The Burn (22 page)

“Mary’s going to talk to you?” Jack asks. I
start.

“I heard her tell you she needed to. We can both
guess what it’s about.” He nods his head at Dave. Jack puts a
spoonful of strawberries in his mouth. They’re very dark and
slightly mushy. There won’t be very many meals with strawberries
left.

If only Jack knew. I can almost guarantee that Mary
wants to talk about something of much greater significance for all
of us. I push my plate away, and it scrapes against the table.

“Are you feeling okay? You didn’t eat very much.”

I shake my head but offer no more explanation. My
stomach roils. I try to will my legs to walk calmly as I leave the
cafeteria. Jack watches me go, and I know concern is all over his
face. I go up the stairs. I pause outside Dave’s room.

I have to know for sure. I have to know if my life
here is over. I open the door. My pack is still stashed underneath
a desk. I bend down and open the pocket where I left that priceless
piece of paper. Jessa’s letter is gone.

When I go down the hall, Mary’s door is already open
and she waits for me. I’ve never been in her room before. It is
small. It contains a mattress, one desk, and nothing else. There
are no books, no nicknacks, no odd trinkets pilfered from the
houses nearby, only a few items of clothing folded neatly and
tucked into the desk, with her rifle laid on top of it, and a
candle on a plate.

Is this a reflection of her life? Barren? I feel an
unexpected wave of pity for her. The set of her mouth makes me
quickly forget it. The shiny streaks down her face tell me she has
been crying, but now she is angry.

“Looks like I’ll do all the talking,” she says. Even
though I’m expecting it, her baleful tone makes me wince. She
reaches to her back pocket and pulls out a piece of paper covered
in plastic, folded three times. She has no idea how important that
piece of paper is to me. I almost sob just to see her treating it
so casually.

“I see you know what this is.” She waves it in front
of my face. “Hmm. Jessa. A best friend? Or a sister, perhaps?” She
seethes with fury, but she isn’t interested in my distress.
“Whoever she is, it’s obvious—you’re not from around here, or
Arizona, or anywhere, are you?”

I can’t lie now. My own weakness in printing that
letter traps me. I have to own up to it. I shake my head.

“And then there’s this interesting tidbit. I didn’t
notice it the first time I read through this. I might have passed
this off as some message you were able to print off a stolen
computer. Until I read the footer.”

I groan. I’d forgotten all messages were printed with
a footer.

Mariana Colony transmission. Do
not read without consent.

“A colonist?” Her voice is deadly serious. “We often
wondered about colonists. Whether it was just a bedtime story our
parents told us. Something the government never wanted us to know.
Can you imagine? People living in peace and prosperity at the
bottom of the ocean while we scrounge around up here like rats.
While we’re captured and tortured and killed by our own government.
There wouldn’t be a single person loyal to the government if
everyone knew it for sure. How could anyone
decent
keep that
from us?”

I want to explain, to say, “It’s not like that, not
really. I came here because I hated it down there. Down there isn’t
real.
This
is what’s real.” But it sounds so ridiculous even
to me. I don’t know if any of the survivors here would stay if
given the chance to go down. My tongue forces my silence, and she
takes advantage.

“Do you have any idea how Dave feels about
colonists?”

The idea shocks me. I never dared lean toward any
conversation of the sort. I wanted to keep that topic as far away
as possible. I shake my head, numb.

“He
hates
colonists.”

I hear every implication in that sentence. She should
have just said, “He hates you.”

“How could you do this to him?” She starts crying
again, and the tears course down her face and fall to the floor.
“How could you do this to any of us? So many of them trust you. He
trusted you. He even let himself like you.”

I slump down onto the desk. My body feels so heavy
with every lie I told.

She circles around to the doorway, blocking my exit.
She is a dark silhouette against the dim light of the hall.

“Of course I won’t tell him if you don’t want me to.”
And she holds the letter out to me.

What is she saying? She has to tell him. Isn’t that
her whole point? Tell him what I am so he’ll loathe me and then she
will comfort him.

