The Torturer's Daughter

by Zoe Cannon

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.” Becca’s mom sounded distant now. Cold. Becca shivered. She didn’t think she’d ever heard that particular tone in her mom’s voice before. “I think it would be best if you went home.”

  Becca shoved her way out into the hall, all but pushing Heather away from the door with her. “Come on. We’ll go talk outside.” She shut the door behind her before her mom could say anything else.

  “What was that all about?” asked Heather as they walked down the stairs.

  Tell her what you should have told her on Friday night as soon as you found out. “I asked her about your parents. She…” Becca hesitated. Somewhere, there had to be the perfect way of telling your best friend that her parents were dead, that they had been killed as traitors, that they had been traitors. Becca wished she knew it.

  They stepped out into the parking lot. A cool breeze lifted Becca’s hair off her neck. The sky hadn’t gotten dark enough for the parking lot lights to come on; the red-orange glow of the sunset glinted off the parked cars instead.

  “She what?” Heather prompted. She stopped in front of a frighteningly-clean car that had to belong to her aunt.

  Becca reached for the door handle, then thought better of it. In the car, no one would be able to overhear them, but how did she know it hadn’t been bugged? If Internal was using people like Jake to get information about Heather, there was a good chance they had her under surveillance too.

  She sat down on the curb in front of the car instead, and patted the space next to her. Heather joined her.

  “She what?” Heather pressed. “What did she say?”

  “A boy at school was asking questions about you today,” said Becca, instead of answering Heather’s question. “I think he’s spying for Internal. You should be careful around him. His name is—”

  “Just tell me what your mom said,” Heather interrupted with an edge to her voice.

  Now or never. “She said your parents confessed,” Becca began. Just tell her.

  Heather jumped up, eyes blazing. “Then she’s lying.”

  Becca stood. “She doesn’t have any reason to lie.”

  “Are you telling me you believe her? You think they’re dissidents now too?” The rage on Heather’s face looked strong enough to eat through Becca like acid. “You’re wrong! All of you are wrong.” Her voice echoed through the parking lot.

  “Quiet!” Becca grabbed Heather’s arm. “What if someone hears you?”

  Heather yanked it away. “I know them,” she said, quieter now. “I grew up with them. They aren’t traitors.”

  If she reacted like this to hearing about their confession, how would she react to the news that they had been executed? What might she say, in her grief and anger, that someone like Jake could overhear?

  If Becca told Heather what had happened to her parents, and Heather went to school tomorrow ranting about how Internal had executed two innocent people, and tomorrow night she disappeared, would Becca have killed her?

  But Heather was going to find out eventually, whether Becca told her or not. And she deserved to know the truth.

  There had to be some way to make this easier. To make Heather less likely to do something stupid once she found out.

  She had a thought.

  It probably wouldn’t work—but if there was any chance at all, it was worth a try.

  “Do you have any of your parents’ things?” she asked.

  Heather folded her arms across her chest. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I have an idea. For—” Another lie. What was she supposed to do, when she choked on both the truth and the lies? “For proving your parents weren’t dissidents. If you have papers of theirs, journals, anything like that… maybe there’s something that can prove Internal wrong.”

  Her voice had dropped to a whisper. She glanced around, out of habit, to make sure nobody had heard. Despite her real motives, talking about proving two executed dissidents’ innocence made her skin crawl. That was dissident activity.

  But if that disturbed Heather, she didn’t show it. “Internal had my aunt get my stuff from the apartment after they searched the place. She said she got a few of my parents’ things for me when she did. I don’t know what she took. It’s probably not much. I haven’t… I haven’t looked through that box yet.” She swallowed. “But there might be something useful in there.”

  “I’ll come over tomorrow after school. We can look through it then.” Becca reconsidered. “No, bring the box over to my place. Just in case your aunt’s house is bugged. No one would dare bug my mom’s apartment.”

  Becca didn’t want to find something that proved their innocence. That would be nearly impossible, anyway. Internal would always argue that they had simply covered their tracks well.

  What Becca wanted was something that would prove their guilt.

  If she tried to tell Heather that her parents had been dissidents, Heather wouldn’t believe her. But if there was proof…

  If Heather knew her parents had been guilty, the news of their execution wouldn’t hurt any less. But Heather wouldn’t think Internal had killed her parents by mistake… and so she wouldn’t accuse Internal where Jake could hear. Or worse, storm down to 117.

  “Thanks for helping me with this.” Heather didn’t sound quite so panicked now. “Sorry for yelling. It just sounded for a minute like you didn’t believe me anymore.”

  “We’ll find the truth together,” Becca promised. She felt dirty.

  * * *

  Heather dropped the cardboard box onto Becca’s bed.

  One box, not much bigger than Becca’s pillow. “Is that everything?”

  Heather nodded. “She probably didn’t want to save anything of theirs. But she thought I might want a couple of things.”

  How likely was it that Internal had left something incriminating, which Heather’s aunt had then packed up for Heather? Not very. But no matter how small the chance, this was worth it. Becca didn’t know how else she could convince Heather that her parents had been guilty.

