Article 5

  I wandered to the bathroom and found the glass-box shower, immediately remembering how dirty I was from the mud and the ash and the vomit. Linens were stacked in the narrow closet behind it. For some reason the sight of clean towels made me miss home terribly.

  Chase searched upstairs, but there was no one home.

  “Do you think we missed him?” I asked urgently.

  “I doubt it. I think he might just be out for a while. No one would be stupid enough to leave those forms on the counter for a full week.”

  Unless he didn’t have the time to clean up. Neither of us voiced what we both thought.

  Maybe Chase was right; he was out just for a little while. Or maybe he was making a run to South Carolina. Worst-case scenario, we’d have to hide out here for the next few days. I tried to think positively, but the prospect of waiting another week to see my mother was a crushing disappointment.

  I used an extra pillowcase to wipe down the counters in the kitchen and was somewhat heartened when water gurgled then shot out of the spigot into the sink. The stove worked as well. The moment I turned it on, my stomach began to growl. I hadn’t been able to eat anything since I’d thrown up in the cornfield.

  Luckily, resourceful Chase had taken a camping pot and a knife-spoon combo from the store earlier. I filled the pot with water and set it on the stove, preparing to make vegetable soup from a packet of dried crumbles.

  While I stirred the soup, Chase sat at the table and flipped on the MM radio. The mere sight of it retriggered my apprehension, but I was morbidly curious to hear if we’d made the headlines.

  It crackled with static. I was so intently staring at it that Chase’s clumsy attempt to remove his jacket caught me off guard. I slid over to assist, glad for the distraction.

  “I forgot,” I acknowledged guiltily. “Here, let me help.”

  He lowered his hands, and I tentatively released the zipper, biting my lip as I pulled the jacket off his right shoulder. He’d replaced the flannel shirt for warmth, but the sticky blood had formed an adhesive, binding the shredded fabric to his skin. My empty stomach turned.

  I had seen it happen and now remembered just how easily the metal had sliced into his flesh. Chase allowed me to touch his arm, gauging his condition from the expression on my face.

  “You need to take off your shirt,” I told him, instantly blushing. It wasn’t like I’d meant anything intimate by it; I’d seen him hundreds of times without a shirt when we were kids. Maybe not after our friendship had changed into something different—we’d never gotten quite that far—but still. There was no reason to be embarrassed. No reason whatsoever.

  He didn’t try to lift his injured arm, and I wondered just how much damage had been done in the hours his wound had gone unattended.

  When he struggled, I slid between his knees, and tried to act like my fingers freeing each wooden button down his chest had no effect on my drumming pulse. He nodded a curt thanks and then stared out the window.

  The same voice from the previous night filled the kitchen, erasing the static over the radio. Though it was stupid, I felt like we’d been caught doing something we shouldn’t.

  “Colonel David Watts, covering Region Two-thirty-eight. It is Thursday, March tenth. Here begins the daily report.”

  It had been only a day since I’d been at the reformatory, I realized. It seemed months ago.

  I left Chase momentarily to click off the stove and place the pot of soup on the table. Wispy ringlets of steam swirled into the cool kitchen air.

  Colonel Watts discussed continuing efforts to secure the Canadian and Mexican borders from the “traitors to the cause,” Americans trying to escape, and reported that there was still no information regarding the missing uniform truck in Tennessee. I finished helping Chase out of his flannel. He was wearing a thermal underneath, and when I pulled it over his head, his undershirt came off too, along with the pathetic wrap he’d managed to secure around the wound.

  I’d never seen Chase like this before, and what I’d imagined paled in comparison. Hard lines of muscle cut into the copper skin of his shoulders and collided into his broad chest. His abdominals were perfectly sculpted; the slight indention of a V disappeared beneath the denim waistline.

  My fingertips tingled. I wondered if his skin felt as smooth as it looked.

  “Hand me the pack. There’s a first-aid kit in there,” he said. I jumped at the sound of his voice, and then flushed so darkly my cheeks must have been purple.

