Unleashed

by Carolyn O'Doherty

  I lift my chin. “No.”

  Tears shimmer at the edges of Shannon’s eyes, eyes so dark with pain it’s hard to look at her. KJ isn’t the first boyfriend Shannon has lost. It was last year, after Steve’s death, that Shannon devoted herself to helping at the clinic. I won’t let any spinner die alone, she’d said.

  My hands tighten against my jeans.

  “This is the best way, Shannon. Really. You have to trust me.”

  “You wouldn’t believe that if you were the one with him all day.” Shannon’s tears spill over onto her cheeks. “If it was you watching him fade away. You and Jack run around doing god knows what.” She waves a hand to encompass our new outfits and all the bags spread out on the floor. “Shopping.”

  “We’re not shopping. We’re getting supplies. Things that you asked me to get.”

  Shannon’s eyes drift away from mine.

  I take a step toward her. “Is that why you never let me sit with him? Because you were worried I’d notice you were poisoning him?”

  “It’s not poison.” Shannon wipes at her wet cheeks. “It’s medicine.”

  Rage surges through me, a beast straining against the bounds of its leash.

  “I should never have brought you here!” My hands are fists, knotted and trembling with the effort not to use them. “I should have left you at the Sick to die.”

  Shannon’s eyes narrow. “If you don’t want me here, then let me and KJ go home.”

  “Alex,” Jack says. His voice holds a warning, and the idea that he might side with Shannon adds fuel to my fury.

  “The Center is not home!” I shout at Shannon. “You’re just refusing to see the truth.”

  “Alex!” Jack says again, louder this time.

  “What?” I whirl, ready to take him on as well.

  Victor is leaning against the armoire in the entrance to KJ’s room.

  The anger raging through me disappears as fast as it arrived, replaced by a cold fear that spreads all the way to the tips of my toes.

  “So,” Victor says, “you’re spinners. I bet there are rewards for turning your type in.”

  My stomach twists.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  Victor smirks. “I live here, remember?”

  “But Elmer’s…?”

  “Closed for the weekend. There’s a sign taped to the front window. Family emergency.”

  I stare at him. Victor wears a greedy expression that reminds me of Ross the day I told him that my skills had changed. The memory makes the cramp in my stomach worse.

  Faith steps out from behind Victor’s shoulder. She wears the same washed-out blouse she had on the night we talked. A breath of hope lifts my anxiety. Faith, bringer of tea and comfort, the one who suggested I help the Society for Spinner Rights—surely she’ll stick up for us now. I offer her a tentative smile.

  “Is it true?” Faith’s voice lacks even a hint of wispiness. My hope vanishes. Faith stamps her foot. “You’re spinners?”

  Shannon whimpers. She’s dropped to her knees, one arm wrapped protectively around KJ’s lolling head.

  “Yeah,” Jack says, “we’re spinners. So what?”

  Faith’s upper lip curls as if she smells something rank. “And you didn’t tell us? We let you stay here. Sleep near us.” She jabs a finger at me with the force of a striking serpent. “Have you been spying on us?”

  A reflexive shame, ingrained from a lifetime of Norms’ taunts, flares across my cheeks.

  “No, Faith, of course not.”

  Jack snorts. “Why would we want to spy on you? We can do much more interesting things than that.” He disappears from his spot by the door, reappearing beside me at the foot of KJ’s bed. In one hand, he dangles a wallet. “Like, say, this.”

  Victor slaps a hand against his back pocket. “What the hell?”

  Jack flickers. The wallet materializes in Victor’s other hand. Victor, unprepared to grasp a suddenly appearing object, drops it. Faith shrieks.

  “Get out.” She clutches Victor’s arm. “You have to get out.”

  Victor bends to pick up his wallet, lips moving silently, as if he’s working through a train of thought. Jack laughs. His eyes are bright. Wild. I reach for time, holding the strands just at the edge of my control.

  Victor raises his head. “I thought spinners couldn’t change anything in frozen time.”

