Demolition Love

34. STAND

  Aidan—

  The GeeGee must have stopped their advance. The guards hold their peace through the chant. Maybe they think we are responding—or accepting; it is an acceptance song—but on the third repetition that changes.

  “Advancin—ooof.” Lin cuts off.

  The song stutters as they hit our outer layer and the kids there stagger back, smishing those of us in the middle, but before I can urge everyone to keep singing, the chant picks up again, stronger than before.

  “All behind you, let it go!” we shout.

  Crow stumbles away and comparatively cool air moves into the space between us. Where did the breathing room—? Oh crap. The guards aren’t attacking the outer kids so much as tearing them away, trying to break our huddle.

  “Hold onto each other!” I yell, effectively ending both the chant and my anonymity as I grab onto the first body my hands touch. I wrap my arms around a muscular middle and find myself looking into the wide blue eyes of Sevens. I stumble back, grip loosening, and then surge forward to grab him again.

  We’re all one tribe, now.

  His arm comes around my waist and he pulls me close in an awkward almost-hug. “Um, it’s Aidan, right?”

  Ridiculous, but I nod.

  “Lock your arms, we all have to be connected!” I yell, making Sevens flinch at the volume, and then I tell him, “You should be further out.”

  He blushes. “You know what, you’re right.”

  He moves off. I grab the High Priestess and the Bishop and more arms wrap around me from behind. We cling to one another, the survivors from D-town.

  Guards yank us apart but no sooner have they torn loose the outer layer and turned to the next than the outer layer is back. We are going to force them to violence. This is only working because they don’t want to destroy us. They want to keep us—who knows why?—but soon they will get bored.

  Frustration rises in the air, palpable, that feeling of throwing yourself against something and having no effect. It’s the way D-town feels against the GeeGee, and so is familiar. Like children fighting grownups. That’s how we’ve felt since the earthquake, but as I look around, new truth dawns.

  We are not children. Not anymore. Not completely grown, maybe. We are in-between, and the GeeGee has set itself up to fail because if they’ve brought us here to teach us something, well, you can stick a D-towner in a desk, but you can’t make a teenager learn.

  The first cry comes then, thin and pained, all the more shocking from my position sheltered in the center of the group. The sound squashes my moment of triumph and throws me back into reality.

  All at once Xavier shoves in beside me. “We should fight back.”

  “We can’t. They’ll crush us.”

  “They’re crushing us anyway.”

  I shake my head. “No, not yet.”

  Thumps and cries from the outer layer grow louder.

  “What should we do?” the Bishop pleads, pulling at his button-down shirt.

  I look at him in shock, realizing I expected the leaders to start giving their own orders as soon as things got rough. Sure, our resistance would ultimately fail, but at least it wouldn’t be my fault.

  Now it’s all on me. The headache from earlier comes back worse.

  “Refuse to sit,” I say. “They’ll put us in the chairs. Resist, non-violently.”

  This becomes, “Resist the chairs,” as the whisper passes away, and I have an image of D-towners fighting off green chairs.

  Of course, resist means different things to different people, and sounds of violence escalate as the more aggressive tribes fight not to be stuck in the chairs. The crowd shifts and I catch a glimpse of the goings-on. It’s almost funny. Over a hundred teenagers throwing toddler-like temper tantrums. My gaze locks on Tara, who’s made herself limp and heavy, like she’s pretending to sleep, while a guard struggles to lift and wedge her upright in the chair. She’s got the right approach.

  “Go limp! Go limp!” I yell.

  Despite the situation, some D-town femme still has the energy to yell an obscene comment.

  I follow my own advice, and those of us still in the huddle collapse into a kind of entwined pile. It becomes obvious this isn’t the best idea when the weight of the kids on top compresses my bruised ribs, stealing my breath. An elbow connects with my mouth and I taste my own blood as I take sips of air, trying to focus on my pounding heart, listening to the panicked heartbeats of those closest to me.

  The beats thump and sputter like a racing chorus of drums. If we all just stopped and listened, our hearts would sync—the GeeGee’s too—no pulse necessary. We’re each alone with heart and breath, and therefore alive. Why can’t that be enough for the GeeGee?

  I close my eyes in rage but only for a second. An instant’s all I have, because a pulse will come. It’s just a matter of time, and our hearts will sync then, but that will count for nothing.

  We only have now to make a difference.

  I shove to get free of the pile and my elbow overextends as the Bishop is lifted away. He hovers above me a moment, suspended at an impossible angle, holding my gaze as his shirt rides up. A GeeGee guard has him by the shirt collar. The Bishop blanches as the guard drags him away and shoves him in a chair. He looks away when the guard comes back for me.

  I shut my eyes and pretend my body is made of water. No resistance. The guard drags me to the desk easily enough but water can’t be made to sit. My body slides boneless from the chair again and again. Water doesn’t jerk when a hand closes on my throat, cutting off air. Water doesn’t tense when I tumble out of the chair and my temple hits the corner of the desk with a dizzying burst of pain.

  Water ends up facedown over a chair. I hang there, limp, but it doesn’t matter; all the other D-towners are already seated.

