“Fine.” I sighed. “It’s a bad idea, Mr. Preachy-Pants.”
He bowed. “I am quite intelligent myself, even if I don’t have the entire Internet memorized.”
I snapped a twig from the tree and threw it at him. “I don’t have the Internet memorized. Just the encyclopedia.”
“Ah. Then perhaps I might someday approach your level of brilliantness.”
A branch cracked behind us.
We whipped around. Crap. Why had we stayed here? We were right in the path of someone coming to the protest from the tramstop.
“Gena? What are you doing?”
Oh no. It was Dom.
He weaved through the trees. Cora trailed him, her arms wrapped around her chest. What the devil was Cora doing out, let alone here? And what the devil was I going to say to them?
I drummed my fingers on my legs. “Um, hi guys.”
Cora’s eyes flickered away from the mob. Her gaze darted between Kalan and me. His unfamiliar face. His lack of Link buzz. Nobody was going to miss it.
It took Dom another two seconds. He dropped to a crouch, his muscles flexing. Kalan was strong, too, but Dom was stockier and had several years of tae kwon do to back him up.
“Who is this?” Dom demanded. “Did he drag you out here?”
“No! Do I look like I’m being dragged?” I edged forward, getting between them. Knowing Dom, he’d rush Kalan without warning.
“Gena, this isn’t . . . is it him?” Cora sounded aghast.
“I’m Kalan.” He put his palms up in front of him. “I’m her friend, I’m not going to hurt her.”
Stupid boy! Shut your big mouth!
Cora shied away, like his voice could strike more memories from her Links. “He’s Populace,” she whispered. “You trusted . . . him to find my Link?”
My stomach tightened. “He’s a good guy, he really wants to help—”
“Help?” Dom snorted. “They’re the ones who stole Links in the first place!”
“He isn’t!”
“You lied to me.” Cora’s eyes widened. “I was just your cover, wasn’t I? You told me you were hunting the Link thief so I’d cover your tracks. And all you were doing was . . .” Her face twisted in anger. “Him.”
“What? Cora, that’s insane—”
She laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. “That’s me, crazy all around. All you had to do to get away from me was lie, and lie, and LIE.”
“That’s not true, you’re my best friend!” I stepped toward her.
“You’re not. You’re not my friend.” She clenched her fists. “Don’t ever talk to me again. You’ve never been my friend at all. You’re a traitor to all of us, every single Mementi.”
“You’re wrong, Cora, I swear I’m—”
“You’re working with the enemy!” Cora cried, pointing at Kalan. “You’re nothing but a nasty, traitorous little slut!”
The words pierced my heart like a bee sting. She should know I’d never betray her. But she didn’t, not anymore. Two years of our friendship was a lot to lose—maybe too much for her to trust me.
Cora shook, and Dom stepped in front of her. “How could you do this?”
His shout rang loud through the trees. My eyes darted to the crowd that seemed a little too near. If they learned a Populace was on their side of the lawn, they’d rush us. My foot tapped out a rhythm in the grass. Cora’s angry, twisted face tore at me.
Dom lowered his head, ready to charge. “He’s POPULACE!”
Several people in the crowd squinted our way, lifting hands against the glare of the sun. Time to bolt.
Except I couldn’t leave Cora like this. Not thinking I’d betrayed her.
“Cora—”
Kalan swore. “Gena, we’ve gotta move it!”
A group from the mob ran toward us, faces red from the sun and their anger. Dom lunged. His arm swung toward me in an arc, and I barely managed to duck. He stumbled.
“Here,” he yelled, gathering himself for another attack. “Populace hiding in the trees.”
I scrambled away. The riot group rushed forward and Kalan swore. He grabbed my gloved hand, yanking me into a run. My heart beat too fast to protest the touch. Running, panting, I clutched at him. We ran. Toward the building. Toward the people coming to pound us.
What in the name of all holiness was he doing?
We flew past them. They skidded to a stop, losing their momentum in the confusion.
Smart boy.
