Granddaddy stands in the doorway and clears his throat, too much of a marrow-deep gentleman to feel comfortable entering any lady’s room while she is dressing. Gramma helps me slide my arms into the navy and white seersucker jacket that gives me an aura of demure sweetness.
“I’m ready, Granddaddy. You can come in.” All-encompassing shame shudders through me like a tiny tropical storm bashing underneath a bell jar. Granddaddy walks up to me with a sodden weight to his steps that pricks at my eyes like a sharp, relentless wind.
“Well, darlin’, you look a picture. No man in his right mind, judge or not, could see a young lady so beautiful and fail to realize this is all just a big misunderstanding.” His breath wheezes from his mouth in labored gasps. August is a relentlessly hot month in Georgia, and the humidity makes his lungs constrict. It’s painful for Gramma and I to see Granddaddy operating at an energy level less than his usual cyclone-riding-a-galloping-mustang.
“I’ll be fine. No matter what the judge decides.” I pressure my lips to curve in a perfect, patient smile that is an undeniable family heirloom, passed down from my Gramma like a birthright. Composure in the face of any obstacle is just how the women from our stock function.
“I can’t believe that boy’s family wasn’t willing to make peace over this whole…misunderstanding.” Granddaddy’s bright white mustache quivers with rage. “I understand a family’s connection to their land, but it was just a bunch of damn nut trees.”
Gramma squeezes his elbow and runs her hand in small circles on his forearm. “Come and lets have some sweet tea. Kailyn made a big batch before she left last night. Come on, now. Evan needs to get a move-on, or she’ll be late.”
“Shouldn’t we go with her?” Granddaddy demands for the hundredth time, and my heart squeezes with love for him. Especially considering the fact that Kailyn’s sweet tea is usually enough to calm that man into an absolute lull.
“No, Granddaddy. This is my own mess, and I’m going to take care of it all on my own.” Before he can protest, I hike up on my toes and pop a kiss on his cheek and my grandmother’s, making a registered effort to avoid looking either of them directly in the eye. “Plus that, we have a strategy we need to stick with. I show up with you, and the judge assumes I think I can get myself out of this using my name.”
“You should be able to.” He rubs the spot just over his heart with short, firm strokes of his fingers, a tic that always shows up when he’s particularly annoyed.
I’d worry, but the doctor always says he has the heart of an ox.
“I’ll be just fine.”
I kept a hold on the breezy, confident way my voice sounded like it was my life-jacket in a shipwreck as I ran my hand down the shiny, curved wood of the left staircase that led down into their gleaming, crystal-filled front foyer, my feet tripping over the glossy marble tiles before I burst through the double doors and beelined through the stagnant heat to the cool interior of my pre-started car.
I manage to hang on to that cheery optimism all the way to the courthouse door, in through the metal detectors, and right up to the doorway of my assigned courtroom, but that’s where my confidence explodes like water from a balloon dropped from the roof to the cement far, far below.
I’m positive the splash of my shattered courage should be audible, but no one gives a so much as a quarter glance my way.
Lawyers with scuffed briefcases, a man with slicked-back hair and a clip-on tie, and a woman in saggy sweatpants rolled at the waist walk by, but no one notices me skulking in the corner. My gold watch flashes at me from the limp bend of my wrist, warning me not to be tardy, not to make a bigger, more complicated mess of this than I already had. I’m tempted to call my best friend, my lifeline, Brenna, but what would she say? She’d make me go in, and I can’t do that.
So I sit on the chilly slate floor, not worried about the wrinkles setting in on the sheath dress Gramma had pressed for me this morning. I bury my head in my clammy hands and resolve to stare at the floor until I manage to convince it to open wide and ingest me whole.
A voice punctures through my self-pity and fear. A smooth, obnoxiously confident voice with the undercurrent of an accent I’ve never heard before and can’t place.
“Are you nervous?” The words are overly familiar, like he’s backstage with me before a big recital or at my side just when my mother disappears on another bender.
I focus on the polished shine of his black boots, and try not to admit that his voice is a sweet caress in my ears, despite my strong mental protests.
