Still Point

  The door buzzed open and a thick-armed guard walked in. He looked down at the floor, studying my usual untouched plate scattered with crackers and cheese that had been sitting out all afternoon.

  “That plate isn’t leaving this room until it’s empty,” he informed me.

  I glared at him. How could they expect me to eat? I didn’t deserve food; I didn’t deserve anything. I looked away from him—at the wall, at myself, which was worse. I closed my eyes.

  “If you don’t eat, we’ll shove a tube down your throat and force the food into you,” he told me. “Don’t go thinking you can starve yourself in here. We wouldn’t do you the favor.” He kicked the plate closer to me. “Eat,” he said. He stood and watched me until I picked up a single square of cheese. I placed it in my mouth and chewed the salty, rubbery texture. I had the urge to spit it out at him, but his hand rested on a gun next to his hip, and his eyes dared me to test him.

  I was already mentally on the execution chair. Your actions eventually catch up with you, especially when you live your life dousing yourself with gasoline, waiting for someone to come up to you with a match.

  I’d been living too much of my life that way, carelessly, recklessly, never thinking of the consequences. Never thinking anyone held a match. Guilt poured over me in waves. I had destroyed everything my mother wanted. All she wanted was her family and I had managed to rip each one of us away.

  After I finished the plate of food, forcing it down my throat like sour medicine, I followed the guard back down to the conference room. Justin was already inside, seated at a table with two empty chairs. He looked beaten down. His hair was sticking straight up, no doubt from pulling his fingers through it for days. My nails were chewed down to the nub.

  There were two plastic cups of water set out on the table. I took a seat in one of the empty chairs, crossed my hands over my chest, and waited.

  A suit walked through the door with brisk strides. He didn’t bother to sit.

  “Roger Murray,” he said, and his eyes shot back and forth between us. “I’m the prosecuting lawyer on this case.” He tapped his fingers on the table. “You might be interested in knowing what your little event ‘inspired.’ Twelve people died in the stampede. A hundred injured, twenty of them cops. It looks like a war zone at the courthouse. All of this hangs on your heads.”

  I looked down and thought I was going to be sick. I curled my fingers into fists and tried to breathe, but it felt like I was sucking in air through a narrow straw. This wasn’t my fault, I told myself.

  “Find Richard Vaughn,” Justin said. “That’s the man you should be prosecuting; he’s the one behind all the DCs. He’s the reason Kevin Freeman is dead.”

  Roger’s eyes darted between us impatiently, as if he was annoyed that we were trying to defend our lives. “All I have here are the facts. If you look over the contracts, everything involving the detention centers is signed by Kevin Freeman. I can’t help that. Contracts are binding. If your father were alive, all of this would be on his head.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “It’s pointless to defend Vaughn,” I said. “If DS is no longer a law, all the detention centers will close. It’s over.”

  “That might not be the case,” Roger stated.

  “What?” Justin and I said at the same time.

  “They are talking about reinstating DS as a national law. The committee wants to schedule a revote.”

  “They can’t do that,” I said, my voice rising. “My father owns the design.”

  “He owned the design,” Roger corrected me. “We would have to rename the program, of course, and hire new administrators, but DS isn’t going anywhere.”

  “You haven’t won yet,” I warned him.

  His face hardened. “You’re both under arrest for treason. Vandalism. Assault. Resisting arrest. For attacking Richard Vaughn and eighteen other innocent victims and holding them hostage at the LADC. Shall I continue?”

  “How can you explain Vaughn kidnapping her twice?” Justin asked. “Drugging her?”

  Roger replied with a smile and regarded me. “You’ve been secretly meeting with DS attackers, planning this riot. Vaughn and his men followed you, because you belong in a detention center, which you escaped from. While trying to arrest you, they were attacked, for doing nothing wrong other than trying to infiltrate a dangerous, criminal cult.”

  “You’re twisting the truth,” Justin said.

  “You won’t get away with this,” I stated.

