by Lee Davidson
“Despite what Billy says, I assumed you had half a brain. Guess I was wrong.”
“Who are you here for?” I ask Lawson, too shocked to care about his slam on me.
“Here’s a clue: it’s not Meggie,” he mocks in a slow voice. “I bet if you try real hard, by process of elimination, you’ll figure it out.”
“Brody,” I say to myself.
“See. That wasn’t so hard,” Lawson says.
“Oh good, the chocolate hulk is funny, too,” I say dryly when the shock has lifted. “This should be a blast.”
His teeth, nearly glowing against his dark skin, make an appearance before Meggie’s and Brody’s volumes rise to a level beyond disruptive. We block our Tragedies at the same time. Clearly, I’m unconditioned compared to Lawson. Not because he’s twice my size, but because his body shows no signs of weary twitching, whereas mine appears to be hooked up to a shock machine.
“How do you control your muscles?” I ask, wondering if he notices the jerking spasms of my forearm.
“You’ll build a tolerance. That’s why we train.”
I nod, glad to know I may not always battle this annoying side effect. “Do you build an emotional tolerance as well?”
His broad shoulders under his green military-style jacket lift and fall. “Depends.”
“On?” I ask when he doesn’t offer any more.
“On you,” he states.
Good God, getting him to talk may be more of a challenge than extracting information from Willow. “You wanna elaborate?”
“Do you want to be emotionally numb?” he asks.
I pause for a long time. “I’m not sure.”
“Well, you’ll be affected until you figure that out.”
“Does it still get to you?”
He barely nods at the speckled linoleum.
“It doesn’t seem to bother Evelynn,” I sneer.
“She’s hardened to this life. Billy, too.” Lawson shakes his head. “They’re built with this—I don’t know—shell or something.”
“That just seems…” I dig for the right word. Insensitive is too weak.
“It makes them the best we’ve got,” he says before I come up with anything. “Evelynn has taken an interest in you.” He puts his bright-white smile on display again.
“Evelynn seems like the kind of girl who takes an interest in everyone.”
His laugh is so deep it’s more of a rumble. “No, not everyone. Although she does have a knack for being…affectionate, doesn’t she?”
“Affectionate?” I say under my breath. “Try presumptuous.”
He grins wider. “Your feigning disinterest is only making it worse.”
“I’m not feigning, trust me. She’s not my type.”
“Not your type? Brother, you must be blind.”
I force myself to keep a straight face.
“Oh!” His face lights up like he’s just solved a puzzle. “You’re gay.”
Now I do laugh because his shocked eyes are like twin full moons. “No, man, straight as an arrow. Hence the bad clothes. She’s just…too much.” I try to picture us as a couple: me in my worn out jeans towing around a six-foot disco ball. The vision is absurd.
A loud noise propels me back to reality. Lawson completes a block before I even process the IV tree crashing against the wall, compliments of Brody. He holds his bandaged hand, probably wishing he would have used the other for his outburst. Meggie rushes to fix the stand and checks Brody’s tubes while Janine and another nurse enter the tiny room to help.
“Nice,” I say to Lawson’s quick block.
“You’ll get faster. Trust me, we get plenty of practice.”
I sigh at his best-news-ever.
“Did you want to be an Elite?” I ask a few minutes later to tune out Meggie’s quiet sobs.
Lawson answers by shrugging. “You?”
“I didn’t know it was an option for someone as new as me.” I pause, remembering when I found out Willow was an Elite, and then recalling the first time we met. I grin at the memory. “I wasn’t so thrilled about being a Satellite, I know that.”
“Yeah? Why not?”
I think of my reasoning. Every molecule within me knows I didn’t want to die, let alone be here. I was pulled away from something, but what? “Don’t know.” I hate this answer.
“Well, brother, you’re the exception around here. I mean, we may not all aspire to be Elites, but most of us think being a Satellite is pretty great.”
“It’s not that I don’t respect what we do, and sometimes I don’t even mind the physical strain, but it feels like there’s something from my life I’m missing and I just can’t grasp what. It’s unnerving.”
