Vagrancy

by Stacey Mac

  “My Aunty gave it to me when my mum and dad were killed,” she says bleakly. “It used to be my mum’s.

  I try not to frown, turning the locket over in my hand. “It’s beautiful.”

  “They took it from me, you know,” she says suddenly. “Those novices from that table yesterday. When they were hitting me and...things,” she stutters, “they found it and took it away. But that big girl, the one you punched? She gave it back to me today.” She smiles hugely. “I think she was scared I would tell you about it, and you would hit her again.”

  “I probably would have.”

  “Yeah,” she agrees, nodding. “I heard her friends call you my big sister. Isn’t that funny?”

  I give her a smile. “That is funny.”

  “Yeah, and I don’t look like you at all! Our hair is different, and I am never going to be that tall, and I have a smaller nose – ”

  I let her prattle on without interrupting. It is the most I have ever heard her speak, the happiest I’ve seen her since I offered her a seat in the van.

  Tilly’s cheek bones are poking out a little more, and her skin is sallower. I was almost thrown in isolation today, but I don’t fucking care.

  *

  It feels inevitable that I should be meeting him in the gym again, like I was going to end up back here one way or another. Before I reach the door, though, I hear his voice, calling to me from the stairwell.

  “Tessa!”

  I turn, my hand on the door.

  “This way.”

  Confused, I walk back the way I came. He wears his usual long pants, and black boots. But now he wears a brown leather jacket, worn and patched. He disappears out of sight, descending the stairs. My pace quickens, and I half walk, half jog to catch up, almost running into him at the bottom.

  He catches my shoulders quickly. “Whoa,” he says.

  “Where are we going?” I ask him, embarrassed to find his hands on me. I move deftly out of them.

  He looks...animated. “Seems to me like you can’t keep yourself out of trouble,” he says. “I think what you need is a break from this place.”

  He sounds cocky, like always. A low laugh escapes me. “Sure,” I roll my eyes. “Just going on a quick trip?”

  “Yeah,” he says, and then he turns on his heel. I’m left standing in the dark corridor, feeling awkward.

  He approaches the night guards in the lobby. Like last time, he takes his tag from around his neck and shows it to them. They exchange a few words back and forth, and then Dean waves me over, looking impatient when he sees I am still standing where he left me.

  I hesitate, but he is a trainer, after all, so whatever he wants me to do must be authorised. Maybe I’ll just be running around the perimeter again, like last time.

  I meet him at the door, and he leads me out, walking straight for the chain-link fence that looms above us, like he did before. But when we reach it, he takes a left along its length, his eyes on the point where the fence line meets the cold earth, and I stop.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, suspicious.

  He doesn’t answer. Instead, he continues along his path, concentrating on the fence, and I follow cautiously behind.

  “You can stop looking over your shoulder. There ain’t no one here.”

  Easy for him to say.

  He stops, bending to the ground suddenly. His skilful hands find a loose wire at the seam, and he begins to carefully unwind it through the diamond pattern of the fence.

  I know then what he is planning, why he has me pacing up the length of the fence in the cold, and the fact doesn’t escape me that while I will be executed for leaving the compound’s confines, Dean is a trainer, and can skip on home to his own sector whenever he wants to.

  I shake my head at his back. “No way.”

  “Relax, darlin’,” he says, unravelling the fence. He uses that annoyingly intimidating voice. The ‘I dare you’ voice.

  I shudder in the cold, and look back over my shoulder again. I consider just turning around and going back to my dorm. But the alternative to Dean’s poor judgement is Trey’s isolation, and before I can decide, Dean has opened up a hole in the fence big enough to crawl under, and he does so. Once through, he stands up and looks at his surroundings.

  That aliveness I saw in him earlier surfaces again. His bright eyes are wide, and when he grins, I can see almost all of his teeth. Suddenly, he is years younger – just another reckless kid from Resolute.

  He turns and finds me hesitating. “Scared?”

  “Of being shot for escaping? Yeah.”

  He steps back up to the fence. His eyes meet mine through the chain links, and they look softer, earnest. “I ain’t going to let anything happen to you,” he says. “I promise.”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  He grimaces. “I’ll tell you what, you tell me that you honestly don’t want to get away from that place,” he nods in the direction of the institution that towers behind me, “and I’ll let you go back to bed. I’ll even tell your trainers that I hung you by the thumbs from the rafters, or whatever it is you Galore kids do for fun.”

  Sounds good. “I don’t want to get away from that place.”

  His eyes turn mocking. “Okay, little coward, suit yourself.” He turns away, and begins to walk quickly across the exposed earth, towards the road.

  I watch Dean’s shadow become smaller in the night. I mean to turn around, go back to my dorm, back to safety, away from stupidity. But when my eyes trail over the brick building my heart squeezes.

  I don’t want to go back. I really don’t.

  I crawl quickly under the fence, and run full out.

  My boots slap onto the unrelenting ground, the cold air whips my loose hair behind me, and I breathe deeply. I’m out, I think. I could just keep going, if I wanted to.