  Roger looked between us and laughed. “You’re both so determined. So confident.” He walked around the table. “It’s a survival mechanism I’ve seen hundreds of times. It’s called delusion of reprieve. It’s a psychological condition more commonly referred to as hope. Condemned people, right before their execution, get the delusion that they might be set free at the last minute. It makes the waiting more bearable. But it’s just a delusion. You know what the penalty will be. Death. One week from today. You don’t have the evidence to fight it. This meeting is over.”

  I grabbed on to the side of the table, but a guard picked me up under my arms and pried my hands free.

  “No,” I said, fighting against the security guard’s hands, but he dragged me back. I could see a blur of Justin through my tears, and shouts echoed around the room. We were pulled away in separate directions.

  I kicked and jabbed my way through the door. The guard dragged me down the hall and pushed open a door, pulling me into the room of mirrors, where all I could do was stare at the mess that was myself. I fell onto all fours and pressed my head against the silver floor. I watched a puddle of tears grow from the flood pouring out of my eyes. I was my own gray sky, I was a river, I was rain. I hated water now, what it meant, all the regret it contained that made me want to drown.

  I wanted to hold my breath until I suffocated. I wanted to wrap my hair around my neck like a rope.

  The door buzzed and a woman came in, carrying a tray. She was wearing yellow scrubs and had a hairnet over her brown hair, which was pulled up in a bun. I was sitting in a corner of the room with my back pressed against the wall. I was practicing the art of sleeping with my eyes open.

  She walked right up to me and set the tray down next to my feet. She knelt alongside me. I winced, as if she was going to grab my arm and shake it.

  “You need to eat something,” she said, her voice soothing.

  “I have a death sentence,” I said. “I’m just getting a head start.”

  “I snuck this in for you,” she said. I looked over at the tray. There were four waffles on a plate. There was a ramekin full of red jelly, one full of chocolate syrup, and a green smoothie in a plastic cup. The sweet, doughy smell almost made me hungry.

  “Thanks,” I said, and met her eyes. She was my mother’s age and had a worried edge to her face as she looked over my sullen expression. For a second I wanted to throw myself into her arms to feel some sort of human contact, but she stood up. She smiled and left the room.

  I looked down at the green, brown, and red cups like they were bowls of paint. I dipped my finger into the thick smoothie and smeared it across the white plate like it was an easel. I grabbed the plastic knife off the tray, so dull it probably couldn’t cut through paper. I dipped it into the jelly, scooped up the red sauce, and stood up. I flung the jelly at the wall, and it splattered red, shiny droplets over my stale, fading image. I smiled for the first time in a week.

  I could feel the dark and brittle ash around my soul start to flake away. I was still alive inside, still raw near the center. Using my fingers, I smeared the jelly on the wall in a cascading swirl. I thought about what Jax had said, that you can paint what you feel or what you see. I always painted what I felt; it was my way of shrinking my emotions before they swelled so huge they split me down the middle. My challenge right now would be to paint my soul.

  The jelly dripped and rolled to the floor in a thin red stream. I grabbed more and kept going, letting it rise and start to climb. I wiped green streaks o
ver the wall, like stairs made out of ferns. I licked some of the smoothie off my fingers, and it was cold and refreshing. It made my heavy eyelids start to widen. I smeared brown chocolate in with the green. The colors swirled up the wall like a climbing staircase. At the top, as close to the ceiling as I could reach, I smoothed red back and forth like wings. My hands were shaking. I took a step back and admired my painting, and for the first time since the protest, I had hope. I looked down at my hands, brown and red and sticky.

  I rubbed my tattoo with my sticky fingers and thought about the definition of flight; I wasn’t afraid anymore. I imagined one person, and it made me want to be free. I wanted to thank him one more time. For seeing me.

