Lies and Legends

by Logan Keys

  Lucy jumps with a start when the bells go off. It’s their turn for lunch, so she scuffs a shoe on the ground as we say goodbye. “You’d better come back and tell me all about it,” she demands before leaving me alone, her hand entwined loosely with Caleb’s.

  Envy is a big pill to swallow.

  Mimi wakes me before dawn, saying she heard that Lucy’s sick from Deborah, who’d heard it from the doctors. Before she finishes, I’m flying down the corridor where the glass at the end of the hall catches me with a bounce.

  “Luce!” I call through the vent. “Luce!”

  Caleb appears. Alone.

  My horror is obvious because he shakes his head “no.” So she’s still alive, then. I can’t catch my breath, and Caleb signs what looks like directions to the sick bay. She’ll still be behind the glass, but if the nurse is off duty, maybe I’ll be able to see her.

  Caleb fans his hands out to stop me from leaving as he searches my face, and cocks his head in question. Oh, Caleb, you perceptive fool. He can tell. He can’t possibly know, yet somehow he does.

  There’s no good reason to share, but my mouth starts before my brain has a chance to catch up. “A man. In the meadow. But I’m okay.”

  He balls up his fists, each finger slowly bending until they’re clenched.

  “The guards stopped him, Caleb. They… beat him.”

  Caleb looks at his shoes, huffing in anger. With a jerk of his thumb, he points to me and then to himself. Some sign of unity. My nod’s short and quick, but he understands.

  If we let go now, if we lose control over our emotions, we’ll fall apart completely. Before that can happen, though, I run toward the sick bay.

  My father told me worry is useless. “It can wait,” he’d say. “Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.” But upon seeing Lucy’s face, I’m a bag of skin puffed up by worry. My heart pumps rapidly as I sense the last bit of twine tighten the noose around my neck.

  Her pointy, wood-nymph features have tethered me to this world far more than I’d realized. She’s one reason out of so few for me to live. When she attempts to sit up and fails, a cracking begins inside of me.

  An “Oh, no” emerges from the depths of my soul.

  She’s not going to bounce back and tell me a funny story with a giggle. She’s not going to come to the glass and tease a smile from me tonight.

  I was twelve the day I met the once sprightly, happy Lucy. Out past bunk curfew, which is a punishable offense (they throw people into solitary for a month’s time for that), I’d ventured near the giant glass separator isolating those forced to live in small cells, prisoners who traveled from one room to be fed, then to another to be bathed, and then back to their bunks each day. No outside time for any of them; a sort of concentration camp inside one already.

  Back then, I’d felt so lost, and when Lucy spotted me, she’d tapped on the glass before gesturing for me to come over, pointing to the vent. But I’d covered my mouth, shaking my head emphatically. She’d nodded back and brought her own mouth close to the metal grate.

  “It’s not dangerous, silly!” she’d said, as if she were much older and assertive than eleven. “If it was, then you’d already be sick.”

  She’d then asked what I was doing up so late, and I’d lied. “There was a spider in my bunk.”

  At this, she’d nodded wisely in thought. “They’re giant suckers, big and hairy. But I don’t think they’ll bite unless squished.”

  Even young, she’d tried to comfort me, and we’d soon become fast friends.

  Now, her hand hangs from a limp wrist when she tries to wave... and I’m thirteen years old all over again, stranded in the corridor, watching Lucy mourn on her knees the day she found out her parents were dead.

  She had clutched a piece of paper—the notification—and looked up at me before screaming. I was at the vent to hear, but her cries had been nonsensical wails of sadness.

  Then, she’d crawled over, and I’d never been more afraid than anything in the world at that moment. Please don’t ask me, Lucy, I remember thinking, because I have no answers.

  “Why?” she’d sobbed, before wiping away snot and crumpling into a defeated ball of little girl. “I want my mommy.” And she’d rocked herself side to side.

  The fist around my heart had woken up just long enough to squeeze even harder. Barely into our teens, not quite done being children, and Lucy wanted her mommy. I’d had no answers for her, so I’d replied, “I want my daddy.”

