Unafraid

by Megan Lynch

  He wanted to believe that she hadn’t, so he hung back. He was tired of talking to people anyway. It was true that he sought out Daniel every day, but all this talk was draining his energy. He’d come to the park for a little peace and quiet, after all.

  After several minutes, it became clear that Samara hadn’t lost her marbles after all. She was waiting for someone. That someone showed up in a long, black transport. Without seeing the front of it, he could tell it had a human driver—it was too shiny to be a driverless car. The driver was hidden, though, behind the black-mirror windows. Samara looked over both shoulders before she slipped inside. He was too far away to see who was inside, but his imagination ran wild with speculation. Jude suddenly feared for Samara’s safety and ran across the pedestrian bridge to get closer, not knowing what he might do if he were to catch the car. Though the car moved slowly through the park, he was too far away, and painfully out of shape. He squeezed his side to relieve a jab that appeared after seconds of running and slowed down slightly. By that time, the transport was at the park’s entrance with its right turn signal blinking. “Hey!” said Jude aloud in the car’s direction. “Hey!” People were staring. Jude started to run again, but by the time he’d broken into a real sprint again, the car had turned and was gliding down the street, quick as a bird in flight.

  Jude stopped, panting on the sidewalk. He wanted to tell these people looking at him to fuck off, but he didn’t have enough breath for that. Instead, he tried assuring himself that Samara was a grown woman who could take care of herself and surely knew what she was doing. He told himself that Daniel would know what she was up to, and that he’d probably arranged this meeting himself. But the more he tried arguing with himself, the stronger the opposite voice became; there was something funny about this. He didn’t like it and he wouldn’t, no matter how long he stood here trying to convince himself otherwise. He thought for a moment about going back to Daniel’s, but instead, he went back to Olympic Village. He’d have to ask Daniel what he knew about this, but first he wanted to connect with someone he was sure would be more worried than he was, just to know he wasn’t crazy.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The jacket had barely made it over Bristol’s shoulders before he stepped in front of the bathroom mirror. The clothes that Cindy had dropped off for tonight were easily the nicest he’d ever worn. Gone were the days of wearing an orange vest over his kitchen blacks, signaling to the world he was allowed to be out past curfew because he cooked for his betters all day and stayed late to clean their messes. Standing in front of his mirror tonight, he admired his gray tweed suit. He liked the way it speckled without shimmering—it reminded him of cement, like the kind he and Denver used to draw on outside their building with sidewalk chalk in the summer. Under the jacket, he wore a plum shirt and dark navy tie. There was a little accessory Cindy called a tie bar, but he couldn’t figure it out and he didn’t think he needed it anyway. He’d never felt ugly the way Denver bemoaned that she did; he’d never really thought about the way he looked before. But he was thinking about it now. And he was thinking he looked undeniably good, tie bar or no tie bar.

  Cindy, who’d been waiting in the hallway, gasped and clapped her hands when he walked out. “Spin ’round!”

  Bristol complied, but as soon as he’d made the full rotation, he noticed Cindy staring at his shoes. “Weren’t the rental shoes in the bag?”

  “Yeah—about that,” Bristol said, digging the heel of one of his ripped, worn kitchen shoes into the floor, “I was thinking I could wear these instead.”

  “What’s the matter with the rentals? Too shiny? I could get suede instead.”

  “No,” said Bristol, making a mental note to ask someone what suede was later. “It’s just that I don’t want people there to forget that I’m a refugee. These are the shoes I ran twenty miles in to escape Metrics. I was exiled from the monastery in these, too, for asking questions. I arrived in Scotland wearing these. If people see them and think they look out of place, I want them to consider that we’re all out of place, and we need them as allies if we’re ever going to fit in with them.”

  Cindy seemed unmoved by his speech, and waved her hand in the air. “You’re the artist.” That seemed to settle it. “Give me that.”

  She fastened his tie bar between the third and fourth buttons of his shirt, and he wondered if she needed to be quite so close to do it. It was a crazy, fleeting thought, he realized—he missed Samara. Cindy stepped back and admired him again, her eyes pulsing on words she accentuated. “Now,” she said, “let’s go have a fabulous time with some important people.”

  Bristol wanted one last look in his mirror, but he’d rather die than admit that. Instead, he and Cindy walked down the stairs to sounds of admiration, led mostly by JoJo. He glimpsed Taye, but he was sitting in the far corner of the room, pretending not to notice Bristol. Before they left, Cindy insisted they take a picture together in front of the Olympic rings still painted on the wall. She wrapped her arms around him and smiled, making it look like they were the best of friends, or maybe lovers. He was afraid he couldn’t control his own facial expression, and he felt temporarily detached from his body as he looked for Samara and wondered what she would think to see Cindy hanging off of him like this. But she was nowhere. Probably out discovering information that had already been discovered by the city’s hundreds of reporters. Screw it. He threw his arms around Cindy, who actually giggled as Nurse Sue snapped another picture.

