A Time to Die

  4

  000.362.18.40.56

  Mother and I are not best friends. We don’t have girl talk or squeal about my future wedding. We don’t paint our nails together. We seldom hug. But we are friends…in our own way. We have coffee in the morning, and occasionally she does my hair. Sometimes we go sill shopping and, when I was little, I held her hand.

  I imagined her first thoughts about me as positive—Parvin, the surprise baby, the life replacing death. Not as a curse.

  My eyes smart. What did I expect? I close the journal and, with it, my heart. I won’t assume and I won’t ask. I may be her curse, but I won’t risk what relationship we do have in my Last Year. Not yet, anyway.

  The front door opens with a burst of jabbering. Reid’s voice holds its usual upbeat dance. It’s refreshing having him home, even if he insists on sleeping in the room above Father’s shop instead of our house—always so independent.

  My fingers brush over my stitches and I slide off my bed, leaving the blanket crooked.

  Reid enters my room like a rhino. The door rebounds off the wall. He stops it with his foot and throws his arms wide. “Ribbons! Long ones, short ones, ones for every mood.” He does a little dance to the singsong rhythm. “Thin ones, thick ones, and ones to tie your shoes!”

  I giggle. “You can’t rhyme.”

  He wiggles his fingers in front of my face. Ribbons are tied to each one—silk, velvet, lace, smooth, curly, and shiny. Though I never wear ribbons—I’m not even sure how to wear ribbons—I can’t stop the sigh. “They’re beautiful.”

  “Like my sister.” He slides them off, one by one.

  “They’ll get lost in all my crazy hair.” I wrap one around my pinky finger.

  “Then tie them to your beard.”

  Mother interrupts Reid’s laugh with a holler. “Supper!”

  I make a face, not very hungry, but we enter the kitchen and take our seats anyway. Crumpled street vendor wrappings sit beside four steaming plates of food on each edge of the table.

  Baked fish.

  I warn my gag reflex to behave. Mother takes the ribbons from Reid and steps up behind me. She loosens my braid and brushes my hair with her fingers. Something in me wants to pull away, but the hidden soft side—that Brielle persona—keeps me still. In fact, it urges me to enjoy the moment.

  “Aren’t you going to eat?” I ask her.

  “In a minute.” She pulls back strands from my face.

  Reid bows his head.

  I close my eyes, trying not to disrupt Mother’s fingers.

  “Our Father in heaven,” he says. “Hallowed be Your name . . .”

  My mind drifts from his formal prayer. He and I don’t pray the same. Maybe it’s because I don’t often pray. Does this prayer touch his heart? I’ve heard it so often I can’t seem to focus on the meaning. It seems so . . . impersonal sometimes.

  “. . . but deliver us from evil. Amen.”

  I open my eyes.

  Mother says, “Now, tell us about your day, Parvin.”

  Father and Reid dig into the crappie with vigor, releasing its fumes like stirred cow manure. Reid throws me a wink. I feign throwing my fork at him.

  It takes a minute to register Mother’s request and even longer to recall the day’s events. Library, Skelley Chase, Trevor, Dusten, Enforcer, journal. I don’t want to tell them much. They look so content. But they’re family—my family. I can’t leave them out, so I insert lightheartedness into my descriptions.

  I brush off disappointments. I leave out the journal. Mother French braids ribbons into my hair while I speak. My throat feels thick from her touch. I want to believe she loves me. I want this show of affection to be real. But I can’t help wondering if she’s thinking of me as her curse. I want my assurance back.

  “Did you see the Enforcer on the corner of Straight Street?” I pick at my crappie.

  “Enforcer?” Reid looks up, a frown creasing his brow.

  Father sets down his fork. “A new family is moving into the empty house—an evicted family. I’d guess he’s their escort.”

  Now it’s my turn to frown. “I didn’t know Enforcers escorted evicted families. I thought they just kicked them out of their home city—downgraded and relocated them.”

  “Enforcers from Upper or High Cities provide escorts as a security measure,” Reid says. “The law in those cities is a lot more structured and humane. They have to register the Radicals and monitor the number of re-located Radicals in each city.”

