by Cameron Jace
“Tell me you’re OK,” Bellona holds Woo tightly with Pepper. I could have been closer to him but Bellona just yelled at me when Woo was shot so I made some peace again. They were all taking care of him already. Woo never uttered a single moan while they bandaged him.
“I am OK,” He says. “Don’t worry. I am just puzzled about the sniper.”
“It’s the Summit, of course,” Bellona says. “There are places in the Playa they don’t want us to see. Why did you even go there?”
“I will tell you later,” Woo says.
It’s somehow strange to me the way Bellona and Woo have become close the last year. The way her stiffened warrior features are more relaxed and caring now is really something.
“Tell you what,” Pepper says to Woo. “We should leave you alone to rest for a while. Let’s go,” Pepper pulls Bellona along.
“And her?” Bellona wonders, pointing at me.
“They’re childhood friends,” Pepper grits her teeth. “And they haven’t seen each other for a while.”
“But you said, ‘alone’?” Bellona still tries to talk like a polite girl in front of Woo, not the way she usually acts.
“Don’t you miss your machine gun outside?” Pepper pinches Bellona and drags her out.
“I am glad you’re alright,” I say to Woo, now that both of us are alone in his tent. I love Pepper. She is my favorite hapless romantic. Even though she is more on Leo’s side, she still wants me to be happy either way. “You don’t know how worried I was,” I try my best to show Woo how much I care and have no intentions of asking him why he doesn’t answer my phone calls.
Woo limps barefoot with a bandaged leg. I don’t remember him wearing shoes, ever. When we were younger, other outside boys called him Peter Pan for that. Come to think of it, Woo is like Peter Pan, Monsterland is Neverland, and the Monsters are simply the Lost Boys rebelling against the elders.
Even while he’s injured he summons his three favorite guard dogs and plays with them a little. They are three female doggies that never treated me well. In fact, his three doggies bark at everyone but Woo. They can be vicious warriors except when they are with their master. Woo calls them: Madly, Lovely, and Deeply. Strange names for dogs but you can’t argue with Woo. Even though not answering me and playing with the dogs instead is insulting, the way he plays with his dogs has a certain magic to it. Woo has always been an animal lover. He loved all kinds of animals more than humans. No wonder I saved a beetle today. I think I learned that from him.
Finally, Woo ushers the dogs out of the tent and reaches for a cigarette from his pack, taking his time. He flips his Zippo open and lights the cigarette in a rather James Dean fashion – Woo loved James Dean movies, that’s why I know about them. He takes a drag from the cigarette and brushes his wet auburn hair back with his hand. Even though his eyes have lost that childish gleam to them, the attractiveness lies in their dimmed darkness somehow. Sometimes, I feel like there is an evil haze surrounding him, caging him, and that I might be able to set him free one day if only I knew what really troubled him.
“The Summit is building something in the Playa,” He says, neglecting my concern. “I have been trying to check it out. There is an enormous wall surrounding the Monsterium, a place that we, Monsters, could never reach.”
“Oh,” I wish we could talk about something else, but what’s new? “I am glad you’re alright,” I repeat myself and pat him on the shoulder. He pulls away smoothly though, pretending to be checking something on his iAm – the Monster still use second-hand iAms as phones to communicate inside Monsterland, Even when he does that, I can’t help but feeling pulled toward him.
Stupid, Decca. You’re just stupid.
“The Summit’s soldiers are all over the Playa,” He grits his teeth, and presses his fingers hard on his iAm’s screen. “Xitler is not keeping his promises. He is up to something.”
“We know he is pretending to be peaceful with us now, and we know his intentions are to kill the Monsters sooner or later,” I say, not really wanting to talk about this.
“It’s all about the Rabbit Hole,”
“Oh. Not again?”
“Listen to me. Two days ago, two of my boys went to secretly explore outside Monsterland and they never came back. The last message they sent me before disappearing was that they thought they had found the Rabbit Hole, but then I lost communication with them and their iAm’s aren’t working anymore.”
“Really? How?”
“That’s what puzzled me,” Woo says. “They said something about Faya being one big riddle, that when solved you will find where the Rabbit Hole is. They mentioned something about the Decagon sign. It was a live feed message and the transmission was weakening before it just stopped.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I have no idea. I have been sending too many Monsters secretly into Faya for a long time, I think they have been killed by the Summit.”
“Killed?”
“What’s so surprising? Monsters die every day. We’re not as precious as ranked people.” Woo stares at me momentarily in a way that seems humiliating to me, as if he thinks I am one of them like Bellona told me. I really wonder how Bellona and Pepper think that Woo loves me – or even likes me. Everything he does proves the opposite. “I don’t want to talk about this now. I will find out what really happened. I am on it.”
Still, I don’t want him to become tense while in pain. “So you received the supplies today?” Even though I know they did, I am just calming him down and changing the subject.
“Yeah,” He nods, still checking his iAm. “Thanks.” Again. I don’t like the way he thanks me. It’s that, ‘please go away’ kinda thank you.
