CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO #2
She stepped in front of me. ‘Think carefully about which side of the glassways you should be sympathizing with. I can’t help it if Pain Carriers are suddenly ungrateful.
But you’re a Pain Giver. If you’d kept that disease, there’d be no more surfing.
No escape. Surfing is what you love the most, isn’t it?
More than our family legacy, and far more than a girl you barely know. ’
I needed to walk away. Walk away, walk away. It felt like my mom lived to drag me down. Like she wasn’t happy unless she was constantly reminding me of how much I needed her – or Dominion. But I didn’t want to rely on them. I didn’t want to be a Pain Giver.
I don’t want Nova suffering because of my pain.
I walked off down the hall. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘That’s where you’re mistaken,’ she called after me. ‘I understand more than you.’
Her words twisted into my back. ‘OK, Mom,’ I said.
I was tired. Tired of her, of everything. I pulled out my phone and sent a quick text to Pua.
Castor
Can we change our surf spot today? I need out of Crestview
Pua
I’m with you there. Northend is a wash
Pua
Centaurus says South Beach is pumping
Pua
Offshore winds
The last time I was at South Beach, I was with Nova.
Castor
South Beach it is
I stepped out of my campervan, inhaling the salt air laced with half-smoke and chili popcorn.
I couldn’t escape the memory of Nova if I tried.
The entire ride down the RRH, I’d thought of her – what-ifs circling around what it would mean to take back my pain.
She said she wouldn’t let me, but letting her keep it wasn’t an option either.
If I took it back, could she like the version of me who constantly worried about being one hit away from addiction? I’d have to give up surfing. I’d be stuck with my family. Would I turn into someone she’d hate? Did she already hate me?
Wetsuit on, board waxed, fins popped in, I walked on to the beach, letting the hot sand seep between my toes.
I hadn’t noticed them before, but this far down the coast you could see the floating solar farms used to power uptown.
You couldn’t see them from Northend. Another thing Crestview kept out of sight.
Pua found me and immediately clocked my mood.
‘OK, confession time,’ she said, falling in step beside me. ‘Did you ask me to surf instead of Jaiden because you know I’ll push you harder, or because you need a free therapy session?’
‘I don’t need a therapy session,’ I mumbled.
‘Patient talking under his breath as though I can’t hear the pain in his voice.’
I flinched a little at her choice of words.
She nudged me. ‘Hey. You know you can’t surf with your mind elsewhere. Talk to me.’
I sighed, stopping just before our feet touched the water. ‘I’m questioning my family. And their intentions.’
She froze, her gaze on the waves rolling in. ‘I always wondered if you’d pick up on it. I couldn’t tell if you knew and ignored it, or if you were just in your own world. The latter made the most sense.’
‘Wait. What do you mean?’
‘Did I ever tell you I had a cousin who signed up to be a Pain Carrier?’
I frowned, confused. ‘I thought your mom came from old money, and Jim –’
‘Is my stepdad, remember? My dad passed away in a motorcycle accident before I was born. He was from Baltimore, and so is his family. They do all right for themselves, but they’re not cushy Crestview like us.
My cousin Marco was my age. We called him Marq – with a q – because he liked a little flair in his life. ’ Pua smiled faintly.
‘You’re talking about him in the past tense,’ I said slowly.
‘Marq signed up to be a Pain Carrier earlier this year. He wanted to save and come out here with me, but he was too proud to let me pay for anything. He had a plan. But a few months after carrying the disease for someone else, he disappeared. My grandmother and aunt are convinced Dominion had something to do with it.’
She paused. ‘Before he disappeared, he told me he could feel the pain. His tolerance screening must’ve been a false result, but no one at his city’s Freedom System lab would listen.
When he asked for support, they wrote him off as an addict looking for hydromorphone and sent him to the opioid treatment centers.
’ Pua wiped her eyes. ‘You know, his dad thinks he took his own life because he couldn’t handle the pain.
He blames his own son – says Marq faked his tolerance levels during his examination, that the pain was Marq’s fault.
‘After that,’ she went on, ‘his dad became a Carrier himself. I think it was some twisted way of proving to himself Marq had lied. He has a Pain Giver with a rare blood type, so his payments are high. He split from my aunt and lives somewhere in the Caribbean now.’
I let out a shaky breath. Another missing Pain Carrier, like the husband at the town hall.
