by P. S. Lurie
I don’t mention that Melissa has never found Selene’s records logged on the medical database.
Not knowing what happened to Selene is gut-wrenching. Considering the history of violence inflicted from mother to daughter, not knowing what would have happened if Selene did find herself face to face with her mother is a whole other story. Selma carries a lot of guilt. She always will. Not just for that night but for fifteen years of abuse.
“Who was that?” Kate asks from her bedroom, as I close the door.
“Just the postman.” Lies are vital in the Upperlands to survive; pretending to be grateful and loyal to those who purposelessly destroyed our spirit is what it takes to stay alive. But the truth is catching up with me. I’m impressed with myself for surviving a year but, like the Fence, I feel the pressure building from the outside in and I’m not sure my foundations are strong enough to keep me standing much longer.
But I am standing, holding my baby sister, mere steps away from being discovered and proving my disloyalty, yet I can’t give up now. I broke the rules one year ago to be in this situation. I haven’t found Ronan. Leda is deathly ill. I’m fighting an impossible fight to stay in the barracks because not only does Kate want me out of there but the sea is nearing the top of the Fence. I’ve shrugged off the nagging feeling that has built up and suffocates me, as if I am drowning, being pulled down by two lungs full of water, and I know that I can no longer breathe easily. Sooner or later, however much I push back, the impending flood will sweep me up and... if pretending to be loyal and grateful is about playing their game, then it’s game over.
There’s only one solution that comes to mind. It’s a crazed idea that I’ve mulled over for the past few weeks and persisted in putting off with the hope that it will be unnecessary. But Leda isn’t recovering so I have no choice. I have to risk it, as outlandish as it is. It has to be right now.
Selene
The woman’s appearance leaves me unsettled so I decide that I have time for a bath, which will help calm my nerves since the tea did little for me. We have plentiful hot water although Nathaniel usually runs baths for me, perching on the edge throughout to keep me company and stop me from panicking from the claustrophobic tub. His presence has always been comforting and I’ve relied on him for so long that that I can’t remember the last time I ran myself a bath without him, or did anything for myself. Since my breakdown my memories are vague and there are plenty of activities, even daily routine chores, I can’t remember doing before. Doctor Graft explained to us that it would take me some time to build up my confidence and, with that, memories of the past should re-emerge. For now, the doctor told me to rely on Nathaniel and that I should be grateful that my fiancée is relentlessly doting.
I turn on the tap and wave my hand under the flow of steaming water until I find a moderate temperature. I leave the door open but flick the bathroom lights off so that the hallway glow spills in and doesn’t leave me in complete darkness. I’m scared of everything: the dark, being alone, rejection, drowning. I drop my robe to the floor and climb into the tub. I sit with my arms wrapped around my knees at first and then spread out as the water fills up around me, acclimatising to the heat until I crave a hotter temperature. I curve my leg so that the rush of boiling water from the tap doesn’t touch my skin. I have to shuffle my head backwards because I’m too tall to stretch out and I can already feel cramp kick in.
Without any products, the water is clear and I stare down at my naked body. My frame is gaunt to the point that I can see my hipbones. Nathaniel says I lost a lot of weight recently and that I need to put it back on to return to a healthy size but I don’t have an appetite for chocolate or other snacks; I must have lost my interest in sugary products, but it feels as if I’ve never developed a taste for them. The few photographs that exist of Nathaniel and me when we first met some years ago suggest he was right that I wasn’t as skeletal but, as with everything else, I don’t remember the pictures being taken.
We seem happy and that’s what Nathaniel says is all that matters.
The water climbs up and reaches over my toes until half my body is submerged. I can’t remember ever swimming but at this depth I feel as if I could almost float.
Then my head spins and the unsettling nightmare returns to me. I am in the sea but no longer is the scene just confined to visuals. I taste the saltiness, feel the sharpness of cold, smell the decay from eroded buildings, and finally watch as dead bodies float past. I am not only there in my imagination but in my memory. I feel the corpses against my skin. They are here with me.
Can imagination be so sensory? Or is it...
Memory. Did this happen? Is it possible?
I panic, grab the sides of the bathtub but my grip is slippery and I flail as I scramble to climb out, all my fears ganging up on me in one swift attack.
Ruskin
“Ruskin,” my mother says as she embraces me. “Oh my god. Are you ok?”
“I think so. What’s going on?”
My father’s turn. “I don’t know. How long has it been?”
“A year,” I say with conviction. I know this because of Jack. I remember his head injury and my heart yearns to know if he’s alive but I came here on a helicopter and have no idea how to even begin looking for him.
“Is Jason with you?”
I shake my head. I assumed he wasn’t with my parents either. Jack and I worked out quickly that our circumstances weren’t dissimilar. Our families were smuggled out of the Middlelands early on the morning of the announcement and our older brothers, the same age and of similar dispositions, were called away before the Surge began. Neither of our brothers returned. I arrived at the cell first, so I assume that whatever happened to Jason happened to Jack’s brother an hour or so later.
