Carrie tiptoed upstairs. If Mariah’s door was shut, she would sneak right back out, but the last door hung wide open. Greg sat next to his mom’s mattress on the floor, back to Carrie, Yankees hat pulled low over his face. Lying on the mattress, Mariah was speaking to him behind closed eyes. She had one leg propped with pillows, which didn’t make sense. Her problems had always been lungs and stomach, not legs. Maybe it was spreading, whatever it was.
“…could be a good thing,” she heard Mariah saying. “All’s not lost. You gotta quit worryin’ so much. You’re gonna give yourself ulcers.”
“I can’t, Ma,” Greg said softly.
Mariah coughed into a fresh rag, leaving her voice raspy. “Yes, you can. I’ll never forgive you if you don’t.”
Greg’s whole body stiffened. “How’s it fair to say somethin’ like that at a time like this?”
She smiled weakly. “It’s not, but it helps my cause, doesn’t it?”
His head lowered further.
“Come now,” Mariah said, reaching to him. “I say you’re wrong, you know you’re wrong, so quit fightin’ me. Legality is overrated. It’s not too late. You can’t give up.”
Give up? The words twisted Carrie’s insides. Greg didn’t think he was coming back?
“Ma…” he said tiredly.
She patted his knee. “In this world, you gotta fight to be happy, Greg. Even when it seems hopeless, you just keep fighting. Fight and win.”
Fight. Another word that made Carrie ill. Greg was heading to a place where fighting was the only way to survive, where war and revolution permeated—
Greg shifted slightly, putting his profile in Carrie’s view.
She gasped.
Greg had a beard. A new one, but still.
At her voice, he jumped and whirled around. She stared at him in disbelief. His clean-shaven look was the first thing she noticed when he moved in. Every other clansman stopped shaving after the Collapse, but Mariah once told Carrie that Greg hadn’t missed a day of shaving in six years, not even in all their times when they barely had food or a place to sleep. Now dark stubble trailed his angular jaw.
He really was giving up.
She struggled to breathe. This couldn’t be happening.
Greg’s eyes narrowed, solidifying what she already knew. She shouldn’t have come.
Backing into the hallway, she worked to make a quiet escape.
“Hey, Ma,” Greg said, “I’ll be right back. Try to sleep for a bit. We’ll leave after you rest up.”
Leave? Greg was taking Mariah with him?
“Wait,” Mariah said. “Was that Carrie?”
“Yeah.”
Mortified, Carrie stepped back into view. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you. I came to talk to Greg, but I’ll just wait for him outside.”
Mariah waved her in. “You’re not bothering anybody. Actually,” she said with a warm smile, “Greg and I were just talkin’ about you.”
“You were?”
But before Carrie could rewind the conversation, Greg shot to his feet and met her at the doorway.
“Who told you?” he whispered angrily. “Grandma?”
Carrie’s own temper kicked in. “No. She didn’t. Why didn’t you? I’ve waited for five days thinking—”
“Oliver!” Greg spat his name like an expletive. “I shoulda known he’d break his promise.”
“Oh, no you don’t. You don’t get to be mad about this, Greg. Why didn’t you tell me about the recruitment?” She took in his dark scruff and her voice broke. “You weren’t going to, were you? You were just going to leave. To disappear.”
His eyes softened with guilt. “I wanted to, but it only woulda made things harder. I promised to stay away from you, Carrie, only unlike some people, I actually keep my promises.”
“Even the stupid ones?” she challenged.
“Hey, y’all,” Mariah called from her mattress on the floor. “Don’t kill each other just yet. I wanna chat with Carrie first.”
Carrie pushed past Greg and knelt next to his mom’s mattress. The sight of Mariah was enough to distract her. She looked significantly worse than a few days ago. Her cheeks were sunken and the circles under her eyes were so dark they looked like bruises.
With great effort, Mariah shifted to face Carrie, careful to keep her leg propped.
“You alright, darlin’?” Mariah asked.
