Renegade Red

by Lauren Bird Horowitz

  “Your parents are in love with you. You don’t need to blow off steam. Plus, you have Jeremy!”

  “But that’s precisely why I need you. He’s been acting … a little weird. Jumpy. I can’t figure it out. I need your girl-dar.”

  “He just asked you to the ball—”

  “I know, but trust me. He has these moments lately, I don’t know if he’s been toking too much or what. It’s like he … thinks he’s somewhere else. He, like, zones out, or randomly shivers. It’s weird.”

  Noa bit her lip. He’s not the only one.

  “All right,” Olivia finally sighed dramatically, realizing she wouldn’t win. “I guess I’ll go see if Annabelle wants to be my wingwoman. I simply cannot face Carly Ann and the new Fools alone.”

  “See how resourceful you are? Good for you!” Noa teased.

  “Please. I’m gonna get enough butt kissing tomorrow when my adult fan club arrives for Parents’ Weekend.” Olivia huffed from the room, the door shutting behind her.

  Noa froze. For the briefest fraction of a second, had the door just … flickered? Noa reached out to touch the wood. Solid and smooth.

  Noa pressed her palms flat on her desk, counted deep breaths in and out. She needed to calm herself, refind her center, which was the real reason she hadn’t wanted to go to the party with Olivia. Something had begun uncurling in her rib cage, an urge she knew she had to fight—something awakened in the library. She’d felt this urge before, an animal rising in her stomach, prowling up into her chest—but it had frightened her so much she’d never talked about it, not even to Olivia. She’d tried to smother it, lock it away.

  It was getting harder.

  Especially today.

  Almost not of its own accord, Noa’s body got up, went to kneel beside her bed. She’d bought something once from Annabelle, just in case, the first time she’d felt this inner-beast. She’d hidden her purchase immediately, tried desperately to forget it was there—but now it drew her to it, a fiery magnet. Noa’s back bent parallel to the floor; her arms reached beneath the bed and her hands pulled up the loose floorboard. Her fingers dipped into the secret vacancy—and pulled out the crisp, cream journal.

  Hands trembling, Noa lifted the little book to her face, fanned the pages, breathed in the scent of paper waiting to be filled.

  Stop! her brain screamed. It is forbidden!

  But Noa didn’t stop. The smell, the feel, intoxicated; she was drunk with pages white, thirsting for ink. She ran her fingers down the journal’s open spine, across its faces, felt the currents humming beneath the leaves. Then somehow she was on her feet, at her desk, deep-black pen leaping up into her hand. Its body burned against her fingers, tip humming hotly to meet the page.

  Noa swept onto her bed, opened the journal, creased down the inside cover, relishing the hiss and whisper as it bent. She lifted the pen, black star tip poised above the white—

  —and Noa began to write.

  • • •

  Noa had never read a poem. She knew what a poem was because it was forbidden, part of the list of things they had all memorized, of things they must never, ever make or even see. The Otec had forbidden these things—these “arts”—for their own safety. Arts invited imagination, a force that could destroy them all.

  But even though Noa had never read a poem, had never even seen one, somehow she knew, from the very soles of her feet up through the tip of every blond hair, that a poem was what she was about to write.

  A poem. A message. To the one Noa felt but could not see, the one Noa knew but did not know. The one Noa remembered, but in no memory.

  Girl, she called it, in mind, in ink. My poem to the Girl.

  Nib touched paper, and words spilled from Noa’s veins, giving blood and flesh to what was too wet for mind to hold. Noa wrote, rewrote, wrote anew, tried to form skins and eyes and bones to shape the figment—and finally stopped, panting. An hour had passed; sweat beaded at her neck. Her fingertips traced her cheeks and found them wet. She realized she’d been crying.

  That’s when the suite door opened.

  “Jeremy got super freaked-out when he was drunk, I had to take him home—” Olivia broke off immediately, turned and slammed the door. She ran to Noa’s side, knelt beside her. “Are you okay? What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” She frantically scanned Noa’s face and neck—then saw the open journal in Noa’s lap.

  Her fear turned instantly to panic.

