by Sarah Noffke
“Stop, Parker,” I say, holding up a hand to him. “I’m not sick. I’m healthier than I’ve ever been.”
“I understand that you think so,” he says, pushing his glasses up on his nose with his ring finger, “but you’re not seeing things clearly.”
“My father isn’t the innocent man you believe him to be.”
Offense flashes on Parker’s face. His eyes taper a bit, but then relax. “Well, he’s shown great compassion during the search for you. And he’s forgiven you after all the Middlings you hurt. He’s publically forgiven you after what you did to him and the President. He may have certain faults but his genuine concern for his daughter isn’t one of them.”
This isn’t working. This isn’t the right approach.
“Parker”—I stand up, hold my shoulders back—“I didn’t hurt any Middlings. And I did defend myself against my father and Vider because they were trying to kill Rogue.”
His eyes narrow into a tight squint. “What?”
“Yes, you recognize the name? He would have been the first kid you gave a Defect injection to.”
“But he’s dead,” Parker says, confusion making his youngish face look prematurely old.
“No.” I shake my head. “He’s not dead and he needs your help.”
“Does his father, President Vider, know?”
I roll my eyes. This is harder than I thought. “He. Was. Trying. To. Kill. Him.”
Parker dismisses this. “I’m sure you misread the situation.”
“Hard to misread the things people think in their own heads.”
He flips his head up at me. “Em, is that your gift? Have you finally gotten it?” His face brightens. “You’re telepathic, like your father.”
I shake my head, taking a seat again. “No, but we can get to that later. First off, I need to know, Parker, do you synthesize the injections?”
His dark eyebrows knit together. “No.”
“And do you know there are babies being brought to the lab?”
“Middlings who are tested for a genetic defect that was prevalent years ago.” He says all this automatically, not a single cue that he’s lying.
“Em,” Zack says from his place stationed by the exit. “Dr. Parker wouldn’t know. They’ve compartmentalized all parts of the projects. No one knows fully what’s going on. Not even my father. Only probably President Vider’s closest cabinet members.”
I nod, having guessed this. But before I could give Parker more information I needed to know, really know, if he was innocent. If he had willingly, knowingly injected children with poison for all these years…well, I’d kill him. I’m not sure if I have the power to kill within me, but something tells me I do, and not only because of my namesake.
“Parker,” I begin, “when I learned the truth, I was given a choice: to stay ignorant or to know a startling reality. I’m not going to give you that choice, for the simple fact that you are being used as a pawn and if you knew what you were doing I suspect you’d stop.” I pause and gauge Parker’s reaction. At first he bristles, like he’s going to refuse, but then something in him shifts and he leans forward, a hesitant curiosity in his eyes now.
“What I’m doing?” he repeats with perfect diction. “What would I stop doing if I knew a certain truth?” And now he’s halfway to entertaining my crazy words.
“The injections you give Defects suppresses their gifts,” I say and deliberately stop to give him a second to fully process that weighty sentence.
And as I suspected his face goes through a series of different expressions until it lands on denial. “No, Em, those injections are meant to bring out the gifts Defects have lost somehow. They’re the cure to the Defect epidemic. I understand how gruesome the treatments had been for you. I realize that’s why you’ve constructed this false reality in your mind. There’s no way the President would sanction a project that causes his citizens such pain if it wasn’t meant to help such a cruel illness.”
“I fear you don’t know the President as well as I do, because he would and he has sanctioned such a project,” I say.
And again he looks at me like I’m a sad mental patient beating against the walls of my padded room. Oh well. All rebels start as crazy people. I get that. Accept this role. “Parker, how long have you been giving me injections?”
He looks up to the ceiling, deliberating on this question. “Since your thirteenth birthday. I remember because I thought it was such a sad thing to happen to a child on a celebratory day. But now I’ve gotten used to it. Most of my patients come to me the month around their thirteenth birthday.”
“Would it surprise you to know that for all four years that you gave me those injections, I never once received my gift?”