She wanted to know if Carrie was alright? Carrie refused to answer such a ridiculous question and instead asked, “What can I get you? Do you want some water? Can I get more pillows from my house? Are you hungry? I made noodles just a bit ago.”
“Nah.” Mariah patted her hand. “Just take care of my boy for me.”
Carrie’s breath caught. It sounded like a dying mother’s wish.
Maybe it was.
“I begged him to tell you that he was leavin’,” Mariah said, “but he’s stupid. Real stupid. Real, real, real—”
“Ma,” Greg cut in, “I’m gonna talk to Carrie downstairs. Try to sleep, alrighty? We’ll leave in a bit.”
Taking the hint, Carrie followed him into the hallway. Before he closed the door, Mariah called, “Remember what I said, Greg. Fight and win.”
With a grunt, he shut her door.
“Where are you taking your mom?” Carrie whispered, following him to the stairs. Hopefully a doctor, though she couldn’t imagine how without a car, money, or time.
“I gotta take her into town to renew her yellow card,” Greg said.
“What? In her condition? She doesn’t look like she can stand, let alone walk all the way into town.”
He stopped on the third step down. “What choice do I have, Carrie? What choice do I have in anything? What choice does anybody have anymore?” He whirled and threw a fist against the wall.
Stunned, Carrie stood there.
His fist stayed on the wall, looking ready to pound it over and over again. But then his shoulders drooped, his eyes closed, and his head fell against the wall.
Silence descended on the entryway. She studied his new beard and the defeat in every inch of his body, and her throat swelled.
“When do you leave for training?” she whispered.
“First thing in the morning,” he said into the wall.
Her eyes filled. “Why didn’t you tell me, Greg?” They could have had a week together.
The entryway fell silent. He just stood on the third stair down, head against the wall, making her feel shut out all over again.
“If this is just a way to get money,” she said, “it’s not worth it. We’ll find another—”
His head snapped up. “You think any amount of money would tempt me to leave her right now? I’m going ‘cause I have no choice, Carrie. Not a single one.”
“There has to be something. We’ll just—”
“Do what? Survive how? Live where?”
But you could die.
The words lodged in her throat.
“Then we’ll take in May and CJ,” she tried. “We’ll hide all of you, post guards, and do whatever it takes so you can stay.”
“And let the patrolmen come in and rip out the garden?” he said with less force. “Shoot the chickens and burn down the house? What about government raids every week? Where will y’all hide if I go AWOL?”
“In the woods.”
“With dogs that can follow your trail?” He shook his head. “I’ve gone over and over this. Every option leaves thirty-four people arrested or dead. It’s me or them, Carrie.” He sighed deeply. “It’s gotta be me.”
Her heart cried, No! but part of her knew he was right because she’d spent five days trying to come up with something, too. She just couldn’t accept that Greg would become one of them, someone like Oliver, who arrested illegals and lied about running into doors.
“Who else knows you’re leaving?” she asked.
“I told my grandparents a little bit ago,” he said. “When you showed up, I figured my grandma had run straight to your house.”
“Why haven’t you told anyone else?”
“I didn’t wanna be here when they threw the party.”
“Greg…how can you think anyone wants you to leave? Don’t you know what you mean to the clan?” To me?
He didn’t respond.
He did nothing but stare blankly down the stairs.
Carrie looked at Mariah’s closed door. Greg’s mom wouldn’t survive his four months of training. She might not even survive four weeks, and Greg had to walk away. No choice.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He followed her gaze to Mariah’s door. His whole body went rigid. “Don’t. Don’t bring it up. Don’t say it. Don’t think it. Don’t mention it—mention her. There’s nothin’ I can do.” He sank down on the stair, head in his hands. “Absolutely nothing.”
Carrie wanted to put an arm around his shoulders but worried that would make it worse, all things considered. So she sank down next to him on the stair, searching for another way to help.
Richard walked into the entryway, clean rags in hand. But one look at them blocking the way upstairs, and he turned right back around.
