Toxic Heart

by Theo Lawrence

  “That way,” she says, nodding toward one of the tents. “And fast. We’ve got a bleeder.”

  She and Turk rush off, and I do my best to keep up with them. Turk glances over his shoulder and smiles at me. “Move it, slowpoke!”

  I pick up my pace and follow them into the tent. I’m shocked by what I see:

  Rows and rows of flimsy metal cots are stacked up like bunk beds, with barely an inch of space between them. There’s a baby crying somewhere, though I don’t see any children, and the entire tent is burning hot—there are only two fans to cool at least a hundred people.

  “This way,” Nancy says, leading us down the middle of the tent. Other women—nurses?—seem to be coming and going as well, bringing food and drinks and medical supplies to the people in the beds. They wear white masks over their mouths, latex gloves on their hands, and white caps covering their heads.

  “To help stop the transfer of diseases,” Nancy says, catching me staring. “You’re Aria Rose, aren’t you?”

  I nod. “Nice to meet you.”

  “And you.” Nancy leads us all the way to the back of the tent and squeezes herself between two beds. On the bottom bunk is a man in his late twenties. He has a buzz cut, and his face is drawn in pain.

  I glance down and see a wedge of steel sticking out of the middle of his thigh. Blood is seeping from the wound, staining the white sheets red.

  Nancy hands me the towels. “This is going to be painful, young man,” she says, “but it will save your life.”

  He nods at her, a world of hurt in his eyes.

  “Poor thing,” Nancy says to Turk. “There was an explosion in a building on the Lower East Side, near the river. Some of the shrapnel got him.” She grips a clamp in one of her gloved hands, fastens it around the jagged piece of steel, and pulls.

  I close my eyes.

  The man lets out an excruciating scream.

  I open my eyes and watch as Nancy struggles with the metal. The piece of steel won’t come out, and she’s forced to twist it almost ninety degrees before there’s a squishing sound and the metal pops out of the man’s leg and into her palm.

  Immediately, the blood begins to flow like a river.

  “Quick,” Nancy says to me. “A towel.”

  I press one of the white towels to the man’s wound. It sops up the blood like a sponge, but he doesn’t stop bleeding. “What should I do?” I say to Nancy, terrified. “The blood … there’s too much.…”

  “Aria, stand back,” Turk says. He holds out his hand and locks his fingers; I watch the tiniest speck of green form in the center of his palm and spiral out until his entire hand is radiating mystic energy.

  Pulling back the soaked towel, Turk presses his hand to the man’s wound. The blood begins to bubble and coalesce, hardening into a clump of reddish-brown. The man’s eyes open in shock as he watches his wound heal before his very eyes.

  Turk removes his hand and shakes it, like he just put down a heavy weight. The energy dissipates and his hand returns to its normal olive color. “Nancy, do you have any water?”

  She bends down and pulls a bowl from underneath the bed. I hand Turk a clean towel; he dips it into the water, then washes the dried blood from the man’s thigh. Beneath it, the wound has healed completely—the skin is pink and fresh. There isn’t even a scar.

  “Thank you,” whispers the man, who still seems weak, maybe from loss of blood.

  “You’re welcome,” Turk says, wiping his hands clean. “All in a day’s work.”

  “Now you get some rest,” Nancy tells the man, leading us back into the aisle. “I’m so glad you’re here, Turk. If you weren’t, well … I don’t think he would have been so lucky.”

  “With a nurse like you?” Turk says to Nancy, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “He would have been fine.”

  I’m surprised by this tender side of Turk. He truly is gifted at healing, and at putting those around him at ease. It’s a quality I wish I had myself. I tend to alienate people, it seems.

  “Who else needs help?” Turk says, curling his fingers. “The doctor is in the house.” He follows Nancy as she motions to another patient. “Aria,” he says to me. “Be useful.”

  Then he hurries down a row of beds.

  Be useful. Sure. I can be useful.

  I spot a young woman wearing a white nurse’s cap and tap her on the shoulder. She spins around. “Emily, I need those syringes an—”

  She cuts off as she realizes that I’m not Emily.

