The Torturer's Daughter

by Zoe Cannon

  “What did you want to do with them?” Becca snapped. “Did you want to kill them too?”

  She imagined Jake as he must have been after his release. Sent back into the world as if nothing had happened, as if nothing were different. His mother dead, and, if her mom was telling the truth, his older sister too. His father… changed. Day after day of getting beaten up at school, then going home to a half-empty house and trying to take care of his dad. How had he survived?

  Her mom pushed the plates aside, stopping just short of sending them crashing to the floor. “I don’t know what’s happening to you, Becca, but it’s scaring me. I could understand your loyalty to Heather; you’ve been friends with her for years. But then you defended that other dissident—Anna—after that rumor she passed on to you. And now…” She studied Becca’s face as carefully as she had Jake’s a few minutes ago. Whatever answers she found there didn’t diminish the fear in her eyes. “Now you’re defending a dissident. Do you understand what you’re saying when you tell me you believe his story over mine? Do you understand what it means for you to imply that it would have been wrong to kill them? Do you?”

  Becca couldn’t think about what her mom was saying. About what it meant. Better to focus on what her mom had done. She let the anger fill her, a shield against her mom’s implied accusations.

  “So you do wish you had killed him. How old was he then? Thirteen? And you would have shot him along with his sister.” As she spoke, her mom’s features rearranged, became unfamiliar. Her mom had said she didn’t know Becca anymore, but she was the one who had changed.

  No. This was who she had always been. Becca had just been too blind to see it.

  “I should have gone with Dad when he left,” Becca spat. “Maybe he had the right idea. Maybe he knew the truth about you all along.”

  The words hung in the air between them.

  They both jumped as the kitchen phone rang.

  Becca’s mom got up first. She picked the phone up from the counter. “Hello?” She listened for a moment, then handed the phone to Becca, her face expressionless. “It’s for you.”

  Only one person called Becca on the land line instead of her cell phone.

  Becca checked the date on her watch. The first Sunday of the month. She had forgotten.

  Becca took the phone from her mom. “Hi, Dad.”

  Chapter Nine

  Becca sat on her bed with her legs tucked under her, cradling the phone against her ear. Somewhere on the other side of the door, her mom was probably still thinking about what she had said. Becca hadn’t meant to say it. The words had slipped out before she was fully aware of them. Had she crossed a line? Said something unforgivable?

  Why did it matter? Why did she care whether she hurt her mom, after everything her mom had done?

  Her dad had asked her something. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

  “How’s school going?” her dad repeated in his soft voice.

  She answered on autopilot. “Fine, I guess.” Now that she wasn’t in the same room as her mom, it was harder to keep her anger fresh. She couldn’t renew it by looking at her mom and seeing how the person she thought she knew had actually been somebody else all along. The rest of the conversation, the part she had been trying not to think about, began to creep back into her mind.

  Do you understand what you’re saying when you tell me you believe his story over mine? Do you understand what it means for you to imply it would have been wrong to kill them?

  “Becca? Are you still there?”

  “I’m still here.” Becca tried to focus on her dad’s voice, tried to let it block out the echoes of other voices.

  Only a dissident would think any of that could be true.

  But she had found proof. That changed everything, didn’t it? How could she not believe, now that she had proof?

  Did it still make her a dissident?

  Did being glad Jake was alive make her a dissident? Did being angry that her mom had killed his mom?

  Dissident. The word echoed through her mind.

  Her dad was talking again. Becca tried to concentrate, but he sounded like he was speaking some alien language. He paused. Was he waiting for an answer? What had he asked her?

  “Are you okay?” The words came through clearly this time. From the way he said it, she guessed it wasn’t the first time he had asked the question.

  “I’m fine,” she said, but winced as her answer came out too fast, too clipped. She struggled to come up with a better response, but her mind dragged her back down.

  Dissident.

  Becca knew what dissidents were. They were the people Internal arrested every day, the people trying to poison society against the government so they could bring back the old corrupt system. Becca’s mom had raised her to believe in the importance of a safe and stable world, a world ruled by justice. Whatever she might think of her mom now, Becca still believed in that world. She didn’t want any part of the world the dissidents were trying to create—so how could she be a dissident?

  But how much of what she knew about the dissidents was true, and how much had been manufactured by people like her mom?

  Back to her mom again. Back where she had started.

  She tried to build her anger up again, tried to remind herself of all the things her mom had done. All the ways she had lied. But instead of boiling over, the anger sat in her belly like a piece of bad meat. Maybe her mom hadn’t betrayed her after all. Maybe Becca was the traitor here. Dissident.

  “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay,” her dad was saying. “But if there’s any way I can help…”

  Her dad’s words barely penetrated her thoughts—but the sound of his voice sparked a memory, one she clung to like a lifeline. He didn’t like her mom’s job either, or a lot of the things Internal did. It was the reason he had left. Becca could still remember the arguments.

  If he could have doubts about Internal without being a dissident, so could she.

