The Loudness

by Nick Courage

  I yawn loudly instead, not meaning to but unable to stop myself, and Freckles and Conor unconsciously follow my lead. “My manners!” Rachel exclaims, looking shocked. Breaking out of the yawn, I snap to attention. Rachel’s started digging through the pile of clothes that the beach towels came from, and I wonder what she’s going to pull out of it next.

  It turns out that she’s not pulling anything out of the pile, she’s flattening it.

  “Guys, sorry, but girls get the bed.” She gestures toward the thin, grey mattress on the floor in the corner, without sheets and abutting a person-sized tangle of electrical cords. I can sense Freckles cringing behind me. “You can camp out on the pile. Should be pretty comfortable, but if you feel anything . . . sharp, or whatever, just move it around.”

  Rachel flops down on the grimy-looking mattress, arms and legs spread like she’s making a snow angel. I make my way to the pile of clothes and cautiously sit down, feeling for hidden scissors or whatever else might be buried down there. It’s really a lot of clothes, though, and I sink happily into them, leaving ample room for Conor, who’s still standing—uncertain—with Freckles.

  “Where’s your dad, again?” Rachel asks, staring thoughtfully at the ceiling. The record that was playing when we came in has finished, and the sound of the storm raging against the corrugated aluminum roof joins the scratch of the needle on empty vinyl to fill the room. If the rain keeps up, we might get flooded out of the Zone without any help from the federales.

  “He’s . . . my parents. They’re political prisoners.”

  “Right,” Rachel sighs theatrically, turning over onto her propped elbows. “I know that. But where?”

  It’s a good question. Somewhere in the City. The capital of the decreasingly United States. Past that, not a clue. I want to tell her as much, that I’m worried they’re being mistreated; tortured. Laying, bloody, on cold wet stones in a basement, electricity sparking from the greasy, whirring machines the federales are using to break them.

  But I can’t.

  I can feel my face contorting instead, hot and angry tears welling up behind my eyes.

  “Nah, that’s not what jail’s like,” Rachel says, sensing my fears. “They’re probably in some classy compound eating smoked salmon with plastic sporks, watching the news on loop.” Conor settles in next to me, making a nest out of jeans and sweaters. I’m still not sure I can talk without losing it, but he speaks up for me.

  “How d’you know that?”

  The wind howls outside while Rachel thinks about how she’s going to phrase her answer. Freckles, tired of standing, sits tentatively on the corner of the mattress. For a split second our eyes lock, and I jerk mine upward as if suddenly distracted by a crack of thunder.

  “Almost everyone here’s had problems with the government,” Rachel says, taking time to choose her words. “Not because we’re bad people or anything. We’re just . . . like you. Sometimes you just want to make your own rules and not be flooded out for living on your own terms.”

  I try to imagine what rules the Other Siders might have made that would have landed them in federale jail, but Rachel goes on. “Like, Carel. He’s from Belgium and came here for school, for a degree in philosophy, if you can believe it. He ended up finding philosophy in food instead of books, so he dropped out of college; his visa ran out, and he just stayed.”

  “And he went to jail for that?” Freckles asks, finally comfortable—or tired—enough to curl up on the mattress next to Rachel. She’s wearing an enormous green sweatshirt and black basketball shorts with bright red trim, an outfit I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. But, somehow, the ridiculousness of the borrowed clothes just enhances her prettiness. An artfully bent wrist peeks out from a ragged sleeve; her neck gleams white amidst voluminous green folds.

  Against my better judgment, I try to remember what our kiss felt like. But it was so quick, and all I can remember with any clarity is stumbling out of the attic, my heart beating double-time. I look at her lips for inspiration: pink, chapped, pursed with worry.

  Perfect.

  And then they twitch.

  Looking up, I meet her eyes and realize with horror that it’s because she’s noticed me staring.

  “Oh, not at all,” Rachel says. “They tried to get him to leave a few times, but he always got back somehow. Carel went to jail because he hooked up with a bunch of eco-warriors and took over a mountain.”

  We all stare at her, agape.

