Rebel

by Rachel Manija Brown

  The rest of the seals followed as Ross’s seal caught up to Paco’s.

  “This is amazing!” Ross shouted. “How did you know about this?”

  “Yuki taught me. He used to ride dolphins. The way he described them, they’re sort of like seals and sort of like big fish. They live in the deep ocean.” Paco glanced over his shoulder at the open sea beyond, as if he was imagining Yuki out there.

  Ross looked back for Summer. He bet she wouldn’t be bored by this. Maybe she’d take off her jacket and swim in her clothes to ride a seal. But Kerry and Summer were nowhere to be seen, and were still gone by the time he returned to the beach.

  He went back to town, collected the oil cart, and headed for the schoolhouse, hoping to find Jennie making lesson plans. Ross found her alone in the schoolyard instead, doing pull-ups on the monkey bars. She’d taken off her jacket, leaving her arms bare. Ross admired her shoulder muscles as they worked under her smooth dark skin. His breath caught as he remembered that he could touch that skin any time he wanted. All he needed to do was ask. Or say yes . . .

  Then Jennie saw him. Her intent expression melted into to a welcoming smile as she dropped down.

  “Come with me?” Ross asked.

  “Sure.” Jennie fell in step beside him, and they headed along the street.

  During the long walk from the beach, Ross had been thinking about how to word his request. “Jennie, you have a lot of siblings.”

  She grinned. “You noticed!”

  He grinned back, then pushed on, still unsure. “I know your family fosters kids whose own families kicked them out when they Changed. Or for other reasons.”

  Her smile faded. “Do you want Ma and Pa to foster Summer?”

  Ross loved that idea—for about two seconds. “No. She’s my responsibility. And I don’t think she’d do it. But I’ve seen how everybody gets along so well at your house. How do you do that?”

  “It’s Ma and Pa, mostly. They never get angry. Even when the kid is. Especially when the kid is. Pa told me after Yolanda came that anger comes from the grief of betrayal. And anger only begets anger. The deeper it goes, the more dangerous it is.”

  Ross grimaced. “Summer is angry, all right, but I don’t know if she’s been betrayed. Though she acts like I betrayed her. Dr. Lee thinks something bad happened, something she’s hiding. Have you ever had anybody like her?”

  “Once,” Jennie said thoughtfully. “It was when Yuki came.”

  “Yuki was like Summer?” Ross couldn’t think of two people with less in common. Except, he supposed, for their long black hair.

  “It wasn’t that Yuki was like Summer, but that he was the one kid my parents couldn’t get through to. Even with angry kids like Yolanda used to be, at least we all knew each other already. None of us could even speak Yuki’s language. Everyone he knew was dead or gone, and we had no idea what had happened to him.”

  Ross could almost imagine that. For half his life, everyone he’d known had been dead or gone. But at least most places he’d gone, he could understand what people were saying. His sister, too, must have believed she’d lost everyone she’d ever known.

  “Summer never said how she ended up here,” Ross said, stepping on to Grandpa Guzik’s back porch. “Sometimes she talks like Mom had her the whole time, but sometimes it sounds like she was alone in the desert, like me. When I ask her, she gets mad. I guess with Yuki, he told you everything as soon as you could understand each other.”

  “Not really.” Jennie hefted the stinky jug of old oil Grandpa Guzik had left on the porch. Ross replaced it with a clean one. “Yuki picked up English and Spanish pretty quick. But he never fit into our family. The harder Ma and Pa tried to make him feel welcome, surrounding him with people, giving him lots of affection, the more he retreated. He’d do what he was told, but as soon as he was done, he’d shut himself in his room or go to the beach and stare out at the sea.”

  Ross hauled the cart between the longhouses along Jackalope Lane. He could imagine how tough it had been for Yuki to be in the Rileys’ crowded kitchen, no matter how friendly everyone was. “How did he end up with the Lowensteins?”

