UnBound

  Five minutes later she still can’t clear the malfunction. She admits defeat.

  As she surrenders her weapon, she sees her score. Twelve. Miserable. Lowest score in her squad.

  Logan is waiting by the gate, but before he can say anything to her, the lieutenant orders him away. The sarge takes her back to the main StaHo building alone on the army cart. He drives, and she sits on the seat next to him, the lockers and ammo boxes jouncing in the back.

  Not once does he speak on the entire return trip.

  • • •

  Back at the StaHo she expects Sarge to escort her straight to the headmaster’s office. Instead he marches her to a classroom where the rest of the squad is waiting for their written test. She slips into a seat next to Logan. Every eye is on her. Logan is frowning, puzzled and worried at the same time.

  The proctor watches the clock so they can start the test on the hour. Five agonizing minutes to listen to a fly buzzing at the window.

  On her other side Kip’s bandaged ankle is propped on the chair in front of him. Pecs is conspicuously absent.

  Then, too low for Logan to hear, Kip says, “Guess who’s in the infirmary because of you?”

  She refuses to look at him, keeping her eyes on the proctor.

  He sings softly, “Someone’s in trouble.”

  As the proctor sets the tests facedown on their desks, Brooklyn takes one last look at the other members of her squad. Maybe some of the girls and younger guys are looking at her with admiration for having stood up for herself. Maybe one of the older ones gives her a small nod of approval. Most are disgusted with her, though.

  Her skin crawls. This is Risa’s fault. If she hadn’t been in the stands, Brooklyn wouldn’t have pushed herself so hard. She would have realized the diplomatic benefit of taking third place in the race and not challenging Kip’s asinine pride. At the thought, someone in a practice room upstairs starts playing arpeggios. Brooklyn hopes Risa’s fingers malfunction during her recital. And that the whole audience spits at her.

  • • •

  After the written test Brooklyn only wants to scour the sweat, gunpowder, and spit off her skin. But even before she can strip down in her dorm, someone raps at the door. She thinks it might be one of the DormGuardians to hurry her along, since she’s the last one out. It would mean she’d have to go to lunch reeking and take her shower later.

  But no—it’s just another ward. The absolute last one Brooklyn cares to see.

  “Can I come in?” Risa asks.

  “What, are you lost?” Brooklyn says. “Isn’t your room in the south wing?”

  “North,” Risa says.

  “Good, I’m glad you’re not lost,” Brooklyn tells her. “Now get lost.”

  Instead, Risa steps in, moving closer to Brooklyn. “I know it was you yesterday.”

  Brooklyn won’t look at her. She grabs her soap and a towel for the shower. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I saw your reflection in the dance mirror. I thought you might turn me in for being there on a Sunday.”

  “Who says I still won’t?” She tries to push past Risa, but unlike most of the other girls, Risa’s more of an obstacle than a turnstile. When Risa’s shoulder doesn’t give, Brooklyn stumbles, dropping the soap. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” She’s about to order Risa to pick it up, but Risa does so of her own volition, holding it out to Brooklyn.

  Brooklyn takes it reluctantly. “What is it you want from me?”

  “Just to thank you for listening,” Risa says. “None of the other kids care enough to listen. Half the time the teachers don’t care enough.”

  Brooklyn shrugs. “You’re good at something,” she admits. “And maybe I got some culture. Maybe I’m not the bonehead boeuf you think I am.”

  “I don’t think that,” Risa says, then grins. “Well, maybe a little.”

  Brooklyn finds herself fighting her own grin. “And maybe you’re just a little bit of a stuck-up bitch who thinks she’s better than the rest of us.” It feels good to say that to Risa’s face after all these years.

  Then Risa nods and says, “Maybe sometimes I do act that way.”

  Brooklyn isn’t sure how to take Risa’s acceptance of her rebuke. It was always so satisfying to hate her. This is new territory. Uneasy territory.

  “I’ve seen the way you sign with that deaf boy,” Risa says.