The rest of the mob loomed ahead. Bodies shifted, turned. A sea of faces glared. Notgoodnotgoodnotgood, my feet pounded out.
“Kalan!” I screamed.
The bigger mob surged like a giant arm reaching for us. Kalan swerved and wrenched my arm. We dashed toward the line of guards surrounding the building. Black batons waved in the sunlight. Cops brandished cans of mace.
The crowd engulfed us as we reached the guard line. Gloved hands tore at my clothes and hair. The Link buzz swelled in my head, spinning my already shaky world. Batons rained down. Fabric and bodies crushed around my face. All I knew was running and clawing and pushing and my hand in Kalan’s.
Then the crushing was gone. Air, free of sweat and fear, whistled as I sucked it into my lungs. Screams and the thump of batons drove my feet across the grass. Kalan held onto me.
The comfort of shade overwhelmed me as we rounded one of the wings of the building. I tripped on a tree root, falling to the ground. Kalan fell beside me. We knelt on the grass, gasping.
“Gena.”
His arms brushed my shoulders, wound around me. My head collapsed on his chest. The rough rhythm of his breathing matched mine, an intimate kind of pas de deux that bound us together.
Touch. I jolted back. The move unbalanced me, and I fell to my butt. My adrenaline-soaked body shook.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped. “I’m sorry.”
“I forgot,” Kalan said, leaning forward on hands and knees. “The no-touching thing, I forgot, are you okay?”
“Yeah. You?”
He nodded.
We sat against the wall of the building, catching our breath. I drummed the grass in a syncopated rhythm, counting out the beats. This was a big deal. But the drumming still helped soothe the panic from our mad dance of escape. The noise of the crowd rumbled around the corner. No one had followed us. Maybe the guards hadn’t noticed we’d gotten past them.
The sound of voices made us both jump. Not again, I couldn’t run like that again . . .
“It’s not the mob,” Kalan whispered. “It’s coming from over there.”
The grass sloped down to our left, ending at a short concrete wall. We crawled to it and peered over. Below and to the right, more security guarded a cement ramp that descended from the street into a parking garage. An olive-green car idled on the ramp below us. Voices echoed from the garage.
“Shipping guys, maybe?” Kalan whispered. “I applied for a job as one, but Dad didn’t want me doing deliveries so far out.”
“Out where?” I asked.
“Everywhere. They have stores around the country. They donate to places like Alzheimer’s care facilities, too.”
Dozens of patients whose minds were wasting away, still able to enjoy and share dim memories on Happenings Memos. I frowned. I didn’t want evil Liza Woods to do good things.
The voices grew louder. Someone stepped from the garage into the sunlight. My breath caught.
It was Liza Woods herself.
I leaned over the cement barrier. She really did look sick. Her short black hair was wispy, her bronze face thin. Not as pretty as her pictures. The crisp business suit hung off her in some places while clinging oddly in others. She half-marched, half-shuffled to the car like an aging general, not the forty-something queen of business she was.
“It wasn’t smart to come,” said a voice from the shadows. A familiar voice. “I shouldn’t be seen here, and there are too many people around who can recognize you now. You still haven’t perfected—”
“I know
,” she snapped in a low, gravelly voice. “I don’t need reminders. Let’s go. I can’t be late for this meeting, and I still need to change.”
“You’ve got to cut back. It’s starting to show.”
My fingernails scraped the concrete through my gloves. That was his voice, all right. Detective Jackson.
Liza climbed in the car. “Shut up and set the driving parameters.”
Jackson glided from the shadows like a phantom. He took the driver’s seat and they sped off.
Jackson. Working clandestinely with Liza Woods and the Link thief. And what hadn’t Liza “perfected”?
Maybe something Blaire had had evidence of.
I was right. The rumors were right. Liza was involved in the Link thefts. And if we ran to the cops or the news or anyone at all, the entire Mementi side of town would tear Happenings down granite stone by granite stone.
Suddenly, the murmur of the mob behind us roared into a frenzy. Kalan and I ducked below the wall. Out on the street, past Happenings’ grounds, hordes of people rushed toward the Mementi side of town.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“Come on.”
