by Martha Adele
A small wave of laughter comes from the room as Oswald chuckles at his own joke. Thinking about the fact that he is speaking of me gives me a small sense of pride. I brush it off and listen to them continue.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” Oswald apologizes. “This is a serious matter.”
“No, no, it’s okay.” The interviewer giggles. “It is nice to know that the events of last night haven’t taken away your sense of humor.”
“Oh, yes, well, humor is one thing that I hope I never lose. I find that if you can make just one person smile a day, you have accomplished something worthwhile.”
The interviewer smiles at him and chuckles again. “Well, consider your task accomplished.” The room joins her in the giddy laughter as Oswald shares his famous shy smile. “Okay, okay, we were right at the part about a man rushing toward you.”
“Yes, yes.” Oswald scoots back in his chair and straightens up once again. He folds his hands and allows his fingers to fiddle with each other. “The man grabbed me and forced me into the van I was originally going to get into and stuck me in the arm with a vial. Next thing I know, I woke up in a, um—” Oswald looks to the side of the room. “Oh, wait, I can’t tell them that?”
The crowd gives another wave of laughter as the interviewer pulls him back in. “Okay, well, that’s fine. I have a few more questions for you, though, hopefully some of which you can answer.”
He nods. “I will do my best.”
“How did you manage to get out of the rebels’ grasp?”
Oswald allows a small smile to rise up on his face. “I was aided by one of our own officers. I can’t give you his name sadly because it was this officer’s wish to remain anonymous. But let me tell you this. If you are listening”—Oswald looks to the camera with a deep face of sympathy—“thank you. Thank you so much for everything you have done. I know I wouldn’t be here without you today if you had not shown up when you did.”
The interview goes on, and I can’t help but snort. I had no idea how good an actor this man was. I noticed that whenever he tells a lie, his fingers can’t stay still. Like when he told everyone that I stuck him in the arm with a vial. I did no such thing. I simply sat in the back with him to make sure he stayed put.
All I can do now is hope that he wasn’t lying last night about helping us. So far, he has stuck to the plan and made it seem as if the Amiable rebels were behind this. I assume that he will continue with the plan; but at the same time, he may not know whom to trust. After being betrayed by people whom he considered his closest friends, he may just be trying to do whatever won’t get him killed at this point.
I just hope that June and Logan can accomplish the next part of the plan.
June
Strolling through the higher-maintenance portion of Kern is much more entertaining than I expected. Everyone dresses more expensively, except for the obvious tourists; and everything here seems to be kept by someone with extreme obsessive compulsive disorder. Everything is perfect. All the bushes are trimmed into boxes, circles, or fancy sculptures depending on where they are located; all the sidewalks seem to have been freshly scrubbed; and there is not a piece of trash on the ground anywhere to be seen. Even the fences around the capitol building are kept perfectly. The bottoms of the black metal fences that you can see through are perfectly painted and seem to have no dirt on them, even though they are stuck in the grass.
Guards are flooded around the property just as they have always been. The only difference is that the closer I get to going in, the more menacing they become.
There are signs put up all over the entrance I was told to go to. All of them say that if you ask to go in, but your name is not on the list, you will be detained and marked as suspicious personnel. You will be put onto a list that bans you from a number of spectacular events such as political rallies, parties, gatherings, fund-raisers, and other things like that.
“Name?” the guard asks me when I approach the entrance.
“June Dawson.” I wipe off the bottom half of my navy dress and look around awkwardly, feeling like I stand out much more than I probably should.
He points to the scanner as a red line appears. I hold my wrist out and watch the scanner run over my code for the first time.
The guard looks to me and then back to the computer. “What state were you originally from?”
“Bloot.”
He types something into the computer, leaving me waiting awkwardly as all the guards stare. The man who told me to scan my wrist looks to me with large eyes and gives me a nervous chuckle. “Oh, I’m sorry, ma’am.” He presses a button in his station that unlocks the gate. “I had no idea that you were on the chancellor’s list. Go ahead. I assume you know the way in?”
I nod.
“Okay, once you get to the front desk, they will have someone escort you.” He gives me a large and slightly frightening smile. “Have a wonderful day.”
I return his forced smile and make my way to the building. I remember which parts of the gardens to go through and which paths to go down to get to the part of the building with the front desks from the inauguration ball. I follow the same path I took that night with Logan and admire the flower blossoms that have seemed to overtake the land.
When I make it to the front desk, I notice the inside of the building looks the exact same as it did the night of the ball. The only difference is that it is missing a bunch of drunken, snooty people.
“Ms. Dawson?” An older woman comes over to me and gives me a large smile. “My name is Mrs. Ness. I am here to escort you to Chancellor Oswald.”
I nod to her. I said thank you, and we head off. I am taken through many hallways, up an elevator, and through even more hallways. When we finally get to Oswald’s office, she gives me one final smile and opens the large finely carved mahogany doors.
When they swing open, Oswald’s eyes meet mine; and he rises to his feet. “Ms. Dawson.” He comes over to me as Mrs. Ness quietly exits and closes the doors behind us.
