Rebel Nation

by Shaunta Grimes

  “Nothing in the notebooks about heating the houses?” Jude asked.

  “Nothing. We’ll figure it out. It’s warm enough tonight for just blankets. There’s some food in each house. It should be enough, even with the extra people.”

  All West wanted was to sort all of these people into beds and pallets and close the door on his own bedroom. He needed to think and he couldn’t do that when he was surrounded by scared, hungry children.

  Originally there was a house for Phire and Emmy, one for Marta and Geena, one for Christopher and Jude, and one for West and Clover. Now Christopher and Marta shared a house, with Jude in the city and Geena killed by Bennett the night Waverly died. Phire and Emmy were still housed together and for the last couple of months West had his house to himself. The fourth house was empty.

  “How many do we have total?” West asked Christopher.

  “The five of us, plus Jude and Clover, the lady with the leg, and sixteen kids from Foster City.” Christopher tilted his head, figuring it out, then said, “Twenty-four.”

  “Twenty-four.”

  “It’s okay,” Marta said. When West met her, her head was nearly shaved bald. She’d let her hair grow since leaving the city. It lay like a cap against her head, soft and light brown. “We’ll be okay.”

  “I know that.” God, he was on edge. He needed to get this done so he could fall apart quietly and in private. “So, let’s get six in the main house, then five in each of the houses except mine. I’ll take Leanne and Clover and we can use the extra space so we have a place to meet.”

  Christopher nodded and started to walk away, but West caught his arm.

  “Keep siblings together. And save a spot for Jude in your house, okay?”

  Marta shook her head and, to her credit, tried to hide her laughter. Christopher put a hand on her shoulder when she said to West, “You know that won’t keep them apart.”

  “It will tonight.”

  —

  After West finally had the new arrivals fed and settled in their houses for the night, he went home. He opened the door softly, not wanting to wake Clover and Leanne if they were already asleep.

  They weren’t. Or Leanne wasn’t. She sat on the sofa, alone, staring at nothing in particular. Somewhere along the line, she’d reattached her leg.

  “Is Clover asleep?” he asked.

  Leanne stayed where she was and didn’t look up. “I don’t know.”

  West left her there. He had no idea what to do for her. He needed to process, alone, and then sleep. Upstairs, he opened his sister’s bedroom door.

  Christopher hadn’t done what he said he would. Jude and Clover sat side by side, leaning against the headboard of one of the beds with Mango snoring softly on the dog bed Waverly had found for him somewhere.

  “You’re not asleep,” he said.

  Clover gave him a strange look and shook her head. “No, I’m not.”

  “You look tired,” Jude said. “Do you want to talk tonight, or—”

  “There’s a bed for you in Christopher and Marta’s house. It’s the one you used to sleep in.”

  “It’s not our fault that she didn’t come,” Clover said. “We didn’t even know that they left until it was too late.”

  He took a breath and tried to find some tact, somewhere in his messed-up head, but couldn’t. “Jude, you aren’t sleeping in this room.”

  West instantly regretted his words. Clover stiffened and fixed him with a look so angry, he actually took a half step back. Jude didn’t move; his expression didn’t even change. Mango woke up and lifted his head.

  “At least take the couch. Give Leanne the other bed.” West left the room. He didn’t close the door after him. He almost made it to his bedroom. So close.

  “Clover? Clover!”

  Clover and Jude both came to the doorway. Mango must have decided his girl could manage, because he wasn’t with them. Leanne called again from downstairs. “Clover!”

  They found Leanne pacing from the door to the staircase and back. When West left her, she’d seemed nearly catatonic, but now she was hyper-animated.

  “I have to go back,” she said. “Tonight. Right now. I have to get back to the city right now.”

  “You can’t,” Clover said.

  “I have to.”

  “There isn’t anyone to help you on the other side,” West said.

  “I’ll manage.”

  “Wait a minute.” Jude took Leanne by the arm and moved her to the couch. After she was sitting, he asked, “Why do you need to go back to the city?”

  “I made a mistake. I got scared. But if I’m not at work in the morning—” She turned in her seat to look at West and Clover. “Bridget Kingston knows where you are.”

  “Bridget wouldn’t tell anyone,” West said.

  Clover sat on the other end of the couch. “She told Isaiah.”

  West wanted to defend Bridget. The words came up his throat, then died there. She had told Isaiah. “Shit.”

  “I have to go back. Bennett will come to me looking for Clover tomorrow. That will give you at least a little time before he goes to Bridget.”

  “Time?” Clover asked.

  “Time for us to move.” West was so tired. So incredibly tired. “We have to leave the ranch.”

  “You have to stay, Leanne,” Clover said. “Who knows what Bennett will do to you when he finds out I’m gone. He’ll know that you warned me. Please, don’t go.”

  Jude sat next to Clover. He didn’t try to stop her rocking. “She’s right,” he finally said.

  Clover pulled her bare feet up to the edge of the sofa and wrapped her arms around her knees.

