16. DEAL
Lawson—
The door to The Dance falls shut behind Aidan. Sound can’t possibly carry to where I stand at the end of the street, but that thud still echoes in my cells. One last resounding slam. The constant throbbing bass barely registers. I’m alone, and isolation feels like emptiness feels like silence.
Silence, it turns out, hurts like shit. Stings worse than the bruises and aches left over from my fight with the A. Worse than the blows themselves. Worse than the shame of getting beat down, unable to fight off my attackers.
The only thing more unendurable was Aidan giving way to fists and boots, while I just stood there. But at least that night I had something to punch.
Now my skin seems to peel away in the night air. Breeze hits with the shock of ice or fire. Clothes offer no protection. There’s no one to fight, no way to make it stop.
I’ve lost Aidan.
My vision turns grainy. I reach out, needing walls to hold me up. Pockmarked brick abrades my palm as I stumble down the uneven sidewalk. My feet take me home.
I pass blindly through the main hall of the Barracks. My knees and abdomen twinge as I run upstairs; parting gifts from the A, reminders of what Aidan suffers every single day. I press my bruised knuckles against the smooth marble wall. I would have given anything, absolutely everything, to take all that pain and make it mine instead.
In our tiny room, Tab sits on a sleeping bag, eating a handful of puffed rice by lantern light. She’s put on weight since I found her. She’s taller than Lin now and fills out one of my old t-shirts, but jeans never seem to fit right on her pear-shaped body. Her ankles show between sneakers and frayed pant legs. She’s poking at a second red t-shirt with a threaded needle.
I force words past the tightness in my throat. “I thought you were sleeping.”
“Nope. Xavier taught me to sew,” Tab announces. Beads of blood form on her— No, that one’s. Get it right. Crimson pinpricks stand out on that one’s fingertips.
“I can see that. What are you making?” I ask.
“A death shirt.”
Sight sharpens. The sheen of the sleeping bags. The gloss of Tab’s black hair. The needle. “A what?”
“A death shirt. It’s for you, to let Death know it’s not your turn.”
“Oh, honey.” I sink onto my sleeping bag and reach for the puffed rice to have something to do with my hands. “Is this because of what happened in the square? The A weren’t trying to kill me. It was just...” I crush kernels to powder between my fingers. Words, which usually come so easily, suddenly have no meaning. “Sometimes there just aren’t any good options, honey, and you have to choose. I made a choice to protect Aidan, just like I look after you. I knew what the price was going to be, but I didn’t mind because I could live with the temporary pain of getting beat up, but I couldn’t live with—” I swallow and still can’t say it. Bloody shit. “I’ll never let anything bad happen to either of you, okay?”
But that’s not enough. I need to be able to promise that I’ll never let anything happen to me, and I can’t. Not anymore.
“Okay.” Tab fiddles with the shirt, bottom lip quivering.
Obviously I mangled that explanation. I dust the crumbs into the puffed rice bag and reach out. I wrap a hand around the back of Tab’s neck and pull that one closer for a hug. Tab falls against my side, warm and heavy as the promise of failure.
Another person leaning on me.
I have to pull myself together; it’s clear what I must do. My hands tremble at the thought. I’ve fought the urge for so long, haven’t even wanted to consider it, but I have a responsibility. I need to be at my best, for Tab and Aidan and all the rest. So I tuck Tab in and then head out for a run.
I jog out to the Boundary, then sprint back through the abandoned streets on the outer edge of D-town. Each time I stop to do pushups I look around, checking—always checking—for nonexistent pursuers.
Outside the building where I found Tab, I fill my lungs with relatively clean air. Then I crawl through the busted window into what’s left of the restaurant. Night bugs skitter and crunch underfoot as I cross the pitch-dark dining room. In the kitchen, dizziness forces me to inhale. Dust clogs my nostrils, making me sneeze.
Soot coats the charred metal handle and sticks to my fingers when I open the door of the walk-in fridge. I stand back to avoid that first blast of stench. Tab long ago ate the last of the rotten old-world food, but the air in the fridge remains stagnant. My empty stomach shifts restlessly as I prop open the door. I run my fingers along the floor until I find my flashlight. Click. The beam slides over my neatly stacked supplies.
Threadbare clothes and patched-up backpacks. Superfoods. Ammo, grenades, guns, bombs. If Aidan knew…
I stride into the fridge, stepping carefully to avoid the corpses of roaches that must have snuck in last time I opened the door. Stupid insects. Why didn’t they realize they’d suffocate?
I grab a protein bar and force myself to chew and swallow. Aidan never has to know. Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe that one can remember me well at the end.
My hands twitch toward the ammunition, but I force myself to unwrap a second protein bar and stash it in my pocket for Tab. I hide both wrappers in my airtight trash container, and only then do I let myself reach for the stacked boxes of ammo. I shift them aside. My hands shake as I tear open the lid to the last box.
Then I’m staring dry mouthed at the little drawstring bag inside. Stacked bullets peek from underneath the hemp sack. That seems fitting. It’s tantamount to treason to have this bag in D-town. Even the Real Deal wouldn’t condone it. Perhaps especially the Real Deal.
