Breaking Point (8 page)

Tomorrow I’d step outside the front door for the first time in a month, and I might not come back.

“It’s okay to be scared.” It was as if he’d read my mind.

“I’m not,” I lied. I don’t even know why I bothered.

“All right,” he said slowly. “I’m just saying that if you were, it would be okay.”

I rested my chin on my knees, longing for the familiarity of my own bed. The smooth feel of my own sheets and the perfect weight of my blankets. I missed home.

“Why’d he turn me in and not you?” I whispered.

“I don’t know,” he answered with a sigh. “But he wouldn’t have if it didn’t benefit him somehow. I’m just surprised he waited this long.”

It did seem strange that someone would sit on this kind of information for a month before talking.

“How would it help him to fess up that I escaped on his watch?” I wondered aloud. Maybe someone had found out, pressured Tucker to talk. My mind flashed to the civilian woman who’d worked at the detention facility—Delilah. She’d been the only other person to know we’d left, but I doubted she had leaked the information. She was too afraid of Tucker to say anything that might get him in trouble, like the fact that we’d escaped on his shift.

Chase shook his head. “I can’t figure it out.”

We remained quiet, listening to the sirens downtown rounding up the curfew-breakers, and the bursts of raucous laughter from a room at the end of the hall. He shifted, and the rustle of fabric reminded me of the last time we’d been alone together in the dark, of the distance that had settled between us since. I wondered with a pang if he was going to return to the chair or even leave, but instead he faced me, all of him now on the bed. The flashlight made his white socks glow.

“I know this story,” he said with some uncertainty. “Sometimes it helps me sleep.”

I nodded my consent.

“Okay,” he began, inching closer. “I was…”

“Once upon a time,” I prompted. He looked down and smiled, pulling at the strings hanging off the end of his pant leg.

“Right. Once upon a time there was this eight-year-old boy, who had to move to … this faraway town. This all happened a long time ago, when people had lots of junk to cart around, so they had to rent this big truck to carry it all.”

I thought of how all the things we owned could now fit into one bag. He turned so we were facing the same direction, and settled back on his elbows, two feet away. His feet hung off the mattress.

My clasped hands loosened.

“We … I mean
they,
drove for two days until they got to the place in the pictures his dad had shown them. It seemed all right; big at least. The boy got his own room. But the best part was that there was this old haunted house up the street.” He grinned. “Classic haunted. It even had an old cemetery outside. So he went to check it out but this other boy—in a pink shirt—jumped out of the bushes and told him to get lost, because, get this, the place wasn’t safe.”

Hazily, that shirt appeared in my memory—an artifact from another life.

He laughed dryly, collapsing farther and rolling onto his side so that his head was resting on his knuckles. Tentatively I mirrored his position, laying my head on my bent arm. He was still a couple feet away, but now looking down on me.

“Turns out
he
was a
she
; she’d cut her own hair. Something about falling asleep chewing gum. All I’m saying is it must have been
a lot
of gum.…”

I kneed him in the ribs without thinking. He winced. I’d forgotten they’d been broken during his arrest, but he began to laugh, so I didn’t feel the need to apologize.

His hand stayed on my calf though, holding my shin against his body. I swallowed. I could feel him, not from behind a sheet of glass, but here.

“Anyway, this girl was clearly crazy, out there all alone with her pink shirt and boy hair, so our hero let it slide that she was trying to boss him around, and told her she’d better let him in because obviously the place was haunted, and he needed to investigate or else … I don’t know, who
knows
what would’ve happened. So, they went inside.…”

I smiled.

“And it turns out it was the scariest damn place he had ever been in his life. Not safe at all for little girls. He was fine, of course.
Perfectly
fine. But it wasn’t right to make a girl stay there, so he told her he heard her mom calling. Just so she didn’t feel bad for being such a baby.”

A giggle bubbled up inside of me.

I’d never been brave enough to go into that old house alone, but when Chase had shown up, intent to see beyond the splintering white columns and broken shutters, I couldn’t say no. I hadn’t known that the sour smell was asbestos and the raised veins in the wallpaper were termite highways. You didn’t think of those things at six. You only thought about how fear could be split down the middle like an orange, so both of you could eat half.