  “This is why many Low Cities deteriorate,” Father says. “If there are too many registered Radicals, the job market and population get adulterated. Low Cities turn into Dead Cities because the government gives less specie and the Mentors move away. That’s one reason I think Unity Village is hesitant to register all the illegal Radicals.”

  I look between Father and Reid—how do they know this? No one seems concerned about the Enforcer on our street. Isn’t Reid nervous? After all, I have our Numbers with me. If that young Enforcer on the corner had stopped Reid and asked for his Numbers, Reid could have been sentenced to cross the Wall then and there.

  “Parvin, I have some news.” Reid’s grip tightens around his fork. Mother binds my hair, pats my shoulder, then she and Father retreat to their room with their meals.

  “Bad news?” I croak as their door closes. They’ll be listening.

  “Depends on your perspective.”

  I bite my tongue. “I won’t panic.” Sometimes saying it makes me believe I can restrain myself. He runs a hand through his hair. I do the same until my fingers catch in the ribbons.

  “Should I beat around the bush—?”

  “Just say it, Reid.” My anxiety swells and my mind skims possibilities: He wants to cross the Wall. The government knows about our Numbers. He knows about my outburst with Trevor. An Enforcer caught him without his Clock—

  “I’m leaving.”

  I let out a sound somewhere between a gasp and a squawk. “L-Leaving?” I focus all my strength on restraining the over-reactive emotions welling in my eyes. He won’t look at me. I can’t bring myself to ask why, when, or for how long.

  “I only came home for a couple days. I’ll return for the six-month Assessment.”

  All willpower drains from me and I rest my face in my hands. First Mother and now Reid. Am I important to them at all?

  Deep breaths. A few tears drop. “I-Is it because of my plan?” I choke. “B-because I want to be a biographer? Is it because I upset you yesterday?” Silence. I look up. His face is in his hands, too. “I’m sorry, Reid.”

  He shakes his head and then meets my eyes. I see the anguish in his gaze before his brave smile makes an entrance. “No, Parvin. It’s not because of your plan. It’s because Florida is my plan. I can leave now knowing you have something to pour the rest of your time into—your biography.”

  “What’s in Florida? You haven’t even told me about it. Why do you love it so much?”

  He releases a long breath and cracks his thumb knuckle. “I’ll write to you about it, okay?”

  Resignation takes its hold—something I’ve mastered. I’ll watch Reid leave on an adventure again, envying him, but not daring to follow. I restrain myself from begging, But you said you came to go through Last Year with me. You said you wouldn’t let me face it alone. A sigh escapes my tense lips. “When do you leave?”

  “Tomorrow. The train departs at dusk.”

  I dip my head. “Thanks for telling me.”

  “Parvin . . .”

  I hold up a hand and stand. “I’m fine, Reid. Just let me swallow it tonight.”

  “Your ribbons look nice.”

  “Thanks.”

  I enter my room and shut the door softly, like a whisper. If I could unbutton my soul and hang it up, its downtrodden state might dry off by morning. Instead, I lie on
my bed and let it float in my swirling emotions.

  Reid was right—I have something to pour the rest of my life into, but I do it because of his absence and my stirring restlessness. With no writing experience, no brother, and nothing else to do, I commit every second to my biography. It’s difficult rebelling against my former habit of wasting time. When the pull to quit is too strong, I walk through the town square clutching my Clock as a reminder of the urgency.

  Sometimes I read my Bible because Reid would want me to, but the words gloss together. The information won’t seep into my heart, no matter what I read. The verses, the books, the stories . . . all seem so boring. What am I missing?

  The dipping pen Father carved drips blotches of Mother’s ink onto the page as I scribble sentence after sentence. The ink is made from blueberries and smells like summer—a hopeful scent in these winter days. Mother places the extra ink on the windowsill for trade.

  Weeks pass and I delve into the works of Skelley Chase—fascinated by his ability to turn the most boring story into a midnight-candle read. My weathered wood desk grows stained from ink. The local newspapers lean in uneven piles. The electrosheet brings drama from Upper Cities and depressing changes in Low City regulations.