“I’m fine. I just…needed a second. To sit.” It may be the most idiotic thing I’ve ever uttered, but I refuse to back down from my resolve to sit on this floor. For a second. Like I said.
The boots shift slightly, and I realize he’s leaned over to open the door of the courtroom. A woman thanks him in a high, nervous voice.
“You’re welcome, ma’am.”
My head whips up at the ‘ma’am.’
Not that I haven’t heard that word spilled like sticky sweet syrup from a thousand mouths of a thousand boys who’ve been born and bred to use it every day.
It’s this boy, the way it slides off his tongue, buoyed with cautious respect and elegant pleasure. Like he loves saying the word. Like his lips weigh the worth of it.
I crane my neck back, and he’s looking down at me with half a twisted smile, his hand extended. I put my freshly manicured hand into his, rough with callouses, and he coaxes me to stand up with a gentle tug, so I’m suddenly nestled close to his tall, lean frame.
“Have you had long enough? To sit?” The questions are sweet, but his lips have a twisted curve that makes my heart double-beat to the tune of one word: wicked.
I smell him, and it’s a smell that’s not part of the deep, salty musks of this area. It’s clean and fresh and sweet. It smells like clover, wet with a sheen of overnight dew. “I’ve had long enough.” I pull my hand from his, reluctantly, and press my palms down the front of my skirt. For an instant, the wrinkles smooth out, but the second I take my hands away, they spring back. I can’t keep the tsk of my tongue locked in my mouth.
His laugh rings out, boldly happy and a little too loud for this dim, serious court hallway. “Hey.” He says it informally, like we’ve known each other forever, and I move a step back to keep him out of my physical territory even as the imprint of his laugh twines through my neurons. He gestures with his long, fingers. He has an artist’s hands. “You can get away with them.”
His eyes are blue, but not glacial frozen blue like mine. His are like sun-warmed blueberries, dark denim blue, well-deep and framed by overlong jet black lashes. He blinks slowly, and his lean, chiseled face is soft and calm despite its cut lines. “Get away with what?” I keep my voice coolly unaffected.
“Wrinkles. Stains. Tears. You’re too pretty to bother worrying about any of that. The first thing people notice is your face, and once they notice that, there’s no noticing anything else. Trust me on this one.” He leans his head to one side, indicating that we should head into the courtroom, and I notice that his short, dark hair is newly cut, expertly done.
“That’s the worst pick-up line I’ve ever heard,” I tell him, but a tiny little shiver of appreciation bolts through me before it disappears, like that magical fragment of a second when a snowflake lands on your tongue, perfect and whole before it melts into oblivion.
“I’m not trying to pick you up.” His eyes are dancing, a jig, the robot, the macarena, and I work to keep my lips in a neat, straight line. “Judge Schwenzer is a stickler for being on time, and we’re two minutes from late.” He swings the door open, and I do my best not to openly admire the clean lines of his long muscles, some etched with barely-covered tattoos. “After you, m’lady.”
Then he smiles, and my nerves unfurl in a long, smooth spin, and I walk in with tiny sparks of silvery light flickering on the outsides of my eyes. It’s probably from nerves. It’s probably because I didn’t eat breakfast. It’s absolutely
not because this irritatingly over-familiar hustler is trying to pick me up in the hallway of a courthouse.
I clamp down hard on my judgment pretty quickly. I’m here for trespassing and unintentional arson. He’s probably here to argue a speeding ticket. I murmur a ‘thank you’ and panic petrifies my legs and leaves me blocked in the doorway. He nudges me in, takes my hand as if I’m some new kid he’s been assigned to lead around on the first day of school, and pulls me to a long wooden pew-like bench, where we sit.
I run my fingers over my red leather portfolio cover. Other people have their court documents clutched in their fists or in cheap tencent folders, but I have fancy taste in my accessories. Mystery Guy has nothing in his hands. Unlike the other people in the courtroom, he’s not sitting ram-rod straight or fidgeting. He looks perfectly relaxed. I bet it was a speeding ticket. He probably thinks just showing up will get him out of it. I flip my cover open, glance over all the damning evidence pitted against me in black and white, then snap it shut again.
