by Pat Schmatz
“So are Emmett and Nona dropped from the saurians, too?” Each word is a blow dart. “I don’t like that Emmett kid. That holy-halo thing he does with his dimples. When did you get so close to them?”
Her voice breaks on the last word, and she turns away. Suddenly and again, I love her more than anything. She’s so — so — so Sully. So completely human, powerful and vulnerable and untouchable, all at the same time. She sucks air, then turns to face me with her jaw set hard.
“What the fike happened out there in the rain? Was it really an accident?”
“It was. Aaron said that he was going back, and Rasta tried to stop him, and she lost her balance and fell. Then Aaron took off.”
“If he pushed her, I’ll kill him dead myself. I might anyway.”
“He was scared. We all were.”
Sully steps closer.
“So you’re not jealous of him anymore? Is that because you’ve got Emmett following you around, thinking you’re some kind of grand wizard-lizard?”
“No.” I shake my head. “It’s because I don’t want jazz from you.”
She blinks as if I smacked a cold palm across her face.
“I can’t handle it.” My voice comes out shaking with truth that I didn’t know was there. “Rasta’s gone, and I can’t stand it if I lose you, too. Sully, whatever happens next, even if I never see you again when I walk out of here, I want it to be okay between us. Like you said out by the fields. Friends.”
Her eyes move over me, reading me like a booktron, and I open my covers and my eyes and my chest and my insides and I let her. I show her my delicate human skin and let her feel the pulse of the grove and the way it rocks deep in my veins.
She takes another step closer. I stand my ground. She reaches out, pulls me in, and hugs me hard. She actually pulls my weight off my feet, up onto my toes. All that heat, all that electricity I’ve felt at her every touch for the past three weeks, it comes through heart to heart in a way that pounds with power.
Not komodo power. Human power. Sully’s power. Lights and jazz and the layers of deep and different below, the secret places she hides even from herself. I feel liquid-heart love for this person in a way that I have never felt before. Still and again and more than ever.
She sets me back on my feet, pushes me away, takes a deep breath, and draws herself taller. The moon has dipped into the western treetops.
“So what happens now?”
“I take you back and lock you in and pray that Machete buys your story.”
“Are you fully lunar? I laid hands on her. She didn’t like me to start with.”
“I’m going to meet Rasta’s da. He’ll help us.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Oh, I want that. I want it more than a mountain of kickshaw.
“No.” My full weight settles onto my human feet. “I want it to look like I’m acting alone. Machete will believe that. Make her believe it, Sully. You can. You can make anyone believe anything.”
“Anything?”
She flicks just enough grin to give my heart a skip.
“Almost. Now come on, it’ll be daylight soon, and none of this will work if Machete catches us out roaming around.”
We trot through the woods, across the Quint, and quiet-quiet back to her Quarry room. We have one more hug that pounds power to my heart. Then I lock her in. I sneak up the stairs, across the lot to the gate. Before I cross the sensor, I look back at CropCamp.
This gecko can hold eight times its body weight with a single toe.
Me, Emmett, Nona, and Sully. That’s not eight. It’s only four. And just for another hour or two. Then I will find Rasta’s da on the road, and he’ll take over.
I CRAWL UNDER THE FRONT GATE. Simple as that. I suppose it would have been smarter to sneak out some back way, but I cannot let Rasta’s da get by me. So I crawl under the iron bars and slink around the left-side hulk of granite boulders.
There’s a niche about shoulder-high. I climb into it, pulling myself up and scrabbling the toes of my boots against the bottom rock. I settle in there, curling myself into a tiny rockish ball. The moon casts long shadows from the west. Trees toss secret whispers back and forth overhead.
I don’t have to wait long. The screen door bangs, and feet crunch across the gravel. They stop between the boulders. I hold my breath.
“Kivali.”
Machete isn’t fooled. She knows that I’m here.
“Kivali, I’m sorry. I should have stayed with you until you fell asleep. And now you’ve bolted.”
The dragon-beat thumps in the back of my heart. Does she know how I got out of the Quarry? Will she send a search?