“Hello, Chancellor Oswald.” I reach out to shake his hand.
He takes it and gives me another smile. “Please, call me Tom.”
“All right, Tom. I assume you will be referring to me as June as well?”
He shrugs. “If you are comfortable with that, I would be delighted.”
I smile back, and the two of us share a moment or two of awkward silence.
Tom looks around the room and takes a deep breath. “You know”—he looks back to me and gives a nervous chuckle—“I am really anxious. I don’t know how I feel about any of this.”
“What is there to be nervous about?” I ask him. “All you are doing is bringing ‘your date’ over to meet your friends for the first time, right?”
He nods. “I guess so, yes.”
“So why are you nervous?”
“Well, to be fair, these are the people who planned to kill me.”
Another smile rises on my face as I realize this man’s main goal in life really is to make the best of things. From every interview with him I’ve watched, he always tries to make sure the other person is doing well. He is always the first to apologize, he is always the first to crack a smile, and he is always the first to try to assume the best of people.
And yet, he has been put into a horrible situation.
The two of us sit down on the couch and talk through everything. We make sure we are on the same page about how the two of us met and realize that saying we met a week ago at the park will be good enough. Just that, we hit it off.
Sure, his friends will probably think I am a gold digger.
But you know what? I know they plotted to have Tom killed, so I will call us even.
The plan is for me to talk him up to make them see how much they need him. I will be pointing out how there was suspicion in the town that one of them tried to have Tom kidnapped. Thank goodness t
hat isn’t true, though, right?
I will make sure to have them thinking that if Tom dies, they will be blamed.
We finish talking through the plan when I see a bead of sweat dripping down his face. I reach up to him with my sleeve and wipe it off. “It’s going to be okay.”
He gives me a quick and unsure nod as a knock at the door surprises us both. Tom rises to his feet, wipes off his face once more, and readjusts his suit. “Come in.”
Four men file into the room with obviously fake smiles on and are immediately stopped. The eyes of each fall onto me, and I can almost hear their thoughts. “Oswald has a daughter?”
“Well”—Riley chuckles at me—“who is this?”
Tom raises his hand and places it on my back. “This is my, um, friend. June Dawson.”
Riley gives Thomas a curious look of slight entertainment while the others look to me in disbelief.
“Now, what exactly do you mean friend?” Dotson asks him, walking over to me in a way that I can only describe as unsettling.
Tom gives them all a look of embarrassment. Immediately, they come to the assumption that he and I are a couple.
“Ah,” Madden approaches me first. “Hi, I’m Phillip Madden. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
I nod and shake his hand. His act is followed by the other three doing the same.
The last man to greet me is James Sparrow. When he comes to shake my hand, he brings it up to his mouth and kisses it. “It’s a pleasure.”
The amount of hatred that rises up in me the moment he does this shocks me. I force myself to calm down and pull my hand away. “The pleasure is all mine.”
Tom must be able to tell that this bothered me because just as I step back, he steps in front of me. “I’m happy you all are now introduced, but we were—”
“Yes, yes, I am too. Ozzy”—Madden steps forward and looks past Tom—“will your friend be staying for dinner?”
He turns to me with a small smile. “I don’t know. Let’s ask her.”
Shyly, I step back. “Oh, I don’t know about that.”
“Well, you must at least stay for drinks,” Tom says to me.
The whole room seems to freeze, waiting for my answer. I think through the plan once more just before I utter the words, “Why not?”
Logan
“Did you hear that?” one of the guards asks the other.
He answers with a mumble, and the two walk off.
Sneaking through the tunnels below the capitol building is much easier than I thought it would be. With my dark suit allowing me to blend in with the even darker shadows, I scurry through and make it into one of the bathrooms. With the clothes of a server that I have had hidden in here since last night, I slide the clothes over my suit, pull off my mask, and make my way out of the bathroom.
Wearing the large hat some of the servers wear, I keep my head down and make my way into the kitchen. Everyone is so busy with their own task that no one seems to even notice me.
When I sense the time is right, I pull out a small metal container and slide a few balls of ice out into one of the glasses. Quickly sliding the metal container back into my pocket, I prepare the rest of the glasses, putting ice in each one of them, including the one with the ice I added.
The way these cups will be set up when they get to Oswald’s office is there will be six glasses. Four of them will have a blue trim around its edges, one of them will have gold around its edges, and the last will have no special trim. The advisors will receive the blue cups while the chancellor will use his gold cup, leaving the plain cup for the visitor. I still don’t understand why they feel the need to make their cups different from one another. From what I hear, Oswald is actually against it; but he didn’t fight it too strongly.
The special ice I put into one of the blue-ringed cups isn’t something that I would prefer to drink. I mean, I have heard the tranquilizer liquid when injected doesn’t hurt, but I still would rather not have its frozen substance slowly melt into my drink. I imagine that it may have some symptoms that come along with the ingestion.
