3. BOUNDARY
When we arrive back at the Ashram, Lama Karen is sitting cross-legged on the bare floor in the center of the social area. That one smiles when we enter—a smile that lends beauty to a plain face.
“We have a proposal, in regards to stopping the Demolition.” Kylie is last up the ladder. Usually, she waits for stillness before saying a word, but now she starts speaking as soon as she sticks her first spindly leg inside.
She must be keen on the idea.
I explain about my parents and FOLM and the stockpile of supplies, including chains. We already debriefed Karen about the demolition sign after the failed council.
“I must meditate on this,” the Lama says.
My shoulders tense. If Karen starts meditating now, there’s no telling how long it will take that one to reach a decision. The Lama takes two steps toward the meditation area and stops.
“On second thought, go ahead. We’ve got to do something about the GeeGee!”
The outburst is startling, and Karen lapses into silence. We all know Kylie would make a much better Lama.
Sam grabs two bedrolls—enough for the three of us to share—and rolls them up with a big jug of water and a half-squished packet of crackers in the center. Tanner checks outside, then lowers the ladder. Kylie, Sam, and I descend to the dark street.
We head toward the Boundary, and I mentally rehearse the route to my old house. We’ll have to get through the uptown district of Three Street, and then down a big hill on what was once a major highway, to the neighborhood at the bottom. There are a limited number of cars now, and the GeeGee only approves emergency travel at night, so there won’t be many people to see and report us. “Smart” roads pose the biggest threat to missions like this. The roads tell the cars how to navigate, and no one really knows how much the roads “know.” They might record if people walk on them, for example, and pass that data to the GeeGee. But that’s a problem for later.
Before we can even get to Three Street, we have to traverse D-town. D-town isn’t five miles across—an easy journey if not for the A. Kylie, Sam, and I creep past a main intersection, and glass crunches under our feet.
“Should have grabbed a first-aid pack,” Sam mutters.
As though invited by her words, a cadre of guys and in-betweens steps into the road. Red anarchy symbols stand out on their once white shirts.
Kylie grabs my hand. Her fingers bite into my flesh, shaking a little. She’s scared. So am I. I squeeze back. Sam switches the blankets to the front and wraps arms around them to protect our water.
“Going somewhere?” The A in the front is painfully familiar.
My gaze flies between his fists and his steel-toe black boots, unable to go to his round face. My stomach starts aching, though there’s no reason for that—yet.
“Well,” another voice says. “Look who was stupid enough to leave the safety of The Dance. We’ll give you a three second head start. One-two-three.”
The round-faced A, the guy Lawson beat to protect me, grabs me by the back of the neck and drops to one knee. He’s much stronger and heavier than I am. I bend at the waist as the muscles of my lower back fight a brief losing battle to keep me upright. Buckled pavement expands in front of me. My eyes squeeze shut before my face turns to pain. At least there’s no glass right here.
“Where’s your guyfriend, now?” The A’s lips move obscenely close to my ear. I can smell his breath—he’s been eating dead animal flesh with onions.
I think the meat might have gone bad but then, by the time it gets to D-town, most meat has.
“Not my…guy…friend,” I manage. Blood flows over my upper lip, into my mouth, and I hope it’s all mine. Pretty sure it is—no reason for the A to be bleeding. “He’s not…mine,” I say again. I don’t know why it’s important to me to say this. Usually I don’t speak to my attackers at all. It’s better that way.
Kylie has a different approach. “Look at me,” she says to her assailant. “I’m just like—ooof—just like you.”
I wince in sympathy as she takes the hit and wipe at my face with my hand. It’s a reflex, even though I should know the A is watching for it. He swats my hand so it bounces back against my damaged nose. I swallow a cry, along with a mouthful of congealing blood.
“Relax,” he taunts. Pale strands of hair flutter against his cheeks in the breeze as he crouches down, reaching for me. “We just want to check you over for scars, make sure you didn’t let the GeeGee fill you up with bombs.”
He wants me to argue that GeeGee medicine doesn’t leave scars, to at least defend myself with words. If I don’t fight, he can’t win.
“You Bees are just like them,” he says, goading me.
I stare at the cement.
He shoves me away and stands. My left hand falls to the cement for balance, and he stomps on the fingers. I bite down on my shriek, but a muffled sound passes my teeth. I’ve broken my silence, and the A’s face splits into a grin of triumph. He kicks me in the stomach.
He keeps changing his technique, and I can’t find the rhythm, can’t seem to hold myself apart from events. That’s what happens when there’s something you want. I have to get those chains.
“We’re going—” I cough.
He grabs my ear, yanks me partway to my feet, and kicks me again. In the side this time.
I fall to my knees, gagging and swaying, and have to start again. “Chains. To stop the GeeGee.”
