by Lee Kelly
She looks at me for a long time, until my stomach starts sinking, until my face becomes hot with anticipation over her impending rage. “Your mother finally told you that?” No feeling, no emotion. Just a question.
“In her own way,” I hedge.
“Interesting.”
“Why . . . ,” I start, but there are too many ways to finish my question. Why did I have to read a journal to know that? Why did Rolladin lie about the E-train summit and tell my mother to give up hope on my father? Why does she act like she doesn’t know us, not really?
And why is she here with me now?
“Your mother and I,” she finally starts, but it seems that her words too, are betraying her. She fingers her crumpled pack of cigarettes, as if it might contain some answers. As I’m thinking the pack is probably older than I am, she pulls one of the sticks out and hands it to me through the bars.
“Thank you.”
“Other way. Turn it around.”
I reverse the cigarette and stick it into my mouth. It’s got a wheaty taste, burnt cinnamon, and she snaps another match and lights it. A storm of smoke attacks me and burns through my nose and ears. “That’s pretty brutal.”
“If you can believe it,” Rolladin says, smoke spiraling out of her mouth like silk, “each one gets better.”
I try once more, peck the cigarette and let the smoke escape quickly, and manage to avoid choking.
“The thing about your mother is that she’s stubborn.” Rolladin takes a long pull from the bottle of whiskey I didn’t realize was next to her. “And she blamed me for everything. Not just for that mess with the E-train summit, but all of it. Did she tell you that?”
It’s obvious, I think. She hates you, despises you.
But I just shake my head.
“If you two were sick. If you weren’t getting enough rations. If one of the soldiers looked at her funny. Anything. I was responsible for both of us. For all of us.” I simultaneously cringe and soften at the word “us.” “All the time. But I didn’t mind.”
I think again of the journal, about Rolladin on every page. How her smothering need to protect, her caging love for my mother, breathed life into Mom’s words.
“No?” I whisper.
She closes her eyes, as if she’s conjuring younger versions of all of us, long ago. “No.” She takes another hard swig. “That damn E-train summit, I swear”—and I get the sense she’s no longer talking to me—“if I could go back and do it all again, I’d keep going. I’d find the damn meeting, despite the fact that we were attacked by those cannibals, Dave strung up and pulled apart like a roast. I’d die trying to do it, to say I did it. So there was no confusion. Though at that point, if I had found my brother”—she laughs—“I don’t know what any of us would have done.”
But I haven’t heard the last part: I’m focused on the cannibals. I’m trying to remember exactly what Mom wrote about the E-train summit, trying to mentally conjure the pages. In the journal, Mary told Mom that she went to the E-train summit and had been attacked by the summit members themselves . . . then later, Mom found out she was lying.
There was never any mention of tunnel feeders.
“Did Mom know how you were really attacked?”
Rolladin stares at me with blank eyes, and I wonder if she really sees me, or if I’ve somehow become a window, a portal to the past. “Everyone knew we were attacked,” she mutters. “But they didn’t know by what. I said we were jumped. Wasn’t about to tell a bunch of malnourished, terrified captives that Dave had been eaten alive. That I’d escaped within an inch of death. That living in the tunnels was turning people inside out, and there were nightmares down there, even worse than what was going on at the surface. So, no,” she says. “I thought it best to keep that to myself.”
But after the Standard, I’m not sure what sounds like truth anymore, and I get a sudden, feverish feeling that Rolladin might be lying. That she’s put me behind bars to feed me this story and make some kind of bizarre peace with herself.
“Rolladin”—I try to remember my place—“if you had just told Mom about the tunnel feeders, don’t you think she’d understand why you never went? Why you never found my dad?”
“Never got the chance to,” she says. “When she found out I never went to the summit, Sarah stole one of my guns and escaped from the Park. Took the two of you with her. I didn’t see her for months.”
She lights two new cigarettes and hands one to me. Even though I feel my lungs shrinking away in my chest at the offer, I accept it through the bars.
“After she was brought back,” she continues, “when they started the census, she was a different person. For years, I tortured myself with the idea that I had broken her.” Rolladin shakes her head. “She pretended we were strangers, to the point where we were strangers.” She takes a long drag, lets tendrils of smoke curl around her words. “Until she and her children hated and feared me, just like everyone else. It was devastating. I’d allowed myself . . . to hope for so much more.”
I watch her, this woman wrapped around a bottle. Smoke clinging to her tight flame of red hair, her polar bear cloak hanging off her shoulder—our bloodthirsty, backbreaking Rolladin. And even though part of me wants to see Mary, more, perhaps, than I can even begin to understand, I can’t see this woman as anything but my warden. Maybe that’s what Rolladin mourns—having us see her in a different way, having someone know that there is, or was, more to her. But my mom killed that possibility. Or Rolladin did, when she drove Mom away.
It makes me think of Phee, of course, how we’ve drifted. Of the way we’ve been recently, missing and misunderstanding each other, growing apart. It makes me wonder how two people can ever go through something together and come out the same way on the other side.
As if sensing my thoughts, Rolladin asks, “What happened to you, when you left?”
I take a deep breath.
