Burn

by Julianna Baggott

  And then there are two more names: Berta Weed, whose death is listed as HEART ATTACK, and Allesandra Weed, who has only one word written under her name: INFANT.

  Partridge remembers the day of the field trip with Glassings’ World History class. It was Arvin who asked if they could open the boxes. He’d found an aunt—maybe Aunt Berta. His parents weren’t dead. Had his mother gotten pregnant again?

  Partridge has the strange desire to open Arvin’s parents’ boxes. No one’s here. He’s alone.

  No. These boxes are sacred.

  He walks on a few steps and finds SEDGE WATSON WILLUX and next to it ARIBELLE CORDING WILLUX. He presses his fingertips to his mother’s name. His mind replays the moment of his brother and mother’s death—together—the kiss, the explosion, the blood spraying finely all around them.

  He shakes his head. “No. Alive. I want to see her alive.” He closes his eyes and thinks of her on the beach, ankle-deep in the ocean foam lining the shore. Her hair is windblown. She’s looking out at the horizon. He whispers, “Look at me.” And she turns her head, and he can see her face. She brushes her hair back and looks at him with love. Real love. His throat aches.

  He opens his eyes. His brother’s cause of death is still the same as it was the last time Partridge was here, the lie that he used to believe: GUNSHOT WOUND, SELF-INFLICTED. He hates his father for killing off his brother—twice. Once with a lie. Once by flipping a switch.

  The last time he was here, he couldn’t bear to see his brother’s life reduced to the contents of a box. But now, he’ll take what he can get.

  He pulls the small box from its slot, holds his breath, and opens it.

  It’s empty.

  He fits his hand inside and presses it to the bottom of the box—the way Sedge once taught him to dive to the bottom of the deep end of a swimming pool and press his hand flat. A quick sharp memory. Sedge taught him to swim.

  He pushes the box back into its slot then quickly pulls the handle on his mother’s metal box.

  Nothing, of course. It holds nothing at all. Was he expecting something? Does he still want something from his mother?

  Yes, he does. He misses her with a sharp pang.

  “Not much to steal this time, is there?”

  He turns around and there’s the clerk. She pulls her cardigan in tight around her ribs and crosses her arms. Partridge must look guilty. He doesn’t know what to say.

  “I was on duty the last time you were here. In fact,” she says, dipping toward him so that her bob swings forward, cupping her cheeks, “I was the one manning the cameras when you took your mother’s things.”

  “You reported it to my father, I guess?”

  “Oh, the chain of command is long and byzantine. I didn’t know why you were supposed to steal the things. I just knew that it was good if you did and that we should then let you go.”

  “It was a pretty elaborate setup,” Partridge says. “I’ll give my old man that much.”

  The clerk nods. “He tried it with Sedge too. A very similar plan. A few years before you showed up here.”

  “What do you mean he tried it with Sedge?”

  “Oh, Sedge was sent here on a field trip too—not with that teacher of yours. This was someone else. And he went to his mother’s box. And inside of it, there were bits and pieces, knickknacks, like the ones you found. But he didn’t steal them. He couldn’t. He looked around, and we were watching by way of surveillance cameras—me and another clerk in charge of reporting it but not stopping him. No, no. We knew he wanted to steal her things. We made sure he was quite alone. But there was something in him that wouldn’t let him take them.” The clerk smiles at the memory. “Not as much of a thief as you!”

  So his father tested Sedge. But did his refusal to steal count as passing or failing?

  “Sedge took a lot of time, though,” the clerk says. “He read a little birthday card—that one was for him, of course, with his name in it. He looked at the necklace with the bobble attached to it, and something else.”

  “A music box?” Partridge says.

  “Yes. It was a music box. And if you ask me, he realized something when he held those items. He felt something deeply. He was shaken by what he found. He knew something that he hadn’t known before.”

  “Maybe he knew our mother might not be dead after all.”

  “Is that it?”

  Partridge nods.

  “He went into Special Forces afterward. I heard that he was the first to volunteer to leave the Dome. He wanted to be out there.” The clerk runs her hand down a few of the handles. They each click, metal against metal. “Maybe he went looking for her. Not the way you did, but in his own way.”