We ran for the front of the building. I squeezed my sweaty hands into fists.
The police line had fractured. Only a few remained, and the Populace milled around in confusion. Papers swirled in the hot wind and abandoned signs littered the crushed and muddied grass. It looked like the aftermath of a war.
A group stood near the steps to the front entrance, and Kalan ran toward them. His church people. Every face focused on the newscast on the screen. My ears caught the audio feed that had been drowned out by the protesters.
“. . . largest attack launched from either side,” declared a newscaster. “First reports are coming in from reporters and local casters, and we expect to have grassroots footage any moment. Though some have suggested this could be an accident, the state-of-the-art fire controls seem to have been hacked and disabled. After earlier reports of police brutality focused on the non-Mementi citizens, an attack of this size is unsurprising. But this assault launched at the heart of Havendale’s Mementi people is truly tragic.”
Assault launched at our heart? I craned my head back, trying to get a better view. The screen behind the reporter lit up with a jarring video feed.
Lit up like a burning effigy, the Memoriam was engulfed in flames.
“No.” I lurched forward and fell to my knees. “No!”
The tall spiral blazed, its external mirrors shattered or blackened. The wooden blocks of our dead. Feeding the fire. Metal Links melting, wooden ones turning to smoke. Ashes of my family whirling, touching the ashes of other Mementi families. Perhaps we’d never been so close as now, when ashes mixed and burned to more ash.
I ripped my eyes from the screen. Thick smoke billowed into the clear eastern sky.
Grandma Piper. Scott, my grandfather. Jerod and Sophie, my mother’s parents who I only knew through their Memoriams and Mom’s stories. We’d had what no one ever did—a fragment of them, alive even after death.
And now they burned, my history and my family and my soul blackened and shriveled. Hot bile scalded my throat. Grandma. Gone again. The word echoed, a shriek that couldn’t escape my mouth. Gone forever.
If there was a God, this must be hell.
Kalan’s hand brushed my shoulder, a touch that scorched through my shirt.
“Gena.”
My chest shuddered.
“My dad’s taking everybody home. We need to get you somewhere safe.”
“They . . .” I could barely speak. “How could they . . .”
“I’m so sorry.”
I wished tears would fall onto my scalding cheeks. Water to cool the heat that seared me. My eyes stayed dry.
Kalan’s fingers took my gloved ones, and I clung to him. I barely noticed that he led me to the tramstop. We rode north, alone on the tram. Outside, the black smoke of my past wafted skyward, vanishing in the clouds.
17
And in my heart, if calm at all,
If any calm, a calm despair . . .
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam XI
My vending machine sandwich from the Observatory at Havendale Canyon tasted like stale ham and cheese, but ash filled my mind. Flakes that fell from the sky, staining concrete and grass and upturned faces with the twice-burned bodies of my grandparents.
I turned on my Sidewinder and projected the holo from the metal picnic table. I didn’t want to know. I had to know anyway. A blinking number eleven in the corner made me pause. Eleven missed texts and calls from my parents. I sent them a text saying I was safe but wouldn’t be home for a while.
Boy, was I going to pay for that one.
My hands shook when I tapped over to a national newsfeed. No social network updates. I couldn’t face the pain of personal right now. In the top corner, a video played. Drake Matthews faced the camera, displaying a hologram of two sets of glowing Links. With his fingers, he drew out tiny balls of light—memories—from each one and tried to force them together. They resisted each other, like opposite ends of a magnet. I was glad I couldn’t hear his explanation of why memories didn’t merge well.
I scrolled to the impersonal headlines. MEMENTI LANDMARK BURNS AMID PROTESTS; MEMENTI MAUSOLEUM COLLAPSES DURING FIRE; THREE DEAD IN HAVENDALE RIOTS.
Three people dead? I’d been focused on the Memoriam, on the ones who were already dead. Now others had joined them. My finger trembled, and I tapped the headline. I couldn’t read the story. I scanned only for names.