The judge enters the courtroom, and we jump to our feet as a solitary, slightly sheepish unit of criminals. Law breakers. Deviants. Sweat coats both my palms.
When Judge Schwenzer finally sits and we settle back down, she attacks the files on her desk. From her shellacked bun to her sensibly hideous glasses, she’s all about the business, and I feel my heart sink. This woman would never splurge on a red leather portfolio cover for her incriminating court documents. This woman will hate me on principle.
I catch the guy looking at me. No sneaking a look, no flirty attempts to maybe establish eye contact. When I put all my efforts into staring him down, he gives me a clear, wide smile and winks, one slow, lazy flick of an eyelid laced with all those gorgeous lashes. My heart races again, and I turn my attention stubbornly to the front of the courtroom.
Which is a mistake. Judge Schwenzer is chewing some poor girl apart for a DUI charge. Apparently this isn’t her first. And just when she’s finished reducing the girl to blubbering tears, she picks up the next file.
“Winchester Tobar Youngblood.”
The guy stands and says, “Excuse me,” before he flashes one more cocky smile and walks with sure confidence to the judge’s bench.
Judge Schwenzer’s lips are already compressed into a flat, mean line. “Winchester. The charges against you involve disturbing the peace and public intoxication. How do you plead?”
Shock jars my eyeballs right to the front of the room, though it makes no sense at all for me to be shocked. I do not know him, no matter how strangely intimate our little court hallway rendezvous felt. Sweet manners, a few open smiles, and a wink aren’t enough to establish a man’s character. But maybe he’s —
“Guilty, your honor.”
I’m admittedly a poor judge of guys, but the disappointment I feel is uncanny.
Judge Schwenzer also seems…not so much shocked, but disbelieving. “I don’t buy it, Mr. Youngblood. The officer filing the report said the man he observed was shaggy, unkempt. In all the times you’ve come before the court, you’ve never looked that way.”
Winchester bows his head with deference. “My mother made me get a haircut for the court date.”
That is a perfectly reasonable explanation. And, honestly, it makes no sense for the judge to question something that easily explained. Why didn’t she think of it?
“The officer also noted that the man he gave a citation to had a tattoo on his forearm. Very distinctive. A Pegasus.” Her eyes are shark-tank-laser-intense, and they’re trained right on Winchester.
He cuffs his sleeve back and holds his arm out for the judge, out of my line of sight. His words are low and even, almost meditative. “A pooka, ma’am. No wings.”
I need to see that tattoo. It’s like a foil-wrapped birthday gift on the table in front of me that I can’t open.
She tilts her head and lets out a sigh heavy with frustration. “That tattoo looks very fresh.”
“My skin takes a long time to heal, ma’am.” His voice remains even-keeled and patient, and that just seems to dig like splinters in Judge Schwenzer’s ass.
She puckers her lips, shakes her head, and swipes her pen. “Five thousand dollars, probation, and community service.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Winchester says, and picks up the paperwork. I watch his confident swagger all the way to the back of the courtroom, but I never get to see him leave, because Judge Schwenzer, angry as a warthog that’s been poked with a sharpened stick, calls my name next, venom practically dribbling over the syllables that fall out of her mouth.
ARC Excerpt
Blue Rebellion
YA Dystopia
By
Liz Reinhardt
Coming 2012/2013
Chapter 1: The Hunt
Regulus
Well-trained Eka soldiers follow orders that are so coded in our brains they’re like reflexes. We don’t listen to our own weak fears; that’s exactly the reason why we drill and train without a break, relentlessly, for years on end. It’s for times like this, when our own insecurities make us question what we’re supposed to know for sure. I want to stay true to my training, my blood, my rank, my post, but the reflexes I’ve worked so hard to make automatic are failing me.
My heart is pumping, the sweat is pouring off of my skin and something deeper than my Eka solider reflexes is screaming that I have to ditch this mission and get far away before something bad happens. I try to push what I feel away; I have to cling to logic. Facts. Training. Because I know who I’m trained to be inside out; I don’t know the untrained me, and I’m not sure I want to.
