"Hey. Rosa, it'll be okay," Rae soothed, trying to comfort me. "We'll figure something out."
"They think he's a killer. He's not. He wouldn't do that."
"I know. I've known him almost as long as you have. They'll see that he's innocent."
I didn't know if they would get a chance, if they would even try. Everyone else already believed it. People who'd lived mere metres away from us for years. They'd stared me down as I walked, blades and shards of broken glass clutched in their hands. I couldn't even think about what Gabby and Mum were going to face on their way home.
I almost jumped out of my skin when I heard a knocking at the back door. My frantic eyes looked up at Rae. He grabbed our family's one defence weapon — a baseball bat that had at one stage belonged to my great-grandfather. I was surprised to see it out in the open instead of hidden away, as it usually was, in the back of my parents' wardrobe. I didn't know what Rae thought was going to be on the other side of that door, but at least he was prepared.
"I'll go see who it is. Wait here." As if I would go anywhere. I was as good as glued to the floor.
Not even ten seconds later Rae appeared back in the hallway, my mother and sister in tow. Gabby looked a bit shaken up. Mum didn't seem phased at all, despite the fact that they'd clearly both run here. Gabby's eyes met mine, filled with fear.
"What are we going to do?"
"I don't know."
TWO
"Barely anyone's outside now," Rae stated, as he peered around the far edge of the faded curtain blocking the window to the street. Over the past hour or so the mob of people appeared to have lost interest in us. At least temporarily. They knew Liam wasn't here.
I could hardly believe what had been happening in the course of just a few hours and I struggled to keep up. Had the world gone even crazier than before? What the hell had happened to my life?
"Well, that's just great. Our own neighbours want to attack us now. What are we supposed to do?" I could feel the panic as it began to seep back into my blood.
"We can't do anything. I guess we just have to pretend that everything's fine."
"How are we supposed to do that Gabby? Liam's life is on the line. Are we supposed to just pretend it's not? Are we supposed to pretend we agree with them out there?" The hysteria was building within me. I would not — could not — even think about going against my brother. The very thought was like poison.
"And what about the fact that they'll want to see us dead soon too? Is that also something we ignore?" I struggled to control my breathing as it sped up.
"Don't yell at me. You already upset Mum today. The last thing I need right now is for you to start fighting with me."
I froze, staring at her, jaw tense. I hadn't even noticed that I was yelling. My voice had jumped up all on it's own, filled with anxiety and defensive anger. And she didn't need to bring up the way I'd spoken to Mum. I was perfectly aware that what I'd said was wrong. It wasn't like I'd ever done anything like that before. No matter how tempting it could be sometimes. If I hadn't been so freaked out it never would have happened at all. She didn't have to throw it in my face like that.
I turned to storm from the room only to be followed by my sister.
"Where are you going?"
I sighed through my nose before turning back to her. I tried not to see the panic, pain, and anger scrunching up her face.
"I can't deal with this right now. I need to get away from you before I explode. Or would you rather I stayed and messed up again so you can yell at me some more?" I couldn't control the words as they came out of my own mouth. I was a horrible sister. A horrible daughter. A horrible person.
I wanted to leave. Needed to leave.
If I was stuck in here with those accusing eyes for any longer I was going to scream.
✽✽✽
"Are you okay?" I looked up from my half cleaned hands to see Rae leaning against the bathroom doorframe, watching the movements of my fingers as they scrubbed at the black dust. Concern laced through his eyes. I threw the useless, soot smeared rag into the sink and turned around properly.
I'd been trying to clean my hands. It wasn't an easy task without running water. Or soap. I sighed before shaking my head.
No. I was not okay.
I brushed past him and walked into the room I shared with Gabby.
We were lucky enough to have the only double bed in the house, now that Mum slept in Gabby's old single. Originally, in the wake of our father's death, Gabby had shared a room with our mother. We'd thought that someone needed to stay with her throughout the night. It was what she was used to. And often she would wake up screaming.
The nightmares our mother had been plagued with following Dad's death left her a crying mess whenever she woke from them. Unfortunately they'd also made her thrash around in her sleep. One time, two years after the attack, she elbowed Gabby so hard in the stomach that she almost threw up. So Liam made the call that Gabby would room with me again instead, as we had before things turned to crap. Only this time we had a bigger bed. I was nine at the time and Gabby was eleven. I don't know how she'd put up with me.
Other than the bed itself we didn't have much in the way of personal belongings to fill the room. There was a small bookshelf crammed to one side, scattered with books we'd collected over the years. The ones we refused to hand in to the government. My favourites were falling apart at the spine from overuse, both from me reading them too much and the sixty years of use they had survived through to get to us.
I flopped onto the faded purple blankets covering our mattress, faintly aware I was leaving black marks everywhere. That was going to be a real pain to clean.
Rae sat at the foot of the bed and looked down at me. I could feel it as he stared at me with those dark green eyes, though I kept mine closed. I just wanted to keep the world away for a few moments. To pretend that none of this was actually happening.
