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“I think my
father's trying to arrange a marriage for me with Jim McFarland,” I say.

She shakes her
head and puts her mug down. “You can’t marry him,” she says quietly.

“I don’t know
if I’ll have much of a choice—”

“No, I'm
serious.” Carmen touches my hand, which sends a thrill of pleasure up my arm
and into my chest. “He's really evil. We always have a choice. Please promise
me that no matter what, you won't marry him.”

“Well, my dad
is the one—”

“Then let your
dad marry him.” Carmen sips the last of her coffee and wipes her cherry lips
with a black napkin. “Well, I’ve got to get back to the Goldman’s and work on
my
Perp
League assignments. I can't even tell you how
fulfilling it is, working on projects that will make sure people like me are
put in their place.”

“Is that really
so bad?” I blurt suddenly. “What's so bad about the
Perp
League? I mean, if they're just exercising their opinions, what's the big deal?
People don't have to do what they say, do they?”

Carmen stares
in disbelief. “You're not kidding, are you?” she asks gently.

Andi
shakes her head. “It's true. They're kind of…fanatic,
right, but just like a community service organization. They get scholarships
for people, right? I mean, what else do they do? Host carnivals and blood
drives and stuff? How evil is that?”

Carmen sighs. “You
guys...you just don't know. I'm not surprised. Nobody talks about it, really.”

“Talks about
what?”

She purses her
lips, then leans forward so her face is closer to ours. “Have you ever met
anyone else who's Perpendicular?”

Andi
thinks for a moment, then answers, “No.”

“Have you ever
wondered why you haven't?”

I answer. “Well,
I just figured there weren't very many of them. I mean, they are a really slim
minority. What, is it one in every one thousand people or something like that?”

“It's one in
one hundred.” Carmen crosses her arms across her chest. “One in one hundred.
And the reason you never see any is because as soon as the League or the Church
finds out, they're gone. They disappear. Nobody hears from them again.”

Andi
stares at her, then laughs. “Oh, c'mon. Are you trying
to say that the Church actually kills them? Where are they, then? Do they just
dump '
em
in a swamp or something? How could that many
people just cease to exist?”

“They do it,”
Carmen says quietly. “Let me ask you this: What do you think happens to someone
who is a
Perp
? What do they tell you happens?”

I look at her,
bewildered. “Well, legally, they have two options. They can go through
counseling, then come back to their home community, or they can relocate.”

Carmen sighs
impatiently. “Okay. So what does that mean, 'counseling'? They talk to them
until they're cured and become Parallel? What?”

Andi
frowns. “Well, yeah...isn't that what happens?”

I’m watching
Carmen, trying to decide if she’s really a making this up, or if she’s somehow
telling us some horrible truth. “What do they do with them?”

Carmen glances
over her shoulder again. “Here's what really happens, and I know because I saw
it happen. Once they’re sure about you, they give you a choice. You can be
reconditioned, like a broken piece of machinery, and what that means is that
they... neutralize you.” A shadow of utter distaste crosses her face.

“Well, that's
no big deal,” I say, too loudly. “Neutralizing just means that they retrain you
to be attracted to your own gender, like it's supposed to be, right? That's not
anything sinister.”

“How do you
think they do that?” Carmen's voice breaks. “They neutralize you. It's like
what they do with a dog or a cat that they want to keep from reproducing. They
just take away your gender, your sexuality, so you don't have any impulses. At
all.” Tears form in the corners of her eyes, and she dabs angrily at them with
a napkin.

A cold chill
seeps down my spine. I don’t want to believe her, but somehow I know what she
says is true. “Did they do that to someone you know?”

She nods.

“What happened?”
Andi
asks.

Carmen shakes
her head. “I don't want to talk about it. Just, I do know that it happens.”

Almost as if
she’s afraid to bring it up,
Andi
asks, “So, what's
the relocation?”

Carmen sniffs,
then answers. “They send them away. To a work camp, usually in some obscure,
easily hidden location.”

“A work camp?”
I ask. “That can't be right. How could they just send people somewhere they
don't want to go?”

