An apology built in Ronja’s mouth, but she choked it down. “This is yours,” she said instead, offering him his overcoat.
“Keep it,” he waved her off.
Ronja continued to dangle the coat before him. He sighed wearily and took it back. An awkward, heavy silence built between them. The girl was distinctly conscious of the purplish bruises blooming on his face, the blood turning brown on his sweater.
“Well,” she began, clearing her throat.
“We can’t just leave straight from here,” Roark said, sliding back into his jacket. “You need new papers. We’ll need fake Singers, supplies.”
“That could take days,” Ronja said, her voice creeping dangerously low.
“I have a friend who can forge them in three hours, and getting the supplies will just take a few minutes.”
“Fine.” Ronja whipped around and started toward the door, but Roark caught her wrist and spun her back around to face him. She narrowed her eyes and wrenched her arm away.
“What?” she snapped.
“This is the single stupidest thing you have ever done in your life.”
“You barely know me.”
“This is the single stupidest thing anyone could ever do in their entire life. If you want to survive, you need to trust me.”
Ronja paused, searching his face for a trace of a lie. She found none—or it was hidden by the patterns her fists had left behind.
“Fine,” she said tersely.
She adjusted her scarf and made for the front door, Roark following behind like a scolded dog.
The rain had slowed to a languid drizzle by the time they got outside. The storm clouds were snaking away over the distant walls, and dawn was seeping through the avenues. As Roark descended the steps to the sidewalk, Ronja paused to shut the door behind her. It left a pit in her stomach; she knew she would likely never reopen it.
She flipped the lock, remembered it was broken, then flew down the stairs after Roark, who was already revving his motorbike down the road.
Ronja climbed onto the back of the bike in silence and wrapped her arms around the boy stiffly, prickling with discomfort. His spine was equally rigid.
Roark revved the engine and they exploded into the empty road, the wheels spraying sludge behind them. He drove less frantically than before, so Ronja was able to watch the outer ring roll by.
The early risers were trickling into the streets, along with a handful of rusted autos. She watched the pedestrians shuffle from task to task, though it made her nauseous. They all seemed so frail compared to the vibrant Anthemites. They were bent, crumpled, like discarded paper dolls.
Ronja knew she had been like them not long ago, and wondered how much she had really changed since then.
Roark ferried them back to the alleyway adjacent to the abandoned subtrain station and parked behind the wall of crates and rancid trash bins. Ronja stood guard at the mouth of the side street, but there was scarcely a soul in sight. Mostly, she was looking for any excuse not to look at Roark.
“We’ll get your papers started first,” Roark said, plodding toward her. “My guy isn’t far from here.”
“Who is he?” Ronja asked as they stepped into the just stirring avenue.
“My friend, more of a brother, really. We met when we were children.”
“He’s a member of the Anthem, then?”
Roark tilted his head thoughtfully.
“Third generation. His parents and grandparents were avid members, but he’s a bit more reserved with his time. He’s our forager and our contact in the outer ring.”
“Have I met him?”
“No, he doesn’t come down to the Belly anymore.”
“Why?”
“His mother and father were killed on a mission when he was just a child. I suppose he doesn’t need the reminder.”
“Oh.”
They fell into another charged silence. Roark had a long stride, and despite Ronja’s anxiety she found herself wishing he would slow down. He kept the brim of his hat pulled low over his face and his chin tucked into his scarf. At first Ronja thought he was cold, but then she realized that if she had recognized him, others might too.
“We’re here,” Roark said suddenly, scraping to a halt.
Ronja followed his line of sight. Her jaw went slack.
“No way,” she muttered.
“What?”
“No way. You’ve got to be pitching me.”
“What—?”
Ronja had already launched up the steps and was pounding on the front door with a balled fist. She rammed her thumb into the doorbell repeatedly and heard the echo ricochet around the house.
“What the hell?” Roark asked, materializing behind her.