But in the quiet I could hear too much.
The voices on the radio warned us about potential attack locations. Static burst through the speakers after every few sentences. My sister's defeated voice tried to coerce Mum to go lie down and take a nap. I couldn't stand to listen to that either.
There was no such thing as peace and quiet. It was a foreign concept somehow remembered through generations. It had never been silent in my lifetime.
I opened my eyes to meet Rae's steady gaze.
"Are you going to be okay?"
I sighed and looked away at the opposite wall. Tacked up with a few slightly rusted nails was a smattering of old family pictures. There were none of Gabby and I. The camera that they'd used had run out of film and been rendered useless long before we'd been born. But there were a few polaroids of my parents together, and a couple of Liam when he was about a year and a half old. His blonde hair had been so much lighter when he was a baby, now it was so dark it was practically brown.
Looking at his face hurt knowing where he was now. Thinking about what they could be doing to him. What they probably were doing to him while I just lay here. While we waited to hear the judgement of some bigoted nobody.
I blinked away tears and looked back into the warm eyes of my best friend.
"I don't know. He's as good as dead, Rae," my voice broke towards the end of my sentence.
"We don't know that. They might let you talk. They could listen." I sat up abruptly, interrupting him.
"Don't be stupid." I knew even he didn't believe the words as they tripped out from between his teeth. "They're never going to listen. He's gone. Liam might as well be dead already. They're going to kill him just like they kill every other person in this goddamn place who's accused of anything. They can't afford not to. Because what if he actually was a Xiet? Wouldn't we still want to save him? The government won't risk it. They can't. If it was anyone else I wouldn't want them to. That's the worst part. If it weren't for the fact that Liam was my brother I'd want him dead too. So don't tell me they will listen."
My voice had grow
n bitter and desperate throughout my speech, but Rae wouldn't back down.
"Well then what are you going to do?"
"I don't know." My jaw tightened with the effort to stop my bottom lip from quivering.
I couldn't save my brother. I couldn't do anything. Not without also getting myself locked up or shot. That wasn't an option. I couldn't do that to my family. Though I wouldn't be surprised if we became targets next anyway.
But what could we do?
We had nothing.
No food.
No water.
Nowhere to hide.
Nowhere to go.
We couldn't just up and leave. That was almost as certain a death as shooting myself in the head. And just as messy. But, and not for the first time in my life, I wondered if it was as impossible as we were made to believe.
"What if we left?" I muttered, breathless at the idea of escape.
"What?" Rae sat on the bed next to me and looked directly into my eyes. "You're actually serious about this."
I looked away and let out a breath.
"Why not? It's not like we have much here worth staying for. We're starving, slowly, day by day. Soon we won't be getting enough to survive. We can hardly get by as it is and they keep dropping the rations. We aren't even safe here. There are bomb threats every single day. And because of that we're never prepared when they actually attack us. Not that we have any way to prepare ourselves anyway. We should just get out before we're all dead."
"With what?" I followed his gaze around the mostly empty room and tried not to listen.
"You said it yourself. There's not enough of anything. You don't even have anything to bring with you. Nothing that'd last. You'd starve a lot faster without your rations. No one has made it out there. You'd get shot before you could get ten metres away from the border." It was common knowledge that the Xiets always had people stationed around the border. We were never sure of how many there were since we could never see them, but whenever anyone got the idea to leave they had been found the next day. Lying dead a few metres from the border that had been made so obvious by the bits of wreckage, and bombed out crevasses that surrounded us. But it had been decades since anyone had actually tried it.
"And what about your family? Gabby would probably come, fine. But that's it. Do you really think you could get your mother out there and not end up losing her the first night? Or what about Liam, huh? You're just going to leave him stuck here? Abandon him when he needs you the most?" I flinched back. Hurt that he would throw my family at me like that.
"Staying here didn't help yours much." As soon as the words were out I regretted them. His parents and younger brother had died when Rae was still a child. Victims of a suicide bombing. His brother was only six months old at the time and had been terribly sick. So his parents had taken him to the closest medic station. It turned out it hadn't been moved in a while and a Xiet sympathiser — a traitor of the worst kind — picked it for their target.
The way Rae's jaw clenched reminded me of just how broken it had left him. How could I say that to him? The wound was still so sore, and I knew it was a low blow.
"Fine. You think it'd be better out there? Take your chances. I can't stop you." He got up to leave the room and I stood to grab his arm.
"Rae, please. I'm sorry, I didn't mean that." He looked away from me and I watched him swallow slowly.
He was clearly still upset, but he didn't give me the time to say anything before he ripped his arm out of my grasp.
"Where would you go?" He avoided meeting my eyes, the only sign that he was still effected by my words. His voice was strong, clear despite the pain in a way that I envied.
"I don't know. Anywhere away from here. Preferably in the opposite direction of the Xiets."
"How are you going to do that when you don't know where they are?"
