“I understand if you don’t want to,” Noel said. “You can go in if you want. I won’t stop you.” Gabi didn’t wait for another invitation. She gave him a wide berth and fled to her front porch, looking around as she went. There was no sign of Bradley or Geoff, and Noel didn’t budge as he watched her go. After tipping her gloves off, she fumbled with her keys and unlocked the door. Why was Noel still standing there? Why wouldn’t he go away? Gabi slammed the door shut behind her and locked it again, her breath fogging up the windowpane as she looked out. Even from inside the house, she could see Noel shivering.
She could let him in and lock the door. The other entrance and all the windows would be locked already. The house behind her was dark, devoid of the smells of baking and simmering soup. Gabi didn’t want to be alone with the emptiness crowding around her, but was she so desperate for company that she would invite Noel inside? Even if he had been a regular boy, a nice boy instead of one of Bradley’s sidekicks, her father wouldn’t approve of her being alone with a member of the opposite sex. After consecration, some chaperoned outings were allowed, but Gabi wouldn’t be eligible for that until after her calling had been confirmed at camp. A dreaded gauntlet, Gabi suddenly recalled, that was only a few weeks away.
None of it mattered. Not Noel or camp or the rules that governed coed mingling in the fellowship. People were being tortured and killed in the very place meant to preserve life. Her gram was gone, and Gabi didn’t know whom to trust to help her fix things, but the hopelessness of it all gave her a reckless courage. Noel looked small out in the yard as he cast one last look at the house and turned to go. Gabi flipped the lock and swung the door open.
“Wait!” she called, scanning the neighboring yards for the figures of Bradley and Geoff racing toward her. Gabi stepped aside and held the front door open, hoping Noel would take the hint so she wouldn’t have to hear herself inviting one of her worst enemies into her home.
Chapter SEVEN
I AM making dinner while Noel Sutton sits at my kitchen counter drinking a cup of tea. Everything is completely normal, Gabi recited inwardly. She was grateful for the excuse to keep her hands busy, having made a beeline for the kitchen the moment Noel closed the door behind him. Along the way, she made sure the curtains were all open so that a neighbor would see the assault taking place, even if she couldn’t be saved in time.
“This is weird, right?” Noel said, then slurped the mint tea Gabi had made from some dried leaves harvested from Gram’s pots. Gabi said nothing. Noel had removed his coat, shoes, and hat at the door, and his hair stood out in spikes around his head. His cheeks were glazed with the warmth of the kitchen, and he looked far less intimidating perched on a high stool at the counter, his feet not touching the floor. Noel put his cup down and drummed his fingers on the countertop. Just like Mathew.
He’s somebody’s son, Gabi reminded herself when thoughts of whether or not she would actually have the guts to wield Gram’s kitchen knife against him crept in.
“Thanks again for letting me in,” Noel ventured. “I guess I should have tried to talk to you at school so you’d feel safer, but you didn’t come out for so long. I thought I’d missed you, so I just came here.”
Gabi stopped chopping and looked up from the soft, wrinkled carrots she’d found in the crisper. “Yeah right,” she said softly. “Safer.” Though she was in her own house, challenging Noel still felt dangerous, but he only squirmed on his stool. Noel’s eyes, she noticed, were the color of chocolate squares warmed in a pan with milk. Gabi remembered the softness of his eyes when they were younger. She hadn’t really seen them in eight years.
“I know why Bradley came after you like that today,” Noel said in a rush. “It’s my fault. I should never have told him. I’m sorry.”
Gabi set down the knife. What was happening? Bradley came after her because he hated her and he could, plain and simple. The Training Period attack had been particularly vicious, and all the more scary for being carried out under the supervision of a teacher, but it didn’t surprise her. Bradley saw his chance, and he took it. She picked the knife back up and sawed at the carrots with renewed vigor.