  “I got the measles,” Jennie said. “Dr. Lee said if Yuki had never been exposed to it before, it could be really dangerous for him to catch it. Meredith had already had it, so he moved in with the Lowensteins. It turned out that he did a lot better when people weren’t constantly trying to talk to him and pat him on the shoulder. Ms. Lowenstein’s way of making him feel welcome was to give him a crossbow. Meredith’s way was to set up a target in the back yard and start shooting, so he could join in if he wanted to and not if he didn’t. For Yuki, the way to get him to come to you was to back off.”

  “Do you think I should back off with Summer?” Ross asked.

  Jennie smiled. “I think you’ve already tried that. I was thinking more of how different Yuki was at our house and at the Lowensteins’. He wasn’t a different person, he just needed a new environment. Actually, there’s another thing he and Summer have in common. Sort of. They’re not good with crowds. Yuki just didn’t like them. But they seem to inspire Summer to put on her worst behavior.”

  “That’s true,” Ross said slowly. “She can be a lot calmer when it’s one on one. She seems . . . normal . . . when she’s with Kerry.”

  Jennie snapped her fingers. “What about taking her to prospect in the desert? Even one afternoon alone together outside of Las Anclas might make a big difference.”

  “That’s a good idea. I’ll ask her.”

  He was still thinking about it when he lugged the laden cart into Mia’s yard. Getting away had always been his first defense. Maybe that was one way that Summer was like him.

  Mia’s head popped out through the cottage window. “Ross!” She leaned out further, looking around shiftily. “You’re alone,” she added with relief that she couldn’t quite hide. “Come on in!”

  Ross glanced up at the yo on its pulley. Mia turned red.

  Before things could get awkward, Ross said, “I know you and Summer don’t get along. Summer and I don’t get along. But Jennie thought that might change if I took her out of Las Anclas.”

  “Oh, right, I heard Summer talking about that in the schoolyard, when I was fixing the water pump.”

  Alarmed, Ross said, “You couldn’t have. I haven’t asked her yet. What did she say?”

  “She didn’t say she was going with you. She said she was going to go on a snake hunt. You know, for giant rattlesnakes. Half the kids volunteered to go with her.”

  Angry kids might be dangerous, but bored ones were even worse. Ross had to take his sister out of town before she got in even more trouble. He’d ask her as soon as Kerry brought her back. But even an overnight prospecting trip would just postpone her terrible snake hunt to the next day.

  Then he got a better idea. “Hey, Mia, wasn’t your dad telling us the Catalina Players would be in the Saigon Alliance around now?”

  Mia nodded, looking puzzled. “Yeah, they go up and down all those coast towns for Lunar New Year. We used to be one of their stops. Not any more, of course.”

  “That’s perfect. How would you like to see them again?”

  Her lips parted in astonishment, as if taking a trip out of Las Anclas had never occurred to her. Maybe it hadn’t. Ross still wasn’t used to the idea that people here didn’t just pick up and leave whenever they wanted to. Or had to.

  “I’d love to!” Mia said belatedly.

  “I want to take Summer,” Ross warned her. “She keeps talking about how boring it is here with no theater. But I’d ask Jennie, too. And maybe Kerry, if she wants to come along. Summer likes her.”

  And she doesn’t like anyone else, Ross thought.

  “Isn’t that a crowd?” Mia’s smile was completely unconvincing.

  “A small one. With two of your friends. Look,” he said, lowering his voice. “You and I might have better luck being alone than in town. No one seems to have anything better to do here than bang
down your door.”

  Though they’d only been interrupted twice, Mia had gotten so nervous about it happening again that they’d spent all their subsequent dates at Luc’s or working at the cottage with the door open so she could see if anyone was coming.

  Mia brightened. “Yeah. And hey, I could take my cloud viper gun!”

  “Cloud viper gun?” Ross echoed, baffled.

  “Yes!” Mia whipped a cloth from her work table and snatched up a gun. It was the smallest pistol he’d ever seen, almost toy-like. But it fit Mia’s hands perfectly. “It paralyzes people with darts filled with cloud viper venom. That is, I hope it does. I still have to test it. But I could do that now that you’re here!”

  “You want to test it on me?” There was a lot Ross would do for Mia, but the thought of being paralyzed—trapped inside his own body—made his palms sweat.

  “No, no, of course not.” Mia grabbed his shoulders and moved him into the center of the room. “Just stand here.”

