by Zoe Cannon
“And then you showed up here a few weeks ago, smiling and letting him drool all over you. I thought you were going to give us a chance.”
Becca knew what was coming. “But then I ran off.”
“And haven’t been back since,” Vivian confirmed. “Until now.”
Until now. Until she needed something badly enough to risk it.
She looked down. A calculated gesture. “I haven’t had friends in a long time.” She glanced up at Heather, this time involuntarily. Heather looked away. “In high school I didn’t want to let anyone get close, in case they turned out to be another Jake. And now… well, now I’m not sure I know how anymore.”
A fragment of near-truth, a brief moment of vulnerability. The moment brought with it a different kind of temptation—the kind she had felt the last time she had come here, and again in the car with Micah. She shoved it back into the furthest corners of her mind, into the places where its whispers couldn’t reach her. They’d turn on you in a heartbeat if they knew what you were. Don’t forget.
“I get that,” said Vivian. “I do. But Micah still means a lot to me. And I’m not going to let your issues break his heart.” She looked around at the others for confirmation.
Ramon gave an apologetic shrug. “No one wants to clean up that mess.”
Heather didn’t say anything. She still wouldn’t look at Becca.
Vivian turned back to Becca. “If you want us to help you, then you need to choose. You can push everyone away like you did in high school, or you can get over it and be one of us for real.”
Ramon fixed her with an intense stare. “Ask yourself if you’re going to hurt him,” he said. “Ask yourself if this is what you really want.”
Becca already knew the answer to both those questions. Yes.
“This is what I want,” Becca assured them. The one part of her answer she could be honest about. She wanted to help the resistance. She wanted to stop the reeducation program. And if she had to break Micah’s heart to do it, she would.
Even if she broke her own heart in the process.
Vivian studied Becca for a long time. Becca forced herself not to squirm under her gaze, forced herself not to do anything that might reveal the truth—that while Vivian mistrusted her for all the wrong reasons, she was absolutely right not to trust. She was right to think Becca would hurt him in the end.
At last, Vivian nodded. “We’ll talk to him for you. I can’t promise anything, but we’ll talk to him.”
Becca let her breath out slowly. “Thank you.”
“We should get together.” Heather finally met Becca’s eyes. “I could help you out with Micah. Give you boy tips. You know, like before.” That same hungry look, the one she had seen in Heather the day of the resistance meeting, dug into her, asking for something she didn’t know how to give.
A year and a half ago, before everything, she would have said yes without a second thought. Now the idea only brought a tired feeling of dread. A year and a half ago it would have meant spending time with her best friend. Now it meant spending time with a stranger—a stranger who might or might not be spying on her for Internal.
She opened her mouth to say no, searching her mind for some excuse.
You need to choose. You can push everyone away like you did in high school, or you can get over it and be one of us for real.
She stopped.
Vivian watched her intently, waiting for her reaction. There was a challenge in her eyes. A test.
“Why don’t you come over on Monday?” The false cheer tasted greasy in her mouth. “I’m in the new building. Apartment 2C. Stop by after work and we’ll talk.”
Heather smiled. Her smile looked all wrong—maybe it was too wide, or her face too strained, or maybe it was just that Becca hadn’t seen her smile since before her parents’ arrest.
“Monday,” Heather confirmed. “I’ll see you then.”
* * *
But it was only Friday when Heather showed up at her door.
The knock filled her with electric fear for a second, before she reminded herself for the hundredth time—or the fifth time, since she doubted she’d gotten more than five knocks on her door since she’d moved in—that Enforcers didn’t knock, they just let themselves in. At least no one had gotten around to hooking up her doorbell yet; if a light knock did this to her, the doorbell would probably have made her jump out of her skin.
She muted the TV, then stood up from the folding chair set up against the opposite wall and crossed the room in three quick strides. She opened the door with Hi, Mom on her lips, since her mom was the only person who ever visited her here, but what came out instead was, “Hi, muh… Heather.”
Heather twisted one hand in the other. “Hi.”
“I thought you were coming over on Monday.” She had just wanted to watch some TV and then sleep. Set the mask aside for a little while. Set her thoughts aside for a little while. If Heather was here, that meant watching every word while she listened for any hint of Heather’s real motives. A sharp ache threatened in her temple just thinking about it.
Since when was Heather so pale? Last night she had looked the same as ever, but now it was like she hadn’t seen the sun in years.
“I was. But I…” Heather twisted her hands faster. “Never mind. It was a bad idea.”
Heather was a stranger to her now. And maybe worse than that—maybe a spy, a friendly face sent here to betray her. But she was also Heather. The weight of history stood between them, the weight of a hundred moments just like this—Heather at Becca’s door five seconds from falling apart, and Becca waiting on the other side to bring her back to earth.
Becca opened the door a little wider. “No, it’s okay. I’m not busy or anything. Come on in.”
Heather’s hair flew into her eyes as she shook her head. “No. I shouldn’t have come.” She turned around and raced down the hall.
