Chapter 19 Kali
KALI
Abead of sweat raced down my forehead, matching the trickle between my breasts in ferocity. I cursed at the midday sun for plastering my clothes to me in a matter of twenty minutes outside and my body deciding to expel everything that had befallen me over the last days through perspiration.
Deep in the maze their compound was, people clad in colorful shorts, loose skirts, and billowing-in-the-breeze dresses filled the streets.
Jealousy got the better of me as my ass began sweating in yet another pair of gray sweatpants.
Someone had sneaked into my bedroom again last night and left a fresh set of men’s clothing.
I dabbed my forehead with my equally sticky forearm. As if triggered by the movement, a yawn broke out of me.
“You okay?” Jayla asked, rummaging in her backpack, the leather so worn, patches of discoloration covered it from the straps to the bottom. Each spot bore a resemblance to withering autumn leaves—exactly how I felt. Shriveling. Parched. Dehydrated.
“I’m fine,” I said. But concern didn’t ease from her scrunched-up nose and eyebrows, and I conceded, “I had a nightmare.” And spent half the night hugging the toilet.
It wasn’t like I could tell her what haunted me.
She fished around in her bottomless backpack and pushed a large lunch box into my hands. “Eat this. Sugar always helps. I packed it for later, but you won’t survive the day with me if you keep dragging your feet like that.”
I pried the lid of the battered box off, and a mass of squashed peach-and-cream eclairs greeted me.
“Does everyone eat this every day or what?” I asked, and gulped the saliva gathering in my mouth as the rich and sweet aroma of sugar powder, butter, and vanilla filled my nostrils with the next inhale.
Jayla seized the flaky goodness from the box, biting into what I bet tasted as sweet as it smelled, and spoke with her mouth full.
“I wish. Gedeon forced Ryder to bake all day after he, uhm, returned from the city with you. Ryder had to threaten to move to another compound for him to back off. Now we have to eat them all before they spoil. We don’t have the luxury of throwing food out. ”
“Why would Gedeon do that? Doesn’t Ryder have a job?
” I took a tiny bite out of a golden eclair, closing my eyes as cream and pieces of peach melted on my tongue.
Godsdamnit, Ryder could bake. Like my life depended on it, I finished the rest of the pastry and licked my fingertips clean of the evidence.
“He does. But Gedeon said you liked pastries.” She said it like it served as a sufficient explanation and pointed to a one-story red brick building squeezed between its two twins.
“Come on, this is our next stop.” She stepped through an open doorway covered by a feather-light curtain floating in the breeze.
I froze on the spot, ignorant of how the translucent fabric caressed my face. Gedeon had asked Ryder to bake. Because I liked pastries. No one had ever done anything remotely like this for me before.
“You coming?” Jayla drew the curtain aside and looked me up and down.
“We’re getting you some clothes. You can’t walk around all the time wearing…
I have my suspicions, but come on, we’ll get you into something more comfortable.
No, fitting. And weather appropriate. You’ve got to be melting in those pants. ”
“I don’t have any money, Jayla. Gedeon, or Zion too, didn’t exactly give me a chance to pack a bag.” Not like my finances had been great in Ilasall. Enough to survive and not starve, but that was it. Why would a person with a black band need more?
A fresh scent of citrus and damp soil rolled over me as I entered the store.
Wooden, plastic, and metal shelves fixed haphazardly on the walls overflowed with folded clothing the colors of silvery stars, the early morning sky, the ripe peaches so hard to get on the black market in Ilasall, and the grass blades of the forest.
Everything I desired.
Pots and pots of varying shades of cream filled the center of the space with herbs I recognized and plants I hadn’t seen before. I crouched down to a palm-sized pot hosting a minuscule plant with seven tiny leaves. Basil. One breath, and the soothing fragrance coursed through my veins.
“What do you think of this?” Jayla held up a short black leather skirt with a slit on one side.
“I don’t think that’s very practical.” Where would I wear something like that? You wouldn’t be able to move comfortably in it. And I bet my ass would sweat even more.
“That’s not the point.” She scoffed and passed the skirt to the owner. “We’ll try it on.”
“You are coming to my show at Vice, right? It’s the first that I’ve organized by myself,” Jayla babbled, making a mess of the tidy space.