“It’s called your memories, bro. You haven’t even been here a full year. That’s no more than a heartbeat in Progression. I’m shocked that you were chosen to be an Elite. No offense,” he adds as an afterthought.
I focus on the gray speckles in the floor and chew on my lip to keep quiet. Anything I say will probably make me sound ungrateful, which is not exactly what I’m going for.
“Jackson, Billy, and Evelynn are the only ones who really wanted to be Elites. For the rest of us, it’s a job hazard that was beyond our control.” He pauses and cracks his knuckles. “Jonathan told me once that as Elites, we’re genetically built to withstand brutal physical and mental bashing more than others, but that doesn’t mean we withstand it easily. Even your girl, Evelynn; she’s hardened, but I still have doubts that nothing gets to her. I know there are things that get to Billy. I’ve seen him crack a time or two.”
I huff and ignore the part about Evelynn being “my girl.” “I have a hard time believing anything affects Billy.”
“He’s arrogant, but he’s not immune,” Lawson says. “Better block your chick.”
My eyes shift to Meggie. Her face is scrunched into a wrinkled, pained expression and her fingernails are indenting the vinyl chair.
My blue filter comes fast. “Haze.”
Calm down, calm down, calm…
The electric shock paralyzes me. When I finally give the order that breaks the connection, Meggie hugs her arms around herself and relaxes as much as the stiff chair will allow.
“She’s had a really bad life. It’s not fair.” The last three words seem to be my mantra lately.
“The walk of life doesn’t matter. Being in a situation like this is never fair.”
Brody’s coughs advance to uncontrollable, though you’d never know it by Meggie’s reaction. She’s like a drug addict, zoned in on the thin sheet dangling off the hospital bed as precariously as the way Meggie is hanging on to her sanity. My block must have worked better than expected. Meggie doesn’t even raise her head when a nurse hurries in and feeds something into Brody’s tube that sends him to Slumberland.
When the room gets quiet again, I look at Lawson. “You’re agreeing with me about this being unfair?”
“You sound surprised.”
“Willow never agrees with me, especially on the unfairness stuff. She thinks this is all necessary, part of the greater purpose,” I mock.
Lawson’s face brightens. “Ah, Willow. I miss that girl.”
Another Willow fan. Go figure.
“She’s right,” Lawson says when I stay quiet. “Fair and necessary are very different animals.”
“So I’m learning.” I watch my thumbs race around each other and then ask, “Where were you during the fire?”
He nods to the unhappy couple. “In their bedroom.”
No way. I would have seen him. “You couldn’t have been.”
“Not bad on your blocks. For your first Elite assignment, you did well.”
“Why didn’t I see you?” I mumble, more to myself.
“There was a lot going on. I was crouched in the corner by the bathroom. Typically, I keep my face buried when an initial tragedy occurs, but I couldn’t help watching you try to warn them. You�
��ll learn soon enough there’s nothing we can do in the first few minutes of these disasters. My advice is to save your energy, lay low, and try to keep what’s happening out of your head.” He turns toward the window, even though the blinds are drawn. “Easier said than done, I know.”
I remain quiet, still unsure if I believe him about being there.
“I stayed inside while Brody made his rounds to all the bedrooms. You and I split up in the ambulances.”
Meggie sits impressively still when a middle-aged man dressed in jeans and a polo shirt enters. Introductions tell us he is Dr. Brown, the hospital shrink, though he doesn’t use those words exactly. An I.D. tag clipped to an Atlanta Falcons lanyard is the only sign that he is part of the staff here. His printed name is followed by a slew of abbreviations that show his importance.
While Brody sleeps, Dr. Brown chooses my chair to pull over to Meggie. After a swift ride across the small space, I jump up before he sits on me. I walk around the bed and rest my back and head against the wall by the window.
“It wasn’t that funny,” I say dryly to Lawson, who has gotten a kick out my slow reflexes, or more likely, the shock on my face when the doc caught me off guard.