Noel cleared his throat. “Listen, I’m trying to tell you that Bradley was just trying to get back at me. He had this whole plan about pairing up with you at Training Period and I told him he shouldn’t do it. I knew Helmsgerth wouldn’t stop him, so when she called for people to pair up while you were in the locker room, I volunteered to be your partner before Bradley could.”
“Why did you do that?” Gabi asked.
“I thought it was too much, with your grandmother and everything. I know what it’s like to lose somebody.”
“Oh,” Gabi said, remembering Noel’s father and the day when the principal of the school had come to their classroom and asked Noel to step into the hall. His mother had been waiting just outside the door, her eyes swollen from crying. Noel’s face had gone white just before he pushed past the principal and his mother and raced away down the hall, trying to outrun the loss of a father killed on a Witness mission. That was when Noel had stopped passing Gabi knock-knock jokes and started hanging out with Bradley Fiske. She’d never put those events together before, though it was so clear to her now.
“It didn’t work, obviously,” Noel continued. “Bradley had already asked Helmsgerth if he could work with you before class. Then right before you came back, he told me he was going to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“He wanted to get back at me for trying to wreck his plan. He said he was going to tell you a secret that I told him years ago. Did he say anything?”
“He said a lot of things to me, Noel,” Gabi snapped. She was tired of trying to guess at his meaning, sore from her one-sided wrestling match with Bradley, and she still needed to figure out how she was going to bring the secret operations at the Care Center to light. Bradley and Noel’s little tiff was the least of her worries.
“He said he told you when I asked him about it after Training Period. He said now you knew all about your mother.”
Gabi stiffened as Bradley’s words came back to her. She’d been more intent on surviving his “tutorial” than interpreting his hateful words at the time. Something about being rejected, thrown out like trash. Going back to where she’d come from?
“Oh shit,” Noel muttered, eyeing the knife in Gabi’s white-knuckled grasp. “Oh, man, I shouldn’t have said anything.” He made to slide off the stool, but Gabi rounded the counter and placed herself in his path.
“No, tell me. He did say something about my mother, about me being thrown out like trash. What did he mean by that?” Noel sank back down onto the stool and buried his head in his hands, raking them through his messy hair. “You can’t come here and say those things and not tell me the rest,” Gabi insisted.
“Okay,” he said, dropping his hands. “But can you please go back over there? You’re kind of scary right now.” Gabi grudgingly retreated to her station at the cutting board but kept the knife in a loose grip. “Okay, so, you know how my mom works at the Care Center, right? On the Returned wards and sometimes Pediatrics?”
Gabi nodded. Vera Sutton rode the same bus as Gram to the Care Center, though her shifts were longer and more frequent since she was a full-time nurse who often worked labor and delivery. Vera Sutton always made sure Gram arrived safely at the lobby when the plaza was slick with ice and Gabi wasn’t there to accompany her. Nurse Sutton was usually there when Gabi came in for her checkups, or when she had one of her crises and needed to be admitted for an oxygen treatment. She had a way of talking to Gabi, explaining things to her so she wouldn’t be afraid.
“So, one night, a couple of years before my dad died, I heard my parents talking,” Noel continued. “Mom was tired. She’d been on the kids’ ward all day and all of the night before. With you.” Gabi nodded again. There were a lot of nights like that. “I remember that Mom was talking loud, venting to my dad about work. She was saying how it was hard for her t
o do her job when she didn’t know all the facts. My dad kept trying to comfort her, but she was crying. ‘That little girl,’ she kept saying, ‘that poor little girl is sick from something, and no one knows what it is. They say it’s because she was premature, but that’s not true. I was there.’ I couldn’t hear my dad so well, since he was talking low, trying to calm her down. She got quieter too, eventually. I knew you from school, and I was curious, because my mom never gets that upset about work.”
Gabi was shaking. The kitchen was too hot. She had on too many clothes. She wanted to reach out and cover Noel’s mouth with her hand, not in retribution for all the times he’d done the same to her but to keep an essential thread from being pulled, unraveling what remained of her world.
