The Reaping (22 page)

“No, where I was there weren’t many luxuries.”

He must hear the seriousness in my tone and see the hollowness in my eyes. He relents. “That’s too bad. I would have liked to hear about it.”

Jessa’s hand is on his arm, and he turns to her and touches her hair. They seem stuck in time, like the clock hasn’t moved forward a single minute since I left.

“I missed you guys.”

Brant shakes his head. “I missed you too, Terra.” He looks down and purses his lips. “Jessa had it rough at first.” He looks up at me and there’s accusation on his face. “But then she said she understood why you left. I never got there.”

“I don’t know how to explain it.”

“I figured you’d say that.” He laughs, one corner of his mouth higher than the other, but his eyes aren’t smiling. He shakes his head. “You were my best friend, you know. I just thought you’d tell me something like this was going on. I thought maybe you’d say good-bye to me.”

I can’t tell him that we hadn’t really been best friends since he started dating Jessa. Relationships change all the time. “I didn’t think you’d understand.”

“You’re right I didn’t understand.” His voice softens. “But you could have let me try.”

Jack leans closer to me. He hasn’t said a word, but I know he’s trying to strengthen me.

“I never meant to hurt you, Brant. You or Jessa.”

Brant shrugs. “I guess it doesn’t really matter now. You’re home.” He cocks his head and narrows his eyes at me. “You’re not going to stay, are you?”

I shake my head. “There’s too much I need to do up there.”

“What is so important up there that you can’t stay here with your family?”

Brant knows about my family. We were friends for so long—he’s lived it all with me. My voice drops to a whisper, and I’m thankful the voice box picks that up. “My family is up there now.”

Jessa doesn’t even blink—she knows what I mean by it, she knows how much I love her and she also knows that I belong up there. Brant on the other hand, can’t help but flinch. The hurt returns to his face.

“The government up there, they’re horrible and oppressive and cruel. They’ve made this loyalty serum. It makes the people think the government can’t do anything wrong, and I’ve seen it, Brant. I’ve seen what it does to people—good people. I need to go up there and help them if I can.”

He nods. “You’re braver than I’ll ever be. Crazier too. You never were any good at anything down here. Now you’ve found a vocation. Jack, did you know Terra tried medicine once?”

I grin, and Jack scoots forward, ready for a good story.

The doors of the Juice Deck slide open, I look up, and I can’t stop the way my grin goes even wider.

Jessa leans in. “I hope you don’t mind. I invited Kai, Jane, and Madge.”

Of course I don’t mind. I wondered when I’d see them here. Madge’s red curls are cropped close to her head, and her face is more serene than I’ve ever seen it. Jane is hardly recognizable. Her limp blond hair is lustrous and wavy, her cheeks and lips are fuller. And then there’s Kai. She has a baby on her hip, a dark-haired cherub that I just want to cuddle for a while.

“This is Terra,” Kai says as they reach our booth and squeeze in next to us.

The baby looks at me and grins, and the pearl of two tiny teeth greets me.

“She’s so beautiful,” I say, reaching for her. Kai passes her to me, and baby Terra grins and touches my cheek. A thread of drool drops from her mouth onto my hand, and she laughs. Kai grabs a cloth and wipes it up. Mothering suits her; she looks so content.

“She’s mine because of you, Terra. I could say it a million times over and it would still never be enough.”

I blush and wave it off. I’m so used to saying things with gestures and few words, but here there are no words. I don’t deserve Kai’s praise.

Madge slurps a smoothie. “Your voice is pretty kooky. You know that, right?”

“I know.” I draw the words out.

Jane laughs. Her hands rest on her arms folded on the table.

“What’s your vocation?” I ask. I wonder how they put her nimble fingers to use.

“Textiles,” she says.

I make a face.

“It’s okay, really.” She leans forward and her eyes light up. She’s come alive down here. “They told me I could make new designs.”