  We’d both sat back to back against the glass, facing lives without those we’d loved, together. At least we had each other.

  And so, Lucy, my brave friend and confidante, had rebounded... somewhat. She’d revived far better than I had from the ashes, only to live in a bubble. She told me she’d be okay. And I’d believed her.

  Then, Caleb had arrived. Both of them were fourteen when he came to Bodega.

  At once, Lucy was rosy and full of life, and I’d watched Caleb slowly teach her sign language, correcting her hands with his own gentle ones. Sometimes, I’d find them in each other’s arms, performing another kind of sign language—one where Caleb cradled Lucy’s face, and Lucy wove her fingers through his hair until it began to fall out. In a world where everything seemed terrible, I’d seen beauty again.

  But now, my Lucy—my rosy, in love Luce—she’s the color of fresh snow, without a single freckle left. Death is easy to recognize nowadays. Still, my face is brave.

  With my hands at the glass I tell her in halting sign language, what little I’ve learned, that I’ll return. Then, at the vent, I utter choked words. . . just in case. “Lucy, you just get well, okay? Sleep. I’ll be back. I promise.”

  She nods, and a sparkle in her eyelashes rolls down the side of her face into her ear.

  Lucy. My angel. My friend.

  Chapter 48

  Liza

  At my window, I wait for the sun to go down. It’s not like it used to be: a bright yellow dot in an azure sky. No, this one’s blurry, distant, hard to spot through the smoke, and creeping low as the moon finally ascends for its part. One leaves, the other comes, and so goes life in a circular chase no matter how much I need it to stop.

  Lucy and I were some of the first to arrive at Bodega.

  After my father had passed, the Authority came and took me to a place where children cried in their beds, some of them so sad they seemed to be made of paper. I didn’t know grief could claim a person like that until it finally claimed me. Alone was new, death was not, but grief steals away any meager slip of joy.

  I’d gone to sleep the child of a master and woke to find the sparkly edges worn off; a paper girl, too, ready to blow away.

  With both parents having had cancer, I’d been selected first to be checked. Cancer was contagious, but that only got the quarantine discussion started. It wasn’t until they’d found pseudo-scientists to claim cancer patients with their weak immune systems were more likely to change into zombies that the vote was unanimous to remove us.

  Zombies are part contagion, part innate. Needing someone to blame, we sick people got lucky.

  The halls are quiet tonight, but I’m careful anyway, sticking to the shadows. Moonlight, as dim as it is, aids my progress.

  Desi had agreed to the plan, and his secret gift has come essentially at a perfect time. I’ve now got it under my smock, more aware of the risk with each step toward Lucy.

  The nurses have long gone, making me breathe a sigh of relief. Lucy’s propped up in the hospital bed. Seeing me, she points to her ear. She’s wearing the earbud I’d snuck to Des earlier, who’d somehow gotten it through to her side. I’m wearing a matching one.

  I flop the long plastic down in front of the glass and sit crossed-legged on the floor with the panel fanned out. Neat rows of black and white keys, all touch sensitive, light up in answer to my pressing. Sound goes through the receiver and into our ears while it remains silent in the corridor.

  My eyes close at the crystal, resounding n
ote. Digital, yes, but perfectly tuned so you couldn’t tell the difference if you tried. Pressing two more before I hold the third, I open my eyes again to see Lucy grinning. Her naked brows are pushed down in anxious excitement, and a shadow of joy sparks inside of her eyes.

  Pale but pure, the sliver of happiness alights and runs from me to Lucy like the arc of an invisible rainbow.

  My hands take their position in such an organic way, posing as if I’ve never left, even though I’ve been away from it for so long. Deep breaths help me to savor the return; it’s been five years. Has any of it been forgotten? Like slipping into another version of myself, I’m more than certain I’ve not lost a single lesson.

  Instincts cue my next move, and muscle memory gleefully kicks in. My body’s alert, yet fluid. After warming up with a couple of scales, my fingers soon find their own way, picking without thought a song I’d played for my father on that very last day: Mozart.

