Downburst (17 page)

A girl above has just dispatched her own opponent. She sees Lila and charges. Lila leaps to her feet, spraying the girl with paint, but none of the balls hits a circle. The girl raises her gun. Nothing. She’s out of ammo too.

Suddenly, she hurls her weapon at Lila. Caught off guard, Lila totters back a step, and the girl zooms forward and snaps the rifle out of her hands. Defenseless, Lila jumps into the air, pivoting into a back aerial and landing on the ground near her knife. She throws it at her adversary just before the girl fires.

The knife swipes the circle over the girl’s heart, but a ball from Lila’s own gun splatters on her right thigh. They’re both out.

I watch as my friend leaves the field, wondering how she learned to fight like that, how any of the initiates learned.

The battle ends not long after Lila’s defeat, but her score puts her in seventh place. I find her after the brief ceremony.

“You were great,” I tell her.

“Nah, my score sucked.”

“You still did better than fifty-three other people. Plus, you had a race this morning. It wasn’t fair of them to put you in two events on the same day.”

She shrugs. “Well, in the real world, we don’t always have the luxury of being well-rested, do we?”

What is that supposed to mean?
I wonder.

We walk back to the bunkhouse
.
I look around at the camp—the artificial trees that blend in so perfectly with the rest of the forest, the nearly invisible meetinghouse, the swaying bridges. I think of the splendor of the matches in the arena, the power behind the windwalkers’ movements, the way they coast elegantly through the air.

Tomorrow, it will all be a memory.

If only I were Aura for real. Then I wouldn’t have to leave. I could finish out the week, fight in the Aerie. Dance with Rye. See Jeremy again. That last one brings me up short.

I keep walking.
Don’t be a fool.
If I were Aura, I’d be dead.

We enter the bunkhouse and circle up the ramp.
I don’t belong here, remember?
It’s no use living in a dream world, because at some point I’ll have to wake up. At some point, they’ll catch me.

While Lila showers, I brush my hair and wash my face. I look so sullied it’s a wonder Jeremy didn’t press me any further than he did. I think about his face when he saw me in the Aerie, the color that spilled across his fair skin, the way he was studying me after my event. What was he thinking? Was he impressed? Disappointed? “Don’t let me down,” he said. Did I let him down? Will I?

Stop it! It doesn’t matter. After tomorrow, I’ll never see him again. I’ll never see any of them again.
But do I have to leave? Is there an option I haven’t considered yet, an alternative?
Remember the Incident! Decortication! They’ll torture me if they think I’m a spy.

“Careful, Kit, don’t drown yourself,” Lila says behind me.

“What?” I look down at the sink. Apparently, I’ve been splashing water on my face. A lot of water.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll be back in a little bit.” Without saying anything else, I leave the bathroom, walk out of the bunkhouse, climb down to the forest floor. Trudging through the trees, I kick up twigs and pine needles, hurl the occasional stick.
Don’t think about him, about windwalking. Just focus on the plan.

I’m passing one of the bunkhouses when I hear voices, and as I look up, I slow my pace. Diva is standing on the platform. With her is Aponi.

“You have ten minutes to collect your things,” Aponi says. “I’ll be back to get you.”

Aponi walks back along the bridge, and Diva turns to go inside. Then she stops and whirls on her heel. Her face blotches into a deep mahogany.

“You!” she spits. She leaps off the platform and flies through the air toward me. I stumble backward as she lands a mere foot away. “This is all your fault!”

“I didn’t make you cheat,” I insist, but I back up some more.

“You knocked me down,” she hisses. “I was so close. Instead, you humiliated me in front of him.”

“Who?” I back into a tree, and she brings her face an inch away from mine.

“You know who. You think you’re so clever, pretending to be someone you’re not.”

My pulse thunders in my head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“But I know what you really are. You’re a fake.”

I can’t answer her. I can hardly breathe.