Jessa nods emphatically. “She’s really good at it too. You know how boring those old clothes were getting. I have a dress she made, and it’s incredible.”

Brant glances up from his food. “The purple one?”

Jessa nods.

“Yup, definitely incredible. The way the skirt hangs . . .” He waggles his eyebrows and Jessa hits his arm.

Jane laughs. “It’s nice being able to try new things and not be told to sew the same gray and yellow clothes over and over again.”

The mention of the labor camp cuts through the happy mood like a razor, and Kai shifts Terra to sit on her other leg. Kai presses her lips to her cheek, and Terra squirms, grabbing for her mother’s hair.

Madge clears her throat. “We don’t talk about it much anymore. There’s nothing to talk about really. It’s over and done.”

The weight on me hangs. It’s not over and done, though, not for me. There’s so much I still need to do. I feel Madge’s eyes on me, the same intense stare I felt so many times in the camp.

“What are you planning? You going back?”

I can’t meet their eyes. To them, I just got here. Jack runs a hand along my arm. His touch asks a question neither of us has had the courage to ask yet.

Jane finally breaks the silence. “It’s okay, Terra. We figured you’d go back. We just didn’t know when.”

“I need to talk to my father first.”

“Good luck,” Jessa says. “He’s different since you left.”

“How much worse can it be?”

The way Jessa’s eyes take me in and shine at me, I know I won’t like what she’ll say. She looks so tired.

“You know Gram and I moved out a month ago.”

Everyone quiets around me, succumbing to fidgeting fingers, wandering eyes, worrying about food and that thread on her pants and that spot on his shirt. They’ve heard about all this, and I’m the last to know.

“Why?”

“He’s harder to live with. I know that’s hard to believe.” She laughs but there’s no trace of humor in it. “After you left he threw himself into his vocation and closed off to everything else. Including me and Gram.”

“So you—what?—just left him?” I have no right to say it after what I did, but I can’t imagine Jessa abandoning him like that.

She sighs and tucks her hair behind her ear. “You don’t have to make me feel worse than I already do.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

She puts a hand up. “It’s okay. I ask myself the same thing every day. Sometimes I think he’s better and worse alone. He doesn’t worry about hurting anyone else this way. But he does get lonely. I wonder.” She looks down and picks at her napkin. “I wonder if I should tell him about Gaea.”

“What?”

She sighs and puts her napkin down. “I know, I know. It sounds like holding a bomb or something, just waiting for it to go off. But if he knew she was here, if he knew she’s been watching this whole time—”

“Yeah, watching and not wanting to say a single word to him? I don’t know if it’s a good idea, Jess. I can barely talk to her.”

“I’ve talked to her.”

Jack’s head has been whipping back and forth this whole time. “What does Gaea have to do with it?”

I look at him. “Jess never told you?”

“Told me what?”

I open my mouth, but the words stumble in my throat. You’d think they would spill out now that I can finally talk again, but they catch and I cough. I rub my eyes with the heels of my hands. Jack waits patiently.

“She’s our mother.”

His eyes widen.

“Your
mother
?” Madge whistles a long note. “The crazy lady from the sub? The one who cut out your tongue, right? She’s your mom?”

What a tangled life I lead. I nod.

Jack’s voice is quiet. “Wow, Terra. I thought you had told me everything.”

I grab his hand, ready to explain, ready with the reasons why I won’t ever hold anything back but why I hadn’t told him this yet, when he shakes his head.

“No, no, I’m not upset that you didn’t tell me. I just didn’t realize it was so . . . messy.”

I laugh like Jessa had. “Messy is putting it lightly.”

“I knew your mom had left. I didn’t realize who she became.”

The conversation moves along without me. Jessa explains what happened all those years ago. She explains what price I paid to leave. She explains what Gaea has been doing to help. My head is so fogged over, I can barely follow the words as they circle around me. My brain catches on the one idea—that maybe Gaea and my dad should talk—and everything else fades to the background. She’s already walked out once. What’s the worse that could happen? No, wrong question. How much more can my dad take?