  Hearing after hearing swallow up my weak protests, leaving me with more ghost eyes of doomed Radicals. I pour every experience, every attempt at saving them, into my biography. Someone will read this. Someone will change this.

  I cry through the recollection of my limited school years, but take care that no tears smudge my pages. After much internal squirming, I change the names of the bullies. I can’t bring myself to give them the honor of having their names published.

  The hardest part of writing my own story is filling in the blanks. I have a lot of blanks: staying at home and doing nothing but dream, read, sit outside and make pictures in the snow, stare at the sky and envy Reid’s confidence, sew, sew, sew. These aren’t things people want to read about.

  I resign myself to a short biography.

  When I’m in need of inspiration, I flip through Mother’s journal to find some mention of Reid or myself. My name appears several times in her short cryptic sentences, but no entries hold emotion. Just raw facts.

  01.12.2140—“I wish the government would give us a better dividend so I could buy Parvin some boots.”

  06.01.2141—“Oliver gave me a glass window yesterday. It’s so clean. Parvin and Reid made faces in it all day long.”

  09.10.2142—“Reid saved Parvin from the bullies at school today. I’m so proud of him.”

  I manage to write two pages from these last two sentences after Mother’s entry jogs a long-forgotten memory. Reid always saved me—from bullies, from depression, from loneliness . . . all the way up until our Last Year.

  Now he has deserted me.

  Every time I finish with Mother’s journal, I place it back in the safe when she’s not looking. For all I know, she doesn’t even realize I’m reading it.

  The six-month mark approaches and Mother turns more snappish, yet somehow softer, in her interactions with me. Maybe it’s because she’ll miss me. Perhaps she already misses me. I don’t often leave my room and our visiting has dwindled to the necessity of mealtime. My birthday passes without card, cake, or Reid. Apparently Mother and Father don’t think eighteen is an important age since it marks the year I’ll die.

  Mother does leave me a Bible verse scribbled on a scrap of paper. Something about God completing what He started in me. I toss it among the stacks of Unity newspapers. Now that I’m eighteen it seems she’s not afraid of being arrested for sharing a Bible verse.

  Half of my Last Year is gone, and I’ve spent it holed in these four walls, filling the air with the aroma of blueberry ink. Even with the scratched-out rough draft of my life sitting on my desk, I am unfulfilled—and plagued by that fact. But it seems to plague Mother more.

  “I don’t know what you expect from my Last Year, Mother,” I say the afternoon of my six-month Assessment. “If you were my Mentor, what would you have me do?”

  She throws a dishrag into the sink and pumps the water handle with unnecessary fervor. “I don’t understand why you want your biography published. Why do you want people to know you disobeyed the government or you quit school or you sew all the time?” Water gushes from the pump and she shoves the stopper into the sink bottom.

  “It’s not just about me. It’s about the Radicals who are sentenced on that platform in the square every month.” I wrap a thin orange scarf around my neck and bypass the basket of gloves. The weather has lightened and spring awaits the sun’s call, but brooding clouds hold the war flag at the moment. “This can heal people, Mother.”

  “No one’s broken.”

  “Everyone’s broken,” I breathe. “Our village has lost its unity.”

  “You don’t make sense.”

  “At least I’m doing something.” The words feel like a lie. My soul pounds its fists on my sternum from the inside, screaming, It’s not enough! But I don’t know what is enough. I must keep searching. I must keep moving.

  It’s no fair growing restless when, six months from now, I’ll be in “eternal rest,” according to Reid and the Bible. I’m not even tired yet.

  “The government won’t publish your story.” Mother pulls her hands from the icy dishwater and rubs them together.

  “They have to. I’ll make it a Last-Year wish. I’m bringing the manuscript to Trevor Rain right now.” I can’t allow myself to think I’m spending my Last Year in vain. One hundred and eighty-one days remain to my life and it’s still as bland as watered-down coffee.