  “Totally trumped-up charges,” she says dismissively, rolling onto her back. “Government-funded company was going to blow it up so they could strip mine for coal. Ecological nightmare. I mean, can you imagine thinking it’s okay to blow up a mountain?”

  I find Carel’s portrait on the wall, green-skinned with a lilac mustache pointed imperiously upward, and try to imagine him baking high-altitude biscuits with a rifle strapped to his back. “Anyway, Carel and his buddies had the top on lockdown for half a year before they finally got taken. He was only in prison for a month or so before they tried to deport him again.”

  “And you?”

  Rachel looks at Conor with an arched brow. “Now, that would be telling!” She laughs warmly, brightening the room. “Kidding, kidding. I haven’t actually been arrested. They don’t have to arrest you to make you feel like you’re in jail, though. Everything you do on the Outside is tracked, they’re always watching. Jail is just a place they watch you more obviously, so you don’t have a chance to make any trouble for ’em.”

  I try to take in what Rachel’s saying, but get distracted by Freckles again. It’s hard not to look at her because she’s sitting right in front of me, but I don’t want her to think I’m creepy, so I try to look around her instead. But not looking at her—looking over her shoulder or at the flaking walls or ceiling—feels just as obvious as staring right at her twitching lips.

  I’m trapped.

  “Your mom understood that,” Rachel continues, her voice soft and serious, and I decide that the only way to escape my Freckles problem is to close my eyes. “It was nice to live in a place where people got it.”

  When I next open my eyes it’s morning, and I’m stretching awake to sunshine and the amplified whispers of the still-spinning record. Carefully, trying not to wake up Conor, I extricate myself from the nest of clothes and tip-toe over to the window. The street outside is muddy and littered with branches—leafy victims of the storm—but otherwise, you couldn’t ask for a more beautiful day.

  I open a few blinds and check the walls for power switches. We’d fallen asleep with the lights on, and a lifetime of Green Zone conditioning has left me very uncomfortable around wasted energy. All the lights seem to lead directly back to the tangle of wires at the foot of the mattress, though, and just as I think there’s no way I’m going anywhere near that, Freckles stirs. Her face is creased with red indentations from a hard night mashed up against a makeshift pillow, and her cheek is glistening with what looks like drool. But in the morning sun, she looks prettier than ever.

  “Where is she?” she yawns.

  “Huh?”

  Freckles points at the other—empty—half of the mattress. Rachel is gone. I shrug and look around the room, searching for clues. Drying on an otherwise cleared space on the floor is the painting she’d been working on when we dropped in yesterday. I was too distracted by the tumult of the storm to take a closer look then, but now I can see that it’s a self-portrait.

  “Paint’s still wet,” I notice, wondering how long she’d been awake; if she’d painted through the night.

  Freckles rolls out of bed and pads over to the clearing, yawning. “It’s not like the other ones,” she says, scanning the rows of cartoonish portraits on the walls and wrinkling her nose. I hadn’t made that connection, but she’s right. Rachel’s coffee-colored skin is a glowing, earthy brown, not a pink or green. Her eyes are still almond, her hair a sun-kissed copper. Her face takes up the majority of the canvas, too, bleeding out onto the ragged edges.


  I lean in, careful not to touch the still-tacky acrylics, and see that the apparently uniform color of Rachel’s face is actually composed of thousands of tiny strokes of pink and blue and green and yellow—her usual color palette. From a few feet away, she looks alive in a way that I can’t quite explain, except that it makes my soul feel too big for my body.

  “Whoa,” Conor says, stretching his arms and looking over my shoulder. “Art!”

  We contemplate Rachel’s self-portrait for another minute or so in the increasingly bright room, until, stomachs grumbling, we decide to venture out of the house and find the rest of the Other Side. It’s stifling hot inside, and—despite the federale threat—the sunshine and the painting have left me feeling so empowered, so full of good will, that I don’t think twice about throwing open the creaking front door and walking to Food Eats in broad daylight, in the middle of the street. Conor and Freckles must feel the same way, because we joke all the way there, laughing loudly, invincibly.

