by J B Cantwell
Just like her. Scrubbed clean.
“What happened?” I finally asked as she came into the kitchen. “I don’t get it.”
I couldn’t explain the pull that coming home had on me. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to prove. To her. To myself.
“Well,” she said, grabbing a small rag that sat next to the sink and wiping the counters absently, “I was mad when you left.” Her eyes widened. “Beyond mad. I had no money, no one to pick up where you left off. Sometimes I would find myself sober, and I would sell some things for enough to buy a bottle here and there.
“Then I met Jim. You may have seen him around the building sometimes. He’s tall with a dark beard and … well … that doesn’t matter. Anyway, we started getting together once in a while. He would have me over to his place for dinner. And, mind you, he was stone cold sober. I liked him, though. He made me feel safe. Still does. I don’t know why he was interested in me of all people.”
She folded the rag and hung it over the oven door handle.
“You look good,” she said. “Healthy.”
“I am,” I said, almost too forcefully.
“So … what do you think?”
“What do I think of what?”
“Of me? I’m so glad you came to see me. That is why you came, isn’t it?”
I backed away. “I’m not really sure why I came. I guess to let you know I’m still alive.”
“You are.” She smiled. “I can’t tell you how happy that makes me feel. I was so worried, and …” Tears were welling up in her eyes again. “Well, I’m glad you came.”
I felt my resolve weakening, and I sat down in one of the chairs, my whole body slumping.
So much had happened, and I had no one left to tell about it, no one left to trust.
Wasn’t this my dream? That I would come home and find her like this? Healthy and whole, full of the same love that had left her eyes so many years before?
No, my dream now was quite different. I wanted to show her that I had survived despite her abuse, that I had thrived since I’d left.
And I’d wanted to throw a couple of punches her way for good measure.
She sat down across from me at the table. “Riley, I’m so sorry. After your father died, I just got … lost.”
I snorted.
“Yeah. Lost. For like a decade. You never even gave a damn about me, did you? I was just a meal ticket. Literally. Don’t you even realize what you did? How you abandoned me? I raised myself, you know. You had no part in it at all.”
I felt my insides buzzing with anger and hurt. My words to her felt forced. These were things she already knew. How could she not?
I wondered who this Jim guy was. He must have been something else. A man with a sick wish for misery.
I stood up, no longer able to take it. The look on her face, full of sympathy and regret. The clean kitchen. The living room. These were things that were all so breakable, so temporary. It would just take one slip and she would be gone again.
But for the first time I realized, I didn’t really want her in my life at all anymore, sober or drunk. I hadn’t come here to clear the air, to repair our fractured relationship. I had come here to gloat, to find a way to hurt her the way she had hurt me for all those years.
And to say goodbye.
I pushed my chair back and made my way across the living room to the door. I heard her chair scrape the linoleum as she got up to follow me.
“Wait. Don’t go yet. Can I get you something to eat? I have a few things around here other than the squares. I could make you lunch. If —”
I opened the door and stood still for a moment, then turned to look at her one last time.
“Please, Riley. Just stay.”
Instead, I walked out the door.
I had nothing more to say.
I couldn’t help the tears that streamed down my face as I trudged through the water on my way to Alex’s apartment. Maybe my mom wasn’t the only one who had changed. Maybe Alex was there right now, commanding the respect he had deserved after so many years of physical abuse. I imagined him, his giant, hulking size compared to his father’s slim build. There would be no contest now.
I smiled as I pictured the two of them facing off against one another. Alex had just as much of a reason as I did to go home and settle his scores.
I climbed up the short flight of stairs to the front door, the water cascading out from behind my now soaked boots. I buzzed the apartment labeled “Williams” from the call box outside and waited.
They must have had a camera outside the building, because whoever had answered the doorbell buzzed me in without comment. Tentatively, I swung the door open.
His apartment was on the second floor. I knew that, but little else. Once, when we were younger, he had taken me home to this apartment, abandoned by his parents from morning till dusk as they worked their menial jobs to make enough credits to get by. The place had been tidy then, but not in a comfortable way. The handful of tiny rooms had felt regimented, forced clean. Alex had worn a shiner on his left cheek that day. It was the first time I’d seen him look angry.
But he didn’t train his angry eyes on me. He showed me around the place, his face swollen from the attack the night before.
“So, this is it,” he’d said. “This is where I live.” He threw his tattered backpack down onto the hard twin bed. There were two others in the tiny bedroom for his brothers. One of them was in the Service already, a shining star in his father’s eyes. The other brother was younger than him by a handful of years. I knew it was Alex intervening between his father and brother that had gained him so many blows to the face, but it didn’t matter to him. Usually, his efforts worked, and his little brother remained relatively unharmed by his father’s rages.
At least physically, technically, unharmed.