“Are you okay?” Noel asked uneasily. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”
“I’m fine. What did you hear, Noel?” Gabi whispered, though he was right to be concerned. She might pass out and drop to the floor like a bag of rocks at any moment, just as she’d done on the ninth floor. But she had to hear him say it first. “Tell me.” Noel kept his eyes on the countertop, chewing his lip savagely before he spoke.
“She said she knew the thing about you being premature wasn’t true because she was with Brother Lowell’s wife the night she lost her baby. I didn’t know what that meant at first, like maybe somebody took you for a while or something, but then she said, ‘Therese’s baby died.’ Then Mom told my dad that Brother Lowell’s wife left the Care Center a few days later with you.”
Gabi’s knees gave out and she collapsed, bruising her tailbone as she crashed to the floor.
“Gabi!” She could feel Noel more than see him in the hot crackle of guilt that radiated toward her. Everything made her sick: the smell of the soup, the nearness of Noel, and the awful words ricocheting around the kitchen to pierce her again and again. “I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. Are you okay? Say something!” Noel tapped her cheek with his palm.
“Why are you doing this? Why do you hate me so much?” Gabi choked out. “Why don’t you just leave so you can go tell Bradley all about it?” She was choking on hot, humiliating tears. How could it be true that Noel’s parents, Noel himself, and even Bradley Fiske knew all of this before she did? Was it the ultimate game? A way of hurting her in a way that would leave a permanent mark?
“What? No! I don’t hate you, Gabi, I swear. I was just messed up after my dad died. I felt angry at everybody, and Bradley’s so angry all the time too. He was just someone to be angry with, I guess. By the time I stopped feeling like that, I didn’t have any other friends left besides him and Geoff.” His words poured out of him like heavy marbles from a tipped box, scattering to lost corners. Noel dropped to his knees beside her. “Can I do something?” He cracked his knuckles convulsively. “I can’t leave you here like this. Please let me help.”
Gabi looked at him through the salty sting of her tears. There was only one thing she needed now.
“Do you have a car?”
JUST ABOUT everyone in the fellowship had cars. There were plenty to go around since the Strain more than halved the population. Some of the survivors had even built houses out of them, using their stripped shells for foundations and the interiors for furniture. Due to the impossibly high price of gas, cars were only used by councilmembers and when the worst weather conditions made walking to one of the indoor bus shelters a hazard.
Noel was jittery at the wheel, and the car jerked down the gusty streets. Gabi slumped in her seat, grateful that Noel was too anxious to make conversation. He had only driven a handful of times. The nurse’s salary his mother earned and the little they got from the Veterans Fund after his father’s death wasn’t nearly enough to cover fuel costs, which had quadrupled in the last four years alone. The water resources necessary to force natural gas out of the earth now that all the oil wells were dry, not to mention the expense of purging the toxins leached into the soil and groundwater in the aftermath of fracking, had driven the cost of a fuel ration up over three hundred dollars a gallon. Fuel rations for councilmembers and the allotment needed for Witness teams to get to their base camps were covered by the fellowship, but everyone else had to pay.
“Don’t tell my mom how you got here, okay?” Noel said as he turned into the parking lot by the plaza. “She’d kill me if she knew I took the car without asking.” He came to a stop and flicked on the overhead light to peer at her. “I’d walk you in, but if she saw me….”
With an impatient snarl, Gabi wrenched the passenger-side door open and began forcing herself through the gusts shearing across the plaza, not even bothering to slam the door behind her.
Gabi’s destination was not, in fact, the Care Center. She was determined to find her father in his office and demand he tell her the truth about her mother, but there was no way she was going to let Noel know that she believed him. She was convinced he would race back to his good buddy Bradley and share all the delicious details of her collapse in the kitchen. The headlights from Noel’s car lit the plaza, and a quick glance over her shoulder confirmed he was watching her walk away.
