Naturals (14 page)

Chapter 16

“Is it safe to assume you two haven’t talked about it?” Lockwood asked.

I sighed, falling more than sitting down on the stool. “No, we haven’t talked about it,” I admitted.

“Don’t you think maybe you should?”

“I don’t remember you and me talking about the fact that we fought yesterday,” I challenged, reaching my arm underneath the cow.

“Um, are you forgetting something?” Lockwood raised an eyebrow.

I groaned. “Good morning, cow,” I mumbled. I leaned the side of my face against the cow’s torso and went to work.

“You really want to talk about our first fight? Fine. Let’s talk about it. I was right. You were wrong. Then you were right, and I was less right,” Lockwood said.

“That was a very verbose conversation,” I replied dryly.

“Considering I’m not in love with you, I figure that’s about all the conversation we need to have. Compared to your situation with Henry, our fight seems pretty insignificant.”

As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. I had bigger things going on. Henry had been up and gone before I woke. I got sick several more times during the night. With each episode, Henry was by my side holding back my hair. He didn’t bring up the kiss at all, and in the morning, he didn’t bother to walk me to work.

I didn’t blame him. It would have been easy for me to justify my actions by claiming that I was sick and drunk, but after years of watching my mother slip on this defense, I wouldn’t have been able to look at myself in the mirror ever again if I did. I kissed him because I wanted to. Whatever else could be said about it—and I was sure there could be a lot said about it—I couldn’t deny the want.

I just didn’t understand why I wanted to kiss him. In the bright light of the morning, it was easy to dismiss the appearance of my mother, but I couldn’t deny that kiss.

Did I have feelings for Henry? He didn’t move me the way James did—of that I was sure. James had helped me discover who I was, but Henry had loved me even when I couldn’t find her. If they had both been here with me, I would have chosen James. Without a second thought, he would be it. Because I didn’t feel like our story had the ending it deserved. I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that, if James had come with me to the community, we would have stayed together forever. I was still so young, and people changed, but it was nice to believe that some loves did last forever, like the loves that James and I had read about.

Until I knew the source of my desire, I had to stop another incident like that from happening. Regardless of the emotional disaster of last night, I could understand why so many of the teenagers around me gave themselves over to desires. Maybe the council wasn’t entirely wrong about it.

It felt so damn good.

It felt dangerous.

“We’ll talk about it. Just not tonight. My only goal for tonight is to get some sleep,” I said. If anything, I felt worse than I had the day before. Not only was I now combating the effects of a pretty horrible cold, I was also hung over. Even though it was an unseasonably warm day, I couldn’t stop from shivering. I knew Lockwood noticed it, but in some symbol of a truce, he didn’t bring it up.

We worked in a comfortable silence most of the day, and I was thankful for the lack of noise. My head was pounding. The area under my eyes and beside my nose was painful to touch. My joints felt stiff, and looking in the mirror that morning, I saw that my eyes were bloodshot. The fabric under my arms and back was covered in sweat.

“Here. I’ll carry that for you,” Lockwood said, motioning to the pail I was struggling to pick up.

“I can manage,” I said, taking a deep breath and using all my might to heave the bucket up. It was near lunchtime, and there were throngs of people heading past us into the barn. It didn’t make sense to go all the way back to the community to eat, so a meager lunch was handed out to the workers instead.

As I hauled the bucket toward the barn, I saw her. Clear as day. The bucket fell from my hands.

“Tess? What’s wrong?” a voice asked next to me.

Henry.

“Do you see her?” I asked shakily.

It wasn’t possible. But there she was, walking in the crowd toward the barn. Again. Emma and Louisa had always favored her, while I had looked more like my father—the same fiery red hair. She stood out in the crowd—her bright, clean clothes cutting across a sea of grime.

I felt Henry’s hand tug on mine. “Do I see who?”

Her eyes scanned across the people milling about like she was looking for something. Like she was looking for me.

“What’s going on?” I heard Lockwood ask from behind me.

Henry’s hand moved to my arm and he gave me a gentle shake. “Maybe we should get you something to eat.”

“How is she here? That’s not…I mean…how could she be here?” I asked. A million different thoughts went through my head. The most seemingly absurd answer was the one that kept coming back to me—was there any chance that she had faked her death?

“Tess!”

Her voice stilled everything inside of me. My mother had yelled for me across the crowd. My mother was alive.

Maybe she had been part of the resistance movement the whole time. All those days and nights she was drunk were merely performances. Perhaps she was so deep in that even my father didn’t know. And after he died, she came up with a plan to take his place. Yes, she left her daughters to fend for themselves, but maybe it was because she knew to truly save us she had to leave. They needed her to take down the council. When she heard the Isolationists had brought me here, she came to find me.