  “What have you done?” Olivia cried, ripping the journal from Noa’s hands and flinging it onto the floor. It slid, still open, to the corner, fresh ink still exposed. Olivia grabbed Noa’s ink-stained hands, as if to heal them with her own. But that’s absurd, Noa thought. No one can heal through touch.

  “Noa, please, we have to hide this!” Olivia was pleading. “Where did you get it? What were you thinking? They’ll send you to him for this, to the Man with White Hands!”

  Noa tried to focus, but she still felt outside her body. She pulled her hands free, dug her nails as hard as she could into her forearms, wanting pain to force herself back inside her limbs.

  “Something’s not right,” she told Olivia helplessly.

  “Writing is forbidden! The Otec—”

  “Praise Otec,” they both said automatically.

  “Olivia, I know, I just—” Noa shook her head.

  Olivia jumped and clutched Noa hard. “You have to stop, you have to stop! Promise me!” She clutched so tightly Noa finally felt it; she could barely get a breath.

  “Okay,” Noa wheezed. “Okay, I promise.”

  Olivia pulled back, but did not release Noa’s arms. Her eyes were fierce. “Swear.”

  For the briefest moment, Olivia’s terrified face shimmered into the Girl, the Girl Noa could not quite see—

  “Swear,” Olivia pleaded, shaking Noa desperately. Noa grunted, body aching.

  “I swear.”

  • • •

  Noa lay awake in her bed that night, staring up at the ceiling. Olivia had waited, worried, until Noa had done an impressive fake sleep for a good forty-five minutes. Noa wanted nothing more than to actually fall asleep, forget the Girl, and keep her promise to Olivia, but the Girl and a growing blur of new mirages now ran in an endless ribbon through her mind. Curls like Judah’s—but not Judah’s—a downiness against her hand. Something small and precious, but incomplete, a puzzle piece from someplace long ago.

  Noa turned over, saw Isla’s empty bed. A sudden, violent panic made her snap up, brace herself on the wall. Isla! Desperation, urgency, fear—irrational, inexplicable, but suffocating, drowning, strangling—Noa wanted Isla now, had to see her now. Suddenly she was sure she’d never see Isla, not ever again—

  But Isla’s only out with her friends, like always, Noa told herself. She’ll sneak back in the way she always does. She tried to count out steady breaths. Nothing was going to happen to Noa’s big sister. Isla couldn’t be caught, she’d never be pinned; nothing could ever, ever break her. That was what made her Isla.

  Isla’s tablet had been tossed carelessly across her empty bed, of course left on, and another photo of the sisters flashed on its screensaver slideshow. This one showed Isla laughing wildly over mac ’n’ cheese, her favorite, while Noa sat with her at their family’s round kitchen table. But the shot was wide, oddly wide, the pair of them off-center. As if something else had once been included in the frame.

  Someone.

  Noa shut her eyes tight, stomach twisting. Was she actually losing her mind? Was this why the Man with White Hands had banned creative things like Judah’s puzzle and her journal—because art really drove you mad?

  Noa heard a rustle at the suite door, and relief flooded over her. Her sister was back. Isla would have all the answers, the way she always did. She would laugh askance and roll her eyes, tell Noa she was a worrywart, and Noa would realize how silly she’d
been—

  “Noa, honey?”

  Noa’s body seized in horror. It wasn’t Isla. The voice was sweet, too sweet.

  Ms. Jaycee.

  Noa could only watch, paralyzed, as Ms. Jaycee walked into the Sullivan sisters’ dorm room, bright in her candy-pink silk pajamas. The vice headmistress wore her fat, bright smile, but her hawkish eyes raked every nook and corner—and like magnets, flew to Noa’s journal, still open in the dust.

  Ms. Jaycee’s whole face rounded, eyes to cheeks to chin, and drained white. She turned to Noa, stricken.

  “Ms. Jaycee please, it was an accident—”

  “Where’s your sister?” the vice headmistress spluttered.

  “Uh, bathroom—”

  “You’d better come with me, Noa.”

  “It’s not what you think—it’s old! I … I found it!”

