Radical

by E. M. Kokie

  “’Morning, Bex,” Gage says when she brings me breakfast. “Back to normal,” she says, like an apology. Now that Christmas and New Year’s are past, there’ll be no more treats or “special” meals.

  Christmas. Mom didn’t come. She hasn’t called or visited since she heard Joan was talking to the U.S. Attorney.

  Joan said the lawyers may have told her not to, but it still hurts.

  They won’t let Uncle Skip visit. Once I’m out of pretrial limbo, he’ll be able to visit, to call, Joan says. But not while I’m here. And I have to be here until the feds give me up to the state or until the case is done.

  I would have actually preferred to forget that it was Christmas. I tried to. Kept my schedule as best I could on Christmas and New Year’s.

  My workout in the mornings — push-ups, sit-ups, lunges, jumping jacks, anything to move — until I’m too weak to do any more.

  I’ve never gone this long without a run, a hike, something fast and hard and exhilarating. What I can do here is a sad substitute. But I can work my heart rate up, a slight sweat, something so my body doesn’t become entirely useless. So that I can maybe sleep later.

  Reading in the afternoon. I never read much before, and I can’t say I’d choose it now if I could do almost anything else, but sometimes reading can make the day, the hole, everything fade away for a while. Just a while. Until a sound — yelling, keys, doors — pulls me back to reality.

  Someone put lights on the tree by the lot. Like a Christmas tree for those of us on this side of the building. They’ve taken them down now.

  That tree is all that grounds me some days. A few weeks ago, I woke up freaked out, and got it in my head that they had stretched out time — spaced meals and morning and night so that what I perceived as a day was really more than a day. That I’d been here years instead of months. It took all day, counting and obsessing and waiting, to talk myself down. I was so freaked I couldn’t eat at all. I wondered if they were drugging me, too. The tree is what convinced me. I look at it every day. The seasons — no one could fake the seasons.

  If they ever let me out of here, I swear I will never live in a place with cinder-block walls.

  I will sleep with the windows open.

  Drive with the windows open.

  Maybe a motorcycle. I wished for one when I was little. On a motorcycle, I’d feel everything.

  If I ever get free, I want to see the ocean. Both oceans. First one, then the other.

  Joan promised to come as soon as she heard from the U.S. Attorney. But it’s been weeks since I’ve seen her.

  What if there’s nothing? What if I’m in limbo in the dark for years? They could do it, keep me here, try everyone else, leave me to rot. Joan says they can’t, but every time there’s a delay, I trust that a little less.

  She says that if there’s a deal, I’ll get out of the hole. But there are others down here — how many of them had deals? She can’t promise me that. I’ve been here long enough to know that in here, the guards call the shots.

  After lunch I give in, curl up under the blanket, and sleep. Warm and quiet in the afternoon lull. It’s not dark like at night. Maybe I can sleep if it’s light enough to see what’s in here with me.

  Heart pounding, I jolt awake, sweat wet on my skin, cooling a trail of goose bumps down my arms, my lungs remembering how to work.

  I was running. First through the woods, the old ones, where we camped when I was a kid. The trails marked by yellow slashes on the trees. I wanted to touch them, but they were too high. I climbed. I fell and fell through the leaves and brush and into a building. A maze of cinder-block walls. I couldn’t find my way out. Someone was calling my name — Joan, I think, maybe.

  She could totally be one of those TV cops or a PI. But not the kind who has some stupid man partner who’s always saving her. She wouldn’t need saving.

  She could totally survive. Lead her own MAG, even. I’d follow her.

  Fighting for people who can’t fight for themselves, even when guilty — holding the government’s feet to the fire. She holds a line against the government every day, more than anyone at Clearview or any backyard brigade ever has. So much better than the idiots like my brother. How many more people are safe and free because of what she does? I’m never going to be a lawyer, but there’s got to be loads of stuff between whatever I was before and Joan.

  After dinner I try to read the book again, but it’s lost its magic. I can’t forget it’s just a book. That the people in it don’t matter. They don’t exist.

