by G. C. Julien
“Ma—who?” he says.
I shake my head and let out a laugh. “Don’t worry about it. Come on.”
He follows me like a lost puppy with his head bowed forward and his feet too big for his body. He’s wearing blue-and-white sneakers that don’t match his new clothes at all, but they look comfortable.
“Appreciate those while you have them,” I say, eyeing his shoes.
He glances up at me, a crooked smile on his face. His teeth look like they’ve been polished. They’re so white and shiny. “Yeah, these are my favorites.”
The rest of the walk is quiet, so I try to focus my attention on anyone walking by until we finally reach Division Six.
“This is your spot,” I say, reaching a crowd of older kids in Division Six’s courtyard. “Big kids meet in Division Six.”
“Big kids?” he looks like he’s about to laugh.
“You know what I mean,” I say. “Fourteen-to-sixteen-year-olds start their day off—” But I pause, realizing I’m not even sure how old he is.
“I’m fifteen,” he says.
It’s like he read my mind. “Turning sixteen soon, though. I’m a Capricorn.”
I cock an eyebrow. “A capi—what now?”
“Capricorn,” he repeats, and the only thing I can picture is some kind of unicorn. “Don’t you know zodiac?”
He probably thinks I’m an idiot because I have no idea what he’s talking about. But he’s not looking at me like I’m an idiot. He’s looking at me like I’m a little kid, like I’m younger than him, and I’m not sure how to feel about it.
He waves his hand in the air like he’s trying to erase something. “Sorry. I’ve spent a lot of time around adults. Sometimes I forget I’m only fifteen. My mom pulled me out of school when I was eight. She said it was too dangerous. You know… Because of little boys disappearing.”
“What?” I say.
“Well, she didn’t want to—”
“No,” I cut him off. “What’re you talking about? What boys? I didn’t hear anything about boys disappearing.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Well, I guess it wasn’t on the news. But my best friend went missing”—he kicks at the grass with the tip of his sneaker—“and then my mom said that some of our neighbors lost their sons and were hysterical. I heard them once… the parents, I mean. They were fighting so bad I could hear them through my bedroom window. Mr. and Mrs. Garner, I think it was. They were such good people. And they always looked so happy together. But after Alex and Skyler went missing, it’s like they turned into different people.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“To the boys?” He shakes his head and kicks at the grass again. “Mom thinks the government had something to do with it. I don’t know. I mean, I thought the government was supposed to protect us.”
“The government isn’t—” I start, but I can hear myself on the verge of getting upset. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “The government isn’t on our side. If they were, they wouldn’t have killed all those people. They wouldn’t have forced women to kill their girl babies.”
“I know, it’s awful,” he says.
For a second, I think maybe we can be friends. He’s levelheaded and easy to talk to. I don’t think of him as a boy when I’m talking to him. I think of him as a person.
“Mom thinks they were trying to make clones,” he adds.
I burst out laughing, but I slap a hand over my mouth when I realize he isn’t smiling. He’s serious.
“Clones?” What for?”
He smirks and shakes his head again. “Not ‘clone clones’”—he makes air quotes with his fingers—“I mean like, they were probably trying to figure out a way to use the boys to create male babies.”
“Like, without a mom?” I ask. “That was all over the news a few years ago. I saw my mom watching it. Parents could create a baby without the mom being pregnant. Like, they grew in tubes. So, what? The government stepped in and wanted to start making a bunch of male babies?” I almost start laughing again. This is ridiculous.
“I don’t know why you think it’s so funny,” he says. “It’s not like it’s impossible. They were already doing it.”
