The XY

by Virginia Bergin

  “Lion got right up off his sickbed and did for Jed. End of. Jed…he’s killed. Dead and gone. Me? I got a one-way trip to hell.”

  If he’d told me any of this sooner, I wouldn’t have believed such a nightmare of a world could be possible. Now I know…and I feel I am now part of this nightmare. And if he had told me, would it have stopped me from letting that man out of the container? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

  “You shouldn’t feel bad for what you did,” he says. “I met plenty in them units I’d have killed if I could. Not just stopped: killed. Plenty any boy would have killed. He even tell you his name, this one you did for?”

  “No.”

  I’ve killed a man with no name.

  We sit in silence for a moment, both staring at our invisible, imaginary beasts in the sky.

  “He…had a beard, like you, only more of it,” I say. That alone—the memory of that alone—makes me WAKE UP. Makes me feel SICK. I get up from my window seat. “And he was older and…”

  On my own face, in the darkness, I draw it—the slash of the scar from his lip to his cheekbone.

  Mason draws in a massive gulp of breath. “River!” he breathes out, his voice too loud in the silence of the night.

  “Be quiet!” I tell him. I cannot stand this. I cannot stand to think about that man. I truly can stand no more. Of any of this. I walk out.

  I leave the door open behind me. It’s his business to close it.

  I have no interest in closing doors or opening them. I have no interest.

  With this whole situation, I am done.

  • • •

  I suppose I do manage to sleep again. It doesn’t feel like it, but when my eyes were last open, it was still night, and now…it is day. Plat is sitting on my creaky cot, the house and the whole village quiet around us. The silence blasts. And me not even noticing it at first. Just like I don’t even really notice how strange the light is.

  “Oh, Plat!”

  We hug for a very long time.

  “I didn’t mean to do it, Plat. I didn’t mean to. I mean, I meant to. I meant to hit him. I meant to stop him. I didn’t mean to—”

  “Shh! I know. Everyone knows. It wasn’t your fault. It was self-defense.”

  “Self-defense… Plat, what is that? Is that a legal thing?”

  “You had no choice, did you? It’s not like you meant to kill him. You just wanted to stop him.”

  My hands—so cold still—feel the memory of the deed. “Plat…when I hit him, I think I wanted to stop him so much—”

  “You could not possibly have known what would happen.”

  “No…”

  My voice, my whole being, is quaking. I feel faint. “I can’t breathe. Open the window!”

  Plat jumps up, opens the window, and helps me over to it. I suck in lungfuls of autumn chill—such a chill. This is why the light is strange: in the night, snow has come. Snow in October, falling on a world that just won’t be ready for it, so many plants and animals not prepared. But that’s how it is now. That’s how the once-was still is; they’d hoped the Earth would bounce back in no time, but it has been injured. Injuries take time to heal.

  A pink scar under a dark beard.

  “Shh!” soothes Plat, stroking my back, the silence outside so deep I swear I can hear the swish of her hand on me so loud it’s deafening.

  The silence outside. It’s not just the first fall of snow.

  S-I-L-E-N-C-E.

  “Where is everyone?” I ask.

  Plat—she just carries on stroking.

  “I asked you a question,” I say as calmly as I can. “Where is everyone?”

  My words puff whiteness into the cool air. They are there, my words, and then gone. Too bad, so sad—

  “What’s going on, Plat?”

  I’m facing her now. Feels like I’m facing some part of myself I don’t really want to look at. A part of myself I am not ready to see.

  “Where’s Mumma? Where’s Kate?”

  “They said you should stay here.”

  “Where are they?” I’m pulling on clothes. My heart, pounding, already knows the answer. My brain wants to hear it spoken. “TELL ME.”

  “There’s a 150.”

  “What for?”

  “It’s a court.”

  “About what?” I ask. My heart knows. My breath? It’s short and sharp and hurting, like the outside is in here. Is in me.

  A court? It can’t be about me. It can’t be anything to do with me, or else I’d have to be there. That’s what my brain argues.