  Chapter Thirty

  A guard escorted me into the conference room. I sank into the chair across the table from Justin and rubbed my eyes. It was impossible to sleep in the room with mirrors. It’s impossible to rest when your mind is always sprinting from one horrible thought to the next. Even Justin looked exhausted and disheveled. For the first time since I’d known him, all of the confidence had drained from his eyes.

  “You have a visitor,” the guard informed us.

  I raised my eyebrows. Our funeral director? I wondered. Maybe they would let us pick out our own casket design. That would be fun.

  A woman cleared her throat, and I looked up. My mouth nearly fell to the floor. The president of the United States was standing there between two security guards. Her coral suit fit tightly around her tall, lean frame and accentuated her dark skin. She was taller than her security guards. Thin black glasses framed her face, and her dark brown hair fell in tight curls above her shoulders.

  I glanced at Justin, who was equally surprised.

  “Justin Solvi,” she said, and walked over to extend her hand. She smiled widely and gave his hand a solid shake, which seemed to rattle him awake.

  “President,” he said slowly, enunciating each syllable like he still didn’t believe she was in the room.

  “Madeline Freeman?” I was almost embarrassed to extend my grimy hand to her meticulous one. I hoped she didn’t look at my nails. She shook my hand and smiled.

  “There’s someone here I’m sure you’d like to see,” she said to me.

  My mom walked through the door. I half jumped, half fell out of my seat and ran over to her. She held her arms out to me and wrapped me inside. We clung to each other. I gulped back my tears, fighting the sobs building in my chest. My mom made everything real.

  She held me while I cried into her chest. All of the exhaustion caught up with me, and my legs felt weak. She lowered me into a seat next to her and kept her arm around my shoulder. Justin slid a box of Kleenex in our direction. I couldn’t imagine what I looked like.

  The president sat down at the head of the table. Her light brown eyes regarded us. “I owe both of you an enormous amount of gratitude,” she said. “Thanks to you, all of the detention centers will be freed this week. Kids will go back home, with therapy to help them adjust. Richard Vaughn was behind all of this. He was trying to pin it on your father.”

  I blew out a sigh of relief and nodded.

  “I’ve been following your progress,” she told me. “You’ve had a busy year.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “How have you been following me?” I asked.

  “Your mother and I have been in contact,” she said.

  I looked between them. “You’ve been talking to my mom?”

  “She’s been helping us out, keeping the FBI informed,” the president said.

  I stared at my mom. “Since when?” I asked her.

  “They hired me as an agent a few years ago,” she told me.

  “To spy on Dad?” This was crazy.

  The president smiled. “Wives make the best spies,” she said. “She’s been an agent for two years now, recruited at my request, when I took office. I’ve never been a huge fan of this digital education system.”

  Justin leaned back in his chair and laughed. He ran his hands over his face. “Your mom is an agent? This is too awesome.”

  I was too surprised to laugh.

  “We found the evidence we needed,” the president said. “Vaughn’s been drugging students and using them as psychological experiments. He’s killed hundreds of kids in the last year alone, but he covered it up with other medical illnesses.”

  “You found the trash lab?” I asked.

  “We owe that to your father. He discovered the first one, and we’ve confiscated six more. They were using passenger cars to make the drugs, the same ones transporting students to the DCs.” Her eyes met mine and softened. “I still respect your father and everything he was trying to do,” she said. “He created a wonderful system that we’ll still keep as an alternative. But it’s time to have other options.”

  I sat with my mom in the lobby. She had brought me my favorite pair of jeans, soft and worn in, and a camouflage T-shirt from the riots that spelled DS Dropouts over the front. It was a luxury to be in my own clothes again. It made my life, no matter how changed or chaotic, feel closer to normal.

  “They’re releasing Joe today,” Mom said. “Want to come to the hospital with me and pick him up?” I nodded. “He’s going to live at home for a few months.”

  “You’ll get to know him again,” I said.