He moves.
I cringe. “To save The Dance.”
“You’re going to save The Dance? Huh.” He holds out one finger and pushes me.
I sway.
He laughs.
“Stop!” The command, spoken by more than one voice, cracks like a gunshot.
The A stops; I would have as well. Shoes crunch on cement shards, and a ring of kids dressed in black and various shades of red step out of the shadows to surround us. I wipe my face again, looking for That Guy, forgetting I know his name because this can’t be happening. The Real Deal doesn’t interfere between the A and the Bees; Real Dealers rarely do anything as a group.
My gaze finds him, feet planted, hands in his pockets. He barely glances at me, then looks away again. Irrational anger bubbles up, drowning out pain for a second, and I stagger to my feet. Why is he just standing there?
A Real Dealer femme steps forward. She has spiked hair dyed a bright red, thick black eyeliner, and a ring in her nose.
“I’m not the leader,” she says. “Anarchists have no leader. But I will speak.”
I’m pretty sure the anarchist comment is a dig against the hierarchical A tribe, because the lip of the guy who’s been hitting me curls up. He shoves my shoulder, knocking me back on my ass, before turning to face the femme.
“What’s up?” he asks.
I pull my knees to my chest with a wince and wrap a battered arm around them. With the other hand, I pinch my nostrils, pressing up against the bone and tipping my head forward. I breathe rhythmically through my mouth. The Real Deal might move on any minute, and the violence will start again. I’m pretty sure I can’t bleed to death through the nose—if I could, it would have already happened—but it’s better to not be bleeding when the next beating starts.
In my peripheral vision, I see Kylie curl into a similar posture. Sam stays sprawled on the ground.
Shit.
“Who speaks for the Bees?” the Real Dealer femme asks.
“I’m eldest,” Kylie says.
In D-town, age is more than a matter of years. Real Age accounts for things like what you’ve survived, what you’ve seen, and the strength of your personality—what you’re capable of surviving. Age is not something we calculate or decide. You just know, looking in someone’s eyes, whether they’re older, younger, or the same age.
Kylie is older than Sam or I because she’s calmer. I’m older than Sam because that one is softer. I’m older than the round-faced A because I’ve seen more. Lawson is older than me, even though he’s seen less, bec
ause his personality is stronger than mine.
All in the eyes.
Kylie rises to her feet without using her hands and limps, one arm wrapped tight around her middle, to stand in the center of the road with the other two speakers. She stands no closer to the Real Dealer than to the A, and doesn’t flinch when he waves a hand stained in my blood. She looks him in the eye when she speaks to him, and her face doesn’t twist with hatred. I doubt I will ever be able to do that.
I look to Lawson and find him staring at me, so I close my eyes and go back to my breathing exercise, heart pounding faster than it was just a moment ago.
Steps approach after a few minutes. My eyes fly open, and I flinch back, but it’s just Kylie. The A have gone, taking our water, snacks, and bedding with them.
“We can go,” Kylie says. “Two Real Dealers are going to help us get the chains, on the condition that if there are any weapons in either your parents’s stash or the one at the FOLM headquarters, they get first pick. The A get the other half.” Kylie holds up a hand, stopping my protest with a tilt of her head toward her sibling, who lies still on the ground. “Sam gets safe passage back to the Ashram; the Real Deal will provide an escort. And when you and I get back, the A will meet us at the Boundary to finish this”—she indicates the road—“and the Real Deal won’t interfere.”
Kylie touches my shoulder and continues. “I’m sorry, Aidan. It was the best I could do. My head hurts. I can’t think. The A just wanted the location of the headquarters, so they could go without us. I gave everything else to stop that from happening. And to get Sam home safe. Come on, Ai, you knew as soon as you opened your mouth about saving The Dance that they’d get weapons out of us somehow.”
My cheeks go hot. She’s right; I should have known that, but it never occurred to me. I just wanted to make the pain stop.
Pain is a problem for later. I let go of my nose and inhale experimentally. Blood doesn’t start gushing again, so I guess I’m okay.
“You did good, Ky. Who’s coming with?”
“Lin, that’s the Real Dealer speaker, and”—she gives me a look—“Lawson.”
Lawson is yelling at Lin now. “—no right to agree to that!”
Maybe he’s upset about sharing the weapons or about being selected to accompany Kylie and me. He stalks toward us, flushed with anger. He has a bag sewn onto his belt. This he opens and pulls out some strips of once-white cloth. He reaches toward me with one. When I flinch, he presses his teeth together, causing a muscle in his jaw to jump, and tosses me the scrap instead. I’m not a very good catch, and it falls on the ground.
“Sorry,” we say at the same time.