  The shades are tightly drawn, so you wouldn’t know by looking at it, but Food Eats is completely packed. And it’s obvious when we squeeze our way inside that we’re the only ones who got any sleep last night. Every face that greets us is tired, and there’s at least one person blowing their nose at any given moment. No one seems to be smiling, and I can feel my morning sense of wellbeing start to evaporate.

  I don’t recognize a lot of faces here, either, so I make my way to the back of the restaurant, dragging Freckles and Conor behind me. It takes us a while to navigate our way through the breakfasting crowd and up to the counter, but I’m determined. Already at the counter, waiting patiently for breakfast, are the two engineers we rode here with. Like most everyone else at Foods, they’re looking ragged, but I tell myself that if anything can rejuvenate the Zone, it’s Carel’s hot and delicious breakfast.

  Only, Carel isn’t behind the counter.

  The kitchen is filled with thick, grey smoke from burnt butter, making it difficult to tell who exactly is cooking. It’s only when he curses and steps—coughing—out from the smoke that I recognize Tom. He’s sweating heavily, wearing a dirty apron loosely around his neck and holding a plate of crunchy, black pancakes. Seeing us, he hands the plate to Conor and then sneezes repeatedly into the crook of his arm. The husky engineer looks longingly at the plate, but seems resigned to waiting.

  Conor nibbles contemplatively on the charred corner of one of the pancakes. “Long night last night?” I ask Tom, holding my hands out to awkwardly receive three slopping mugs of coffee. He sneezes one more time and then rubs his bleary red eyes with the heel of his hand.

  “Meeting just ended, just now. How’d ya guess?”

  Conor shrugs and takes another crunchy bite of pancake. I don’t know how he can do it. As hungry as I am, the hundred running noses in the room have momentarily put me off of my appetite, and the pancakes look like something you’d line your driveway with. I notice that Freckles isn’t reaching for a bite, either.

  “So,” she says, covering her coffee with a delicate hand as Tom erupts into another violent sneeze. “What’s the plan?”

  “Welp,” he yawns, stretching the itch out of his face. “It looks like we’re just gonna see how things go.” Freckles raises an eyebrow incredulously, as if to say “all night for that?”

  “I know,” Tom says, absentmindedly picking at Conor’s burnt pancakes with one hand and rubbing his temple with the other. “I know. It’s ridiculous. Of course, there was . . . debate. A lot of people left, couldn’t stand the thought of just chancing it.”

  “And you?”

  “Good question.” Takes off the apron and hands it to the husky engineer, who’s still waiting patiently for his breakfast. “Help yourself, man.”

  While the engineer fumbles with the apron strings, Tom squeezes my shoulder with a cold and dirty hand, guiding me conspiratorially to the far corner of the restaurant, Freckles and Conor in tow. “Truth is,” he whispers, eyes flickering nervously around the crowded room. “We can hide, but the federales won’t stop until we’re accounted for. Been through this before, and waiting ain’t the answer.”

  “So . . .” prompts Freckles, quizzically sustaining the oh.

  “So once they realize there are stayers, that opening the spillway isn’t gonna flood everyone out, they’ll think of something else. It might take a while, but they’re not just gonna walk away.”

  Tom is leaning against the wall as if he’d be on the ground without it, completely downtrodden, but his cynicism doesn’t get me down. On the contrary, the muscles in my legs and arms go instinctively taut, flexing, and my heartbeat quickens. I’ve been worried about the same things he has, the seeming impossibility of getting things back to the way they were before . . . and honestly, it’s a relief to hear someone else voice them.

  It means waiting and hiding isn’t an option.

  It means we have to do something.

  I’m about to tell Tom as much when his eyes momentarily narrow, and then, with effort, he forces himself to stand without aid of the wall, his face plastered with a good-natured smile.

  “There you are!”

  I turn around, knowing before I do that it’s Grammy. I briefly wonder what could have happened last night to make Tom react the way he did, but before I draw any conclusions I’m wrapped up in a tight, sickly sweet-smelling hug.