  Ms. Jaycee reached into the pockets of her matching pink silk robe, slipped out a pair of latex rubber gloves. She rolled them delicately down over her narrow, manicure-tipped fingers; they made a polite little snap against her wrists. Then she moved slowly to the corner, reached gingerly to pick up the journal as if it were diseased. She turned to Noa, smiled a terrible, pitying smile, blinking rapidly in sympathy.

  “I’m sure we can sort this out,” she said in a tone that mimicked comfort. But as she turned, Noa saw her eyes.

  They were black and hard, like knives.

  • • •

  Noa sat uneasily in the vice headmistress’s office, fighting panic and the desperate urge to flee. She tried to focus on the words curlicued across the Japanese screen behind Ms. Jaycee’s desk: Alone we can do so little! Together we can do so much! Let the Otec guide you! Noa immediately shut her eyes. The Otec. The Man with White Hands. The savior she had betrayed.

  Ms. Jaycee cocked her head at Noa from behind her desk, furrowed her brow with delicate precision. “Noa, what are we going to do?”

  “I … I found it. I was going to report it…” Noa tried, trailing off as her pitiful lie echoed into silence. Ms. Jaycee just stared, simpering with that saccharine sympathy that didn’t reach her eyes.

  “I’m so sorry,” Noa dissolved tearfully. “Please don’t send me to the Man with White Hands—”

  Ms. Jaycee frowned. “The Otec—”

  “Praise Otec,” they both said.

  “—keeps us safe. You know that.”

  “I know,” Noa whispered, staring at the floor.

  “You’re safe here, and happy, aren’t you? With your sister, your friends, even this new boy.” Noa looked up. Ms. Jaycee nodded. “The Otec—”

  “Praise Otec.”

  “—wants me to notice everything, so I can help keep everything running smoothly. You want everything to keep going smoothly, don’t you?”

  Noa nodded numbly.

  “I’m on your side, Noa. You need to know that. There is nothing so important to me as my students. Look behind you. Look at my Wall of Pride.”

  Noa turned slowly to the wall behind her, which showcased a collage of students, all posed in uniform, smiling the same smile, oriented in just the same way.

  “Those are my success stories, Noa. Students here who forgot the Otec’s grace—”

  “Praise Otec,” Noa mumbled.

  “—and who lost their way, but I helped them back onto the right path of obedience. Many of them became class presidents, honor-roll students, a credit to this school.”

  Noa looked over the pictured faces, recognizing some here and there, but not others, who must have graduated. She turned back, cheeks aflame.

  Ms. Jaycee seemed to have relaxed a little. “Since this is your very first offense, I think Probation is in order, not Review.” Noa closed her eyes in relief.

  Ms. Jaycee smiled beatifically. “But no Parents’ Weekend. I’m sorry.”

  Noa knew she should be feeling only gratitude, should take this punishment and sing its praises, but she fought the urge to cry anyway. What she wanted, needed more than anything right now, was to run into her mother’s arms, to have Hannah stroke her hair, whisper the ghosts away. She needed the four of them—she, Hannah, Christopher, and Isla—to pull tight their family knot, leave no end loose, weave up every strand.

  Noa got up shakily, told herself just to get out the door quickly without crying, but her body paused. She heard her own voice, small, turning and speaking back.

  “Ms. Jaycee? What happens when you see the Otec?”

  Ms. Jaycee said nothing for a moment. She eyed Noa carefully. “Praise Otec, Noa,” she prompted quietly.

  Noa flushed, nodded quickly. “Praise Otec.”

  Ms. Jaycee smiled. “You may go now, Noa.”

  Her tone was sweet, but Noa flinched. Again the vice headmistress’s pupils shone glinted like knives.

  • • •

  Noa would have preferred to stay in her room during Parents’ Weekend since she was not allowed to see her own, but Ms. Jaycee’s punishment included making her watch her classmates’ reunions through the floor-to-ceiling windows of Harlow’s new Probation room. The room itself was an oddity at Harlow, a glass cube suspended above the central auditorium. The students had named it the Birdcage.

