Stealing Liberty

by Jennifer Froelich

  “Xoey!” I sweep the light through the darkness. When I hear a groan, I refocus the beam. “Can you hear me?”

  She moans again, but at least she’s moving — holding her hand up against the light. “My leg is stuck.”

  Adam comes back with some rope. It’s pathetic — dirty and worn, but it will have to do.

  “Lower me down,” I say.

  “No need.” Riley’s back and starts digging through the tools. “I found the basement door, I just need something to break it open.”

  “Let me,” Oliver says. “You help Reed.”

  I know what he’s thinking. Riley has plenty of spirit, but she’s too small for wielding pickaxes. She glares at me as Oliver heads off. No doubt this is my fault too.

  Sam stands at a distance, rocking on his heels. He hasn’t said much, but now he turns to Riley. “Will she be all right?”

  “We’re going to help—”

  Another loud crack interrupts her. I leap out of the way as another piece of floor gives way, this time carrying an entire bookcase down with it.

  “Xoey!” I yell.

  But it’s no use. I see nothing. I hear nothing.

  Chapter 11

  Xoey

  * * *

  I woke up too early this morning, but at least I was not screaming. My roommates are less and less sympathetic when I do. Except for Riley. Unexpectedly, she has been my sole defender. I assumed she disliked me because she hates Reed. Maybe I was wrong.

  Today is the first day of the week. The day my Lord rose from the dead. The day I needed to decide again how I would spend my morning: in a field, or in a closet.

  It feels like Director Kino wins, no matter what choice I make.

  Mom once told me the UDR created a new calendar when they signed their constitution fifty years ago. The months were the same, but the year was reset to zero and every month had three ten-day weeks instead of four seven-day weeks.

  “The new constitution said ‘free from religion’ after all,” Mom said. “Setting our calendar by God’s days of creation was considered archaic.”

  Mom said the leaders hoped people would lose track of Sunday and complete the process of transferring their faith from the Lord to the State. After five years, the project failed and they quietly reverted back to the Western Calendar, which even the UN recognizes as the international standard. With less than ten percent of the population practicing religion of any kind, they felt comfortable conceding to habit when they had won the battle against God.

  “They don’t understand the truth,” Mom said. “There is no victory without God.”

  Her words stuck with me this morning, so I set my feet toward the library. Anyway, I could not stomach the thought of Kino’s satisfaction if I did not show up.

  The days have grown bitterly cold. It seeps through my clothes and settles in strange places: between my toes and under my lips. This morning wind swirled through the courtyard and tugged at my shirtsleeves, stealing my breath. I saw the ghosts of the trees swaying in the wind, dropping golden leaves in a perfect path leading me to the library. Kino was waiting for me there, dressed in a beautiful black dress.

  “So pretty, yet so stubborn.” She touched my cheek. “Are you sure you want to go through this again, my dear?”

  My lips trembled. “Last week, you asked me why God did not come to save me.”

  “Yes, I did.” She squinted at the sky. “Has He come this time? Did I miss Him?”

  “Maybe He sent me to save you.”

  For just a moment her mirth faltered, then she rallied. “Do you know why we never took your Bibles away? Have you ever wondered?”

  “Because God’s Word stands forever.”

  “No, my dear. It’s because there was no need. Why go to the trouble of getting rid of a book no one bothers to read?”

  It was my turn to look away.

  “But since you are so devout,” she said, “I think I’ll be generous and give you two hours of worship this morning.”

  I did not fight Monica when she pushed me into the closet. But the darkness always gets to me at some point. Then I resorted to my basest fears: panicking, screaming, clawing at the door.

  Going back to the library to serve detention this afternoon was almost too much to bear.

  “Are you okay?” Adam asked when he found me on the front steps, praying for the will to go inside. His arrival just then felt like God’s answer.

  I nodded and followed him inside.

  Five minutes later I fell through the floor.