He shrugs, a sad burden in his eyes. “No surprise. You’re like many of the rest. It’s such a stubborn epidemic we’re up against.”
“When you say ‘like many’ don’t you mean ‘all of the rest’? Has one adolescent receiving the injections ever received their gift?”
He startles at the question. Thinks on it. “Well, no, but that’s the purpose of the project and they are constantly resynthesizing the serum to make it better.”
“No, they’re constantly resynthesizing it to make it stronger.”
“Em, I understand that in your mind, you’ve constructed—”
I hold up a hand again and Parker pauses. “Now what if I told you that when the injections wore off, both the time I was sick and could not have them, and again when I escaped Austin Valley, my gift surfaced?” I thread my arms across my chest, sit back and wait for him to answer.
He stares at the corner of the room, disbelief and skepticism taking turns battling for dominance on his facial features. “Wait,” he says, shaking his head, not looking at me. “So you have your gift?”
“Yes.”
“And you believe the injections are the reason it was suppressed?”
“I know they are,” I say.
“But why…?”
And herein lies where I’ll have to unravel this confusing ball of lies for Parker, and make him believe in me and not Vider. The best way to accomplish this is not something I think I’ll enjoy doing to someone who over the years has become my friend. But Vider plays dirty and to outmaneuver him so will I.
“Parker, for four years you’ve been putting children through unnecessary, mind-numbing pain and not to help them, but rather to suppress their gods-given gifts. You’ve unknowingly been taking formula synthesized from stem fluid stolen from Middling infants and injecting it into innocent, healthy children. And because of what you’ve done, one of them, the very first of them, Rogue Vider, is about to die. If you don’t help me then you’ll be responsible for his death. And if you ignore his death, then I’m sure many more will stack up at your feet, since I suppose you have injected hundreds of children.”
He straightens reflexively. His eyes widen. Mouth drops open.
“You weren’t given a choice about learning the truth. But you will be given one now,” I say, a fierce venom in my words. “Are you going to right your wrongs? Are you going to save the people you’ve unknowingly harmed?”
Chapter Eight
After my speech, Parker didn’t merely agree to help, he begged. I gave him the full history and he listened, many times flinching or darting his eyes away, obviously dealing with his own internal conflict about being involved. He agreed to travel with me tomorrow night to Rogue’s farm, but needed some time to get his affairs in order.
I threw myself on Zack’s couch as he led the doctor to the door and dismissed him. I wasn’t as good at this game of manipulation as Vider, and I didn’t have the gift of mind control to back it up. All I had was the truth and people’s moral fibers to pick at. It all felt too much like a game, and not like what it was, real people and their lives.
“That was brilliant to watch,” Zack says from his place leaning against the doorway.
I remove my arm draped across my eyes and stare up at the newly pl
astered ceiling. “It was manipulation and it worked,” I say in a robotic voice. “I used guilt and authority I don’t own to make him help.”
He shakes his head and walks into the room, taking a seat in the armchair across from me. “You broke through President Vider’s brainwashing, which I’m seeing is pretty strong for most. I’m not sure why it doesn’t work on you and Rogue, and only partly works on me, but it probably explains the reason you were classified as a Defect.”
I sit up suddenly. “You’re the biggest Defect I know. Only unclassified.”
He smiles, a tired one that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Yes, I guess so.” He’s undone his shirt a few buttons and his tie hangs on the banister outside the room. “What will you do tomorrow?” Zack asks.
I fling myself back down on the sofa a bit melodramatically. “You mean before I smuggle a doctor out of the Valley?” I say, unable to keep the smile off my face.
“Only you…” he says, shaking his head.
“Well, I’ve got plans to meet a certain brilliant mastermind,” I say, spinning a lock of one of my golden curls around my finger.
“Oh, here?” he asks, not an ounce of concern in his voice.
I sit up and shake my head. “Of course not. I don’t want to put you under any more suspicion. Nona and I will meet in the old campsite. I thought it would be a good chance to get a full update from her on the rebellion. I left her a note this afternoon.”