How many adults has he been talking to, exactly? But then I remember seeing Grandma on her laptop and the videos she used to watch. I always call it a laptop. That’s what Grandma says it was, but Mom used to shake her head every time Grandma said that, and she’d tell her, “Mom, laptops are a thing of the past, now. They’re Projexers.” And then Grandma would shake her head, grab her old plastic keyboard, and slam it on the counter, refusing to give into the whole holographic stuff. She wanted nothing to do with the colorful projected keyboard, using the excuse that pressing plastic buttons was how it should be, not tapping your fingers on the counter. My mom would even try to get her to use the slim virtual reality headpiece, but she’d refuse. I was happy about that—I got to see everything she saw floating up in front of her face.
And there was so much outrageous stuff on there that I thought was fake—like the time I saw a policewoman talking to the camera and telling everyone how she’d been fired for being a woman. And then she said that the police were trying to design guns that only worked with fingerprint technology. That way, their weapons couldn’t be used against them and they couldn’t be used by women. It sounded like a bunch of garbage, like she was upset for having been fired and wanted to get back at the police force. But I found out a few weeks later that it was true. A bunch of policewomen came out and said the same thing. And then, another time, I heard that some high-security buildings were designing access control that didn’t allow women to enter at all. Something to do with fancy cameras and hormone-detection machines. It sounded so farfetched, but everyone started talking about it.
What am I supposed to believe? Anything could be true.
“Think about it,” Zack says. “If they have thousands of little boys, they could do all kinds of tests on them to figure out why they were born a boy and not a girl. Or, they could keep making boys and stop women from having kids, you know, naturally.”
“That’s disgusting,” I say. “They can’t force women to not have babies. That’s horrible. Some women want to be mothers. And boys aren’t lab rats. They can’t make people by putting them in an incubator and sticking tubes down their throats. It’s revolting.”
I’m taken aback by my own words. For the first time in I don’t know how long, I’m actually defending boys.
“Or,” Zack says, and his eyes are wide open like he’s about to tell me all about a cool book he read, “maybe they’re making little soldiers.”
“Soldiers?” I ask. “For what? And you’re talking in the present tense. Everything’s gone now.”
He rubs his fingers through the few little hairs on his chin. “Maybe some secret underground government lab survived all of it. Maybe they’re keeping the babies hidden too, you know, train them how to fight as they get older. And years from now, when there’s literally nothing left in America… When most survivors are dead, they’ll come out from hiding and take over.”
I smirk. “Well, that’s stupid. If there’s no one left, why even bother to take over—”
“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “It sounds crazy, I know.”
He seems a bit embarrassed, like he took it too far and assumes I think he’s an idiot.
“It’s not that crazy,” I say, and he looks at me, his big eyes fixed on me for a moment. “I mean, you never know anymore, right?”
His smile comes back and he nods. “Exactly.”
“Listen,” I say, “I’d better get going. I need to get a few ingredients for Mavis and Perula. And I think you’d better hurry.” I point at Mrs. Lewenburg, the Life Lessons teacher, and at the students who are all getting up from the grass. “It looks like they’re going somewhere.”
“Oh!” he says, walking backward. “Okay, I’ll catch you later. And, um—thanks for the chat!” and he runs toward the group of kids, his long, lan
ky legs kicking behind him.
Poor guy. Mrs. Lewenburg stops talking as she watches him approach, and everyone in the group turns to him. Awkwardly, he places his hands behind his back, and although I can’t see his face, he probably has that cheesy grin on it—the one that says, “Please like me.”
Some of the girls look disgusted by him, and a few others at the back start giggling and whispering.
I hope I’ll run into him again later.
Even if his stories sound insane, they’re fun to talk about.
CHAPTER 9 – GABRIEL
I hear her footsteps against the iron staircase before the heavy door swings open. I sit upright, stretch my neck, and blink away the fuzziness from my sight until I see Freyda standing there, hands on her hips.
“Miss me already?” I say, my voice sounding like a toad. She doesn’t even smile.
“Get up,” she orders.
“I’m not even dressed—”
“Now,” she says like I’m a disobedient dog.
I slowly roll onto my hands and knees and get up on my feet. It feels like my ribs are being pulled out of place.
