by Kyle Andrews
With an extra bounce in her step, Willa turned and walked away from Justin. As soon as she was gone, he realized that half of the students in the hallway were staring at him.
One of the other jocks, Par Bundy, passed Justin, staring him straight in the eye. They'd been in several extracurriculars together over the years. They'd been acquaintances for a long time, without any tension. When Uly died, Par and a few of the other jocks turned to ice around Justin. Once or twice, Justin had been attacked on his way out of school at night.
Fortunately for him, Justin was a better student than most of the others. He wasn't just prepared for a fight. Some part of Justin had been itching for a fight every day since Uly died. Those kids who attacked him never knew what was happening until they were bleeding on the ground.
“If they knew what was good for them, they'd put a bullet in your head too,” Par mumbled to Justin as he passed.
Justin looked down to the ground, trying to seem like the poor bullied kid with emotional issues. The funny part was, Par was right. If they knew what was good for them, they would kill Justin, because when the war started, he planned to seek revenge for what happened to Uly.
“Miss your boyfriend?” a girl from the crowd yelled to Justin. “So hard to find a good murderer these days!”
Laughs were had by many, who undoubtedly felt strong and powerful as they made fun of Justin. He could have easily hated all of them, but he didn't. He saw them for what they were: mindless little drones who did what they were told, and thought what they were told, because opening their eyes and looking at the world around them was too much of a challenge for their simple minds.
“Hey, Par,” Justin called out, looking up to where Par was now standing.
When Par turned to look at him, Justin started to walk toward him and calmly said, “You hit like a girl. You throw like a girl. And I'm sure you catch like one too. You know the real reason you hate me? It's not because of Uly. It's because no matter how hard you try to be the big man on campus, I will always be on the field before you. I will always score more goals than you. I will always win the game, while you watch from the sidelines.”
Par started to grumble and groan, balling his fists and trying his best to look intimidating. Justin looked him in the eye without showing any fear or intimidation, because he didn't feel either of those things.
“If you want to hit me, hit me,” Justin told him. “Stop making comments out of the side of your mouth as you walk down the hall, hoping that I'll throw the first punch. You should know by now...” Justin allowed a slight smile before finishing, “I would never hit a girl.”
“Sexist creep!” a girl called out from behind him. He honestly couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or not. His attention was on Par, waiting.
The thing about this situation was that Par didn't have the option of retreat. Half of the student body was watching him, and listening to Justin insult him to his face. Justin, the kid who everyone seemed to know was a member of Freedom, even if they didn't know that he was a member of Freedom.
Par had to do something, and Justin was counting on that fact. But Par was taking far too long to respond, so Justin gave him a nod and started to turn away from him.
Having no choice but to act right then, Par grabbed Justin and spun him around, throwing him into a set of lockers.
“Apologize,” Par demanded in as threatening a tone as possible.
Justin looked down nervously and said, “Sorry to offend, ma'am.”
The crowd oohed and ahhed, and Par listened to them laugh at him. He obviously didn't want to get into a real fight with Justin, but it was impossible to avoid.
Par threw a punch at Justin's face, which Justin easily avoided. Par's fist hit the locker behind Justin, sending a loud boom through the hallways. The pain in Par's eyes was unmistakable, and Justin was actually starting to feel sorry for him for a second or two, until Par threw another punch which landed in Justin's stomach.
The air was knocked out of Justin and he doubled over. He could have tackled Par right then, taking him to the ground and twisting an arm behind his back, so that Par wouldn't be able to move. Instead, Justin drew out the breathlessness and stayed doubled over until Par grabbed him and threw him against the lockers once again. He punched Justin in the face, and while Justin wanted to put on a good show for the crowd, he didn't feel like spending more time on this than was necessary. So, he went down and curled up on the floor.
“A girl never hit like that,” Par told him.
“Sexist creep!” that same girl shouted. This time, Justin was pretty sure that it was a joke. God, he hoped it was a joke.
The bell rang and Par walked off, leaving Justin on the ground. As all the other kids went about their business, some laughed. The strange part was that Justin saw a few students who were looking down at him with sympathy. As soon as he locked eyes with one of those girls, she turned away and hurried down the hall. Nobody wanted to be seen bonding with a member of Hate after all, whether it was just a rumor or not.
When most of the students were in their classrooms, and Justin was pulling himself off of the floor, he glanced up the hall and saw Sim staring at him. Sim didn't look away as soon as Justin locked eyes with him. He seemed as though he had something important to say, but he couldn't do it here. Especially not now.
Sim walked away, and Justin's attention turned toward a history teacher, Mr. Oliver, who was walking toward him with a disapproving look on his face.
“Kids and their rumors,” Mr. Oliver told Justin. “I guess they need to hate someone and Uly's not good enough for them.”
“I'll live.”
“I'm sure you will. But you should get to the nurse's office, just in case.”
Mr. Oliver walked off, toward his own classroom. Justin would have thought that he was nice man, with concern for Justin's well-being, except he hadn't stepped in to stop the fight in the first place. Though he wasn't sure quite how this fit into the training of a teacher in the land of the oppressed, he was sure that it meant something. Nothing just happened. Everything was part of the system. Part of the conspiracy against the people.