  “It’s weird being back here.” Heather looked around with longing in her eyes. Becca knew she wasn’t seeing the tidy space around her with its pale blue walls, but the mirror-image room on the other side of the wall, the one with clothes strewn everywhere and posters covering every inch of available space. The room that was probably empty by now, its walls slathered with enough layers of white paint to erase all traces of Heather, waiting for somebody new to move in.

  Heather brought her gaze back down to the box. “You really think there’s something in here that could prove they aren’t dissidents?”

  Becca shifted uncomfortably. “Maybe. It’s worth a try, anyway.”

  She sat cross-legged on her bed, facing the box. Her fluffy bedspread crinkled under her legs. Heather joined her.

  Neither of them opened the box.

  Heather glanced around the room again and pulled her arms into her lap. “You’re sure no one’s watching us in here?”

  Becca felt kind of paranoid herself. They were here to prove two dissidents’ innocence. Even if that wasn’t Becca’s real purpose, it was what she had said they were doing. This could get them both arrested, and here they were talking about it in broad daylight. In Internal housing, no less. This was still safer than doing it at Heather’s aunt’s house, but it didn’t feel that way.

  But Becca was willing to bet that wasn’t what was really bothering Heather right now. However certain Heather was of her parents’ innocence, she had to be afraid of looking through that box, just in case she was wrong.

  And if things went Becca’s way, Heather’s worst fears would come true.

  “I’m sure.” Becca took a deep breath and opened the box.

  Although she had known it was unlikely, she had still hoped the box would be stuffed full of mysterious-looking papers. Or that Internal had left a laptop or something behind—although Becca doubted any dissident would store incriminating informatio
n on something so easily monitored. Instead, the box was almost completely empty. Down at the bottom, a miniature photo album lay in one corner, next to a jewelry box and a small notebook. That was it.

  Heather slumped. “I guess my aunt thought this was all I would want. Or maybe Internal took everything else.” She picked up the notebook. “This looks like it could be a journal. There might be something in here.” She started to open it, but stopped the motion halfway through.

  Becca slid the notebook from her hands. “I’ll look through it for you, if you want.”

  “I know they weren’t dissidents,” Heather said hastily, as though Becca had accused her of doubting them. “I just don’t think I could handle seeing their handwriting right now.”

  Becca opened the notebook.

  Birdwatching Notebook, the first page read in Heather’s mom’s neat script.

  She tried to banish her disappointment. Maybe the first page was meant as camouflage. She turned the page. She didn’t know what she was hoping to find—a signed confession, maybe. Whatever she was hoping for, it wasn’t what she actually found: a page that was blank except for a date from about a year ago and the names of two birds. Bluebird: Sialia sialis. Barn swallow: Hirundo rustica.

  She flipped through the pages. More dates, more birds. Goldfinch: Spinus tristis. On another page, underlined twice: Mockingbird: Mimus polyglottus. Useless, unless she could convince Heather it was some kind of dissident code.

  “Was your mom into birdwatching?” Becca asked, hoping the answer was no.

  Heather nodded. “She put a feeder outside the window and tried to identify all the birds she saw. She got really excited when she spotted one she’d never seen before.” Her voice was soft with memory. “Why?”

  Frustration built to a pounding point between Becca’s temples. “That’s what this is. A birdwatching notebook.” She set it back into the box, only resisting the urge to hurl it across the room because it probably meant something to Heather.

  Beside her on the bed, Heather was paging through the photo album, slowly tracing each picture with her finger.

  Becca pulled out the last item, the jewelry box, without much hope. She examined each edge carefully, hoping for a secret compartment, but found nothing more mysterious than an earring without a mate.

  They weren’t going to find anything.

  She hadn’t really expected this to work. Still, the failure tasted bitter in her mouth. After they finished their search and came up empty-handed, Becca would have two choices: tell Heather that her parents were dead and watch her self-destruct, or wait for her to find out some other way and put off the explosion a little longer.

  A soft sniff drew her attention. She turned to see Heather wiping away tears as she brushed her finger against the edge of one of the pictures. It showed her parents together, younger, probably before Heather was born. The tears fell faster, and Heather whimpered, like she had forgotten Becca was there.

  There was no point in doing any more searching. Dragging this out would only hurt Heather more.

  “I don’t think there’s anything here.” Becca took hold of the photo album. Heather didn’t resist as she slid it out of her hands. She wished she could say something else, something to ease Heather’s grief. But every word of reassurance she could offer would be a lie.

  As Becca lifted the album, the picture that Heather had been looking at slipped out and fluttered to the bed between them. A piece of paper, folded in half, followed it.

  Heather started to grab the paper, then pulled her hand back to her lap.

  Whatever this was, it wasn’t the proof of their innocence that Heather was looking for. Nobody wrote out their support for the government and then hid it in a photo album.

  Becca picked up the paper and unfolded it. Heather peered over her shoulder at her father’s tiny chicken-scratch scrawls. She deciphered the note before Becca did; Becca could tell from her sharp intake of breath.