“Come back. We’ll figure it all out together. We both want the same thing. Together, we can do this. Comrades.”
Comrades don’t lock comrades in.
“I’ll give you ten ticks to come back, and then I’ll have to alert GovCentral that I have a runaway.”
Comrades don’t threaten each other, either.
“This is your last chance to walk back in. Do it now, and everything will be fine. More than fine. Kivali, you need guidance. Let me help you. I can be the mother you’ve never had.”
Mother? Machete wants to be my mother? Lizard flesh rises bumpy across my arms, the back of my neck.
“If you’re caught outside, I can’t control what happens to you.”
I don’t move. Not even an eyelash.
“It’ll be out of my hands. No chance for me to foster you. No chance for you to cert here, or probably anywhere else, either. You’ll end up in Blight. And what a loss that will be.”
She sounds sad. She sounds really, genuinely sad. Like Sully, she can make anyone believe anything. Almost. The trees rattle and swish. Machete and I wait. She knows that I’m here. She does. I can feel it.
Finally, she turns. Her footsteps crunch back across the gravel. I let my breath out slowly. The screen door hits the frame. I don’t think she will report me right away. Maybe she’ll give me enough time to meet Rasta’s da. That’s all I need.
I crawl down from the rocks, cut across the tall grass to the road, and start walking. I let the wind blow me through the early gray toward the north-south highway. Rasta’s da will come from the south. He will be a fierce adult crow with all the safe fluffy arrow-true strength of Rasta. He’ll look like her, only more. He’ll take charge. Me and Sully and Nona and Emmett — he’ll take care of things for us.
The puffs of cloud ahead are dark gray-blue against the east sky, which gradually mellows to bluish gray and then pink and then yellow. The raggedy dark tree line slowly sharpens and takes form. The sunlight behind me tips the undersides of the clouds, lightening them to white, and the sky gradually deepens to a true blue. My shadow is long and lean and walking, still walking.
At last, a lone dot of motion appears on the road ahead. It’s a single skizzer, traveling at a good clip. We draw steadily closer to each other. The solo person in the driver’s seat is small. Barely bigger than I am. Soft. Balding. And pale, so pale. He brakes, stopping a few paces from my kneecaps. Grief scalds his mild features.
“Who are you?” he asks.
“I am Rasta’s strong alliance.”
His face crumples as if my words sucked all the air out of him. He pulls over to the side of the road and gets out of the skizzer, propping himself against it. When I approach, he reaches for me, and I expect a protective wraparound of adult crow feathers.
Instead, I am enclosed in a larger version of Emmett. He leans on me. He is heavy. I feel smothered, like I’m sinking into the dirt on the side of the road. I pat his back until he steps away and I can breathe.
“Tell me.” His voice is nothing like Rasta’s. It’s weak, airless, fractured. “Tell me what really happened to my baby.”
Shame washes over me. Imagine having Rasta in your nest for sixteen years, and then gone forever. I’ve only known her a few weeks.
“She was trying to help me,” I say. “She —”
> He doesn’t give me a chance to confess.
“I told her to be careful, told her over and over before she left, told her in every inflow. Told her to keep her head down, to just get through camp and come home to us.”
“I’m sorry.” I don’t sound like a dragon or even a comrade. “It’s my fault. I —”
“No.” Rasta’s da shakes his head. “Don’t tell me your name or anything about you. Whoever you are, and whatever you’re doing, if you are Rasta’s strong alliance then you’re mine, too. But the less I know about you, the better, because they’ll ask and I’m not a good liar. Just tell me this — was she scared? They said that she hit her head and died quickly. Is that true? Or did they hurt her?”
“No!” I say. “Nobody hurt her. She fell.”
“You were on a lark? Outside in the rain?”
“No. That’s a lie. Rasta was trying to rescue me, to get me away from Ms. Mischetti.”
He nods. He’s looking at me but he’s very far away. I’m a distant planet that he’s peering at through a telescope.
“And you?” he asks. “You’re all right?”
His ask has no force behind it. I don’t think he wants to know, not really.