“You heard me right. I won’t tell him. If you do
something for me.”

I know I won’t like what comes next. But her cunning
surprises me.

“I’m going to tell him I rescued him. And you’re not
going to say otherwise.”

My hand slips off the desk then, and I have to catch
myself so I don’t collapse on the floor.

She folds her arms. “You see the significance of
that. I knew you would. I also know you were there that day. That
was when you first came here, wasn’t it?”

I nod blankly, not even looking at her anymore. Not
looking at anything, just feeling the empty spot in my stomach
start to expand and punch holes in all my vital organs.

“I know you were the one who pulled him out of the
ocean. But he doesn’t know that. And you can never tell him because
then you’d have to change your whole story. I know the way he’s
mooned over this mysterious rescuer ever since it happened.
Dreaming he’s in love with her after only a moment. Love doesn’t
happen that way. But if he believed it was me, then maybe things
can go back to the way they were. The way they were before I
left.”

I wonder if she really does love him, or just loves
the idea of him. If he is the only thing that kept her alive in
Seattle. The thought of him. Was that why she finally came back? He
was the only good in her life?

And again I feel that strange pity welling up in the
last remaining full spot in my body. I am a tin man—hollow. Except
for my heart. My heart is full to bursting, and it bursts out
through my eyes as the sobs I fought to contain suddenly wrench
themselves free.

She watches me cry and her face is a kaleidoscope of
emotion. Even though she has destroyed me, she takes no pleasure in
it. She merely wants to protect Dave and the colony. Then she hands
me a paper and pencil.

“Any last words?”

I nod and write three words. The only words I have
for her at that moment. I could write so many things, I could lash
out in anger and frustration, could beg her not to go through with
it. Instead I write:

I am sorry.

Then I hear a sound at the door and I turn. Dave
stands there. Confusion is all over his face. Seeing him stand
there is more than I can bear. I run from them.

“Terra?” he says as my footsteps echo down the
hall.

“Just let her go,” Mary says.

I slip downstairs and out the double doors before
anyone can see me or stop me. I’m not sure where I’m going, but
away is the best I can do. I follow the same paved road I had
followed when I first came here. I trudge along, my feet aching.
Past the sad houses and the water treatment plant. Past the marshy
areas. I am slow. I am tired and hungry and emotionally drained. I
am torn between two homes, and I can have neither.

The sky is well dark by the time I reach the beach
with its rundown parking lot and debris-covered sand. The old boat
Dave almost drowned with has washed ashore and is overturned, half
buried in the sand. I sit on it, not even minding the damp that
soaks through my pants. I gaze out to the water and watch it ripple
in the moonlight. A faint blue light flickers at me from the water.
I didn’t know the moon could shine in colors. But then I look
closer and realize the light moves beneath the water. Then it
surfaces.

The sleek gleam of a sub rises above the water. I
jump up. Someone has come for me. Would my father actually break
all the laws of the colonies to come here and fetch me? My heart
rises a moment as I hope that he might. That he loves me more than
he loves the colony.

The sub slowly inches forward, then sloshes into the
sand and stops. The hatch opens. A teenage girl with a buzzed head
appears from the dark hole.

“Jessa?” I try to say. Seeing her made me forget for
just a moment that I can’t speak. I can’t believe it. I’ve thought
of her countless times the past few days. She’s beautiful.

“Terra? Oh Terra, I’ve missed you so much.”

She flings herself off the sub and into the surf and
runs to me, tripping in the sand she isn’t used to walking on. Then
she is hugging me tighter than anyone ever has. She cries into my
hair and squeezes me. I cry with her and kiss her cheeks. But where
is her hair?

“I had no idea if you were dead or what happened, or
if I would ever find you. I couldn’t tell if Gaea was laughing at
me, or lying to me, or what.”

I pull back, shocked. Jessa nods, wiping the tears
from her cheeks.

“After a week went by, I just about went crazy. I
missed you so much, and I didn’t know if you were dead. Mr. Klein
noticed how weird I was acting in class. He called me to his office
one day and gave me a note telling me how to find her. Told me
she’d have answers. So I went.”

