Children of the Uprising (34 page)

“I already told you. We'll find a part for you, something real but safe.”

“I don't want you to find a part for me. I want to know the details. I want to have a say. I don't want another person to die in my name while I stand on the edges doing nothing but talking.”

“I can't,” Reggie replied. “You've done everything already, Christopher. You should be proud of what you've done for us. I'll give you something, but I need you to be safe. I've gone back on enough promises about you already.” Reggie turned away from Christopher and started to walk away.

“What promises?” Christopher called, confused. He was sick of being confused. “What else are you hiding from me?”

“Promises he made to me,” said a voice behind him. It was Maria. “Years ago I made Reggie promise me that he would protect you from becoming involved in the War. But here you are anyway.”

“Is that why you pushed me to run first?” Christopher asked Reggie.

Reggie nodded. “But then you ended up with Dutty. So I figured that if you were going to choose to fight anyway, I should at least try to give you a gambler's chance of winning.”

Maria jumped into the conversation again. “But a promise is a promise. So Reggie owed me one promise, and with it I made him promise me that he would keep you out of danger from now on. You've done enough already, Christopher. You shouldn't have to do any more. Let them finish it. It's their War, not ours.”

“Maybe it's not your War,” Christopher said to Maria, “but it is mine—at least until it's over. It's always been inside of me. I've spent my life trying to get it out. Nobody is going to be able to do that for me.” Christopher turned back to Reggie. “I need to know the plan. I'm sick of people making my decisions for me. Besides, you're hiding something from me, Reggie. I can tell.”

“There are parts of the plan that you're not going to like,” Reggie answered.

“Those are the parts that I want to know about the most.” Christopher's voice trembled. Reggie looked at Maria, waiting for a sign from her that it was okay to speak, but she was like a stone. “Don't look at her,” Christopher said to Reggie. “She has no say in this.”

“But I'm your mother, Christopher,” Maria said.

The three of them stood in the middle of the empty room. Christopher shot Maria a look. He was too kind to respond to her with anything more. The look was enough. The look tore at Maria's heart. “Tell me what I'm not going to like about the plan,” Christopher demanded of Reggie.

Reggie looked to Maria again, wanting to do right by her, pleading with her with his eyes. “Tell me!” Christopher demanded when Maria refused to respond to Reggie's stare.

“To be sure that the plan will work, a lot of innocent people are going to get hurt and a lot will probably die,” Reggie said to Christopher. “We're planting bombs around the city as a diversion. Without the diversion we don't have a chance.”

“And this is your plan?” Christopher asked. It didn't seem like a plan that Reggie would devise.

“No,” Reggie admitted. “We have a source on the inside that we're working with.” Reggie hoped the questioning would die with that.

It almost worked. Christopher didn't think any more of it. His thoughts were on the plan, but Maria's thoughts were on the source. “Who is it?” Maria asked, even though, deep down, she already knew.

“We didn't do it on purpose,” Reggie said, apologizing to both Maria and Christopher now, before they could even be sure what he was apologizing for. “We couldn't afford to take any shortcuts. Of all the people who could help us, he's the best by far. He knows everything and no one is more bitter than him.”

“Who are we talking about?” Christopher asked, still not filling in the gaps but feeling nervous all the same.

“Our man inside—,” Reggie started.

“Who is it?” Christopher demanded.

“It's Jared,” Reggie said. Maria physically flinched when she heard the name.

“The man who killed my father?”

“The man who stole you from me,” Maria said.

“He's a spy?” Christopher asked, dumbfounded.

“He is now.”

Christopher was in shock. He reacted like a cornered animal, flailing at the greatest threat first. “I want to meet him,” he said, expanding on his demands. Now he wanted everything, every goddamn thing. “I want to meet Jared and I want him to explain the plan to me.”

Reggie looked at Christopher, with deep, sad eyes. “If he's going to meet Jared, I'm going with him,” Maria announced. She wasn't about to let him face that demon alone.

“This isn't negotiable, Reggie,” Christopher said. What had Addy once told him? Nobody gets what they want, and those that do want something else as soon as they get it. But what if all you wanted was for things to make sense?