  What had gotten into me? We’d just broken into a house, and I was preparing to look at a knife wound. Nothing about our situation spelled romance.

  I’m just tired, I told myself, even though I knew I wasn’t. When I bent down to retrieve the bag, I flattened my hair against my face, hoping that it would hide my mortification.

  He found the first-aid kit and opened it on the counter beside the cooling soup. I laid out the materials I would need: a handful of gauze, a miniature bottle of peroxide, and a damp towel. Then, as gently as I could, I pressed the cloth against the wound, mopping up the blood that had painted his skin. The cut was deep and spiraled from the inside of his bicep around his shoulder.

  I knew what I had to do, and I knew he wasn’t going to like it. I drenched the gauze in peroxide.

  “Sorry,” I whispered, just before pressing the gauze over the wound.

  He swore furiously, nearly knocking me over. His teeth were bared; I could hear the sharp intake of breath through his mouth.

  “I said sorry.”

  I collected myself, having been flung into the table, and wiped up the new blood bubbling to the surface. I found a clean part of the rag and applied pressure to the cut. The wound was so long I needed both hands. It took me a moment to realize he’d caught me by the elbow with his good arm and was still holding on.

  “You probably should have had stitches,” I said with some remorse. “I know it stings, but it’ll ease up.”

  “It burns like hell.”

  “Don’t be a baby,” I gibed. He shook his head, but his expression was lighter than before.

  There was a dark bruise forming on the bottom of his jaw, and an even larger contusion on his side that I hadn’t seen before. I touched it gingerly with my fingertip, and he hissed.

  “Did he break a rib?” My fear of Rick was burning into anger.

  “No,” Chase said, still wincing. “But you may have.”

  “What?”

  “Swinging that stick around. You clocked me in the side.”

  My eyes grew round, and my mouth dropped open.

  “Relax. You hit him at least twice.” He chuckled at this.

  “Oh. Good. I think. God, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Just remind me not to meet you in a dark alley.”

  I half smiled.

  When the bleeding had stopped, I closed the wound with several butterfly Band-Aids from the kit, hoping this would be enough. I wrapped clean gauze around his entire arm, securing it in place with heavy white tape.

  “Your knuckles look pretty torn up,” he acknowledged, his mouth tightening.

  I examined my fingers. They were raw from scraping the gun off the asphalt, bruised and wrecked from the reformatory, and achy now that he mentioned them. I had forgotten my pain in place of his.

  I cleaned the skin, but he put the Band-Aids on my fingers. Again, he gazed over Brock’s damage but said nothing about it.

  His hands were very warm under mine, and I realized they were swollen from the fight. He couldn’t quite close them, nor could he stretch them all the way open. There were several fingers that didn’t even line up quite right, but I suspected these had been broken long before today.

  When he finished, he withdrew his touch quickly.

  We began alternating turns with the spoon. The soup was too salty but warm. I tried to ignore that his skin sometimes brushed against mine, but it was difficult.

  Chase jerked suddenly and turned up the volume on the radio.

 
“… assaulted by a man and woman, late teens or early twenties, outside a sporting goods store in Hagerstown, Maryland. The assailants are armed and should be considered dangerous. They are believed to be driving a late seventies era Ford pickup truck, maroon, Michigan or Minnesota plates. Male subject may have defected from the Federal Bureau of Reformation. Victims reported presence of an FBR nightstick used in the beating. A lineup of AWOL soldiers’ photos are under review by the victims. If found, perpetrators are to be detained and brought in for questioning. Any information can be forwarded up your chain of command.”

  I lowered my forehead to the table, everything inside of me frozen. The man on the radio continued.

  “… list of missing persons grows by two today. Ronald Washington, African American, sixteen years old, runaway from the Richmond Youth Detention Facility. Ember Miller, Caucasian, seventeen years old, possibly abducted from the Girls’ Reformatory and Rehabilitation Center, Southeast.”