“I don’t mind if you meet here,” he says, shaking his head.
“Thanks, but arrangements have already been made.”
“Can I come though?” Zack asks. “I haven’t had an opportunity to receive a proper update on what Nona has been working on.”
“Yes,” I say, unable to keep the smile off my face.
“What?” he asks in response to my unabashed grin.
“I’m just stupidly happy that we’re all working together. It’s beautiful and if it wasn’t for Rogue’s condition, I think I’d actually be able to fully enjoy all this.”
Zack nods, but it’s a solemn one. “Yeah, when you told Dr. Parker that Rogue might die, you were—”
“Totally exaggerating,” I say, completing his thought with a sly smile. “I learned exaggeration from the President and decided to employ it in my favor.”
“That’s a relief,” Zack says, sliding low in the chair and looking up at the ceiling, fatigue obviously creeping over him. “You were convincing enough I believed it.”
“Well, Rogue’s condition is serious enough that I came to the Valley. But I’m certain Parker can help him.”
He nods, relief in his eyes. “Your instincts are always good on these things.” We’re quiet for a long while. It feels comforting to have Zack nearby and not have to fill the time together with too much talk.
Finally he yawns and says, “Nona will be so happy to see you.”
I nod. Smile. “She’ll be happy to see you too,” I say to him. “She wrote in one of her notes to me that she loves it when you come by the house, but hates that it’s to take Dee out.”
He shrugs, a defeated look on his face.
“Do you think that relationship is helping your rank inside my father’s office?” I ask, pushing to a half-seated, half-reclining position.
“I know it is. Otherwise I wouldn’t do it. Chief Fuller favors me over the other new hires, bringing me in on special projects and giving me access to more files than the rest.”
It’s always weird when I hear Zack refer to my father as Chief Fuller. It reminds me how professional their relationship is. “Oh, well then I guess it’s worth it,” I say and then squint my face with sudden morbid frustration. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Your unhappiness isn’t worth that. I know you don’t like Dee and I’m sure—”
“It’s fine, Em,” Zack says, his voice monotone. “If it helps our cause then I’ll do it.”
“Well, she doesn’t deserve you.”
And for only a second a smile springs to his mouth, lighting up his eyes. He connects with me and it disappears, covered again with the overly serious mask he wears full-time. I regard him, how different and similar he is to how I always remembered. “I guess, now that it’s safe to say and all, I had the most stubborn crush on you for too many years,” I say, my stupid mouth spilling my mind’s thoughts.
Zack’s head flips up, the tiredness of his eyes completely erased and replaced with astonishment. “What?”
I giggle. “I know, it’s lame to say, but it seemed fitting based on where we are and where we came from and where we’re going.”
He shakes his head and darts his eyes away. “You told me that because it’s safe to say now that you’re in love with Rogue.”
“Probably.” I giggle again.
“Stop it,” he says, an angry sharpness to his voice as he regards the ceiling with a dark intensity.
“What?” I say, still giggling. “I just think it’s funny that a bum like me ever fancied a prince like you. Sorry. You can totally go shower off my cooties right now if you’d like.”
He stands at once and strides out of the room, each step coated with palpable hostility.
“What? What did I do wrong?” I say to his back as he flees, completely confused by his sudden anger.
He freezes. Turns and looks at me, his eyes so perfectly sad right now. “Em, you’re my best friend, right?”
I nod.
“Then please don’t ever tell me how you used to feel about me.” He gives a pained laugh that actually makes my heart hurt. “Don’t tell me about how you felt prior to Rogue. Let’s simply let all that be a mystery, all right?”
I swallow down a sudden pain so raw I think tears will soon be its companion. Unable to look at him one second longer I search the rug’s intricate pattern. “Sorry,” I tell the floor. “I just thought it would be funny to share.”
“You’re my best friend,” Zack says. “The only one I’ve ever wanted. Don’t make things weird, please.”