  “So do lots of other people,” Jack says. I step on his foot. Telling strangers our whole story can’t be a good idea.

  An ugly smile spreads across Victor’s face. “So that’s how you get money?”

  “Yep.” Jack walks over to the pile where we’ve dropped our stuff. Holding one of the backpacks up over his head, he unzips a bulging pocket. Bills flutter down like confetti, drifting past his shoulders, sliding across the dirty floor. Shannon gasps. Victor laughs out loud.

  “Here.” I stoop down, scooping up a handful of fallen bills. “Here’s five hundred dollars.” I march over to Victor and thrust the wad of hastily counted cash toward him. Faith steps back at my approach. I don’t look at her. “For the week. We won’t stay any longer.”

  Victor eyes the money. “I don’t think I like our deal anymore.”

  KJ’s face floats before me, his skin so thin the veins underneath look like tiny rivers—rivers pumping poison through his body with every beat of his heart.

  “You promised,” I say to Victor. It takes effort to keep my voice steady.

  Victor smiles. It’s a wide smile showing too many teeth—like a shark’s.

  “So?” he says.

  Shannon moans, her misery adding to the weight of responsibility threatening to crush me.

  “You can’t turn us in. We’re too powerful,” I bluff. “We can freeze time and…”

  “I don’t think our staying here is a problem, Alex,” Jack says. “Not now that Victor sees how useful we can be.”

  A whole new set of worries climbs onto the mountain I’m already carrying.

  Victor points to the bills littering the floor. “Just how much money do you have?”

  Jack shrugs. “Don’t know. We never counted it.”

  Victor’s eyes gleam. “And you can get more?”

  “I can get you anything you want,” Jack says.

  “No!” Faith and I say, in unison.

  “It’s too dangerous,” I protest.

  “I don’t want them here!” Faith wails.

  “Come on, Faith, think about it.” Victor murmurs into her ear. The only words I catch are everything we want and never go back. Faith doesn’t look happy, but eventually she nods. Victor bends down to scoop up the cash.

  I grab Jack’s arm.

  “You can’t do this,” I whisper. “It’s too risky.”

  “Oh, come on, what choice do we have?” He grins. “Besides, it’ll be worth it.”

  “Worth it?” Every nerve in my body strains with the effort to not scream at him. “How can stealing a bunch of crap for Victor be worth it?”

  The muscles in Jack’s arm twitch. He pitches his voice low, an angry murmur that rattles my ear like an oncoming storm. “I don’t know why you wanted to leave the Center, but I left so I could have a life.” He pulls away from me. “If you want to spend your day panicking every five minutes, be my guest, but do it without me. I’m going to hang with Victor. With someone who can help me get where I want to go.”

  “And where is that?”

  Jack looks at me like he’s never seen me before.

  “Music, Alex. If I’m going to get to have a life, I want to do something with it.”

  He bends down to help Victor collect the rest of the money. I watch the two of them, their matching spiky haircuts bobbing as they scoop up the scattered bits of paper. Victor laughs and punches Jack’s shoulder. Jack beams.


  I turn away. On the floor, KJ lies terrifyingly still. Shannon sits beside him in a crumpled heap. My anger reignites, burning through my despair. Ugly, brutal images of all the things I could do pop into my head. I can freeze time and tie Victor and Faith up so they can’t report us. Beat Victor so badly he’ll never threaten us again. I chew on my fingernail, picturing Victor crying, begging me for mercy.

  A sighing sound makes me turn my head. Faith stands in the doorway, watching Victor and Jack with a worried expression. One hand covers her mouth; the other reaches toward her brother, as if she can see the images in my mind and wants to shield him.

  My anger snuffs itself out. All my life I’ve resented the hateful way Norms perceive spinners. They call us treacherous, untrustworthy, crazy, and violent. It’s unfair, I’d rant to KJ, puffed up with righteous indignation. The Norms’ doubts are based on nothing but an uneducated fear of the unknown. They have no right to make life-and-death decisions about us based on assumptions. And now look at me. Free for a matter of days, and I’m already doing—or thinking about doing—everything that Norms accuse us of.