  She gives no reply. I hoist the satchel containing my biography onto my shoulder, blow her a kiss she doesn’t see, and tromp into the afternoon rays. It’s already two hours past noon, but today’s a lazy day. Mrs. Newton stands on the corner, washing her street window.

  Mother and I figured the Newtons have a lot of specie from their previous city because every window in their new house has glass in it—pure single sheets of glass. Our new kitchen window is made of twelve square panes connected to crisscrossed wood framing. Aside from the windows, their two young girls wear different clothing almost every day.

  “Good noon, Parvin.” Mrs. Newton waves her rag at me—the friendliest soul on Straight Street.

  “Good afternoon.”

  An Enforcer steps out of Mrs. Newton’s front door—the young one who thatched their roof. I jolt to a stop and my hand flies to my Clock in my pocket.

  He sees me and smiles, crinkling the black backward E on his temple. “Good noon, Miss.”

  “G-Good . . . uh . . .” I take tiny steps, inching to the other side of the street.

  “This is Parvin Blackwater.”

  I want to scream at Mrs. Newton to be silent.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Miss Blackwater,” he says. “Off to the market?”

  I shake my head. “M-my six-month A-Assessment.”

  His smile fades. “Oh, I’m sorry. Well, enjoy the spring warmth on your walk to the county building.”

  “Thank you.” I turn onto Center Road toward the square and try not to flee. Deafening thumps pound my eardrums as my blood pulses. Why is he with the Newtons? They’re not friends with an Enforcer are they? And why did he want to know where I was going?

  I glance over my shoulder. He’s not following. Does he suspect anything?

  It doesn’t matter. I have our Clock. He can’t do anything to me. My heart rate slows and I try to push my thoughts to positive things.

  Reid comes home today. What would he say to my second encounter with this Enforcer? Maybe nothing. Maybe he would shrug it off. Maybe our reunion will be like last Assessment Day, joking in the entrance of the county building and riding the elevator together. But when I arrive, the entrance is empty of all except Rat Nose. She’s wearing new glasses.

  I approach
her desk. She looks up and her eyes narrow. “Parvin Brielle Blackwater?”

  I flinch at the name Brielle. “Is my brother here?” She squints at an electronic screen set into the face of her desk. I lean over the marble counter and stare at the screen. “Is that new?”

  A miniature calendar blinks from under her coffee cup. “The government gave us a few benefits. It’s about time they updated our system. These documenters make my job easier.” She moves the cup and taps the screen. Today’s square grows large. “Your brother has not arrived yet.”

  “He’ll probably be a little late.” I shake off the disappointment. When does his train arrive? Home has been bogged with depression since he left. I want him back and I don’t ever want him to leave again.

  “Mr. Rain will see you now,” she rasps, pursing her lips.

  I trudge into the elevator and stare at the reflection. Nothing new—I’m a bit heavier than last time from all the sitting I’ve done. Reid will like that.

  I knock on Trevor’s door. He lets out a muffled, “Come in.”

  When I enter, someone’s in my chair. Trevor beckons me forward. The broad-shouldered, shorthaired stranger turns and releases an unnatural smile. He has a prominent jaw with a brown goatee and holds an asparagus-colored fedora in his lap. I’ve seen him somewhere before—he’s attractive, mid-thirties, with a tanned complexion.

  “Mr. Sacred Seconds?” I place his face to the memory of Rat Nose’s old magazine.

  “Ah, you read magazines?” His voice is low with a little warble and sounds almost bored.

  “No, but I saw you on the cover once.”

  He raises an eyebrow before turning back to Trevor. I rub the toe of my boot on the floor. My Clock is in one hand and my satchel dangles from the other.

  “Parvin.” Trevor smiles—a real smile, making me step back in surprise. I eye him, but he goes on. “I’d like you to meet Mr. Skelley Chase.”

  5

  000.181.23.20.16

  Shock. People react to it in different ways. Some scream, some drop things, some babble. Me? My brain enters an instant sludge of numbness and idiocy. My tongue muscles recover sooner than my mental ones and I spew foolishness. “You have a goatee.”