  She tried to lighten her voice, tried to make it sound like this wasn’t a big deal. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Shoot.”

  She tried to figure out how to word her question without sounding like she was making accusations. “What made you hate Mom’s job enough to leave?”

  His answer, when it came, was sharp. “What has your mother been telling you?”

  “What? This isn’t about her. I—”

  “I never had a problem with her job,” her dad insisted. “No matter what she says.”

  Becca frowned. “But… I remember. I used to hear you arguing about it.” The memories, blurry from years of disuse, sharpened as she called them to mind again. A fight in the middle of the night. All she said was that her life wasn’t that bad under the old regime. How is that enough to condemn her to death? Another, hastily interrupted as Becca came in from the yard. I know the kinds of things you do in that place. How can I watch you hug Becca and not think about the blood on your hands?

  “I always supported your mother.” Her dad interrupted the memories. Becca recognized the tension in his voice. She could hear it in her own thoughts.

  Did he hear the word echoing in his head too?

  Dissident.

  In his denials, she could hear herself thirty years from now, insisting that she had never doubted any dissidents’ confessions. Pushing the evidence she had found to the back of her mind because the only alternative was to become the enemy.

  Lying like everybody else did. Like her dad was right now.

  Why couldn’t anyone just tell her the truth?

  “If you didn’t have a problem with her job,” she challenged him, “then why did you two argue about it all the time?”

  “You were a kid. You misunderstood.”

  Maybe she should let him have his denial.

  And then what? If he couldn’t admit his doubts, what was she supposed to do with hers? How was she supposed to quiet the accusing voice?

  Her voice hardened. “I know
what I heard.”

  Her dad waited a moment to answer. “Her job brought certain dangers with it. Things I didn’t know if I could live with.”

  “What do you mean?” She wanted to know how he was rationalizing this to himself.

  “Well, you remember what happened with your mom’s friend.”

  Becca tried to figure out what he was talking about, but nothing came to mind. Had anything actually happened, or was he just making this up to cover over the doubts he didn’t want to admit he had?

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “You don’t remember?” He sounded surprised. “I guess you were pretty young at the time.” He paused. “Internal took her husband. She blamed your mother for it. Your mother tried to help her at first, but she wouldn’t listen.”

  Despite herself, Becca almost felt sorry for her mother. A friend who had lost family to Internal, who turned on her and pushed her away even though she’d had nothing to do with it… Becca knew all too well what that felt like. She kept waiting for Heather to call her or at least say hi at school, but when they passed each other in the halls, Heather’s eyes slid over her as if she didn’t exist.

  She forced her attention back to her dad. “What does this have to do with why you hated Mom’s job?”

  Her dad hesitated. “Her friend tried to kill her.”

  It took Becca a moment to recover her voice. “She what? Why?”

  “Maybe she was a dissident. Maybe losing her husband just made her snap. When your mother left for work, her friend was waiting for her. Your mother barely got away in time.”

  Maybe her dad was making this up. But Becca didn’t think so. She had a faint memory of police cars in front of the house, of the feeling that something important and scary had happened.

  If her mom’s friend could do something like that…

  No. Heather could never kill anyone.

  But the Heather she saw in the halls these days, the one who had screamed at her in the cafeteria the last time they had talked, wasn’t the same Heather she used to know. Heather hadn’t been that person since the night she had called Becca from 117.

  Her dad was still talking, still trying to convince her he had never had any doubts. “That’s why I didn’t like her job. I didn’t think I could live with that kind of danger. It had nothing to do with… anything else.”

  But Becca wasn’t listening anymore.

  * * *

  Becca rushed into the cafeteria, out of breath. As soon as she stepped inside, she scanned the tables for Heather. She didn’t see her.

  She stood just inside the doors, studying the faces of everyone who walked in. She flinched at the hostile glares some of them directed at her. While the rumors about her and Heather had died down, they still weren’t entirely gone. She wanted to go sit at a table in the corner and pretend she was invisible… but she had to find Heather.

  Five minutes went by, then ten. Still no Heather. Was she eating someplace else? Maybe she had decided not to come to school at all.

  When Heather finally walked through the doors, Becca almost didn’t recognize her. She was still going without makeup, and her hair was pulled back in a plain ponytail. Her jeans and t-shirt looked more likely to have come from Becca’s wardrobe than her own.

  But the biggest difference was in the way she held herself. She didn’t shuffle her feet and hunch her shoulders the way she had the last time Becca had seen her; she walked with her old confidence. No, more than her old confidence—this was something new.

  Heather saw her, Becca could tell. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second before Heather looked away.

  Becca blocked her path. “We need to talk.”

  Heather tried to walk around her. “Not right now, okay? We can talk later.”

  And how long would that be? Another three weeks? A month? By then it could be too late.

  No, she told herself again. Heather isn’t capable of something like that.

  But if she was wrong…

  She matched her steps to Heather’s, keeping her body in front of her. “No. We need to talk now.”

