by Mya Robarts
When I turn away from them, Divine shouts after me. “You! V-girl! Stop ditching meetings. Today at five p.m.”
No way. I’d die if the Comanches heard word of my pathetic attempt to seduce our leader. I’m working out on my own.
Walking back toward town, I wonder why Divine and Joey keep doing this. Maybe it’s because they can’t get married. They aren’t even allowed to live together because biracial kids like me aren’t welcome. Even if they could get away from Starville, she wouldn’t be able to get a new marriage tattoo, since her ex-husband left after the troops abused her.
A loud sigh escapes my chest. Perhaps if I hadn’t seen the soldiers violating my mother, I wouldn’t be a voyeur. Her attackers’ faces haunt me at night, and whenever I watch Divine and Joey, my terror subsides a little.
Maybe I am trying to stop seeing what can’t be unseen.
Distracted by these gloomy thoughts, I trip on a loose stone. That’s when I notice him.
He emerges from the woods, not far from my hiding place. I can’t decipher his cryptic expression. I doubt he could watch the show from where he was, but I’m certain that he saw me watching.
Of all people, why him? Aleksey unnerves me because he resembles my mother’s attackers. Besides, he’s seen me naked, and now he’s seen another private part of me.
I’m about to say something, but then I remember who he is. A corrupt, drunk Accord cop—an ex-soldier with, most likely, a history of violence. They’re the ones who should feel ashamed. Cops do nothing to defend recruits. Compared to that, my tendency to watch is nothing.
I take a breath and meet his gaze with defiant eyes before turning my back on him. I can feel his eyes stabbing into my back as I put more distance between us.
I have other things to worry about. The railway will take five more days to repair, and I hope I’ll still have my Shiloh job by then. In the meantime, I have sewing jobs, and Dad has found a way to work on his pills again. The entire Velez family, even Poncho in his guardian role, fabricates the pills.
I cross town with Aleksey not far behind me. I don’t jump to the conclusion that he’s following me. Unlike the other Accord cops, Aleksey and Tristan spend a lot of time at the clinic, assisting every way they can. The rest are supposed to supply vaccines and run tests at the clinic for Starvillers, but most of the time, they drink on the streets. They come only when they need Aleksey to sign papers or to receive orders from him.
When I get to Exodus Street, Aleksey is still walking behind me. I take a detour, just in case.
These days, Dad has been working as though they’re paying him a fortune, and I’m pleased to see him so motivated. Nurses and doctors come and go, leaving as soon as the wounded soldiers are stabilized and sent to bigger hospitals. Most of the time, my family is alone at the clinic. But when there are soldiers around, I don’t leave my family alone, and I make sure the twins remain hidden.
Sweaty after the long walk, I arrive at the clinic and search for my family. I find Azzy making pills in an empty examination room. She’s ditched the dull philosophy lesson that’s taking place in another room.
We work on the pills together, hours passing amicably.
The soft music in Aleksey’s room quiets down. Sometimes, Aleksey shuts himself in to play his double bass, and no cop or soldier dares interrupt. But whenever Olmo corners Aleksey, the cop listens with solemn patience—wearing his perpetual serious face—and answers Olmo’s endless questions with nods and grunts. When I see this, I don’t hate Aleksey as much as I should. I’m not always so patient with Olmo myself.
One day I overheard Olmo ask him, “Why don’t you talk, Prince Aleksey?”
The cop tore a piece of paper from his journal, scribbled something, and handed my brother the note. Olmo grinned and regarded Aleksey with admiring eyes. “Cool!”
Olmo showed me the note later. Only four words: I don’t want to.
But when Elena Rivers, using a seductive tone, asked the same question while Aleksey was busy checking his j-device, she received an altogether different response.
“An experiment,” he said curtly.
“Ooh! I love experiments,” she purred. “What kind of experiment?”
He showed her the time on his j-device chronometer. “To see how long it would take an insufferable, nosy idiot to ask me about it.”