  “About what?” I ask Plat again.

  She won’t even look at me. This question will not be answered.

  “Oh, River, no. River, please,” she says, following me as I crash down the stairs, as I shove sockless feet into my boots. No time to lace them. No time for a coat. “Don’t go!”

  I’m gone.

  • • •

  Court normally happens in the community studies room at school. I run there, stumbling through the snow, Plat—I think—trying to plead with me…or was she just stumbling along with me? I’d stopped listening.

  The community studies room is empty except for the littler ones, messing around when they should be studying. Messing around when at least some of them would normally be in court too—too young to vote, but not too young to learn. I suppose it has been Agreed that whatever is going on in court is not something they need to know. And as I am not there either, I suppose it has been Agreed that it is not something I need to know. But Plat? One look at her face tells me she knew the court wasn’t here. She has let me run here. Playing for time, Kate would say.

  “So where are they? The granmummas’ house?” That’s next most likely, though we’ve had courts and other community meetings in Lenny’s barn before—and even in the church.

  “I don’t want you to go there.”

  That’s all the answer I need. But Plat—Plat wouldn’t miss a court.

  “Why aren’t you there?” I ask her.

  “I’ve abstained,” she says.

  On what should have been my first 150 Court, I had to abstain because it was me facing restorative justice for punching Jade, which I did when she said the only reason I was so quickly accepted into the 150 was because of my mumma. I wouldn’t have punched her for that; I punched her because of the nasty and very untrue things she said about Mumma. She said we were privileged, that Mumma abused her privilege, that we got new tech before anyone else did (we don’t), and that the only reason Kate—“that old witch,” Jade called her—was still alive was because my mumma had a guaranteed supply of inhalers. None of it was true. I felt Kate rage possess me. I punched. Jade punched back. I punched again.

  Her nose bled. I came back to myself, and I sat and comforted her. Her arm reached up around my shoulder, and she comforted me back. But I was a 150 member, so it didn’t—it couldn’t—end there. Not for me. I had taken my first step into mummahood. I was becoming an adult, so I had to face justice as an adult.

  The restoration decided upon was that Jade should apologize to me and that I should help her in whatever way she chose for six months or until she decided otherwise. I thought she never would decide otherwise. For a week, Jade reveled in the arrangement, even though the court was clear that I should be thanked by her for every deed done. It was a harsh Agreement; it tested us both. At the end of the second week, Jade had had enough. Justice has been done, she told the 150. I wasn’t even that grateful to her for losing patience with the process. We both knew she shouldn’t have said what she said and I shouldn’t have done what I did.

  Justice truly had been done.

  Since then, I abstain a lot. A lot more than I should do. Abstentions are rare. So rare that if it occurs, it usually means a 150 member can’t separate her feelings from the facts. Most of us, most of the time, are
more than capable of making decisions. It’s how we are raised, what we are raised to do, and it started right back in the granmummas’ time, when life was one agonizing decision after another. Me, I love facts. I know facts. You give me a mathematical problem, and I will show you the answer, even if I have to skip a thousand stones to work it out. You give me Casey needs a hip operation versus Silver-Moon’s mumma has leukemia, and I abstain.

  Plat, she never abstains.

  “Please, River, let’s just go home. Yours, mine—I don’t care! Let’s just go home. We’ll talk about it at home,” Plat is saying.

  I run, stumbling, for the granmummas’ house.

  “Don’t do this,” Plat says, putting herself between me and the granmummas’ door. “Please don’t do this.”

  I can hardly hear her. What I hear is the pounding of blood in my own ears from the running and—

  Didn’t it feel like this last night, when I killed a man? The crashing pounding of blood? The whoosh of life when a life has been taken.

  “Give me one good reason,” my brain forces me to say to Plat.

  “Because I love you,” she says.

  Oh, Plat. P-L-A-T-I-N-U-M! I love you too. But Plat…she also loves the law and politics and justice and reason. “Because I love you” is hardly Plat’s style. “Because I love you” makes no sense to me right now.