  They stood like that for a moment as people shoved past them. What would Becca do if Heather said no? She had no way to force Heather to talk to her.

  At last, Heather nodded. “There’s a table over there.” She pointed to the far corner of the room.

  Becca shook her head. “Not here. Someplace quieter.” Someplace where people won’t overhear.

  They left the cafeteria. On their way down the hall, they passed two of Heather’s old friends headed in the opposite direction. As the girls saw Heather, one of them leaned in toward the other and whispered something. Heather didn’t even look at them.

  Becca ducked into their Citizenship classroom, which was empty this time of day. She was afraid Heather would just keep going, but Heather followed her into the room. Becca closed the door behind them. This was as safe as they were going to get. At least she could be relatively sure the classrooms weren’t bugged. Surveillance didn’t need to spend hours listening in on every class, when Monitors were more efficient and didn’t cost anything.

  Becca and Heather sat at a couple of empty desks near the center of the room. The shiny desks at this school still unnerved Becca a little. She missed the scuffed and scratched-up desks of the old school. They had felt lived-in. These—and everything else in this school—looked like props from a movie.

  “What did you want to talk about?” The grief and uncertainty had disappeared from Heather’s voice. She didn’t sound like the same person Becca had talked to in the cafeteria three weeks ago. But she didn’t sound like her old self, either.

  Becca studied the smudged blackboard as though the right words might appear there. All she saw was a list of the ten characteristics of a good citizen, which she had memorized back in elementary school. “If you still don’t want anything to do with me, that’s fine. I can leave you alone after this. But I need to know something.” She stopped, unwilling to even hint at the suspicion that could drive Heather out of her life for good.

  Heather waited, so still and quiet that Becca wanted to ask her what she had done with the real Heather.

  At least she was looking at Becca now, and listening to her, instead of pretending she didn’t exist. So what if she was acting a little strange. She was still trying to deal with losing her family, her friends, her life. Of course she wasn’t back to normal yet.

  “What do you need to know?” Heather asked.

  “Do you blame my mom for what happened with your parents?”

  “Of course not. She did what she had to do.”

  Heather’s answer had come too easily. Like she had practiced it. Maybe Becca’s suspicions hadn’t been unfounded after all. Cold began creeping up her limbs.

  “If you’re thinking of… doing anything… don’t.” Becca stumbled over the words. “You’d get caught. You’d end up being executed like your parents. Anyway, my mom isn’t responsible for what happened.”

  Heather frowned. “You’re not making any sense.”

  What had Becca expected to accomplish by doing this? If Heather wasn’t planning on trying to get revenge against her mom, the idea that Becca would suspect her of such a thing might damage their relationship beyond repair. And if she was, could Becca really talk her out of it?

  But as long as the possibility existed, Becca had to do something. No matter what Becca thought of her mom, she couldn’t stand back and let her die.

  “You think I would, what, turn into a dissident?” Heather’s voice rose. A little of her old self crept back into her face. “You were the one person in this school who didn’t suspect me. I should have known you’d end up taking their side sooner or later.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I meant if you were planning on… getting revenge against her somehow.”

  Heather looked at her in horror. “Against your mom? For executing a couple of dissidents? You really think I would do something like that? What’s wrong with you
?”

  Becca felt like an idiot. The strangeness she had seen in Heather, her too-quick response to Becca’s questions about her mom—they seemed like nothing when put up against the fact that she was all but accusing her best friend of… dissident activity, she realized. She had said she would never suspect Heather of being a dissident, but by bringing up a possibility like this, that was exactly what she was doing.

  But still, doubts lingered in her mind.

  Heather had said “for executing a couple of dissidents.” Not “my parents.”

  Was she trying too hard to sound innocent?

  Heather’s chair screeched against the tile as she stood up. She walked to the window.

  “I’m sorry.” Becca got up to join her. “Dad told me this story about a friend of my mom’s who tried to kill her after Internal took her husband. It made me kind of paranoid, I guess.”

  Heather didn’t look at her.

  “It didn’t even occur to me that that would make you a dissident. I just remembered what it did to you when Internal took them, and how mad you got at me for no reason…”

  Heather dug her fingernails into her palms. She drew her shoulders up and dropped her head, like a turtle trying to retreat into its shell.

  Then, abruptly, her fists unclenched. Her shoulders dropped.

  She turned to face Becca. “I’m sorry.”

  Becca blinked. If anything, she had expected Heather to demand an apology from her, not the other way around. “For what?”

  “You’re right. I was acting suspicious.” She fiddled with something on her shirt. “You believed me when nobody else would, and I screamed at you and pushed you away. You didn’t deserve that.” She dropped her hands to her sides. “I had to work through a bunch of stuff in my head, and every time I saw you it reminded me of all the things I didn’t want to think about.”

  Like how Becca felt every time she looked at her mom. The thought of being to Heather what her mom was to her made her skin crawl. She tried to shake off the feeling. “It’s okay.”