The door swung open and a boy appeared in the frame, his mouth poised to shout. He froze, his eyes flicking between Ronja and Roark like a rapid pendulum.
“Ronja?”
“Henry!”
Ronja leapt at the boy, who barely managed to remain standing when she slammed into his chest. Her arms could not fully encircle his torso, so she clung to his shirt and inhaled his familiar scent. She shook violently, her dammed tears desperate to flow. She bit them back, held on tighter.
Henry took a moment to recover, then wrapped his burly arms around her in a bone-crushing hug. He stroked her damp curls as she trembled.
“What the hell, Roark?” Henry growled, his chest vibrating with rage.
Roark stepped through the doorway delicately and closed it behind him, careful not to graze Ronja in the process. “I was about to introduce you to my new friend, Ronja, but it appears you two are already acquainted,” Roark said lightly.
“You could say that,” Henry replied tersely. “I suppose it was you on the receiving end of the package, then.”
Ronja heard Roark shrug, his leather coat crinkling.
“You are such a skitzing freak, shiny,” Henry said, tightening his grip around Ronja. He pulled his head back and Ronja looked up at him, her eyes in danger of overflowing. With an apprehensive hand, Henry reached out and brushed a chunk of her hair away from her bulky stitches. His face contorted.
“Was this your choice?” he asked softly.
“I didn’t have one, I was about to die. Though I wouldn’t have been dying in the first place if he hadn’t kidnapped me,” Ronja said, glowering at Roark over her shoulder.
“Okay, I thought you were an Off,” Roark said, rolling his eyes. “Not to mention, I apologized.”
“You’re going to do a hell of a lot more than apologize,” Ronja said with a humorless laugh.
She pulled away from Henry. They clutched each other’s forearms as if afraid to let go. “They have my family at Red Bay,” she told Henry. “Roark is going to help me get them out, but I need new papers.”
Henry’s jaw bulged. His gaze flicked toward Roark. “Ronja, I’m sorry,” he said, returning his attention to her. “If they’ve gone to Red—”
“They’re either dead or mutts. I’ve heard the speech. Can you get me the papers or not?”
Henry’s grip tightened around her arms. His nails would have dug into her skin if not for the thick fabric of her dress. He gazed down at her with his quiet, searching eyes. She matched his stare unflinchingly.
Finally, Henry sighed, his willpower slumping. He released her forearms and ran a hand through his coarse hair. “I’ll get you the papers, Ro,” he told her. “But I can’t come with you.”
“I didn’t ask you too,” she clarified quickly. “I know you can’t leave Charlotte.”
“You’re my family, too,” he countered uncertainly.
“I’m not your blood, and I’m not helpless.”
“Roark’s a pitcher, but he won’t let anything happen to you, if only to preserve his pride.”
“Oi,” Roark grumbled.
Ronja and Henry ignored him.
“And if he does let something happen to you, I swear I’ll kill him myself.”
“I used to k
ill spiders for you.” Ronja reminded him, her mouth quirking into a fleeting smile.
“But I never had any trouble killing rats,” Henry replied, shooting a scalding look at Roark.
Ronja chuckled as Roark rolled his eyes again and huffed exasperatedly. “I’ll be fine, Henry,” she assured her friend, squeezing his forearms. “Especially if I have papers.”
Henry nodded, as if he were trying to convince himself.
“I’ll get started right away,” he said.
Henry disappeared into his bedroom, which apparently served as his office. Roark fell into an unsteady slumber on the parlor couch, a bag of ice perched atop his eye like a tiny cairn. Ronja helped herself to the fresh loaf of bread sitting on the countertop and a glass of milk from the icebox. The Romancheck fridge had always been fuller than her own, so she felt no guilt.
As she chewed on the dark bread, her mind and eyes wandered, flashing between memories and bleak predictions.