“Hmm. Did you watch the show today? I totally kicked ass.” I am trying to sound cheerful.
“I don’t watch that stuff. You know that.”
Why do I even like you, Woo? Why?
“Now,” I stomp my foot. “You seriously have to stop this.”
Woo tilts his head slowly. “Stop what?”
“This,” I am pointing my finger back and forth between us. “What’s happened to us? I did everything for you. Why are you treating me this way?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” He tries not to look me in the eyes.
“You don’t want to talk to me. You don’t answer my calls. You’ve just been bad to me. What have I done? I risked my life for you, Woo. I gave up on my rank and went to find you. And even now, I am doing my best to please you and the Monsters, doing these horrible shows, and you all seem to not like me. Not even you. What have I done?”
“We do like you, Decca,” He says it so flatly it sounds like an insult of indifference. And why does he say, ‘we’? “It’s just because you live out there with the Nines and the Eights that you don’t feel what we feel. We work night and day, preparing ourselves for a revolution with tied hands.”
“I can’t believe you said that. You think I am one of them? I don’t even have friends out there. I don’t even have a family.”
“You’re a Ten, Decca,” He says. “You’re practically a god. So don’t go saying you don’t have friends. You can have the world out there.”
“It’s not true. All my friends are here. All my friends are Monsters. I only became a Ten to save everyone. It’s not like I had a choice. “
“Now, you don’t have to remind us.”
“What? Where did that come from? Why are you taking this personally? I didn’t mean it that way. I meant I am a Ten because I am actually a Monster if that makes any sense.”
Woo turns his back on me and starts texting again.
“Don’t you turn your back on me,” I pull him back by his shoulder. If I have to, I’ll kick him where he was just wounded so he never turns his back on me again. “I did this for you. What’s happened to you?”
“What do you mean by that? I am perfectly OK.”
“No, you’re not. It’s li
ke you have been abducted by aliens or something. This is not the boy I entered the show to find. I can’t take this anymore.” I say, about to let out tears.
Woo stops texting and looks concerned for a moment. It’s as if he doesn’t want to show me that he cares. Why?
“Please, Woo,” I say in a softer voice. “I am going crazy here. All this stress I am facing outside in Faya is unbearable. I don’t even know why I am considered special. I don’t even know why you saved me when I was a kid. It’s been a whole year and you still refuse to tell me why you helped me. I feel like I am living a big mystery and even though I don’t mind not knowing all about it now in exchange for following you like the rest of the Monsters, I am afraid that if I know I’ll end up living a lie.” I catch my breath after that sentence. I think my words should move him. He could at least tell me one of the secrets I need to know, or maybe just… hold me closer. I’d settle for that.
“If you please, I have work to do.” He says, wanting me to leave. Given that I killed a tiger last year, my anger makes me want to punch him in the face right now. But I just can’t, and I hate myself for it. I hate myself because there is another awesome boy who would do anything for me out there and I am here with Woo instead. I think Dave’s advise turned out to be just bad. I shouldn’t have come here. “Don’t you have someone else to go to? A Nine? Someone of your caliber?” Woo says, insisting on making me hate him.
“Is this about Leo?” I finally get it.
“Well. He is a Nine. He’s popular in your world, and if I remember correctly you kissed on TV so many times that the video of you being kissed in the Breathing Dome is one of the top ten on Zootube to this day.”
“It’s Youtube.” I mess with him, feeling a little relieved that all of this is out of jealousy.
“I know,” He waves his hands. “I taught you these things when you were a kid.”
“Speaking of that, where is the Woo I knew when I was a kid?”
Woo doesn’t reply, checking himself in the mirror on the wall, as if looking for that lost kid in him I used to know. But his glance into the mirror is short lived. He turns away as if the mirror would expose the truth he doesn’t want me to know.
“I am not with Leo, by the way,” I say to him. “We rarely talk since the games. And all that kissing—or whatever happened—was under different circumstances. We were dying, things were too emotional, and I thought you were dead.”
“That doesn’t change the facts of what happened. Maybe if you stayed a Monster and weren’t exposed to the world outside Monsterland, it would have. Last time I checked, the kids were saying you both were dating.”
“Where did you get that from?”
“This ‘Who Dating Who’ site.”
“You check those sites?” I raise an eyebrow. Woo shrugs. I hope his Monsters don’t know such a fact about their leader. “Those sites are horrible. They can say whatever they want to sell.”
“And what about the Tango wedding on TV, you and Leo?”
“That’s just some stupid commercial we’re planning to do. It should air live on the next Ranking Day. We’re going to dress like a husband and wife in an ancient world. It’s what the crowd wants, and I am doing it to raise more money for the Monsters. It’s not like we’re getting married. It’s all TV business, Woo. You know that.”
Woo turns around, looking differently at me now. A little like the old days when he used to look at every feature of my face for hours. He holds me by the shoulders. I wish he would pull me closer, but he has become so not Woo. Where is that childish passion that used to gleam out of his eyes? His fingers keep pressing on my shoulder as if he wants to tell me something as if he really wants to pull me in his arms but something stops him, and he doesn’t utter a word. His lips are sealed and twitching, and his eyes are blank, without light in them. I am staring back at him so maybe the light will come back to his eyes.