Lockwood stepped in front of my line of vision.

“Move,” I insisted. “You’re in my way.”

I shoved him aside and sprinted toward my mother as fast as I could. She stood, staring me down, taking me in. A slight smile crawled across her face. I reached out my hand to touch her but before I could, she turned and left. She was gone.

What was happening?

“And who exactly are we staring at?” Lockwood asked, slightly out of breath.

I couldn’t believe what I was about to say. “My mother,” I breathed.

Henry was in front of me in an instant. He placed his hand across my forehead. “You’re burning up.”

I shook his hand off. “I’m fine. I need to go and talk to her,” I said, trying to move around the boys who blocked my way.

“Tess, just listen to me—”

“I said get out of my way!”

“You’re hallucinating,” Lockwood said.

No. I saw her. She was there. She had come back for me.

I shoved Lockwood out of my way with as much force as I could. He stumbled back just enough to let me by, and I briskly made my way toward her. I could hear Lockwood and Henry protesting behind me, but I didn’t stop. Maybe if she didn’t see me, she’d leave again. I couldn’t have that.

“Mom!” I called out as loudly as I could. The word felt unfamiliar on my lips.

She was back, standing before me like she had never left. She froze, her eyes finding me. And she smiled again. A real smile. She reached out her hand for me. This time I would touch her. I was so close. In just a few more steps, my hand would grab onto hers.

But then the darkness came.

Crushing down on me like the bag the snatchers had pulled over my head on the way to my death.

My mother was gone.

“I see you have a new ribbon,” James commented, motioning to the bright blue ribbon that pulled my hair over my shoulder.

“Yes, you like?” I asked with a flirtatious smile.

“Oh. Yes. Not as nice as the one I have, though,” he said in a mock-serious tone. He pulled from his pocket the ribbon I had given him the last time I saw him.

“You kept it?” I whispered.

“Of course I did,” he whispered back. “The council wouldn’t let me have much, but I kept this.”

“And now you’re here, and we won’t ever let them separate us again,” I replied, taking his hands in mine and pulling them behind my back, bringing him as close as possible to me.

“Never,” he confirmed.

His lips met mine. This kiss was slow and hesitant. Two lost boats crossing an unfamiliar sea. It had been so long.

I pulled away from the gentle kiss and looked up at him. I hesitated before speaking. I knew our short moment would come to an end soon. They always did. I couldn’t help but feel if the council wasn’t there to keep us apart, something else would.

“I’ll miss you,” I said, unsure where he was going. I just knew he would leave.

“I know you will. I wish I could say the same,” he said. His smile returned as he gently pulled on a strand of my hair, and I froze. His words didn’t match his actions. Was he joking? He must have been. I attempted to laugh, but it came out empty.

He sighed. “It’s so much less fun these days. Now that I know I can have you so easily…and I do mean all of you.”

Something inside of me dropped.

“What…what are you talking about?” I asked nervously. My heart, which always seemed to betray me in these moments, picked up speed.

“I know about Henry. How long did you wait? Not that it matters. Somewhere deep inside, I knew the council was right about you girls. I’m not mad, not really. I’m glad we don’t have to pretend anymore.”

James was getting closer to me, and I soon found myself up against the wall. In an instant, quicker than the pounding of my heart, he had my arms pinned against my head, his hands clamped against my wrists. My mind flashed to the day by the tree, the way he roughly led me from the other boys. He always had so much power.

I couldn’t breathe.

His face was inches from mine; he was going to invade. And he was grinning.

I heard footsteps approaching. They were soft but somehow familiar, and my heart flared.

It was Henry.

“I told you,” Henry said angrily, nodding his head toward James. James didn’t acknowledge his presence.

They stood side by side, blocking the sun. Only shadow remained.

Henry reached up and ran the back of his hand down my cheek. It continued down to my neck, where it stopped, slowly wrapping itself around, choking me. Everything was going black. Somewhere in the distance I heard them, the Templeton boys, taunting.

Slut.

Whore.

I reached up my hands to try and pry Henry’s from my neck, but he was too strong.

The darkness returned.

Chapter 17

“Come, child. Let’s get this filth off of you,” a soothing voice said. I tried to open my eyes to discover the source, but they felt so heavy. Something cool and moist ran across the length of my arms and then my legs.

“Is she going to be all right?” someone asked.

“I wish I could say for sure, but she’s a strong girl. She’s fighting.”

“Fight, Tess. Please, keep fighting,” the voice begged.