Something soft, but surprisingly warm, smacks me square in the face. “Put these on.”
I grab the clothes and stare at her. She looks much smaller now that I’m standing, and I don’t think she likes that. Her chest is puffed out like she’s trying to make herself look bigger than she is. She probably feels threatened by me, which makes me a bit sad.
I don’t know why, though. I’d never hurt her.
She clicks her fingers together and widens her eyes at me. “Let’s go.”
I slip the cotton, or hemp, tunic over my head. It hurts to put it on, but if I don’t hurry, she’ll let me know. It’s soft against my skin, like fleece, but it’s a bit tight for me. It contours my shoulders and my chest, which makes my biceps bulge out. It’s probably making me look bigger than I actually am, and I’m a pretty big guy. If they’re presenting me to a bunch of women who hate men, wouldn’t it have been better to make me wear something a little less… showy? Maybe a sweater or something. Better yet, how about a bunny outfit? Something cute and innocent that screams, “I’m not here to hurt you.”
All right, all right. I’m being an idiot. But I don’t want their first impression of me to be a bad one. I slip into the pants. They’re beige, and they match my new shirt, and thankfully these aren’t snug. They’re comfortably loose, so they don’t sit tight around my junk.
I scratch my chin, feeling the rough hairs of my beard. There’s another problem. My beard. I don’t think women are ready to see some six-foot-two man with muscles, a beard, and dark curly hair that’s starting to hang by his ears. I’ll probably look like a goddamn caveman to them.
Shit.
“Here,” Freyda says, and she passes me a silver blade, its sharp tip flat in her palm.
I let out a soft laugh, and even that hurts my ribs. “Must have read my mind.”
“No,” she says. “I looked at your face.”
Is this supposed to be an insult? Even if it is, I can’t be upset with her. Just looking at her makes everything about this hellish basement seem a little less awful. She narrows her eyes at me, but I don’t mind. Let her hate me all she wants as long as she keeps coming to see me.
“What’re you, anyway?” I ask. “Ex-military?”
She crosses her arms over her chest and purses her lips like I’m an idiot for even trying to make conversation.
“Special Ops?”
Nothing.
“Black Marines?” I try, even though I know it’s highly unlikely. It was a fairly new division in the military, and most women were booted out by the time the war started.
“You gonna shave, or what?” she asks.
I’m surprised she’s standing so close to me. First off, I’m a man. But secondly, I’m holding a weapon in my hand. What if I were some crazy bastard? Some piece of shit pig with only one thing on his mind? I’d have her pinned against the wall in a second. I shake away these thoughts. I shouldn’t even be having them, but with everything I’ve witnessed over the last few years, my mind automatically finds the worst-case scenario in every situation.
My eyes shift to her gun belt. Maybe that’s why she’s so confident. She has two pistols tucked away in holsters. And if she is ex-military, she knows how to use them.
“I don’t have a mirror,” I say.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she says. “Give me that.” She snatches the blade right out of my hand. “Hold still.”
Hold still? A woman who hates me and all men of the world is holding a razor blade by my face.
“You’re too tall,” she says. “Bend down a bit.”
“You’re too short,” I want to say, but I don’t think she’d find it funny.
I stare at her. Is she serious? Am I supposed to trust her to shave my beard? She rolls those beautiful eyes and lets out an annoyed breath, probably sensing my hesitation. “I know what I’m doing. I’ve shaved my husband’s beard many times before.”
I blink, but I don’t move my face.
“You have a husband?” I ask.
I realize it’s none of my business, but it’s too late to take it back. The words already came out. She grabs my face with one hand and gently scrapes at the side of my jaw with the other.
“Had,” she says, and she doesn’t look at me.