She kept piling the clothes onto a polished wooden counter, where a gray-haired woman and her helper, a curvy teenager—I’d guess a worker, but they’d explained to me at dinner that a concept of a family and parents existed here, so maybe she was her daughter, whatever that actually meant—sorted them out and folded the fabrics into a neat pile.
The pink-cheeked girl smiled shyly at me as I hovered in the middle of the store, wringing my hands together.
“Jayla, I’m not trying them on. I can’t buy anything,” I pressed. Even if I did, I’d have to leave everything here before I went back to Ilasall. A yellow oleander awaited me, hidden in an old shoe box my sneakers had been sold in, tucked away in the corner of my closet.
Holding up a pristine purple t-shirt, Jayla grinned. “We’re putting everything on Gedeon’s tab. He’ll have no choice but to pay.”
“In such a case, we can deliver everything to the central building, and you can try out whatever you pick there,” the elderly woman—the owner?—piped up, folding a pair of black cotton shorts Jayla had dropped onto the counter. “Keep what you like and send back what you don’t.”
“Jayla—”
“Na-ah.” Jayla interrupted what was supposed to be my plea for her to cease torturing me. “Don’t you dare say anything.”
She shook hands with the woman carrying smile wrinkles around her mouth and eyes, whispered something that made her daughter giggle, and shoved me out of their store.
Noticing my discomfort, she explained, “Everyone knows Gedeon. He has a tab in every shop here. Probably in the other compounds too. And we’re using it today. Now let’s go get you everything.”
We strolled through shop after shop, clothing, underwear, boots, lotions, and soaps, and Jayla chatted with the owners, as if she knew them personally. After the seventh store, I’d given up on keeping track of what she’d picked out to be delivered.
Each time she told them to put everything on his tab, she flashed me a devious smile.
I had no idea what he’d done to deserve her ire, but I was beginning to like her.
Her revenge methods were mischievous and a little wicked.
She used me for her gains, but in such a method that instead of hurting me, it benefited me by creating a way to use Gedeon myself. That, I could appreciate.
“You said something about a show at Vice. What is it?” I asked Jayla as we exited yet another store. This time, thankfully, we’d hopped inside only to pick up her order and not another string of things she believed I needed.
“It’s our bar. The main one in the compound.
” She stuffed a crinkling paper bag into her backpack and threw it over her shoulder, muttering about her sweaty back.
“And the shows, well, you’ll have to see for yourself.
I don’t want to take away the surprise. Please say you’ll come.
Pleeeeeease. Everybody will be there, and I think you’ll like it.
It’s a special occasion. I have so many things to finish in the next five days that I don’t know where to start. ”
Five days.
I hadn’t planned to stay even for today. Gedeon would be back tomorrow and, somehow, I’d managed to stay free of Zion so far. Luck had teased me with its presence for longer than usual, and I knew it was a question of time before it drifted away.
I had to go back to the city. I couldn’t spend my days shopping and chatting, carefree and floating with the day’s pace. I couldn’t patiently wait for the fight we’d bring to Ilasall. I had to take it there myself. And I had a plan, a way to wipe out the higher-ups.
Except I’d kind of begun to want more.
And fighting with a group would be easier than by myself.
We could do more. We could demolish the entire city instead of a dozen people in charge.
I had ended up here against my will, but since when had my body mattered?
So what if I used it to get what I wanted?
It wouldn’t be the first time. And if I had Gedeon and Zion in my pocket, maybe I could get them to speed up their plans.
But that meant Alora and the rest would suffer while I lived in comfort.
I hid my fists in the pockets of my sweaty sweatpants and shoved the traitorous feelings of staying deep down as we strode along the sidewalk, as close to the buildings as possible, using the thin strip of shade as our shield against the sunlight baking us.
“Hey!” A young woman waved from the other side of the street. She shot quick glances to both sides and trudged over to us. Half of her blonde locks spilled from the loose bun atop her head, and her round belly peeked out from under the too-short, yellow t-shirt.
“Brea! How’s the baby?” Jayla hugged the heavily pregnant woman. Brea placed Jayla’s hands on her round belly, and Jayla beamed. “It kicked! I felt it! It’s sooo weird. Again! It kicked again! Holy shit. I can’t believe it.” She rocked on her heels, her excitement palpable.