I managed to open my eyes, but the brightness of the room caused them to close again immediately. Before they did, I could have sworn that I had seen Sharon, Lockwood, and Henry. I didn’t understand why my eyelids felt so heavy, or who or what they were talking about.

With a great deal of effort, I was able to pry my eyes open again. The light had somehow changed, morphed into a whole new world.

“Tess.”

A simple word but my heart fluttered.

“Emma?”

She was there kneeling before me. First I’d seen my mother and now Emma? But that wasn’t possible. I had watched my sister die during childbirth. “I…I don’t understand,” I admitted.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” Emma said, a smile lighting up her face. She took my hand and pulled me from the floor. It was only then that I realized where we were. I was back in the compound.

“But how?” I asked, looking around me. We were in the communal bathroom.

“I told you she would be surprised to see us,” Emma called out to someone as she led me by the hand over to the sink.

“Look at you, Tess. You look dreadful,” she said affectionately, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek. She let go of my hand and turned on the water. I wanted to grab her hand back instantly, but her pretense of ease calmed me. She didn’t seem like she was going anywhere.

I looked at my appearance in the mirror. Emma was right—I did look dreadful. Pale. Near death. There was a frightening yellow tint to my skin, almost as if my own face had been replaced by some child’s mask melted by the blazing heat of the sun. And then something else caught my eye. Standing in the corner of the room was my mother.

“Mom?” I croaked.

So I had seen her. She had been with me in the community the whole time. She wasn’t crazy or dead, so she must have been a resistance fighter. My mother had played us the whole time. Had she found a way to save Emma, too? Maybe she had found a way to save our whole family.

“Yes, Tess. I’m here, too,” she replied, walking out of the darkness and moving to stand on the other side of me. There we were. Together. I couldn’t stop the tears that sprung to my eyes, but I didn’t want to. There was no need for me to question the logic behind it. By some miracle, I had them back.

“Wash your face. We can’t take you with us looking like that,” said my mother.

“Take me where?” I asked.

She smiled. “You’ll see.”

I looked down at the sink, placing my hands into the running water. I cupped them and gathered as much of it as I could, then closed my eyes and splashed it on my face. It felt so good against my still hot skin. I opened my eyes.

No.

God. No.

It always came to this.

My face and hair dripped not with water but with blood.

I stumbled back from the sink and looked to Emma and my mother. They both continued to smile at me, but everything had changed. Emma’s dress was soaked from the waist down. My mother began to cough violent bursts of red as she grabbed onto her neck. I followed the substance, life itself flowing from the women who raised me.

The tiles in the floor began to buckle. Move. Shake violently. From under them came all nature of beasts—maggots, worms, snakes. They slithered and crawled toward me. I pressed my fist against my mouth to stifle the scream that was waiting to be released.

And the darkness took me once again.

“Help me hold her down,” the woman’s voice urged.

“Why is she thrashing around so much?”

“I don’t know,” the woman replied.

“Tess,” a second male voice called out to me. “You have to calm down. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

I knew this place. I had come here to hide so I could read the book James had given me. I immersed myself in all of the personal notes he made in the margins of
Frankenstein
, a story that seemed to be written about him despite its author having died hundreds of years before our time.

I hesitantly placed my hand against the door, fearing it would be locked. I didn’t mind being in The Void, but only because I knew I could leave it if I wanted to. The Void was used to imprison naturals before a wrangling, but I had sought solace there before. I had hid there to read the books James had given to me. Much to my relief, the door pushed open without much effort.

But there was something strange about it.

As I walked inside, no light entered the room.

Perhaps there had been some power outage in the compound. It was rare but had been known to happen. I took a deep breath and stepped through the door, losing myself in pitch-blackness. I reached my hands in front of me and searched for a wall, but I only found emptiness. I moved my hands to the side and found two smooth walls alarmingly close to where I stood. I froze. There weren’t supposed to be walls there. I was supposed to be standing in the hallway that led to the dining hall.

I snapped my arms back to my sides. My whole body began to shake with fear. As I slowly moved forward, my toe met with something hard. I raised a trembling hand forward and felt around, finally locating a doorknob.

It made no sense.

I turned the knob and pushed the door open. But I only found The Void again. And again. And again.

“Tess!” A girl’s scream made me jump.

I paused, waiting to see if I would hear it again. It was only a matter of seconds before I did. I knew that scream. It was the same little girl who called for our mother for days after she killed herself.

“Louisa!” I yelled back.

“Help me! Please, help me!” she screamed.

“Where are you?” I called out, turning around and around in the room. My eyes were unable to find even the tiniest bit of light. My heart was pounding. I had to find her. I could save her now—I wouldn’t abandon her. Not again. Not ever, ever again.

A long, painful shriek cut through the air.