I take in the room. It’s vast and there are plenty of doors around us but I don’t know where they lead. I jog over and try one but it’s locked so return to my parents in the centre of the room, confused why they aren’t helping. “Come on.”
“What are you doing?” my father asks, without moving from the spot.
“Looking for a way out.” It should be obvious and didn’t need asking.
“What’s the use?” he replies, dejectedly.
I see the vacant expression on his face. “What have they done to you?” But I already know the answer. The Upperlanders haven’t done anything except allowed my parents’ minds to waste away for a whole year. In the absence of living or death, it was easiest to train themselves to feel nothing but apathy.
“They locked us up,” my mother answers on his behalf. “We’ve spent every minute worrying about you and Jason. Did you see him at all?”
“No.” I’m sure he’s dead and I don’t need my mother to know what I’m thinking. If she hasn’t accepted this yet then I’ll let her delusions prosper a while longer. Then again, I thought my parents were dead but here they are. “We need to work out why they are doing this to us now. Do you think the timing is important?”
“Are you sure it’s been a year exactly?” My mother shakes her head after a while, as if she had a chance of stumbling on the reason by racking her brain but comes up empty.
We don’t have to wait long for what happens next because one of the farthest doors clicks open and three portly men walk in. They inspect us with blank faces and then take their seats some distance back on the thrones but we don’t move towards them. They are roughly my parents’ age but disparate from them: overly-satiated and dressed in sanctimonious, judge-like robes.
One reads off a piece of paper and looks over his glasses at us at the end of every line. “By decree of the Upperlands, you were found guilty of disloyalty by association. Jason Peters, son to Russell and Evelyn Peters, brother to Ruskin Peters, broke his contract by meddling in the plans of the Great Cull. He was shot on sight when trying to interfere with the proceedings of a household.”
My mother gasps as if Jason’s death is a surprise. More is the surprise that the three of us are still
alive. Jack and I assumed both our brothers had failed whatever the Upperlanders had wanted from them, which I now know was to patrol our streets whilst family members killed one another. What this man is saying is that Jason intervened and tried to help. I wonder who it was for Jason to consider risking his life. I wonder if Jason knew what the repercussions would be on us.
“Due to these circumstances, we cannot welcome all three of you into the Upperlands as first planned. Therefore, it has been decided that you will face the same honourable resolution as the courageous families who took part in the Great Cull. To this end, only one of you will be allowed to re-enter the Upperlands as a free man or woman. This past year you have been placed in holding pens because we are fair people and, whilst we endeavoured to make adequate space, there are still not enough resources to Rehouse you all. We wish there was something else we could do and are upset as you are.”
The man reads through the script, monotone and emotionless. None of what he’s saying seems to connect with him. It’s already too much for me to take in but he goes on.
“In summary, you will face the same fate as the rest of the Middlelanders one year ago. You are more fortunate than most that one of you has already given their lives and this should lighten the choice we have sanctioned for you to now make. We are glad to take notice of your gratitude for one of you to be Rehoused.”
The man stops and looks up from the parchment, expecting some sort of reaction from us but we are trying to decipher his long-winded and confusing message.
“What is he talking about?” my mother asks.
My father speaks matter-of-factly. “One of us can live. Two of us must die. He wants us to choose and be grateful for it.”
Theia
Kate is too distracted to ask what the non-existent postal delivery is, which works in my favour and I hope it is not the last time fortune falls on my side today. Leda is in and out of consciousness and makes a few groans but nothing more. At her best over the last few months she could put short sentences together but my roommates and I have spent our time over the year asking her to keep her voice down. We agreed that the Middlelanders around us in the barracks shouldn’t find out about my sister because we don’t know which way their loyalty would swing, whether to us, the community from the past who shared their traumas, or to impress the Upperlanders by attempting to rewrite their pending status and be promoted into the community that offers a prosperous future.
It’s telling that loyalty only works in one direction in the eyes of the Upperlanders.
I stick my head around Kate’s door, having left Leda in the entranceway. My sister is barely breathing and all the worry and affection in the world will not save her. I need to go now. What I’m going to do is something I’ve put off for so long because of the disgust that propels through my body each time I consider it, but now that I have no choice it is better not to think about what could happen and just push on. Sink or swim, I’m so far from dry land that I need to just focus on each kick to keep me afloat rather than reaching the safety of the shore.
“Help me with this,” Kate says, when she sees me in the reflection of the mirror.
I stand behind her and zip up the dress. She will wear a coat on top but there will be some sort of party after the announcement for her kind at which she will dazzle. Cassie will be notably absent and I’ll be expected to keep watch as she runs riot around me. Cocktails and canapés is what I overhear Kate mention for this planned function but I’m not sure I know what else the occasion consists of apart from the basic description of small bite-sized pieces of food and drink that will suffice for a mid-afternoon snack. It’s a laughable and striking contrast to the scraps of fish we used to salvage in the Middlelands; while we were starving and desperate to put on weight by foraging for anything, Kate is desperate to fit into smaller dresses and consequently chooses to starve herself.
