The Burn

  Chapter Sixteen

  When I go down the hall, Mary’s door is already open and she waits for me. I’ve never been in her room before. It is small. It contains a mattress, one desk, and nothing else. There are no books, no nicknacks, no odd trinkets pilfered from the houses nearby, only a few items of clothing folded neatly and tucked into the desk, with her rifle laid on top of it, and a candle on a plate.

  Is this a reflection of her life? Barren? I feel an unexpected wave of pity for her. The set of her mouth makes me quickly forget it. The shiny streaks down her face tell me she has been crying, but now she is angry.

  “Looks like I’ll do all the talking,” she says. Even though I’m expecting it, her baleful tone makes me wince. She reaches to her back pocket and pulls out a piece of paper covered in plastic, folded three times. She has no idea how important that piece of paper is to me. I almost sob just to see her treating it so casually.

  “I see you know what this is.” She waves it in front of my face. “Hmm. Jessa. A best friend? Or a sister, perhaps?” She seethes with fury, but she isn’t interested in my distress. “Whoever she is, it’s obvious—you’re not from around here, or Arizona, or anywhere, are you?”

  I can’t lie now. My own weakness in printing that letter traps me. I have to own up to it. I shake my head.

  “And then there’s this interesting tidbit. I didn’t notice it the first time I read through this. I might have passed this off as some message you were able to print off a stolen computer. Until I read the footer.”

  I groan. I’d forgotten all messages were printed with a footer.

  Mariana Colony transmission. Do not read without consent.

  “A colonist?” Her voice is deadly serious. “We often wondered about colonists. Whether it was just a bedtime story our parents told us. Something the government never wanted us to know. Can you imagine? People living in peace and prosperity at the bottom of the ocean while we scrounge around up here like rats. While we’re captured and tortured and killed by our own government. There wouldn’t be a single person loyal to the government if everyone knew it for sure. How could anyone decent keep that from us?”

  I want to explain, to say, “It’s not like that, not really. I came here because I hated it down there. Down there isn’t real. This is what’s real.” But it sounds so ridiculous even to me. I don’t know if any of the survivors here would stay if given the chance to go down. My tongue forces my silence, and she takes advantage.

  “Do you have any idea how Dave feels about colonists?”

  The idea shocks me. I never dared lean toward any conversation of the sort. I wanted to keep that topic as far away as possible. I shake my head, numb.

  “He hates colonists.”

  I hear every implication in that sentence. She should have just said, “He hates you.”

  “How could you do this to him?” She starts crying again, and the tears course down her face and fall to the floor. “How could you do this to any of us? So many of them trust you. He trusted you. He even let himself like you.”

  I slump down onto the desk. My body feels so heavy with every lie I told.

  She circles around to the doorway, blocking my exit. She is a dark silhouette against the dim light of the hall.

  “Of course I won’t tell him if you don’t want me to.” And she holds the letter out to me.

  What is she saying? She has to tell him. Isn’t that her whole point? Tell him what I am so he’ll loathe me and then she will comfort him.

  “You heard me right. I won’t tell him. If you do something for me.”

  I know I won’t like what comes next. But her cunning surprises me.

  “I’m going to tell him I rescued him. And you’re not going to say otherwise.”

  My hand slips off the desk then, and I have to catch myself so I don’t collapse on the floor.

  She folds her arms. “You see the significance of that. I knew you would. I also know you were there that day. That was when you first came here, wasn’t it?”

  I nod blankly, not even looking at her anymore. Not looking at anything, just feeling the empty spot in my stomach start to expand and punch holes in all my vital organs.

  “I know you were the one who pulled him out of the ocean. But he doesn’t know that. And you can never tell him because then you’d have to change your whole story. I know the way he’s mooned over this mysterious rescuer ever since it happened. Dreaming he’s in love with her after only a moment. Love doesn’t happen that way. But if he believed it was me, then maybe things can go back to the way they were. The way they were before I left.”

  I wonder if she really does love him, or just loves the idea of him. If he is the only thing that kept her alive in Seattle. The thought of him. Was that why she finally came back? He was the only good in her life?

  And again I feel that strange pity welling up in the last remaining full spot in my body. I am a tin man—hollow. Except for my heart. My heart is full to bursting, and it bursts out through my eyes as the sobs I fought to contain suddenly wrench themselves free.

  She watches me cry and her face is a kaleidoscope of emotion. Even though she has destroyed me, she takes no pleasure in it. She merely wants to protect Dave and the colony. Then she hands me a paper and pencil.

  “Any last words?”