I shrugged and tried to ignore the basic logic laced through his thinking.
"We have to try, don't we?" Was it so bad to just want a way out?
He nodded slowly before sitting down again, dragging me down with him.
"You know you'd have like, a very high chance of falling into enemy territory. The army keeps all that stuff secret from us."
"I know but we also have an extremely high chance of getting ourselves locked up or killed if we stay here. With Liam accused it's only a matter of time. You know that."
"Does that mean I'm not allowed to worry? You don't even have a plan. You can't just get up and run for it. Even if you make it through you'll get lost in the ruins. I know you will."
"Well, thanks for the vote of faith, but I wasn't planning on going alone."
"Gabby doesn't know how to get around either. She gets lost here. We have like four streets." I ignored his pathetic attempt at humour.
"What about you? Aren't you going to come with us?"
"Someone has to stay behind."
"What? Why?"
"Well, for one, Jacki probably wouldn't go."
"Why not?"
"Because she wouldn't want to. She can't even handle walking around her own home by herself most of the time. She would be terrified. I'd have to stay behind to watch out for her."
"Don't be stupid. We could bring her with us. And even if we couldn't," my voice wavered over the words, "we could find someone else to look after her. You know everyone here feels sorry for her. Why can't you come?" For once I found myself unable to decipher the look on his face.
"I just can't." He looked away from me. "I only found out for sure this morning, and I was going to tell you earlier, but then the bombing happened and I didn't have a chance. They're moving the medic station to my house. Considering I'm the only one who still lives there it seemed like a good idea. You know I want them to move it more often." He took a deep breath as I stared at him. Waited for the real answer. They could use his house even if he wasn't there. That's what they normally did anyway. It exposed people to more danger if you put a spotlight on an actual home.
Rae met my searching gaze and spoke suddenly, all in a rush.
"They're starting my training tomorrow. I can't leave now. Not when I could help people." I nodded slowly. Of course. This made so much sense I was surprised I didn't see it before. What kind of unobservant friend was I? Rae had always wanted to help people. He never wanted another person to go through what he had when his brother got sick. If the fever had been dealt with better Rae would still have a family.
But just because I understood where he was coming from didn't mean I wanted to leave him behind.
It seemed to dawn on us at the same moment.
I was still going to go. Take whatever pieces of my family I could and get out. It was an act of desperation, but what other choice did I have?
We were never going to see each other again. That was a hard thought to swallow.
I couldn't remember a time when Rae hadn't been in my life. Living in a place so small, riddled with death and traitors, we'd learned to only trust each other. We were family. You didn't just abandon family.
"But you're my best friend. How am I supposed to leave you like this?"
"I don't know. But if you think it's the best way to protect your family, to protect yourself, then you're going to have to."
THREE
For a few moments we stood there, submerged in silence. It was sinking in that soon, very soon, I was going to go. And I'd be leaving him behind. The only person outside of my family that I trusted. That I actually cared about. And I was going to leave him with no one. We were all he had and I was going to take that away.
It wasn't like he would be able to replace us. Just the idea of that happening made it feel like a burning piece of coal had been dropped into the pit of my stomach. But even if he wanted to he wouldn't have been able to. You couldn't trust just anybody around here. If they weren't accusing you of treason, they were likely committing it themselves. You couldn't trust anybody at all.
Rae would be stuck here. Alone.
And I would be st
uck out there, in the vast unknown. Accompanied only by my sister and disjointed mother.
I couldn't even begin to have second thoughts about my rushed plans before I heard raised voices and the slam of a door coming from the living room. My eyes met Rae's worried gaze before we both raced out to see what had happened.
"What's going on? What's wrong?" I called out. Rae almost slammed into my back when I halted abruptly at the scene before me.
Gabby was leaning against the closed front door while tears dripped down her face, watering the worn carpet beneath her. Her cheeks and eyes were red. What more could have possibly happened in the fifteen minutes since I had left?
"Officer Hadley was here," she paused her broken speaking to sniff hard against the onslaught of emotion. She tried to compose herself. She failed.
"He told me th-they've scheduled Liam's exe-execution for next week." It was hard to understand her through her hiccuping sobs, so I held tight to the impossible hope that I had misheard her. That this horrible thing — no matter how much I'd been expecting it — was not really happening.
"What?" The word fell quietly from my lips and shattered on the ground like a dropped vase. My body and brain felt like they were about to shut down.
I stared numbly at the space between my sister and I. The tension was sliced when Mum walked into the room, likely disturbed by the crashing of the door.
"What's with all the tears?" She scrutinised Gabby's current state before looking over at me for an explanation.
But I didn't know what to say.
I didn't know how to answer her.
I was only held up by shock at this point. At any moment I was going to fall to pieces. Or maybe pass out. Too much was happening, and in only the space of a few short hours. I didn't know how I was supposed to handle it.
I felt the gentle pressure of a hand on my lower back. Rae, offering his unspoken support. But it didn't help.
Bright Cold Day Page 3