by Celi, S.
THE UNDESIRABLE
By S. Celi
2013, All Rights Reserved by the author
Property of Lowe Interactive Media, LLC
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
Fostino’s frown mixes with his tightened jaw. “Are you serious about this, Charlotte? Really serious? I just — I can’t believe you’re breaking up with me.” His eyebrows pull tighter than any seam I have ever sewn. “God. I’m so stupid.” His mouth sets in a hard line. My heartbeat jumps to my ears. I bite down hard on the inside of my bottom lip.
Oh, God. Did I make the right choice? Will he understand? Will he always hate me?
My breath quickens as the air constricts all around the two of us. I almost taste the awkwardness in the air. I pray my pain doesn’t show on my face.
How do people manage to stay friends after something like this?
I can’t. No, I won’t. Not this time.
I stand in this apartment and know that I failed to make this breakup painless. My words cover this small dusty room. All the muscles in my back tighten and twist from the stress. We will never be just friends — ever.
He gets up from the couch and pulls on his worn, muddy combat boots. He seems wounded, broken, and defeated. He radiates pain. He picks up my keys to the apartment from the coffee table. Awkward. My mind flickers to the beginning. I remember the moment in the town square when The Party transformed our lives. I want to go back and change everything since then.
“I wanted to take care of you and shield you from—” He stops and gestures to the windows and the crumbling world outside this room. His soulful brown eyes glint with anger. “Everything.” Now he exhales. “I guess I’m not surprised. Not after all that happened.” His shoulders slump.
Sweat beads on the back of my neck. I swallow some of my uneasiness. My plan just might work. I taste the hollow victory in the back of my throat.
Good.
“I—I’m sorry.” I have nothing else to say, no words to make this better. In minutes, I’ll leave the apartment and flee my life because I have no other choice.
“I’ll never understand you. Or this.” Fostino shakes his head of dark waves. He fixates on the bare wall behind me.
His words hurt, but Fostino can’t know how much he affects me. I push away the urge to reach out and hold him tighter than I ever hugged anyone. Instead, I shudder a little in my shapeless black dress — the one the government issued me last month. I hate this. I am not a cold person. I don’t hurt people on purpose.
“Fostino, I—“
In a few steps, I reach his side. My shaky hand reaches out and the keys link our hands together. I smell him through all the dust in this studio apartment with the Murphy bed in the corner. I inhale just remember how he smells. I’m so afraid I will forget it. Each second ticks by worse than the last. This conversation is hard, so very hard. I bite down on the inside of my cheek to stop myself from saying something I can’t back up. If only I could tell him the truth, share my terrible secret, and find a way out of my bleak future.
If only.
“Did you ever mean anything you said? I mean, even for one second. Did you ever even like me?” He balls his hand into a fist once I raise my arm to stop him. He keeps talking anyway. “I told you I loved you right here in this room, even though you didn’t say it back. I meant it.”
My stomach twists and heart pounds while I keep up the lies. “Well — I did like you.” I emphasize my next words as my toes curl in my sandals. “I thought I loved you once. I wanted to say it, but—”
“But, I’ll always love you. I will.”
He mutters something else I can’t understand, and his words undo me. I give in and kiss him. His lips are a gentle push against mine, and the kiss is so good it hurts. His lips taste like a nectar I want to savor forever. But I can’t. This moment must stay cold and Fostino needs to know this is goodbye for good. Before the kiss intensifies, I pull away and remember my task. The black Humvee full of people waits around the corner. We all must leave soon. They gave me 15 minutes to make sure this break-up is a clean one. Time is up.
Now.
His eyes lock mine. “Why won’t you tell me what’s really going on?”
Oh no. He can’t know the truth.
Hurt him.
They told me I must end it. Loving me will destroy him. It will destroy everything.
My teeth bite my lip hard on the inside as I search for the words. “It’s — well — we just…we aren’t right for each other. I don’t want you to come after me. We need to end this. This relationship—”
“Whatever. It’s fine. You shouldn’t make stuff up.” Fostino sounds very weary and haggard with each sentence.
I take my keys and slide them into the black wool satchel on my left shoulder. Then I take the deception a step further. “I won’t ever love you, Fostino Sanchez.” The words taste like rusted metal. “I just won’t.”
My hands open the door with purpose. A few steps will take me through an ancient hallway that links this apartment with 16 others. I push myself through the doorframe and pull the door shut behind me. Then I take the first steps of what I know will be a lifetime of solitary strides. With each step, I sever this connection.
Once outside, I round the corner and slide into the alleyway as the armored vehicle hums a signal. The Humvee’s fat tires set off its flat black paint, tinted windows, silver chrome handles, and a large armored grill on the front and the back. This car is a fortress, made for combat and intimidation. All the cars the government owns mirror this one. I slip inside and sink into black leather.
Soon, we will all leave Harrison Corners, Ohio. This small band of rebels will take me some place. And I don’t care where. I just want to disappear, and need to more than ever. After I close the Humvee door, Thompson speaks first.