  I sleep off and on, and then it’s morning. Another morning. But a shower day. And clean clothes. The jumpsuit is almost scratchy it’s so clean, and this one fits better than the last. I comb my uneven, stupid-looking hair over and over so it will dry flat.

  “Bex,” Shields says, opening the door, “lawyer’s here.”

  I’m glad I got a shower.

  When they lead me into the room, Joan’s still standing. I study her face.

  I can’t read her. I sit and brace for the news.

  “The U.S. Attorney has interviewed the corroborating alibi witnesses.”

  “Lucy?”

  “Yes. And your uncle, a few others.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “I believe she’s fine. Happy she’s not going to have to testify.” There’s more to it.

  “There was some press,” Joan says. “Her parents were worried. She’s gone home to North Carolina. Until things calm down.”

  My stomach turns. Exactly what she didn’t want — my scary life messing up hers. Sent home, like she did something wrong.

  Joan has a clean, uncreased folder. She opens it and pulls out some papers. “They will agree to drop the transfer motion and allow your case to proceed as a delinquency matter for carrying the gun and the possession of the ammunition. No mention of the pipe bomb, since it was on private land, no damage to persons or property,” she says. “No mention of sales or transfer of ammunition, which will mean no issues for you down the road if you want to join the military, get certain kinds of licenses and jobs, future gun ownership.” I hadn’t thought about that. “If you give a full statement, on the record, answer their questions”— she takes a breath and lets it out —“and testify against any of the defendants, if necessary.” She waits a beat and then says, “And your source for the Bobcat and ammunition.”

  I’m shaking my head before I can even really think it through.

  “They already have him, Bex. Wasn’t hard to trace the gun and ammunition to him.”

  “How long?”

  “Ultimately, a judge has to approve it. But your maximum exposure is an additional five years, until your twenty-first birthday. I’ll argue for much less than five years, and the government will likely agree to less.”

  “No more seg?”

  “Up to the facility, but I’d expect them to move you out of segregation. Part of that would depend on you, on how you do with the other residents.”

  “Residents,” like we’re renting apartments or something.

  Five years.

  “Even if we defeat the transfer motion,” she says, leaning closer, “you will be found delinquent. Possibly for the pipe bomb, too. And the judge will likely reduce the time if you cooperate.”

  “Then why —?”

  “Because they want your testimony. Or at least the threat of your testimony. They want you on their witness lists. If you cooperate, the judge will hear about it. It will go a long way to knocking time off that maximum, and maybe even getting you out of a secure facility.”

  What happens to people who turn on their own family? Turn for getting out a few years faster?

  Leverage. Strategy. I’m a pawn. And maybe a traitor.

  “Bex?”

  I’ve known for a long time, even before all this, that I might have to act on my own in a crisis scenario.

  There was no training for this, but I will fight to survive.

  Uncle Skip insists on carrying my duffel upstair
s for me. He never would have done that before.

  There’s not much in it. I gave away most of my stuff before I left the halfway house. I can get more. I don’t need much, anyway.

  “I tried to put everything back where it was,” Uncle Skip says from the doorway.

  The bed’s different. And there’s fresh paint and an area near the closet where the floorboards have been replaced.

  “Mike helped, with the floor, the paint,” he says. I nod to show I heard him. “And some others, too. Helped.”

  With the house. Putting it back together after the agents ripped it apart. Because of me. Me and Mark.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  Someone washed the curtains but didn’t know to starch them.

  The same mirror, except I hardly recognize myself. My hair is short but boring. I’ve never been this pale before.

  “If you’d rather have a different room, you can, but I thought . . . this is your room.”

  I turn around to face him. “No. It’s perfect. Thank you.”

  “You said that already.”

  “I mean for coming to get me, letting me come here.”

  “Oh,” he says, taking off his hat and rubbing his neck. “How about I make us some dinner? Are you hungry?”

