by Zoe Cannon
“Not at all. Everything I said was true. I miss you, Becca.”
And Becca missed her. Even knowing why her mom had really come out to the park with her didn’t change that.
But the person she missed had never existed.
A car passed them, temporarily blinding Becca with its headlights. “I know something is going on,” her mom said over the noise. “I know Heather and Jake have been telling you things.” She lowered her voice as the car disappeared into the distance. “You’re starting to wonder if they’re right. It’s understandable.”
Heather and Jake. Her mom was going to try to blame this on them. Becca remembered what had happened the last time her mom had thought one of her friends was a dissident. She still had nightmares sometimes where Anna accused her of turning her over to Internal.
“They haven’t—” Becca started.
Her mom spoke over her. “But some part of you knows that what they’ve been telling you is wrong. That’s why it all seems so confusing. Whatever they’ve told you, I can explain it all for you if you just ask. If you don’t talk to me, I can’t help.” Her voice, floating up from someplace behind Becca, was tight with restrained fear.
“Heather joined the Monitors. She wouldn’t have done that if she was a dissident.” But Becca had no way to defend Jake. Nothing to say that would save him if her mom decided the only way to keep him from passing dissident ideas to Becca was to have Internal arrest him again.
“I don’t know who let that girl into the Monitors, but whoever did it is either an idiot or needs to be investigated. Not only were both her parents dissidents, now she’s started spreading dissident ideology herself.”
“All she’s told me is that Internal was right to execute her parents!” She knew it was hopeless even as she said the words. Her mom wasn’t going to drop this. She could see what was happening to Becca, and in her mind, the only reasonable explanation was that Heather and Jake were responsible. Nothing Becca said would change that.
Nothing she said about Heather and Jake, at least.
But if she admitted to finding the evidence…
Her mom would know she had been snooping. She would know that Becca had information she wasn’t supposed to have.
But she would also know that Becca had gotten the information from her computer. Not from Heather or Jake.
“After what Anna told me…” Saying Anna’s name felt like betraying her all over again. “I went on your computer one night when you were at work. I looked through your files. And… I found something.”
They were almost home. The glow of the parking lot illuminated the road ahead of them.
“One of the dissidents’ files had information about what he was supposed to confess to. What you were supposed to make him say.” Becca didn’t know if her mom could hear her. She was speaking so softly she could barely hear herself.
Her mom’s answer, when it came, was just as quiet. “We need to have a talk.”
* * *
Neither of them said anything else as they walked through the parking lot and into the building. The stairwell was silent, but Becca couldn’t think over the sound of her uneven breaths.
Becca followed her mom into the apartment. She felt like she was walking to her execution.
Her mom sat down on the couch. Becca joined her.
Was this how her mom looked when she was interrogating a dissident? That carefully-blank expression, those unreadable eyes?
Her mom spoke first. “I’m sorry for lying to you.”
That wasn’t how she had expected her interrogation to begin.
"I didn’t want to do it," her mom continued. "But you have to understand, nobody outside Internal is supposed to know about this. It’s not even well-known inside Processing. If anyone found out that you had this information… or that you got it from me…" A hint of fear crept into her too-neutral tone.
Becca kept quiet. She didn’t need her mom finding out about the conversation she’d already had with Heather.
"Dissidents have been passing around distorted versions of the truth for years," said her mom. "These things always make it back to them sooner or later. But it’s important that everyone else believes it’s just another dissident lie, if they hear about it at all; otherwise what we’re doing would be meaningless. If that weren’t so important, I would have told you the truth a long time ago. I never wanted to keep anything from you."
“It’s not about you lying to me.” Everything her mom had done, and she thought lying to Becca was the worst part? “It’s about what you’ve been doing. All the false confessions.” She had to force every word out of her mouth. Talking about this with Heather had been hard enough. To talk about it with her mom, with someone who worked for Internal, was practically unthinkable. But at the same time, something in her unclenched a little with every word she spoke. It felt good to talk to her mom again. To be able to tell her the truth.
She kept going. “I know you. You wouldn’t do something like this. The truth matters too much to you.” She met her mom’s eyes, but only for a second. It was too hard to look at her. “But you’ve been doing it all along, haven’t you?”
Her mom’s phone buzzed again. Her mom ignored it.
“You need to remember something.” Her mom got off the couch and knelt between Becca and the coffee table, so Becca had no choice but to look at her. “No matter whether these people have done what they’ve confessed to or not, they’re still dissidents. We can simply execute them, or we can go a step further and use them to strengthen society. We choose the latter.”
Becca had told herself the same thing, when she had first found out. Those people were dissidents. They deserved whatever happened to them.
Dissident.
She went cold.
No. She wasn’t like the people her mom was talking about. She hadn’t done anything that would get her arrested. Right?
But what had Anna done?