“Read the
Constitution. Fourth amendment. ‘No person shall be held to answer for a
capital, or otherwise infamous crime, except in cases that present a public
danger; Perpendicular cases are subject to immediate detainment without
representation due to the extreme threat to national security and the social
structure of our Nation’. The government is controlled by the Church – no
matter what they say, there’s no equality of Church and State. It’s all run by
what God has planned. And when the Church decides you’re dangerous, they can
make you disappear, because there’s no one to stop them.”

 
Something inside me wells up, panicking. I
can’t believe her. I just can’t.

 
Andi
snorts. “You
sound like one of those left-wing liberal conspiracy theory nuts. With the
signs and the tents and the stinky sweaters.” She shakes her head. “Don’t you
trust anybody?”

“I trust people
I know.” Her eyes blaze at me. “I don’t really know either of you. I’m going on
instinct. And if you tell anyone about our conversation, I can make it bad for
you. I have connections.”

The fear sits
in my stomach, eating at me. “But…they can’t just take people away for no
reason.”

“Don't you get
it?” Carmen hisses, eyes blazing. “They’re cases. They aren't people anymore.
They have no rights. They're just an inconvenient aberration. They mess up the
gene pool. They drag everybody down. They're not human.”

 
They're not human
. The words hit me with
the force of a silent bullet. The idea, the feeling, that I’d never quite fit
into this world suddenly comes clear, shifts into razor focus. In a heartbeat I
revisit all the times in the past when I had known I was different, when kids
on the playground had pushed me against other boys and I felt nothing, when I’d
seen ads in magazines of fresh-faced girls and focused on them a bit too
intently, when I’d had dreams of feminine lips and eyes and soft curtains of
hair brushing my cheek.

“I'm
Perpendicular,” I whisper, almost involuntarily.

Carmen's thin,
brown hand covers mine, and she smiles shyly. “I had a feeling you were.”

I stare into
her blue eyes, forgetting that
Andi’s
sitting there. “But
what you said about those camps and all that. That can’t be true. I mean, my
father is involved in this. He’s an ass, but he’s not evil. He’d never condone
hurting people.”

“I know it
sounds crazy, like some wild conspiracy theory.” Carmen stirs her coffee and
gazes into the cup. “If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t believe it either. And
your father…he knows all about it.”

Andi
rolls her eyes. “Come on. You expect us to believe
that people we’ve grown up with, people we’ve known all our lives, are really
monsters who dispose of people who are different?”

Carmen is
silent. She carefully lays the spoon beside the cup. “I don’t think we should
see each other while I’m here. I’ve said way too much.”

“How long are
you here?”

“Just till
winter break.” Her lip trembles slightly. “I needed to get away. This was the
only way I could do it. As soon as I’m eighteen, I’m gone. I don’t know how,
but I’m going to get away.”

I feel sick.
The thought of losing her now that I’ve finally figured out what’s going on
terrifies me, but the thought of being with her…that’s almost as bad. But this
isn’t who I am. It isn’t who I’m supposed to be. “What do we do?” I ask
helplessly.

Carmen licks
her lips. “I hadn’t counted on…anything like this. I can’t get involved with
anyone.” But the way she looks at me…I don’t think she really means it. Or she
wishes it were true, but it’s not.

 
Carmen grabs her purse and touches my hand,
which sends a bolt of blue lightning directly to my solar plexus. Her eyes are
determined and hard. “I wish things were different. I’m sorry. Be careful.” I
watch her walk away and realize, with a wave of intense sadness, that I can’t
see her again.

I can’t.

“Chris?”
Andi
waves a hand in front of my face. “You’re staring at
the door. Kind of looks a little weird.”

I focus on her.
“Sorry.”

She leans
forward, eyes squinted in concern. “What are you going to do now?”

I stare into
the remains of my coffee drink. “Nothing.”

 
“Nothing? What do you mean?” She snaps her
fingers near my ear. “You still there?”

“
Andi
, there’s nothing I can do. I can’t…be…that.”

“But you are.”

“No. I won’t
be. I’ll choose not to be.”