He pulled me a little closer and I didn’t even tense.

“You’ll never guess where she lived.”

As our smiles faded I noticed that his hand had moved up to the outside of my thigh, and his fingers were drawing small, slow circles that seared through my jeans. It had seemed logical to be ready to go at a moment’s notice, but now I wondered what his touch would have felt like on my bare skin.

His fingers brushed the dark, cropped bangs away from my eyes, and his lips pressed softly against my brow.

“I remember who you are. Even if you forget,” he said.

My eyelids weighed down, and in my last conscious moments I felt the warmth of his hand on my leg, the pressure of his touch, making me real. Not just a shadow. Not just a memory.

*   *   *

I DRESSED
alone in our room, facing the blank wall, wishing it would inspire a clear mind. My thoughts raced with anticipation of what the day might bring, always returning to the same image: the holding cell in the base. The sterile floor, the threadbare mattress that smelled of bleach and vomit, the overhead lights that buzzed and flickered. And Tucker Morris leaning in the doorway, his green eyes saying
I knew you’d be back.

I reminded myself that I’d lived through his internment before, and focused on the mission.

My hands shook as I buttoned up the starchy blouse, as I zipped up the itchy wool skirt and tied the triangular scarf in a sailor’s knot around my neck. I wondered what Ms. Brock, my evil headmistress at the Girls’ Reformatory, would think if she saw me now, back—by
choice
—in a uniform I’d resisted so fervently.

Curfew ended with a sputtering of yellow light that had me jumping out of my skin.

Houston and Lincoln had already left with Cara, scouting our path for any positioned FBR. We would go next, followed by Sean, dressed as a soldier, and Riggins in street clothes. Sean would meet us outside of Tent City, the others would keep to our shadows and watch for trouble.

I walked out of the room and came face-to-face with Chase. A look of disappointment crossed his face when he saw that I’d actually changed; clearly he’d been hoping I wouldn’t go through with it. He straightened to his full height. The MM insignia—the U.S. flag flying over the cross—branded the pocket of his navy flack jacket, just above the name badge
VELASQUEZ
. His pants bloused over newly greased black boots. In the stolen uniform, Chase looked almost exactly as he had when he’d arrested my mother.

I realized he’d never said he would come. Some things he didn’t have to say out loud.

The next thing I knew, Sean, Chase, and I were in the empty lobby, standing before the double doors. It was still dark on account of the thick rain clouds, and I was glad for the added cover. I put my hand on the glass, edging it open, feeling the cool, misty morning air seducing me out into danger, just as the familiarity of the fourth floor pulled me back.

“The Sisters are different here,” Sean said. “Remember Brock? She had full authority over the soldiers at the reformatory—you’d never see her back down. In the cities, Sisters are charity workers. Models of obedience. They’ve got power, but not over the FBR. They’re the kind of women the Statutes intended them to be, got it?”

Subservient. Respectful. Spineless.

“Got it,” I said.

He paused, and then squeezed my arm. “You better go.”

I swallowed. “Bye, Sean.”

“I’ll be right behind you.” He hesitated, and then turned away from the door, as if he didn’t want to see us step outside. I was glad for the privacy. He was making me nervous.

“Ember,” Chase started, then shook his head. “Just stay with me, all right?”

There was something else he wanted to say, but I didn’t give him the chance. I nodded and pushed the door open.

For a moment I stood on the dark street, holding my breath, expecting something earth-shattering to occur. As if the whole MM was just waiting for me to show my face so they could shoot me. But nothing happened.

Beside me, Chase transformed. His expression grew grave, his eyes daunting. When we began to walk, each long purposeful stride had me hurrying to keep up. I dropped my gaze, and kept several feet behind him, because no woman walked side by side with a soldier.