  I wrap my arms around my chest. What is wrong with me?

  Jack and Victor stroll out of the room, Jack talking animatedly about all the things they can do tomorrow, after he’s had a chance to rest up. Faith drifts after them. I turn to Shannon. She’s sitting cross-legged beside KJ, stroking his arm in a gentle rhythm. Regret at the way I yelled at her bows my head, and I clear my throat.

  “Is there…anything I can get for him?”

  Shannon shrugs. The misery on her face is so complete she doesn’t seem to have room to still be mad at me.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she says.

  I slide down to sit on the floor on the other side of the room.

  “Neither do I.”

  We sit together in awkward silence. Shannon’s hand continues its steady caress. She’s probably trying to figure out how to contact the Center. I trace an aimless pattern on the dusty floor. I’m going to have to start sleeping by KJ and Shannon. Jack and I can never leave the squat at the same time again. On top of being a robber and potential thug, I have now become my former roommate’s jailer. The pigeons outside the window take up their mournful cooing. I am not the person I thought I was. When KJ wakes up—if KJ wakes up—will he understand the choices I’ve made? Will he even like the person I’m becoming? More importantly—do I?

  10

  SUNDAY DRAGS OUT SO SLOWLY IT FEELS LIKE IT’S LASTING a month. The week’s bright fall sunshine sinks under a lowering blanket of clouds that alternate between dreary and wet. Moisture seeps through the squat’s tired bricks. By late afternoon, the air feels dank, and the whole squat reeks of mold. KJ is still in a fever-tossed stupor, Shannon isn’t speaking to me, and Jack took off with Victor around ten this morning and hasn’t come back. I lie on my blankets, half watching the entrance to KJ’s room to make sure Shannon doesn’t sneak out, half trying to distract myself with a novel. It’s not working.

  I toss the book in the corner and pick up my phone. So far, all I’ve really paid attention to is how to call and text, but I know cell phones can do a lot more. I tap the rectangular white box in the middle of the screen and the words search Google pop up. I touch the box and a keyboard appears on the bottom part of the phone. Next to the flashing bar, it now says: Search or type a URL. I type “spinners” and hit enter.

  The Secret Life of Spinners takes up all of the first few screens. It’s getting good ratings, which is depressing, given that it portrays us as backstabbing torturers. The actor who looks like a psychopath is up for an award. I keep scrolling:

  Spinner protest in DC turns violent

  Congressional budget includes steep cuts to national CIC budget

  Anti-abortion groups protest prenatal testing for chronotin

  New Harvard study finds incidents of mental illness among spinner youth higher than previously reported

  Northwest Division CIC set to close October 1

  My thumb freezes over the final headline. I touch the screen and an article pops up.

  Northwest Division CIC Set to Close October 1

  Sept 16 The Northwest Region’s Crime Investigation Center is set to close at the end of the month. In a statement issued to The Oregonian, Regional Director Virginia Chang said high levels of toxic mold have been discovered in the building, which make it unhealthy for residents and staff to continue living there. Most of the current inmates at the spinner institution will be dispersed among other Centers elsewhere in the country, though a few have opted to participate in a research project being carried out in the program’s national office outside Tacoma. Police Chief Lamar Graham says the program will be “sorely missed. The partnership between the Portland Police Department and the CIC has been very successful and led to numerous arrests.” There are no immediate plans to repair the Center’s building, a former single room occupancy hotel in downtown Portland, which the program has occupied for the past twenty-seven years.

  I read the article twice. Closing…toxic mold…dispersed among other centers…research project. Ross said Barnard was in trouble because so many spinners have escaped. Is this the consequence? The mold thing is probably just an excuse. I close my eyes and try to picture what the other Center kids are doing right now. It’s Sunday afternoon, which means free time, so most of them will be in the common room. I imagine Yuki flipping through an out-of-date fashion magazine while she half-watches a rom-com on TV, Aiden and Raul arguing over a card game, Angel and Simon reading or playing a computer game…but that’s all wrong. What I’m picturing is the past. This is a much different present, one where the five remaining fully qualified spinners are most likely huddled together, worrying about their futures, while the fifteen Youngers sit in their own common area, scared and confused.