She saw her cousins, strapped down, needles jutting from their veins, pouring the carrier virus into their bloodstreams, disintegrating their bodies along with their humanity. She saw her mother, limp and heavy, her limbs twisted at impossible angles, shoveled into an oven, burned to ash. Mutts and their families were not allowed proper burials. They were cremated, then used to fertilize the fields.
Ronja was buoyed into the past.
She was nine. It was her first day of fourth grade. She had snagged the most remote desk she could find, then pushed it even further away from the others. It was almost pressed against the wall. She still received disdainful looks from her peers as they filtered in. She focused on her book, burying her nose deep in its worn pages.
“Hi.”
Ronja pretended not to hear, fearing the worst.
“Do you mind if I sit here?”
Ronja peeked over the lip of her novel. Her muscles coiled as she prepared to run or fight.
A boy stood before her, tall for his age, with a face scrubbed raw and freshly trimmed hair. He wore a patched sweater and a wide, genuine smile.
Ronja jerked her chin at the desk to her right. The boy sat. She plunged her nose into her book again. The words blended before her eyes as she waited for the insults to fly.
“I hear we got Mr. Erickson,” the boy said. Ronja scooted closer to the wall. “Could have been worse, right? Could have gotten Woods. I hear her mole got bigger. Do you think she’d let us dissect it in class?”
Ronja snorted involuntarily. She lowered the dense volume slightly and peered out at the boy, who was still smiling. His eyes were soft.
“I’m Henry,” he said, sticking out his hand for her to shake.
Ronja stared at the extended arm for a moment. It was the first time anyone had offered to shake hands with her. She grasped his fingers lightly and shook.
“Ronja,” she said.
Ronja plummeted back into the kitchen.
It all made sense now. Of course Henry had shown her kindness. He was free of The Music, free of the ceaseless voice in his ear that implored him to treat mutts like something stuck to the bottom of his shoe. What about the handful of other people who had shown her kindness throughout her life? Were they free, too, or were they just less malleable?
“Is there any food around here?”
Roark appeared in the doorframe, yawning and stretching. He had shed his coat and boots, and his long hair was mussed from sleep. The skin around his eye was now a blend of red and violet, but the swelling had receded somewhat.
Ronja nodded at the bread resting on the cutting board. Roark shuffled forward sleepily and began to saw at it with the serrated knife.
They were silent for a while. Roark crunched on his stale bread, cringing slightly at the tough texture.
Ronja finally broke the hush. “Can I ask you a question?”
The heir inclined his head as he chewed.
“Do I look like a mutt to you?”
Roark set his crust on the countertop slowly. He flicked a stray morsel to the floor with a long forefinger. “Do you know how mutt Singers work?” he asked, staring after the suicidal crumb.
“They’re stronger than normal—”
“No,” Roark cut her off, shaking his head. He ran his fingers through his black hair, then leaned toward her over the counter. “They send out waves that alert humans to their location and their status. If I were to wear a mutt Singer, everyone with a normal Singer would think I was a mutt, no matter how handsome I may be.”
Ronja was silent. The icebox hummed from the corner. The tires of an auto squealed outside the window, followed by a good deal of muted swearing and shouting.
“I don’t know what to make of it, but to answer your question: No, you do not look like a mutt. You look beautiful.”
Ronja put her face in her hands. The world was shredded through her splayed fingers.
“I’m sorry,” Roark said quickly. “I didn’t mean to offend—”
The girl shook her head, her curls bobbing. Memories were corroding her vision, swallowing the black of her fingers and the pieces of the kitchen. “I grew up thinking . . . you know . . . I knew I wasn’t, but . . . everyone said . . . ”
“No one should have to endure what you and your family have gone through,” Roark said quietly. “I’m sorry for what my father and The Conductor have done to you.”
“I didn’t mean what I said about you,” Ronja said through her hands.
“You did in the moment, and I deserved it.”
Ronja took a great, shuddering breath and let her mask fall. Her face tingled. Her lungs were too small. Roark was watching her intently.