The more he thought in those terms, the more insane Justin sounded to himself. The words sounded crazy, but he knew the reality of the world. He'd seen it with his own two eyes. To deny it would be the true insanity.
The nurse's office was accessed through the school's main office. To get to it, Justin passed by administrators and secretaries. They saw his wounds and stared. He tried his best to look like the wounded puppy and not the kid who just got the crap beaten out of him on purpose, just so he could get down to the nurse's office.
As he sat in the office, waiting for the nurse to return, Justin kept his eyes down. He didn't want to make eye contact with any of the office workers. Though he doubted that any of them didn't know who he was, he wanted them to forget that he was ever there that day.
Minutes passed, and still the nurse didn't come back to her office. She was probably at lunch or roaming the halls, as she sometimes did. She was not known for her great attention to work. What she was known for, at least to Justin, was taking on a student assistant each semester. Someone who had a knack for first aid, or who might need it in their future job.
Somehow, Marti had gotten herself the position for the semester. Given her other extracurriculars, Justin had never imagined her being shipped off to a factory once she was assigned, like Amanda. She was involved in a lot of sports, though to a lesser degree than Justin or Uly. Considering the first aid training that she was getting, Justin assumed that she was being groomed for a medic position, or maybe nurse or doctor. It would be good work for her.
Of course, it was all a theory. Justin didn't know who would be assigned where, any more than they did. But ever since he realized that the extracurriculars were early training for lifelong careers, he couldn't help but think about every student he passed in the hallway, and what they would become. Most didn't even realize that their futures
were already set in stone. They looked at their assignment day as something like a lottery, as though they could randomly hit the jackpot. But that never happened.
He was sitting in the office for almost a half hour before the nurse came into the room and closed the door behind her.
She looked him up and down, and ran a thermometer across his forehead, checking the results before she said, “What seems to be the problem today?”
“I'd rather not talk about it, if that's okay?” Justin replied, playing the troubled and bullied youth.
The nurse nodded. She didn't care one way or the other whether he talked about it. Her job was to slap a bandage on whatever was bleeding and then make him hold an ice pack to his face for a while, before shipping him back to class.
He sat quietly as she dabbed a cut that he hadn't even realized was on his face with an alcohol swab and put a bandage on it. She then left the room, to get an ice pack out of the freezer in the teacher's lounge. She closed the door behind her.
Finally, Justin was free to move around the room without anyone seeing him or watching what he was doing. Quickly, he grabbed a chair and placed it next to the wall, just under a clock that was hung there. He climbed onto the chair and pulled a note that he'd written for Marti out of his pocket. He slipped it behind the clock, double checking to make sure that the clock was hanging straight before he stepped down from the chair.
After moving the chair back to where he found it, Justin went to a bottle of liquid soap by the sink. He turned the bottle so that the label was facing the wall, and then turned the nozzle back toward the sink, so the nurse wouldn't notice anything strange. Once he did this, Justin went back to the exam table and sat down. Moments later, the nurse walked back into the room and handed him the ice pack.
“Sit back and put this on your face for a little while. It'll help with the swelling,” she told him.
She took a seat at her desk and began flipping through magazines on her tablet, while he rested on the table, holding that ice pack to his face.
He sat there until the bell rang again. As soon as it did, he thanked the nurse for her help and left the office.
All of that for a conversation that he should have been able to have with Marti face to face. In the letter, he told her that he found an old toy of Uly's in his apartment. He said that it was in desperate need of repair, but if she wanted it, she could come to his apartment and pick it up after school.
Lies. Deception. Allowing himself to be beaten up. Layers upon layers of secret codes and hidden messages which, roughly translated, simply meant: 'Need help. Come to my apartment.'
19
The halls were mostly empty in the school, since students were either in class or at lunch. Justin was supposed to be in the cafeteria, but he'd already eaten and he had no desire to sit in a room full of people who had nothing better to do than talk about him and throw scraps of food in his direction. Fortunately for him, few of them had good aim.
He was sitting in the hall, trying to close his eyes and get some rest, when he heard footsteps approaching. Upon looking up, he saw Sim making his way toward him. He had an uncomfortable look on his face and kept glancing over his shoulder, obviously hoping not to be seen by anyone as he approached Justin.
Once he was close enough, Sim crouched beside Justin and said, “I need to...”
He stopped himself mid-sentence and looked around once again. He was too nervous and uncomfortable to simply not want to be seen with Justin. This was something else. Something bigger.
“You should either talk or you should go. People are going to be done with lunch soon,” Justin warned him.
“I saw her.”
It was blunt, yet vague. Justin narrowed his eyes and tilted his head questioningly as he asked, “Saw her?”
“I saw Libby,” Sim clarified, growing even more uncomfortable. “I mean, I think I did. I don't know. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn't her. It couldn't have been her.”
“Why not?”
