by Celi, S.
“So what do you think I should do?” The muscles in my back tensed.
Might be worth it to hear him out.
“I’ve thought about it and I have an idea.” He pointed down the alley to a crumbling, ancient apartment building a half block away. “My parents own that. As a kid, I helped my mom clean it on Saturdays. I know the place pretty well.” Fostino’s eyes bore into mine.
“Aren’t all the apartments taken?”
“Not now,” he admitted. “Not since, well…” His voice trailed off because he didn’t need to say any more.
Not since the massacre.
“I can’t pay for an apartment,” I said, incredulous. “I don’t have any money. No what… I mean… I don’t have any stamps. I can’t pay anything.”
Fostino looked up and down the alley to make sure we were still alone. “It won’t be a big deal if you move in,” he said. “Mom and Dad stopped collecting rents a few weeks ago because they’re so distracted. God, they just worry about Farrah. She is not doing well. I think she’s been having nightmares. I wish she would talk to me.” Again he trailed off and his eyes grew hard. “It doesn’t matter about the rent, anyway. The building is theirs. They own it.
“I cleaned out one of the studios the other day. It has a crawl space under the bed. I think it will be a good place for you.” Fostino grabbed my shoulders once more. “Closer to work, and safer, maybe.”
“Why should I trust you?” I wondered aloud again. My eyes searched his face. “How do I know you won’t turn me in, that you won’t tell The Party that I’m an Undesirable?”
“Come on. I would never do that,” Fostino responded. His eyes darkened further. He moved one hand from my shoulder to the nape of my neck. “I’m trying to show you even though…” His words trailed off as he held my gaze.
“So if I did move in, how would you suggest I do it?” I murmured. I broke away from his stare and studied the back of the apartment building. “It won’t be easy to move much over here.” I sucked in a tentative, unsure breath.
Fostino answered me first with a deep exhale; the medals rode up and down his chest. “I’ve thought about that, too. You won’t be able to bring much… a small backpack, I think. And you’ll need to bring it in the morning, on your way to work at the factory. You could leave it on the back steps over there. Then I’ll slip it into the apartment.” He moved his left hand off my right shoulder and it found a place in my tangled hair.
“Will The Party let me move?” My thoughts turned to the soldier I watched beat the woman in the square on the day of the massacre.
“I think so,” he said as he ran a hand through his hair. “It’s worth trying.”
He had a point. What could I lose?
Nothing. I had nothing.
Even so, the thought made me unsure. “When do you think the roundups will start?” I looked down. My hands turned clammy.
“Soon,” he asserted. “Maybe even tomorrow.” Fostino leaned closer to me and put his forehead on mine. “Look,” he added. “Please do this.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
I shut the door to the shack and whirled around. My eyes swept the room before my body sank into the tattered loveseat. I stared at the floor for a long time and didn’t move.
Could I do this? Leave this place, the only home I’d ever known?
Around 9:00 PM, I heard the screams. Right after, I heard the unmistakable sound of a dog bark. My blood froze. My eyes watered. My lungs heaved with dread.
What was that?
The screams came from outside the house, on the street. I heard one and then another. Two voices pierced the night like long knives.
“Don’t! Please!” the first one wailed in a sharp staccato. “I promise we didn’t do anything! I promise!”
“We’re loyal, I swear!” yelled the other, a man’s lower voice.
With catlike movement, I crept to the small window my mother had long ago covered with a curtain fashioned from an off-white sheet. I reached over next to the window and flipped off the light switch so the room plunged into blackness. I waited 30 seconds before reaching up my hand to pull back the lower corner of the sheet.
Across the street, I saw it.
Two soldiers stood outside the Mon Swayne home; a shack similar to mine. One stood next to a large wolf dog on a leash with a pointy collar. The dog didn’t bark. It growled behind a clenched jaw and waited for orders. The other soldier reached up and fired his gun in the air.
“Enough!” he shouted. “No more talking! We have all the proof we need!” He picked up something from the grass and shook it in Mrs. Mon Swayne’s face. She answered him with a horrified, loud cry.
“Our dog found this,” he said. “This!” He threw it on the ground again and stomped his boot on it. The other soldier threw a flashlight on it, but I couldn’t make it out at first.
“It’s not ours,” Mr. Mon Swayne pleaded. “I’ve never seen that money before in my life!”
“Nonsense,” said the soldier with the flashlight. “We found a box full of Canadian dollars underneath your bed! Along with a Canadian passport!”
I gasped.
Everyone in Harrison Corners knew the government forbade Canadian passports. And Canadian money.
The soldier took what resembled a passport out of his back pocket and threw it on the ground, too. Then he pulled out a pair of handcuffs and ordered Mrs. Mon Swayne to turn around. When she didn’t right away, he fired a shot into the air again and then hit her on the arm with the butt of his gun.
“You are under arrest!” the first soldier screamed into the face of Mr. Mon Swayne. “You are guilty of high treason! You are an Undesirable!” The second soldier made the move to handcuff Mr. Mon Swayne. Husband and wife dissolved into hysterics now. My tears came, too.