“Did he believe you?” Thompson throws the vehicle into gear and drives it down the alley. He gets irritated when I don’t answer right away and runs a thick hand through his long dreadlocks. “Well?”
I take my keys and slide them into the black wool satchel on my left shoulder. “He did. Well… I think he did. He didn’t try to stop me. Not really.” I bite my lip to stop the anxiety from overtaking my soul.
“Good.”
The car passes propaganda signs peeling from the bricks of the old apartment homes in Harrison Corners. The signs tell us to KEEP WATCH FOR UNDESIRABLES, to remember THE PARTY WATCHES US, to be GOOD WORKERS. I pass two huge billboards with the face of our Supreme Leader, our dear father, our savior: Maxwell Cooper. In both, the half-smirk he wears frames serious eyes. Another cracked, broken sign right next to the billboards says VICTORY OVER CANADA IN 2068.
“Ugh, I hate Maxwell Cooper so much,” Willa mutters once we pass the last sign. She shakes her head. “And it’s not 2068 anymore. It’s 2072.”
We all know Maxwell Cooper, even though none of us have ever met him. No one dares directly challenge him. He rules the U S, and nowhere did he make that more obvious than here in Ohio. Knowing what I know now, these signs look so different. The words on the billboards sting me like a thousand bees. All lies.
“I know you wanted to bring him with you,” Trina soothes. Even in this light, I still see the faint scar on her cheek. Perhaps it
comes from a long suppressed and heartfelt place. I wish I knew for sure. “But we don’t have the space. Too dangerous. We can’t.” Nothing new. She told me this before.
She will tell me this again.
Willa glares at me. “I still don’t get why we’re doing this in the first place.” She points her next words at Trina. “We. Do. Not. Need. This.” This small woman wants an obvious fight — with me. I know who I am to her: a blonde threat with a dark secret.
“Willa!” Trina retorts in a low voice. “Come on. The decision’s been made, and you know it. The Specialized Secret Resistance chose to save her. So just quit it.” She scowls.
Willa rolls her eyes. “It’s stupid. We don’t need her. The SSR does fine without her. Fine.” She shakes her head, grits her teeth, and looks out the window on the opposite side of the back seat. Her left hand taps the gun on her hip. Everyone stays quiet for a moment.
Once out of the alleyway, we join the other black Humvees on the public street. That’s the one car allowed these days in Harrison Corners, and just for members of The Party. Five cars glide past us. Each carries the symbols of The Party on the front, identical to the one we ride in to make this great escape. I wonder who sits inside each one.
“What will happen to Fostino?” I murmur, choosing to ignore Willa. We can fight it out later. “Will he be okay? What about his family? Will they kill him like they killed my mother?” My mind races after the last words. The questions can’t leave my mouth fast enough. Memories weigh down my shoulders. In seconds, the dread and horror will break my ribs.
“I don’t think The Party knows about you and Fostino. Not all the way. Not yet,” Thompson says, and I know he’s right. He knows everything because he works as a communication operative for The Party. Thompson keeps his eyes on the road, but I see his grip on the wheel tighten. “We should be okay. Things should be quiet in town and over at the shirt factory for a while. At least, we think so.”
I nod. It sounds like we have time to figure out what to do about Fostino. Maybe I can still find a way to fix this mess and come back for him. We can still be together. It’s not over for us. Then I realize what Thompson has just said. My stomach twists once more before I force the next words out of my mouth.
“Because they just want to find me now, right?” I keep my voice low and my eyes on the rearview mirror.
Thompson shrugs. He does not need to say yes. No one in the car says anything. Maybe that’s the worst part about the news we all know — something so horrible no one wants to talk about it, even though it motivates everything we do. At last, I have an answer to a question my mother would never answer. I know who I really am and whose blood runs through my skinny teenage body.
My name is Charlotte Walker. I am the bastard daughter of our dear Supreme Leader, Maxwell Cooper.
CHAPTER TWO
This whole mess started back in April — well, the latest part. Life in Harrison Corners changed one Wednesday afternoon that month. My small corner of the Midwest, isolated from endless War for almost two decades, suddenly had War in the streets.
Around 10:00 AM, the grey clad soldiers showed up in their tanks, hanging off the sides and shooting blanks from their guns. That would be the last time they ever shot blanks at us. Their shiny knee length boots glinted in the spring sunlight. A voice behind a megaphone screamed at us to assemble in the city square at noon.
Most of all, I remember the wide-eyed terror no one wiped from their faces. I saw it on Mr. Mon Swayne’s kind face as he walked his dog. I spotted it in Mrs. Plumbsmith’s eyes as she moved the garden hose one morning. I caught it on my own face as I brushed my teeth.
As the sun rose, my mother once again checked out.
She found comfort at the bottom of a bottle of vodka every day; on that shiny morning, she decided to drink it all before 9:00 AM. I found her lying face down on the bed in the back bedroom. I pushed back some of the hair from her face and the smell of vodka overwhelmed me.