Jansen Foster.
Lachlan Sandoval.
Trix Fairfax.
Kalan squeezed my shoulder, and I welcomed the distraction of his touch. I knew two of those names. The two who were Mementi. I turned off my Sidewinder and delved into memories of dead.
Lachlan. He did physics research at Ascalon. He was the brains behind the Low-G Club, actually. He had a four-year-old son, and his wife had had twins last year, girls with Lachlan’s red hair.
Trix. I’d seen her at the Beach a few times. She did some kind of work with music therapy and liked wearing scarves and gloves with butterflies on them.
I’d never spoken to either of them. We smiled and nodded, like everyone in Havendale smiled and nodded. Content that we knew enough about each other that it wasn’t necessary to actually know each other.
Facts made for lonely friends.
I had a real friend, though. Cora’s bitter face haunted me.
Text from Genesis Lee to Cora Julieta Medina, TDS 16:41:23/5-9-2084
Are you okay? I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Kalan. I swear we’re looking for the Link thief. Love you.
The reply came almost immediately.
Automated text, TDS 16:41:35/5-9-2084
CORA JULIETA MEDINA has rejected the following text: Are you okay? I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Kalan. I swear we’re looking for the Link thief. Love you.
I dropped my head to the table.
Kalan touched my arm. “To the canyon?”
We hiked through the heat of the dying afternoon. When the cool of my rocky tunnel closed over me, I didn’t feel the usual peace. Not even this place could heal me today. I passed the pool and the stunted tree. My toes edged right up to the cliff. The canyon wound into the distance, rocky cliffs waltzing with blue sky on a floor of green.
“What are you doing?” Kalan asked warily.
“Have you ever stood somewhere high and felt that urge to jump?” I said. The wind rushed up the side of the cliff, lifting loose strands of my hair in a tangled dance.
“It’s going to be okay, Gena. Look at me.”
“My dance teacher calls it l’appelle du vide. The call of the void. It’s the voice inside us that wants us to fall, to give up. I used to think it was something different. Something calling me to do all the things I wanted. To take a leap of faith. Now I think she’s right.”
The emptiness inside me yawned wide open.
“Genesis, I’m going to put my hands on your shoulders and pull you back, okay?” His strong hands cupped my shoulders. I stepped back.
“Tell me about the things you want,” he whispered in my ear.
He thought I was going to jump. That wasn’t what I wanted.
“I want . . .” I breathed in air that had swirled over the world and touched all the places I could go. It filled me, building me up again, calling to my favorite memories of far-off places I’d absorbed over the years. “I want everything.”
“Everything?”
“I want to dye my hair blue and play drums in a rock band. I want to be an astronaut and dance in the stars. I want to go to all the places in the world I’m not supposed to want to go, like Hong Kong and Paris and Tokyo and Tennessee.”
Kalan turned me around. Red rock framed the quirky smile on his face. “Tennessee?”
“My grandma was born in Nashville,” I said. “It’s number one on my list.”
“Well. I guess you don’t want much, do you?”
“Just the world.” I sighed. “And the Link thief.”
“I can still help you with that one.” His head moved closer to mine.
I nearly whispered the last thing I wanted—him.
“Tell me a story,” I whispered instead. “A nice one, without anything being destroyed.”
He smiled a little shyly and told me the story of Genesis.
* * *
We talked until the sky faded from blue to purple, sitting against the canyon wall. We should have talked about Liza and Jackson and what that meant. Instead, we tried to forget the entire awfulness of the day. Kalan told me about God creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh, and about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and about the snake that was really the devil that got them kicked out.
“Do you actually believe that stuff?” I asked.
He laughed and nudged me with his arm. I loved those little touches. The thrill of what had once been forbidden.
“You think I’m nuts,” he said.
Only a little. My thoughts drifted to the Memoriam. “Do you believe in heaven?”
His fingers felt for mine in the almost dark, and I took them. “And hell. But especially heaven.”
The Unhappening of Genesis Lee Page 17