Even if Becca had been telling the truth about her, Anna would only have been guilty of passing along a rumor she might not have even believed. Hadn’t Becca given that same piece of information to Heather? Hadn’t she done something more serious than that when she had gone through her mom’s files?
“What about…” Her mouth was dry. “What about people who haven’t done anything but say the wrong thing? People like Anna?” People like me?
“In instances like that, it makes even more sense for us to try to get something useful from them,” her mom answered. “Those dissidents usually can’t even give us the names of any others. Either way, we have to remove them from society. By using them this way, we can do some good as well as eliminating the harm they cause.”
That was what she was now. That was what these thoughts made her. A dissident, no different from any other dissident in Processing. Somebody to get rid of. Somebody to use.
I’m not a dissident.
If she hated what her mom was doing, she was a dissident.
If she was a dissident, she was one of the people her mom was talking about.
“But how are you strengthening society by getting people to confess to things they haven’t done?” Please make it make sense, she pleaded silently. Please make me believe you.
Stop me from turning into a dissident.
Her mom moved back up to the couch. “The first question you asked was about people who haven’t done anything you would consider serious,” she said. “That’s exactly why what we’re doing is necessary.” She leaned toward Becca. “Most people think the way you do. If you heard someone say the country was better off under the old regime, what would you do?”
“I’d report them,” she said immediately. But was that even true anymore?
Just how far gone was she?
“Why?” asked her mom.
“Because only a dissident would think something like that.” She didn’t see how closely her words echoed Heather’s until she heard herself speak.
“But what makes that dissident dange
rous?” her mom pressed.
Becca hesitated, not sure how to answer.
“Right,” said her mom. “You wouldn’t be able to say. One person, making an offhand comment about the government, doesn’t look like a threat. A conspiracy to overthrow the government—that’s the kind of threat people understand.”
“The kind of threat you create.”
Her mom nodded. “And because people believe that those conspiracies exist, they understand the danger that dissidents present, even if they understand it for the wrong reasons. It becomes automatic. When they hear someone saying the country was better off with the former government, they know that person is a danger to society, even if they don’t consciously think about why.”
“But what makes those people dangerous to begin with?” If she could find what made even the minor dissidents dangerous, maybe she could find the thing that separated her from them.
“A thousand tiny drops of poison will kill somebody as easily as a giant spoonful,” her mom answered. “But those tiny drops are harder to see. If people become complacent toward dissidents who don’t appear to pose any immediate threat, soon they’ll start ignoring them. If the dissidents are ignored instead of stopped, they’ll have a chance to gain enough power that people will stop ignoring them and start listening. And the more people listen to them, the more powerful they’ll become. Before you know it, with no conspiracy necessary, we’ll have exactly what we had before. Chaos, corruption, a world built on ignorance and fear.”
Becca wanted to believe her. She wanted to believe that what Internal was doing—what her mom was doing—was right, no matter how many lies were involved, no matter what her mom had to do to get dissidents to say what she needed them to say. If she could just make herself believe it, she could have her mom back. She could have her mind back. She could have her life back.
Heather had done it. She had blocked out all her grief, blocked out everything Becca had told her. She had convinced herself that her parents had deserved to die. Why couldn’t Becca convince herself that her mom was doing the right thing?
Her mom’s neutral mask slipped a little more, revealing the fear underneath, with every second she waited for Becca’s response.
“I think I get it,” said Becca slowly. “You have to do what you’re doing, so people will understand that dissidents are dangerous. Otherwise they won’t see the danger until it’s too late.”
Her mom sagged against the back of the couch, letting all her muscles relax at once. “Exactly.”
“I think I need some time to think about this,” said Becca. “It’s a lot to absorb.” She swallowed. “Thanks for explaining. I should have asked you when I first found out.”
She escaped to her room before her mom could look past her relief to wonder whether Becca meant what she had said.
* * *
Sometime around midnight, Becca’s mom answered the call from work after all. From behind her bedroom door, Becca assured her that it was fine for her to leave, that she didn’t need to talk anymore. After the apartment door closed behind her mom, she waited five minutes before she left the apartment herself.
She hadn’t ever gone to the playground this late before. Stepping away from the lighted parking lot and onto the dark road, she was reminded of the time she had walked to 117 to find Heather. The night that had started all this.
That night, she’d had a purpose. Find Heather. Help her. Tonight she didn’t know what she was looking for. She used to be able to escape her problems at the playground, but this time she carried the problem with her. Where could she go to escape her own mind?
Dissidents were dangerous. Becca knew that. She had known it all her life.
Becca thought like them. She talked like them. She acted like them. Was she dangerous?
Becca sped up, trying to outrun her thoughts.
Dissidents would destroy the government if Internal didn’t stop them. They would replace justice and order with chaos and corruption.
What did that even mean?