  Brooklyn tenses up, sensing an insult, or at least a dig. “That’s none of your business.”

  “I know—I just think it’s cool that you learned how to do it. It’s a talent.”

  “A useless one!” Brooklyn growls. “There are barely any deaf people out there to use it with. Auditory tracts are cheap.”

  “But you still learned it for the kids in here. Maybe just for that one boy.”

  The fact that she’s right—the fact that she can read Brooklyn so easily—makes her uncomfortable. When people know you, that knowledge can easily be turned against you. Brooklyn starts wondering if there’s something she knows—or could find out—about Risa that she could use against her. Not that she would, but like old-world nukes, a balance of power could save their little world from nuclear winter.

  And then Risa says, “In a way, it’s not all that different from playing the piano. I mean—you use your hands to create meaning, just like I do.”

  Brooklyn just stares at her. What is her angle? What does she want?

  “Are we done here? Because I really do have to take a shower.”

  “Yeah, we’re done,” Risa tells her. “I just wanted to thank you for liking my music. And to congratulate you on taking second place today.”

  “Why were you even there? Shouldn’t you have been practicing for your test?”

  “The practice rooms were all taken,” Risa said with a shrug. “Besides—you stopped to listen to me. I thought I’d return the favor.”

  Risa turns to go, and, not wanting to let her have the last word, Brooklyn says, “You made three mistakes.”

  Risa turns back to her. “Excuse me?”

  “When you were playing, I heard three mistakes. But if you fix those three, it’ll be amazing.”

  Risa’s smile is genuine. Almost dazzling.

  • • •

  Brooklyn finds Thor waiting for her just outside the cafeteria.

  You scared me, Thor signs.

  Why? Did you think I got unwound before lunch?

  Anything’s possible.

  With Risa’s interruption and her shower, Brooklyn hoped she’d be late enough to entirely miss her squad, but the lunch line is moving slowly today, and she can see they’re all still there. Two guys from her squad, having apparently inhaled their food, are the first to leave. They pass her in the hallway as they exit the dining hall, looking like they want to shove her, or worse. Thor glares at them coldly, and they move along, as if intimidated by him. Funny how a skinny deaf kid has more power than hulking boeufs.

  Another fight? Thor looks resigned as he signs.

  Ignoring the question, she signs back, How bad is it?

  This is preliminary. It’s just your ranking with the boeufs and academics. It doesn’t include arts kids yet—they test after lunch.

  With her written test already computer scored, there’s nothing more she can do. Her performance is her performance, both in the field and the classroom.

  How bad is it? she signs again.

  He looks around them. Through the swinging doors the dining hall is crowded and filled with watchful eyes, but the hallway is empty. There’s no one listening, no one watching—and even if there were, no one could decipher their hand gestures.

  Get your lunch, Thor signs. We’ll sit down and we’ll talk after.

  But she grabs him before he can walk away and signs impatiently, Tell me now!

  Then she sees the tiny tic at the corner of Thor’s mouth and the dread in his eyes. He hesitates a moment more, then finally he levels the news at her. Blackjack, he signs. As of now, you’re
number twenty-one.

  She flattens herself against the wall and slides down till her butt hits the floor. She missed the cutoff by one. She’s on the harvest list. She will be unwound.

  She ignores Thor kneeling next to her and his flying fingers. Everything that happened that morning crashes over her.

  Thor gets in her face, shouting with his hands. We can fix this!

  Poor kid, she thinks. He’s delusional. Nothing can fix this. Not after another fight. Not after that low marksmanship score.

  Still, she manages one sign. How?

  An arts kid might bump you off the harvest list, once they test, he signs. And if not, we can bump someone else on it.

  She frowns. How? she signs again.

  Leave that to me.

  • • •

  The cafeteria is only half-full for lunch. Having eaten earlier, the arts kids are now beginning their marathon of tests. The hall has a different vibe without them. The sounds are more bass, with sudden silences intermixed with gravel-rattling voices and squeaking benches. The deaf kids are there, sitting at the far end of the room, comfortable in their forest of signs—but Thor has left for the computer lab in his attempt to save Brooklyn’s hide. He might be smart, but Brooklyn doubts he can influence the list at all.