  “It has been Agreed, River.”

  “What has?”

  “The verdict.”

  My brain sputters.

  I feel… I think I must feel as baffled and angry as Mason ever has. But I am not Mason. I have a right. I take hold of Plat’s hand. I squeeze it. Then she stands aside.

  I push open the door.

  I scan the room, and the room scans me.

  It looks so normal—and so not normal. Every sofa, every table, every chair, every everything in the granmummas’ enormous kitchen, has been pulled to the sides so the 150 can cram in; even the doors to the never-used dining room have been flung open to accommodate the crowd.

  They sit or stand, higgledy-piggledy, but roughly in a circle. That’s what a court always looks like—no one separate, all in a circle.

  I am in the middle of it. No one goes into the middle. I am in the middle.

  In that circle, part of that circle, sits Mason.

  He stares back at me…with just the slightest shake of his head. A quiet no, but around it, there’s a ripple; evidently, the community has been introduced to Mason, and evidently many of those who are not granmummas are still struggling with the fact of his existence, just as I did.

  I was right: none of the littler ones are in the court to observe. Only 150 voters: teens like me, the granmummas, the mummas—but not my mumma?! I scan the room again: no Mumma—only Kate, who gets up from her place next to Mason and comes to me and says, “You shouldn’t be here,” even as other neighbors get up—to comfort, to chide, to… I do not know what this is.

  “Well, I am here,” I tell her very quietly.

  I’m not biologically related to Kate, but sometimes I feel more like her daughter than Mumma’s. I sound like her sometimes. I do know that. Sounds like is not the same as thinks like. I do remind myself of that. I remind myself of that now.

  “Everyone should sit down,” says Yaz. “That includes you, River.”

  Yaz was deputized to be facilitator of the 150 when Mumma isn’t around, but it turns out Mumma is around. Yukiko is holding an open notebook, filming the proceedings. An open notebook on which PicChat is up and Mumma’s face is scanning the room—and sees me.

  I see her register that. Register me. Register me and ignore me.

  Granmumma Rosie gets up from her chair and goes and perches on the arm of a sofa. I am being given a seat. This is not the usual way of things; if you’re fit to stand, you stand. Plat pushes through the circle to stand behind the chair. I go, and I sit, and I am grateful to sit. My knees are shaking. Plat’s loving hands rest gently on my shoulders.

  “Yaz, what was the result of your investigation?” my mumma asks.

  I look at Mason.

  “That I’m guilty as hell,” he says, looking straight back at me.

  “Yaz?” my mumma says.

  “Manslaughter,” says Yaz.

  “That’s right!” says Mason. “I slaughtered him!”

  Yaz wheels over to him. “This is being recorded now,” she advises. “We’re going for the lesser charge. On the basis of the evidence.”

  “Basis of—lesser’n what? What are you saying?”

  “Lesser than murder. It was not deliberate. It was accidental. It was self-defense.”

  Mason squints at her.

  “And it was not, in any way, premeditated.”

  “Pre-what?”

  “You didn’t think about killing that asshole prior to…accidentally killing him,” Kate tries to help out.

  “Oh NO! NO, NO, NO, NO!” cries Mason. “WAIT THE HELL UP HERE! I thought about killing that bastard about ten thousand times a day!”

  “That’s not the point,” Kate murmurs. “Trust me: you didn’t mean to kill him.”

  My heart—my deafening, pounding heart—feels like it could burst straight out of my chest and lie there beating, bloodily, in front of everyone.

  “But I did it,” I tell them all. I do that; I speak.

  “Got witnesses says I did,” Mason blusters on. “Whole village of she-wolf witnesses. And I did.” He seeks out the camera. “I did it, and I meant to.”

  Sweet has a toy, a kaleidoscope. She loves it. I don’t love it. It makes me dizzy, makes the world split and twirl. I feel like I’m looking through it right now. I feel like I’m feeling through it.