  He handed his body over to Special Forces. He became a fighting machine, a nearly speechless animal. He somehow maintained some part of himself, and in the end, he never turned on Partridge. He fought for him.

  Partridge puts a hand over his eyes, bows his head. He starts crying. He imagines Sedge the moments after knowing what was in his mother’s personal archives box. Did his father also leave the hint that his mother might still be alive beyond the Dome? Had he felt like he wanted to scour the earth for her, the way Partridge had? “I miss him,” Partridge says.

  “You think a person only exists in a body? No, no,” the clerk says. “Not any more than a person’s life can fit in a small metal box. He’s here,” the clerk says, and she waves her hand in the air as if it’s suddenly charged with electricity. “All of ’em,” she says. “They’re all around us! Everywhere!”

  LYDA

  WHEELS

  Lyda doesn’t have much time. Pressia, still dressed as a guard, is asleep on the far side of Lyda’s bed but could wake any moment.

  Lyda gently opens her bedside table and pulls out her Baby’s Own baby book. She sees her writing. I crave. I crave. I crave. The words cover page after page. It’s all she’s ever written inside of it.

  The margins are bare. She turns the book sideways and writes along the edge of the outer margin just what Pressia told her she’d write to Bradwell—a coded message: Our lives aren’t accidents. This is the beginning, not an end. Do what you have to do. And she draws a rough picture of a swan floating on a ripple. She may have sounded like she’d lost it last night, but she was still thinking clearly—about the next step and how to get there. She was wildly heartbroken, but there’s no wildness to it anymore. Now she feels a sharp relentless ache. She knows what must happen. Pressia might not be sure it’s time to take down the Dome, but Lyda is.

  She rips the edge of the paper that she’s just written on. She let Freedle loose last night, and now she clicks her tongue softly, calling for him. She hears ticking and then a whir of his wings, and moments later he alights on her open palm. Lyda whispers, “Once upon a time, Pressia’s mother set you loose to find her daughter. And you did. This time, hopefully Cygnus will get you all the way out of the Dome, and you will have to find Bradwell and give him this message.”

  She lifts one of Freedle’s wings, and through the thin casing of his light body, she can see the inner mechanisms. Lyda rolls the long thin message and fits it into the cicada’s body, but she leaves a small tail—a little bit sticking out, something one of the others on the outside might notice.

  The cicada opens his fine metal wings, flaps them, lifts from her hand, and flits around the room.

  Lyda opens the closet door. She pushes through the maternity dresses, their hangers squeaking along the rod, but when she gets to the back of the closet, reaching for her handmade armor of woven hangers, there’s nothing. It’s gone.

  Did they come in last night and take it? Have they known it was here all along? She feels invaded, betrayed—and stripped of the thing she’d made to protect herself.

  She hears two voices in the hall talking quickly, urgently. Lyda presses her ear to the door. She recognizes Chandry’s voice—high-pitched and whiny—and the guard’s bass. She imagines Chandry coming in, pawing through her clothes, and ri
pping out the armor. It’s probably already been thrown away.

  The voices stop. There’s a squeaking noise, something rattling along the wood floors—something on wheels? And then there’s banging in the nursery. She knows what’s happening. They’re tearing it all down.

  The noise wakes Pressia, who stirs and sits up.

  Lyda presses her finger to her lips.

  “What’s going on out there?” Pressia asks.

  “It’s Chandry Culp. She’s the one who’s teaching me to knit and, well, trying to teach me how to be a good mother. She’s taking apart the nursery. She’s breaking it down.”

  “Your mother ordered Beckley to get everything in the nursery replaced.”

  “My mother,” Lyda says. “She has the proof they’ll need to put me away after they take the baby from me. My mother will report that I’m certifiably crazy. Maybe I am.” She sits down next to Pressia on the bed.

  “No,” Pressia says. “Don’t say that.”

  “Girls!” It’s Chandry’s shrill voice. “Girls, come out here now!” Is Chandry going to make Lyda take the nursery apart—as punishment?

  Lyda clicks her tongue for Freedle again, who peddles through the air.

  “Freedle!” Pressia says.