  She nodded slowly. “I need to be more careful what I wish for,” she said. “Wishes aren’t always granted the way you expect.” She pressed her fingers over the cuff of her blouse. “They’re having a memorial for your dad and all the victims at Waterfront Park, in two weeks,” she said, squeezing my hand, but I was still too shocked to respond. It hadn’t sunk in that my dad was gone. The accident was still a blur. Even the protest felt like a faded memory. My mind refused to see my dad’s pale skin as my last memory. I was already forgetting, and only remembering his strong, confident eyes. How impressionable they were. How on the rare occasion when he did smile, it was the most beautiful expression.

  “And Justin,” my mom said. “What will he do?”

  I looked down at my feet. “We haven’t talked about it yet. He’ll probably be traveling a lot, helping to coordinate new face-to-face schools.”

  “How do you feel about that?” she asked me.

  “I think it’s great,” I said with sincerity. “It’s who he is. It’s what he lives for. He literally wants to change the world. He’s more like Dad than I realized,” I admitted.

  “Yes,” my mom said. “He is.”

  A door swung open down the hall, and I looked up to see Justin walking side by side with the president. Assistants trailed them, and bodyguards led the way. I wasn’t surprised to see it; even in street clothes, Justin fit right in. He had the same determined stride and confident arch to his back. I felt like I was watching a commercial on leadership.

  My mom stood up and told me she’d wait for me outside.

  “We have a driver taking us home,” she said.

  I nodded and stood up to meet Justin. His face was beaming. He was in his element, flying at top speed, finally in an atmosphere he was designed for.

  The president shook my hand. “What’s next for you, Maddie?” she asked.

  “College,” I said. “Computer law.”

  “Good,” she said. “We need people like you keeping technology in check.”

  “I’m hoping they can be face-to-face classes,” I hinted, and she nodded enthusiastically.

  “That’s what we’re working on.” She looked at Justin. “Speaking of work.”

  I smiled because I had seen this coming.

  “I want someone like you on my team. I need help coordinating these face-to-face schools. You have the kind of following we need to get this up and running.”

  Justin was nodding in agreement before she even had to ask.

  “It’s what I want to do with my life,” he said without hesitating. He caught my eye and smiled, one of those smiles that’s so alive, when he’s at his best, when life is a ten.

  “When can you be
on the East Coast?” she asked. There was a flicker of hesitation in his eyes. Before he could respond, she answered for him.

  “I want you to start as soon as possible. Why don’t you sit in on a phone call I have with the education commissioner today? We can’t waste any time. If we’re going to bring back face-to-face schools, it needs to happen now, while the issue is hot.”

  “Of course,” he said.

  The president was interrupted by an assistant, and she walked away with him, signaling that she’d be back in a few minutes. An office door closed behind them.

  Justin turned to me. His eyes were intense. He pulled his hands through his hair, his signature move, indicating that he was overwhelmed.

  “This is happening really fast,” he said. He was looking at me but he wasn’t. I could tell that his thoughts were jumbled. I wondered if the room felt like it was moving under his feet, like it felt to me.

  “I can’t wrap my mind around it yet,” he said.

  I nodded. “It’s not every day all your dreams come true,” I said.

  He studied me, and his eyes were so serious, so intense on reading mine, I had to look away. I knew what he saw, and I felt so idiotic for being sad.

  So, this was how it ends, fast and final in a brightly lit room where digital canvases stretched above us depicted arched ceilings and sun rays streaking through fake-sky windows. The cream marble tiles shined under our feet. It looked like a fairy-tale ending, and instead I was getting the nightmare. The curse doesn’t lift. Cinderella’s slipper doesn’t fit. The sleeping princess never wakes up. The end.

  Even though the ceiling looked like it arched three stories high, the room felt claustrophobic. Something heavy pushed down on my shoulders. I needed fresh air. I needed to walk. I hadn’t been outside in more than a week.

  Justin looked at the door the president was about to walk through, and back at me.

  He took a step closer, like if he studied me hard enough, he could draw out the words he wanted. “How do you feel about the East Coast?” he asked.