  I nod and write three words. The only words I have for her at that moment. I could write so many things, I could lash out in anger and frustration, could beg her not to go through with it. Instead I write:

  I am sorry.

  Then I hear a sound at the door and I turn. Dave stands there. Confusion is all over his face. Seeing him stand there is more than I can bear. I run from them.

  “Terra?” he says as my footsteps echo down the hall.

  “Just let her go,” Mary says.

  I slip downstairs and out the double doors before anyone can see me or stop me. I’m not sure where I’m going, but away is the best I can do. I follow the same paved road I had followed when I first came here. I trudge along, my feet aching. Past the sad houses and the water treatment plant. Past the marshy areas. I am slow. I am tired and hungry and emotionally drained. I am torn between two homes, and I can have neither.

  The sky is well dark by the time I reach the beach with its rundown parking lot and debris-covered sand. The old boat Dave almost drowned with has washed ashore and is overturned, half buried in the sand. I sit on it, not even minding the damp that soaks through my pants. I gaze out to the water and watch it ripple in the moonlight. A faint blue light flickers at me from the water. I didn’t know the moon could shine in colors. But then I look closer and realize the light moves beneath the water. Then it surfaces.

  The sleek gleam of a sub rises above the water. I jump up. Someone has come for me. Would my father actually break all the laws of the colonies to come here and fetch me? My heart rises a moment as I hope that he might. That he loves me more than he loves the colony.

  The sub slowly inches forward, then sloshes into the sand and stops. The hatch opens. A teenage girl with a buzzed head appears from the dark hole.

  “Jessa?” I try to say. Seeing her made me forget for just a moment that I can’t speak. I can’t believe it. I’ve thought of her countless times the past few days. She’s beautiful.

  “Terra? Oh Terra, I’ve missed you so much.”

  She flings herself off the sub and into the surf and runs to me, tripping in the sand she isn’t used to walking on. Then she is hugging me tighter than anyone ever has. She cries into my hair and squeezes me. I cry with her and kiss her cheeks. But where is her hair?

  “I had no idea if you were dead or what happened, or if I would ever find you. I couldn’t tell if Gaea was laughing at me, or lying to me, or what.”

  I pull back, shocked. Jessa nods, wiping the tears from her cheeks.

  “After a week went by, I just about went crazy. I missed you so much, and I didn’t know if you were dead. Mr. Klein noticed how weird I was acting in class. He ca
lled me to his office one day and gave me a note telling me how to find her. Told me she’d have answers. So I went.”

  She is brave. I never thought she’d find Gaea and come here. I hug her again.

  “Gaea told me where you’d gone.” Jessa looks at me closely. “She also told me what you paid.”

  My empty mouth aches with every word I can’t say to her.

  “I don’t completely understand why you did it, but I understand enough. I paid too.” She runs a hand over her scalp. She gave her hair to Gaea. Her great beauty, her one vanity. She gave it up for me.

  She’s more than her hair. She’s more than her hair. I tell myself over and over. I do it to keep from crying again as I look at her stubbled head. She shakes her head, waking herself up from her thoughts.

  “Look, I don’t have much time. That sub is programmed to turn itself around. I came here for a reason. I want you to come home.”

  I drop her hands then. She wants me to go back to the colony?

  “I asked Gaea how I could get you back. She must be watching you or something. She knows that someone named Mary knows that you’re from the colonies.”

  I frown. What does this have to do with my coming back?

  Jessa pulls a small metal cylinder from her pocket. “Don’t open it yet.”

  I take it from her. I turn it over a few times in my hands. It’s lightweight and fits easily in my palm.

  “A hypodermic needle’s in there. Filled with poison. Enough to kill a person. She understands that it needs to be subtle so no one else would know what you did.”

  I step away from her. Nausea rises in my throat. What is Gaea asking me to do? What is Jessa asking me to do?

  “Look, don’t freak out, Terra. Gaea said as long as Mary’s left up here without you, she could talk. But if she dies in her sleep, then no one knows any better and you can come home.”

  She must see the horror on my face.

  “I know it’s horrible, Terra, but it’s the only way. Please? For me?”

  I shake my head, shaking the fuzz loose that gathered as soon as she said “kill a person.”

  “I know it’s a lot, Terra. Just think about it, okay?”

  How can I even think about it? I’ve seen too much death.

  “She’s our mother, you know.” Jessa says it impersonally, like we’re talking about an insect. “Gaea, I mean.”