“Excuse me.” A woman taps me on the shoulder, startling me. I quickly turn to her as I finish loading the ice in Mavis’s—I mean, June’s—cup. The woman takes a step back, shocked at my face. “Um, is this cart for the chancellor’s office?”
I nod and step back from the cart. “Yes.”
She stares at my face for a moment more, but I can tell she won’t ask. She doesn’t want to be rude.
“I got these burns fighting in the war,” I tell her.
Though I didn’t tell her which war.
“Oh.” She gives me a smile and begins pulling the cart out. “Well, thank you for your service.”
I nod back at her and find my way out of the kitchen as well.
When I manage to leave the building and climb back into my own, I find Elloise waiting in my room for me.
“Well, well, well, would you look who it is?” She steps over to me and gives me a small smile. “Where have you been? I came to bring you dinner.”
I shrug. Not wanting to be too suspicious, I speak up, “I like going out.”
“Yeah? Where?”
“Don’t worry,” I tell her, “I don’t go anywhere where anyone can see me. I make sure to stay in the woods or in the hidden parts of the city.”
Elloise gives me a look of slight disbelief but shrugs it off. “Whatever you say, Logan.”
She exits the room and allows me to eat my dinner alone, leaving me to silently hope that June can complete her job.
June
“Oh really?” Madden takes another sip of his drink. “So the first time you and Ozzy actually met, he knocked you down?”
I shrug. “Well, I actually believe I knocked him down, but he won’t admit it.”
Tom looks to me with a squint. “What do you mean you knocked me down? I walked right into you while looking at the poinsettia trees.” He thanks the woman who has just collected our plates from the table and slides her some cash. “Have a wonderful day.”
“But,” I say to him, smiling at the woman as she nods to me goodbye, “when I walked into you, my leg went in between yours and tripped us both.”
He chuckles and wipes his mouth with the napkin from his lap. “Can we just say we both tripped up?”
I roll my eyes and take a sip of my champagne as everyone else chugs their drinks. I’ve noticed that Tom and I are the only two really taking our drinking lightly while the other four are taking large gulps of whatever drink they fixed themselves. As the servers finally leave the room with just the six of us, their questions and comments become more and more obnoxious.
“Well, either way, Ozzy”—Riley finishes his drink once more and heads over to the cart for another—“it sounds like you have yourself a fine young lady. Anyone who can manage to get their legs intertwined that quickly within yours has to be a—”
“What he means to say,” Dotson interrupts before Riley has time to finish his obnoxious statement that was meant to be a compliment, “is that it really sounds like you two have fallen for each other.” He takes a sip from his blue-lined glass and stares at us, waiting for some sort of laughter.
Tom immediately gets the joke and releases a snicker while I have to force myself to enjoy the pun. Everyone in the room snorts along, all but Sparrow.
I look to him as he holds his chest with one hand.
“Are you okay, Mr. Sparrow?”
He nods, looking like he is attempting to hold in a belch. “I’m fine. My chest just started hurting a tad bit.”
“Well, you did pound down your steak.” Madden chuckles.
“Oh yes,” Dotson snorts, “the last time I saw something disappear that quickly was when—”
“You lost your hair?” Sparrow interrupts.
Everyone at the table laughs as Do
tson glares at Sparrow. “Yeah, yeah, whatever.”
“Try drinking a little bit slower.” I take another sip of my drink and look to Sparrow. “It goes down better if you do that.”
He nods again and returns back to the conversation.
None of our ice looks any different, but I assume that Sparrow is the one who got the tranquilizers. With him drinking it slower, it gives his ice more time to melt. I keep him talking about anything and everything throughout the next thirty minutes or so to make sure he doesn’t leave or pass out.
Every time someone asks him if he is okay, he brushes it off and changes the subject. He continues to sip at that same glass the rest of the evening until it finally comes to an end.
“Well, I think it is time to call it a night,” Madden announces. He rises to his feet and raises his glass to us all. The five of us follow his lead and wait. Madden stares at me for a moment and then at Tom. “I would like to make this toast in honor of Ozzy’s new friend.” He smiles and raises his glass once more. “To June.”
“To June,” the rest of them say.
I watch the four advisors all finish their glasses as Tom and I gently sip ours. Three of the advisors all exit the private dining hall cheerfully while Sparrow slowly makes his way out.
“Hey, James.” Tom makes his way over to the large man and places his hand on his back. “Are you sure you are okay?”
I watch from behind as Sparrow shakes his head and collapses to the ground. Tom immediately drops to his knees and calls out his name once more. The chancellor quickly turns to me with a panic in his eyes. I point out to the door and squeal, “Go get help!”
He nods and sprints off out of the room, giving me a small window of time. I dive down and pull Sparrow’s right shoe and sock off, pull the empty syringe I had on my thigh holster out, and inject three milliliters of air in between his toes. Quickly, I force his sock and shoe back on and the syringe back onto my holster and flee the room with tears streaming down my face. As I try to turn a corner to find Tom, I run directly into him at full speed. He catches me and forces me far enough away from him so that he can see my face. “I got help.”