Savage Run (5 page)

“
But at least I’ll go to my
grave with your secret.”

He pinches his upper lip, huffing loudly.
Then, his eyes fall upon the locket around my neck and his eyes
narrow.

“
You give me necklace, I
give you IDs.”

I reach up and curl my fingers around the
smooth golden surface. My mother’s locket? Just thinking about
giving it up it makes me feel as if I’m parting with a piece of
myself. But there is no time to waste and it has to be done.
Ignoring the ache in my chest, I yank the chain from around my neck
and hand it to Sergio.

“
You are
stupid
girl for doing
this. In few days when you die, I shed no tear.”

“
Then you will have lost
nothing.” My voice is dull.

Sergio bolts the lock on the front door, and
then peels the rug back, exposing the trap door. Gemma grabs my arm
when she sees it. “Come, my little pteetsas.” He lifts the circular
latch and pulls the trap door open.

“
What does pteetsa mean?” I
ask when I pass him.

“
It
mean…‘bird.’”

I step down the metallic spiral staircase,
steadying myself on the wobbly rail. I’m not particularly fond of
dark, confined spaces—as a matter of fact, I hate them—but having
Gemma here helps put me at ease. The room’s walls are made of rock,
and the floor is an uneven slab of concrete. I get the distinct
feeling that I’m in a forbidden place where hundreds of illegal
transactions have taken place over the years. Oddly enough, it
doesn’t bother me at all.

Sergio presses the button on the old laptop
and sits down on a creaky wooden chair. He drums his fingers on the
desk while he waits for the computer to warm up.

“
How is it that you have
electricity right now?” I ask.

He stares at me for a second, his eyes as
icy as his frown, and I prepare for a lecture on how I should shut
up and just be grateful that he’s helping us. “Have you heard of
generator?” He cocks his head to the side and slumps back into his
chair.

“
Yes,” I say, having seen
gigantic ones at the hospital. We would use them if there were a
power outage.

He nods toward a small beat up machine in
the corner, its hum so low that I hadn’t noticed it.

“
I build it with my bare
hands.” He lifts his beefy, oil-stained fingers so we can see
them.

“
And you’re from the
Eastern Republic, right?” Gemma asks.

“
You dead soon so I tell
you story. I kill a man in government because he kill my sister. He
murder her in front of my old mother’s eyes. The government coming
after me after I stab the man dead, so I get on boat and come here.
If you tell anyone, I kill you.”

“
Oh,” is the only sound I
manage to produce for a second. “We need the IDs today.”

“
Fine, but it take me few
hours to hack into system to add your new IDs to list.”

“
No! No, you need to do it
sooner than that!” I yell, my hands flailing. “The Savage Run
registration ends at noon, and we have to be in the governments
database by then.”

He looks at me like I’m growing a third eye.
“If I rush, it won’t work.”

“
If you don’t rush, we’ll
die,” I reply.

“
Well, I already tell you,
I don’t care if you die.” He slumps back in his seat, and lights a
cigarette, inhaling deeply and blowing the white smoke out by the
side of his mouth.

“
I don’t care that you
don’t care. We need to get into Savage Run!” I say.

“
I not sacrifice my whole
operation so you can die.”

“
Well, if you don’t, I
guarantee that you’ll be caught.” I feel kind of guilty for
blackmailing him, but at this point, if I don’t, my entire plan
will crumble to pieces and Gemma’s and my fate will be in the hands
of Master Douglas.

“
You worse than Masters!”
he says with anger crinkling his heavy eyebrows.

I’ve pushed him to the limit, but I’ll keep
pushing. “You’ll never hear from me again after this—I
promise.”

“
Finally, one thing I
looking forward to,” he says as he types something into his
computer. “Okay, okay, I make it happen. I need to take picture of
you and you.” He studies us both for a while. “We must make you
look like boys.”

“
I brought clothes,” I say,
lifting the bag from where Gemma placed it on the floor beside the
desk. “And a pair of scissors to cut our hair.”