  But Dean is just ahead of me now, and when he looks over his shoulder and spies me coming closer he gives a shocking, roguish smile and takes off.

  His jacket flies out behind him as he streaks along the broken asphalt road. I laugh at his childishness and speed up.

  Soon, I’m catching up, and when Dean sees me he shoves a hand at my shoulder, nudging me off-course. I swear at him.

  It’s something like fun.

  I run past Dean and cut him off. “Get back here you little cheat!”

  I turn and start running backwards, mocking him, smiling evilly. I can’t help but smile. “Nope.”

  His answering grin is dazzling. It slows me. Are we playing? This feels like playing. I was unaware that I knew how to.

  Dean, though, is a natural.

  We begin to pass a series of small disintegrating buildings. Houses with their roofs caved in, rubble surrounding them and tangled with weeds, as the forest begins to reclaim the earth it stands on.

  I feel safe here. This part of Galore has never been in use since we established. There is not enough left here to make use of, but there is too much to clear out, and so it has been left in its post-war state.

  There is a break in the debris, and a narrow road leads to what used to be the crossing point of a railway. Dean leads me down this small forgotten street to the white wooden beams. He slows as we approach and then ducks underneath them.

  I copy him and stop when he stops. We stand in the middle of the train tracks, breathless.

  “C’mon,” Dean says, gesturing to the twisting rungs that wind their way behind the ruins and into the woods.

  I start to run again in the direction he points, but he grabs my wrist.

  “Let’s walk, lunatic. Give me a break.” He pants, his breath fogging in the air.

  These tracks have been untouched, except for the damage left by the ones who wrenched the steel runners out. We walk in silence down them, stepping carefully along the rungs, an endless fallen ladder that lures us along its path.

  As we draw slowly away from what is left of disintegrating suburbia, I imagine that nothing has changed in this place; that a train might co
me hurtling towards us, safely carrying people home. It is the most unbound I’ve felt in a long time.

  “I should probably thank you,” I say, “for what you did for me today, but I don’t want to.” I glance sideways at him, worried that my candour will sound like disrespect.

  Dean only smirks and continues walking, saying nothing in response.

  “Why did you say that to Trey?” I ask, taking advantage of his tolerance. Pushing it.

  Dean shrugs indifferently. “Same as before. Didn’t think the punishment fit the crime.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “I know what you meant,” he says abruptly. “And I’ve not figured it out yet.”

  I purse my lips shut.

  “My turn,” Dean says. “How does a nice girl like yourself end up in so much trouble, so often?”

  “What makes you think I’m such a nice girl?” I ask in return.

  He grins. “You’re right, you’re not that nice. Not too smart either. Why don’t you just lay low?”

  “Wow, two insults in one breath.”

  “Can’t ignore your strike rate,” he shrugs. I don’t answer, and we walk on.

  After a while of placing my feet on the rungs at precise distances, I can do it without looking, and I look to the trees instead, seeing nothing but shadows. They are the ghosts of trees that border my home. A tightness grips my chest.

  “Why did you bring me out here?” I ask. But what I mean is, why are you being nice to me?

  He puts his hands in his pockets. “You seemed pretty wound up yesterday. I thought you could use a break.”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “What is your name? Your full name, I mean,” he asks suddenly. And when our eyes meet, his scrutinise mine.

  “Tessa G00136.”

  He looks disappointed. “Your real name.”

  I stop. It is such an odd thing to demand. “Why do you want to know?”

  He stops too, and he looks tired. “You have a habit of answering questions with questions,” he accuses.

  “And you have a habit of asking questions which beg more questions.”

  We stare each other down, and I find I can’t let myself concede to him.

  “You don’t trust me much,” he says, after the silence has stretched too long for normal convention. This time, it’s not a question.

  “Why should I?”

  “I did save you from starvation today,” he says sharply. “I think you owe me some credit.”

  “I don’t owe anyone, anything.” Especially not him. With that, I start jogging again. I want to keep following these tracks to their end, even if I have to run for days.

  I want to be anywhere else.

  But I can’t escape, not with Dean’s pounding footfalls coming closer and closer. I can run far, but not fast enough.

  “Tessa, stop,” he calls calmly.

  I ignore him.

  “Please stop?”

  I slow, and when I do he grasps my wrist again and pulls me to a standstill.

  “How about this,” he says carefully. “We’ll play a game.”

  I roll my eyes, “A game?”

  “This is supposed to be punishment.”

  “I thought you didn’t agree I deserved punishment?”

  “Do I need to give you an official order?”

  Bitterness floods my mouth. “You can’t have it both ways,” I say, repeating his own words back to him.

  “Actually, I can,” he says sharply, “because I really don’t think you can afford more trouble.”

  I bite my tongue.

  “So...true or false. You don’t like it back there,” he nods in the direction of the training compound, though we can’t see it anymore.

  I sigh. I don’t want to play games with him. I don’t want to get to know him. But I don’t want to leave and risk pissing him off either, even if I could get back into the compound by myself…which I can’t.