  “Hello, everyone,” the GeeGee femme says, like she’s welcoming a class of kindergartners. “My name is Miss Corrigan. I will be your teacher.”

  My view in this position is limited to holey D-towner shoes and overwhelmingly green floor. I go ahead and sit up.

  Sevens occupies the desk to my left. The skin over his cheekbone is slit and he has a nosebleed, which he does nothing about. Blood dribbles over his lips to his chin. Of course he was one of the ones who fought. I shake my head and he gives me a rueful smile, then lowers his gaze.

  I consider his wounds. A guard obviously struck him directly. My guard got so frustrated he was swearing, but he never hit me. They must still be under orders to only strike in self-defense. We can use that, if I can just get everyone to stay non-violent. Too bad it’s a bit like getting cougars to eat vegetarian.

  Miss Corrigan is spouting some crap about how pleased she is that we “decided” to join her class. What will she try to teach us? If only I knew that, I might be able to come up with a better strategy. There’s a more immediate problem, though. Now that we’re separated in our desks, if I attempt to lead, I’ll be singled out.

  I’m the only Bee. I have to survive for when the pulses come. I don’t know what I’ll do then, but I’ll be the only one who can do anything.

  Sevens is back to watching me. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it feels like he’s thinking the same thing. He opens his mouth and I shake my head, but of course he ignores me.

  “We won’t learn shit from you.” Sevens’s voice carries.

  He glares at the “teacher” but, around the room, D-towners cross their arms. They know the information was meant for them.

  Miss Corrigan smiles. “Let’s just start with a writing test. I bet none of you can write.”

  Does she seriously think we’re going to fall for that? But there’s some angry shifting and a guy shouts, “The Logic can write!”

  Stupid, stupid.

  Maybe he realizes his mistake because he stares down at his desk.

  Guards circulate, distributing the “quiz” while Miss Corrigan hovers at the front of the room. She’s obviously wary of us. If I were an A or Real Dealer, I
’d know how to use that.

  No, don’t think about the Real Deal right now, especially not that Real Dealer.

  To distract myself, I glance down at the sheet of bamboo paper on my desk.

  NAME (First, Last):

  GENDER: M/F

  I will myself to stop reading there, but my gaze has already moved on.

  MOTHER’S NAME:

  FATHER’S NAME:

  A lump fills my throat. No, not this, not on top of Lawson’s disappearance and my own captivity, but the dream is fresh. I remember the sound of those black bags zipping closed. I should have climbed out from between the cars, made sure I saw their faces one last time.

  My parents died to keep me out of GeeGee hands, and now here I am. I can’t let this happen. I won’t.

  “I don’t know how to spell,” I say.

  “That’s okay,” Corrigan says, misunderstanding the emotion in my voice, probably on purpose. “You’ll learn that here.”

  Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.

  And I get it.

  The night Lawson rescued me from Sevens, the night Kylie thought I was meant to die, I didn’t survive so I could help D-town resist the pulses. Who knows if I even can? No, I lived for this.

  My parents gave their lives to stop these monsters from taking over their world, and my world may be smaller, but I can make the same sacrifice. I can set an example.

  And if they make an example of you?

  Let them. I should be the target. I’m the only one here who understands how to bear suffering without fighting it. I shove the paper to the floor and stand up. Sevens reaches for my hand but I sidestep.

  “Your paper,” I say, “is missing something. There’s no spot for in-between.”

  Miss Corrigan’s lips press flat. “There’s no such thing as an in-between.”

  “Yes. There. Is.” I can’t let this slide. I don’t know why but it matters. My identity suddenly matters so strongly I would die. “I will not fill out that form unless you put in-between on it.”

  Miss Corrigan’s chin comes up and her lip curls. I feel my fellow D-towners draw in a breath and hold it.

  “Hansen,” Miss Corrigan says.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Find out what the child is.” She turns away, unclipping her comm from her belt.

  The guard steps out of line and advances on me, and my gaze flies to the door. For a startling moment, I have a vision of Lawson bursting in at the last moment, like he always seems to do, but that fantasy is stolen by the guard’s rough hand, shoving under the waistband of my pants. He feels around.

  With an extra thirty minutes to prepare, I could probably coax my muscles to relax, to accept this invasion, but now I can’t stop them from tightening. It doesn’t matter, really, except as the tiny defeat it is to me, as a Bee. I can keep from fighting back or even from wiggling to escape, but it’s out of my power to prevent this last battle, my body’s rejection of what’s happening to me. I don’t breathe as he makes more thorough contact than strictly necessary and his hand lingers.

  “Get what you came for?” I snap, and my face heats at this second defeat—that I couldn’t keep silent.

  “Hansen.” The femme guard who invited me to live at her house jolts into motion, stepping toward us.

  Hansen yanks his hand out like he’s been caught doing, well, exactly what he was doing, and he takes a hurried step away. I don’t feel the violation, though, don’t feel much of anything, until he bends over my desk and marks my sex on the intake form. Then tears of humiliation well and carve stinging tracks down my cheeks.