  As she exits the lunch line with her tray, another random lull descends. The slower eaters in her squad sit at the table under the clock. The most offensive members have already left. There are allies—or at least those who remain neutral—at the table, but still she stalls, not wanting to hear them rehash the tests, or worse, her fight with Pecs. At least he’s not there. She looks around for a safe harbor away from her squad. She can’t sit with one of the other squads, and she can’t sit with the deaf kids without Thor there. In the end, she starts for an empty table. Ironically, if Risa were here, Brooklyn might consider joining her. As much as Brooklyn has despised her, she can’t deny the fragile connection they made in her dorm room. And all that old baggage—the things that made Brooklyn feel thorny with resentment and shame—suddenly pales with the rawness of this morning’s many failures.

  But before she even puts her tray down, she hears, “Yo, Brooks. Over here.”

  From her squad’s table Logan waves at her. His back had been to the doorway, and someone must have told him that she was there. Reluctantly she walks to the table. Before she gets there, several of the others leave, averting their eyes—both guys and girls. But even the ones who remain don’t seem too hot on sitting with the Pariah of the Day. And of course there’s Kip, complete with a bandaged ankle that he wears like a war wound. He sits at the end of the table with a trio of scrawny plebes. They’ll fawn all over any older boeuf who gives them attention, and Kip always does. He gets off on being worshipped. If humans licked their wounds, she’s sure Kip would make the plebes lick his.

  Writhing inside, but unable to escape, she sits next to Logan.

  “Bombed the written test,” Logan announces cheerfully.

  She’s grateful that he’s taken the sting out of her own failures by starting the conversation with his own. She can’t help wondering whether he has really failed the written, or is he just saying that to make her feel better. Could he be on the preliminary harvest camp list too? Thor didn’t tell her anyone else’s standings.

  “You probably did better than you think,” she says generously.

  “Don’t see how.” He seems to meditate briefly on it, and then shrugs. “Can’t do anything about it now.”

  Not without a Thor to change his standing, she thinks, and takes a hefty bite of her burger.

  “At least he didn’t break a fellow soldier’s nose,” Kip says. The burger suddenly tastes like a turd in her mouth. One of the plebes giggles nervously.

  Logan frowns at his best friend. “Man, that’s not cool.”

  “Yeah? Well what she did was worse.” Without looking at her, Kip grabs his tray and leaves. In his dramatic departure, he forgets to limp. The plebes slink after him, one girl shooting Brooklyn a dirty look after reaching a safe distance.

  Logan bumps his shoulder against Brooklyn’s. “Don’t worry about him. He’s just sore you beat him in the two mile. And so what if you tripped him—Kip needed his ego taken down a few notches anyway.”

  Brooklyn bristles. “I told you—I didn’t trip him.”

  “You know what? It’s over. It doesn’t matter.”

  But it does matter. Because Logan is taking Kip’s word over hers. He thinks he’s being magnanimous by forgiving her—but he’s forgiving her for something she didn’t do.

  Logan goes on talking, not even noticing Brooklyn’s slow boil. “And Pecs—I wouldn’t worry about him, either. He’s leaving the home soon anyways. Turns eighteen in three months.” Then he looks at Brooklyn’s burger. “You gonna eat that?”

  She finds what little appetite she had is completely gone. She puts the half-eaten burger on his plate. “All yours.”

  Grinning, he wolfs it down and talks with his mouth full. It barely sounds like human speech.

  “Didn’t understand a word you said.”

  He wipes grease and mayonnaise off his mouth with his hands. “I said . . .” He speaks with exaggerated clarity. “Weird about your rifle malfunctioning.”

  “Yeah. Weird.” She doesn’t want to talk about it. Even thinking about it makes her sweat.