  Trepidation grows with this memory, but it’s instantly squashed. I’m playing for the here-and-now.

  Still, maudlin thoughts fight their way through nevertheless, because the music harkens memories, moments from before. How can my playing not wake the ghosts of my past? The answer is: it cannot.

  My fingers dance with a direness that’s attached to my very core. The music fills me, touching the empty spaces, and for once, not recoiling; healing me, mending my broken parts, swooping into the void and thickening until I’m full again. From chorus to solo and back, I’m rusty, but what lacks in technique, there’s passion, and then some.

  And something new. Maturity. I’m playing more like a woman now. One who’s seen the world and what it has to offer and has been left wanting.

  I’m on the chase---the hunt for inspiration and the release it renders like never before. Wisdom from age helps make the music honest, like a soul that’s lost and loved, and learned, and wondered. But where’s the hope, Liza? My father’s voice is well imagined.

  Hope. Such a dangerous word. Here in this place it’s suffocated to almost being completely gone.

  I hunch my shoulders against the question, then relax them again for the extra length needed to reach down my digital piano while playing through my thoughts, and for them, too, cathartically, to cope with a world that’s already crashed down.

  I’m beginning to lose control of it. Pain. It’s there. Ready to grip me in its terrible vice.

  Lucy is here, now. Focus on that, Liza.

  Songs plucked from memory come to me like a flood. Wrists jerking, the sweet-sweet sound that blossoms in my ear like a flower before the old sun, that yellow ball of light and warmth to guide us all. And Lucy’s hearing this, too, as planned. I avoid her gaze, feeling vulnerable, open. I’m also afraid of something else, seeing her . . . missing her already.

  Here and now, Liza.

  Emotions run like a faucet, but luckily it’s rushing into the music and being used, processed, before it can swallow me, made beautiful again before it can form into anything bad . . . like grief. Like hopelessness.

  I’m not here anymore; I’m there, in that distant place. Freedom reigns in a plane of existence where the meditation is perfect—to hide, to learn, to grow, and to see the truth. If I’m there too long, though, I’ll turn back into paper-girl and blow away. I know this and so I’m rushing through it. Taking the solace it offers and not lingering too long.

  My father’s parlor surrounds me in my mind, warm and inviting with the sun through the windows. He’s playing, while I’m standing at his podium with a stick, pretending to conduct. He’s nodding and smiling, and my hair’s spun gold, and I’m the blue-eyed spitting image of my mother, not sick and not dying.

  And Lucy’s not dying. She’s outside of her bubble, free, somewhere making the boys laugh at her joke on the lunch quad. Cheering Caleb on in his games. Eating popcorn at the movies.

  And even if we aren’t friends, we live, damn it. We live.

  And the camps aren’t real . . . not to us.

  No.

  Play, Liza, play.

  The song ends, as all good things must, but another tune comes to mind, something from long-long ago. How the memory remains after so much time has passed is a mystery. But it was mine, written by me in a fancy, a sweeping melody of innocence before growing darker, yet what would a child know of darkness?

  A lot, apparently.

  Panic grips me near its finish, the resounding crescendo crashing down like a great storm, spinning it all backwards. The end of the world; people dead in heaps; the smell of burning bodies; and children in the streets, crying, begging, all of us becoming orphans. Oh, death, why have you come for the innocent?

  I’m breathing raggedly and the sound eclipses the last note. It takes time to recover, to focus and calm the rage inside. My search of the keys now yields nothing but their simplicity. They are not evil or good. They are what I make them be and I’m in a stupor to realize where I am momentarily. I look up to Lucy, who’s asleep on her side, a gentle smile on her face.

  The noises I make to gather the piano don’t wake her.

  Neither do my hands on the glass and the choked sound from my throat.

  Goodbye, my friend.

  This is goodbye.

  Chapter 49

  Crystal

  The door to my cell is thrown open and I shake with dread thinking they’ve come to purge me. Karma has ordered it. This is the last day on earth as me again, and that’s a scarier thought than I’d like to admit.

  The people of Anthem, they want me, I mean they truly need and want me, but now I’m going away. And while in the end they may be better for it, I’m frightened, and all the previous bravery has fled.