Another person who could feel their Pain Giver’s disease, like Nova.
This was why Pua had hesitated when I’d told her I wanted to thank my Carrier – why she’d changed the subject and run to the water to avoid it. ‘I’m sorry, Pua.’
‘You have no reason to be sorry. You didn’t do anything.’
‘I don’t understand. Why didn’t you tell me this before?’
‘I tried.’ She shrugged. ‘I talked about it with Jaiden. We decided it wasn’t a good time.
Your pop had missed another big surf over the summer, and your mom was on you about not choosing a better major or something.
’ She let out a long sigh. ‘Then you came over and told us you were done with your family. You and Jaiden made plans to move out once you got a sponsor. I thought maybe you’d learned something – something about Dominion – that pushed you over the edge.
I was going to bring it up after you moved out. But that hasn’t happened yet, so …’
Hearing Pua talk about my life – my problems – made them feel impossibly small. I’d spent so much time pissed Jacinta wanted to force a ‘better’ life on me, while something was deeply wrong with Dominion itself.
‘I don’t know if you noticed, but I stopped coming over after that. I haven’t set foot in your house since July. I have a problem with them, not you. But now that you’re starting to see it too …’
‘What? What were you going to say?’
She didn’t look at me. Instead, she chose to focus intently on attaching her surf leash to her ankle. ‘You should be careful, Cas. Your family are powerful people.’
We surfed for a few hours, but I couldn’t concentrate. I wiped out more times than I’d ever admit. In less than twenty-four hours, two people I cared for had told me my family was lying to me. Lying about the Freedom System. I didn’t know what to do with that, or where to start.
When I got back to my campervan, a flyer was sticking out from beneath my windshield wiper. No words, just an old-school matrix barcode.
‘Oh, wait.’ A man jogged over, a bundle of the flyers tucked under his arm. ‘I didn’t realize this van was yours. My bad.’ He held out his hand. ‘I can toss it for you.’
I furrowed my brow. ‘Why would you need to do that?’
‘You’re Castor Fox, right?’ He glanced around, as if checking whether I was alone. ‘Look, it’s no big deal. I’m just advertising a new g-funk club down the boardwalk. Not your scene.’ He plucked the flyer from my grip and hurried off.
That was weird.
In another life, I might’ve believed him, but I caught the emblem on his shirt – the same one all the protestors against Dominion wore.
I walked to the next car over and lifted the flyer from its windshield.
I pulled out my phone, downloaded a converter and scanned the matrix barcode.
It redirected to a site with a single question: what are lies?
I remembered everything about the first night I met Nova, including the protest signs in Bay General’s lobby. I typed my answer in the empty box below: contagious. The page flickered, then shifted to an anonymous forum.
I clicked the first thread. The title – DON’T TRUST DOMINION – pulled me in. Post after post questioned helical disease. How does anyone know Dominion’s research is legit? Why are most Pain Carriers Black and Brown? Why are they concentrated in less affluent parts of communities?
Then came the testimonials – people describing the pain they felt while carrying a rich person’s disease, and the silence they were forced into because they needed the money to support their families.
It didn’t stop there.
Someone had posted Dominion’s research, claiming it was falsified.
Centuries of studies showed no evidence that some people experience less pain than others.
The belief had been a harmful stereotype, one that led to horrific experimentation in the past. One post stood out to me: my cousin ran the numbers – eighty per cent of active helical disease carriers are white.
This was never supposed to be our problem.
I shut off my phone.
It was everything I’d spent the morning searching for.
Centaurus had blocked every query, every variation.
But this – this had to be a mistake. My family’s years of dedication to innovation and solradiance research.
The millions poured into philanthropy. The opioid treatment centers for the uninsured.
The development of cheaper, more effective medicines.
Somewhere, somehow, a researcher must have made a mistake and buried it.
Grandfather couldn’t know. Not after what he’d shared with me about his past.
Around me, others reached their cars and scanned the matrix barcode.
South Alta was bold. This wasn’t like the scattered protestors in Crestview.
Down here, people wore their slogans on their shirts instead of holding signs.
Support for Brenson Moorehouse was everywhere, along with the emblem of the lightning bolt over a sun.
This wasn’t noise – it was a movement, with Dominion’s alleged lies and coverups at its center.
I needed the truth. These forums were a start.