Then I tell her, about all of it—about the cannibals in the tunnels, about Robert. About the crushing void of the Standard, and what had happened to our Dad there. Mom, now comatose and disconnected. Phee, just an empty vessel. I tell the story brutally, honestly, quite aware that all our lives depend on its telling.
When I’m done, Rolladin slowly wraps her thick knuckles around the bars of the cage and squeezes. But she doesn’t say anything for a long time.
“I’ll help you,” she finally says. “Like you asked. Tomorrow morning, I’ll talk to my Council. You tell us where to go. We’ll get them back.”
“Rolladin, thank you. You can’t imagine what they’re doing down there. The Standard—they’re monsters.”
“This city, this world. It’s full of monsters,” she says. “The world’s a terrible place. And despite what your mother thinks, it’s still my job to keep you safe.”
I get an odd prickly feeling at the back of my neck. Keep us safe. Keep us stored away in a park in the middle of a tiny island. Keep us dressed in lies. And for a minute I can’t hold in my emotions any longer. I just need answers.
“Rolladin, the war,” I say, before I can think twice. “Why’d you lie? Why didn’t you tell us it was over?”
For a second, everything but pure anger drains from Rolladin’s face. “Don’t talk to me about things you don’t know.” She rages forward and grips the bars of the jail, rattling them, and I fall back in surprise.
I’ve blown it. With one bold, stupid question, I’ve blown my family’s chance to be saved.
Rolladin slowly steps back from the cage. “You’re young. I forget how young sometimes,” she says. “So you can’t understand. The people who survived this—our lives were stolen. Mine and your mother’s and the hundreds of others who spent months crawling through the tunnels eating and praying and shitting alongside each other.”
She begins to walk towards the stairs, then turns. “I rode into Jersey years ago, after the R
ed troops were pulled out of the boroughs and shipped to other fronts. After I didn’t receive news from our captors for weeks, then months. Then years. Went as far as Pennsylvania on horseback. And there’s nothing. Nothing but burned and riddled wasteland from a decade of attacks. The world that we were waiting for, gutted and gone. What was I going to do, let my survivors stumble out into a black hole? Let them know it was all for nothing?” she whispers. “Life is good here. Hard work and sacrifice give people a reason to live. They give people meaning. Our city—this Park—this is the seed from which the new world will grow. You’ll see that eventually.”
But that’s not your call, I want to say. That’s not your call to make.
“There are reasons for lies, Skyler.”
She leaves me confused over whether I hate her, or pity her . . . or somehow understand what she’s saying. And the idea of understanding her, this patchwork of a woman, this blur of misguided ideals and contradictions, angers me more than anything.
45 PHEE
I wake up to Trev slobbering on the pillow next to me. And for a second, I get tricked into thinking we’re back at the Park. That Trev’s managed to fall asleep in our room, with Mom in our other bed, and Sky stuck with the floor. It’s so comforting, this fake memory, that I nearly fall back asleep.
But it’s not totally right.
The sun’s too bright, for one thing. And the sheets are too white. Plus, my head’s killing me. Then it comes back to me in a roar. We’re not in the Carlyle.
We’re in hell.
I sit up and nearly vomit from the head rush. My thoughts are tripping over one another, all mixed up and out of order. Things don’t make any sense. Feelings have color, words have faces, memories are cut up and reordered, and some weird army of voices is barking them at me. When I try to box my ears to shut out the voices, they only become louder and more annoyed.
“Stop!” I finally scream at the voices, and Trev flies awake in shock.
Wait, Trevor’s here. Trev’s in my room at the Standard.
“What are you doing here?” I eye him. I rack my brain for the answer—for what happened last night—but everything’s still running together and out of focus.
“Nothing,” Trev says. But he looks guiltier than he did after stealing a second helping at the Christmas Reenactment last year.
I thrust off the covers and try to hop to my feet, but I nearly fall over.
“Are you okay?”
“Do I freaking look okay?”
“You look terrible,” he says softly. Something about the way he says it rubs me a really weird way. Almost like he feels bad for me, like I’m someone to be pitied. I’ve never heard it in his voice before, and I want to shake it right out of him.
“I haven’t seen you, or anyone besides Wren and Robert, in weeks. Tell me how you got here. I don’t remember,” I demand. I don’t tell him how nervous I am that he’s not real.
“You might not remember ’cause of the potion,” he whispers. “Phee, keep your voice down, okay? They said they’d come back in the morning, to give you another—”
“’Cause of the potion? What are you talking about?”
Trev looks at me, flustered. “They give a lot of people potions, so they can fit in . . . so they can make a home here,” he says. “Most adults get the heavenly blue, so they can see heaven. Most kids don’t need any potions, ’cause our minds are already open. But I guess some do, like you. Master Wren said—”
“Master Wren?” I hate that he’s said this.
“Wren said you’re too angry with the world, too far gone to join the Standard without—” He stops talking and his face goes beet, I mean beet, red.
“Without what?” I start pacing, but my legs buckle and I sit down. I stare at him angrily. “Trev, without what?”
“Without a love potion.”