Dr. Brown talks to Meggie about her enormous loss, but Meggie is too raw to answer the few questions he asks. She stays silent while he discusses the different ways people grieve during these types of tragedies. I spend this time replaying the events of the fire, but remain unable to find any trace of Lawson.
After Dr. Brown wraps up his session and excuses himself, Janine takes his place. Meggie is not zombie-like when she argues with Janine about leaving the hospital for a shower and some clean clothes. Janine finally wins, which is a good thing because Meggie’s hair and skin are still tinted gray with soot. A break from this building couldn’t hurt either. I say goodbye to Lawson and ride along in Janine’s minivan.
Back at Janine’s house—because Meggie no longer has a home of her own—I remain a gentleman by staying in the hallway while Meggie showers. Though the total trip takes just a little over an hour, by the time we return to the hospital my tired muscles feel a decade older.
Lawson and I exchange a few words and judging by his relaxed posture, his hour with Brody was easier than mine.
After an excruciating afternoon of blocking, my calimeter finally sets me free. I welcome the buzzing grace, wondering how I ever considered the noise annoying. I push on the top of the watch at the same time Lawson pushes his. The hospital powers down with a fading hum and everything in the room goes dead except Lawson and me because we already are. The tears on Meggie’s blotchy cheeks are now frozen beads of glass.
Lawson says, “Displace,” a second before I do and we’re yanked through the ceiling. The screaming wind fills my ears and my hair flattens to my head.
Along with Lawson, who’s morphed into a glowing, bright red blur, distant Satellites burn through the atmosphere in a rainbow of colors. A bright purple line far away makes me think of Willow, though surely she’s too busy driving Troy crazy to be checking on one of her Tragedies. My heart feels a little bigger when I think of Willow, but more empty when I realize I miss her.
Lighted streamers converge closely enough to make me uncomfortable before we’re all flung into our respective living quarters. My muscles continue their spasms when I land. A quick coding session before heading down to Benson is a must.
In the small room at the end of the hallway, I sit on the black mat and face the mirrored wall. My sight moves from my messy brown hair across the small scar on my eyebrow, compliments of a victorious football season. It figures I can remember where that scar came from, but not the two that are making me crazy. When my gaze stops on the drawstrings of my hoodie, an unsettled feeling slides through me. I should recognize this sweatshirt—I know I should—but why? Could it have something to do with my twin scars?
I blink hard and shake my head, looking away from the mirror. The verdict is in, ladies and gentlemen: I have lost my mind.
Irritated with myself, I force my brain to empty (oh the fun Willow would have with that) and close my eyes. My knotted muscles loosen slowly, then faster, until I’m in my happy place: above the ground in a tree stand surrounded by the wildlife-filled forest. The ropes tying my muscles together pull away as noisy birds sing around me. By the time the monster buck strolls into the clearing, crackling leaves under his weight, my entire body feels like a marshmallow. No more convulsing for me, at least through break.
When I blink, the buck disappears and a dust-covered ceiling fan fills my vision. A lead weight crushes against my body and my fingers claw into the mattress beneath me. Panicked and paralyzed, I jerk my head to the left, catching glimpses of an entertainment center in the bedroom of my past. I blink hard three times, hoping to get back to the coding room and away from the sensation of stinging ice sliding over my abs like a knife. My scream bounces through my head while the prickling cold circles its way up my chest, to my neck, and then my ear.
“Come back to me,” a voice whispers in a cloud of freezing vapor, delivering the greatest torment yet.
My yell is so loud it seems to vibrate the bedroom walls before my eyes burst open to see the mirror in the coding room. I claw at my frozen chest and escape the blue hoodie while trying to control my chattering teeth. My skin warms until the ice localizes on my mysterious scars. The raised, tear-shaped welt on my chest is now white instead of pink but is somehow, unbelievably, not split open. I manage to stand and unbuckle my belt, letting my jeans fall around my ankles. The scar on my knee is a twin in every way, including pain.