  Reed and Oliver shout my name. I blink, confused. Dust swirls around my head. Something heavy pins me down. I try to move and my left hip throbs in response. It must have absorbed the brunt of my fall.

  “I’m okay.” My voice is hoarse, barely a whisper. I don’t think they hear me. I try to move again, but I can’t.

  “Xoey!”

  Wood cracks again above my head. Dust trickles down and everything shakes. Something heavy falls through the floor. I scream, but no one hears me.

  The light is gone.

  I am being buried alive.

  I cry out in pain and the world goes dark.

  I wake up choking on dust. Fragments of shelving and shards of wood press against me on all sides. My right leg is pinned by something heavy and a sharp pain radiates from my ankle to my knee. I try to call for help, but my voice is weak, muffled.

  They will never find me.

  Panic swells in my throat. I scream and scream. I cannot stop. The world goes black again.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  I wake to darkness. My heart thuds against my throat. I am still alive then.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  The sound comes from someplace near my feet.

  “Xoey?” The voice is gentle. Oliver’s voice. “Can you hear me?”

  Oliver. My voice is raw and thin as a piece of thread, but he must hear me because he laughs. It is the best sound I have ever heard.

  “She’s alive!” he yells. “I can hear her!”

  Somewhere above me the rest of them laugh, clap, and cheer. For me. I blink back tears.

  “Oliver,” I whisper.

  “I’m here. Just stay still. We don’t want another cave-in.”

  I wish I could bottle what I feel when I hear his voice, but my panic is returning. The darkness is too much, wrapping around me like a burial cloak.

  Lord! I cannot do this alone anymore!

  He answers me with enough courage to say it out loud.

  “Oliver, I can’t handle the dark.” I say it so quietly, I am convinced he cannot hear me. “Oliver!”

  “Shh.” I see no light, feel no shifting of materials, but he sounds closer.

  How much danger has he put himself in to rescue me?

  “No, I need to talk,” I say. “Please.” I wait a few seconds. “Please.”

  “Okay. Just be as still as possible. I’m listening.”

  So I tell him about Kino’s closet. I tell him about my father’s closet. He never interrupts. When I finish, I take a deep breath. The air seems clearer. Yes! And there it is! A pinprick of light just past my right elbow.

  Tears of relief spring to my eyes.

  “Keep talking.” Oliver’s voice is just beyond the light. “Tell me something better. Something that makes you happy.”

  “You mean aside from this moment? Hearing your voice, seeing your light?”

  He laughs. “Did you just make falling through the floor and having a bookshelf land on top of you into a happy moment?”

  I smile in the darkness. A moment later, I speak again. “I remember singing.”

  I think back to Sundays, when my mom and I met with our off-the-grid congregation of believers. We sang together. I miss it, I realize. I miss singing.

  “So sing to me,” Oliver says.

  I feel my cheeks turning red. “I’m not sure I can.”

  “Listen. This is going to take a while.” He grunts. “Did you ever play that game as a kid, what was
it called… Blockbust? The one where you had to click on different shapes to remove them from a pile so you could reach the prize underneath?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s pretty much what I’m doing right now, except it’s not on a tablet and, well, you’re the prize. We don’t want you getting buried beneath the rubble if I choose badly.”

  Suddenly I imagine something worse. What if the weight of debris is transferred from my spot to his? What if Oliver is crushed?

  “Can anyone help you?”

  “Oh, they’re helping,” he says. “I’ve got them working hard. Adam is down by my feet, taking whatever I hand him and passing it along to Sam, whose probably building something amazing with it, knowing him. He’s also passing me tools and boards for bracing.”

  He grunts again.

  “And he can pull you out if it starts to cave in?”

  “Yeah, he won’t let me get buried alive. He’s a bit attached to me.” Oliver laughs. “Literally, I mean. He insisted on tying a rope around my ankle.”

  “Oh. That’s good.”