Chapter Seventeen

“Next destination: the vocational quarter.”

The transport slows to a stop and the doors hiss open. I thrum my fingers against my pants. Come on, come on, I will the doors. I’ve spent the entire ride from the Juice Deck trying to focus on Jack’s face while feeling the stares on my back. While turning and saying, “Why yes, I’m the freak-show daughter of your beloved speaker. Want to line up and shake hands?” had a certain appeal to it (especially if I switched voices on the voice box), it wouldn’t do me any favors. So Jack whispered nonsense to me, trying to make me laugh.

Jack holds my hand as we step out and head to Field #3.

I see a figure through the glass of the dome. He’s crouched among the rows of strawberries, tending the plants. It’s so familiar to the first work I ever did with him—pulling weeds in the oca fields—that I can’t help but think of that day. I remember the smell of rain and green plants. I remember the way the sweat trickled down my back as we worked in the hazy summer sun. I think of the way Dave smiled at me and the way it was so easy to laugh with him. I haven’t laughed as much lately. As crazy as it sounds, life was simpler then.

Jack touches a hand to my back. “I’ll let you go talk to him alone. If he talks to you at all. Don’t expect too much.”

I nod and press my hand to the screen that opens the door. The light scans over my palm.

“Access denied.”

My old field. The one vocation I might have stuck with—I tolerated it more than the others, even if I wasn’t very good at it—and now I can’t get in. I wonder how long it took security to remove my name from the access lists. My hand slips from the glass plate.

Jack clears his throat and steps beside me. “Let me try.” His voice is hushed. He knows how awkward this is, to have him let me into my own home. The light scans his hand, turns green, and the door slides open.

He shrugs his shoulders and one side of his mouth turns up. “I have access to just about everywhere. A doctor needs to be able to get in to help people.”

“I know.” I almost make myself believe it, but my voice cracks. I really am a stranger here.

I step into the pod and take a radiation suit from its hook. My breath catches as I pull the zipper up to my chin. I’ve done so many things since that day months ago—months? It feels like years—when I zipped up my suit and tended corn for the last time with Jessa. I never expected to feel the same clench of claustrophobia in my chest with the suit on. I put the visor down and step into the field.

I never tended strawberries here or at the settlement. The rows and rows of short plants with white flowers stretch out. The soil is soft, and my feet leave prints behind me as I carefully tread down the rows. The suit’s climate control kicks in and a breath of cool air travels down my limbs. I’m so used to sweating that this actually feels cold. I’m ten feet from Dave when he stops digging.

“I wondered when you’d come see me.” His voice is hollow. He doesn’t even look at me. He just says it, waits a beat, and then keeps raking through the row.

I stop dead in my tracks. I don’t know what would be worse—Dave not speaking to me at all, or this.

I decide to use the voice box. Writing words and signing things would take far too long for the conversation we need to have. “I would have come sooner. I’ve been busy.”

Dave snorts. “Doing what? Convincing those idiots that it’s finally time to do something? Good luck.” His tone is so sharp it could almost cut me. “Nice voice, by the way. Is that what you sounded like before?”

“No. This voice is much sexier.”

He turns enough so that I can see his face through his visor. His lips turn up in a wry smile, but I can tell he doesn’t find it very funny. He turns to the ground and pokes the dirt with his spade. “This place is unbelievable. No weeds. I barely have to do anything to make these grow.”

I kneel beside him and touch one of the plants. “I wasn’t very good at agriculture. I wasn’t good at much of anything.”

“So I’ve heard. Jessa visited me for a while after . . . ” The sentence hangs between us, and I can fill it in by myself.
After Mary died.
Dave’s eyes are clouded, but he shakes his head and the storm in his face clears. “Jessa told me how many vocations you burned through. Was that because everything down here just isn’t
real
?” Dave sits back and lets his hands fall uselessly at his sides.