  “It’s so good to see you, Panky!” Grammy says, overflowing with an uncharacteristic positivity and rose-scented perfume, pinching my cheeks. I see Conor and Freckles smirking out of the corner of my eye, but am too nervous to feel embarrassed. “What’s going on?” I blurt out, just as Grammy coos, “You look like you got a good night’s rest!”

  Tom, still stiffly smiling, shrinks against the wall, but Grammy doesn’t seem to mind my outburst. “Oh, nothing much,” she laughs. “And thank you again, Thomas, for sparing your cook this morning. I simply had to get one of his . . . recipes.” Behind her, Mrs. Wallace, red-nosed from sneezing, digs into a big, fluffy stack of the engineer’s pancakes, and—stomach growling—I make a mental note to get some for myself, now that Tom’s not at the griddle.

  “The plan, you’ve heard it?” Grammy asks, turning her attention back to us. “We’re going to hide out for a while, aren’t we?” she says, looking meaningfully at Tom. “Until those jackals realize they’re actually helping us with the dam . . .”

  “And then we’re gonna fight ’em?”

  “Oh, Lord, no,” Grammy says, looking at me like I’m crazy. “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, Henry. And we’re lovers, not fighters, aren’t we?”

  I shrug while Tom shivers visibly behind her. It’s a total departure from her rabble-rousing speech last night, and I wonder again what went down at the meeting . . . what could’ve happened between Grammy and Tom, who seemed so friendly last night.

  But more importantly . . .

  “What about Mom and Dad?”

  Grammy gestures dismissively, the fat antique rings on her wiry fingers clanking dully. “This is business, Hank. All of this.” She looks around Food Eats appraisingly. “The Other Side only exists because we needed workers to rebuild the Green. The Green only exists because we’re all so invested in the Zone. We don’t want, and can’t afford, to live anywhere else. Henry,” she continues, gripping my shoulders and pulling me into a tight hug. “The government is business, baby.”

  “But Mom and . . .”

  “Your father. I know, I know. The federales have something we want. They’re trying to send a message. We have something they want, too. Fidelity, loyalty. Access to ports, to the river. Power. As long as they respect our business, and mind their own, we can work this out.”

  It makes a superficial sort of sense, but the glimpse I got last night of the bruise on Grammy’s arm worries its way into my brain, giving me doubts . . . and the kidnapping, the attempted flooding—none of that was what anyone could call business, not even Grammy.

  “I thought this was war,” I say,
uncertain. “Last night you said . . .”

  Grammy shrugs. “Last night I didn’t have the whole story.”

  “Well, what’s the whole story?” I whine. “That Mom’s less important to you than this restaurant? Than some recipe?”

  “Some wars are fought with weapons,” Grammy says, choosing not to acknowledge my petulance. “And some wars are fought with . . .”

  “Wits?” a voice pipes up from behind me.

  Grammy looks at Freckles as if she hadn’t noticed her standing with us this whole time. To her credit, Freckles holds her ground, not flinching under Grammy’s hawk-like evaluation.

  “Wallets,” Grammy mutters, after a long pause. “Most wars are fought with wallets.” She runs her jewel-encrusted fingers through Freckle’s hair, rolling the sun-blonde tips contemplatively. Freckles bugs her eyes as if she wants to disagree, but bites her tongue instead. “Where are your parents, honey?”

  “My aunt,” Freckles mumbles. “She . . . she’s staying in the Green.”

  “I plan on staying in the Green myself,” Grammy purrs, then laughs enigmatically, heavily-shadowed eyes widening larger than I’ve ever seen them before. “We’ve rebuilt too many times for anyone to kick us out over something as stupid as treason. But first,” she says, letting go of Freckle’s hair. “Some coffee. I should be able to get a cup in my own restaurant, right?”

  The room explodes into a nervous cacophony as Grammy bustles purposefully toward the husky engineer, who’s red-faced and smiling now, flipping golden pancakes with proud flourishes for a growing crowd. “These are just growing pains, Henry,” she calls out reassuringly, without a backward glance.

  My stomach doubles up on itself as sweet steam from the engineer’s pancakes rises up in hypnotic curls that catch the yellow morning light. And the smell: thick slabs of white butter and golden syrup that glows as if it’s lit up from the inside . . .