“Heather!” Becca called after her. Heather didn’t even slow down.
All Becca could do was watch her go.
Chapter Seven
The day of the resistance meeting, Becca woke to the familiar growl of construction equipment.
It’s too early for this. She threw a hand over her eyes to block out the obscene amount of light streaming through the window. Groaning, she rolled over and buried her face in the pillow.
For the past few weeks the construction crews had been working to demolish the abandoned playground next door—the playground where she used to go whenever she needed to be alone and think, where she had admitted aloud for the first time that she was a dissident, where she had hidden Jake when the Enforcers had come for him—and put up more Internal housing in its place. At least once a week, the rumbles and squeals woke her half an hour before her alarm was set to go off.
But only on weekdays.
They never got started on weekends until at least—
Her eyes flew open.
She leapt out of bed, forgetting to free her feet from her covers first, and landed facefirst on the floor in a tangle of sheets. Rubbing her bruised knee with one hand, she fumbled along the top of her dresser—the only other piece of furniture, besides her bed, that she had brought from home. Her fingers closed around her watch; she pulled it down and stared at its face.
Eleven-thirty.
Half an hour before the resistance meeting was supposed to start. Half an hour, when it would take her ten minutes to drive downtown and another ten to walk to the bookstore. Which left her ten minutes to get ready. Ten minutes to try to make herself look like someone worth listening to, like someone worthy of this seat at the grown-ups’ table.
She pulled herself to her feet and ripped open her dresser drawers. Jeans—no. Shirt with a cartoon character on it—no. Pajama pants—definitely not. She pulled out a black skirt and a shirt she had borrowed from Heather two years ago and never returned. She interrogated the outfit with her eyes as she held it out in front of her. Will you make me look like one of them? What had the others
worn to the last meeting? But she couldn’t remember, and she had no time. She pulled on the skirt and yanked the shirt over her head. They would have to do.
She raced to the bathroom, where she whisked her toothbrush around in her mouth long enough that her breath wouldn’t smell like a corpse’s armpit. She braved a look in the mirror. Her hair jutted out on all sides like someone had stuck her finger in an electrical socket while she slept. She jammed a brush through her hair, wincing at the pain and at the static that made a few unruly tendrils leap right back out again.
Three minutes. If she was going to have any chance of showing up on time, she had three minutes to get out of here.
She started to pull her hair back into a braid. At least that would get all the little strands out of her face. Then she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and groaned. She looked like her mother. The only worse thing than showing up at the meeting looking like a kid would be showing up at the meeting looking like Raleigh Dalcourt. She shook the braid back out.
Tap. Tap tap.
Somebody was knocking on the door.
Enforcement. They know about the meeting. She froze, then forced her muscles to relax one by one. No. Enforcement doesn’t knock, remember?
So who’s here?
Maybe Heather had decided to come back and say whatever she had wanted to say two days ago. Still clutching her hair tie in one hand, Becca hurried through the living room—two minutes—and opened the door.
Heather wasn’t standing on the other side. Micah was. He stood with shoulders hunched and jaw set, hand raised in preparation for another knock.
He straightened with visible effort as he saw her. His gaze traveled over her as he took in her breathless appearance. “Is this a bad time? I, um. I can come back.”
One minute. But Micah was here, at her door, wanting to talk to her. If she turned him away and rushed to the meeting, what would she tell the resistance? No, I couldn’t get close to Micah for you. I was too busy trying to make a good impression by getting here on time.
“No, it’s fine,” she said. “I have to leave soon, but I’ve got time. Come on in.”
He stepped inside and looked around the room. He raised his eyebrows as he took in the bare white walls, the empty space, the single folding chair. But he didn’t say anything.
She gestured toward the folding chair. “Um, you can sit if you want.”
He looked over at the chair, but stayed where he was. He opened his mouth, and words fell out in a rush. “I’m an idiot. Yesterday Vivian spent half the day lecturing me, and I woke up this morning and looked at myself in the mirror and all I could see was a complete moron, and I realized she was right.” He paused for breath. “From the beginning I’ve felt all this potential between us. And who knows, maybe it was just my imagination. But I still never expected you to look so scared at the thought of going out with me, like I was some kind of monster or something. I had to wonder how you saw me, and if everything I’d felt between us had only been in my head, and if every time we talked at work you had been secretly wishing I would leave you alone.”
“I wasn’t—” she began.
He spoke over her before she could finish her half-truth. “So I decided I was done. I wasn’t going to let myself keep seeing what I wanted to see when clearly you were nothing but disgusted by me. And then you apologized and explained and made everything complicated again. I didn’t want it to be complicated. I didn’t want to wonder what you really thought of me or why you were apologizing or whether that line about Jake was just an excuse like I assumed it was in high school. I wanted to accept that you weren’t interested and move on.”