I nod to the rug, too mortified to look at him. From my peripheral I spy his nod and he turns and leaves. I squeeze my eyelids together and the tears push out, tears marking so many different hurts, but the freshest is that I’ve upset Zack with honest words. Ones I thought he’d laugh about, but instead resents me for. A new reality unfolds in my mind and its implications make a dozen more tears mark my eyes.
Chapter Nine
I leave Zack’s house an hour before sunrise. He was sleeping when I slipped the note under his door. This sneaking out of houses in the morning and leaving notes behind to detail my plans is becoming an awful habit. The note I left for Zack was much shorter than the one to Rogue. I told him the time to meet Nona and me and that I’d decided to leave early for the campsite. The truth was I didn’t want to awake to see his face, which would probably look different to me today. He’d been so angry with me last night, resenting me for my uncouth joke. Making me feel embarrassed. Making me feel ashamed and like my stupid emotions could ruin our friendship.
All night my heart hurt with confusion. Half the time I was angry with Zack and then the other half I sought his forgiveness. On a dozen occasions I had to stop myself from knocking at his door, confronting him with my thoughts. And on one of those occasions I walked to my door, convinced I’d actually open it this time and cross the fifteen feet to his room. But right then I heard the creak of the floor boards outside my door and I darted for the guest bathroom on the other side of the bedroom. I locked myself in there for two hours and then dragged myself to bed, heavy and raw from all the tears I’d cried.
Knowing there was no way in the world I was going to be able to sleep, I dream traveled to Kalalau Valley in Kaua’i, Hawaii. It was a perfect place to dream travel since the terrain makes it inaccessible except by foot. I sat on the top of a western-facing cliff and dangled my feet over the side. In three months, I’d dream traveled all over the world and throughout history. At first it had been a wild ride of sceneries, always with Rogue by my side
. Now my journeys were more about coming to know myself. Strange how travel makes existentialists of us all. The impossible beauty of Kalalau Valley, which is both rugged and pristine, soothed me into a Zen state. When I pulled my consciousness back to my body, I felt ready for the many challenges that I’d face.
Although tonight Parker and I will have to hike out of the Valley and I should probably rest, all I want to do is move. I need to clear my head. To focus. Getting Parker through these hills is going to be a challenge. He’s a doctor who gives hundreds of injections a day. And although I’m sure his trigger finger is strong, I’m guessing he has a limited lung capacity. And then I’ll have to take him on a day’s ride through the rough Oregon terrain. I’m a little concerned with how he’ll fare, but as long as I get him back to Rogue with his wits about him then I’ll be happy. And I’m not sure what he can do for Rogue, but if anyone knows what’s going on with him it will be Parker.
The last three months had been filled with laughter and love and an array of amazing dream travel locations. It had also been packed with a lot of heartbreak. Two or three times a day, I’d find Rogue in the barn or the house or the garden convulsing with a seizure-producing headache. They’d gotten better at first and then became exponentially worse. Frequent. Debilitating. Leaving Rogue with a cold tiredness in his beautiful green eyes. Our daily routine is always interrupted by the headaches. Worst of all is the anxiety that traces Rogue’s face when he awakes each morning. He always plasters a smile on his face, holds me in tight to him, and wishes me a good morning. But under this armor I sense the fear, the dread of the headaches that will plague the day. And any closeness between us is often interrupted by a headache. They’re the demons all around us, dictating our life, controlling us by harming Rogue. They’re always the threat to our well-being and our love. The only threat.
Rogue has come so far and allowed me close when I find him suffering from the pain. He allows me to pull him into my arms and hold him tight against my chest and whisper comforting words into his ear. But his surrender to my help comes at a cost that I spy in the defeated looks he gives me afterwards. I know he doesn’t want me to see him like that, but there’s no avoiding it. And I can’t allow him to suffer alone. I almost wished at times I had the headaches too, so he could return the affection and support, but for some reason they haven’t beset me.