“A love potion? You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say. “Trev, my mind’s all fucked up. I don’t even remember last night. That wasn’t a love potion, moron, that was poison.”
He shakes his head. “No. Master—Wren would never do that. He said he’d never lie to me . . . that I always deserved the truth . . . that I was like a son.” His blush turns almost purple. A son. Well, I’ll give him one thing, that bastard Wren knows just how to work people. “He just wanted to calm you down, that’s all,” Trev adds. “He promised me he wouldn’t hurt you.”
“Wait.” I’m still one step behind him, struggling to put the pieces together. “You mean you knew they were going to drug me up, before it happened? You were in on this?”
“No, I—”
“I could have freaking died last night, Trev. Do you understand that?” I ask. “So now you’re just swallowing whatever crap Wren’s shoveling? I mean, seriously, what’s wrong with you?”
“Phee, come on, it’s not like that.” Trevor flies out of bed, rushing towards me in explanation. But I wave him off and crawl into the corner to think. I close my eyes and try to concentrate, try to piece together something, anything, real from last night.
And then, slowly, memories start to tiptoe out of the corners of my mind.
I remember eating dinner, all upset that Robert wasn’t taking me to see Mom in the heavenly blue. I remember getting crazy paranoid.
I sort of remember running out of the room—then seeing Sky and Ryder on the stairs. A rush of anxiety floods me—they were together together—but I can’t think about that now. Then I was brought back here. To Trev. That memory I can see as clear as crystal: his face hovering above mine.
But then it cuts to black.
“What happened after you came in here last night?” I say softly.
“What?” He starts laughing, this high, panicked little laugh. “Nothing. I tried to take care of you.”
I study his face. I’m not sure I know him. Right now, I’m not sure I know myself. “I bet you did.”
“Phee, seriously, you’ve got to keep it down. Elder Francis said when you wake up, he’s coming by with another potion. If he hears you, he’s going to do whatever he did to you—”
“What you did to me.”
“Phee, seriously, stop. I’d never hurt you. I didn’t do anything. I wouldn’t want to. Not like that.” His voice catches, and now he’s crying. “Come on, you’ve got to believe me.”
I stay in the corner of my room and look out across our dead city. I can’t remember anything past Trevor’s face above mine. I don’t know if he’s telling the truth. But even if he is, for a minute I hate him, for being here. For seeing me like I was last night. I hate him for everything.
“Phee,” he says through soft sobs. “I swear. I just thought—”
“What?”
“I just thought—”
“Seriously, Trevor,” I snap at him. “You just thought what?”
“I just thought, if you could get love from a potion, then maybe you could love . . . me,” he whispers.
Goddamn it, Trevor.
“I just wanted so badly to believe it.” His breath catches and stutter-steps. “I wanted to believe all of it.”
I pull my knees up to my chest and feel my own tears coming. Not just because of my throbbing head, or the panic that still burns through me from the poison. And not just because of lonely, needy Trevor and his desperation to be loved.
But because of me, and the rest of this island, who just put their heads down, swallow lies, and wish them true: the fieldworkers who believe Rolladin’s stories without questioning, Robert and the sad people of this hotel who cling to Wren’s bullshit as a reason to go on. And me, who fell for Robert’s act hook, line, and sinker, just so I’d never have to leave this city.
“I swear, Phee. I would never, ever hurt you,” Trev’s mumbling on the bed.
I walk over to him slowly. He’s sobbing: I’m sorry, I would never. Oh God, I’m sorry.
Then I slap him across the face. Once.
Again, on the other cheek with the back of my hand.
He lets me.
I slowly push him over, climb in next to him, spoon him like when we were kids and the world was less angry and complicated. I press my face into his back, bury my head under the covers, and let myself break down and cry.
46 SKY
I’m on the back of Rolladin’s horse. I’m an afterthought, a sliver of a girl between the queen and the back of her saddle, as we ride from the stables through the changing leaves, across the cement labyrinth of Times Square, and over to the Hudson. We lead a team of a dozen warlords on horseback, a herd of armed guards galloping into dawn.
“You’ll wait outside,” Rolladin finally breaks our windy silence on the West Side Highway. “Me and my troops get your mother, Phee, and Trevor alone.”
“Rolladin,” I hesitate. I didn’t bring this up last night, or this morning when I gave her every detail I could about the Standard and its security. But we’re getting so close, I know this might be my last chance to beg her for another favor. “The men from Britain, the ones you found in the woods. They’re good men.”
“Skyler.”
“They’ve saved our lives countless times,” I plead. “They’ve become . . . like family.”
Rolladin doesn’t answer, not until I see the raised platform of the High Line, the Standard’s twin towers of glass erupting out of the surrounding rooftops like crystal beacons. And as soon as I see them, my stomach wrenches. Dread, remorse, and anger, it all mixes and bubbles within me like a scalding stew.
“I can’t have them in my Park.” Rolladin shakes her head, and her broad back shifts me along with it. “It’s too late. No, we’re getting Sarah and the kids and going home.”
The thought of leaving Ryder and Sam in that hotel, of never seeing my woodsman again, turns my insides out.
“But Rolladin—”
“Enough,” she barks back at me.