“I’m sorry—”
She’s so focused that her forehead has wrinkles and her lips are sealed tight. Her nose is medium-sized and neither round nor pointy. It’s this perfect combination. And those eyebrows. It’s obvious she doesn’t pluck them. I mean, who would in a postapocalyptic world, anyway? But she doesn’t have to. They’re perfectly shaped into half-moons. Not too thick, not too thin. She has this cute little beauty mark over her lips, too. It sits right at the top corner of her mouth. She even has one on her thick bottom lip. A little brown freckle. I’ve never seen that before.
“Stop staring at me,” she says.
“I wasn’t—”
Her grip tightens around my jaw. “I can feel your eyes. Look somewhere else.”
“Sorry,” I mumble, and I roll my eyes up toward the ceiling, awkwardly trying to find something to focus on. All I see are old pipes full of cobwebs and wires that probably haven’t worked in years.
“Those pipes up there,” I say, and I flinch when she cuts me.
“You shouldn’t be talking,” she says.
I don’t say anything and stand with my back hunched forward and my hands behind my back. I feel like I’m in a scene from Beauty and the Beast. Like I’m being cleaned for some big celebration by someone who thinks I’m a monster.
I close my eyes, and her touch, even though she’s brushing a blade against my skin, is the nicest thing I’ve felt in years. I can’t remember the last time I felt a woman’s touch.
Her hands are so soft, but incredibly strong at the same time. She’s breathing out through her nostrils, and it smells like perfume, or like flowers. Like she’s eaten a whole bouquet of lilies or roses. How does she do that? Manage to keep up with her hygiene? Then again, this place is full of women. Hygiene is probably an important part of their everyday activities.
“There.” She pulls back from me. With my jaw still held firmly in her hand, she moves my face from side to side to make sure she didn’t miss anything. My skin feels completely irritated, but I don’t mind. She licks her thumb and wipes the side of my cheek, probably where she cut me earlier. “Good as new.” She shifts her eyes to meet mine, but only briefly. The second she realizes we’re looking at each other, she turns away and I straighten.
“Thank you,” I say, but she doesn’t say anything back.
“Come on, let’s go.”
“Hey, Freyda—”
She tilts her head and looks at me, obviously feeling empowered again now that she’s at a safe distance.
“Is there anything I need to know? About this place, I mean. Should I be worried? I get tha
t you guys—you women, I mean. Women. You’re not a fan of men. I know that. But am I walking out there to be stoned to death? I know Eve said that she’d accept my help, but I don’t know if she was serious. All I’m saying is if I’m gonna die, could you please tell—”
“You’re not dying, you idiot,” she says. She lets out a long breath, and it sounds like she’s trying hard not to be mean to me. “You seem like a decent guy. I hope you are. Eve will be telling everyone that you’re going to help us in some way. I don’t have all the details yet. So, if you are this good guy you say you are, be yourself. Don’t be an asshole, and most of all, don’t be misogynistic.”
“I’m not—”
“And don’t interrupt someone when they’re talking to you.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re a huge minority here in Eden,” she says. “I honestly have no idea how it’s going to go. I’m sure some women will be pretty excited about having a man around”—she gives me a quick up and down—“but most are probably going to hate you right off the bat.”
I let out a soft laugh even though I don’t think any of this is funny. “I guess this is karma. Women have been fighting to be treated as equals for centuries, and now, in this place, men are a lesser being.”
“You’re not a lesser being—” she tries, but I shake my head, my curly hairs tickling my forehead.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Honestly, you all have every right to be hateful. I won’t take that from you. I hope I can make a difference, though.”
She bows her head and rests her thumb on her gun belt. “If you’re genuine, Gabriel, you’re one hell of a guy. I’m trying to be positive, here. I’m trying to believe you.” She then raises her chin and flares her nostrils. “But if I find out you’re dishonest in any way.” Now she’s pointing a finger at me. “If I find out you’re doing all of this for some sick fucking reason—that you’re a piece of shit like the rest of them—so help me God, you’ll be looking at me upside down, the weight of your body held only by your fucking dick wrapped in barbed wire.”
CHAPTER 10 – EVE