  “Oh!” she says. “You’re … you’re …”

  “Aria,” I say.

  “Of course!” She blushes. “I’m Kerry. I just, I didn’t expect to see you here, and Emily, well, she hasn’t been much of a help … not that that’s any of your concern. Thank you for visiting the square.” She glances behind me. “Is Hunter Brooks here with you?”

  “No,” I say. “Just me. What can I do?”

  The girl looks confused. “You’ve helped so much already. You and Hunter, you’re so inspiring.”

  I really don’t deserve her compliments. “There must be something I can do,” I say, feeling uncomfortable.

  Kerry looks around. “There,” she says, gesturing to a bed. “I was going to bring her one of these.” She extends the tray she’s holding; it’s full of plastic cups of water. “But I’m sure she would appreciate it more coming from you.”

  I take one of the cups and walk over to the bed, where a sickly-looking bald girl is resting on a dirty white sheet. Her eyes have a milky film over them, and she’s frail—as skinny as a toothpick. I can’t tell if she’s mystic or human.

  “Hello,” I say. “Would you like some water?”

  The girl turns her head. “Yes, please.”

  “You should probably sit up so you don’t spill.”

  The girl strains her neck, but she doesn’t move. She’s too weak.

  With my free hand, I reach behind her head and gently guide her to a seated position. “Thank you,” she says to me.

  “You’re welcome.” I hand her the water. “Drink up.”

  She takes the cup. “You’re Aria Rose,” she says.

  “I am. What’s your name?”

  “Yolie.”

  “That’s pretty,” I say.

  “I’ve seen you on TV,” Yolie says to me. She looks sicker than any drained mystic I’ve ever seen. I wonder what happened to her.

  “Oh?”

  “Your boyfriend is mag,” she says, giving me the slightest hint of a smile.

  I laugh at her use of Aeries slang. “You think?”

  “That’s what my older sister, Lorda, says,” Yolie says.

  “Where is Lorda?” I ask.

  Yolie sits still. “I don’t know,” she says. She cranes her neck, looking around the tent. “Maybe here.”

  My heart goes out to this poor little girl.

  “I’m cold,” Yolie says. Her twiggy arms are covered with goose pimples, and her teeth have begun to chatter.

  “Let me get you a blanket,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”

  I leave her bedside and walk back to the main aisle. Across the tent, there’s a flash of green energy. Turk must be working his healing magic. If only there were something he could do for Yolie …

  “Kerry,” I say, rushing up to a nurse. “I think Yolie is—”

  The nurse turns around and makes a face at me. “I’m not Kerry.”

  “I can see that,” I say, taken aback. This girl has a tense face and coarse skin; her cheeks look like they’ve been roughened with sandpaper. “Well, um, Kerry told me to give that little girl Yolie some water, and she’s cold. She needs a blanket.”

  “Look around, Aria Rose.” The girl says my name as though it’s poisonous. “Do you see a hiding place for blankets? No. That’s because we don’t have any.”

  “You don’t have any blankets?” I ask, shocked.

  The girl clucks her tongue. “You come off a lot more eloquent on TV.”

  “Why don’t you h
ave blankets?” I ask.

  “Ask your boyfriend,” she says, walking away. “We’re missing a lot of stuff.”

  “Genna isn’t exactly the sugariest cookie in the batch,” says Kerry, coming up beside me. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” I say. “She doesn’t like me.”

  “It’s not that,” Kerry says, offering me a look of sympathy. “It’s just … well, war does funny things to people.”

  “I understand,” I say. “But that’s not important right now. It’s Yolie. She’s cold, and—”

  “I just gave her something to help her sleep. Do you mind?” She holds out the tray, still half filled with cups of water. “Just for a moment. My arms are getting tired.”

  “Of course,” I say. “What happened to Yolie? And where is her sister?”

  Kerry considers my question. “Let’s walk and talk.”

  “Yolie’s family used to live in the Magnificent Block,” Kerry tells me as she leads me down a row of beds. “They were registered mystics.” I stop at each bunk, handing cups of water to injured men and women who are so appreciative, some of them even start weeping. “Aria Rose,” they say. “Our savior. Where’s Hunter? The two of you … so inspiring.”