“You think your little act will impress him, when the truth is you don’t know anything about being cool.”

Being cool?
I stare at her.

“So instead you have to embarrass the people who are. That’s the only way you can get his attention.”

“Seriously, what are you talking about?”

“You seemed to know just fine last night.”

Last night?
At the dance? I think about Diva’s threat, her snarling eyes. Right after I danced with …

“Jeremy?”

“But you won’t get him now. Not after going underground.”

“What?” And then it comes together. “You were the one who shut the door!”

“That’s right,” she sneers. “And then I reported you. How did that feel?”

“There’s no proof I was down there,” I say, keeping my voice level.

She frowns. “What do you mean? Didn’t they find you?”

“No one found me.”

“That’s impossible! How did you get out?”

She doesn’t know about the tunnels, the utility closets.
I smirk and take a step forward, forcing her back. Her face grows even darker as she realizes what this means, that she hasn’t succeeded in shaming me at all, that she’s only heaped further disgrace upon herself. Her eyes turn feral, bloodthirsty. She lunges for my hair.

I bat back her arms as she digs her fingers into my scalp. We fall to the ground, tumble across the dirt. I knee her in the chin, and her head snaps back. Then she elbows me in the stomach, the exact place she kicked me this morning. The breath leaves my body, and I curl up on my side, covering my head with my hands as she continues to strike with her fists.

“Stop!” The blows cease as someone pulls her off. I look up and see Damon pinning Diva’s arms behind her back. Aponi is there too, and she crouches down next to me. “Are you okay?” she asks, extending a hand to help me up.

I stagger to my feet, cradling my gut. “Yeah.” I look at Diva. Her face is almost black.

“You should go take care of those bruises,” Aponi says to me. “Would you like me to come with you? There’s a medical kit at the
wakenu
.”

“No, I’m fine.”

As Damon and Aponi lead Diva away, I limp back through the woods. My shoulders are tight, scrunched up to my neck. I shake my arms, but I can’t loosen the muscles, and the movement only makes me wince. I close my eyes, take deep breaths. Diva didn’t know after all.
No one is onto me, and I can escape as planned.

So why can’t I relax?

It’s because of him, isn’t it?
Jeremy. Diva was jealous of me. She thought he …
She thought he what? Liked me?
I stop walking. Does he like me?

I keep walking. No, that’s ridiculous. Jeremy watches me to make sure I don’t do anything I’m not supposed to. He’s suspicious of me, at least, that’s what I thought. I slow down.
Was I wrong about that too?

A melodious jingling suddenly wafts through the forest, coming from my right. Grateful for the distraction, I wander toward it and in a few moments reach a clearing near the meetinghouse. Someone is hanging wind chimes from the branches of the aureolin Birch trees that surround the dell. The chimes are made of thin, iridescent pink shells, and as the breeze flows through them, it produces the dulcet music.

On one side of the clearing, four people are sitting on some folding chairs. It must be an event. I look at the schedule on my Quil—there it is.
Karikara.
There’s no translation.
I take a seat on the back row.

After about five minutes, a counselor stands up and begins the contest. There are only two participants, and they’ll go one at a time. The first contestant gets up from her seat and walks into the clearing. She’s wearing a shimmery coral dress that matches the shells on the chimes. In her hair are two black feathers. Additional pairs adorn each wrist and ankle.

The girl stands in the center of the glade, closes her eyes, and bows her head. For five long breaths, she stands still. Then, throwing her head back, she vaults into the sky and begins to dance. Not like the wild dancing by the campfire or at the
wakenu
. This dance is studied, formal.

The girl spins slowly in the air, stretching out her arms, wrapping them over her head, arching her back, twirling around the clearing—all to the honeyed peals of the chimes. There are no giant fans to provide the currents. She molds the dance to the wind that naturally exists, to the music it creates. It’s like watching a rose petal pirouette in the breeze. For the duration of her dance, all I hear is the sweet pinging of the shells. All I see is the gossamer flower in the sky.