  “Meanwhile, Riley and Reed are upstairs. They’re napping, I think.” He says this last bit at top volume and I hear Reed’s muffled reply: indignant, though incomprehensible from somewhere above me.

  Oliver laughs. “No, they are moving pieces off the pile up there, playing their own game of Blockbust so we don’t have another cave-in from above.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have been more careful where I stepped. Thank everyone for me, if—”

  “Shh. No more talking,” Oliver says. “Just focus on the light and let me hear you sing.”

  For several minutes, I cannot screw up my courage, no matter how hard I try. But then the panic starts creeping in again.

  He is right. It could take a long time for him to dig me out. In the meantime, I do not want to lose control again. That would be even more embarrassing than singing for Oliver.

  I consider my options. The first song I think of is an old song my Mom used to sing to me. The more I think about it, the more it feels right for this moment. I clear my throat and sing:

  “Soft stillness,

  Restless sleep,

  Hold my hand,

  Worries keep.

  In the blackest ink of night,

  Wings rest softly,

  Take no flight,

  Stay, stay,

  Don’t leave me alone,

  The weight of this life,

  Makes me sink like a stone,

  Stay, stay,

  ‘Til morning burns bright,

  Don’t leave me alone on this darkest of nights—”

  A tiny spot of light bursts into brilliance, silencing me, blinding me until Oliver takes its place. It creates a halo around his head as he reaches for my hand.

  “I’m going to need you to stop singing now,” he says. “Adam’s so moved, he’s crying on my ankles.”

  Chapter 12

  Reed

  * * *

  We make an enormous mess.

  Riley and I are so focused on pulling debris away from the hole in the library floor, we don’t think about where we throw it. By the time we are done, every piece of shelving, every shard of wood is scattered to four corners. Dust and bits of insulation float in the air. Our hands are raw and bloody, but the center of the room is bare, revealing buckling floorboards around the hole where Xoey and the bookshelf fell through to the basement below. Great curving cracks on either side make the whole incident seem parenthetical — I guess it was, since she is alive and well, except for an injured foot. Oliver says a sturdy metal cabinet was the only thing keeping the second bookshelf from crushing her.

  Mr. Haak stomps in to grumble at us the next day. He slept through all the excitement, then got cranked by Kino for it. Somehow, it’s our fault.

  “Try and keep from killing anyone today,” he says. “Too many reports to file.”

  He walks away and I wink at Xoey. She stares back blandly, drugged up and sitting in a chair Oliver dragged over. She’s managed to thank us over and over again, but not much else. After Oliver pulled her out yesterday, he carried her to the Med Center where Mr. Vardelos set her broken ankle in an air cast. Luckily, he was sober. The cast did all the real work anyway, linking with Xoey’s nanochip and fitting itself to her fracture. She’ll be wearing it for a few weeks, but she is already hobbling around pretty well. Whenever she’s lucid, that is. I had to do some creative storytelling to get Kino to let her stay. She wanted to ship her out as soon as she found out she was injured.

  “Don’t,” I said last night when an automated message through my tragus implant summoned me to her office. “I’m on to something with Oliver Penn and Adam Quincy and I don’t want to mess it up.”

  “Something like what?”

  “I don’t know!” I feigned exasperation. “It’s not like they talk about it out loud. They’re not dumb. They know they are being monitored. But they exchange looks sometimes I’m learning to interpret — and hand signals.”

  “Hand signals?”

  “I think they might be using some kind of code.”

  “What code?”

  “Something to do with the tackle league. Sometimes they talk about players and statistics that don’t make sense to me.” I offered her my tablet. “I’ve been keeping notes, trying to figure out the cipher. Do you want to see?”

  She shook her head and waved it away. “So what does Xoey Stone have to do with it? Is she involved with one of the boys?”

  “No!” I answered too quickly, but her question scares me. If Kino ever gets the idea one of them has a thing for Xoey, she’ll exploit it.