  But instead of slowly leading me to my doom, a guard rushes in, sloppily reaching for me, groping my body and hands, trying to untie me so fast that I struggle. “Get off of me!” Panic makes my voice shrill.

  “It’s me.”

  My body stiffens at the familiar deep voice. “Oh my God!”

  “It’s me, Crystal, it’s me.”

  He reaches for the helmet and my eyes shoot to the cameras. “Don’t you dare!”

  He pauses, and I can sense his smile underneath the helmet. I want to say his name so badly, but I know someone is listening.

  “What are you doing?” I hiss.

  “Just play it cool. I’ve got the keys.” He unlocks my wrists and I rub them, standing, trying not to look excited. But also, I’m freaking out.

  Once we are in the hallways, I check both directions and push him up against the wall. “What are you doing, Jeremy?” I say next to his ear.

  “Breaking you out.”

  I soften and touch his shoulder. “If your mother finds you. If she gets to you…” Tears fill my eyes. That he would do this. That he would try this idiotic plan. But I’m also frustrated. This could ruin everything we have worked so hard for. If Karma held us both all would be lost.

  “You have to get out of here,” I whisper, and I pull him toward the way out.

  Once we’re outside, he tears off his helmet.

  “Put it back on!”

  “Look,” Jeremy says. “I don’t know how much time we have but…” He drags me to the fence behind where they purge the prisoners. Guards pass the other way so we hide between boxes in the shadows. Jeremy is breathing heavily inches from my face. He smiles, his eyes searching mine. He touches my chin. “You didn’t think I could let you die did you, Crys? I am the one that’s supposed to do that.”

  And I realize his mental idea. Jeremy hadn’t thought to get out of here whatsoever. He figured he’d be the one to stay behind. It’s what his mother most wants.

  I put my hands on either side of his face. “Hell no,” I say. “Hell. No.”

  Jeremy forces his lips to mine so roughly that a groan escapes my throat. It’s a desperate kiss. He pulls away and pushes me up the fence and over.

  I lean down and grab his arms, but he backs out of reach.

  “I am not leaving you,” I sa
y.

  When he doesn’t budge I straddle the fence and sit there. “Together or none at all.”

  “Fine,” he says.

  “We have to get me an outfit.”

  Jeremy nods, climbing up behind me, and we jump down on the far side. It’s just up a ways that there are three guards. Jeremy keeps a lookout while I quickly subdue them. I get an outfit and bite back a gag when the stench reaches my nose.

  “Let’s go,” Jeremy says.

  We almost make it to the streets when the alarms sound. Then our suits light up at the collars.

  “That’s new.” Jeremy points at the blinking symbol lit up on my collar.

  “They must have installed sensors since we keep using their duds.”

  We toss off our helmets, gulping in deep breaths. No sense in hiding now.

  “Better get out of these too,” I say, and we strip down to our underwear. “Probably some sort of locater device in them.”

  Guards spot us before we can hide.

  “Stop!” they shout.

  Jeremy and I take off at a run down an alleyway towards the city. We lose the guards after a couple of turns, but more cut us off on the far side. Once they have our location, they are like ants. They pile into every street and clog every way out.

  As they surround us, I sense the end of our rebellion. I feel the tightening of the noose on my neck a final time. I’m overwhelmed by the sense of despair and surrender. Then I picture all of Anthem falling the rest of the way into darkness. The citizens purged until none are left.

  I gasp at the thought. “No. No. No,” I say to Jeremy. “It can’t end like this! It’s just can’t! You should have never come for me. I was ready. I was ready to be a sacrifice.” My eyes burn but remain dry. “I was ready!”

  Jeremy’s gaze dulls with acceptance. He’s swiftly going away. Off into his fog again. I pray that he does so that he doesn’t have to be there when they purge us again. I grip his hand as the guards come forward.

  They grab us, rip us part. I don’t have it in me to fight them anymore. Guards shove me to the ground, they pull my wrists back and tie them. Pain shoots through my shoulders, and I curse beneath my breath.