Gabi knew that her father would be working for another couple of hours if he kept to his usual schedule. Councilmembers met at the beginning and end of each day to evaluate reports from Witness teams in the field. These meetings had an official start time but were open-ended as it was impossible to know what might need to be dealt with swiftly, and it was important to have good news for the bulletins. The entire fellowship read these updates avidly, as the Witness work was not only a top priority for the spiritual mission of Unitas, but a matter of security. The Tribes were a violent lot who’d been raiding and fighting their way into the protected zones since the formation of the fellowship.
As Gabi marched into the teeth of the wind, she knew if she were to trust Sam with righting the wrongs at the Care Center, she had to know who he and she really were. The possibility that her mother was not her real mother dealt only a glancing blow. Therese was a face in a photograph, a handful of stories her father and Gram told her. Nothing would be lost to her that hadn’t already been taken the night Therese died. But to lose her father and Mathew? To know she was no more connected to them, or even Gram, than she was to any of the hunched figures rushing by her on the plaza? The thought pained her, but if she couldn’t keep herself together, she was never going to learn the truth.
Noel was still there, she noticed, as she arrived at the double doors of the Care Center. Still watching her. She’d been hoping he would have driven off by now so she wouldn’t have to go through the charade of stepping inside and fielding pointed questions from Officer Katz. It wasn’t until she’d walked through the doors that Noel finally backed out of the parking spot, and by then Officer Katz was already rounding the desk with an intent frown.
“Gabi!” Katz said. “You’re looking a bit better. The new dose must be agreeing with you. But should you really be back out in this weather so soon?”
“Hi, Officer Katz!” Gabi said in what she hoped was a breezy tone. “Just getting out of the cold for a second. I’m going to see my dad.”
“He’s not in his office right now, dear. We track all the councilmembers so we know how to reach them in case of an emergency. Why don’t you wait with me and I’ll let his assistant know you’re on the grounds? He can come get you when he’s done, and you and I can have a nice little chat in the meantime.” Officer Katz herded Gabi to a second chair behind the curve of her security desk. “Would you like something to drink? Or a cracker perhaps? I’ve got some left from my snack ration.”
This was not the plan. If Gabi had to sit and make small talk with Officer Katz while everything boiled inside her, she would surely lose her mind. She needed to see her father now, otherwise she never would have gotten into a car with the likes of Noel Sutton.
“I really have to see him,” Gabi demurred. “It’s important. Can you call him?”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Katz said stiffly, V-sh
aped wrinkles bracketing the border of her mouth. “Go ahead and have a seat. You’ll see him soon.” There was no mistaking the note of command in Katz’s voice. She was used to being obeyed. Just as Gabi was about to back down and try to formulate a new plan, Nurse Mehta swept inside, letting a shock of night air in with her. She was so bundled up that Gabi might not have recognized her had it not been for the smear of purple lipstick just visible over the top of her scarf.
“Well, look who’s back to see us!” she sang as she whipped off her hat and smoothed her hands over her cropped hair to settle the static. “What brings you back so soon, Gabi? Not feeling sick again, I hope?”
“I was on my way to see my dad, but now I don’t know where he is,” Gabi said before Katz could interject.
Nurse Mehta gave Katz a pointed look. “Well, that’s easy enough. I’m sure Officer Katz was about to tell you that he always makes a visit to the Returned wards on Mondays after his final council meeting.”
Officer Katz reddened to the tips of her ears and thrust her shoulders back. “Brother Lowell is going about his duties and should not be interrupted. She can perfectly well wait until he is finished.”
“Oh, nonsense,” Nurse Mehta said dismissively. “She can come up with me.” Before either woman could give those words further consideration, Gabi was around the desk and on her way to the elevator.
“Wait!” Katz called. “She isn’t cleared to go up!”
“I’ll look after her, Rhonda,” Nurse Mehta said as she punched a button to call the elevator, then pushed Gabi inside as the doors opened. The young nurse giggled as she pressed the Door Close button. “Katz is a trip, isn’t she?” she said once they were alone. Gabi searched the young woman’s face to see if it was safe to agree with her and noticed a faint smudge of red powder between Nurse Mehta’s eyebrows.
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