The Unquiet

  A bus waits to take us away from the woods, and standing by it already are most of the boys and the girls from the cottages. I look around, trying to figure out who is missing. Emma with the fiery red hair is gone, but she was no surprise; she had a bad memory and could never hit a target. Jason with the deep voice. I can’t see Rebecca Matheson, who played the piano almost every evening, anywhere. And no Greta. Where is Greta?

  And then I realize Edith is shaking next to me.

  Gray isn’t here.

  I am so shocked I cannot move. How can her brother not have made it? I scan the group again and again, and Edith’s teeth are chattering together so loudly I can hear them.

  “Maybe he . . . ,” I begin, trying to offer her some explanation.

  Edith watches me hopefully. But I cannot think of anything else to say.

  She looks away.

  We line up in front of the bus. I try not to think about her as I hold my hand to my chest and sing. Our sleeper anthem. We sing like we have every assembly morning for the last eight years. We sing for the last time. We pledge our allegiance to the other Earth. Halfway into the anthem, when Edith is biting her lip so hard she has drawn blood, her brother finally turns up. Shirt buttoned wrong, hair a mess, and dried blood on one hand, slinking into the line, as if he had never been gone. “I see you both made it,” he says out of the corner of his mouth. He doubles over when Edith slams her elbow into his side.

  “You idiot,” she says, but she breathes a sigh of relief.

  There is an eerie silence afterward as we board the bus, different from any that has ever been, and everyone either looks down or stares out a window. All of us are now in on the secret. We have spent the last eight years here reprogramming our bodies, our memories, but this last day is proof that somehow along the way, we reprogrammed our morals also. What is right and wrong. What we can and cannot do for our country. For ourselves. The examination was never truly about what we remembered; it was our final lesson: that we are capable of anything.

  It is strange that we are supposedly ready for this, for our new lives. I do not feel as though I am truly any different today from yesterday. But we will begin our new missions. We will live as our alternates and wait for the day when the war really truly begins.

  Handlers will keep track of us once we are away from these woods. A routine check-in once a month when we must give account of everything that has happened, when health checks are performed and our pills are refilled. My handler, they tell me, will be a person named Odette.

  At the very last moment before I board the bus, I turn to Madame, who suddenly looks so old and pathetic. My voice is soft but not kind. “You didn’t pass the examination, did you?” I say, because I understand now that it is not us she hates. “That’s why you’re here. If you’d passed, you would be in the city. You would have claimed your alternate’s life.”

  Her eyes widen for a moment, and I cannot tell whether she is surprised at my frankness or my daring. Normally her girls and boys are supposed to be meek, obedient. Then the look is gone. A silk scarf billows up around her neck. “There is no such thing as failing the exam for some special people,” she says, breathing smoke onto my face. “If they cannot pass in the usual way, they pass in other ways.” She gestures back to the cottage, to Agnes, and I suddenly imagine myself as a hairdresser, a tattoo artist, even the person who collects surveillance on alternates until we’re ready. It is not such a bad life. It is only a punishment because you had the chance to be someone else, someone better, someone more important. Because you, out of everyone, will be the person never to get on the yellow bus that comes.

  Madame runs her fingers alongside my left cheek and smiles. Her teeth are yellowed, rotted, and despite myself, I smile back. I even hold still when she leans forward suddenly and hugs me. My chest warms in an old childish way, as if even now I am only a marionette in her game, still waiting for her to piece together my drawing and to tell me it was beautiful. Waiting, like a bird at the mouth of a rifle. Why do we always want the things that will hurt us the most? Madame’s hand is rough where my tattoo aches, and her voice is full of malice when she whispers, “Vous êtes faibles, mon enfant.” Weak, weak, little girl. “Don’t worry, it will be our little secret.” I pull away, as if I have been slapped. I stumble on board and sit at the back, press my face to the glass, and watch the cottages disappear, swallowed up by the trees.

  I will never call them home again.