  “No one else’s did. Well, Shanda’s weapon jammed a couple of times, but hers always does. You used your own rifle, right?”

  “Yeah, I did.” Then she thinks about it. She was the last one in line, still shaking from the encounter with Pecs and the long walk alone with the sarge. A plebe had unlocked her weapons locker before she arrived. Had he switched it with someone else’s—or worse, had someone tampered with her rifle somehow?

  Thoughts swirl in her head like furious hornets.

  • • •

  After lunch Logan slopes off to watch one of his nonboeuf friends in a jazz recital. A kid who tutors him in math.

  “You should come,” he says. “Get yourself a little culture.”

  She’s about to say she likes classical better than jazz but decides against it. “Sorry, music isn’t my thing.” Then one of the other kids mimes the breaking of her recorder—which is apparently legendary—and it gives her all the excuse she needs to slip away and find Thor. But once she’s alone, her natural paranoia rises. Had the plebe at the weapons cart given her a bad rifle? Before she knows it, she’s turning for the stairwell that leads to the basement weapons cage. She keys in the digital lock, which she always knows, no matter how often they change it, and takes the stairs three at a time.

  A different code opens the door at the bottom of the stairs, and through long practice, she ducks her head to avoid the camera. The basement is a warren of storage areas. An atmosphere of old paper, decaying rubber, and petroleum permeates the place. It’s colder than upstairs, but not by much.

  The armory is in the back. She passes the freight elevator and the long row of file rooms behind more locked doors. She’s used information in those files in trade for goods and favors. She could probably find something in there that would save her now, but there’s not enough time. Too bad she hadn’t found a hideous scandal that could keep her safe until she turns eighteen. If she survives this harvesting, that will be her new priority.

  The weapons are stored in rows behind a rigid cage of steel bars and chicken wire. She stalls on the north side of the armory, hearing a rattling inside. Between the third and fourth rows she sees someone standing at a workbench; an overhead lamp lights him and the bench. His back is to her, but he looks like the plebe who was responsible for the weapons lockers at the rifle range, a wiry kid with nasty knuckles and large ears. He was also part of Kip’s entourage at lunch. Two lockers are open on the bench. The plebe is disassembling a rifle.

  She’s too far away to identify either of the lockers as hers. She clutches the cage bars, straining to see. In its concrete foot, the steel squeaks against her w
eight, and she reflexively backs away into the shadows.

  “Who’s there?” the plebe calls. His voice squeaks like the cage bar.

  Soundlessly she flees down the long corridor, then ducks down a side hall when she hears the ponderous opening of the cage door. She finds a second stairwell, not daring to return to the main one. She fumbles the exit code and is sure the camera caught her profile leaning closer to the keypad. Can they identify her from a dim silhouette? Just one more thing she wishes she didn’t have to think about.

  She heads for Thor’s small bedroom and is grateful he isn’t there. He might have talked her out of her rampant paranoia, and she wants to let it range free.

  Her thoughts buzz angry and bewildered. Did the plebe sabotage her gun and is now hiding the evidence of his tampering? And if it was sabotage, who ordered it? A plebe that age wouldn’t act alone. This would have to have been planned long ahead of time, so it couldn’t be Kip. Or could it? He’d never liked her, even before his catastrophic fall on the track. Maybe it was the sarge. The man always seemed to have it in for her. He treats her as if she’s not a true boeuf, no matter how well she scores on tests and performs on the field. And it can’t be just because of her fighting.

  The lieutenant couldn’t be involved in the conspiracy, could he? Maybe the sarge, but not the lieutenant. She wants to think at least one person besides Thor is on her side. Logan doesn’t count. His protective power expired the moment he chose to believe Kip instead of her. Maybe she’ll talk to the lieutenant about the rifle. Maybe he’ll treat her fairly—and maybe Thor can keep her off the harvest list this time. But what about next time? She’ll need to scrape deep for information that’s so awful it’ll keep her safe for the next two years. From now on she must protect herself. No matter who gets unwound because of it.