“Louisa!”

No matter how many times I yelled out for her, she never returned my call.

…

The piano. How could I have forgotten about the piano? The musical instrument that had changed every single aspect of my life. It was funny to think that such an insignificant object could hold such power.

My first moments with James were in this room. He could have turned me in for playing the forbidden instrument, losing myself in the song my father had taught me. My father had given me so much without my knowing it at the time. It was only after reading his letters that I understood how much we were alike.

I wondered if my father knew about the community. Would he have liked living here?

The community.

Wait.

How was this room here in the community?

The door to the piano room opened behind me. I spun around, afraid that whoever was coming through that door wouldn’t be as lenient as James had been. But even though the door stood open, no one was there. I frowned and turned back to face the piano.

My father was sitting on the bench. He looked up at me and smiled. “Come and play with me.”

My feet moved of their own accord. My body was always controlled by music. It made its way inside me and worked into my veins, pulling the blood wherever it so chose, and I never minded it. I always wanted to lose myself in the notes—the only trait I had inherited from my mother.

As I sat down on the bench, my father winked good-naturedly and began to play. My hands moved to the keys and followed his. They would always remember these movements. It was the song of my family, my people. My eyes glazed over as they moved across the keys. The light and the dark blurred into one.

Nothing definable.

Life itself.

Despite the almost melancholic tone of the song, playing with my father felt like a game. With every key I pressed, I slipped into a memory of him and me—those moments where he taught me how to read and play music—and I saw those instances for what they were now. He was preparing me. Every word I read and memorized, every key that my hands touched, was strength.

He had been giving me strength.

I couldn’t help but laugh. I was happy. Supremely and utterly happy. I was so lost in the music that it took me a while to realize my father had stopped playing, but when I did, my hands stilled. I turned my head to see my father staring straight ahead.

“Tess,” he warned.

I looked around the room. We were no longer alone. The chosen ones from my other life were back, were coming to take my father away. “No!” I yelled. I couldn’t let them take him again. They would never give him back. The letters weren’t enough.

I wanted my family.

My father turned to me, his eyes already showing our defeat. He placed a hand on my cheek. “I can’t save you, Tess,” he said quietly.

Suddenly two hands appeared around his neck. With a sickening snap, my father’s head fell forward. I twisted around and came face to face with George.

“I’ll find you,” he whispered, a smile slowing spreading across his face.

“I’m sorry. There’s nothing else I can do.”

“Bullshit. Give her the medicine,” a boy yelled.

“The leaders would never allow it. Besides, I’m not sure if we even have anything that would help her,” the woman replied.

“The leaders wouldn’t allow it? Isn’t she your great hope? Your people’s salvation?” the boy charged. His voice was so bitter, so hurt. Lost.

“She’s not what they expected,” another male’s voice said quietly. It wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar voice, but one I felt like I hadn’t heard in a while.

“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?” the first boy asked.

“It means she isn’t like Sharon. She won’t just…”

Sharon?

The voices became muffled, melting into one another.

“Tess.”

There was only one person who said my name like that… I managed to open my eyes, squinting from the light of the room. I hurt. My whole damn body was sore. A ragged cough rattled my chest. My throat felt like I had swallowed glass.

“She’s awake!” the beautiful boy called out.

I knew that voice. It wasn’t possible.

I needed to touch the boy, the one who owned the voice that spoke to me like no other had ever done before or since. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t lift my arm. It was as if someone had replaced my blood with cement. All I could do was uncurl my hand, which had been clenched in a fist. I cried out at the wave of pain that rushed through me as I stretched out my fingers toward him.

I was locked in some sort of prison, and I wondered if there was even a way to escape it. I needed to reach him. He always seemed so unreachable.

“Are you sure about this?” someone asked the boy.

A wordless exchange took place between the two people. A nod. A handshake. Someone knelt down to me and placed his hand against the inside of my arm. The coldness of his touch burned through me like every pore in my body was infected, decaying. I screamed in agony.

“We need to hurry. This is what I saw. She doesn’t have much time left. Please, Robert,” the boy begged.

James. It had to be him. He was gifted with visions.

“I’ll need to be the one to do it. Things are already bad enough, and if this doesn’t go well…”

Robert. Could James really be talking to Robert?

“I don’t give a damn what they do to me. If she dies—”

Was I dying?

I felt a sharp, piercing pain in my arm, and my eyes began to feel heavy again. The burning sensation that ran across my limbs, invading my very pores, lessened. It was replaced with a strange prickly sensation.

“Don’t you die on me, Tess,” my boy commanded.

My mouth refused to open.

The darkness that had been hunting me for so long had finally caught me.