  “Sure.” I’m not. I actually don’t know if I’ll be able to eat with the nerves and tension climbing up my spine and through my limbs. “Can I go for a run first?”

  He stares at me, his lips pulled in tight. He wants to say no, but he can’t. As of twelve days ago, I’m an adult.

  “Not too far.”

  “I won’t.”

  When I first got to the halfway house, I ran on a track at the nearby school. It was easier, somehow, than being on the streets, where anyone could see me. My muscles were so weak, I could only do half a lap. Then a lap. Then more. The track let me run without worrying about who was lurking in the shadows. I could see everything.

  Later I ran on the neighborhood streets, anxiety choking off my air until I was dizzy, but I kept going until it was just a lump in my throat.

  Walking across the backyard toward the barn, I can still see signs of the searches. Boards on the barn that have been replaced. Areas in the yard that are uneven, grassless. We can level that all out again. Maybe plant something. Aunt Gracie had a garden a long time ago. Maybe Uncle Skip liked it. Maybe he’d like one again. It would be something to do.

  I can’t make myself go past the barn or into the woods. Too many shadows. Too many ghosts. Instead I accept today’s limitation, as Dr. K. would say, and run along the edge of the woods and then up the drive. I can run the drive, up and back, and around the house. In the open, where I can see anything coming.

  I loop Uncle Skip’s new truck and smile at the shiny bumper, so different from his old one covered in dings and dirt.

  All this has aged him. Being questioned, being held, being scared he might lose the house or the station. Worrying about me. He looks tired all the time now. And older. But here, at home, he still looks like himself. He doesn’t look scared. That’s comforting.

  After a few laps, I realize that the lump is gone from the back of my throat. And I’m actually, maybe, hungry.

  Inside, I wash up enough for dinner and help Uncle Skip carry our plates to the table. New paint in here, too. And a new table. New chairs. New plates.

  “Sorry it’s not a fancy homecoming meal,” he says.

  I stop pushing the potatoes and meat around my plate and force myself to take a bite. “It’s good. I just don’t eat as much.”

  “Well, you eat what you want. Then stop. There’s cake for after — store-bought, but cake.”

  “Chocolate?”

  He looks at me as if to say, You had to ask?

  He sips his iced tea. “I’m glad you’re home,” he says.

  “Home,” I say, like I’m testing the word.

  “Home,” he says again. “Wherever I am, there will always be a place for you.”

  Uncle Skip looks at his phone. I still can’t get used to him with a cell phone.

  “Trouble?”

  “Nah,” he says. “Just Mike, checking in.” Uncle Skip grins, and I feel myself smile. Mike, checking in on me. “Mike, some of the others, wanted to come over here tonight. I thought it might be too much for you. Maybe I was wrong?”

  I shake my head. “You weren’t.”

  “That’s what I thought.” He eats another bite of potato. “But maybe you could come to the station with me tomorrow. We could stay a few hours, then come home. Something I want to show you.”

  “What?”

  “Just something.”

  “Okay,” I say, but even I can hear the tremor in my voice.

  “There hasn’t been any trouble at the station in months. Not since the sentencings started. For once the papers got things almost right.”

  The papers. The articles. About how the whole big grand plan — bombs and killing people and sparking a revolution — was mostly talk, and how the informant panicked. How most of the guys were really only guilty of big talk and having too many of the wrong kinds of guns. Even Mark. At least that’s the story they’re telling now.

  Mom and Dad and his lawyer wanted me to speak at Mark’s sentencing, about Clearview, about how we ramped each other up, or so they argue. About the “fight.” How I exaggerated the fight, another side effect of my “paranoia.” That I’m really the one to blame. Joan finally convinced them that if they called me to testify, it would not go well. But they’ll never forgive me.

  I didn’t put him there, but I’m easier to blame than him. I’m out. And they didn’t see him coming. I was the one they thought might do something scary. No one saw Mark coming. Maybe no one saw him at all. All my talk about being prepared, being vigilant, and I missed the greatest threat right under our noses.