  So I say: “True.”

  He nods, and begins wandering down the track again. “Your turn.”

  I hesitate. How much can I get away with here? Part of me is itching to ask things that I shouldn’t want to know, another part of me doesn’t want him to see that part of me. I decide to go with the most basic. “True or false, you became a trainer because your family are frontline soldiers.”

  “True,” he says. “Though it ain’t the reason I’m a trainer.”

  “Then what is the reason you –”

  “My turn,” he says abruptly. “You hate the compound because they tell you what to do.”

  “False,” I say, though I can see why he would assume this. “There are a hundred reasons why I hate that place, but I’ve been told what to do my whole life, so it isn’t exactly a shock to the system. I’m Galore, remember?”

  He observes me thoughtfully, but waits.

  I bite my lip. “You decided to become a trainer because you like being the one with the power.”

  “False,” he says, grinning dryly, “Though you already knew that.”

  Do I?

  “You don’t like to fight,” Dean says to me now.

  I roll my eyes. “True. Though you already knew that.”

  “And why’s that? And spare me the ‘I’m no good at it’ excuse.”

  “That isn’t how the game works.”

  “Do me a favour, darlin’,” he says, “and just answer it.”

  I feel exhausted suddenly. He won’t understand it even if I tell him. “My father raised me to believe that violence isn’t a good thing, though I’m sure that sounds strange to you. And don’t call me darling.”

  “It doesn’t sound strange. Keep going.”

  I try to frame my words carefully. “He doesn’t think that killing is right, even if they are the enemy. He used to tell me that if they kill, and we kill, then we’re all murderers, and there is no paradise in hell for those who kill better.”

  Dean mulls over my words. “What do you think the alternative is?”

  “I don’t know the answer, I just don’t think training children for war is it.” I pause. “My turn. You don’t like Galore.” There is a smile in my voice.

  “True,” he says unabashed. “I’ll admit your militia is stronger, but I don’t need someone telling me how to scratch myself.”

  I laugh. “Right.”

  “She laughs. So you’re not a robot,” Dean says, observing me closely.

  I roll my eyes again.

  “True or false,” he says now, “You still hate me because of what happened last year.”

  “True or false,” I say in return, “The reason you’re not punishing me is because of what happened last year.”

  He frowns, deep creases appearing between his dark eyebrows. “True,” he says shortly, “and false.”

  “Care to explain that?” I ask doubtfully.

  “Don’t really think I have to,” he smirks.

  We face off again, finally reaching an impasse. Neither of us is willing to answer more questions past this one barrier. We can’t stand here glaring at each other and shivering all night, and we are now miles away from our starting point. At Dean’s say so, we turn and begin jogging again, retracing our footsteps. I was unsure how long we had been gone for, but when we finally reach the crossing again, my legs are weak, and my body is radiating warmth instead of trembling.

  “You run well,” says Dean, huffing in his exertion as we slow to a walk on the street.

  “I told you, I like running.”

  We say nothing else until we reach the fence. Dean tells me to be careful of the loose wires when I crawl back under the hole he made, but he holds most of them away from my body anyway.

  After Dean crawls through – faster than I had – he stands tall again. “Make sure you look more exhausted than that when we walk back through those doors,” he says, then he leans to the ground and scrapes some loose dirt into his hand. Without warning, he comes towards me and brings that hand to my cheek, wiping the dirt across my
face.

  “Hey!” I protest.

  “Stand still, darlin’.”

  “Stop calling me darling.”

  He smirks, rubbing the rough ground along my jaw line. His fingers reach my chin, and they stop.

  A shiver that starts from his point of contact crawls to my neck and down my chest.

  He smiles for a second. Something about his expression tells me that he felt the shake of my body at his touch.

  I blush.

  “Better,” he says, appraising his handy work.

  “How do I look?”

  “You look haggard and disgusting. Go on, now.”

  We pass the night guards at the entrance, who barely notice me behind Dean, and he takes me to the stairwell. He lets me go first up the stairs this time, and for some reason, I am uncomfortable of him behind me, watching every step.

  When I reach the first floor, I turn back. Dean will go up to the third floor, where the other Resolutes have set up camp. He climbs the last few feet, but seeing me by the wall, waiting for him, he pauses, his foot on the top step.

  I don’t know what I mean to say, only that I feel I should say something to him. The truth is, I don’t know whether to say something nice, or scathing, or customary, or gracious.

  And this is exactly why I didn’t want to know him. It was so much easier when I knew I hated him.

  “This is another one of those times that you should thank me,” he prompts.

  I smile reluctantly; I don’t mean to. “Probably.”

  His head tilts, and he frowns. His expression becomes fervent, wanting. “What’s your real name?” He asks again. This stare he gives me is magnetic, makes me imagine things I shouldn’t, and forget things I ought not to. Before I think, I talk, though I haven’t said the name since I was a child. “Contessa Tyrell.”

  “Well, Contessa Tyrell,” he says, coming to stand at my level. “It was interesting talking to you.”

  Chapter Nine