“Talk to me about something else,” she demanded, massaging her temples briskly. “Anything.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How did you and Henry meet?”
Roark beamed. He picked up his crust again and bit into it, spraying crumbs across the countertop. Ronja swept them into the bin with her sleeve.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
“Well, I met him in the Belly after the Anthem kidnapped me. I was twelve. They drugged me, and I woke up cuffed to a chair—same one as you, actually.”
“No pitch?”
“No pitch.”
“So, basically what you’re saying is that you’re projecting your childhood trauma onto me?”
Roark punched her arm lightly across the countertop, and Ronja mustered a snort of laughter.
“Why did they take you?” she asked.
“I was bait.”
Ronja cocked her head.
The boy sighed, as though he had already recounted the story a thousand times. He moved closer to her across the surface.
“The Anthem got intel that a shipment of improved Singers was going to be delivered to a WI warehouse just outside the city. It was a huge shipment, half a million units. My father sent most of his private Offs ahead of our auto to guard the warehouse. The Anthem was going to raid it, but they needed to get the Offs out of the way. They thought that if I were taken, my father would send all his Offs after me, and the warehouse would be left unguarded.”
“Did it work?”
Roark paled considerably beneath his bruises.
“No. The entire strike team died that night, including Henry’s parents.”
“He told me they died in an auto accident,” Ronja breathed.
Roark shook his head. “The Anthem found their heads in the factory that night. The warehouse was swept clean, too—all the improved Singers were already gone.”
Bile rose in Ronja’s throat. She gulped it down. “Why did you stay with the Anthem? Did you have a choice?”
“Well, Wilcox was all for killing me, but Ito saw my value. Once I learned what was really going on in the city, and I met Evie, Iris, and Henry, I begged to stay. It didn’t hurt that my father was a skitzing monster.”
“What?” Ronja asked with a dry laugh. “Did he give you two ponies for your
birthday instead of three?”
“Not exactly.”
Roark rolled up his sweater sleeve to reveal a constellation of small, round scars. Cigarette burns. “One for each time I spoke out of turn,” he said. “I . . . ” he broke off, staring at her forearm, which was sheathed by her dress. “I did the same to you.”
Ronja shook her head, hid her arm behind the countertop.
“Forget it,” she said. “I’ve had worse.” She shoved back her curls, revealing a thin gash in her hairline. “Layla gave me this when I hid her whiskey. This”—Ronja tugged down her collar to reveal the white scar across her chest—“was from when I woke her from a nap. She smashed a bottle of vodka on the nightstand and stabbed me. I was picking out glass for hours.”
Roark closed his eyes and took a slow breath through his nose. The wall clock trudged through the seconds as the pair sifted through their memories.
“It’s funny,” Ronja went on after a lengthy pause. “They always told us The Music counteracted violence, but honestly I think it just made things worse.”
“It stops people from being violent toward the government. They don’t care about what we do to each other.”
“Guess not.”
Roark reached across the table and took her small hands in his own. “I’m sorry, Ronja,” he said softly, gazing at their interlocking fingers. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but—”
“What’s done is done. Stop apologizing.”
“I hoped that—”
“Yeah, me too. It’s my fault too, though. I should have gone to check on them sooner. I was selfish. I was happy for the first time in my life, and—”
“No.”
Roark released her hands and cupped her cheek with his warm palm. Ronja flinched, but did not move away. His gaze held her in place. She had never noticed how much gold there truly was in his brown eyes. They did not seem dark at all.
“You don’t get to blame yourself for this.”
Ronja smiled ruefully. “Just get me to Red Bay,” she said. “Then I’ll go about forgiving you and myself.”
“I’m going to need to take your photograph.”
Ronja jerked, looking to her left.
Henry stood in the doorway, his arms folded over his chest, a thunderous expression plastered across his face. He looked like he might grab Roark by his shaggy hair and ram his head against the wall.
Vinyl: Book One of the Vinyl Trilogy Page 17