Aside from being assured that his parents wouldn’t be home for hours, I still itched to get out of the place. Something about it felt wrong, and I understood why Alex was always spending his time outside wandering the streets. He was waiting until he had to go back, until he had to go face down his father again. Because there was nowhere else for him to go.
Just like me.
The front door to the apartment was left ajar, and I knocked on it tentatively, opening it slightly. “Hello?” I took a step inside.
I was surprised when his mother came to the door, and even more surprised when I saw that her face was free of the bruises I’d usually seen there. Her skin was clean.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said, backing up into the apartment. It was noticeably less tidy this time.
She sat down on the couch and pulled out a small packet of cigarettes, lighting one as she eased back into the pillows. Taking a long drag from it, she let out the smoke with the sigh of relief.
I stood stock still, waiting in the front entryway for an invitation inside.
“So he’s not with you, then?” she asked.
“Alex? No. I was hoping to find him here.”
“Not a trace. Is he still alive?” She turned her head slightly, trying to hide the mask of worry she now wore.
“As far as I know, yes. I saw him a few weeks ago, and he was fine. He’s … different now, pumped up with steroids. I’m not sure you’d even recognize him.” I took a few tentative steps inside and let the door click shut behind me.
She turned, looking at me again. “Steroids?”
I nodded. “Yeah. It’s a program they have for the strongest of the men. They make them … stronger.”
I paused, unsure of what else to say. I looked around the room.
“What happened in here? It looks so … different.”
She snorted a little, and smoke from her cigarette came out of her nose.
“It is different. Everything is different now.”
“So, you haven’t heard from him, either?”
“Not a word. Not that I can blame him.” She tapped her cigarette against the ashtray.
“I guess I shoul
dn’t have come then,” I said, turning to leave. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
“Wait,” she said, standing up. “If you see him again, you tell him that bastard is dead. He can come home now. What things were like before … well, they’re not like that now.”
I turned around and asked the question with my eyes.
Dead?
“How?”
She raised up a lock of her long, brown hair and revealed a row of stitch scars five inches long on her cheek. “It doesn’t matter how. Things are different now. You tell him that.”
I couldn’t stop staring for several long moments, then I nodded and cracked open the door.
“Tell him to come home,” she said behind me as I turned to go.
And I walked out into the morning, the memory of her ruined face burned into my mind.
Chapter Six
The sky had become overcast, and my stomach was in knots as I thought about what had just happened. It seemed that both Alex and I had drastically different family situations compared to how they’d been when we’d left. If he were to visit his old home, he would find … what? Love? Somehow, I didn’t think so. But at the very least, something would await him that was more peaceful than the situation he’d run from a year ago.
And my own mother, suddenly clean and sober, suddenly loving and kind.
It seemed like some cruel trick by the universe, changing her into the picture of a perfect mom for me to face down. My anger had no place anymore in that old, dingy apartment. Her eyes were innocent, remorseful. My emotions had drained away as I realized that throwing any more rants her way would be more like attacking a child than the witch I remembered.
And Alex’s family. Had his mother killed his father? I had to wonder. That was no small scar she’d shown me on her face. Did he do that?
I sighed as I trudged through the water in the streets back toward the train station. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever even see him again, Alex. He was in battle with his other Prime cohorts, and no matter how much body armor he wore, he wouldn’t be totally safe until he was done, out of the Service for good.
Maybe not even then. Were any of us?
It took some time for me to notice that I was being followed. I stepped up onto the Manhattan train platform, waiting in the sudden drizzle that burned slightly as the drops made contact with my skin.
That was when she showed up, a young woman about the same age as me.
I waited quietly, wondering if it was just my imagination. Was she here for me? Jonathan hadn’t given me very detailed instructions, and her stare brought me no comfort.
Soon, the beat up cars whizzed by as the train slowly came to a stop. I slipped inside, but unlike the other few rides I’d taken into the city, this time I didn’t bother to hide.
The doors to the train slid closed, and I sat down in one of the empty seats. The car wasn’t full; not everyone could afford a commute into the city. I looked around.
Erica Morgenstein
Designation: Green
Jamie Beck
Designation: Green
Michael Blume
Designation: Orange
And sitting on her own:
Amanda Richardson
Designation: Orange
My lens blinked inside my vision.
ORANGE. ALERT. ORANGE. ALERT. MOVE AWAY.
I remembered the first time I’d seen an Orange. It had been on this very train, and she had scared me out of my wits.
Lydia Davis
Designation: Orange
She’d taunted me, smiling through her dark makeup in my direction as we approached the great entrance into the city, through the Manhattan Wall. Me, a scared little mouse as I took my second-ever train ride into Manhattan. But though she’d sent shivers down my spine as she stared at me, I never could’ve known what plans she’d been hiding behind her lens. I never could have known what she’d really had in store for me.
But this was someone new. Amanda. She was wearing plain clothes, no fatigues, but I still wondered if she was another Hannah, keeping tabs on me for the Service.
