of any use.
If we ever made it back to the community, it would be something I would want to explore myself.
George, using and manipulating God knows who, managed to get a message across the lines. It was simple and direct: he wanted James and me. In return, he would give me my sister. He promised that neither of us would be hurt, and he would not take anyone with him who was unwilling.
Of course, I didn’t trust his word a bit, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t go. We were to meet at the now-destroyed compound we passed on our way here—the compound we had burned down. The message didn’t indicate whether he knew the location of the community, but I appreciated that he hadn’t picked a place to meet too close to it if he did.
I knew that going before Al and the others to ask for help would be a waste of my time. They didn’t call themselves Isolationists for nothing. They wanted no part in the war unless it was right there at their door. They wouldn’t fight my battles for me, and I wasn’t planning on asking them for permission to leave, either. After everything, I was pretty sure the moment I did, I would find myself back in the cell.
Naturals (Lost Souls) Page 21