Did a world built on justice and order, the world her mom had taught her to believe in, involve people like Anna being arrested? People like Jake’s mom being tortured to death? People who said one wrong thing forced to confess to trying to overthrow the government?
She felt like she had run straight off a cliff. Her feet hit the solid pavement with every stride, but she could still feel herself falling.
She couldn’t start thinking like this. She had to stop this somehow.
She slowed as she reached the playground. At night, it looked downright sinister. Elongated shadows stretched out from the swing set poles and reached for her along the ground. The playhouse had transformed into a black hole ready to suck her in.
A shrill warble, too close to be a bird, cut through the silence.
Her heart nearly exploded out of her chest.
The noise came again, but this time she recognized it. Her phone. Right. Glad nobody was around to witness her moment of panic, she answered. “Hello?”
“Hey.” It was Jake, sounding more subdued than she had heard him since the day he’d told her about his past. “I know it’s late, but… I need to talk to you. Or just hang out. Or something.” His voice wavered. “Do you think you could meet me at the old playground by your building?”
She stopped walking. Jake never sounded like this when he called her. Ever since he had explained his history to her, they had kept their conversations almost obsessively casual. He never called her sounding upset, or asked her to come hang out this late at night. Something had to be wrong.
But with her mom’s explanation circling through her head, with her desperate denials no longer working, she had no room for talking to Jake, for forcing what her mom had said about him out of her mind.
Fighting her guilt, she opened her mouth to tell him she couldn’t make it.
A figure stepped out of the playhouse. He waved as he walked toward her.
Jake was already here. And now he knew she was here too.
At first he was only a vague shadow. As she got closer, his features resolved. His familiar face, minus his usual smile. The tears that glittered in his eyes.
The ring of bruises around his neck.
Becca started to reach her hand up toward them, then let it fall back to her side. “What happened?”
Jake shifted awkwardly on his feet. “It was a bad day. That’s all.”
She tried to keep her mind on Jake’s problems, tried to block out the questions that still wouldn’t leave her alone. “Bad days don’t usually involve someone trying to strangle you.”
Jake walked the few steps to the swings and sat down. The swing creaked under his weight. “It’s just my dad. Sometimes he’s almost normal, and sometimes he’s… not. Today when I got home from school, he thought I was from Internal.” He clutched the rusted chains and let the swing sway back and forth. “I managed to remind him who I was, but after that it was like I wasn’t there. He kept talking to my mom and Sarra, like they were there in the room with him. I stayed as long as I could, but I had to get out of there. And you were the only person I could go to.” He laughed. Something about his laugh didn’t sound quite sane.
Becca knew she should try to comfort him. but all she could think about was the name he had said. “Sarra. Your sister?”
He nodded.
His sister. She had existed after all. Which meant her mom had been right, at least about that part of his story. And if she had been right about that part, why not about all of it?
It didn’t matter what he had or hadn’t told her. Not right now. He needed her.
But if she ignored this, it would mean she didn’t care that he might have been a dissident. That he might still be a dissident. And that would mean she was turning into somebody who could forgive dissident activity but not a few false confessions, somebody who hung around dissidents as if she were one of them.
Again she felt herself falling.
It was already too late.
No. She could stop this.
She took a step back. “You never told me about her.”
“I’m sorry.” He scuffed his foot along the ground. “I meant to.”
“You told me you weren’t actually dissidents.”
Now he looked up at her, his eyes wide, the moonlight lending them an eerie glow. “We weren’t. I explained what happened.”
“Mom told me there was nobody staying with you. She said your sister was involved with a dissident group. She said all of you were dissidents.”
Tell me she was wrong, she begged inside her mind, just like she had earlier during her mom’s explanation. Make me believe you.
It didn’t work any better now than it had then.
Jake didn’t speak. His swing stopped moving.
It was true. She knew it just looking at him, just listening to the silence between them.
“I didn’t know what else to do.” His words faded into the air. “You were going to leave unless I explained, but if I told you the truth…”
She wanted to forgive him. She wanted to tell him that it was all right, and that she understood, and that she was sorry for everything that had happened to him today and in all the time since his arrest.
But how, after hating her mom for lying about something Internal had ordered her to keep secret, could she forgive Jake for lying about this?
How could she justify that?
“I told you not to lie to me.” The coldness in her voice made her shudder. She sounded like her mom.
Better to sound like her mom than like a dissident. Right?
“What was I supposed to tell you?” His voice roughened. “Was I supposed to say they shot my sister on TV as some kind of lesson? Was I supposed to tell you how it was her fault all along for getting involved with those useless people who were willing to just throw us away afterwards?” He was yelling now. “Was I supposed to tell you how little it all meant to them, in the end? Everything we did for them, to expose this government for what it really is? Everything we went through? Was I supposed to tell you how they came to me after, and asked me to join them, when they weren’t willing to help us in the only way that mattered?”