“Did you know?” A desperation for a complete truth seizes me by the throat. “About what they do here? The implants?”
His shoulders curve and cave. Weighed down. Defeated. He knows.
“What are they?”
“You’ve already been on the oral dose.” He won’t look at me. “Same stuff; they plant it near the spinal cord. High-emotive frequency triggers a biorelease.”
“But why?” I whisper.
“Suppresses aggression, violence. Eases anxiety. Adults my age take it orally, but the implants are better, if they get them in before the brain fully matures. Fewer side effects.” Now he sounds like an infodoc. Or someone trying desperately to convince himself. “No addiction, no black market, no guessing at titrations before blood tests.”
“But — do you think it’s good? The drug? Is it good?”
“It works.” He still won’t look at me. “If you take it, things are easier. And Blight? I couldn’t want that for my Rasta.” Her name comes out on a sob, and his shoulders shake as he turns away. “What was the last thing she said? Were you there? Do you know?”
I close my eyes, seeing Aaron’s back and Rasta turning to me in the gray twilight rain. I see her plastered wet hair again, her huge eyes, and I see the tumble on the backs of my lids.
“ ‘We have to stay out of her control.’ ” I repeat Rasta’s last words and open my eyes to find Rasta’s da really looking at me for the first time. “She said that right before she fell. She meant Ms. Mischetti.”
“And that’s what you’re doing now,” he says. “Getting out of her control.”
“I came to find you. To ask you what we should do.”
He turns away quickly, as if I’ve hit him. He wraps his arms around himself like a child.
“I gave my Rasta.” His voice shakes so hard, I think it might crawl out of his throat and rattle off on its own down the road. “This camp business is all wrong, but it’s too big to fight. I can’t help you.”
He gets into his skizzer and pulls onto the road. I stand in front so that he can’t move without running me over.
“You can’t help me?” I whisper.
No, no, he shakes his head no. He stares at his hands on the steering wheel, tears sliding down his cheeks and dropping onto the sleeves of his light blue jacket. “I have to go sign their docs.” His hands clench tight, so tight that the end of one thumb is red; the knuckle of the other one, white. “They won’t let her come home till I sign their fikewise papers. I have to sign their . . .”
Shaking his head, tears falling, hands clenching. I step back. How dare I ask him for anything? It’s inhuman and unlizard. I get out of his way. I can’t bear to watch him anymore. I’ve barely gone ten paces before he calls.
“Wait.”
I stop, but I don’t turn back. I don’t want him to see my tears.
“Here. Take these.” Footsteps approach along the road behind me, and then stop abruptly. He drops something at my feet. It’s his jacket. “You can’t go walking down the road in camp coveralls.”
His shirt joins the jacket. I unlace my boots and kick them off, start to unbutton my coveralls. Glance over my shoulder. Facing the other direction, he steps out of his pants, tosses them back toward me, and stands white-bodied in sky-blue boxers and black socks in the middle of the road.
I quickly put on the shirt, drop my coveralls, and push them behind me. I pick up his pants and put them on. Buttons, zipper, belt.
“Rasta would want me to help you,” he says.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. It’s not what I’d hoped, but it’s something. His clothes fit me well enough. Plenty roomy but not ridiculous. I turn to thank him but he holds his hand up, stopping my words. Both of our faces are wet. He finishes buttoning the coveralls and walks back to the skizzer.
He picks up a bag from the passenger seat, looks at me for one brief glance with Rasta’s eyes, and hands it over. Then he gets in and skizzes off, wearing my beige CropCamp coveralls. I watch until he fades to a tiny dot on the horizon and disappears.
MY LAST KNOWN OPTION leaves with Rasta’s da. On my right is a stretch of crop fields. On my left a scraggle of brush is backed by a line of woods. I have to get off the road. I step into the shallow ditch on my left. Climbing out the other side feels like scaling a mountain, even though it’s only a few steps. I trudge through the brush into the protective shadows of the trees and collapse against a big oak trunk. An enormous branch stretches above me, and the canopy blocks most of the overhead blue.