Jared was surprised when Brian called him to arrange the meeting. He thought that his request to meet Christopher was nothing more than a shot in the dark, but there he was, standing in a small apartment on 130th Street on Manhattan's West Side, waiting. A man named George had patted him down before letting him into the apartment. Jared didn't complain. He couldn't blame them, all things considered. “Are you going to pat them down too?” Jared asked, handing George the gun he was carrying before George had a chance to feel it in his belt.

“No,” George answered flatly. So Jared was going to be the only person hated by everyone else in that room and he was also likely going to be the only person in the room who was unarmed. George opened the apartment door and Jared walked inside.

Jared wondered what he was going to say to them. He hadn't really thought this through. Some things you just can't plan. Brian had told him that Maria was coming too. Jared didn't know who else would be there. For all he knew, this might be a setup. For all Jared knew, he wasn't going to walk out of this apartment alive. He'd made peace with that. He was an old man by soldier standards.
If this is supposed to be the end,
Jared thought to himself,
at least there'll be some drama to it.

Jared paced up and down inside the apartment, waiting for the others, unable to sit for more than a few seconds. He was trying to burn nervous energy. He'd been pacing for more than twenty minutes when he finally heard a sound outside the door. He saw the doorknob begin to turn. Only then did he sit down. He picked a seat facing the door. He watched as the doorknob finished turning. He watched the door begin to open. The next thing he knew, he was pulled back in time.

When the door swung open, Jared saw his old friend Joseph standing in front of him, but the strangest part was, it wasn't the Joseph from the last time Jared had seen him alive. It was the Joseph from when they were both boys growing up. It was the Joseph from high school in New Jersey. Jared almost said something to his old friend and then the two people standing behind Joseph broke his trance. Then it wasn't Joseph anymore. It was a boy. The similarities were still there, but there were differences too. The boy was smaller than Joseph and he had an intensity about him that Jared never remembered seeing in Joseph—not until that last time they met anyway.

“You must be Christopher,” Jared said to the boy as he stepped into the room. Maria was right behind him. She was so much older than Jared remembered. Time had hardened her. Behind Maria was a tall black man. Jared recognized Reggie too, but only because he'd seen his picture at work. Reggie was one of the War's most wanted rebels.

“You're Jared?” Christopher asked, staring at the old man sitting in front of him. He was thin, almost frail. His hair was thinning and his skin was peppered with age spots. The man in the chair didn't match the powerful image of Jared that Christopher had in his head.

“I am,” Jared said to Christopher. Then he turned to Reggie. “And you must be the infamous Reggie.”

“Well, I guess we got the introductions out of the way,” Reggie said.

“Not all of them,” Maria said, stepping forward and staring at Jared. “Do you remember me?”

“Of course,” Jared responded. “How could I forget the woman who turned my two best friends against me?”

“Enough of that,” Reggie broke in. “That's not what we're here for. We don't have time for the past here.”

“Fair enough,” Jared said. “Then what are we here for?”

“Christopher wanted to know about the plan,” Reggie told him.

“So you brought him here so that I could tell him what you were afraid to?”

“I've told him. He wanted to hear it from you,” Reggie said. “We told him it was your plan.”

“You told him all the details?” Jared asked Reggie with a smile.

“No,” Reggie admitted. “Not all the details.”

“Okay,” Jared said. “Have a seat.” Jared motioned to the chair across from him. Christopher moved slowly toward the chair. “Don't worry, Christopher,” Jared said. “They patted me down before I came in here. You're safe. So you want to know about the plan?”

“Yeah,” Christopher responded.

“That's why you're here?” Jared asked him.

“Yes,” Christopher answered.

“You're not here because you want an apology?” Jared looked at Maria. “She's not here because she wants an apology? You just want to know the plan?”

“Yes,” Christopher repeated.

“Okay,” Jared said. “That's good. Because I'm not going to apologize to you or to her.”

“Okay,” Christopher said with a raised chin.

“The way I figure it, there's only one person who I might owe an apology to and it's not you and it's not her.” Jared pointed at Maria.

“I told you, I'm not asking for an apology. I only want to talk about the plan. I only want this all to be over.”

