by Mya Robarts
His grip on the steering wheel tightens. “No. He was going to recruit you.”
Since yesterday, I’ve been thinking about Aleksey’s feelings for me. I can approach the situation in one of two ways: I can grieve that I’ve found a man who loves me but who’s not going to be part of my life, or I can feel grateful that I met him at all.
His eyebrows are still furrowed as he accelerates, making the tires squeal.
A yearning to alleviate his worries surges inside my chest. I want to kiss that scowl until it disappears. Maybe my next words will change his somber mood. “You know why I asked you to wait some days before we—?”
His eyebrows arch.
“Because when we’re—” I fidget in my seat, unsure how to continue. “—in that bed together tomorrow night, you’ll know that I’m not giving myself to you because I have to. Not because of fear, not because of curiosity. I’ll give you my body, my trust—my v—virginity—because underneath that red cape and grim look, there is the only man I want.”
He says nothing, but offers a cocky half-grin. I’m covered in mud, and my hair is a bushy mess. Even so, he’s looking at me as though he couldn’t get enough of the sight of me. Wide, shining eyes and dilated pupils illuminate his face.
By the time we reach the clinic, word has spread. Five days before the recruitment ceremony, the majority of the 36th Battalion is en route to New Vegas hospitals.
Aleksey examines my hearing in one of the ER rooms. He says it’ll take a few days before it returns to its full capacity. He acts like a true professional in the way he makes me lie on my stomach so that he can examine my thigh wound, which reopened during the fight. Still, forbidden thoughts take over my mind. I want you to suck on that thigh. I want you to make love to me.
While he’s taking care of my bruises, he receives a call on his ring-device. Rocco won’t make the news official until tomorrow, but he informs the leader of the Accord Unit about an important piece of news.
The recruitment ceremony has been canceled.
I collapse into a chair and bury my head in my hands. I haven’t slept in two days, and I’ve felt tense all along. A whirlpool of emotions replaces the tension. Relief, uncertainty, pride, joy, weariness, and the overall feeling that it’s too good to be true. Until next year, I’m free from the pressure of recruitment. I’m finally free to make love to a man who loves me. I don’t even realize that tears are rolling down my cheeks until Aleksey cradles me in his arms.
“Shh, don’t cry, my Kämpferin. Allow yourself to hope.”
And at this moment, I realize that I’ll never forget him. You usually can’t recall all the people you’ve shared laughs with. But you rarely forget the people you’ve shared your tears with.
47
Family and farewells
By the time my dad takes care of all the Comanches, it’s way past curfew. They’ll have to spend the night at the clinic. I sneak out and cross the courtyard, hoping that no one notices. As I’m about to climb the scaffold to Aleksey’s room, I hear a voice.
“Lily, where are you going?”
Rey and I look at each other awkwardly. Comprehension dawns in Rey’s amber eyes. He grabs my wrist with force. “No. Stay with us.”
I don’t notice when Aleksey leaves his room and jumps from the scaffold until he lands gracefully in front of me. He assumes a protective stance. “Get your hands off her, Diaz.”
“What have you done to her, beast?” Rey asks, scowling.
Aleksey ignores the question.
“Nothing I didn’t want him to do,” I answer for him.
Rey throws a punch that Aleksey easily avoids.
“She doesn’t want to,” says Rey. “She’s young! She’s scared! You’re taking advantage of her fear of recruitment!”
The general looks at Rey the way someone would a slimy insect.
“She loves me, Fürst.”
Aleksey turns to me, his expression questioning. He sees something in my eyes that makes him scowl.
“I offered her marriage,” says Rey. “What have you offered? Pleasure? She deserves more.”
“Stop being a jerk, Rey!” I shout. “Aleksey has helped us and—”
“You’re after the joy of exploring unclaimed territory, being the first,” says Rey, ignoring me. “But when you’re gone, I’ll still be there for her. As her husband.”
Although I feel his fury brewing, Aleksey maintains a cool, distant attitude. Rey throws another punch, and the cop looks as though he couldn’t care less. I’m not sure whether Aleksey considers Rey a worthy rival, but I won’t risk things escalating between them.