  “We’ll be okay,” West said. “I promise, we’ll be fine. Virginia City is bigger, it has so much more room.”

  “Virginia City?” Clover asked.

  “It’s in Waverly’s notes,” West said. “He set it up as an alternative place for us. I think he knew we’d need it.”

  “That’s just great,” she said. “Well, Leanne can’t go back to Reno. Not now. You need her here.”

  West inhaled and tried to figure out what his sister was talking about. He felt like there was something he should be able to see, but it was right outside the edge of his vision. “What are you talking about?”

  She sighed and leaned back against the sofa. “Everyone always tells their big news before me. Remember, Bridget did the same thing when I had to tell you I was going back to the city.”

  “We’re not going back to Reno,” Jude said quickly, intercepting West’s protest.

  Clover held a hand up, cutting them both off. “I have to go to Washington, D.C.”

  She might as well have told him that she had to go to the moon. He couldn’t even wrap his head around how he was going to move all these people a few dozen miles to Virginia City.

  “We need that book,” she said.

  “Clover, I can’t do this right now. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “The book,” she said, frustration permeating her voice. “Waverly’s book. It’s in the Library of Congress, I’m sure of it, and we need to get it.”

  West scrubbed his hands through his hair. “Has everyone lost it? Really? Because I can’t even believe we’re having this conversation.”

  Clover narrowed her eyes. “I have to go, West.”

  “No. I’m sorry. No. Whatever is in that book, we don’t need it right now.”

  “I can’t dive for Waverly’s notes.”

  “We have bigger problems!” West inhaled and tried to slow his heart.

  “You aren’t listening to me. I can’t swim. I can’t learn to swim. I can’t do it. We can’t get the notes, so we have to find the book. We have to know what Waverly put in it.”

  “You aren’t going to Washington, D.C. How would you even
get there? It’s three thousand miles away.”

  “I know how far away it is. I’m not stupid.”

  “I know you’re not stupid.” West turned to Jude and then Leanne, silently begging for some help. Neither of them jumped in. “This is ridiculous.”

  “She can take the train,” Leanne said.

  “Christ, don’t give her ideas.”

  Clover bristled. “I can come up with my own ideas. I would have thought of that one.”

  “You can’t take the train. Even if it was safe, our train doesn’t even go that far.”

  Leanne put a hand over her mouth. She looked as stressed as he felt. “She can get as far as Denver with Frank. He’ll know what to do from there.”

  West pointed a finger at her, then fisted his hand and bounced it off his hip. “If you think I’m sending my sister on a train alone across the country, you’re crazy. Seriously, insane.”

  “She wouldn’t be alone,” Jude said.

  West turned to Jude but couldn’t stand to look at him. He couldn’t stand to look at any of them, so he paced away.

  Clover stood up. “What are we doing here? Just hiding forever? We need to know what Waverly felt was important enough to hide. We need that book.”

  “So send a message with Frank. Get someone to get the book and send it back to us.”

  Clover walked around to stand in front of West. Mango was finally roused by their voices enough to come downstairs and stand beside her. “That will take too long. And if the book gets lost—we can’t trust it to strangers. You know I’m right.”

  “The farther away from Bennett she is, the better,” Leanne said, quietly.

  Clover stared up at him, making more eye contact than she normally did in a week. He blinked first. “I’ll take Leanne back.”

  “West—”

  He shut her down with a look. “I’ll take her now.”

  —

  “I can reach Bridget,” Leanne said after five minutes of silence in the van. “I can get her a message.”

  West didn’t look away from the road. What would he even say to her? She’d stayed in the city. She hadn’t sent him a message. As far as she knew, she’d never see him again, never speak to him again. If she didn’t care, why should he? Why did he?

  The answer came as soon as he asked himself the question. She’d had days, maybe weeks to think about leaving him. He was the one who was left. He was still reeling.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “What’s your plan for getting back out of the city?”

  “Frank will bring me. I think I can get you two days before Bennett talks to Bridget. Get Clover and Jude to the train on Wednesday. I’ll be on it.”

  “This is a bad idea. You know that, right? This is a dangerous idea.”

  Leanne leaned back in her seat and rubbed her eyes. “We’re past the point of good and safe, don’t you think?”

  “What if you’re not on the train?”

  “If I’m not on the train, then my plan didn’t work and I’ll probably be in jail waiting for my date with your father.”

  West stepped on the brake hard enough that Leanne put a hand out to brace herself against the dashboard. He didn’t bother pulling to the shoulder. No other cars had driven on these roads since the walls went up. He yanked the gearshift up to park and turned in his seat to face her. She kept her eyes closed, her head tipped back against the seat behind her. He took her arm and yanked her attention to him.

  “This isn’t a joke,” he said.

  She sat up and turned toward him but didn’t try to loosen his grip on her upper arm. She was close enough that he could smell the river water that had dried on her skin. “Don’t you think I know that?”

  “I’m not sure that you do.”