  Chapter 12

  The road is long and straight; it seems to go on forever. The hours that pass feel like days, but it’s the minutes that are worst. You breathe and breathe forever, waiting for it to end, and then find that only two minutes have passed. That time is moving like winter on a day when everything is frozen.

  We hold on to our seats with white hands and pursed lips and hearts that beat horribly out of sync. With every slow-passing minute the sky dies a little more, the day peeled back by night, until, finally a murmur of excitement buzzes from those who can see the city lights. They already feel the energy of our new world, and it is different, better, yet exactly the same as they had imagined. Everything we learned in the cottages to survive—how to hunt, to cook, to be self-sufficient—must now be hidden in the real world. We are not supposed to be able to take care of ourselves. Kids our age are not even supposed to want to. There are high fives and hurrahs. I hear someone in front say that our real test isn’t our ability to kill; it’s our ability to make friends, to pretend to care about our clothes, our homework, learning how to drive cars, and thinking about colleges.

  “Here’s to our pretend futures,” Davis says, raising an imaginary glass in his hand.

  “To our pretend futures,” everyone echoes.

  The bus roars with laughter.

  This is it. This is everything, and I make myself smile with them, press my face to the window. I want to be as happy as all the other sleepers. I don’t want to sit here missing the familiarity of the past.

  When we first found out we would be sleepers, I used to imagine a horror story. It was always the same one, which left only one version of me alive, but it was the wrong one. There would be a battle of good and evil, and the good one of us would prevail. She, and never me. I was always dead, but that was not the worst part. In my story no one would ever know. She would go on living, and I would be the one forgotten, lost, because there was never enough of me to begin with. I had not left enough of an impression in the world. I would think these things and then shake my head quickly mid-thought. “My name is Lirael Harrison,” I would say, snapping my fingers. “I am fourteen years old.” My name is Lirael Harrison.

  I think that sometimes we walk toward the stories we have already written for ourselves, or perhaps they are forewarnings of the things that are coming. Perhaps, deep down inside, we already know how our whole lives will play out, everything has been decided, and I am already dead somewhere.

  I jolt awake when Gray says, “Lira,” softly on the bus. I open my eyes, see him turned around in the seat in front of me, concern making his eyebrows furrow. My look must be the same as the one he gave me in the training room because for the longest flicker of a moment I do not understand who he is, and then I do. I get the impression that this is not the first time he has called me either. He looks tired, but he leans in closer, as if he has forgotten all about yesterday, as if I am in a bad enough state for this moment alone to matter. Edith is staring at me, too, and that is when I notice how cold I am. That I am shaking. The hand wearing the wire shudders the most, as if it might be trying to remove itself because it already knows that it will kill another girl today. It might as well be screaming: “You are afraid.” I’ve been twirling the wire on my wrist so hard and for so long that there is a bruise forming.

  “What should we do?” Edith asks. They’re talking about me as if I am not here.

  “She’s fine,” her brother says, but he doesn’t turn back to the front, just watches me. “Think about something else, Lira.”


  Except that there’s nothing else to think about.

  I sit on both my hands. I stare straight ahead and pretend that that is all there is: the road and the journey without any destination. About five kids are left on the bus when it finally stops for me, and this is what I want to be able to say: that I found her in a tree, in a green dress and black rain boots. She did not see me coming. She did not notice the way I slid the wire from my wrist and unwound it until it was long and strong enough to wrap around her neck. I want to say that there was murder in my eyes. I want to say that I did not feel fourteen for the first time in my life. But I did. I did, and I do.

  My training never presented the possibility that my alternate would see my face before I saw hers. That is what threw me. She was not supposed to be in the barn; she preferred the trees. She stood there, frozen, but a friendliness crept across her face when she recognized me. It stopped me for too long, and by the time I recovered I had already forgotten how to be a good sleeper.

  I say all this as though it were past, yet I say it inside a moment when I have lunged for her, but she is steadier than I am, and stronger. Blood is running down my arms and down the side of my face where the rock hit me. I am lying on the ground, and her hands are around my neck.