The dress is a radiant blue, like the depths of the ocean, a colour I have only seen once a few years ago before the great cull, on the day Henry and I tried to escape. I become lost in the hues that glisten on the fabric, like ripples on the water’s surface. Rhythmic swathes over floating bodies. Grasping pockets of cold. Knocked unconscious. Sinking. Drowning.
I miss what Kate says before I shake myself back to the present and then stand at a distance and pretend to admire her in the dress as she spins on her heels for me. She isn’t fazed by the idea that reminders of the rising sea are a scary prospect because she’s convinced that the rule of the Upperlands will save her. She’s safe in the knowledge that when the time comes to raise the Utopia her place is guaranteed. My pending status means I don’t have that luxury, which is still better than my sister, Leda, who has no right to be here at all.
“Stunning, simply glorious,” I say. I always have a host of adjectives at the ready for Kate. “Anything else I can help you with?”
She thinks. “I have about an hour before I need to leave and I still have my hair and nails to finish. You should go now rather than bothering me. I need to concentrate. If you’re sure I can’t nominate you then I guess I will see you later.” Selfishly I’m pleased. “I’m grateful for you,” Kate adds, smugly, as if we share an understanding of how loaded that word is.
“Of course.” Just because I have to go to the announcement doesn’t mean I have the rest of the day off. Kate will either be out with her friends or too drunk to look after herself let alone Cassie. I will have to come back and sort the girl out but at least I have quelled Kate’s desire to push for my declaration of gratitude for a while longer.
“I hope the announcement brings good news to us all.”
“Me too,” I say after a delay when I notice Kate glaring at me. “I’ll be grateful for whatever President Callister says today.”
Gratitude.
The pain is too much to bear that I want to laugh. Or scream. But I do nothing.
Ruskin
One of the last things both Jack and I experienced with our respective families before imprisonment was the announcement and, once we accepted our time in the cell wasn’t going to end anytime soon, we spent a few days debating whether it was all a hoax. By the end of the first week in incarceration we didn’t have a doubt that the blonde woman in the field was serious. Somehow the Upperlanders had convinced themselves that giving over some of their space was akin to Middlelanders sacrificing their loved ones, whether through denial, ignorance or just plain old stupidity.
For obvious reasons, Jack and I were fortunate to bypass that awful night and the choices people had to make. Yet in all the time we spent together, exhausting all conversations, supporting the other’s down days, and falling towards one another, we never discussed what we would have done in that situation except for self-sacrifice. We brashly stated we would give up our space, although with more than one other family member each, it didn’t provide much in the way of a clear-cut solution.
Jack didn’t know Henry or any of my other friends and I didn’t know his but we guessed at what happened to each of the households by descriptions of them. I couldn’t believe Henry’s parents would allow themselves to live over him so I knew he would be Rehoused.
Two parents giving up their lives for their son.
Which is the same predicament I am certain I am in now. I have to buy some time to think before I’m made an orphan or I agree to end my life.
“What happened to Jason’s body?” I direct my question to the three onlookers. I don’t expect an answer but I do receive one.
“Washed away in the oceans over time. Your Middlelands cease to exist. There is nothing of the world outside of the Fence. Never mind your brother. If he had abided to the rules you would have lived your lives all together in opulence.”
“Stop,” I plead. If they were trying to direct my anger towards my brother it is working but I don’t believe that whatever Jason did was because he didn’t care about us, even if he was aware of the repercussions.
My father leans in towards me. “There are
three of us and three of them. Feeling strong?”
So his lack of fighting spirit was either a ruse all along or he’s been forced to snap out of his self-pity. I glance at the onlookers. They’re out of shape but more sated than us. The alternative is to play their game, which isn’t much of an attractive option.
I pretend to cry and hug my mum but as I do so I whisper the plan forward.
“Now,” my father says, and the three of us charge them.
Only we don’t get far when the man on the central seat pulls out a gun and shoots my father in the leg, causing my mother and me to stop in our tracks.
“That was not very grateful of you,” the man who has been silent up until now says nonchalantly. He also reveals the previously hidden gun and aims it at me. “Perhaps none of you deserves to be Rehoused.”
Selene
I throw up over the side of the bath as the water swirls down the plughole and my head stops spinning. I try to think about what just happened but fear blocks my mind by focusing only on the image of me in the sea. For the first time, the nightmare remains fixed in my head outside of sleep and it has never felt more real. I wash myself down and clean the bathroom as best as I can but my hands are shaking and then I realise I am not just reacting to nerves but that the medication might not have had time to settle before I vomited it up. Doctor Graft, the only visitor I have had, explained to Nathaniel who then conveyed to me how important it was that I take the pills daily without fail until I felt myself again. Today is more important than any other because I have convinced Nathaniel I want to attend the announcement and I know facing the crowds without my dose will be impossible.