“Aleksey, if you hurt him, you’ll hurt me.”
Aleksey looks at me with an unreadable expression.
“Give us a few minutes. I need to talk to my friend,” I say in a conciliatory tone.
“No, you don’t,” Aleksey says tersely. “I’ll settle some things with Diaz. Wait for me in my room.”
I mean to make my voice soft, but I can’t. “You can’t boss me around. I’ll talk to Rey.”
Aleksey wraps an arm around my shoulder and glowers at Rey. “If you need to talk, go ahead. Pretend I’m not here.”
I look at the stars above the clinic, feeling suddenly weary. I don’t want to talk to either of them anymore Surprising both of them, I lower my body until I’m sitting on the ground with my head between my knees.
“You look pale,” says Rey in a concerned voice.
I yawn. “Can’t we all celebrate the news of no recruitment and take a well-deserved rest?”
“In which bed, Lily?” asks Rey, his tone sarcastic. “Mine or his?”
“That’s it, Diaz,” growls Aleksey. “Get out of my clinic.”
I hear footsteps. Someone is approaching, but I won’t look up until I’m sure my emotions are under control.
A voice I wasn’t expecting pulls me out of my trance.
“Leave her alone, Rey! What did you say to her?” Azzy pushes Rey with a broom. “You don’t have any claim on her. You’re hot and cold and don’t even know what you want! You have to sort your shit out and stop messing with her.”
At that moment, Aleksey puts his palm on my shoulder. “Lila, I need to talk to you. Now.”
No! Not now. I just want to gather myself.
Azzy puts the broom over her head. “You won’t start a fight here, Aleksey Fürst. You don’t have any claim on my sister, either.”
She swings the broom menacingly before tossing it aside. “If she wants to do or dump both of you, you’ll either accept it or clear the space for someone else.” Azzy points a finger at the men, who watch her in awe. “She’ll do whatever she wants with her body, and you won’t have any right to be judgmental. Because you—” she jabs her finger at Aleksey, “—have screwed visitants, and you—” she turns to Rey, “—you weren’t so eager to wait until marriage when you screwed Angie, were you?”
She takes my hand and leads me to her room. I’m shaking, and my stomach growls. Aleksey offered me food earlier, and I declined. Now I regret it.
Azzy storms from the room and returns with soya bread and tea. “Eat this; it’ll increase your pheromones.”
“You’re making that up.” I ravish the bread and swallow the tea in one gulp. “But thanks.” And I don’t mean just for the bread.
She shrugs. “Somebody had to shake up the Priest a little. In your emergency deflowering triangle, he became the weak link.”
The support of my annoying sister warms me. I might not have much in life, but I have my family. Acknowledging this is enough to make me feel better.
I smile and pat her shoulder. “No triangle. My deflowering dilemma was never a matter of who. It was a matter of how.”
I won’t sleep with Aleksey tonight. I’d rather spend the night with my siblings in Azzy’s room. I’m emotionally exhausted, and I need time with my family before they leave Starville. Thanks to Aleksey’s contacts, Dad and the twins will get temporary IDs and move to New Norfolk,
where there’s an Accord hospital. I’m not sure I’ll survive to see them again, so I worry that tonight is my last chance to say goodbye.
We use sheets to build a makeshift tent. Blankets become our sleeping bags. We pretend we’re camping outside, in a place without war.
Olmo, as usual, sings and makes animal noises in his sleep. Mostly soft coos, but every so often he growls like a lion, startling us awake.
“Let’s slap him until he wakes.”
“Come on, Azalea.”
We finally fall asleep. I have blissful dreams for the first time in a long time. A starry sky over a sleepy blue lake. I dream about magnificent angels deep in conversation as they fly to the moon.
“She looks so young like this.”
“I blame the war. Sometimes I think Lila hasn’t developed emotionally. After all, she was forced to skip all the rites that let other girls reach maturity because she had to take care of herself, of her siblings … of me.”