  Ross moved obediently, looking for the target as she raised the pistol.

  “It doesn’t use anywhere near as much gunpowder as it would if it fired bullets, because the darts are fragile,” Mia explained. “They’re filled with liquid, you see. Okay, watch this.”

  Before Ross could react, she shot herself in the arm.

  Her eyes rolled back into her head, and she started to topple. He lunged forward and caught her. Her body was stiff as a board. His heart pounding, he laid her down on the floor and put his ear to her chest. She was breathing as deeply and evenly as if she were asleep.

  He gently tugged the pistol from her rigid fingers and laid it on the bed beside the engine parts. Then he took her hand, rubbing it and wondering if he ought to run and fetch Dr. Lee. But he was afraid to leave her. What if she stopped breathing? And he wouldn’t be able to get her out the door, stiff as she was.

  Her fingers twitched. Ross laid her hand down, and watched as her toes wriggled, then her head turned. The paralysis was wearing off, though not fast enough for Ross. He didn’t relax until Mia smiled up at him and said, “I hope I didn’t drool.”

  “No, but you should have warned me! You keeled over like a tree falling. I hope you tested that on an animal first.”

  Mia didn’t seem to hear him as she scrabbled for her pocket watch.

  “Ah! Three minutes for a one hundred pound person. But most people are bigger than me. And it needs to knock out the largest people for at least one minute to be useful, so I’d better double the dose.” She glanced at Ross as if she’d suddenly remembered that he had spoken. “Oh, it wouldn’t have been practical to test it on an animal. My cats only weigh a few pounds. Too risky. Even a tiny overdose might kill them.”

  “You should have tested it on a—a cow, or something.”

  Mia shook her head. “How would you know if a cow was paralyzed? They never move anyway!”

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Kerry

  The horses and Ross’s little burro plodded southward alongside the broken slabs of the ancient road.

  Kerry wiped a trickle of sweat from her forehead. Each of their three days of travel had been hotter than the last. Ross had given Summer her knives back as soon as they’d left, and they’d all ridden out watching for danger. So far, they’d scared off two coyote packs that had wanted horse for lunch, and avoided half a dozen pit mouths. But those moments of excitement had been brief and separated by long stretches of boredom.

  When Kerry had said as much, Ross had commented, “That’s desert life for you.”

  “Yours might have been boring,” Summer had retorted. “Mine was non-stop adventure! Have I told you about the monster I fought in an alkali lake? Well, it’s not there anymore, not after it met me! We—I was riding along . . .”

  There was that we again. But in the entire long and clearly imaginary tale of tentacles and underwater battles that followed, Summer never again let a clue slip about her mysterious companion.

  Kerry mostly rode beside Mia, enjoying her chatter about explosives and weapons and dancing dresses. But by the end of the third day, in which nothing happened but a whole lot of riding, even Mia and Summer had fallen silent.

  Kerry stifled a yawn and tried to think of something amusing.

  For instance, how desperate the town council must have been to get rid of Summer and buy a week or so of peace in Las Anclas. Apparently they’d agreed to the trip almost as fast as it had been proposed. Kerry hadn’t been at the meeting, but Sheriff Crow had told her friend Ms. Lowenstein all about it. Meredith had overheard, then reported the story to the martial arts group.

  Grandma Wolfe had reminded the council of Mr. Horst’s election promise to invite the Catalina Players back to Las Anclas, and suggested that this would be a perfect opportunity. Meredith passed on Sheriff Crow’s vivid description of Mr. Horst’s sour look as everyone else (except the mayor, who abstained, and Mr. Preston, who no longer had a vote) instantly endorsed that idea.

  The martial arts group had whooped and clapped. But Kerry hadn’t forgotten that except for Dr. Lee and Sheriff Crow, that same town council had once voted to execute her. Kerry hoped they’d all go for a swim the next time a queen lobster decided to pay a visit.

  She scanned the barren sands for something interesting. Nothing moved but heat waves. Summer looked ready to pass out from boredom. Mia’s eyes were glazed. Kerry bet that for the first time in her life, Mia had run out of new weapons to imagine. Ross and Jennie were clearly keeping a lookout for danger, but even they seemed to be struggling to stay focused.