The train glided to a stop on the other side of the wall, and I stood up with the rest of the Greens to exit.
They were all afraid of the Oranges, just as I had been. I was willing to bet that not one of them had ever even seen a Red.
But I wasn’t scared anymore, not of something as simple as a designation. I knew now from personal experience that the Oranges and Reds were just people, lost in the maze that the government had created for them. My designation of Green would do little to protect me in this world.
Amanda followed me down the stairs to lower Manhattan, just like everyone else on the train did. But she was different. Just like Lydia, she’d had her eyes on me the whole trip over.
I tried to be nonchalant as I made my way up Park Avenue. I looked into the stores, most of which boomed their advertisements in my direction, sharing with me their sales, the images of myself changed on the viewscreens in their windows to show me how I would look dressed in their fancy clothes. I forgot about Amanda for a moment and stopped in front of one of the stores, distracted.
“Riley Taylor! Thank you for stopping by. Let us show you the latest in our line of fine attire.”
My lens lit up with choices for me to try on digitally. I glanced to my side and saw that Amanda Richardson had disappeared.
My heart was pumping as I feigned interest in the clothing. I let my eyes wander and chose one of the dresses displayed in my lens. Instantly, the reflection of myself on the view screen was replaced by a different version of me. The dress I had chosen, a white ball gown, was digitally wrapped around my body and shown back to me and everyone on the street, trying to entice a sale.
For a few moments, I forgot what I was doing there. I fell back into the mindset I’d had a year before, back when my only motivations were to escape my home and win the final stipend that came at the end of a three-year term in the Service.
I spun the dress from side to side, watching as the taffeta swirled in the late morning drizzle.
I looked at the other dress options in my lens and nearly chose another to try on. Then, I remembered.
Jonathan. The Volunteers. And Amanda. What had the Service learned about me in the past twenty-four hours? I wasn’t under arrest. Not yet. But if they caught me, it wouldn’t be a Red designation awaiting me.
I looked around, suddenly alarmed again, and keenly aware that she was somewhere close, waiting for me.
Then I saw it. A revolving door that led into a shopping mall.
I looked to my side again, searching, and this time I found her, leaning up against a wall, looking as innocent as she could be.
I took a few quick steps toward the door, and a moment later I was inside.
I hid behind some of the mall kiosks, the kinds that sold sunglasses and makeup, trying to lose her, the ghost on my trail. But each store blared my name as I zipped by, seeking my business.
“Hello, Riley Taylor!” boomed the advertisements that were aimed at my particular chip. “Let us show you our new line of fine dresses. Come on over!”
I ducked into one of the stores, trying desperately to get the system to stop shouting out my name for the whole mall to hear.
I grabbed two shirts off the rack and made my way to the dressing room, hoping that an hour there might throw Amanda off my trail.
But it didn’t.
“Hello, Amanda Richardson! May I help you? Let me show you how you would look in our fall collection …”
My heart was leaping out of my chest as I heard someone else enter the dressing room area, then close a door right next to my tiny cubicle.
A moment later, a hand shot out from beneath the wall separating the rooms from one another. In it, Amanda Richardson held the same device that had been used to transfer my information into Kiyah’s chip the day before.
Relief flooded through me. She had been following me, but for entirely different reasons tha
n I had feared. I grabbed the device out of her hand, then realized there was also a small, folded piece of paper in her palm. I unfolded it and found a list of directions.
“Take the device and hold it to your chip. Press the small green button. This will enable you to download your data onto the chip within it, and you will be without your lens system. Then pass it back to me.”
Without a lens system? I took the device, hoping that something more than a blank chip would be provided. Curiosity got the better of me, and I held it to my chip as instructed.
For a moment, the world swirled around me as my data was downloaded, wiping my chip clean. When I could no longer see anything through my lens, I passed it back to her. If I’d had pen and paper, I might’ve asked the questions in my mind. Namely, how was I supposed to get out of the mall without a designation? Wouldn’t some sort of alarm go off? Nobody walked around with no designation; it was suicide.
I heard scribbling on the other side of the wall, and a moment later, she held out a similar, but different, device.
I took it and the note.
“This device has my information on it. Put it to your chip, then hand it back to me. Jonathan will meet you at the 81st street subway station. Be careful.”
I held the device up to my head, and a moment later I had a fully operational chip again, only this time I would be seen as Amanda Richardson. With her chip hooked up to mine, I would see through her eyes. And short of being seen by someone I knew, my designation would read no more than “Orange” as I made my way through the city. Nothing. No reason for anyone to stop me. Nothing to worry about. They would fear me, if anything, just as I’d feared Lydia that day.
I handed back the device beneath the wall.
“Leave no stone,” she whispered.
A moment later, I heard the dressing room door swing open and Amanda’s footsteps as she headed out of the store.
Hope. Hers was a message of hope.