Gemma immediately wraps her hands around her
long, blonde braid.

I lift the scissors out of the bag. “I’ll go
first.” Pulling the elastic out, my thick black hair cascades down
my back. I hand the scissors to Gemma, and sit down in a brown,
leather chair. I can’t explain why the thought of cutting my hair
brings a tear to my eye—it’s only dead protein. It’s not like I’m
nervous Gemma will do a bad job. And even if she does, who
cares?

“
Ready?” Gemma
says.

I nod. When I hear the scissors snap and
feel the tickling of my roots as Gemma slices off the first chunk,
I don’t cry. But I do ache.

“
Have you pick out name?”
Sergio asks. His eyes are glued on the screen.

I think for a moment and settle on my
father’s least favorite person from the Bible. “Joseph.” My father
says he was an unrealistic, arrogant, self-righteous man who
thought too highly of himself. But in the end, as I recall, Joseph
triumphed over everything. And everyone.

“
You, other girl?” Sergio
draws a deep look at Gemma.

“
How about George?” she
says, still cutting away at my hair. “It’s not perfect—a little too
long and shaggy around the edges. It will just look like you
haven’t had a cut in a few weeks.”

“
There’s mirror upstairs in
bathroom. With different clothes and make-up you look like
pre-puberty boy.” He smiles grimly at me. “What is word? Sissy
boy?” He laughs dryly.

I narrow my eyes at him, letting him know
that I don’t appreciate the sarcasm. And with that, I stand up and
head upstairs with a change of clothes in hand.

At first, when I enter the tiny bathroom, I
avoid looking at my reflection in the mirror. I head straight for
the faucet and slide my palms beneath the running water. The water
stings my raw flesh and turns the sink red. I stifle a cry and pant
instead. I grab a washcloth from the cabinet, wet it, and wipe the
blood off my knee and leg. The gashes aren’t too deep, but they
sting like crazy. Rifling through the bag for my shirt, I catch a
glimpse of myself in the cloudy, cracked mirror. The short haircut
accentuates my pointy chin and pouty lips, and my slightly slanted,
dark brown eyes look huge, as if I’m trying to make out something
in the dark. There are plenty of young men with those features,
aren’t there? However, my neck looks way too thin to be a guy’s. My
hand touches the place where my mother’s locket used to hang. I
feel so bare, so exposed without it. But even though how difficult
it was handing it over to Sergio, using it to get the IDs was the
right thing to do.

I make a few serious faces and furrow my
brows in an attempt to look like a fierce competitor. I release a
sharp breath. It’s useless. They’ll never let me sign up, and even
if they do, I’m sure the other participants will suspect.

What am I doing? I must have lost my mind! I
can’t fathom why I thought this was a good idea; clearly, I haven’t
thought this through. Because if I had, I would have…I don’t know.
I feel so lost. So many changes in a few hours, and it’s all coming
down on me at once. I realize there’s no turning back now, but am I
a complete idiot for having done this?

No.

I can’t start to believe that about myself
now. But what if my father is right? He has told me countless times
that I’m a good-for-nothing, weak-minded, and irrational being.
What if my sanity has withered away after having angry, hateful
words directed at me for so many years? What if I have indeed lost
my ability to think straight? What if I never actually had the
ability to think straight? Only a crazy person would do this,
right? Or a desperate one. One desperate enough to voluntarily
register for a life-threatening obstacle course where I have a
twenty-five percent chance of dying. Yet, what if I make it? What
if I actually win my freedom? Goosebumps tingle my neck and arms.
If I register, at least there’s a chance. At least I’m living life
on my own terms and not being forced to be a Laborer without any
choices. Better to be dead than a coward fearing my dreams.

I wrap my chest tightly with gauze, and
change into the black t-shirt and faded jeans I stole from my
father. With the last piece of gauze, I loop it through the belt
holes and double-knot it. Once I get back downstairs, Gemma’s hair
is already cut, thanks to Sergio.

“
Computer thinking,” he
says, as if to justify why he cut Gemma’s hair, instead of letting
me do the honor.

