James 21
James
This is probably a stupid idea.
I don’t even have a fully formed plan. It’s mostly fury fueling this side quest. But if I don’t do something—anything—I think I might lose the last few screws holding me together. I could always head back to the house and fix that fresh hole in the nursery, but my body is coursing with electricity.
I need air.
I needed to get off campus.
I’m so deep in my frustration I nearly walk into a woman pushing a stroller, changing course just in time to catch myself against a light pole instead.
I wince, stepping back as a clutch of pedestrians trundle past. It’s the last gasp of a perfect winter day.
The air is chilly but the sun’s been bright, and the weather seems to have activated the population.
The light is waning now, blue skies cooling, a few streetlamps flickering on as the sun inches toward the horizon, but bustling crowds continue to gather and disperse.
I really thought it’d be less crowded at this hour.
I pull my baseball cap lower over my eyes, drawing the soft collar of my jacket up around my neck before shoving my hands back into my pockets.
A sharp, energizing breeze pushes through the crowd.
The tip of my nose is pleasantly cold. I’m trying to root myself in these sensations: the golden glare of sunlight, the taste of winter, the clench of my fists in my pockets.
All day I’ve been trying to release this ache in my chest, but no matter what I do to distract myself, it keeps coming back.
Still, it’s nice to see the fog lifting over the city.
The streets are thronged by people of all ages angling for an inch of sidewalk, eager to shake off the dark cloud of the last few days.
Some storefronts are swarmed: a couple of restaurants still appear to be giving away free packages of food, and the energy in the air is optimistic.
Despite the recent attacks, conversation and laughter underscore a general din of movement and activity.
They think it’s over.
They have no idea what’s happening; no idea how many agents are embedded in the capital city; no idea what kinds of storms might be headed in our direction.
And I have no idea what to do with myself.
Warner demoted me.
It’s been about a month since I was functionally benched, ordered to sit on the sidelines of my own life at the start of what might soon become a full-blown war.
I’m just supposed to remain on standby.
I’m supposed to wait.
Wait to be summoned for a meeting; wait to be ordered around like a lackey; wait to be issued menial work so far below my skill set that the intended humiliation isn’t even subtle.
It was a horrible kind of relief to throw myself into damage control for five days; the context was shit, but at least the work gave me purpose.
It helped, too, that I’d managed to make enough of my own trouble over the last couple of weeks, doing what I could to solve some problems.
Now, I’m in a deadlock.
There’s still plenty of work to be done, but all my earlier messages evaporated with my old pager, so I have no idea what’s going on today or whether I might’ve been summoned for anything, and worse: my biggest problem doesn’t even want to see me anymore—
I nearly lose my footing, biting back an expletive as someone crashes into me from behind.
I reach out instinctively to stabilize the stranger who drove her elbow into my spleen, straightening as I look her over.
The cut of her hair and style of her lightweight puffer jacket indicate she should be returned to the pack of women waiting just a few feet away: four others are watching this scene unfold in various states of amusement, all wearing their hair and clothes in nearly identical combinations with minor personalizations.
The woman forces out a laugh and a self-conscious apology before looking up at me.
The smile instantly dies on her face.
I stiffen.
She slackens.
“Oh my God.” She takes a sharp, ragged breath, her eyes widening as she lifts an unsteady hand to her mouth.
I try to generate a little warmth in my expression, but I can feel the tension in my jaw. “You okay?” I ask her.
She is not okay.
She’s gone pale. Her hand falls away. Her mouth remains partly open as she struggles to generate another sentence. I want to give her a moment to complete this objective, but when she lifts her hand again like she might touch me, I take a sharp step back.
“All right. Well.” I grimace. “Have a nice day.”
I push my way down the sidewalk at a faster clip, my shoulders tensing when I hear the woman emit a high-pitched, abortive scream.
Like I said, this was a stupid idea.
I immediately duck down a quieter street.
It’s never a simple thing for any of us to move around in public, which is why I rarely venture into the city; but as the least interesting member of my family, the stakes have always felt lower. I’ve never been uncomfortable enough to feel paranoid—and this unnerving feeling is new.
All these years, I think I’ve been naive.
I used to believe people were just socially awkward.
Maybe a little too enthusiastic. And I couldn’t really blame them.
My older brother’s face is spray-painted across city blocks.
They sell tiny toy statues of my sister-in-law at the mini-mart charging stations.
Kenji and Nazeera have their own line of action figures.
My father was a notorious psychopath they teach kids about in school.
My entire family is globally known in a way that might really fuck with a more well-adjusted person’s sense of reality. It actually helps that I had such a destabilizing childhood. It helps that we’ve been able to maintain some pretense of normalcy in The Waffle.
It helps that when I look at Aaron Warner Anderson, Living Legend, I think about how he once single-handedly fought off dozens of soldiers armed with nothing but a machete—but also how he once slapped me in the head with a pair of rubber gloves and taught me how to scrub a toilet.
I’ve always had a distorted sense of reality.
I’ve always hated the scrutiny, but I never took it personally—especially not as I got older.
The more I grew up to resemble Warner, the easier it was to assume people were just really, really obsessed with him and kept getting us confused.
We look similar enough, despite our stark differences. It was a solid theory.
Now I know too much, and I hate it.
I pull the bill of my cap an inch lower, grateful I made the detour to grab the hat before I left The Waffle. I never used to take these small precautions, and I nearly talked myself out of it. It seemed like an overreaction.
Apparently not.
I clench and unclench my brand-new pager.
I hate that my head is going dark again, remembering the deluge of anonymous messages from this morning.
I hate that I feel weird walking around in public now.