As a recessive, a weak blue-eye in a sea of strong, perfect brown-eyed Eka soldiers, I already know I march to the beat of my own drum more than I’d like to. I’ve seen a lot of my comrades go down in the field because they didn’t know when to walk away, and I don’t plan to join them in the ground. But I have to convince my comrade to get out with me so I’m not labeled a deserter, a traitor to our Eka blood. I want to stay where I belong, and that means I have to shut down what I feel in my gut, even if the alarm bells in my head are going off like crazy.
I look at my partner on this mission, but he’s focused on a routine on-the-hour weapon check, oblivious to the unease that’s making the sweat pour from my face, neck, armpits. I wish I knew what it was that made my entire body react to this place, this situation, but everything looks in order, the same way it’s looked since we made our camp in the dust and low scrub brush outside the Catur village.
Scaeva and I have been baking in the sun on the cracked banks of the Erie River for three days. The tilt of the planet at this location is sharp enough that we get a sweltering dose of a small, second sun’s light right around the primary sun’s setting time every day and for four hours after. The sky stays a pale dirty green, thick with the smog from factories burning crude sludge to power the turbines that run incessantly behind the village. It’s a Romul government standard Catur village, surrounded by a fence that was once made of neat planks, but is now falling down, reinforced with odd bits of plastic or crumbly mud clay, tattered pieces of rag-cloth, pieces of rusted scrap metal or woven wires. The gate is secured by a series of odd chains, mostly rusted, but it’s hardly necessary since there are so many gaps in the fence, anyone or anything could find a way through.
I wipe the sweat off of my forehead with my sleeve and take a pull from my canteen of river water, bitter from the sterilizing pellet I dropped in a few hours before. Everything here is filthy. The water is thick and sluggish, the air swirls with dust and grit. The homes beyond the mangled gate are supposed to be neat and boxlike, in formation according to Romul building strictures, but there are caved-in walls, torn roof sections, improvised waterwheels, scraggly garden plots that don’t seem worth the effort of breaking up the sandy soil. Chimneys badly in need of cleanings belch out smoke that burns sour from the Catur habit of burning anything and everything; animal bones, old rubber, dried dung. The people we see in the distance scu
ttle around the village, nothing more than dirty, matted creatures hurrying through their sad routines.
There’s nothing to hunt, there aren’t any rebel insurgents, and I’m tired of listening to Scaeva’s rambling about ‘bagging a dirty Catur.’ There’re a lot of Eka warriors who go rogue, come back to Romulus with some kind of war memento from a bagged enemy, and Scaeva’s desperate to come home with some sign that this mission was all about glory. I have a feeling the heat of the suns and his own stupid ideas are going to lead to trouble. He fidgets and scans the horizon through the scope of his rifle with a desperate hopefulness that makes my blood cold and peaks that internal fear I can’t seem to get a hold on.
“I think I still hate Tri the most, even after seeing how these barbarian Caturs live,” Scaeva muses, suddenly breaking the silence.
“Every level exists for a reason,” I remind him, even though he knows it. I think it makes for bad blood to dwell too much on the divisions. Each level has a place in Romulus, and, hard as that is to realize when you’re staring at a falling down village full of people who need nearly constant supply trucks from Romulus in exchange for sporadic brute labor, it’s the truth that’s been decided by people with far more intelligence and power than Scaeva or I have.
“But the Tri are so lazy, and they don’t have the disability thing to go with that surly attitude they seem to have. Did you notice the way the garbage carriers don’t even salute unless you practically hold a gun to their heads? And the care workers are letting those damn kids run wherever they want on the streets. It’s like Romulus is suddenly an open nursery. And I noticed my Tri maid is doing subpar work in my room. I found dust under my bed again. Standards are slipping.”
“What were you doing under your bed?” I scan the distance with my binoculars, and feel a sudden justification of my panic. Little whorls of sand are kicking up, which could very easily turn into a vicious sand storm. “Keep your respirator out.”
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