  My heart stopped.

  “Oh,” I said in a tiny voice.

  I caught a couple of additional lines: “no leads … call the crisis line if apprehended.” But I could barely focus on the man’s callous tone.

  “Brock figured it out,” I said weakly. I had doubled over my stomach. “She must have called to verify the trial.”

  If they knew I was gone, “possibly abducted,” it seemed safe to say they knew Chase was the one that had taken me. Soon the highway patrol that had pulled us over would add to the report. Then Rick and Stan from Hagerstown. The pieces fit together, burned into my brain.

  I had a hard time swallowing.

  Chase’s expression was as gloomy as I’d ever seen it. Not surprised, like mine surely was, but deeply concerned.

  “You’re worried about something,” I prompted.

  “That’s not enough?” He gestured to the radio, raking a jagged hand over his skull. I could tell he was unnerved but trying to hold it together. Maybe for me. Maybe just for himself.

  “It’s more than what we just heard. Tell me. You can tell me,” I assured.

  He rolled his head in a slow circle.

  “It’s too soon for you to be reported missing. I don’t think the headmistress happened to call Chicago to check on the trial. I think that someone may have contacted her first.”

  CHAPTER

  9

  “WHAT? Who?” Was it Randolph? Had he suspected something?

  My thoughts backtracked to the overhaul, to the blond soldier with the green eyes. And the three marks down his neck from my nails.

  “Morris.” I guessed. It had seemed like they were friends. You said you’d be cool, Morris had said when Chase protected me. He’d obviously known Chase and I had had some sort of connection in the past.

  “You know him?”

  “How could I forget? He arrested me.”

  “Tucker Morris is…” Chase grimaced, as if unable to find the right word. “He was in my unit. He came back with me after he … delivered you to transport.” He glanced quickly over and then looked away, his face tightly drawn.

  “Why would Tucker have called the reformatory?” I asked, glad that Chase seemed to dislike him as much as I did.

  An odd expression crossed his face. He was beyond angry now. Tortured almost. Clearly Tucker had done something really bad to Chase.

  Or Chase had done something really bad to Tucker. Which would explain why Tucker would have turned him in.

  “There’s … sort of a history there.”

  “What ‘sort of a history’?” I asked dubiously.

  I could hear Chase’s heel tapping the floor. He hesitated so long I thought he wasn’t actually going to answer me. Then he sighed heavily, resigned to sharing.

  “Tucker enlisted in the Bureau about the time I was drafted. We were in the same training cohort.” He was rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.

  “And you two hit it off?” I prompted dryly. Getting Chase to explain anything was like pulling teeth.

  “No,” he said. “We had some things in common. Important things for training. We’re about the same size, so they put us together for hand-to-hand, and—”

  “Hand-to-hand fighting?”

  “Yeah. Combat maneuvers. He seemed all right at first, quiet, but decent anyway. We had classes together, just like in school. On the Statutes and all their caveats. Negotiations. And then policies and procedures for management of disruptive civilians.”

  I snorted, thinking of my mom telling the soldiers to get off our property.

  “He got in some trouble.…” Chase waved his hand, indicating that this part of the story was inconsequential. “After that he was a real pain. Arguing with everything the instructor said. Refusing to follow orders. Kid couldn’t even fill out the correct paperwork for an SV-one.”

  I frowned. I didn’t want Tucker to have rebelled against the MM, because that’s what I had done, and I didn’t want to have anything in common with that blond-haired, green-eyed coward. I motioned impatiently for Chase to continue.

  “It wasn’t that he couldn’t get anything right. It was that he purposefully tried to get things wrong. He kept sneaking off base, then getting caught and thrown in the brig. Getting his pay docked, his rank stripped. He was sort of used to calling his own shots, and he had … uh … ties he couldn’t cut at home,” he added.

  “Have to dedicate your life to the cause, right?” I feigned indifference but remembered with a pang what Rebecca had told me in the reformatory. How convenient for you, I thought bitterly, that your ties were so easy to sever.