  It may be true that the informant panicked, embellished, but there was a plan, and I’ll never be sure Mark and Zach and maybe the others weren’t getting ready to act on it. If Riggs hadn’t been suspicious, if I hadn’t said something to Mark, if the feds hadn’t been watching them and stopped them when they did . . . The papers can all say there was nothing to it, but there was something.

  They had the guns. Fully automatic. And plans.

  Riggs disclaimed any suspicions, of course. His shocked and tortured face was all over the news. It helped that he was able to say Devon, Neal, Mark, and Zach hadn’t been out to the club for “a while.” He stretched the weeks to months, but who was going to correct him? And then he doubled down once things fell apart by crowing about the overzealous government, targeting and setting up these young men. Stopping just short of fine young men. No one ever mentions me.

  “One of those corporate places offered again.”

  “To buy the station?” The buzzing under my skin feels like panic.

  “Decent money. Would pay off the legal bills, leave enough to make a difference.”

  Legal bills caused by taking us in and trying to help us. Which almost cost him big, more than just legal bills and repairs.

  “So you’re gonna sell it?”

  He plays with his food. “Not today.”

  I sip my water, icy cold, and look out the screen door at the fading light of dusk.

  “I don’t think I can work inside, where anyone can come in,” I say, staring into my water. “Not yet.” I look up at him. I can’t say maybe not ever, can’t admit that’s a possibility, or that cinder-block walls make it hard to breathe. But he shakes his head soothingly.

  “I have it covered.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.” He takes a drink. “The job’s yours, of course, if you want it back. But . . . it’s covered, for now.”

  Did he hire someone? I’m too embarrassed to ask, since it didn’t occur to me to ask before. Dr. K. would say let the guilt go, but it’s lodged there in my chest.

  Uncle Skip gets plates for the cake.

  I pour the milk, then put an ice cube in mine. I need it as c
old as I can get it.

  “You still want to learn?” He watches me. “Repairs? Rebuilds?”

  “Yes.” I do. I really do. I need to do something. “But I might not be . . . ready,” I say, hearing Dr. K.’s voice in my head, her murmurs telling me to take ownership of how I feel and be clear. “But I want to try.”

  “Good.”

  We eat the cake, but I can barely taste it. I force myself to chew and swallow, bite after bite, because he bought it, for me, as a celebration. He reaches over and stops my fork. He doesn’t say anything.

  Enough.

  I sit on the porch and try not to vomit up the too-much food. The air smells like mud and spring. Part of me wants to sleep right here, on the rocker, under the open sky. The part of me that freaks out at being walled in. But it’s at war with the part of me freaking out about being this exposed, this open to attack. Ultimately I decide I’m not ready to sleep on the porch, where anyone could get at me, but I’ll leave the windows open upstairs.

  After a shower, before I get into bed, I pull Joan’s business card out of my new wallet. Her cell number is written on the back. Just in case, she said, right before she hugged me good-bye. I run my finger over the numbers and then put it away.

  I need another pill. I don’t like taking them, but Dr. K. says, for now, brave is accepting when I need help.

  I made my choices. Now I have to live with them.

  “Bex,” Mike says, coming around the truck in his bay and pulling me into a hug, a hard one that almost lifts me off my feet, oblivious to how much he’s freaking me out. “Look at you.” He smiles big like I’ve been away at college or camp. “You’re taller? And skinny. Man, we are going to have to get my sister in here cooking for you.” He’s so happy. And Mr. Heinman and Mr. Henderson. So happy it’s overwhelming. I didn’t think anyone besides Uncle Skip would really be happy to see me.

  “Come on back,” Uncle Skip says.

  Mike’s grinning like he’s in on the joke, whatever it is.

  I don’t like surprises.

  I step out the back of the service-bay doors and stare at the broken-down heap sitting there. “I know it’s not much to look at right now,” Uncle Skip says, “but it’s solid underneath the dings and missing parts. It’ll be beautiful when we’re done. When you’re done.”