  If they all get scattered, how will I find them?

  I jump to my feet and take five steps toward KJ’s room before I stop. Jack isn’t here. KJ can’t hear my news. Shannon would only push harder to return to her friends. I go back to my blankets. Blackmailing Barnard is not going to work. I need to tell the other spinners the truth, get them to stop taking Aclisote, and help them plan a way to escape. But how do I break into the Center? And once the kids get out, where can they go? I can’t bring them all to the squat. Even if Victor let them stay here, the Elmer’s staff would surely notice.

  Questions circle my brain so fast I can barely follow the trails of my own fears. I curl up on my blanket and try to think like KJ. He would take the problem apart logically, focusing on what he could control. I force the whirl of panic to settle. What part of this muddle can I tackle now? Center, Aclisote, shelter, warning, escape. One step. What’s one step? Shelter. I let the single thought rise from the flurry. We need a place to stay. It doesn’t have to be perfect—it just has to be secure and hold twenty-four people.

  I uncurl myself, find a pen, and start making a list.

  * * *

  Jack is not happy when I wake him up on Monday morning.

  “What time is it?” he grumbles, squinting into the drizzle-gray light.

  “Nine.” I shake his shoulder again when his eyes start to drift. “I let you sleep in.”

  “Not when I went to bed at two thirty.” He yawns. “You should have come last night. Victor picked out this amazing synthesizer he said he’d teach me to use, and then I snuck us all into this club and we heard, like, six bands. They were totally awesome.”

  “I’m sure they were,” I say, not bothering to hide my irritation. “But we can’t leave Shannon alone, remember?”

  “Oh, right.” Another yawn. “What are you doing today again?”

  “Looking for a bigger squat.” I yank the blankets off him before he gets too cozy.

  “Where?”

  I hold up the sheets of paper I tore out of the back of my book. Hours of Google searches hav
e narrowed my list to motels that, based on their ratings, can’t be too picky, plus some sketchy-sounding neighborhoods that might have some squat-appropriate buildings.

  “I’m starting in Southeast,” I tell Jack. “Tomorrow, I’ll try Gresham, and then North Portland.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Jack stretches his arms over his head. “Good luck.”

  Six bus rides and five hours later, I am wet, hungry, and burdened with a thundering time headache. I’m also starting to realize that finding a place is going to take a lot of luck. I tried three motels, including a really divey one, and all of them refused to rent to me without ID. The woman at the third one asked me so many questions about my parents that I was certain she planned to call the cops the minute I left. After fleeing straight from her reception desk to an unlocked laundry closet, I froze time and walked a mile before letting it restart.

  A replacement squat has so far proven equally elusive. Even supposedly depressed neighborhoods teem with activity, every building packed with people and surrounded by watchful neighbors. Twice, I found places that seemed possible until I froze time to check them out. One, an empty-looking house set back from a quiet road, turned out to be occupied by a very frail old man. The other, a boarded-up grocery store, had no windows or lights, which made entry nearly impossible and would have made living there even harder. It makes me understand why Victor and Faith are protective of the Elmer’s warehouse. The sunlit space, with its working electricity and tiny half-bath, is starting to seem like a palace of comfort and security.

  I trudge away from the boarded-up grocery store under an overcast sky. It isn’t raining anymore, exactly, but the air sticks to my skin, soupy with damp. What are Shannon and KJ doing right now? Is Jack staying awake? Traffic zips past me, four lanes of drivers hunched as they squint through smeared windshields.

  A block ahead, a bus stop looms out of the gray. It offers no shelter, just a metal post with the route number printed on it. I rub my arms to smooth the goose bumps popping up beneath my wet coat. The idea of climbing onto yet another bus and heading into more urban wasteland seems about as appealing as eating dirt.