  Her dark hair was still damp and hung in limp braids. She was wearing clothes that were too big and in a few minutes she was going back in the river with her prosthetic leg wrapped in plastic tarp. She had a look, though—a determination in her eyes that made him think of Clover. He had a feeling that she was underestimated just as often as his sister was. He put the van back into gear, feeling stupid for jumping down her throat, and started back toward the place where the wall crossed the river.

  Every time he let his mind wander, it went to Bridget. The way her thick blond hair felt between his fingers. The way she tasted when he kissed her. How it felt to sleep with her curled against him. The dull ache in the pit of his stomach that came from wanting more than he’d had the nerve to ask for.

  He’d spent months caught up in some stupid romantic dream. He really believed that she missed him as much as he missed her. And then she stayed in the city with Isaiah. West felt like a fool, and that made him angry. He knew Isaiah and he knew that Bridget didn’t mean anything to him. His best friend went from girl to girl. None of them could resist him and none of them held his attention for long.

  The real truth of what it meant that Bridget had chosen to stay in the city dawned slowly. Isaiah had slept with Bridget. The thought took West’s breath away and he nearly came out of his skin when Leanne put a hand on his shoulder and he realized that he’d almost driven off the road. He pulled the wheel and straightened the van out.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  West forced the image of Bridget and Isaiah in bed together out of his head. “Why would Bennett suddenly want Clover back, after all this time? What about our dad? Does he know that Clover left the city?”

  Leanne shook her head. “I didn’t tell him. Do you want me to?”

  He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything. “I barely know him. How can I answer that?”

  She hesitated before speaking again. “I know him.”

  Fantastic. “So what do you think?”

  “I think that we need someone in the city. If I just leave again, we don’t have anyone to give us information.”

  “You don’t know any other rebels?” What an incredible mess. “My dad might not even believe you.”

  “Your dad knows that you’re alive.”

  “God, you told him? How could you do that? You had no idea what he’d do.”

  “I knew we’d need someone. Who else could I have trusted? He hasn’t told anyone. When I see him, he asks a lot of questions. The right questions. He helped you before, didn’t he?”

  West felt like he should have some kind of answer for her, but nothing came to him. He literally had no idea how his father would react to the news that Clover was gone from the city again. “Use your judgment. We’ll meet at the train on Wednesday.”

  I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing. . .

  —THOMAS JEFFERSON,

  LETTER TO JAMES MADISON, JANUARY 30, 1787

  It didn’t rain much in Reno, so when it did, it felt like magic to James.

  He stood at the window in his barracks and looked into the near-perfect dark. He couldn’t see the clouds, but they completely blocked the stars, so he knew they were thick. If green had a smell, he thought, the ozone scent of almost-rain was it. He turned his head just enough to see the framed photo of Jane he kept on top of his dresser. She was under an umbrella, smiling at him as he snapped her picture during a weekend trip to San Francisco.

  A knock on his door pulled him back out of the past. He shook off his nostalgia and his thoughts of Jane as he went to answer it. Leanne Wood was the last person he expected to see, but there she stood, looking like she’d been hit by a truck. She was staring over her shoulder, like she thought someone might come up behind her and didn’t even seem to notice that he’d opened the door.

  “Leanne?” When she turned her face to him, alarm shot through his blood. Her eyes were hollow and she looked exhausted to the point of collapse. Her hair was damp and she was shivering so hard she had to hold on to the wall to keep upright. “What is it? What happened?”

&
nbsp; She came past him into his room, closed the door and locked it, then pressed her back against it. “It’s time,” she said.

  “Time for what? What happened? Is it Clover? Is she okay?”

  “She left the city.”

  James’s hands fisted and unfisted and he started to pace. On his third pass across the room, he brought a blanket to Leanne and wrapped it around her shoulders. “It’s West, then. She left because something happened to West?”

  “West is fine.”

  Something unclenched in his chest. “Sit down and tell me what’s going on.”

  She slid awkwardly to the floor, her back still against the door. Not exactly what he had in mind. “Bennett expects to bring Clover back into the Company in the morning. What time is it?”

  “About midnight.”

  “So we have eight hours at least. He won’t go to the dorms before eight.”

  “Eight hours to do what?” He was still struggling to figure out what exactly was happening.

  “Jesus.” Leanne pushed strands of wet hair off her face. “I don’t know.”

  James took a bottle of what passed for whiskey these days from his sock drawer and poured a couple of fingers into a plastic cup. He handed it to her, then pulled a chair over and sat in it. “Why don’t you start from the beginning.”

  “West isn’t sure we can trust you.” She gulped the whiskey, grimaced. “I told him that we could. We can, can’t we?”

  He gave her a little more whiskey. Just another swallow. He was tempted to knock some back himself, but he had a feeling one of them should be sober. “Trust me with what?”

  “Well, I mean, I’m still alive and I haven’t been arrested yet, so you haven’t told anyone what I’ve already told you.”

  Not that he hadn’t agonized about it. “I haven’t.”

  “So if there’s more. If something else is happening. You want to know, don’t you?” She swallowed the whiskey.

  “Yes.” The word came out easily, even though James wasn’t really sure.