  As soon as she says it, I know. I didn’t realize it then, but I know. It explains the spite toward my father and the loving hatred of the colony. The knowledge doesn’t move me. I feel no tie to her. She mutilated and silenced me. She took Jessa’s great beauty. No mother should do that. No mother should ask her daughter to commit murder. She and I have both become monsters.

  The sub engines begin to purr again. Jessa turns around.

  “No! Oh, Terra the sub’s going to go back. I need to get on it. Look, Gaea’s sending a sub to come tomorrow night—midnight. Please get on it. Please. It’ll only stay for fifteen minutes and then it’ll go back to the colony. Please, Terra.”

  And she skips toward me to kiss my cheek one last time before running to the sub, clambering up to the hatch, closing it behind her, and then she is gone. The only evidence she was here are her tears in my hair, the tingle of her kiss on my cheek, and the metal cylinder in my pocket.

  As I limp back toward the school, I pull the metal cylinder from my pocket and turn it over in my hands. The gravel scrapes under my boots. I don’t think about walking or the school or Jessa. My brain is sluggish. The only clear thought I have is How can I?

  After what happened with Smitty on the hunting trip, the last thing I need is more blood on my hands. Did Gaea—refuse to think of her as mother—watch that as well? Did she sit hunched over her keyboards, her eyes fixed on the monitors as she watched my life unravel? Is the metal cylinder in my hand a sick joke or a gift?

  The sour taste in the back of my mouth gags me. Clouds skirt over the moon, and the path in front of me darkens. I stick to the pavement, the only sure way I know of getting back in the dim light. Soon the sad houses line the road. I look long at them. Broken windows, shutters, leaning porches, all of it surrounded by tall grass.

  People had lived here, and people had died here. People had been happy here. Why can’t I be one of them? I could leave it all behind. I could go back to the colony where I’m not a murderer. Where everyone has enough to eat and everyone lives peaceably, and the brutality up here is just a rumor.

  By the time I see the dark school, I hear a voice calling my name.

  “Terra! Are you out here?”

  I stop. Dave stands outside, his hands cupped to his mouth.

  Dave wants me home. Red comes down the steps behind him. Should I go to them? What can Dave offer me? What can he offer me now that the mystery of his rescuer will be revealed, and all I can do is look on? The settlement will never be home again.

  But I put one foot in front of the other and walk forward into a pool of light cast by one of the open doors. He sees me.

  “Terra! Where’d you go?”

  He grabs both my shoulders and looks into my face. I must look haunted. He frowns.

  “You’re okay?”

  I can’t move. My feet ache, my head hurts, and I’m falling apart as he stands there holding me together. He won’t be able to hold me together much longer.

  “Where were you?”

  I point behind me. He looks past me, disbelief on his face.

  “I would have thought with the way your feet are you wouldn’t be up for a walk. But whatever. You’re back now.” He gives me a hug.

  I stiffen. I breathe the scent of sweat and smoke, strawberries and worn cloth. I won’t get another embrace like this, I’m sure. I soften and cling to him for only a moment—the only moment I will allow myself. The dull ache in my chest catches at my ragged heartbeat. I close my eyes and etch him into my memory. Then I pull back.

  “Come on, let’s go in.” He drapes an arm over my shoulder.

  Why does he make this so difficult? Why does he put an arm around me like I am one of them? I shrug his arm off. I can’t let him do this.

  I can go home to the colony. I see a girl crying in the shadows. A face ground into the gravel. A man with a hole in his chest. I can go back to the ocean and let the water wash away these nightmares forever.

  Mary waits for us inside. I can’t look at her.

  “Oh, you found her.” She surprises me by sounding genuinely glad. As much as I am a traitor and a threat, she doesn’t hate me. She worries about all of us. I am too tired.

  “Dave, can I talk to you for a moment?”

  My knees buckle. This is it. He will be gone forever. The metal cylinder is icy through the thin fabric of my pocket.

  “Sure.” He looks back at me, worried. He must see how pale I am, how hollow my eyes are. But Mary pulls him around and leads him out again, out to the back where a small fire burns and several of the men are busy tending the smoke houses.

  I walk to the cafeteria, now dark, and pull the drapes back just a sliver from a window. Mary pulls Dave a little aways from the others, just out of earshot. But I can still see their faces in the fire glow. Dave, with whiskery cheeks and impatient mouth, Mary with surprising softness in her eyes. She really is in love with him.

  They sit down on two folding chairs, side by side, the chairs just barely toward each other. Mary stares at him, but Dave looks at the fire. Then her mouth starts moving rapidly. His eyebrows shoot up.