“She developed well. She’s a woman, a fighter.”
“But in many aspects of her life, she’s still growing up.”
“She looks so peaceful.”
“You thought that she sleeps peacefully only with you, didn’t you?
“Dr. Velez, I know it’s customary in Starville to ask the father first.”
“Ask?” For a while, the only sound is the murmur of the wind under their wings. “No. It’s customary to ask the head of the family. You’d have to ask Lila.”
The angels soar toward the sun until one of them breaks the silence.
“… Farewell.”
“Farewell?”
I can’t listen to the angels anymore. By the time I open my eyes, the sun is high in the sky. We haven’t overslept since the twins were toddlers.
I make my way toward Aleksey’s room. Giving him my virginity will be my way of saying goodbye.
When I enter the room, I freeze in shock.
For a moment, I think I’m having a vivid nightmare. The room is unrecognizable. Where his bed, his bass, and his desk used to be, there’s nothing. Nothing that could convince anyone that he ever lived here.
I enter the room. Each step echoes against the empty walls. Did he move his things to the Accord headquarters? Is that what he wanted to tell me last night?
At that moment, a female voice sounds from outside. “V-girl! Come here!”
It’s Divine. Her lips are pressed together and her body is tense. “General Fürst and the Accord Unit left Starville.”
“Oh!” I shrug. Well … he’s constantly out on commissions. “When are they coming back?”
She avoids my inquiring gaze, and hesitates before answering. “Never.”
I blink in confusion.
“Don’t you get it? They were expelled from the country. They’re never coming back.”
I carry all the woes of those who don’t know where they’re going
My dear dove; bring me my freedom from those remote lands.
The Dove—Eduardo Carrasco
48
Missing him
I put the solar gadget in its usual hiding place under the museum floorboards and enter the beheading room. I’ve been hacking the wireless connections all morning and found the evidence that Aleksey won’t come back. A couple of notes mention that the 25th Accord Unit is on its way to Bern, an European city that holds the UNNO headquarters. Some military blogs that question the neutrality of the Unit show a picture of General Aleksey Fürst boarding a military hovercraft. Patriot military sites wonder whether other units in Patriot-occupied territories should be forced to leave the country, too.
I whistle “The Dove” song and take my favorite pigeon, Cher Ami, between my hands to pet her. The soft contact with the pacific creature soothes my feelings of loss. Aleksey broke his neutrality pledge for me. The cost we’ll pay is that he won’t make love to me tonight. Or ever. The lovers who never were, he said once. His words were foreshadowing. I thought I was ready to lose my ally, my voyeurmate. The only man who has made me feel loved. But why so soon? Why like this?
“It’s logical. No recruitment ceremony means we don’t need them here,” says Divine, who is helping me feed the pigeons.
I look away and inhale sharply. “A goodbye would have been nice.” I’ve been told that Aleksey spent an hour talking to my father while workers took his things to a Starville orphanage. Later, he took a helicopter to the soldiers’ headquarters and disappeared from my life. “If he could say goodbye to Dad, why not say goodbye to me?”
“He said he didn’t want to wake you up.”
I raise my hands in front of me, open my palms, and release Cher Ami. She flies through the damaged ceiling and disappears into the blue sky. I wish more than ever that I could fly with her. I still can’t believe that I won’t see Aleksey again. But what can I do to change what happened? Nothing! It is what it is.
“Gary Sleecket was part of several ceremonies. Perhaps the handsome Prince—”
“Gary returned only because he was a popular cop,” I say. “A lot of Starvillers wanted him back. That’s not the case with Aleksey.”
Divine tries to push the topic further, but I don’t let her. I’m trying not to think about him. It hurts, and I can do nothing to change the situation.
“Who’s in charge of the clinic now?” she asks.
“My dad. Provisionally. But the soldiers have assigned us a new dwelling in the same building as the Diazes. So … I don’t know.”
It’s pointless to move. My family will transfer to New Norfolk, in the Atlantic Coast, and I’ll leave Starville soon, but we can’t disobey an official order. Besides, moving out might help me get Aleksey out of my system. I can’t mourn when there are many things to do.