I hate that there are people out here making calculations about how best to subject my body for their pleasure or my murder—with only a limited gray area in between.
I release a strained breath, my exhale almost visible in the cold, golden light. I push my way down the street, looking up at intervals. Keeping my eyes averted means losing the ability to stay as vigilant as possible, and I hate that, too. At least the crowds are thinner here.
I lift my head a little.
I’m alternating between scanning the shop signs on this quieter street and glancing down at the blank face of my pager for a directive.
No new notifications.
I’ve already sent Kenji several messages in the past hour, but I’ve gotten no responses. I’m not desperate enough—yet—to reach out to the soldiers who used to report to me; but at this point I’m basically begging someone to give me a job.
I want to be told to pick up a weapon.
I’d like to be ordered to do something violent.
Instead, I’m walking through the heart of the NCC—New Capital City—searching for a decent clothing store. Short of raiding Nazeera’s closet for things that won’t fit the equivalent of a human doll, I don’t know what else to do. Rosabelle must be starving and freezing.
And I don’t give a shit about the rules anymore.
I plan on stocking Nazeera’s depressing kitchen with groceries when I get back on campus. I’m going to teach her how to use a vacuum cleaner. I’m going to buy Rosabelle a fucking bed, and I’d love for someone to try to stop me.
I’m dying to get into a fight.
But those tasks are a little easier to accomplish. My problem is, we don’t have clothing stores in The Waffle.
Like, regular clothing stores.
Not a consignment shop; not a carefully curated vintage boutique. We’ve got a number of secondhand options, but I have a dark feeling Rosabelle’s been wearing castoffs for a really long time.
When I first met her she was drowning in moth-eaten, oversized clothes that looked like they might’ve once belonged to a man.
The pieces she was given in rehab were pulled from a community bin.
The hospital scrubs she’s issued every time she’s sent into recovery are rough, thin, and over-starched; they aren’t meant to be worn for more than a couple of days.
I want her to have something of her own. I’m looking for a place that sells brand-new things.
For women.
Or children, maybe.
“Fuck that,” I mutter, frowning to myself.
Rosabelle is small but there’s nothing childlike about her body. I would know; that cat costume was indecent on her. That cat costume gave me heart problems. I’ve felt every inch of her soft curves through her rotation of thin, makeshift outfits, and never once has she been wearing underwear.
That single thought drops like a hot stone inside me, driving a sweet, strange pain through my blood.
I take a breath and look around, smaller groups of pedestrians swelling and retreating around me.
I tug on my baseball cap and focus my eyes on the ground, where the low sun casts long shadows across the pavement.
My memories of Rosabelle are so intense it doesn’t take much to punch a hole through my chest. Heat is already coursing through my veins.
I can still hear the gasp of her breath, still feel the tremble of her body.
I can’t be having these thoughts in public.
I wasn’t trying to have these thoughts in public.
In fact, I’m working so hard to stop thinking about Rosabelle I almost walk into a parked car.
Suddenly she’s all I can think about.
I’m rigid and heavy, overheating. Sounds and images continue to blaze through my mind: her hands on me, her soft lips against my bare chest. The way she backed me up against the wall. The desperate way she said my name. The taste of her on my tongue.
Fuck.
I would not do well with a chip in my brain.
I can’t imagine living in a world where any random person could hear my thoughts at any given time. Life on the Ark sounds so much worse than it was living under The Reestablishment. At least back then we had the freedom to resist the fascists in silence, even if we couldn’t resist out loud.
I come to a stop on the sidewalk.
It never occurred to me that keeping my thoughts to myself might one day be categorized as an endangered privilege.
I dart another look around. The sidewalk is less of a crush here, but I feel claustrophobic. The problem is, I can’t think about Rosabelle without being reminded of the last time I saw her—which means my head goes straight to hell.
I’m suddenly back inside the warehouse, my hand clenched around the hilt of a blade buried in Sebastian’s shoulder. I can’t feel the cold anymore. I’m not standing on this street anymore.
I’m locked in on Rosabelle.
Time slows down.
I take in the terrified look on her face as she registers the sight of Sebastian. Blood is streaked across her eyes, dripping off her chin, spattered in her hair. She’s so paralyzed by fear she can’t speak. She can’t move.
Right now, I can’t breathe.
I close my eyes, willing the images to disappear. My heart is pounding.
I don’t know how to recalibrate.
All day I’ve been trying to convince myself I’m overreacting.
Maybe Warner was right: maybe Sebastian was just following orders to bring her in.
Maybe he’s not a lunatic psychopath who gets off on hurting her.
It actually helped to have Warner disagree with my assessment of the Sebastian situation.
His arguments were compelling enough to give my head a reason to argue with my heart.
Maybe Sebastian isn’t the guy responsible for subjecting her to some kind of systematic torture back on the island.
Maybe.
But then why would Sebastian’s arrival coincide with her sudden, categorical demand to push me away?
I take a few blind steps forward, narrowly avoiding a fire hydrant. A lick of cold wind steals into my collar, raising goose bumps along my skin. I keep hearing Rosabelle’s voice.
I will protect you with my life.
If that means I have to fight you, I will. If that means I have to suffer in order to keep you safe, I will.
Sharp pain pulls across my chest.
No matter what I try to tell myself, my body doesn’t seem to care about logical arguments. My body doesn’t give a shit what my brain has to say on the subject of Sebastian.
My body wants to fucking kill him.
I fight to take a cleansing breath, drawing the cold air deeper into my lungs. I tilt my head toward a slant of golden light.
I need to calm down.
My pager buzzes in my hand and I tense, glancing at the notification in surprise.