A light rain had started by the time we reached the corner. It lowered the bruised sky, coating my forearms and the back of my neck with a prickly layer of moisture that made my skin feel itchy and somehow foreign. Without hesitation, we turned into a dank alley, garnished by overturned trash cans and stray animals. I nearly tripped over a man’s foot that stuck out from beneath a flattened cardboard box. Each sound—the flapping of a pigeon’s wings, a clatter from within a Dumpster—shoved my heart into my throat. My gaze roamed, but no one seemed to see us. Which was good. For now.

Finally, the alley opened to a street, kitty-corner from Knoxville’s city square. Two soldiers were positioned at the entrance to the Square, distracted by the words SAVE US SNIPER spray-painted across the front of an empty shop. The neon green letters drooled down the wall. I stared at the scene, wide-eyed, surprised by my own approval, before fixing my gaze on the ground.

Hastily, we moved past. The soldiers didn’t even turn their heads.

I padded around the empty Contraband Items bins and condemned buildings, trying hard to shut out the chorus of groans and steady whimpers from the shapeless piles of tattered clothing strewn across the red bricks. Homeless civilians, maybe a thousand of them, immigrants from the fallen cities who’d come here for help or pity. They huddled together against the gusting wind to conserve energy. The last time I’d been here, Sean had been inciting a riot, but now the place was as somber as a funeral. With the MM’s lockdown on rations, there was little to do but starve.

I glanced back, but the soldiers weren’t following. We passed the abandoned shops filled with squatters. Passed the large painted sign over an empty store that read: SEVEN P.M. WORSHIP SERVICE—MANDATORY. I remembered the church I’d made us go to back home after we’d received an Article 1 citation for failure to observe the national religion. While I gave our names to the church recorder, my mother would steal cookies from the welcome table.

The way cleared for Chase; no one looked at us twice.

I turned left, focusing on Chase’s heels. On the sidewalk before me a group crowded around a rain barrel, fishing out the cloudy liquid with a peeling, tin cup, fastened to the wood by a metal chain. Most bore the signs of malnourishment. Hollowed cheeks. Ashy skin. In contrast, their bodies looked bloated, loaded by layer upon layer of clothing. Trust ran thin these days; any possession left unattended was fair game.

A skin-and-bones tenant broke from the pack and approached me, sunken eyes searching hungrily over my disguise. A girl’s summer dress fringed out beneath his holey sweater, and for a fleeting moment I thought of the Statutes that had been hammered into my brain at the Girls’ Reformatory. Wearing clothes inappropriate for your gender could mean an Article 7 violation.

I prepared myself for recognition, panicked that the unveiling would not occur on our terms.

“You got any food, Sister? It’s been two days.…”

He didn’t know who I was. I found myself both relieved and disappointed.

When my escort backtracked, the man slumped and scurried back into the anonymity of the makeshift shelters. I wiped my sweating palms on my pleated navy skirt, then squeezed a single finger along the tight collar of my button-up blouse.

“Not yet,” Chase said under his breath. He tilted his head toward a unit of soldiers standing outside a cleared area contained by yellow caution tape. The cement within that circle was stained red and black. The table where the soldiers had signed people up for the draft was broken in the center, and painted a sticky burgundy that attracted particles of dust and leaves. The MM had left it there in defiance of what had happened, as if daring a civilian to celebrate the death of a soldier.

Behind it, against the side of a building were three single lines grouped together, painted in the same neon green as the Save Us Sniper sign.

A bell resounded from the back of the Square, startling me. Though most people had given up on breakfast, it seemed there were to be some rations after all. With renewed energy, the starving sprang from the bricks, and stampeded toward the soup kitchen lines.

I ducked out of the way of a sprinting family, and aimed for a silver bus in the opposite direction, where volunteers could donate blood in exchange for rations vouchers. It was parked sideways between two buildings, marking the entrance of Tent City, just as Sean had said. A CLOSED sign hung low enough to have been spat upon multiple times.

We followed the length of the bus to a large Dumpster, overflowing with the last bits of trash that people couldn’t use for shelter or warmth: broken glass, damp paper, and food too long gone to provide any nutrition. It smelled rank, like mold and vomit. My nose scrunched up involuntarily.

Hidden in a nook between the bus, the building, and the trash was the rendezvous point, and a quick scan told me that we were the first to arrive.