  They stepped outside, where a red driverless transport stood waiting for them. Inside, Cindy adjusted his tie again and whispered, “Did you ever think you’d be on your way to a reception to introduce your work to the UK?”

  “I didn’t know what a reception was, or that the UK existed, or that what I was doing was considered work.”

  “A simple no would have sufficed.” She smiled at him, then out the window.

  The room where the party was held was enchanting. Large glass vases held long-stemmed lilies that seemed to fawn over the beautiful people scattered throughout the room. Bristol noticed the beauty of the women first. The colors of their faces were too stunning to be real—crimson lips, rose cheeks, cerulean eyes. But the men, whose color looked much closer to reality, also had a crippling beauty about them. The lines of their faces and bodies were long and crisp and defined, and they were the ones Bristol looked forward to sketching from memory in the morning. Maybe over coffee.

  “Bristol, this is Paige Dunaway,” Cindy said with an airy gesture toward a woman with bright pink lips and long black hair. “She’s the editor of Modern Art Today.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Bristol said.

  “We’re so glad to have you here. Thank you for coming.” Paige had the same habit of letting her eyes do the annunciating for her.

  “I didn’t have a choice.” Bristol’s comment was nothing but a true statement, but both women laughed.

  “Tell her about your shoes, Bristol.”

  He told her about his shoes, about his journey, about how he liked Scotland so far. She and Cindy listened marvelously, reacting with theatrical expressions at just the right points. Bristol never thought to think of his life as interesting, but here, among the rich and beautiful, he was finally able to see his life as somewhat important. People kept joining their circle, nodding and leaning in to hear Bristol talk.

  “My husband and I have been very impressed with your work. It’s so provocative, the risk you took to make it is evident in the final product, almost visible. It must be so fulfilling to know that your art inspired so many to question their lives back where you’re from,” said Paige. “Especially when you had so many forces conspiring against you.”

  “Yes,” said Bristol. He wasn’t able to say any more, though, because his memory transported him without warning from this swanky room with its purple glow back to Nan’s safe house in Fallwood. He hadn’t known that Samara knew he’d been the one behind the graffiti, but she did know. What had she said to him? Yo
u’ve shown me who you are and who I can be. I’ve seen the beauty inside your mind, and I fell in love with that beauty. He wanted to kiss her, but she kissed him first. And her kiss was soft and sweet and urgent and hungry all at the same time…

  Bristol snapped back when he became aware that someone in the circle had asked him a question. “Excuse me?”

  “I asked, what are you working on now? If anything?”

  “Oh. I’m doing some sketches of my sister.”

  “Your sister seems to appear in your work quite often,” Paige said.

  “I know her face better than anyone else’s, I guess, so it’s easier for me to draw. She and her husband are expecting their first child and—” there was a little gasp from the crowd around him and murmurs of congratulations. “Thank you. I’m experimenting with the ways to show how the baby inside her is free in a way we’re not. The baby is without country or language or tier. Her child could belong to anyone right now. It’d be a shame to send him or her back to the USA.”

  “Your sister’s child has a bright future in Scotland!” said someone in the back.

  “And so do you!”

  “And so do your people!”

  “There has been much talk in Parliament about sending you all back. You must have seen the reports,” said Paige. “But we won’t let that happen.”

  Simultaneously bemused by their assumption that everything would turn out just fine—that must have been the pattern of their own lives so far—and supported by this large group of influencers, Bristol’s heart beat in his ears and his palms broke into a sweat.

  Cindy walked over and patted his arm. “We all have much work to do if we’re going to make this world a better place for your niece or nephew. But this is a good start.” Bristol looked down, wishing there was a trap door under his feet to hide him away from all this attention. “Let’s get you a drink,” she said.

  The drink was bubbly, but bitter. Bristol poked at the ice with the little straw a few times while Cindy relayed his story of escape once again, with considerably more drama added, to another group of chiseled-looking people. Bristol took Cindy aside after she was finished and asked if they could leave now.

  “Let’s stay another hour,” she urged. “The McColls just told me that they’d like to arrange a benefit for the American refugees.”

  Bristol was tired of asking her what she meant, so he just pretended to know who the McColls were and what a benefit was and agreed to stay. The drink was making him fuzzy.

  A little cough caught Bristol’s attention. No one else had noticed it, but it was familiar to him. He looked around, suddenly alert again. He walked out of the room and into a little corridor where Jude was standing on the other side of the door frame. Bristol smiled brightly at Jude’s mangy second-hand clothes, which made him look soft and young in this light.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I—it’s Samara,” said Jude. “She got into a black lime-o-seen at the park.”

  “A limousine?” Bristol asked, his brow knitted.

  “Yes, a limousine. And Daniel doesn’t know what she’s doing. None of the Red Sea people know. And she’s not back yet.”

  It was almost midnight. “I told her we needed to be on the same page.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “What she would do if it were us.”

  Jude nodded, his eyes much too world-weary for someone his age. Together, they stepped out into the night to find her.

  Chapter Thirty

  On the phone, Nurse Sue told Denver to lie down and call her if the bleeding got worse. Stephen insisted that the nurse had meant to lie down longer than an hour and would not let her back up for the rest of the night. He brought her chicken soup and crackers for dinner.