Elena looked affronted. That day she’d been so nasty to my dad that I felt like Aleksey had avenged my family for me. Since then, Elena has recovered well. She often visits the clinic to try to get into Aleksey’s pants. He’s always rudely indifferent to her flirtation, but she doesn’t take the hint.
Living so close to an ex-soldier scares me, but my family trusts him, perhaps because he’s completely impartial. Neutrality defines Aleksey; I can’t tell if he favors one band or the other. He gives the same care to all the injured soldiers, whether they’re Nats or Patriots. And at the same time, it’s as though he doesn’t care about anybody.
“Well, he has to be nice to Patriot soldiers since they keep him fed. He eats a lot,” says Azzy. She has an uncanny ability to read faces, hearts, and minds.
“Weird. Ex-soldiers barely eat.” That’s another desired effect of the tonics they take to build their muscles.
“He must have stopped taking the tonics after he left the army. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to drink alcohol.”
“Those aren’t normal muscles. If he’s not taking drugs, how is he so built?”
She stops mixing the ingredients to stretch her arms. “Because he trains every morning. Shirtless.”
I look out the window. This room has a magnificent view of the stone staircase and the mountains beyond Starville. “You’ve been paying attention to him.” Well, so has every other female in Starville.
Azzy shrugs. “There aren’t many things to do around here. Maybe that’s why he’s always scribbling stuff in his notebook. I suspect he’s writing music.”
She stops talking and stares greedily when Aleksey appears outside the window. Poncho jumps around the cop as he climbs down the stone staircase. I nudge Azzy back to reality.
“I wasn’t swooning, idiot! I was studying him.”
I believe her. She likes to analyze people. “What’s the verdict?”
“That man is dangerous. You’re not considering him for emergency deflowering, are you, Lila?”
Azalea knows I’m still unsullied. When I arrived home feeling dejected that night, I thought she would give me the I-told-you-so speech. She didn’t. With her talent for guessing emotions, she not only gave me privacy, she offered me support … in her own detached way.
I scoff. “No! He’s kind of a soldier.” More like a beast.
“Good. Just take a look at him!” she says. “He towers above soldiers, so his truth must be extraordinary. Too much for a tight girl.”
Dad’s biology lessons got us used to describing reproductive functions in clinical terms, but we use other words for fun. A penis is the truth. A vagina gets a different name every time.
I wrinkle my nose. “Is that even possible? Ginas ought to have a stretch limit.”
“A baby is the limit.”
Remembering the monumental size I grasped in my hands, I shake my head. “That’s different. Mother Nature prepares ginas and cervixes over the nine months of pregnancy for deliveries.” But not for unnaturally large penises.
“That’s why Rey’d be better for you. He seems well-endowed in a normal way. It won’t ever happen, though.”
I look away, feeling a mix of irritation and embarrassment. I couldn’t see it, but I felt it. “Bigger than normal ... but …” She waits for me to elaborate, but I won’t disrespect Rey by discussing his girth.
She laughs. “Well, you know what they say: Penis is in the eye of the beholder.”
I should stop this conversation for her own good. Discussions about sex are not uncommon with us, but Azzy is taking her adult act to uncomfortable extremes. I realize that I so do not want to talk about thi
s with my sister.
It’s Azzy who changes the subject. “Aleksey must like you. He sometimes stares at you.”
I glare at her. “Then he must like everybody. He always stares at everyone with his I-hate-you attitude.”
I need to distance myself from Azzy, so I take my batch of pills and enter a deserted emergency room. She follows me. “Forget about Rey; it wouldn’t have worked. He isn’t the only one with principles. You would’ve felt horrible.”
She’s right. If I can’t have his complete acceptance, I’ll feel as though I’m raping him.
“It was a stupid plan, doomed from the start,” she adds.
I’m frustrated by her patronizing tone. All the tension from the past few days hits me at once. “You know what? Maybe one day you’ll wonder what it’d be like if your best friend made love to you. Because you know he wouldn’t ever hurt you.”
She rolls her eyes.