That afternoon, I take our scarce belongings to our new provisional apartment. My family has always had keys to the Diazes’ apartment, so, in a reconciliation gesture, Dad has given copies of our keys to Baron. Yet, I turn down their offer to help me. All we have are some mattresses, a mirror, and boxes full of Olmo’s medicines. It’s not much, but it takes a few trips to get it all into our new home.
After returning from one of my trips, I decide that this is a good moment to talk to Duque again about our plans to move to Shiloh.
Duque hasn’t mentioned suicide since the day I proposed, so I internally congratulate myself. I lost my voyeurmate, but perhaps Duque and I will become like brother and sister while we live in Shiloh. I’ll do everything in my power to heal his broken heart.
I decide not to knock first. What if he’s sleeping?
When I open the door, I freeze for a second, during which all my nightmares pass through my mind.
I haven’t seen a more revolting, soul-breaking spectacle in my life.
49
Losing a part of herself
The monster has pressed both of the girl’s hands against the cot. His hospital gown is open from behind, giving me a view of his rear moving rhythmically. His face is unfocused, like he’s in a trance.
The girl is fully dressed, her eyes open wide.
He hasn’t entered her; the friction is against her stomach. She’s as paralyzed as I am. So unresponsive that she might as well be dead.
But she’s not dead. Her entire body emanates disbelief.
She never agreed to this. She’s too young to have agreed to this.
The girl suffering Duque’s frenzy is Azzy.
The monster stops his attack. Duque runs his hands through his hair. It’s as though he’s coming out of a trance. He says something loud enough to take me out of my paralysis. “What am I doing? Why am I—?”
I ram against him; he falls from his hospital bed and howls. I smile as I realize that he fell on his wounds. I’m glad it hurt.
I yank his gown toward me and slap him hard. “She trusted you! I trusted you!”
His face contorts in agony. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened. I was hurting and—”
“STOP THE EXCUSES!” I slap him again, h
arder. So hard that my hands burn in pain. A blinding rage numbs my senses. “My father, Cara, Divine. They aren’t lashing out at innocent people!”
I don’t know if it has been seconds or hours, but I keep thrashing at Duque. Eventually, someone pulls me away.
“Let go of me!” I scream.
“Easy, Velez,” says Joey. It takes the combined efforts of Joey and Mathew to restrain me.
Cara helps Duque to his feet, her face paler than usual. I’m about to order her to stop helping a brute when I hear a whimper. I turn to look at Azzy. She has just sat up on the bed. She’s red-faced and immobile, looking as though she were the one who has done something wrong.
I stop struggling and gag. If I hadn’t found him, how far would he have gone?
“I won’t hit him … let me go to Azzy.”
I hold my sister, cradling her tenderly. Because the Comanches won’t let me hurt Duque physically, I resort to verbal violence.
“I knew you felt castrated. You felt like less than a man, and damn if I don’t doubt your masculinity this very moment. You impotent freak!”
Azzy covers her ears. Duque is leaning on Cara’s shoulder, a pained expression on his face. The others look at him sympathetically, but I can’t. He might have castrated my sister—because that’s what this is, even if we’re talking about a female victim: a form of mutilation. Losing a vital part of herself that she’ll never recover.
“You’re not a man. You’re nothing. You of all people should know what you were about to destroy.” I glare at Duque, who isn’t returning my gaze. “I love your family, so I won’t hurt you as much as I want to. But you’ll stay away from us.”
Tears fill his eyes. “I’m sorry. Believe me, I’m sorry. Kill me to repay the damage.”
His tears only enrage me more. My eyes are wet with the intensity of my anger, and I’m trembling. “Oh, yeah? What about your family? Stop hurting people, goddammit!”
Still pressing my sister against my chest, I lead her to the doors.
I turn to look at Duque. His eyes are full of tears as he’s staring at his feet. I haven’t hurt him enough. It’s my sister we’re talking about. He should have tried to protect others from the pain he suffered himself.