  “When it was destroyed,” Kerry says, “her parents were killed. She and her sister hid out there as long as they could with some other kids, but eventually they were hungry enough that they started stealing. A storekeeper caught them. She realized how thin and sickly they were and brought them here.”

  “But she still looks ill.”

  “She has dysentery,” Kerry says. “We’ve been trying to treat her, but it’s not working. If we had better medicine, maybe …”

  “And her sister?”

  Kerry frowns. “Dead. Nobody’s had the heart to tell her yet.”

  I take a deep breath, trying to steady my hand as I give a young man a glass of water.

  “Aria Rose,” he says in a throaty whisper. “You’re more beautiful than I could have imagined.”

  “This is Steve,” Kerry says. “He’s the Don Juan of tent four. A real lothario.” She giggles and glances back at the young man. His face is practically burned off—one of his eyes is missing, and the skin around his nose and mouth is an angry red, overtaken by scar tissue.

  “Well, thank you, Steve,” I say. The corner of his lip twitches. I think he’s trying to smile.

  “What happened to him?” I ask once we’ve left his bed.

  “He’s a human injured by mystic fire,” Kerry says. “The rebels set fire to a building in the Aeries that housed a number of Foster supporters.” She pauses. “Unfortunately, because the power grid is out and they couldn’t ascend to the Aeries in a POD, they ignited the building from its foundation. Steve’s father had a shop on the lower level, and, well …”

  “That’s terrible!” I say, enraged. Since the Point of Descent elevators are the only way to travel between the Aeries and the Depths, extinguishing a building from the bottom up means death for everyone inside. No escape. “That is so irresponsible of the rebels.”

  Kerry nods. “There are others here, too … more than you’d think. Blasted with stray mystic energy. Collateral damage,” she says. “No one intends to hurt them, but they get hurt anyway. That’s what war does.”

  Outside, I take a seat on an empty wooden bench. I look around the square, overwhelmed by the idea that inside each of these tents are dozens of people just like Steve and Yolie—innocent casualties of war. People who did nothing wrong, who are losing their lives so that my parents and the Fosters and Hunter and the rebels can continue playing their dangerous killing games.

  People stare at me as I sit. Most are nurses traveling from tent to tent, but there are a few mystics, too. Many of them recognize me and are gracious and introduce themselves. But some of them try to burn me with their eyes and make me feel invisible. Worse than invisible—evil.

  “Monster!” a girl my own age screams at me. Her mother has to drag her away. “Selfish monster!”

  It’s clear that to some, I am the face of this war.

  I stand up. There’s only so much hostility I can take. The square is still bustling, and the air is threateningly hot, the sun beating down on us. There’s a loud hum like a swarm of bees coming from one of the tents, and I head toward it, intrigued.

  Outside the tent, men, women, and children are waiting in four lines. At the front of each line is a square metal stool and a nurse standing beside it with a buzzing electric razor.

  People are getting their heads shaved.

  “Excuse me,” I say to a man in front of me. He’s wearing tattered pants and a stained brown shirt. “What is this for?”

  He doesn’t even turn back to look at me. “Vermin,” he says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Rats. Everywhere.” He turns, finally making eye contact. If he recognizes me, he doesn’t let on. “And mice. And fleas. And lice. The mystic energy used to help keep ’em in check. But now the Depths are full of ’em. Better to shave your head so they don’t have a place to nest.”

  Gross. My skin crawls.

  “Yo!” shouts someone behind me. I turn around: it’s Turk. “Did you see me back there?” He stretches out his arms. “I was like a healing ninja! I cast some spells on that shit.”

  “You’re a weirdo,” I say.

  He sticks out his tongue. “Takes one to know one. Ready to go?”

  “No.” I move up in the line.

  “Next!” one of the nurses shouts.

  Turk widens his eyes. “Aria Rose. You’re not waiting in line to have your head shaved, are you?”