I look in the bag. It’s food. And water. I immediately drain the half-empty water bottle. I unlace my boots and yank them off. Between last night’s battering and this morning’s long walk, my feet are killing me. I peel away my damp socks to take a look. My left heel is scaggy with a popped blister and some dried blood. The hot spot that’s been smoking on my right heel is only red — no fluid. I stretch my toes apart, airing the sore spots in between.
Then I rip into the cold baked potato, almost choking myself as I gulp down huge bites. It tastes like CropCamp, like hands planting and weeding and mounding and digging, and like sunshine and rain and soil. I wish that Rasta’s and my hands were in that potato-field dirt right now.
I’d talk. I’d talk and talk and talk. I’d tell her about Sheila, and Korm, and the komodo. I’d show it to her. I’d let her pet it. I’d tell her all about the saurians and the Radio and the komodo’s mysterious movements. I’d tell her about me and Sully, and about how it felt to step out of my lizard skin, and ask her if she saw me roll back into it with all the lizards looking on. I’d tell her about that creepy dream where Aaron ate the bird. I’d ask her if Nona is right, if vaping is vaping, and dying is dead.
By now the CounCircle gong has rung and the CropCamp day is in motion — but what does that motion look like? Which carefully chosen truth is Machete telling everyone about the rain and the dark and the fall and the night?
I devour the apple, core and all. It’s sweet and wet and soothing. When I’ve licked the last of the juice off my fingers, I lean back against the trunk and close my eyes. I have never been more alone in my life. Lizard and human — they’re both so very far away. The problem with living in two realities is that neither one gets to be entirely real.
If I could stomp with lizard music into eternity, I wouldn’t need anything else. In that deep night dance I was a dragon, aura to core. But Machete flipped me to human and stole my komodo, turned me into a freezing, drenched little comrade who lay dreaming in the rain instead of rescuing my friends. Pathetic. Now I’m a weak, foot-blistered thirsty runaway. I am a throwaway whose mother wanted it not. Raised by a vaping foster. When Donovan Freer vaped, he raised his arms and begged to go. Did Sheila do that? Did she leave me on purpose?
Maybe
the dragon left on purpose, too. Because I chose CropCamp and Sully. But how could I not? For all her faults, Sully is real, a flesh-and-blood conglomeration of particles that I can smell and touch. Lizard Radio is a bunch of waves at best. At worst, it’s nothing but random chemical and electrical impulses in my head, planted by two delusional adults who never figured out how to live in the world. Sully can shatter my ribs and splat my heart on pavement. Lizard Radio can’t hurt me like that, and it can’t touch me the way Sully does.
It can’t touch me the way Rasta did, either. Water begins to leak from my eyes. It’s nothing like the wild grief ride in my slice after kickshaw. Tears trickle salty to the corners of my mouth as I remember Rasta’s elf-face and serious eyes, her magical baby-crow voice and her fingertips on mine. A steady current of loss flows down my cheeks, dripping from my chin. Rivers and streams of sad that I think will be pouring out of me forever.
There is nothing left for me. I’m neither human nor dragon, not Sheila’s, not Machete’s, not Korm’s, and not Rasta’s da’s. I belong nowhere. Certainly not here in this foreign wood, with nowhere to go and nowhere to be. The only thing that I am is nothing.
Before you can be what you are, you must be all things.
The whisper comes from the inside, like gotothefields my first night at CropCamp. I wave the words away. I don’t want to be all things. I don’t want to be anything. It’s too hard.
“Please.”
My voice is so shaky. I force myself to my feet, straighten, and stretch my hands to the sky.
“Please.”
Donovan dropped his clothes. I pull off Rasta’s da’s shirt, unfasten the belt, and shed the pants. I stretch again for the sky, bare-chested.
“Please.”
Nothing happens.
“Please?”
I try to make my voice sound like Donovan’s, but I can’t get the right tone of plea into my please. The slanting sun and the breeze lightly touch my skin, and the trees whisper around me. Everything is so sharply defined; the colors so bright, they hurt. I drop my arms and look around.