  Noa was one of three offenders, but the other two students—Leticia Jones and Avery Hunter—sat in the far opposite corner, blending into the background and out of Noa’s particular notice. She doubted they’d want to commiserate anyway, since they weren’t her friends. Noa was relieved, however, that Dr. Chandler was supervising. Something about his casual, awkward posture—leaned back on his chair legs, scuffed loafers up, glasses in his mouth, book open on his lap—made Noa feel warmer. He wasn’t at all like her father, Christopher, who lived in neat corners and careful lines, but he was better than Ms. Jaycee all the same.

  The probees were supposed to study, but Noa couldn’t help looking down at the excited family reunions below. Everyone always complained about Parents’ Weekend—especially Isla, who always whined for a solid month about the imminent landing of the “colonizers”—but invariably, Noa knew, almost every classmate’s eyes shone and footsteps quickened when parents actually appeared.

  Noa couldn’t see details, but she easily picked out Olivia’s shock of pink hair and the two black-haired, ant-like figures hugging all over her. Noa didn’t need to see their faces to know the Lees’ boundless adoration: it shimmered brightly over their reunion like colored light from falling fireworks. Noa could only partially see Olivia’s posture, but she knew her friend’s smile was half-sincere and half-ironic, with the tiniest little curl that reminded Noa so much of Judah. But Judah of course was not among the happy ants. He had no family to visit him.

  The Lee reunion was rivaled only by the Keenans’, where two tall and lanky parents gesticulated wildly over their superstar son, Miles. Miles was bent backward, laughing loudly at some adventure of his father’s in a way that made Noa almost want to cry. It was strange—she and Miles were friendly but not exactly friends, yet she was overcome with relief that Miles was so easily beloved, his life so smooth, that he didn’t have to know loneliness, or despair. It was the future he deserved, Noa’s heart somehow knew with every beat, no one deserved it more.

  Noa’s parents suddenly walked in, and all thoughts of Miles were swallowed by a paralysis of longing. Noa watched as Isla danced toward them across the room, a pixie under shining, starlit hair, and pirouetted into their father’s arms. Christopher startled to hug her, only to find he grasped at nothing, as just as quickly Isla flitted from his hands.

  Noa’s rib cage felt pulled inward, as if it housed a black hole and not a heart. She saw Hannah looking around, knew she was wondering where Noa could be. The anxiety in Hannah’s posture made Noa sick: her traveler-mother had always been the sun, shining into every shadow; not this profile in searching curves, waning moonlike to the tide.

 
Thank Otec at least Isla was there.

  A scream split the air, so loud it traveled even into the Birdcage. Noa found herself on her feet, Dr. Chandler at her side, pressed against the wall closest to the sound. It had come from Jeremy Robsen, who was being visited by two older women figures—his aunt Celia and their housekeeper, Noa guessed, who lived on the Sullivans’ street. Jeremy had lurched away from them and was screaming unintelligibly in the corner of the room. His aunt hurried over, making him scream more loudly; he spun, pounded frantically against the wall as if to break it down, as if he needed to escape.

  Noa pressed her ear to the glass, and Jeremy’s shrieks contorted into sonic shapes: “Don’t! I don’t want to go! Don’t throw me in there!”

  “Don’t throw him where?” Dr. Chandler murmured, forehead wrinkled intently as he pressed his own ear against the glass. Noa surveyed his face, and it happened again—the windows behind Dr. Chandler seemed to flicker, turn blurry—almost, Noa realized, like a digital hiccup in an image. Noa immediately touched the window, but just like her door the previous night, found it once again quite solid.

  Below, two aides corralled the struggling Jeremy away, and Ms. Jaycee gestured to the shell-shocked parents, inciting hurried hugs. Apparently, visiting weekend was over.

  As the room below quickly emptied, Noa turned to Dr. Chandler. She could tell his mind was whirling. Not really knowing why, but suddenly desperate to know, Noa lowered her voice to ask, “Dr. Chandler, why do our books only have lists of dates and names? Don’t you ever … wonder … what they stand for?”

  Dr. Chandler was still intent on the window. “I never have,” he murmured, sounding worried. “I never have before.”

  • • •

  Noa nearly tripped over Judah as she descended from the Birdcage. He had been sitting hunched against the door to the stairs, and when she opened it, he leapt to his feet, agile and tense, ready for a fight.