  I shrug. “What would you have to say about it if I were?”

  Turk thinks for a moment. “I’d say you have some serious cojones. And that Hunter is going to fliiiiip when he sees you.”

  “Yeah, well, who knows when that will even be?” I’m practically at the front of the line.

  Turk quirks an eyebrow. “Trouble in paradise?”

  I don’t bother answering him, because the nurse has shouted, “Next!” I take a seat on the stool, feeling the weight of my hair spilling onto my shoulders.

  For a split second, I wonder what Hunter will say when he sees me, what it will feel like when the girl presses the razor to my scalp. Then I blink and say, “Take it all off.”

  She gulps. “Aria Rose? I don’t think—”

  “Please.” I stare into her eyes. “All of it.”

  “If you say so,” she says softly. She cleans the razor and mutters, “None of my friends are going to believe this.”

  I make two fists. I’m ready for something new.

  “Hey!” someone says to my left. I turn my head and see Turk cutting in front of an older guy and stealing his spot on the stool next to me. “What’s the rush?” Turk says, shooing him away. “It’s just a haircut.”

  “What are you doing?” I ask, staring at his beautifully crafted Mohawk, his identifying feature. “Are you insane?”

  “I’m not going to let you do this alone,” Turk says. “It’s that simple.” He reaches out his hand, and I grab it. “Oh God,” he says out loud. “What in the Aeries am I doing?”

  “Close your eyes,” I say. “It’s just hair. It’ll grow back.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Turk says, turning to the nurse at his side. “Just do it.”

  Turk looks totally different. Younger. Sweeter. You couldn’t help but stare at his hair when you first met him—the sharp black spikes, the intense, hard edge the Mohawk gave him.

  But now he doesn’t look all that intimidating. Well, minus the piercings and the multicolored tattoos.

  He looks good.

  “It feels funny,” I say, rubbing my hands over the soft fuzz covering my scalp. My head tingles—it feels pounds lighter without the hair, almost like a balloon full of helium that could pop off and drift away at any moment.

  “I want you to remember that I did this for you,” Turk says glumly. “Remember for the rest of your life.�
�

  Someone passes me a tiny wooden hand mirror.

  I stare at my reflection. It’s my face, only different. The brown locks are gone, and the buzz cut accentuates the shape of my skull—my cranium is pointer than I would have guessed, egg-shaped; my ears are more pronounced without my hair to hide them, my brown eyes more piercing, my dark eyebrows more severe. Everything is exaggerated. I don’t look like the privileged daughter of one of the richest men in the Aeries. I look like a girl who has seen hard times.

  I stand up and immediately the crowd of people waiting in line erupts into applause. I feel myself go red with embarrassment.

  “Aria! Aria!” People are chanting, people who have just gotten their heads shaved, people who haven’t, men, women, and kids, mystics and nonmystics. Even some of the nurses are clapping and laughing.

  I feel like one of them. Accepted.

  Just then, a new image flashes on the JumboTron just outside the square.

  It’s Kyle. My brother.

  I haven’t seen him since the night my father invaded the underground. He’s wearing a navy suit and a tie, his hair parted neatly on one side. He stands behind a podium making a statement to the press, seeming much older than his twenty-one years. My mother and father are behind him, both looking proud. Seeing them is like an electric shock to my entire body: rage and fear mingle inside me, together with flashes of other emotions from when I was much younger—love, maybe.

  “We will not rest until every mystic is found and destroyed,” Kyle announces. People around me begin to hiss and boo, cursing at the screen. My brother looks up from his notes and stares directly into the camera. “And I am holding myself personally responsible for making sure that the Aeries are resurrected to their proper heights. The true Rose family has never disappointed this city, and we will continue to see it prosper and prevail.”

  Kyle. A fresh face for a troubled time. This must be a publicity stunt. My father has never trusted Kyle with much responsibility before now. No doubt Johnny Rose is still pulling the strings behind the scenes.

  As Kyle continues to speak, I realize that he’s actually quite poised. Passionate. Charming, even. I wonder if he’s still a Stic junkie or if my father made him kick the habit.