My voice rises to a yell. “And you’ll want to know what sex is like when it’s not forced on you, so you’ll make plans to lose your innocence, too! Even if there’s nothing but friendship! Even if you’d rather wait ‘til you met someone special … but you know that will never happen to you.”
“Friends with benefits? No, thank you.”
“Never say never, Azalea. Let’s talk about it when you’re the one eligible for recruitment.”
Azzy ignores me, shaking pill dust from her dress. “It’s too much trouble to erase it from my to-do list.”
“You’re eleven. You don’t have a to-do list. It can’t be Rey because—” I look at the floor and feel a lump in my throat. “I can’t … use him.” I look up. Her condescending expression makes me shout. “I’ll find a way before the troops take me! Don’t you dare judge me!”
I storm toward the double doors. I wrench them open and stumble into someone. Someone who may have heard my outburst. Embarrassed, I stare at my feet.
“Excuse me,” I mutter, not daring to look up. But even without a view of his face, I recognize that colossal body.
At this moment, I want the ground to open up and swallow me. Aleksey is looking at me with cold steel eyes. A wicked, humorless half smile crosses his face. He obviously listened to my diatribe.
“Dr. Velez?” he asks coolly.
I’m speechless. We saw Aleksey going to town, so why did he come back? I motion toward the aisle where I had heard Dad’s voice. With no other words, I walk past him.
“So, if you won’t use your friend, I have a friend who loves being used. By virgins,” he says.
I want to make a dignified exit rather than show him that his words hit me like a punch. I keep walking, my head held high. My feet don’t get the message, and I stumble. He responds with a strange breathing sound. Has this brooding man suppressed a laugh?
I can’t take anymore and sprint to my room, slamming the door.
I’ll make him regret that he used the V-word to make fun of me.
One day.
Fly your flight, my dear dove
Sing your song, make it reach the ocean
I want my freedom
I want to live in peace
I want to sing your song
To have your wings
To be able to fly
I want my destiny to leave the path that it is taking now.
The Dove—Eduardo Carrasco
8
The Comanche Resistance
As the days pass, I fight to mend my self-esteem. I can’t get over my first failed attempt at seduction. My first failure, and likely not my last. There must be other options to lose my maidenhead, but masturbation isn’t one. I want a shared experience. To feel that someone cares for me even in my most vulnerable state. Even under normal circumstances, that’s difficult to find. I stand no chance as long as there’s war, as long as there’s hunger.
The air raid left Starville with little in the way of communications, so we have more food shortages. More people are enlisting for recruitment. Others scan the ruins for remnants of wallpaper; they say the starchy glue is edible. And I’ve noticed that the number of rats, stray cats, and dogs has drastically diminished.
The Accord cops distribute food, but it’s never enough. Patriots say Starvillers should pay the costs of the occupation, so most of the Starville production, including food, goes to the war effort.
We can’t use the provisions that TCR saved, and without my job, we rely on the ration coupons provided by the government. The rest of my family is starting to depend on Aleksey’s charity, which I find humiliating. He brings us food, but I never eat it. Women mustn’t take food from soldiers, as soldiers abuse the women who accept their food. Then they deny it was rape and claim it was prostitution. If my family eats Aleksey’s food, that’s okay, but I won’t. I don’t starve, but I never get full. At least Olmo is eating better now, although he has this habit of eating only parts of the chocolate bars Aleksey brings him. Olmo hides the rest in his emergency backpack.
I could use one of those bars at the moment. My stomach growls as I walk down the steep, winding streets toward the museum.
Poncho growls when we reach Exodus Street, where some Accord cops are drinking. One of them, Gary Sleecket, leers at me. “Why so lonely, pretty?” he shouts before they burst into laughter. I ignore them, hurrying on my way to TCR headquarters. I haven’t been there since my failure at seduction, and I dread being that close to Rey again.
Buck Weaver founded The Comanche Resistance after he came across some solar e-readers at the museum ruins. He used them to learn survival and fighting skills, then shared what he was learning with his most trusted friends, including a fourteen-year-old Rey. As they got stronger, they began scheming acts of opposition, like hiding provisions and sabotaging the Patriot trains. Only a dozen of us remain because TCR has lost members to recruitment. My dad and Baron Diaz don’t train with us, but they’re members, too.