  I cannot breathe.

  I am going to die.

  I want to beg her, tell somebody, please don’t forget the history of me, that I was here. That I tried. That I failed.

  It will happen quickly, and this is how it will go: I die and she lives, but the moment I am dead, our people come to silence her before she can reveal what she has found out. If I am still alive somehow, they will kill me, too, and then we both will have ended.

  But then suddenly the blackness around my eyes begins to fade, and Edith is pulling me up. “It’s okay,” she keeps saying. “You’re going to be okay.”

  Gray does all the work. He removes the evidence. I don’t even hear her scream. I gasp for air until my eyes clear up and my throat stops hurting. They wipe the blood from my forehead, from the corners of my mouth, and I am ashamed of the way I feel, like a little child needing to be cared for. I am crying and shaking, and I don’t know where one stops and the other starts. How did they get off the bus? When? Why are they here?

  “Don’t say anything,” they tell me when I open my mouth and shut it for the third time. “Don’t say anything. Just go and be a sleeper. This part doesn’t matter.”

  They don’t wait for my response. They blend into the dark as they hurry away.

  My enemies, my friends.

  Over time I turn this night into a dream, a myth, a false memory. It never happened, and I have begun the rest of my life with more secrets. They heap themselves on one another until there are nearly more than enough to bury me, but I will wear this face. I swear. From now on I will wear it well.

  Part Two

  One Year Later . . .

  Chapter 13

  My grandfather sends me into town once a week with a box of apples and apricots on my bicycle. No matter how early or late I leave, Cecily insists on coming with me, her lip bitten in concentration as she rides over the bumpy road on the tricycle she should have given up two years ago. “It’s good for me to know,” she says in her serious voice, “everything you do in the city so that I can take over when I’m older. Right, Lira?”

  I nod in agreement. She looks pleased with herself. “Someone has to take care of the trees,” she adds.

  My grandfather, Da, has been putting all sorts of ideas in her head about the family legacy, about how the well-being of the orchards will fall to us one day. Some afternoons he gets the sudden urge to walk us both through the trees and vines again, make us take everything in while he watches, as if within twenty-four hours we might have forgotten what apples look like, what unripe grapes feel and taste like. As if he can teach us to love his life, his job, his orchards as much as he does. I neglect to mention to Cecily that since I am barely fifteen, it’s very unlikely that she’s going to take over anytime soon. “You look ridiculous,” I yell instead, turning back to laugh at her. “You’re going to have to learn to ride a proper bicycle soon, because that thing is going to give out on you. Just look at the rickety wheels.”

  She makes a face and pedals faster, although that gets her nowhere. Sweat trickles down from the sides of her pink helmet from the effort. “I don’t get in your business,” she growls, “so why are you getting in mine?”

  “You’re six,” I say. “I’m supposed to be in your business.” I wave back at the fishermen by the river who are readying their boats. The river is only a few minutes from the orchards, easily visible to those passing by on the road and often filled with fishermen who have done this job all their lives. Some afternoons they bring back something for us. “For your grandmother,” they’ll say.

  “Well, I’m old enough to mean what I say,” announces Cecily. She sticks out her tongue, licks her sweaty upper lip, and I laugh again. Her hair is matted to her forehead, and I slow down. For my efforts, when she reaches me, she rides her tricycle directly into me. We both go flying into the grass on the side of the road, apples and apricots sprayed everywhere. “No, no, no,” I groan. I jump up and immediately begin picking them up in case a car comes. If Da were here, he would cry. “An apple is worthless,” he would say, “if it has a single bruise on it. I am the best orchardist for miles, Lirael. People respect me. People expect the best from me.” His thumbs would press against his eyes to hide the tears; he would clear his throat as if it were itchy. And I would remember how small he is, how stooped his back gets when he walks, how old and wrinkly and breakable he is.

  I squint over at Cecily. “You saw that on television, didn’t you?”