I lift the pouch and rub the fabric between my fingers. I touch each of the small cloth-covered objects inside the bag. One-two-three. One for me, one for Tab, one for…
I swallow. It’s been over a year since I touched this bag. Dependence—on anything—is a handicap I can’t afford.
Just this once.
I tear at the drawstring, broken nails catching on the coarse fibers. I lift one earbud and weigh it in my open palm. The circular logo on the dial catches the glow from the flashlight.
GG
I set aside the pouch. My fingers clench, but I slacken my grip before I crush the tiny miracle of technology. With a twist of this dial, I can feel anything I want. I can be happy, like before I met Aidan. The flashlight beam jerks as I tremble, illuminating my fist like a strobe. The tattoos on the backs of my fingers spell out an order.
DEAL
I jam my knuckles against my teeth and taste dirt. I bow my head, shoulders curling, muscles tensing as sobs tear from my throat.
There, in the fetid air, I heave and gasp and choke for an embarrassing length of time.
When it’s over, I look down at the earbud and jerk in horror, fingers closing, hiding the GG technology.
Not today.
I can’t afford to lose my edge, the aura of violence that draws D-towners like flies to honey. Tab and Lin—and Aidan, even if that one doesn’t know it—need me to be dangerous. Real Dealer Lawson. D-town Lawson. Violent Lawson.
I drop the earbud back into the pouch and, after a second, slide the whole thing into my pocket. Just in case.
I return to the Barracks to find Lin and Dart sparring in the dimly-lit common area. I pause in the doorway, holding open the beaded curtain. The scene is so normal that the ache in my chest eases slightly. It might just be heartbreak, the kind of thing people survive every day.
The Barracks used to be a bank. Now snores echo in the vaulted space. Here and there, adopted siblings whisper around a stove, but most bedrolls lie empty. The Dance is the place to be this time of night, especially for couples.
My hands flex. Don’t think of Aidan.
Lin is in the middle of a spinning kick. She’s a tad drunk, but so is her opponent. She lands a glancing blow to Dart’s hip. Tall and skinny, he sways like a tree in high winds, dancing backward to keep his balance. Then he shifts wei
ght to his back foot and flows into a perfect roundhouse.
“Lawson,” Lin calls out, ducking.
There’s a flurry of blows that ends with Dart on his back and Lin standing over him. She doesn’t like to talk about her past—who does?—but word gets around. Lin’s father was some kind of martial arts master. She learned to fight while learning to walk. She must have walked early, because he died when she was four.
She brawls with the kind of messy instinct I could only wish for. Dart, on the other hand, fights like he learned from a textbook. We three are some of the top fighters in D-town.
Xavier, leaning against the wall, ripped chest and arms bare under black denim overalls, is better than any of us. If Real Dealers were pack animals like the A, he would be our leader—and I like to think I’d be second-in-command. Apparently Xavier’s been waiting for a turn to spar, because he grins as Dart climbs to his feet.
Dart moves to dust off his pants, checks himself, and gives Lin a mock bow instead. She blows him a kiss, then beckons to Xavier.
I wind my way through the camps to join Dart on the outskirts of the sparring area. Bedding and camp kitchens have been pushed aside with no regard for who owns what. It doesn’t matter; Real Dealers never forget what belongs to us. I find Lin’s rain bucket and pour some water into a rusted can. Dart is watching from the corner of his eye, so I force something like a smile, lips pulling back from my teeth, and he looks back to the combatants.
“Hey, Xavier,” I call. “Thanks for the Death Shirt.”
“Huh?” His gaze flicks away from Lin for just an instant and then back. “What are the stakes?” he asks her as they square off.
I plop down on the scrunched sleeping bag, holding the can.
Lin rolls her shoulders. She’s got a short skirt over her denim leggings, and it’s hitched up to give her legs room to move. The leather doesn’t cover much. “I thought we were fighting for your pride.”
Xavier says, “If I win I get to kiss you.”
Lin’s expression doesn’t change. “Sure, but if I win I get to cut off your balls.” She pauses. “Care to change the stakes?”
It says something for the value we place on agreements in D-town that Xavier answers in a faint voice. “Uhh…we fight for an item of choice from each other’s supplies, as usual?”
Lin nods and raises her fists, then grins slowly. “You know, if you’d have taken that bet, I would’ve let you do a lot more than kiss me. Any guy willing to take a risk like that deserves to put his balls to good use.”
Xavier chokes, then chokes again when she kicks him in the crotch. I wince in sympathy even while giving a toast with my full can. Tab chooses that moment to settle onto the sleeping bag next to me, clutching the red t-shirt.
“But why does Xavier mind if Lin plays with his balls?” Tab asks.
I’d taken a gulp from my water can, so it’s my turn to choke. Bloody acid rain. I double over coughing, which gives me an extra minute to come up with a really good reply.
I manage, “I thought you were sleeping.”
“Nope. I finished your shirt.”
“Oh…thank you.” I accept the balled up t-shirt, and it unrolls onto my lap. My fingers clutch at the fabric. My throat convulses, like swallowing a mouthful of cut glass.
Tab has stitched, in black thread, a perfect replica of Aidan’s tattoo.