I awkwardly hovered a few feet away, pretending not to listen to their conversation about the pregnancy, someone named Ali, and how they should meet next week so Jayla could tell her how the show at Vice had gone.
Definitely not intruding.
They exchanged goodbyes and Brea crossed the street, back to where she had originally emerged from.
Which made me wonder.
“Where are all the children?” I hadn’t seen any so far, and kids were the key to the survival of humankind.
“At schools. But they are on the other side of the compound from here and they’re teaching classes right now.
” Jayla hooked an arm around my elbow and steered us left at yet another street corner.
After suffering through the last two hours and endless turns, I was trotting alongside her like an obedient puppy.
“You have schools?” It couldn’t be. How could they smuggle citizens out of Ilasall, have no fertility measures in place, but have operational schools?
“Yes. Obviously, we don’t differentiate children based on their fertility, as we don’t test it. Here, we don’t base education on the status of your reproductive system. Also, some kids live at the schools, some with their families, so it’s kind of a whatever works situation.”
But if they didn’t run the tests, then how did they know who could grow their numbers, who had to be protected at all costs, like in the city, and who were expendable?
“How do you know if they’re fertile or not if you don’t test it?”
Jayla shrugged. “No one cares. It’s not like we have any fertility suppressants you could take. You get pregnant, you survive, you don’t get pregnant, then you don’t. We don’t really care about it. How does it feel when no one can tell what color you are?”
“What?”
She indicated my wrist. I’d been instinctively searching for the usual wristband I’d wear in the city like all dutiful citizens.
“I thought it was impossible to take off the wristbands. I’ve tried it once and almost electrocuted myself.”
“Not anymore. Sadira’s team figured it out and now we can easily remove them.
It used to be difficult before since the green ones have trackers in them and it would set off an alarm if brought outside the city walls.
Those days were messy,” she said as we navigated the labyrinth of streets, the withering grass peeking through the cracks in the roads as thirsty as us.
My sweat plastered the white t-shirt to my back, and I dreamed of taking a dip in that giant bathtub back in my bedroom.
Tugging the cotton fabric away from my back, I asked, “How did you end up here? The compound, I mean.”
She sighed through her nose. “Originally, I’m from Ardaton.
I wore the black band in the city, but you know that doesn’t mean you get to live a free life.
You sell whatever you can, and one time, I sold too much.
I couldn’t walk for a week. I could barely crawl to the bathroom from the pain.
It was my fault because they warned me about what they’d do to me, a courtesy of sorts, and I still agreed.
And no, it wasn’t only men. The women can be just as cruel, if not more.
I think you’re as familiar with that as me.
” She scratched the back of her head, right beneath the ponytail of her fiery hair, and tugged down her cropped, sleeveless, vivid red top.
“I ran into Damia’s contacts in a grocery store a few weeks later and they helped me to get out.
I couldn’t stand living near Ardaton. I could feel its walls trapping me even from afar, so I relocated here.
Figured if Eislyn could make a life here, so could I. ”
Without second-guessing the impulse, I pulled Jayla into an embrace and stiffened, not sure what to do. Awkwardness quickened my pulse. Hugs weren’t a part of my life. Not since my childhood years, not since Alora’s and my separation.
Hesitant at first, Jayla tightened her arms around me, and my rigidity dissipated. We held each other in the street full of colorfully dressed people, in the compound with no restrictions on freedom, in the continent where a place existed to live as you wished.
“Thank you,” Jayla murmured. “But my story is nothing compared to others.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s not worth telling.” She had come from another compound, from a different city, yet her experience mimicked my own. I knew what it meant to seek what you needed, wanted, craved. Any means justified the ends.
Except she hadn’t betrayed her kind. I had.
Untangling our bodies, Jayla gestured to another store we had reached. “Wait here. I need to pick up some things for Vice and don’t want to ruin your surprise.”
“I still don’t know anything about Vice besides that it hosts some kind of shows because you won’t tell me. Can’t I go in?” No shade offered cover from the scorching globe hanging in the cloudless sky, and dread drenched me at the idea of lingering outside.
“Nope. I’ll be out in a minute. Here, you can have the last eclair in exchange.” She handed me the time-beaten lunch box and vanished into the depths of the mysterious shop.
I did want that freaking pastry.