  “Of course not. If I did half the things I saw on the television, Lira,” she says cheerily, “you would be dead. Race you.” And then she is gone, dust from the road billowing up in her wake. I wipe the fruit carefully on my dress before putting it back inside the boxes. Cecily pedals as fast as she can. She couldn’t beat me if I was walking, much less riding my bike, but she doesn’t let that stop her. She turns back to grin at me, eyes wide, voice squeaky. “I’m winning, I’m winning. Oh, my God, I’m actually winning.”

  “No, you’re not. I’m coming to kick your butt,” I yell.

  But I let her win. Not just because she is my sister but also because there is no sorer loser in this world than Cecily. I let her win because it is the thing to do and because suddenly I am tired of having to smile, having to make conversation. It happens. Sudden moments like these when I am heavier than usual. Despite myself, I turn my eyes up to the sky much more frequently these days. I am waiting for something. I just don’t know what. But then I think that maybe I am remembering what I did, not waiting, and my head hurts.

  I let her win because I have never forgotten that I am not really her sister.

  A lot can happen in a year. A body can grow taller, bonier; eyes become bigger, grayer; hair darker, longer. I am her but harsher around the edges in a way I am convinced she would never have been. This, I tell myself, is not weakness. It is the subtle reintroduction of myself, the old me, in a way no one but I will know. My old self wasn’t enamored with food, didn’t care about her appearance so much, didn’t care about pleasing everyone else. That is what I tell myself when I look in the mirror. Secretly I am afraid that I might be about to fall apart.

  Each dawn the same robin sits on the same wire fence, singing the same song. Night hands over morning in the exact same state it was given. There have been no rearrangements of the clouds, of the stars, no big surprises. Everything in the world is a whisper, and now more than ever, I understand what it means to be a sleeper. Counting time, counting days, always on edge, yet doing nothing. I was trained for much more, but my orders haven’t come yet. The worst that has happened is that my grandmother is sick, my grandfather is unhappy with his apricot trees this year, and he is blaming the nippiness of the weather at night, the lack of workers because all the bo
ys over fifteen have run off to the city to sign up to become soldiers, to become men.

  It is not just them. Most parts of the countryside are emptier now than they were ever meant to be. The Silence has made people antsy. The possibility that it might not be resolved with simple conversations or negotiations. If the world falls apart, people want to be ready, people want to be doing something. They’re not stupid enough to be completely defenseless, so every once in a while, protests surge around the world, and men and women hurry to sign up for the army, to pledge their allegiance to a possible war, but it won’t be enough. They have no idea what they will be up against.

  Some people think the Silence will last forever; others, just a few more years. The effort is less halfhearted in the countryside, where the boys are bored, and running away to big cities seems better. In school, before I finished last term, there were empty desks, and the teachers pretended not to notice. People seem to think that in bad times, being surrounded by more people is some kind of defense. Perhaps it is. Perhaps if a rocket falls from the sky and there are ten people standing together, at least one will survive. On any given day on my way home from school, some family was always sitting at the bus stop with suitcases and a look of unease on their faces. They worried about going to the cities to live in cramped apartments and breathe in the polluted air, but they did it anyway. That stopped nearly as quickly as it started, though, and it’s gone back to waiting now. Waiting for war; waiting for the Silence to end.

  I am still not used to the idea that my life as a cottage girl is over forever. Every once in a while I sense that I am being watched. Those times are the only reminders of a sleeper world. My fighting muscles are completely useless to my everyday life, and my mind still turns, trying to assimilate new facts of the world that I dare not miss. Like the new things that make my grandmother tired these days, that make Da worried, that make Cecily sad. Sometimes I catch my sister staring at me, and suddenly I cannot meet her eyes. I know I am still living in the cottages inside my head even though I am here. I am guilty of that. Today I have to remind myself twice that the apples and apricots are for the baker’s wife and that the money will buy Gigi’s medicine for the week. When we reach the shop, we tie up our bicycles, and I have to remind myself that I am not supposed to be shy. Da says that I am a good haggler, almost as good as him. I tell myself these things and become her.