As the wolf dog barked, the soldiers forced the Mon Swaynes into the open flatbed truck on the street next to their home. The door to the house hung open. They stood alone on the flatbed. Then the soldiers signed the dog to climb in the back of the truck and loaded themselves in the front. The high beams of the truck flooded the street like syrup over a pancake.
They drove down the road. Something inside me told me I would never see the Mon Swaynes again. Seconds later, the flatbed truck stopped at another house three doors down.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Five minutes after 8:00 AM the next day, I rounded the corner to the alley behind the convenience store and headed toward the 16-unit apartment building. Earlier, I’d packed a small black messenger bag with the few valuables I decided to take with me. The weight of the bag hung off my shoulder like a cinder block. I marveled at being able to make it to the back steps of the apartment building undetected.
I shrugged off the messenger bag and left it where Fostino had told me to place it. Then I exhaled, and headed to the factory.
*
After work, I came back to the alley and knocked on the door at the back of the apartment building. No one answered. My messenger bag was gone.
What about the bag? Where did it go? Did Fostino pick it up as he promised, or did someone else, someone from The Party find it?
Panic flooded my body. I pressed myself against the brick of the building, buried my hands in my face. I tried not to cry or panic, and sat there I heard the distinct sound of the crunch of boots on gravel.
“Charlotte,” said an out of breath Fostino. “I’m sorry I’m late.” He gave me a reassured grin.
“They had the roundups last night,” I wiped my nose on the sleeve of my thin sweater. “They came and took the Mon Swaynes like they were criminals.”
Fostino gave me a curt, no-nonsense nod. “I know.” Changing the subject, he said, “I put your bag in the apartment.” He held out a hand to help me up. “Want to see it?”
“Sure
,” I whispered.
He led me down a long hallway with four doors on either side. A musty smell filled the hallway. To the right of the back door, a few steps led up to the second floor. We didn’t go up. Down the hall, two of the doors hung off their hinges. At the sixth door, he stopped.
“So, this is it,” he announced as he pushed open the wooden door.
Inside the door, I saw a ten-foot-by-ten-foot square room that seemed surprisingly cozy. A folded up Murphy bed sat in the corner. A bathroom broke off from the north side, across the room from a small couch and a flat 4-D TV programmed to play state propaganda nailed into the wall. Ages ago, someone had covered all the walls in sea foam green paint and I saw a place where it peeled away from the wall. A bare coffee table completed the room. My messenger bag lay beside the bed along with a stack of folded white sheets and a blanket.
“Thank you, Fostino,” I said, taking in the room.
“Come here. I need to show you this.” Fostino shut the door and walked towards the area where the bed was. He motioned and then knelt down. He ran his hand along some of the floorboards until he caught what he wanted. As I watched, he lifted up the boards with some force and grimaced.
“Holy crap!” I jumped back a little, startled by the transformation of the floor.
“It’s an old bomb shelter.” He beckoned me to look. I saw a five-by-ten foot room dug into the earth and lined in concrete. The room had enough space for people to stand up straight and not hit their heads. Someone had placed a small cot, lantern, table, and chair inside the secret room.
“Why is it so big?”
“The building has four of these. I guess they were supposed to protect people who lived here if a nuclear bomb ever hit. You know, from way back in the 1950s or whatever. I guess that’s when someone built this building. I never really bothered to find out. A couple years ago, my dad converted the rooms into tornado shelters instead of filling them in with concrete. I’d forgotten these were here until I found this one last week. Maybe it’s a good thing.”
“Yeah…” I whispered, overwhelmed.
“You should be able to stay here for as long as you want,” he continued. We still crouched on the floor. He sat less than two inches away from me. Slowly, he reached over and brushed some hair out of my face. “God, I am drawn to you like some kind of…” Even as he trailed off, his words covered us like a warm, thick blanket.
“Did you tell your parents about me?”
“No.” He didn’t take his eyes off mine. “And my parents don’t ask a lot of questions.”
My mouth turned dry, so I just changed the subject. “Patrolling tonight?” I asked, and thought of the time.
“I patrol most nights, Char.” Fostino raised his eyebrow.
“Of course,” I replied and breathed in his familiar smell.
Then he leaned in and kissed me.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
In a cold sweat, I jolted awake in the Murphy bed the next morning. The sheets wrapped around me so tight they restricted the blood flow to my legs. I lay in the bed for a few minutes and counted the grooves in the ceiling.
I still tasted Fostino on my lips. First, his lips had brushed mine. Just once.
“You’re so beautiful, Charlotte,” he’d whispered.
I’d pressed up against him on the apartment floor. A charge filled the air around us as time slowed down. The kisses turned from one to two, and then to five. They went on and on, pulsating and intensifying with each one. I held on to his muscular chest adorned with all the medals and insignia; I smiled under the tickle of stubble on his chin. When he pulled me closer, my hand found a place behind his neck and I never wanted to let him go.
We only stopped when the Hologram Watch reminded Fostino of his duties.