  “He’s fine!” Lyda says, and she quickly cups him and puts him in the pocket of her sweater. “Best to keep him hidden.”

  Pressia grabs Lyda’s hand. “Is there a way?”

  Lyda knows what she’s asking—is there a way out of here? “There’s always a way.”

  They step into the hall. The door to the nursery is open enough to see Chandry in a shiny blue pantsuit, leaning over a large rectangular bin on wheels. She’s picking up a bundle of hand-whittled spears. The orb is gone. Chandry has been hard at work too. She’s a little breathless and perspiring. She’s muttering to herself angrily. “What a pretty mess we’ve made! What a pretty, pretty mess!” When they appear in the door, Chandry looks up. “You!” she says to Pressia. “Start helping!”

  “And me?” Lyda asks.

  “Someone reported the orb’s broken. A repairman is here.” Lyda looks at Pressia. She remembered to tell the guard! “He wants to know what’s wrong with it exactly,” Chandry says. “Personally, I don’t think you should have access to that orb anymore! But does anyone ask my opinion? No! No they do not!”

  “Okay,” Lyda says. “I’ll go check on him.”

  “And then come right back here. You have been wicked. Do you understand me? Wicked. And it has to stop!”

  “I promise,” Lyda says. “No more of it!”

  Chandry gives a final nod, and Lyda walks quickly to the living room. There, at the dining room table, is Boyd, wearing a gray jumpsuit, working on the orb. “You came so quickly!” Lyda says.

  He stands up and smiles. “Always at your service.”

  “Have you fixed it?”

  “I’m working on it,” Boyd says. “It’s a wiring issue, I believe.” There’s nothing wrong with it at all, so does this mean he knows he’s been called for a different reason?

  “Well, I really needed your help,” Lyda says.

  “I’m smoothing it all out.”

  “Do you have to take it with you to the shop? I thought maybe it would need to be taken out.” She means that she hopes he will help them get out—Pressia and Lyda together. But will he understand?

  “I see your point,” Boyd says. “Yes. And I’ve thought of that.”

  “You have?”

  “I have.”

  Boyd screws a back panel onto the orb, tightens it up. He hands it to Lyda. “It’s all better, though! See?”

  She admires it. “Aren’t you a lifesaver?” Lyda says, meaning, Save us.

  “It was nice to see Chandry here this morning,” Boyd says, idly packing his tools.

  “Do you know her?”

  “We’re neighbors, actually. Mr. and Mrs. Culp are great people.”

  Lyda’s alarmed. Is Boyd trying to tell her something?

  “The kind of neighbors who help others. You know?”

  “Really…” Lyda says.

  “Really,” Boyd says. “You can always trust a Culp.” Is he telling her to trust Chandry? Lyda feels like crying. Is this a joke? Trust Culp? Chandry? If she trusts Chandry, and Boyd is wrong, she’ll wind up in the rehabilitation center. But if Boyd is truly part of Cygnus and so are the Culps, then this may be their only chance.

  Boyd reaches out to shake her hand. He’s leaving. She hugs Boyd and whispers, “Return him to the outside. He’s a messenger. Let him go.” She takes Freedle from her pocket and slips it into the pocket of Boyd’s gray jumpsuit.

  When she releases him, he looks confused, but she has to have faith that Boyd will find Freedle and do as she told him and that Freedle will have sense and strength enough to deliver the message. Lyda smiles at Boyd, pats his shoulder.

  “Be careful with the orb,” he says, but he glances at her belly. He means, Take care of the baby. Is he saying that he won’t see her again—for a long time?

  “I will, Boyd. Thank you,” she says. “Thank you for everything.”

  “You’re welcome. I hope it all works.” He smiles at her—weary but with a hint of hope.

  She smiles and then clips back down the hall.

  When she walks into the nursery, Pressia is nowhere to be seen. The large plastic bin on wheels sits in the middle of the room. Chandry looks at her searchingly then glances at the cameras mounted in the high corners. The cloths hiding the cameras are gone, but one seems like it’s been twisted so that it points mostly into a corner, leaving part of the room out of view.

  “Are you just going to stand there?” Chandry says. “You should have been made to do all of this yourself!” Her tone is still harsh. Is she putting on a show? She picks up a spear. “Here,” she says, nodding to the bin.