Greg didn’t even notice.
In the silence, Carrie studied the back of Greg’s t-shirt, remembering something Mariah had once told her. Something about the day Kendra had died. Greg had shown up to the Raleigh hospital limping, bruised, and utterly defeated. Even now Mariah didn’t know what had happened with his foreman. Something bad enough he hadn’t taken off his shirt in front of his mom—or anyone else—since.
“What did they do to your back in Raleigh?” Carrie whispered.
He pursed his lips as if debating whether to tell her or not. Then, without a word, he reached over his shoulders and pulled up his t-shirt, exposing his entire muscled back.
Carrie’s hands flew to her mouth.
seventeen
CARRIE COULDN’T MOVE.
Greg’s back was covered with crisscrossed, raised scars, like he’d been whipped. Zach said they had punished Greg for speaking out in defense of an older man, but they whipped him for it? It seemed so cruel, so…medieval.
It took her a second to find her voice. “How could they do that to you?”
“Oh, that’s not even the best part.” Greg dropped his shirt and lifted his sleeve, exposing his upper shoulder. Another scar. This one circular and more defined, only it was raised and tinged pink. An old burn. It was about the size of her fist and shaped like a symbol: a circle with a diagonal line through it, like the kind of circle in a No Smoking sign. Only this diagonal line crossed out a single, solid star.
Squinting, she noticed numbers tattooed into his skin below the crossed-out star. Identifying numbers.
“They branded you,” she said, understanding.
He’d been beaten, branded as a traitor, and watched his little sister die in the space of a few hours. All for standing up to the evils he was about to join.
He dropped his sleeve. “If they see these during training, who knows what they’ll do.”
Kill him. Because he hadn’t just been punished and marked. He ran. He only had a yellow card now because Oliver faked some ID numbers for him. Here she was worried about what would happen to him after training. He might not even survive the first day.
“You can’t give up,” his mom had said. “Even when it seems hopeless, you keep fighting. Fight and win.”
Carrie pinched her eyes to block the sudden flood of tears, but over and over her mind screamed, Don’t go!
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Even if I can keep all this hidden, what do I do, Carrie? Arrest people like us? Brand other traitors?” He stared down at his hands. “I’m scared that even if I manage to make it back here alive, it’s not gonna be me anymore, you know? That they’re gonna get into my head and mess with it. That I’ll become one of them and want to hurt people like us. I’m scared that I’m gonna forget who I am—who we are.”
Greg had never been scared of anything.
It terrified her.
She wanted to offer to write to him, but there wasn’t any mail service. No phones either. She couldn’t even visit.
“You won’t forget,” she whispered.
His eyes flickered back to her. “What makes you so sure? You haven’t been in their clutches before. You haven’t watched the guy next to you become a robot just to stop the pain.”
“Because you’re a Pierce.” She smiled sadly. “They’re fighters, remember?”
It almost came, that tiny smile he saved for her. But then his face fell. “That’s what they want. Fighters. Killers.”
“You can’t give up, Greg.” She leaned forward on the stairs to look at him directly, suddenly panicked like she’d never felt before. “Hide your scars and follow the rules. Do whatever is necessary to stay alive. Please. You can’t give up.”
He gave her a strange look. “Who says I’m givin’ up?”
“Your mom and”—she pointed at his face—“that.”
“This?” He scratched his dark stubble. “Do you remember when you asked me why I shaved? Well, I wanted to look like a patrolman. Ironic now that I’m gonna be one, but squatters look too obvious, too homeless with their scraggly beards. I figured if I was ever spotted by a patrolman, they’d assume I was one of them. My mom and I—and Kendra when she was around—needed those extra seconds of uncertainty to make a run for it. I wanted to look like one of them, and now…” His shoulders lifted. “And now…”
He probably couldn’t grow a beard fast enough. That beard was his way of fighting back, of telling himself that he wouldn’t become one of them. Even his hair peeking out of his Yankees hat was longer than she’d seen.