I avoid the mirror in fear of seeing the expression on my face reflected back.
After my scars finally cut me some slack, I pit-stop at my closet to trade clothes because mine are soaked, making the term cold sweat actually mean something. My stomach is knotted and uneasy. So much for finding relief by coding.
In the kitchen, I splash fresh water on my face and will my jitters to swirl down the drain, too. They don’t so I opt for caffeine, not even bothering to doctor the black coffee. Although the bitter and strong brew would put Willow’s battery acid coffee to shame, the edge isn’t enough to take mine away, even after an extra tall cup. I’d consider coding again if I weren’t so terrified of getting the same, inexplicable results.
I’m pouring my second cup when—speak of the devil—the queen of sarcasm barrels through the door. Of course Willow doesn’t knock. This shouldn’t surprise me, but I jump anyway and steaming coffee dumps down the front of my fresh shirt.
Years worth of tockets jingle when she dumps her corduroy bag on the floor. Willow skips right over the hello, how are you bit and leaps head first into, “Heard about that eye, kid.”
I unthinkingly reach for my temple. “What are you doing here?”
She pulls off her sweatshirt to reveal a pink, screen-printed tank that in no way matches her camo pants. “Just popping in to say hi. Hi! I think the beating helped your face. Your nose looks straighter.”
“Shut up.” I try to say it with a little venom but end up smiling instead. I playfully smack her arm when I pass by her before pulling my coffee-soaked shirt over my head to trade clothes for the second time. “No one even touched my nose,” I yell from the closet.
“Who was lucky enough to hit you?” Willow says from the kitchen.
“Billy,” I answer.
“Ah. He’s quite a charmer.”
I really did miss this freak.
Back in the kitchen, said freak is helping herself to coffee. She eyes the puke-green sofa while taking a sip. Like me, she opts for black, straight up and doesn’t even flinch from the strength.
“I knew you’d keep it,” she says over her cup in her usual I-told-you-so tone.
“I’m not keeping it,” I lie. “I just haven’t had a chance to get rid of the thing yet. It’s been a little busy around here.”
“Yeah, I bet.” Willow nods, not buying my excuse. “How�
��s your new assignment?”
I push my maroon shirt sleeves up. “Difficult.”
“Welcome to being an Elite. Gooooo Team!” she sings and throws her fist in the air. “You eating?” she asks after another sip of coffee.
“Always.”
She walks around the counter to me and stands on her toes to mess up my hair. “You’re so predictable. Come on, I’ll join you. We’d better hurry, though. Only about a half hour before duty calls.”
“‘Til break? You’re kidding?”
“Uh…no. What have you been doing?”
“Coding,” I say.
“For an hour and a half?”
“Apparently,” I mumble to myself.
“You all right, kid?”
I hate when she acts like a mother. “I’m fine.” I collect my bag without looking at her. “Come on.”
On our way to Benson, Willow fills me in on her and Troy’s garden projects. She lights up when she adds that Troy has been sharing lots of details about what life was like with Mya and Ryder.
“Hey, speaking of, when do I do Maintenance?” I ask.
Willow’s expression turns to horror and she stops in the middle of the lobby. “You haven’t checked on him?”
My heartbeat bursts into a double-time rhythm while my mind races to the biggest mistake of my short career, the one that almost cost Ryder his life. I ignore the stares of our fellow Satellites—compliments of Willow’s volume—while I try to remember how and why I let Ryder stray so off course that his beautiful Shelby ended up wrapped around a tree. How could I have almost failed both Ryder and Willow so terribly?
Willow’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “You told me you’d take care of him!”
“But…I didn’t know…I mean, Jonathan never said…” I ramble in panic. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know!” What if I’ve failed Ryder again? What if—
Willow’s stone face buckles and she convulses with laughter. Then she walks away, still laughing.
“Willow!” The heat from my anger rises to my cheeks.
“I totally had you! You should have seen your face,” she yells through her chortling, keeping the interest of the scattered Satellites throughout the lobby on us.