The short hair brings out
Gemma’s heart-shaped, rose-red lips and high cheekbones. Her
eyelashes reach all the way to her light eyebrows and her small,
thin nose sits like a button in the middle of her face. This
will
never
work.

“
Do I look bad?” Gemma
asks.

“
No, I’m just…worried…” I
let my voice trail off.

“
Me, too,” she
says.

After Gemma changes into her clothes—a gray
long-sleeved shirt and hunter green cargo pants—Sergio takes our
pictures. While he continues to work on the computer, he says
there’s water upstairs. Parched, I climb the stairs and head to the
kitchen. Gemma excuses herself saying she needs to use the
restroom. When she doesn’t return after I finish a whole glass of
water, I press my ear against the bathroom door. I hear her silent
sobs.

“
Gemma…?”

Pause. “Just a minute.”

I hear her blow her nose and flush the
toilet. She opens the door—her eyes red. “I just want to go home to
my mother.”

The word ‘mother’ makes me immediately reach
for my chest where my necklace used to hang. Instead I find nothing
but bare skin.

I suppose I would want to go home, too, if
Ruth were my mother. She’s the type of person who makes sure you’ve
had enough to eat, asks you how you’re feeling, and really listens
to you when you speak, and never asking anything in return. In
fact, she’s the closest thing I have to a mother since mine
vanished sometime shortly after I was born.

“
Just think, if we make it
through the course, you can visit her anytime you want.”

The left side of her mouth rises a little—it
almost looks like the beginning of a smile. “That would be nice.”
She sits down on the edge of the tub. “I just want to thank you for
risking your life to help me. I’m sure he would have finished me
off if you hadn’t intervened. He kept saying it every time he would
become angry with me—that one day he’d get so angry that he’d kill
me.”

“
Of course I couldn’t just
leave you there.” I sit down next to her.

She takes a deep breath. “Master Douglas is
a horrible, horrible person.”

Dare I ask her about what she’s been
through? I decide that it might help her to talk about it. “What
did he do?”

She glances at me briefly before looking
away, seemingly ashamed and not sure whether or not to tell me.

“
You know I would never
judge you. What happened isn’t your fault.”

Gemma bites her bottom lip and heavy tears
tumble down her cheeks. “He drugged me…and beat me…and…locked me
up…” Her voice fades lower and lower as she speaks until it’s
barely even a whisper. “Raped me…” She buries her face in her arms,
uncontrollable sobbing juddering her body.

“
Shhh…” I don’t really know
if she wants me to stroke her back, but it’s the only thing I can
think to do. “I’m so sorry. It will never happen again, you
hear?”

I listen to her cry for a while, and all I
can think is that I should have done something sooner. Much
sooner.

Gemma sniffles, lifts her head, and wipes
her nose with her forearm. “I think I would have killed myself
sooner or later if I had to stay there.”

“
Oh, Gemma…”All this time I
made deliveries to Master Douglas, at least once a week for the
past year, I saw her eyes deaden a little more each time. I
suspected he was being cruel, but raping her? Drugging
her?

“
You didn’t know.” She puts
a hand on my shoulder. “Just promise me we’ll do this
together.”

I nod. “Every step—all the way.”

Sergio enters the room and hands us our new
IDs. They look identical to the ones the government
issues—electronic chips, 3-D Newland emblems and all. My name is
Joseph Wood and Gemma’s is George Washington.

“
Seriously?” Gemma says
after reading her new last name.

“
You don’t like?” Sergio
asks with a wry smile.

“
Well, don’t you think that
it’s a little too obvious?” she says.

“
It popular to name sons
after former president of the home of the brave.” Sergio nods. “And
when you think of name during obstacles, you remember, you are
brave.”

I don’t know whether he’s being a complete
jerk or if he’s being sincere. My guess is a little bit of both and
definitely a smartass. I notice he changed my birth year to two
years later than my actual birth year without me having to tell him
to do it. I smile. If there’s anyone who knows how to trick the
system, it’s Sergio.