“What are you keeping from me?” I manage to break the silence. “Who am I?” I whisper. “Why am I so special? Why did you teach me all of these things? Why did the Breakfast Club think I’d make a Ten? Who are they, anyway? I have been begging you to answer me for a year now, and you never do. I have been patient, thinking that if I didn’t insist on knowing, you’d be nice to me. And since you’re not, I have to know. Who am I, Woo?”
Woo doesn’t say a thing. Like every time I’ve asked him before. Why couldn’t he tell me? What was the point in not telling me? If I had surrendered to his idea of staying here with the Monsters, would he have told me?
His silence is slicing me apart and he pulls away from me, taking another silent drag from his cigarette.
“You know, sometimes I feel that going after you in the Monster Show was a mistake,” I say. “You didn’t deserve it,” I say, a pitch lower than the rest of my sentence because no matter how angry I am at him, he is still a part of my childhood and has taken a big bite of my heart already. I can’t do much about that.
“You’re right,” he nods. I can’t believe how he doesn’t miss a chance to let me hate him. “You shouldn’t have come after me. I devoted my childhood and my years to save you from the game. I did my best so you didn’t attend the show, but you still did. That pretty much answers your ‘Who am I?’ question, because it’s only you who can know who you are. You might think I am being cryptic and this is a puzzle, but it’s the truth. Only you can know who you are. I know you want to know why, but I can only tell you when the right time comes—”
“Will the right time ever come, Woo?” I wonder, shaking my head. He doesn’t reply again. I understand that Leo spent the first six hours I knew him mute because he had a bomb in his mouth. He had an excuse for that. Woo doesn’t have an excuse for not telling me who I really am, no matter what he thinks. But I am not the old Decca that I used to be. I take things into my own hands. No one paints my destiny anymore. They might have the paper and the pen to do so, but they lack the ink, which is my own blood that draws what my next choice is.
“I won’t give up on you, Woo,” I say to him. “I won’t.” And I mean it even though he doesn’t look appreciative.
We lock eyes for a while, silently, like long lost friends with amnesia, trying to remember if we had ever known each other. Or was it just a dream? I see his jaw twitch a little. Oh boy. Woo’s pain is much greater than mine. I can see it in his eyes like a clown trying his best to cover his own pain by making little children laugh. He just doesn’t get it that most clowns turn scary instead of loving in the end. What’s your secret, Woo? It’s ironic that I am so sure that his secret has something to do with who I am.
Even though the eye-locking doesn’t solve anything, I know I won’t give up. Sometimes, in order for people to really get to know each other, they need to lock eyes repeatedly until the invisible barrier shatters and they can finally see each other. That last sentence was ironic, coming from the Girl with Golden Eyes. Don’t you think?
I turn around and leave. I am a strong girl, I tell myself, walking to the car. I killed Carnivore, for God’s sake. I can handle this. Being torn and confused about how I feel is something I can deal with.
I enter my car and stare in the mirror. I’m a big girl, I remind myself again. I don’t necessarily need love in my life. I am a Ten. People adore me. Any Nine would love to be with me. I could live the life of a queen if I want to in Faya. I am strong.
Then I bang my head against the wheel and start crying.
6
Last Resort
Feeling lost and driving in the streets of the Sol, I turn to visit my family. I know I am not allowed to see them since they cleared my name last year, but I don’t care. The tears in my eyes are the fuel that drives me toward them. Isn’t family always supposed to be the last resort?
It seems that who ever I try to save ends up at distance with me. The more I rise, becoming a Ten and saving lives, the more I fall into the bottomless pit of loneliness.
I park about two hundred fee
t away, the closest I am allowed to get and watch my family’s house from afar. A pretty house with green shutters and pink doors, very different from the pigeonholed brown house we used to live in the city of Eve. Everything in Sol is bright and florescent like walking in Wonderland. The colors are sometimes silly in a way that makes you question if such illuminated beauty hides a sinister darkness underneath.
Stop it, Decca! The cuckoo in my head says.
“I wonder if I should put the iAm’s receptor back on,” I murmur in my car. “Maybe I am not strong enough without artificial guidance. Maybe I am just a lie and a torn, pessimistic person without that thing Leo removed from my head.”
Damn it! The cuckoo in my head says. You’ll be fine. Just hang tough.
I watch Jack, my brother, putting out the garbage. He looks awesome. He is becoming a Nine in a couple of days. I can see my mother behind a window in the second floor, babbling on the phone. She looks like she just came back from the hairdresser. Minutes later, my father arrives in his new Merzedes, parking it in the garage of the fabulous house they live in.
It’s amazing how their life changed since they cleared my name and since Jack was officially a Pre-Nine.
I am happy for them. That’s the sweet thing about family members. However apart, however contradicting, we’re always happy for each other, even when one member’s happiness is another’s misery.