“So…you’re not giving up?” she said carefully.
“Nah. I’ve never been smart enough to quit while I’m behind.”
Hope burst inside her. Greg could do this. He could survive, although she had no idea how. But knowing him, he’d take down half the government in the process.
He nudged her arm, reminding her how close they sat on the stair.
“How’d you like the view of the outside world?” he asked. “I never heard how the drive went.”
“The trees are beautiful.” She nudged him back with her knee. “Thank you for bringing a piece of them back to me.”
“The blossoms stink. Sorry. I didn’t know.”
She smiled softly. “Yes, but they’re beautiful. I love them.”
“Well, I figured you should get to see them, even though they nearly got me arrested.”
She turned. “That’s why you were almost arrested?”
“Yeah. Hope they were worth it.”
“Are you crazy? Nothing is worth you being arrested.”
“Wow,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “Way to kill the romance.”
She startled.
Romance.
There was no reason for her face to go hot, but it did. She ducked her head to hide behind her thick hair.
He reached up and lifted her chin to study her. “Man, I’m gonna miss this.”
He meant his uncanny ability to make her blush, but part of her longed for him to mean more—that he’d miss her. Because she would miss this, too. The two of them alone, talking, friends again, him finally letting down his guard.
His hand fell away from her chin and he faced the stairway again. “So…Oliver didn’t happen to divulge anything else, did he?”
“Like what?”
“That’d be a big fat no.” He shook his head. “Oliver! That guy and I are gonna have a little talk. Or…not.” His thick brows pulled down. “Man, this whole leavin’ thing really stinks.”
And just like that, the brief happiness fled.
Greg suddenly turned toward her. “Listen, Carrie, when I start makin’ money—which had better happen soon ‘cause that’s the only good thing to come from this—I’ll find a way to send it back to you. Maybe you can use the money to buy supplies. Or even convince my mom to see a doctor. Who k
nows? If I can survive long enough, we might be able to save up enough money to buy another home, maybe even get a few more people legal.”
“Your plan,” she whispered.
His face lit up. “Yeah. Not exactly your flower shop, but this might work better—or at least faster. Even if we can only buy one other home, my grandparents could abandon theirs and then maybe I could…I might be able to…”
“…come back,” she finished for him.
His eyes locked on hers, and she felt it, felt the connection, the possibility between them. She lost herself in the depth of those green eyes and the possibilities.
Would he come back to her or just come back?
“It’s a long stretch,” he said, “but we might be able to pull it off. Until then, can you do somethin’ for me?”
“Anything,” she said.
“Make sure that my mom, Richard, and my grandparents head into town by the 15th of every month. They’re gonna need help gettin’ there. Wait,” he said, scowling. “What am I thinkin’? You can’t take them.”
“No, I’ll do it. I can stay hidden. I promise to take care of your family while you’re gone, Greg.”
It was the least she could do.
“Thanks.”
Blowing out his breath, he rubbed his dark stubble. “Man, what I’d give for a car right now.”
“Can Oliver drive you to Naperville at least? Or even into town today with your mom?”
“He offered,” Greg said, “but I turned him down.”
“Why?”
“‘Cause I’m stupid, remember? Real, real stupid. But it’s fine. I’m a good walker. If only my mom was. I’m thinkin’ about carting her around in Old Rusty. What do you think?”
“Terrell’s old supply cart? Maybe. Or if that’s too cumbersome, you can take our water wagon. It’s smaller, but she should still fit.”
“That’d be easier. If only that could get me to Naperville faster. I’d take anything at this point, car, motorcycle, horse. I’d even take Butterscotch if she’d let me ride her.”
Carrie sat up. “What about a bike?”
“A bike would be great. I could make the trip in an hour or two on a bike. If I could sneak out at night, I’d have plenty of time to get home and back before morning. If I hide the bike in the woods, they’d never even know I had it.” He turned. “But Grandpa said we didn’t have any bikes left. Is there one?”
Citizens of Logan Pond Box Set Page 53