  ‘No,” I said again. “I don’t think so, but I’m missing something about the cipher — maybe even the key. If you break up the detention crew now, they’ll just clam up. I need more time to figure it out.”

  Kino just stared out the window while I stood there like an idiot. Had I protected them, or put them in more danger with my lies?

  I’m knee-deep in this, but every time I see my mom on Kino’s wall, my desperation grows. She wouldn’t want me doing this — lying, spying. I know that. She’d tell me to let her die rather than betray my new friends. If Floodlight has taught me anything, it’s the women I come from are fierce warriors who would rather go down fighting than begging.

  But she’s my mom, and I already lost her once. Kino knows this. It’s why she plays games with her food, though I still haven’t figured out how a school principal has this kind of power. She strings me along, so I’ll string her along too. For as long as I can.

  “All right.” She swiveled in her chair. “You can have a few more days. But figure it out quickly.”

  I nodded and headed for the door.

  “And Reed?”

  I stopped, but didn’t turn around. I can only wear the mask for so long.

  “I will take action soon, with or without your help. Let’s not let your mother get caught in the crossfire.”

  Zak was outside her door, ready, like always, to take the brunt of my anger in stride. Last night, I controlled it.

  “Tell me about your family’s farm.”

  He shot me a strange, sideways glance, then shrugged. “It’s a couple hundred miles east of the Western Sand. My mother’s family owned it for generations before nationalization.”

  “What’d you grow?”

  “Carrots.”

  “Seriously? Carrots?”

  “More than could fill a grocery store, back in the day. I’ve seen pictures of my granddad as a kid, standing next to truck beds filled with carrots. Overflowing, actually.”

  I’ve never seen a grocery store more than a quarter full of food, so I have a hard time picturing so many carrots in one place. I wanted to ask him again what his parents did to send him here, but knew he wouldn’t tell me. Besides, we had reached the dorms.

  “You have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No,” Zak said. “Not anymore.”

  The draft goes wel
l. It’s been a nice diversion, putting my players through their practice programs. I programmed Luna to keep track of their specs, reading them back to me at night when I have trouble sleeping. Riley’s players end up on the same team as mine, so I guess they won’t hurt me after all, except during scrimmage. But Adam and Oliver are on different teams, so we talk a lot of smack in the fields and in the library.

  We just finished the potato harvest. In the munitions plant, we’re out of the wind, at least, but it’s almost as cold inside as outside. And while no one worried about us sneaking potatoes out of the fields, we are closely monitored in the plant — even weighed as we enter and exit.

  It doesn’t take long to learn how to make bullets. I’m getting used to the feel of copper, lead, and brass in my hands. It bothers me, though, holding ammunition UDR soldiers will use to kill members of the Resistance.

  Our detention crew spends the next week clearing everything from the first floor and throwing it out the east windows. It becomes a game — trying to hit the dumpster, with points lost for every scrap that lands in the parking lot instead. Xoey keeps score and insists on helping where she can — pushing a broom, handing us out-of-reach tools. Oliver keeps trying to get her to sit down, but I talk him out of it.

  “If she’s useless, she’s expendable. Kino will send her away — to somewhere much worse than this.”

  No one is happy when we move to the basement, which we didn’t even know we would have to clear. Our cleanup slows down drastically. There are no windows down here — no easy way to get rid of the rubble or avoid the noxious air. We devise a system — loading debris on stable sections of broken paneling, then dragging it across the floor to an ancient elevator, which carries it up to the first floor. Then we drag it out and unload it through the windows. By then, we’re usually too tired to care if it hits the sides of the dumpster.

  Kino was off campus last weekend. Zak tells me she flies out once a month for meetings. During her absence, I notice our teachers seem happier. I overheard someone say they take turns heading into town every night to unwind at Dinah’s Place. I haven’t seen her since she returned, but any day now she’s going to call me to her office and ask for a report. I have nothing to tell her. I only hope the recent outbreak of food poisoning among the Short Timers will keep her busy for a few days.