She is brave. I never thought she’d find Gaea and
come here. I hug her again.

“Gaea told me where you’d gone.” Jessa looks at me
closely. “She also told me what you paid.”

My empty mouth aches with every word I can’t say to
her.

“I don’t completely understand why you did it, but I
understand enough. I paid too.” She runs a hand over her scalp. She
gave her hair to Gaea. Her great beauty, her one vanity. She gave
it up for me.

She’s more than her hair. She’s more than her hair. I
tell myself over and over. I do it to keep from crying again as I
look at her stubbled head. She shakes her head, waking herself up
from her thoughts.

“Look, I don’t have much time. That sub is programmed
to turn itself around. I came here for a reason. I want you to come
home.”

I drop her hands then. She wants me to go back to the
colony?

“I asked Gaea how I could get you back. She must be
watching you or something. She knows that someone named Mary knows
that you’re from the colonies.”

I frown. What does this have to do with my coming
back?

Jessa pulls a small metal cylinder from her pocket.
“Don’t open it yet.”

I take it from her. I turn it over a few times in my
hands. It’s lightweight and fits easily in my palm.

“A hypodermic needle’s in there. Filled with poison.
Enough to kill a person. She understands that it needs to be subtle
so no one else would know what you did.”

I step away from her. Nausea rises in my throat. What
is Gaea asking me to do? What is
Jessa
asking me to do?

“Look, don’t freak out, Terra. Gaea said as long as
Mary’s left up here without you, she could talk. But if she dies in
her sleep, then no one knows any better and you can come home.”

She must see the horror on my face.

“I know it’s horrible, Terra, but it’s the only way.
Please? For me?”

I shake my head, shaking the fuzz loose that gathered
as soon as she said “kill a person.”

“I know it’s a lot, Terra. Just think about it,
okay?”

How can I even think about it? I’ve seen too much
death.

“She’s our mother, you know.” Jessa says it
impersonally, like we’re talking about an insect. “Gaea, I
mean.”

As soon as she says it, I know. I didn’t realize it
then, but I know. It explains the spite toward my father and the
loving hatred of the colony. The knowledge doesn’t move me. I feel
no tie to her. She mutilated and silenced me. She took Jessa’s
great beauty. No mother should do that. No mother should ask her
daughter to commit murder. She and I have both become monsters.

The sub engines begin to purr again. Jessa turns
around.

“No! Oh, Terra the sub’s going to go back. I need to
get on it. Look, Gaea’s sending a sub to come tomorrow
night—midnight. Please get on it. Please. It’ll only stay for
fifteen minutes and then it’ll go back to the colony. Please,
Terra.”

And she skips toward me to kiss my cheek one last
time before running to the sub, clambering up to the hatch, closing
it behind her, and then she is gone. The only evidence she was here
are her tears in my hair, the tingle of her kiss on my cheek, and
the metal cylinder in my pocket.

As I limp back toward the school, I pull the metal
cylinder from my pocket and turn it over in my hands. The gravel
scrapes under my boots. I don’t think about walking or the school
or Jessa. My brain is sluggish. The only clear thought I have is
How can I?

After what happened with Smitty on the hunting trip,
the last thing I need is more blood on my hands. Did Gaea—refuse to
think of her as mother—watch that as well? Did she sit hunched over
her keyboards, her eyes fixed on the monitors as she watched my
life unravel? Is the metal cylinder in my hand a sick joke or a
gift?

The sour taste in the back of my mouth gags me.
Clouds skirt over the moon, and the path in front of me darkens. I
stick to the pavement, the only sure way I know of getting back in
the dim light. Soon the sad houses line the road. I look long at
them. Broken windows, shutters, leaning porches, all of it
surrounded by tall grass.

People had lived here, and people had died here.
People had been happy here. Why can’t I be one of them? I could
leave it all behind. I could go back to the colony where I’m not a
murderer. Where everyone has enough to eat and everyone lives
peaceably, and the brutality up here is just a rumor.