I thought about those moments the whole day. I stitched each kiss into the shirts I made. I saw his face when the government propaganda played on the huge monitors at the factory. I wondered if he would leave me another note in the fabric spool. I saw Fostino everywhere. His final words to me echoed through my head. All day I waited for the clock to tick to 7:00 PM. Once it did, I rushed to the apartment and shut myself inside.
I went to the bathroom and peered into the small mirror above the sink. My hand ran a brush through my hair and I dotted a thin amount of lip-gloss on my lips. Then I focused on my face. I never saw much beauty when I gazed at myself, but I knew Fostino and others did. I wanted to be beautiful for him.
Unsatisfied with what I saw in the mirror, I turned away and waited for Fostino in the living room. Bored after a few minutes, I turned on the 4-D TV. I took one large step back when the screen buzzed on.
“Oh, you work today,” I said to it before I could stop myself. On the screen, state media showed video of Maxwell Cooper and his wife Patricia at a ribbon cutting for a War Memorial in Chicago. After that came a clip of the two of them getting on Air Force One, flanked by their two sons, and then some video of them arriving at a state dinner with generals from The Party.
Fostino was much later than I expected. He didn’t knock at the apartment door until well after 10:00 PM, and well after his patrol shift. By that time, a Hollywood produced movie about economic struggles in Canada had almost finished. When I opened the door, he wore a distressed expression.
“What’s wrong?” I pulled him inside the studio. “What’s happened?”
“It’s the patrols.” Fostino got a glass of water from the bathroom sink. “They’re getting harder,” he said in between gulps. His brow furrowed. “Char, so many Undesirables live in our town.”
“Really?” I leaned up against the bathroom doorframe, incredulous. “Come on.”
“Yes, really.” He slammed the glass down on the sink ledge. He came out of the bathroom and sat on the sofa. “Remember what they told us in school about all those people who spy on us for Canada? It’s all coming true.”
“Did you arrest people tonight?” I asked as I flopped on the Murphy bed.
“Yes.” He broke my gaze and fixated on the TV. State media now showed a movie about how horrible life in Canada had turned since the beginning of The War.
“How many?” I whispered my question.
“Fifteen,” he replied. He took off his jacket and revealed a grey t-shirt to match his cargo pants. “All on evidence of membership in the SSR.”
“I heard about the SSR.” I pulled my hair into a ponytail.
“But, you don’t know what I know,” he informed me with a raised eyebrow. “The SSR is not just the enemy. They will undo us. Even now, they might have bugged this apartment. Don’t trust them. They claim they know the way to freedom— whatever freedom is to them. It’s lies.” He stood up and then changed the subject. “Listen, before I forget, I brought you something.” Fostino crossed the room and opened the door to the apartment. He stepped outside and then brought a small bag back in. “It’s an orange.” He pulled a small one out of the sack, crossed the room, and handed it to me.
My mouth watered and I smiled at him. “Last time I ate one of these had to be four years ago.” I took the fruit and held it up. The citrus smell tingled against my nose. “This is very nice of you.”
“I thought you’d like it. Farrah likes it, too. I gave her some earlier before I left the house.” His eyes glittered with mischief as he grinned back at me. He sat down on the loveseat again. “We got a shipment in today at the store. You know, for The Party. I managed to swipe it when dad took out the trash.”
I got up from the bed and sat down next to him on the loveseat. Fostino took the orange and peeled the first of the rind away. It looked delicious. He handed the first bite to me.
“You know, we sell this in the store for 15 stamps a piece.” He gave me a rueful smile. “Dad says that’s because it’s so expensive to send anything anywhere on a truck.” He took the se
cond bite. “Especially from Florida, where this one came from.”
The sugary tartness of the orange slice dissolved on my mouth. I hadn’t tasted something this nice in a long time.
“I can’t believe you brought me this,” I said. He had taken a huge risk here, and I tasted my guilt in the few bites of the orange. “I don’t deserve all this.”
He shook his head. “I figured you didn’t eat much in the last few days.” He eyed my bony arms.
“You know I haven’t,” I said between bites. “No one has much food, anyway. And then we just get cans of tomato juice and peanut butter sandwiches for lunch at the factory.”
“I know,” he admitted. “They feed us a little better. Sometimes we get pieces of bacon for breakfast and granola.”
My eyes narrowed as my thoughts shifted to all he told me over the last few days. “Do you believe what they say? Do you really think there so many bad people live in our town? In our country?”
Fostino’s eyes darkened. “I believe some people in our town want to sabotage our country. The same people want to make things harder.”
“But—”
He cut me off with one stiff hand. “You need to understand.” He leaned in closer to me. “This…all this that’s happening, it’s for our benefit. It will take us somewhere — to a better life. Canada won’t win The War.”
“I don’t get it. What does Harrison Corners have to do with winning The War?” I stammered out my whisper. “And what about my mother?”
Fostino sighed. “Sometimes in life, shit happens,” he said in a cold voice even as his free hand reached up and played with my hair.
“What? My mother? You wouldn’t talk about Farrah that way!” Outrage coursed through me. No way had he really believed that.