When I enter the foyer, I hear voices coming from the training room. Luke Rivers, Elena’s brother, and Rey are arguing.
“Well, you’re entitled to your wrong opinion, but you’re mistaken,” says Rey.
“You can’t tell other people how to live their lives,” retorts Luke.
“I didn’t say don’t use visitant services. I said they deserve respect, too. I couldn’t care less where you stick your—”
Someone pats my shoulder, startling me.
“Hey! You’re back! I missed you,” says Duque, his amber eyes shining.
I smile timidly. It’s good to know at least one person missed me.
Duque leads me to an empty room where his fiancée, Veronica, is talking to Cara Winston and her daughter, Holly. I don’t join the conversation.
“It’s too bad the law doesn’t allow me to take her place,” Cara says grimly. Like her mom, Holly is slim and blonde—exactly the kind of girl Starville bachelors prefer. And soldiers. But unlike me, Holly is not trying for an emergency deflowering because she hopes to marry a local boy someday. If by some miracle she doesn’t get raped, and if she plays her celibacy card, she’ll find a husband quickly.
As inconspicuously as possible, I return to the foyer. I take a deep breath before entering the training room.
Luke is already warming up in front of the mirrors, his straight black hair falling into his almond-shaped eyes. We ignore each other as usual. He’s still arguing with Rey. I don’t understand why a privileged boy like him even joined TCR when he doesn’t get along with the leader.
“It’s none of your business. I can live perfectly without that,” says Rey from behind a half-broken folding screen.
“You don’t even know what—” Luke fakes a gasp, “—sex really is, you prude.”
Rey relays his sardonic comeback as he tosses his carpenter clothes over the screen. “You place your small penis inside a woman’s vagina. Then you thrust continuously. After a while—twelve seconds, in your case—you ejaculate sperm. As simple as th—” He comes out from behind the screen and sees me. A mix of shock and
embarrassment appears on his face.
“Lily,” he says, blushing. He’s shirtless, and his pants hang loosely from his hips. I don’t know if he’s embarrassed by what I’ve just heard or because of what almost happened between us.
“Hey, Rey,” I reply awkwardly, making my way to the door. “I—I’ll feed the doves.”
The sunlight blinds me when I enter an adjoining room that has a partially collapsed roof.
First Nats, and later Patriots, used this room to behead their enemies. The room’s tragic past and the strange sounds heard here at night are the reason for the rumors of a haunted museum. Here, a redheaded boy, Mathew Berkley, is using a contraband object: our outdated solar gadget. On sunny days, it gives us limited access to the Patriot networks.
“No news on … Midian?” I ask quietly. Until the night of the air raid, we kept in contact with Midian’s resistance.
He shakes his head. “We haven’t received pigeons either. Fanny has been praying for their souls.”
Fanny is Mathew’s pregnant wife. At twenty-two, Mathew has been married for six years and is expecting his second child. Starvillers believe engagement at thirteen and marriage at sixteen is natural. It’s not. Those are aftereffects of war and recruitment.
Other than the Diazes, I don’t feel comfortable around people. To avoid further conversation, I throw breadcrumbs on the floor, whistling “The Dove,” my dad’s favorite song. I step back as our messenger doves appear, fighting for crumbs amongst the dust.
When I return to the mirrored room, everybody is holding broomsticks.
“Duque will take charge,” announces Veronica, kissing her fiancé’s cheek.
TCR members are supposed to learn a combat skill and then take charge, training the rest of us. Today, Duque will train us in wooden sword combat.
We start with a warm-up and simple combat exercises, but when we pair up for more complicated exercises, the ditched sessions take a toll on me. I’m usually one of the top four fighters, but today I’m struggling to defeat Veronica, the most recent addition to TCR. When I finally manage to beat her, I’m sweaty and bruised; my lip is cut. It’s humiliating. Ignoring the pain, I swear that I’ll wake up at four a.m. every morning to practice.