  “I’m not sick,” she said. “Nurse Sue said a little bleeding can be perfectly normal.”

  “Just eat it so I feel better. Can I get you anything else? Chocolate? Ice cream?”

  Denver smiled. Back home, as a Four, he wouldn’t be allowed to buy those things for her. “Just stay here with me. We’ll get some chocolate tomorrow morning before we go to the training center.”

  But in the morning, there was another streak of blood on her underwear, and they agreed she’d better stay in bed. Stephen looked gray when he left. He gave her the number for the training center and insisted she call immediately with any updates.

  Alone, she put her hand on her stomach again.

  Denver never thought to wonder what her mother had gone through the day she walked into the abortion center to end Bristol’s life; she only knew that she’d discovered she was pregnant again—by a man who wasn’t her husband—and walked out of the center after they told her to lie down. How far along had she been? Probably around this same time, four months of carrying her child at the same time she was caring for Denver, just barely a year old then. Denver’s mother must have known what she was in for, both physically and practically; she’d been pregnant before. She’d given birth before. She knew that a second child would mean a slash to her citizenship score that she wouldn’t be able to repair; that she’d be able to stay a Three, since no one ever moved tiers back then, but that life for her infant daughter would be forever changed once she was old enough to marry. Denver was ashamed of it, but she had always carried just a touch of resentment for that, that her mother would rather carry her second child to term than to sacrifice him for her future.

  As she felt the familiar jab of shame for thinking, even for a moment, that her mother should have gone through with the abortion that day, she clutched her stomach. Something was coming upon her slowly, a physical sensation of twisting, grinding, inside her stomach. Cramps. She’d had some back at St. Mary’s, early on. Probably nothing. She was glad when it faded away, and with it, the shame and her mother’s memory.

  She flipped through the newspaper that had been left by their door this morning. Her movements were restless, and her eyes firmly trudged through the headlines, forcing her mind back to the present, back to the severity of their situation here as refugees. She’d have to do a better job keeping up with the news…

  It didn’t take long before her gaze fuzzed over again, imagining her mother at her own age. She’d seen pictures of her from back then. She was built like Denver, long and lean. A thin waistline that would have betrayed her secret quickly. Did she have a bump under her dress the day she walked up the steps to the abortion center? Denver knew which center she’d gone to—a tall gray building downtown with steps that looked like a gauntlet. There were police on either side of those steps, supposedly to protect the women who were only allowed to go in alone. But Denver had always suspected that they were also there to keep women from running out, as her mother had done. Were they always there? The day her mother went with Bristol in her body, were they there, sneering and laughing at her?

  Denver’s son would someday be a full-grown person, just like Bristol was now. He no longer seemed so imaginary when she thought of it that way. Just as slowly as it had come before, a wave of stronger pain hit Denver and she could no longer pretend it was harmless. She fought against it, grasping her middle as if to protect her baby from the pain. She didn’t know much about pregnancy, it was true, but it didn’t seem like her baby would survive if he were to be born today. Then again, she was so ignorant of these things. Maybe he would be fine, just tiny.

  Denver’s mother would have gone through the doors and probably signed some papers, feeling sick, asking why the baby happened at all. Maybe feeling guilty.

  Her stomach crunched in on itself again. No.

  Did her husband know at this point? Mom was having an affair with another man, a long-term affair judging from the number of children that resulted from their relationship. Denver and Bristol’s biological father—did he know?

  That one was stronger.

  Did she talk to Bristol as she waited in the ugly waiting room, probably dotted with vases filled with dusty silk flowers and Metrics poster
s assuring her that she was doing the right thing? Did she tell him she was sorry?

  I’m sorry.

  They’d have called her into the waiting room. They’d have told her to take off her clothes and put on a gown. It would have been cold in the room. It was always so cold wherever they made you wear a gown.

  Stop. Stop, stop.

  Denver clamped her teeth together to stop them from chattering and slowly lowered her legs to the floor. She waded to the bathroom and, with effort, sat on the toilet. The pain was coming fast and strong now. She fought against them as if she were standing on a beach, wrestling strong waves. Each one knocked her over, quickly weakening her. But she sensed relief was near.

  She looked into the toilet. Blood-red water.

  No, no. Stay with me.

  They’d told her mother to lie down.

  Denver got up again, trailing thick blood behind her. It was on the soles of her feet, but the pain stopped her from caring what happened to the carpet. She had to reach the phone before the next wave hit. She reached out and touched it with her fingertips. More pain. All pain. Denver pulled her hand away, leaving a red swipe across the top of it.

  “She’s about four months along,” the doctor were saying about her mother. “Let’s suck it out. Spread your legs.”

  Denver opened her own legs, right there on the floor beside the bed. The blood was everywhere now, the shades of red forming a spectrum between the dark, jelly-like clots on the floor and the bright watercolors on the inside of each thigh. Denver’s body pushed, and she reached down and received something in her hands.