I bend for it and grimace. His hand shoots down and snatches it. As he passes it to me, his skin brushes mine, making me tingle. I wipe my face with the cloth, and Lawson turns to Kylie and sets to wrapping another strip around her bleeding knuckles. I have a disconcerting image of her hitting an A in the teeth before I realize she must have broken a fall by putting her fist down in glass.
I’m just standing there with the bloody cloth. I tuck it in my pocket to be boiled later. There’s a cut on my left arm, courtesy of the glass, but it seems like a waste of the strips. Lawson is busy tending to Kylie, so I tuck the clean cloths in an empty pocket and try to breathe evenly.
Kylie and Lawson get Sam up off the ground, get Sam to count—incorrectly, no matter how many times Kylie asks—how many fingers they are holding up. Sam hobbles off into the darkness supported by the remaining Real Dealers, and Lawson, Lin, Kylie, and I turn toward the Boundary.
Lin falls in beside Kylie, while Lawson’s long strides carry him out in front. I’m caught in-between, like what I am, and against my better judgment, I hobble as fast as I can to catch up with Lawson.
“Were you—you were going to just let them beat us.” My voice should not sound so bitter. He’s not tribe. And what am I saying, that I want him to do violence?
He stops walking and rounds on me. “I could have gotten beaten too! Would that have made you feel better?”
I flinch back, and this time I’m pretty sure the look that comes and goes on his face is hurt.
“You had tribe there,” I mutter, though I know better. I wasn’t thinking before. Real Dealers don’t act together. Rarely act together. Tonight they did, because of the weapons, but if Lawson had stepped into the fight it would have been just him against all the As.
He’s opening his mouth, raising his hands to gesture in frustration.
I forestall him. “No, it wouldn’t have. Made me feel better.”
He nods. He stares straight ahead as he walks, one hand in a fist, the other closed over it, rubbing at his knuckles. Would it have made him feel better?
“So where are we going?”
“I’ll show you the way.”
“You still don’t trust me.” It’s not an accusation.
“You might leave me behind,” I say. Us. I should have said, you might leave us behind. My head really isn’t on straight tonight. Maybe all the beatings from the As have knocked it off kilter.
“Why would I do that?” he asks. “More people will make this easier.”
I nod, and we walk in silence. We pass a few clusters of kids—no more As—and every time we do, conversations stop and people stare. Kylie and I, with our shaven heads and high-necked shirts, can’t be anything but Bees, even though the Om tattoos on the back of our skulls aren’t visible in the dark. Lawson and Lin are in Real Deal uniform—funny that they, who don’t have leaders and don’t act together, have a uniform. We belong together about as well as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Crazy Horse. D-towners whisper and point, but no one asks what we’re up to.
We’re still two streets back from the Boundary when Lawson grabs my arm and yanks me against the side of an abandoned building—truly abandoned, not just GeeGee abandoned. D-towners don’t live this far away from The Dance. Lawson’s hand clamps over my mouth, heedless of the flecks of blood that are probably still around my nose, and my heart batters against my ribs.
“War—oo—ing?” I ask, lips moving against his palm. After years of training myself not to fight back, my fingers don’t even wrap around his wrist.
“Shh!” he hisses in my ear and points toward the Boundary.
A figure stands at the crossing, on the GeeGee side of the tracks. A tall figure. A grown-up, with a pole, no, a sonic blaster sticking up over its shoulder.
I go cold. Shit. Oh, shit. What do we do, what do we do, what—
Lawson waves over his shoulder, and Lin and Kylie join us.
“GeeGee,” Lin whispers, soft as flower petals falling to the ground.
“Patrolling the Boundary,” Lawson agrees, laying a hand on her arm.
“Shit,” I say. Not very helpful, but that’s still my only thought. I can’t look away from Lawson’s tanned fingers on Lin’s ivory skin.
“You giving up, Bee?” Lawson asks.
I wet my lips. “Do you think we can get out?”
“We have to,” he whispers. “Without The Dance, everything will fall apart!”
I nod—it’s the same thought I had earlier—but he’s not finished.
“We can’t let D-town fall,” he hisses. “For our parents!”
Because that’s the one thing all D-towners have in common, regardless of tribe. The thing that makes us D-towners instead of normal kids, living green, round, sonic-pulse-controlled lives under the GeeGee. Our parents fought to give us a future of freedom. They kept us out of hospitals and away from schools—anywhere that might keep records—and when they died and there was no one to register us in the great Census in the first year of the New Era, we became the Children Who Do Not Exist. Over time, we gathered here, in D-town.
D-town is the last surviving civilization of the old world. If D-town falls, the GeeGee wins. They must know that too because, having mopped up all resistance elsewhere, and organized their schools and their farms-in-a-building and their “rehabilitation centers,” now
they are coming for us. For our heart. For The Dance.
“Let’s do this,” I say and march into the street.