“I under—”
He didn’t even slow down. “But I really want to get to know you better. I’ve wanted to get to know you since you joined the Monitors back in high school. When I heard you were Raleigh Dalcourt’s daughter I expected someone totally different, someone more distant and ruthless—not that I’m saying your mom is distant and ruthless. And you’re so closed off a lot of the time, which I guess should make you seem distant, but you don’t—because even though I don’t know you very well, I feel like I can see what’s underneath, and I can only catch little glimpses but every glimpse is beautiful.”
He drew in a hurried breath, then kept going. “And I want to see more. I want to know what’s underneath the mask you wear and why you keep it hidden away. I want to know who you are, even though the idea terrifies me because I think if I really see you there’s nothing that could stop me from falling in love with you.”
Every word hit Becca like a tiny blade, slicing through her defenses until they threatened to fall away entirely. Never had she wished more that she believed in Internal, that she had nothing to do with the resistance, that she could let her guard down and show Micah everything she was without turning him against her. She wanted to laugh at his awkward rambling dangerous speech—not out of cruelty, but because Micah could make her laugh and that was nothing short of a miracle in the world she lived in. She wanted to grab him and kiss him, let the mask fall, let him see her. She wanted to tell him to leave and never come back so she wouldn’t be tempted.
She pulled her mask in tighter around her. She had a mission. She couldn’t forget. Like the dissidents down on the underground levels, he had information, or he would. And she, like a good interrogator, would take it from him and throw him away.
“If you want me to go, it’s okay.” Micah looked down at the floor. “I understand.” He started moving toward the door.
She caught his arm. Moved her hand down past his wrist, tangled his fingers in hers. “I don’t want you to go.”
“You don’t?” He looked up at her with hopeful eyes, gentle eyes, dangerous eyes that could see right through her. For a moment he looked to her like the future she had thought she would have before the resistance, all hope and promise and the brightness of new horizons. She wanted to lose herself in those eyes. In that future.
She didn’t know she was moving in closer until her lips met his, and at that first electric touch she realized she couldn’t lose herself in him after all. Instead, he could strip away everything that wasn’t her, everything that wasn’t real. If she let him.
She pulled back. Her heartbeat drummed in her ears like a warning. “I have to go.”
“Right. You were leaving.” Micah ran a hand through his hair, straightened his back, visibly tried to regain a little composure. “Go. We’ll talk later.” A silly grin spread across his face, like he was only now starting to process what had just happened.
She wondered what he could see on her own face.
Too much. Because he was Micah, and he could do that, and she had just opened all the doors to her defenses and asked him to waltz inside.
“So, I guess I’ll see you at work tomorrow.” Micah left the apartment, turning his head to shoot her one last smile before closing the door behind him.
Even if she ran, she wouldn’t be able to make it to the meeting on time. But she could still make it there. And now she had something for them besides promises. Now she could tell them that she had made progress.
Her stomach curdled at the thought.
But she didn’t have time to be disgusted with herself. That could come later. Right now she had to leave.
She hurried out of the apartment and down the hall as fast as she could without calling attention to herself, and tried to replace her memories of the kiss with thoughts of her mission.
* * *
The minutes ticked past noon as the cars ahead of Becca inched along the road. She had underestimated the traffic, hadn’t counted on all the people who wanted to go out for lunch or spend their afternoon shopping downtown. And then there had been an accident somewhere up ahead, fire trucks racing past as the cars slowed to a crawl. Now she drummed out each lost second on the steering wheel as she imagined Jameson and the others discussing their plan without her.
Inch by painful inch, the cars crept forward, until at last Becca
reached the parking lot at the edge of downtown. With a squeal of her tires, she pulled into the lot—and came to an abrupt halt as every other car in the lot tried to leave all at once. The driver in front of her, purple-faced and moving in the wrong direction, honked and waved his arms as Becca jerked and wove her way into a parking space.
She rushed out of the car and crammed a few coins into the parking meter. Her feet itched to take off running, but Jameson’s training stopped her. She couldn’t risk looking conspicuous, not even now. Especially not now, on her way to a resistance meeting. She held herself to a brisk walk, every step mocking her with the knowledge that the meeting had already begun, that it might end before she even walked in the door.
The last time she had walked this route, the sidewalks had been practically bare, leaving no buffer between her and Jameson, no camouflage to help her stay hidden. Now she pressed her way through the crowd she had wished for back then, some people propelling her forward as they shoved ahead, others almost crashing into her as they hurried in the opposite direction.
Past the antique shop. Past the spot where she had caught Heather following her. Past the restaurant Jameson had dragged her into. She checked for Heather every couple of minutes, glancing over her shoulder, eyeing reflections in the windows. Another minute slipped by, and more followed, outrunning her at this turtle’s pace.
The crowd only grew thicker as she followed the route Jameson had shown her. She mumbled apologies as she pushed her way through. Just three blocks to the bookstore. Just two blocks. Almost there.
A block away from the bookstore, the crowd stopped moving. People pressed in close to each other, all facing away from her, filling the air with hushed babble as they strained forward to see… what?
No. A strange hollow feeling spread through her chest instead of panic. It’s not them. It’s not them.
A strange smell, acrid and thick, hung in the air.