“Mom, wake up.” I gave her shoulder a gentle push, but she didn’t move. I tried again. Nothing. “Mom. Come on.” I looked down at my watch, growing more anxious by the second. 11:15 AM — no time for something like this. I checked her breathing one more time before grabbing the keys to the door of our shotgun shack.
I couldn’t think about my mom’s problems, the ones plaguing her every day. For years, Jean Walker had issues — ones she would never share, and pain never allowed to heal. On this morning, I forced myself to focus only on the dread rolling over me.
Before I left the house, I stopped to turn off the 4-D TV in the small living room. I placed my thumb on the scanner located on the side of the screen and silenced the sound of a state television news anchor yelling about yet another bombing in Milwaukee from the Canadians. To his left on the screen, a huge revolving graphic shared the national average for a gallon of unleaded gas: $16.99.
I just shook my head and headed out the door.
Once steeled for the unknown, I took the short walk from our small house to the square around 11:30 AM. I passed one of the two run down gas stations in town and shook my head. A broken, rusty sign still advertised gasoline at $7.99 a gallon. Wouldn’t that be a nice price? I tried to think of the last time I saw someone buy gas there, and couldn’t remember. Instead, I thought of something else: it had been two years since I’d seen anyone drive anything but a black Humvee.
Only members of The Party drove those. And they only bought gasoline from designated shops.
When I got to the center of town, a Party General stood on the front steps of City Hall with a riding crop in his gloved hand. He tapped it up and down as we assembled. I found a place in the back and noticed the members of the army ringing the square in a human chain. All wore identical mirrored sunglasses rimmed in silver. They cradled their machine guns.
Seconds later, one of the soldiers near the front of the group stepped out of line and raised a whistle to his lips. He blew on it three times. The sound startled all of us living in Harrison Corners. Apprehension thickened the air all around us. Instinct focused my eyes on The Party General. I didn’t know his name, but I sensed he held my future in his hands, right along with the future of my whole town.
“Silence!” he barked. His clipped accent told me he didn’t come from anywhere near Harrison Corners. “I demand silence.”
He got it. To my left, and my right, no one looked back at me. All the soldiers stood at attention, one hand on their brows. Their other hands held a gun at their sides. They sneered at us, hungry for blood.
“From now on, His Honorable Sir, our dear Supreme Leader, Maxwell Cooper, has the City of Harrison Corners under his direct jurisdiction.” The General yelled each word at us. “From now on, the army will be the direct representative of the Supreme Leader, Maxwell Cooper. What The Party says SHALL be followed.”
The soldier with the whistle blew it at us again, this time at a faster and louder chirp. The General pulled a folded white sheet from his front coat pocket and waved it open with a gloved hand.
My muscles twisted in my body like taffy. I could not remember when The War with Canada started; I knew the fight had to do with how little oil and gasoline we could buy or find. The conflict had always been there as some sort of distant aspect of life — something never touching our day-to-day lives.
“From now on, The Party and the Homeland Guard have direct control over the daily operations here in Harrison Corners,” thundered The General.
I scanned the crowd and saw everyone I knew in town. No one, except my comatose mother, dared to skip this. Everyone near me focused straight ahead and kept their hands at their sides. Their expressions stayed vacant as The General straightened his paper. The rows of people looked like corpses. Then I saw Fostino Sanchez standing five people down the row from me. The sight of him that morning stopped my heart.
Why was he staring at me again?
“Oh wow,” I murmured, unable to control myself. My face reddened when the man next to me nudged my arm with the pointy part of his elbow.
Fostino’s fine jaw and pointed Roman nose made him stand out from the group of students a year ahead of me in school. Regulations made those kids spend a fifth year of high school attending compulsory Party training in the Homeland Guard. That day in the square, I noticed once more his caramel skin, black shock of hair, gleaming white teeth, and the thick black eyebrows that framed his green eyes.
So interesting. So different. So very exotic. Just nineteen, and yet, so much more of an adult than me.
Then I felt that familiar, delicious twist in the center of my stomach…
Dozens of times, I’d watched him saunter through the halls of school and drill after class with the Homeland Guard. Even more times, I caught his gaze in the hallway or locked eyes with him as I laughed in the lunchroom. For months now, we’d played that game of chicken with each other, an obvious magnetism between us each time we glanced at each other or ran into the other.
We just never talked. Well, except for one time. He managed to say “hi” to me once in the lunch line before his friends called him away to Party drill. And that time, my heart sank to my feet as I watched him throw a muscled arm around the shoulders of some other girl in his group.
Fostino radiated popularity, athleticism, and confidence. I had none of those things.
My breath quickened some more and I licked my lips. I tried to pull my eyes away from him. Instead, something forced my attention to him like a magnet. My heartbeat throbbed in my ears. A small, slow, almost predatory smile spread out from Fostino’s lips, as if he could not keep stoic even during this important moment. Then, as soon as it came, his gaze disappeared. He shook his head.