  The note was dated two days before the arrest. It wasn’t addressed to anyone. Becca squinted until the letters resolved themselves into words.

  New info on false confessions—from conversation between Internal agent and someone from an unknown resistance group (both executed). Can you use this?

  Ratio of false confessions to real is high: 4 to 1? More?

  All confessions about unified resistance are false. It doesn’t exist. That’s why we’ve never been able to make contact.

  Most false confessions are scripted by Public Relations. They use expendable prisoners. That means most high-profile executions are not from real resistance groups.

  This isn’t widely known, even in Processing. Only a few handle scripted confessions:

  Becca skimmed the list of names, hands shaking. She was about to put the note down when the last name on the list jumped out at her.

  Raleigh Dalcourt.

  Her mother.

  Chapter Four

  Becca left the apartment not long after Heather did. She walked along the road, past the half-finished new building, paying only enough attention to her surroundings to make sure she didn’t wander into the path of an oncoming car. She needed to get away. She needed to think.

  She needed the playground.

  All the old apartment buildings on Becca’s street had been demolished a few years ago to make room for more Internal housing. There had been plans to replace the playground down the street from Becca’s building, too, but after the park a couple of streets away had put in a fancy new playground, everyone forgot about the old one. Now weeds grew higher than the seats of the swings, and the metal slide had long since turned red with rust. The wooden playhouse to the side of the swing set had a sinister feel to it; whenever Becca walked by it she half-expected a killer to jump out.

  This place used to scare Becca. For the past few years, though, she had come here whenever she needed a break from the world.

  She needed that now.

  She climbed the precarious ladder up to the top of the slide, where she sat cross-legged, watching the grass sway in the wind. The construction noises from down the street provided a background to her thoughts.

  The words of the note repeated in her mind. The things Heather’s dad had written about so casually seemed impossible to Becca. The idea of Processing scripting dissidents’ confessions, faking an entire network of dissidents…

  She would have called it dissident activity—what else could she call a plot to make the dissidents appear stronger than they were?—if Processing weren’t a part of it. If her mother weren’t a part of it.

  Of course, all this was assuming the things in the note were true. She had no reason to—

  At the edge of her vision, something moved.

  Becca jerked her head around to face the playhouse, where she had seen the brief flicker of motion. Whatever it had been, it was gone now. Probably just more paranoia. She looked away, feeling silly.

  It happened again. A flash of color between the boards of the playhouse.

  She spun her head toward the playhouse again—just in time to see somebody walk out.

  She didn’t move, didn’t even breathe, but the intruder looked up at her anyway. As soon as she saw his face, she recognized him. Jake. Giving her that smile, the one that made her want to trust him. She wouldn’t fall for it this time. She knew what he was.

  She couldn’t deal with him right now. Not after what she had found.

  She returned his smile with a glare. “What are you doing here?”

  She knew she should be trying not to look suspicious. But right now she couldn’t bring herself to care.

  He shrugged. “I just came here to think. It seemed like a good place to be alone.”

  Right. Like he had just happened to run into her in the hallway yesterday. “You don’t need to worry about me getting in your way. I was just leaving.” She inched her way back down the ladder, tensing each time it creaked.

  “You don’t have to go,” he said. “Maybe we can finish our conver
sation from yesterday. You know, since you ran off in the middle.”

  She stepped off the ladder and onto solid ground. Her headache was starting to pulse behind her eyes again. “I have to get home.”

  “Maybe some other time, then. I’ll see you in school tomorrow, right?”

  “I guess.” She started walking toward the road. Leaving now would look rude. Maybe even suspicious. But she had to get out of here before she exploded.

  Jake stepped in front of her. “Whatever I did, could you just tell me?” His smile was gone now, replaced with perplexed frustration. “We were talking the other day, and everything seemed fine, and then you took off. Now you’re acting like I’m the last person in the world you want to see.”

  Something inside her snapped. “You want to know what you did? How about flirting with me so you could get information about Heather to bring back to Internal?”

  Jake’s mouth fell open. It took him a moment to close it again. “Wait. You think I’m working for Internal?”

  She had caught him by surprise. Good. “Why else would you have been so interested in Heather? Why else would you have been talking to me in the first place? You weren’t being as subtle as you thought you were.”

  “I’m not working for them. I don’t know why you would even think that.” He shook his head a bit too emphatically. “Maybe I was asking about Heather because I saw the way everybody was treating her. Did you ever think about that? Maybe I was talking to you because I like you.”

  Maybe he was telling the truth, and she had misread him. Maybe their conversation at school had been completely innocent. Maybe a boy really did like her instead of Heather for once, and she had screwed up her chances with him by accusing him of being a spy.

  How was she supposed to know? How was she supposed to figure out what to believe?

  There was hardly any chance he was telling the truth. Becca had only ever had a couple of dates, and never a real boyfriend. When most guys saw her and Heather together, they really only saw Heather. And the others were all afraid of her mom. Why should Jake be any different?