  Which reminded Kerry of something that did amuse her: watching Ross trying to juggle two girlfriends and a little sister who made loud retching noises if she so much as caught him holding hands.

  If anyone had been mean or jealous, it wouldn’t have been funny. Kerry had grown up watching her father’s many wives subtly jostling for power for themselves and their children. Ross and Mia and Jennie were nothing like that. It was just a hilariously awkward situation, and in ways Kerry was sure Ross hadn’t envisioned when he’d planned the trip.

  For instance, the nightly game of musical bedrolls. When they camped the first night, Kerry set her bedroll near the fire. Ross waited for Summer to lay hers down, then put his next to hers, no doubt meaning to be close enough to protect her should something attack in the night. Summer instantly picked up her bedroll and dumped it beside Kerry’s, as far from Ross as possible. Jennie, with cool poise, set hers down next to Ross’s before going to check for desert creatures.

  Mia laid down her bedroll on Ross’s other side. They glanced at each other, then reached out. Their fingertips brushed, and then—

  “BAAAARF,” Summer announced.

  Mia and Ross yanked their hands back like they’d been burned. And that was the last touching either of them attempted that night. Jennie never even tried.

  The next morning, Ross said he’d go get firewood. Jennie went with him. They were gone for an hour and returned with wood they could have gathered in ten minutes. Ross was flushed under his brown skin, with a silly little grin. Jennie, of course, was completely deadpan.

  That night, Summer pawed through their food. “Why is everything so gross? Ugh! This jerky makes me want to puke!”

  Mia stared at intensely at Ross, then informed him in a squeak that she’d get the firewood. He got up and followed her. Fifteen minutes later, they were back, both looking uncomfortable.

  “Finally!” Summer declared, fists propped on her scrawny hips. “Did you walk back to Las Anclas? How’d you miss all those dry branches right over there?”

  Mia blushed scarlet. To distract them both, Kerry said, “I wonder what’s at the end of the road. The desert can’t go on forever.”

  “I was expecting something more like the ruined city,” Mia said wistfully, laying her bedroll next to Ross’s. “Not exactly like it, of course. Just interesting and different. But we haven’t seen anything yet that we don’t have right outside of Las Anclas. Pit mouths, coyotes, j
umping cactus, vampire trees. It’s like a three-day patrol.”

  “It’ll change soon,” Jennie promised as she pitched her bedroll in an expert snap of her wrist on Ross’s other side. “There’s a reason nobody lives here: no water. Things should change once we hit our first stream.”

  “When do I get to ride Sally?” Summer demanded. “I ride better than any of you. Except Kerry, of course.”

  Calmly, Jennie said, “You get your turn with Sally tomorrow if you do your part with camp chores tonight.”

  “Like?” Summer crossed her arms belligerently.

  “How about feeding the horses?”

  “That’s no chore!” Summer sprang to Rusty’s side. She clucked to the little burro as she rifled through the luggage, then triumphantly produced the feedbags. “That’s fun! I thought you’d make me get firewood.”

  “Ross and I will do that,” Jennie said.

  As Ross and Jennie took off, Mia began shredding jerky for soup. Kerry watched Summer long enough to see that she was doing an excellent job with the horses, then excused herself to check for tarantulas. Once she was out of earshot, she let herself laugh. Jennie obviously had plenty of experience dodging siblings at the “romance is gross” stage, but it looked as if Mia would have to wait for her turn with Ross till they were back in Las Anclas.

  * * *

  The next morning, they woke to a low gray sky that promised rain. Summer roused them by banging pots and pans, yelling, “Wake up!” Bang, clatter! “Let’s eat as we ride. The jerky doesn’t taste any better fried, now that we’re out of potatoes.”

  Nobody objected, so they set off. Kerry didn’t mind eating on the road, especially when all they had was hard jerky and harder trail biscuits. Hills loomed in the distance, but otherwise the terrain was the same as it had been all along: a black road with weeds sprouting from every crack, and bleak desert stretching infinitely to either side.

  She worried off a strand of jerky. If she’d been home, cooks would have accompanied them and made pancakes and coffee.