Sim's eyes met Justin's. He took a moment, obviously considering whether or not he wanted to tell Justin what he was thinking. In a way, Justin was hoping that he would decide not to. There would be some loyalty to Libby in that decision. If she was in trouble, and Sim didn't want to make it worse by telling a loyalist about it, Justin might be pleasantly surprised. On the other hand, he really wanted to know what Sim was talking about. He couldn't have seen Libby. She was in the Garden.
“Do you care about her?” Sim asked Justin. “I mean, I know you were friends. I know you used to... I mean, you—”
“Had a childhood crush on the only girl I knew at the time,” Justin nodded. “It's not a big deal.”
“But do you still care about her?”
“I got over her a long time ago.”
“But do you still care? At all?”
The way he said it surprised Justin. He'd never seen Sim act so emotional before. He wasn't quite sure what to make of it. He wasn't sure which act to put on.
“I guess. Yes,” Justin allowed.
“I saw her last night. At the hospital.”
Justin wasn't expecting this. Hearing those words come out of Sim's mouth was like being punched in the stomach all over again, but he had to keep that reaction from showing on his face. He had to pretend that he didn't care.
As far as he knew, Libby was safe and sound at the Garden. If she was at the hospital, there must have been a good reason for it. The only thing he could think of was the scanner. But why would Aaron send her out there? It was dangerous. They weren't supposed to be risking her life. If that had been the plan, he never would have left her alone there.
“What do you mean? Was she okay?” Justin asked, trying desperately to sound less concerned than he actually was.
He felt like he was shaking, and prayed to God that Sim didn't notice.
“She wasn't sick. She just looked different. Her hair was different and she had glasses, and...” Sim deflated as he said, “It couldn't have been her.”
“Why not? People change their hair all the time.”
Sim looked down, and then ran his hands through his hair. He looked like he was trying to find the right way to tell Justin what he needed to tell him. He was taking a long time too, which made Justin worry. Did Sim know the truth?
“The person I saw—who I thought was Libby—was with another guy and they were being chased by HAND.”
“What?” Justin asked, trying to look completely dumbfounded, when in reality he was worried sick, and a little pissed off that Libby would be put in that situation.
“Did you see the news this morning? The people who were trying to steal the medicine?”
Justin nodded. He'd heard about what happened, but brushed it off. It didn't seem important at the time, but he should have known better. He should have known that there was more to the story than what was being reported.
He searched his memory for the details of a news story that he'd mostly ignored. Only one fragment of that story stood out. Someone was dead.
“You're telling me that Libby Jacobs was with Hate? Stealing medication from a hospital?” Justin said with carefully measured disbelief in his voice. “You have to be wrong. She's not like that.”
Sim nodded. “I know. I keep telling myself that it couldn't have been her. But the thing is, I think she saw me too. I think she recognized me.”
“HAND had her a month ago. They said so themselves. If she was one of those people, they wouldn't have let her go.”
“I know.”
Both of them were silent for a moment, trying to let this conversation sink in. Obviously, they each needed to absorb it for very different reasons.
“If it was her...” Sim started, but he stopped himself to regroup before continuing. “If that was Libby, they did something to her. They're forcing her to do this.”
Justin looked at Sim, but didn't say anything. He knew that Sim was trying to make sense of the situation as best he could, and Sim seemed honestly d
isturbed by it. Maybe he really did care about Libby. Maybe he wasn't as unfeeling as Uly always thought he was.
“But what if they're not?” Sim asked, in an even more hushed tone than before. “What if they're not forcing her?”
He didn't wait for an answer, which was good, because Justin had no answer to offer him. Instead, Sim got up and started to walk away, leaving Justin confused about what type of person he thought Sim really was. A cold-hearted loyalist rarely acted this way.
After taking a few steps, Sim stopped and turned around to face Justin again. He asked, “Did you find Amanda?”
Justin hesitated. For the briefest of moments, he forgot what the plan was when it came to telling Sim whether or not he'd found Amanda.
It was only a moment, and hopefully it didn't read as anything more than shock over the news of the Libby sighting. Then he told Sim, “No. I didn't find her.”
20
Willa was late for the appointment that she insisted on making with Justin after lunch. He sat in her office, staring at one of those old propaganda posters that she had hanging on her wall, counting the seconds and insisting that if she didn't show up within five, he would get up and leave.
The last thing he wanted was to talk to a school counselor. He didn't want to discuss Uly, not because the subject was still painful—though it was—but because he was tired of having to make up lies and put on acts, just to make people think that he was feeling what he should be feeling and thinking what he should be thinking.
He was upset that Libby had been taken out of the Garden and put into a dangerous situation without anyone telling him. He had no illusion of being important or high ranking to the Freedom cause, but she was his friend. He brought her into the place. He had invested a lot into her and put his own life on the line for her, and it pissed him off to think that Aaron and the others didn't even think it was worth telling him when they planned on putting her in a building full of HAND officers.
She could have been dead. After everything that they'd been through, that could have been that. She could be gone forever. But he couldn't allow himself to believe it, even for a second. Until he knew for sure, he would have to settle for being mad at Aaron. Anything else would force him to shut down, and he couldn't let that happen in the middle of a school day.