  “Yeah,” he looked mildly relieved. “It’s standard procedure to break off any previous relationships. Women are a distraction, temptations of the flesh and all that.” He laughed awkwardly.

  An acidic taste crept up my throat. It seemed unthinkable that he would follow such a ridiculous rule, but his compliance made the transformation seem even more real. The thought that Chase had changed so quickly after being drafted made me feel like I’d never really known him at all.

  I was beginning to think that maybe I’d gotten the wrong impression of Tucker, and that any hope I’d harbored for the return of my old Chase was about as likely as me going back home and finishing high school. But these thoughts felt just as wrong as what Chase was telling me now.

  “So my CO—my commanding officer—made Tucker and me partners. He told me I couldn’t make rank until he passed all his courses.”

  “And that’s what you wanted?” I spouted. “To move up?” I tried to picture Chase as MM leadership, calling the shots in an overhaul, charging people for Article violations. He couldn’t be that heartless, could he?

  “Got to be good at something.” The sound of his voice was as foreign as the look on his face when he’d taken my mother away. I shivered.

  “He didn’t go down without a fight. Fought me a few times at first. Then he started fighting everyone. He fought so much that the other guys harassed him just to see him lose it. Like it was funny.”

  I tried to ignore the wave of pity I felt for Tucker.

  “The officers even got into it. They started setting up matches for him after drills at the boxing ring on the base. Word spread. Lots of guys came to place bets. If they bet on Tucker, they usually won. That’s when our CO got it in his head that Tucker would be good leadership material.”

  “How’s that?” I asked, confused. “I thought they hated him.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe they did at first. But when he fought they started to see the soldier he could be. Vicious. Unstoppable. But still too much of a liability.”

  Chase cleared his throat then and scowled, and I felt a wash of relief that he seemed to struggle with this concept. There was still some humanity inside of him.

  “Our CO offered him a deal. If he would just dedicate himself, work hard, be the damn poster boy for the FBR, then they would stop the fights. They’d put him on the fast track to captain, which normally takes years, but they were going to make it happen in mon
ths if he just played nice.

  “It was a double bind. The harder he pushed, the more they wanted him. The more he conformed, the more they wanted him. He couldn’t win. They started rigging the fights, to try to break him.…” He trailed off.

  “How?” I asked.

  “Nothing terrible,” he said, the color in his face rising. “Sometimes they’d make him run before a fight. Or wouldn’t let him eat that day. They started setting him up with bigger guys. He got knocked around a lot more and … it got worse. He quit trying. He took their deal. After that he didn’t really have anything to fight for.”

  Nothing terrible. Right.

  I chewed my lip, quietly making sense of the last few minutes. Feeling a fresh sense of grief for not one, but two good people.

  “He’s jealous of you.”

  “What?” Chase’s head shot up.

  “Tucker’s jealous. You got out. You’re free. He doesn’t want you to have what he can’t.”

  Chase considered this.

  “What I don’t get,” I said slowly, “is why you’re jealous of him.”

  “Why would I be jealous of him?” Chase blinked, taken aback.

  “I don’t know. Maybe because all you wanted to do was move up, but he was the one chosen.”

  “He paid for it.” Chase’s shoulders rose an inch.

  “I know, that’s the part I don’t get,” I said. “It’s pretty sick to be jealous of someone that was practically tortured. Even if he did want to be a soldier.…”

  “He didn’t!” Chase said with sudden vehemence, slamming his fist down on the table. My spine straightened.

  Silence.

  A heavy sigh escaped between my teeth.

  “I thought you said Tucker wasn’t drafted. That he enlisted.”

  Chase’s eyes were dark and indecipherable. He looked right at me, but he wasn’t seeing me.

  “Right … he enlisted.… I only meant that he didn’t adjust well.”

  I lowered my eyes to the fist that had banged the table. I watched the way the gnarled knuckles couldn’t quite straighten.