She leans back
in her chair and folds her arms across her chest. “You’re just going to pretend
this never happened?”

“Nothing
happened.”

My soul is
screaming at me. A small, angry voice inside pounds on invisible walls as it
sinks deeper into a windowless room. Remember the feeling! It screams. Remember
how alive you felt! But I push it down, harder, further, lock it up, cement
over it.

“Chris. You
can’t just pretend—”

“I
gotta
go.” I pick up my cup, drain it, and put it in a blue
plastic bin near the door. “See you later.”

I feel her
staring at me as I leave, wondering if I’ve gone crazy or stayed sane, or if I
even know what I’m doing, which I don’t. “Stay here,” I tell
Andi
, who stares at me, mouth hanging open. I dart out of
the café and push past a knot of stupid kids. Carmen is already out the gate
and walking quickly away.

“Carmen,” I
call. She stops. She doesn’t turn.

I trot up to
her. “What you said—”

She still has
her back to me. “I didn’t say anything,” she whispers. She keeps walking, but
more slowly, so I follow. The voices in the café courtyard fade. When we’re out
of range, she stops again, and turns to face me. Her cheeks are wet.

I brush a tear
from her cheek. “Why are you crying?”

Her eyes. There
is a world in them, some alien world that’s both paradise and death. Something
stabs at me when I see the dampness on her cheek. Something breaks in me.

She licks her
lips and glances down at the swirling red-brown-gold leaves. “I don’t know why
I said those things.” She checks my face for a reaction. “I was just talking. I
didn’t mean anything.”

“You think I’m
going to tell someone.” I guess it makes sense; she doesn’t really know me.
She’s just trusted me with her biggest secret…hell, her life. “I wouldn’t. I
wouldn’t ever.”

She shakes her
head as if she wants to believe me. “We can’t…there can’t be anything…” It’s as
if the words in her mind are fighting to come out, but she’s shutting them
down. “Forget that you met me.” She turns again and walks.

I should let
her go. I know she’s right.

“Wait.”

She stops.
She stops
. She feels the same way.

I approach
slowly. In my head, I know she’s right. I stand at her left shoulder, just
behind her. “I just wanted to tell you….thank you.”

She whirls
around, her face a
stormcloud
. “Are you kidding?”

“No.” It’s my
turn to stare down at the leaves. “I know we can’t…do anything. But, I haven’t
felt like this. Ever. I didn’t think I could.”

The hardness in
her face falls away, like a wax impression that melts and disappears. “What do
we do?” she whispers.

“Nothing.” I
smile wanly. “That’s what we get. That’s what we do. But you can remember one
thing: you woke me up, just for a minute. I’ll remember that.”

“That’s not
going to be enough,” she says.

“It’s going to
have to be.” I walk away, leaving her there alone on the sidewalk. I know that
what I am is unacceptable. I can’t be a Perpendicular, and if I am one, I’ll
change that. I have to change that. But I will remember that moment, feeling
real…forever.

When I get
home, Warren and David are in the middle of a heated argument. I turn the brass
door handle and hear, “You have no idea what you're doing!” but I can’t tell
which one of them says it. Warren always tells me that old married couples
start sounding like each other after a few years.

The fight is
happening in the piano room, which is usually reserved for company and
important church meetings. Warren sits on the burgundy velvet chaise (sixteenth
century, very expensive) and David stands against the marble fireplace as if
posing for a magazine photo. I hate when they fight, but at this moment it
distracts me from my own problem.
 

“Oh, Chris,”
Warren says, suddenly cheerful. “We were just talking about you.”

“Really?” I
feel oddly numb. On the way home, I was so worried that they’d be able to see
that something was different about me, like the dirty secret would be revealed
on my skin or in my scent. Now I realize that to them, I look exactly the same
as I did this morning. They can’t tell that I’m some other person now, some
freak of nature. I sit stiffly next to Warren, waiting.

He pats my
knee. “We were talking about this arrangement.” As Warren says the word “arrangement,”
he glances over at David, disapprovingly. “David spoke with you about it. What
do you think?”