  Lyda takes the spear and walks it to the bin. She looks into it, and there, amid all of the mess of her room—the remains of books and spears, pieces of Lyda’s dress, the shell of a few books, even the bowl of ashes, now overturned, and all that’s left of the crib—is Pressia. She looks up and nods. Trust Culp. This is what she seems to be saying. Lyda drops the spear into the bin.

  Chandry has a bundle of spears in one fist. She backs up close to the wall that the camera isn’t filming. “Bring that bin closer,” Chandry says. “Stop lazing around!”

  Lyda complies. She pushes the bin to the spot Chandry is now pointing at. Once there, Chandry gives a nod. She means, You’re out of view now. Get in.

  The bin is dark and cluttered with the debris of her room. As Lyda climbs in, Chandry keeps talking. “I don’t know what possessed you to make such a disgusting mess! A child is a holy, holy gift.”

  Soon, Lyda and Pressia are sitting on the floor of the bin. It’s dusty with ash, like home.

  Chandry is dropping in the last few spears, saying, “You were going to bring this child into this awful place? What were you thinking? Your mother was right about you.”

  This stings. What did Lyda’s mother say about her?

  “You need help! Real professional help! You’ll probably never be right in the head. It’s a permanent condition!”

  Lyda closes her eyes. She knows why Chandry is saying this; it’s a warning. She means that Lyda has to get out now. Her mother will be coming back for her with a team of professionals. She’ll be taken into the rehab center and never allowed to leave. A permanent condition. Lyda thinks back to what she read in her psychological evaluation: lifelong institutionalization. She opens her eyes. Pressia reaches out and grabs Lyda’s hand. She must know this is hard for Lyda. It’s like losing a mother, in a way. Maybe it’s worse. A rejection. Pressia squeezes Lyda’s hand, and Lyda squeezes back.

  Chandry closes the lid, and the bin goes dark.

  The bin starts rolling. Lyda can feel the jostling wheels. She listens to their light squeaking.

  Chandry has taken them out of the room. She stops in the hallway for a moment. Ha
s she left them?

  No—she’s back, humming a little tune, pushing the massive garbage bin.

  She says to the guard, “The poor girl has had a shock. We don’t want her to lose the pregnancy. Let them both sleep the rest of the day. They’ve eaten. They’re tucked in. Do not disturb them. Do you hear me?”

  The guard must nod because Chandry starts moving again, the wheels catching and jittering beneath them. Lyda reaches down to steady herself and feels the tightly woven metal—her armor. It’s here. Maybe Chandry knew this was the way for Lyda to keep it.

  EL CAPITAN

  ANGEL

  El Capitan’s arms are corded, and he hangs on the metal frame of what used to be a tall swing set behind an elementary school. Helmud is gripping his neck. There’s a line of people waiting their turn to beat the two of them with sticks. He can only see through the puffed slit of one eye; the other is swollen shut—this was from the earlier beating: a free-for-all. The survivors’ bodies are bent and warped, but the blurring of his one weeping eye takes away the details of their scars and fusings, which is a mercy.

  They’ve chosen their own sticks—some thin and whiplike, others heavy as two-by-fours. One survivor is armed with what looks like an old golf club, bent and kinked. El Capitan and Helmud are covered in a mix of bloody cuts, deep bruises, and welts. El Capitan’s body burns hot and bright with a pain so sharp and deep that his mind feels loose.

  And he remembers being little—he was blindfolded, given a stick, and told to beat a brightly colored donkey strung to a tree branch. It was a birthday party. He’d worn new corduroys that swished with each step. His mother stayed the whole time, which was strange, and she held Helmud’s hand instead of letting him wander.

  El Capitan knew the birthday girl was from a rich family because they had a swimming pool—though it was fall and the pool was capped.

  They’d already opened the presents, and the kids at the party had made fun of his gift—a plastic doll. It was a cheap present, and the birthday girl was too old for it. And so when his turn came, he beat the donkey as hard as he could. And when they said his turn was over, he kept beating it. He beat it and beat it until he heard a pop and the candy rained down, spraying everywhere as the donkey gaped and swayed.