“Me too,” Jared said. That was enough of a thread to pull them together. Jared began to tell Christopher about the plan. He told Christopher about the targets, about the buildings, about the bridges, and about the bombs. Christopher imagined explosions and screams coming from all over the city, all a mere diversion so that no one would pay attention to the real target. Christopher assumed that they'd use bombs there too. They could take out all four floors in one blow.

“That's insane,” Christopher said. “Why do we need to hurt all these innocent people?”

“Innocent?” Jared spoke to Christopher as if he were the only other person in the room. He didn't care about Maria or Reggie. He only cared about the Child, about his best friend's son.

“They're innocent,” Christopher repeated. “They've got nothing to do with this War.”

“Just because they're not part of our War doesn't mean they're innocent,” Jared said. “Everybody hates somebody. Most people just don't keep a list. You tell me who's more innocent: the ten-year-old who was born into the War but hasn't been told about it yet or the thirty-year-old who's spent the better part of his life ignoring the evidence that the War exists. Who is more innocent? Tell me.”

“I don't do riddles,” Christopher said.

“Well, you should,” Jared told Christopher, “because solving riddles is the only way you're ever going to get answers to any questions around here.”

“There has to be a better way,” Christopher said.

“There's not. We can cut corners to save the lives of some strangers, but every corner we cut makes it less likely that the plan is going to work. We're only going to get one chance at this. Brian and Reggie have already agreed.” Jared looked up at Reggie. “I heard that they're the ones in charge. What makes you think you have a say in this anyway? How long have you been a part of this War? Four weeks?” Jared shook his head. “What do you know, really? Your father understood how little he knew and he'd been knee-deep in the War for years before he died.”

“Before you killed him?” Christopher said before Maria could.

“Before I killed him,” Jared confirmed.

The anger began to rise within Christopher. “It doesn't matter what I know. I get a say because this is my revolution,” Christopher told Jared, clenching his fists. “This is my Uprising. It's mine and Addy's and Evan's. It's not yours. You had your chance. You all had your chance. You wasted it. You could have had your own revolution, but you chose to kill your best friend instead. So don't tell me how little I know.”

“Your Uprising?” Jared asked with a smile. He liked the kid's fire. He appreciated the fire.

“Yes,” Christopher said through clenched teeth. Christopher finally realized what he wanted. He felt it in him. He didn't want power or glory. He didn't want fame. He wanted this all to end, sure, but before that happened he wanted something else. “After everything I've been through,” Christopher said, glancing at Reggie and Maria, “I want some control over my own life. I know you guys did what you did to protect me, and I appreciate it, but that's over.”

Jared laughed. “You want control?”

“Yes,” Christopher answered.

“Take it from somebody who knows, control is an illusion, kid,” Jared replied.

“Don't listen to him, Christopher,” Maria said, nearly shouting. “You can control your life. You can.” She ran up to Christopher, grabbed his hand, and stared into his eyes. “That's all I ever wanted for you. That's all your father wanted for you. He never had it. Neither did I. But you can, and if this is what you need to do to get it, then don't listen to him,” Maria said, shooting daggers at Jared with her eyes.

Christopher looked up at Reggie and Reggie said, “I know I've been walking a thin line, trying to use you to start this Uprising but trying to protect you at the same time. I thought that was what would be best for you, but this is your Uprising. It doesn't exist without you. Remember, whatever you decide to do impacts a lot more people than the four of us.”

Christopher didn't say anything. He took in what Maria and Reggie said to him, the gifts that they'd bestowed on him, and then he turned back to Jared.

“Well, then,” Jared said, “if this is your Uprising, let me give you some advice.
They're
not going to care about collateral damage or hurting innocent people when they see you coming. They're going to do whatever it takes to destroy
your
Uprising. They have rules for when they fight each other but not for when they fight you. They know full well what they have—what you're trying to take from them. It's not just history. It's a history stripped bare of pleasantries. It's a history of hate and fear. Whoever controls that part of history has all the power.” Jared leaned forward, closer to Christopher. “I've seen what they do to dissidents. I've been there. They showed me. They wanted me to learn in case I was thinking of following in my friends' footsteps. I've heard the screams. I've seen the blood and the torn flesh. You're a kid. You don't know the wrath of what you're about to go up against. I do. I know what will happen to all of us if you fail. So, if this is your Uprising, then I suggest you drop the sentimentality and do whatever it takes to win it.”