  “Accidental?!” he says to Yaz. “This ain’t no accident. I meant to kill him.”

  “But it’s in your best interests to—” Yaz tries.

  “My best interests?” Mason rages. “My best interests? Put it down as I meant to kill him or the deal’s off.”

  “What deal?” I ask out loud, but to no one in particular. My heart lies like a stone at the bottom of the kaleidoscope world.

  “I’ve got a reputation,” Mason says to Kate. “And maybe that’s all I’ve got, but I’m telling you—”

  “Stop filming,” Kate says to Yukiko, and Yukiko does. “Scroll back. Wipe the conclusion. Recap. Charge is murder. Plea is guilty.”

  The court ripples with consternation, and I see Kate stare Mumma down.

  Plat gently hugs my shoulders.

  “But I did it,” I tell them all, my heart pounding with fright.

  “This is a done deal, sweetie pop.” Kate speaks across the room to me. “Don’t mess this up.”

  “But I did it…”

  “Do not mess this up or we’re all in trouble. All of us.”

  Every head in the room nods. My community is unanimous. Our 150 is united in Agreement…and Mason is too. As he nods, he fixes me with a stare and a long, purposeful grin. A long, purposeful grin I don’t even have a name for—sad? Glad? Angry? Wistful? A kaleidoscope grin.

  I sit back down, feel Plat’s sweet hands curve around my shoulders, offering a comfort I can’t even feel.

  “Are we ready to record this?” asks Yukiko.

  Granmummas, mummas, and the oldest teens nod. Mason nods.

  Yukiko hands the community notebook to Casey.

  “I don’t think I can,” she whispers. “I mean, I just don’t think—”

  “I’ll do it,” says Plat, stepping forward.

  “Your career!” exclaims Zara, her mumma.

  Plat, she just takes hold of that notebook. “Recording,” she says.

  She points the camera at Yaz.

  “A man was killed—”

  “Murdered,” Mason chips in—is waved down to silence by Kate.

  “A man
was murdered. Method and location information online with this report. Pictures same. Witness reports same. Postmortem report”—it’s only now, when I see Yaz look to her, that I even realize Akesa is in the room too—“available shortly. Cause of death: blow to head—”

  “De-liberate,” Mason blurts.

  “—resulting in catastrophic brain hemorrhage,” Akesa says.

  “We have the perpetrator,” Yaz says.

  Plat turns the notebook camera to Mason.

  He runs a hand through his hair. That’s what he does, I know, when he is anxious. Is it only me who sees that hand is shaking?

  “Yo, hey,” he speaks to the camera. “It was me. I did it. I meant to. No one asked me to ’fess to nothing. I hid out in the woods for weeks after I run from here. No one”—he shoots a look at Yukiko, who mouths words—“aided or a-betted,” he says slowly. “I didn’t get no help from no one, and I did do it, and I did mean to.”

  Plat shifts the notebook away. There’s a ripple in the room as Mason reaches and grabs it back. “Code of Honor,” he speaks into the camera.

  Yaz takes the notebook off Plat, speaks directly into the camera.

  “We have an admittance of responsibility,” she says. “Assessments confirm that although the perpetrator is suffering from depression and anxiety—”

  “What? Who’s saying that? Did you say that?” Mason demands of Akesa.

  “—his mental health is otherwise sound, although he appears to have a variety of delusions of a…culturally transmitted nature.”

  “Now what is that supposed to mean, she-wolf?!” Mason snarls.

  “We don’t know how to restore,” Yaz says to my mumma.

  “Understood,” my mumma says. “As the case involves a boy, it’ll be decided by the National Council. Thank you to the 150 for their deliberations and for Agreeing not to discuss this case outside the court…and to the accused, for being so helpful. The court can go home.”

  There’s a murmur of—relief? Is it that? It’s so hard to tell which way is up, which way is down, which image is true.

  I look at the window because I cannot look at anyone else. It’s snowing again. I hear a single flake falling. Falling. It screams, sounds like a jet crashing.

  • • •