She ends with her arms thrown back over her head, the feathers on her hands joining the feathers on her feet, her toes coming to rest softly on the ground. Then she returns to her chair, and the other contestant takes her turn. The second dance is just as exquisite.

The event ends, ten minutes after it began. The first girl wins first place; the other girl gets second. There is no third.

My mind is revolving in a hundred directions as I leave the clearing to go to dinner. Everything about this place is so different, so baffling. I wish I had more time to figure these people out, to know what they know, but instead I’ll just spend the rest of my life wondering. Wondering about their history, their secrets. Wondering about Jeremy. Wondering about what life might have been like if I had been born a windwalker.

When I approach the
wakenu
, I think about calling Lila to see if she wants to meet up but decide against it. No point in making things harder, and I don’t feel like talking anyway.

At the salad bar, I take two extra packets of crackers and find a table in the corner of the dining hall. I slip the crackers in my pocket to add to my stash and eat my meal slowly, looking around the room, taking in the curve of the seats, the view of the sunset through the large windows.

After I’ve finished eating, I drop off my tray and leave the building, but it’s too early to go to bed, so
I pull up the schedule on my Quil. There’s one more event for the day. A prayer ceremony, at the lake in half an hour. I was hoping my last event in the camp would be something a little more exciting, but I suppose this will have to do.

When I reach the lake, the sun has just dropped below the horizon, veiling the downy trees in soft pastels. The cornflower water is smooth and still, embraced in a lavender mist. I drink in the serenity and think again about the dancer and the wind chimes. I imagine that even now I can hear the soft clinking of the shells in the breeze.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

I jump, whipping my head to the side. Jeremy is standing next to me, his arms crossed behind his back as he stares out across the water. “Makes you glad to be alive.” He looks at me and smiles.

My heart beats faster. “Yeah,” I say. “It’s really pretty.”

“I’m glad you finally showed up.”

“What do you mean?”

“For the ceremony.”

“Oh.” I don’t know what to say, and we stand there for a while in silence, regarding the lake. I peer at Jeremy from the corner of my eye. Could Diva be right?
Don’t think about it.
I look back at the water.

When the shadows lengthen across the quiet ripples, we turn away and walk toward a group of tree stumps. Jeremy sits down next to me, and I try not to notice that our arms are touching.

One of the counselors gets up and recites something in Yakone. I act like I know what he’s saying, but really my brain is drubbing against my skull. It’s so hard to sit here and pretend, to be a poser, when all I want is for it to be real.

The counselor finishes and passes a bag around to the dozen or so people in attendance. When the bag gets to me, I reach inside and pull out a small handful of seeds, each one attached to a thin membranous wing. After everyone has taken some of the kernels, the counselor leads us to the edge of the darkening water.

“
Pualani ana
.
May the cycle of life continue under the watchful eyes of First Parents,” he says. Then he throws the seeds into the wind. The rest of us do the same.

I watch the small wings flutter and whirl as the breeze carries them away across the lake. I doubt any of them will actually turn into trees, but it’s a nice gesture.

Next to me, Jeremy inhales deeply. “It’s good to be reminded, you know? To take the time to remember what’s really important.”

I nod, wishing I knew what he was talking about.

When the seeds have vanished from sight, Jeremy walks me back to my bunkhouse. “Have a good night,” he says. He waves at me and then fades into the trees.

I want to say something, make it last a little longer, but I don’t. I just watch him walk away. Then I climb up the ladder.

Lila isn’t inside the bunkhouse, but I still don’t call her. Instead I clean myself up and get ready for bed. As I sink into my bunk, I feel the pressure of the mattress on my injuries, another good distraction—the graze on my head, the welt on my side, the scratches on my face, the cuts on my feet, the lumps on my back and shoulder, the bruises on my stomach. And that’s not even counting my hands or my ankle.
But it was all worth it, just to see this place. Just to know.