The Unquiet (25 page)

T
he sun rises somehow, and we have fallen asleep sitting upright underneath the window. My lips are swollen; my mind is numb. Gray kisses my hands and tells me that I am beautiful. His eyes are dark, intense, as if this means something wonderful to him when he says it. I kiss his eyelids and ears and run my fingers through his hair, over his chest, down his back. There are many scars with many stories and many stories with invisible scars, but Cecily will wake up soon. I smile my unnatural smile when he pulls me onto his lap, and I wrap my body around his. We have lost our clothes. We have lost our minds.

“When it's time to stop feeling this way,” I whisper against his lips, trying desperately to rediscover the ground beneath me, “we have to stop. We'll know when and how to stop it.”

“Okay,” he says softly, not looking at me.

I don't meet his eyes either.

In the end I don't know which lies are the worst: the ones we tell ourselves in the dark or the ones we pretend to agree to.

The truth is that this morning my tracker wrist hurts worse than it did yesterday. In a different way than it ever has. The most searing pain I have ever felt, and my arm is heavy. Gray flinches when I touch his wrist. But we still don't acknowledge what it means: that we have to go. We have to go; it is not a choice.

I make breakfast with Cecily afterward. She brushes my hair. She sings me a song. I make her laugh at least twice, and then, when she isn't looking, Gray corners me in the kitchen with his lips. We kiss quietly, desperately, holding hands. “We'll wait as long as we can,” he says against the back of my neck. I nod.

But it's time.

It's time.

I
t is easier to imagine that they are not us. The boy and the girl at the end. For the girl's part, she'd always thought that in the end she would let her sister go. But instead all three of them fill a single trash bag with things from the apartment. The boy shrugs into a coat and leaves to find a truck that can't be linked to him. When he returns, the girl and Cecily are waiting by the door, packed, dressed. Not a single word is uttered. Not a single sound is made. The boy and girl do not look at each other, and even Cecily is smart enough not to ask questions. Today is different from every other day. Somehow
she understands this as she crouches in the backseat of the car with her sister.

They have decided to run away from this war. To escape the city and find a safe place where all three of them can hide. They are not sure where exactly, but they know they have a better chance of surviving outside the city. And if they cannot save themselves, then they will find a way to save Cecily. That is the plan.

Barricades seal off every single corner of the city, but they drive to the weakest one, an electric fence protected by twenty guards with guns. They squat in an abandoned motel across the street for nearly a week, waiting and hoping for any kind of opportunity. But each day passes, and there is none. Not for the girl and boy. Not even for Cecily. This is the worst part. At the very least they have to get her to a safe place.

And now what?

“What's wrong, Lira?” Cecily whispers.

I open my eyes, and she's staring at me. I'm clutching my arm. Small beads of sweat dot my face. I am tired and dirty; my skin is burning up. I don't look at her. I focus on the small room we're hiding in, the broken glass and clothes strewn on the floors that do not belong to us. There are other people hiding all over this building, too.

“I'm fine,” I tell Cecily in a shaky voice, but in that exact moment my head spins. We have been holed up in this room for five days now. Gray sits in his own corner with his back turned to us. It's bad enough for Cecily to see my face grimace with pain. Worse if she sees him, too, and harder to explain. She has to believe that at least one of us is strong. She has to believe that it is him.

The pain in my wrist radiates through my whole arm.

I get up and go to Gray. “Okay,” I whisper. “Okay, the other plan. We hide her.” And with those simple words it is over for the girl and the boy. We accept it. The impossible idea of freedom put out of our minds for good.

Does it mean anything that we tried?

It was stupid to try, wasn't it?

I
find Aunt Imogen hiding in the old apartment.

I am packing everything that matters—clothes mostly, our remaining cans of food—emptying the medicine cabinet, when I sense someone behind me. I am not usually so careless, and as I turn, my fist connects with a jaw. Aunt Imogen crumples to the floor. For a moment I do not recognize her. She is dirty; her hair is wild; her clothes are covered in dried blood. Her blunt butter knife clatters to the floor between us. I must look different to her, too. A hat hides my hair; a torn jacket covers my dress. The moment she recognizes me, my aunt bursts into tears. “I
thought you were dead. Have you seen what is happening? I thought— Oh, God. Oh, God, Lira, where is Cecily?” Her voice becomes hysterical. “Where is Cecily?”

I step forward and place a grimy hand over her mouth, beg her to be quiet, but it doesn't help. Outside, someone screams, something smashes. Chaos spreads like wildfire. We waited too long. I should not have come back here. Gray told me so.

But I argued with him.

“I have all the supplies we need there,” I said. “Food, bandages, medicine. If we can't go to the shops anymore, then we have to go back.”

All these supplies are for Cecily. For wherever we hide her.

“I should never have left,” Aunt Imogen is saying now, over and over. “You were all I had. I'm so—I shouldn't have . . .” Her words trail into incoherence. I catch the word
family
, but I don't know why blood means that she has to care about me when she has never even known me. I am not the one she has let down. Her niece is: the one who isn't here anymore because of me.

I let her hug me. I stand there stiffly until she is finished. Until she sees the lack of emotion on my face and finally lets go of me. Her crying stops abruptly; her hand flies to her mouth. I have misjudged her. She understands right then what I am. She scans the floor for her butter knife. I kick it
out of the way and hold up my hands. “It's okay,” I tell her calmly. “It's okay. Really.”

“No, it's not.” There is a hollowness in her voice. “No, it's not.” Her whole body sags, but she forces her eyes to hold mine, and they are strong eyes. This is the first time I have truly noticed them. “Is she dead?” she asks finally. “Is my niece dead?”

It reminds me of the girl. It reminds me of Da. Of Gigi, as if they all are standing here right now, asking me, “Is she dead? Did you kill her? How could you? How could you? How could you?”

I breathe. I breathe again.

Seeing Aunt Imogen changes everything. The illusion of the three of us—me, Cecily, and Gray—that has been building up inside my head quietly deflates, and I feel relieved somehow. This is how it should be. How it should have always been.

I reach for the bag of things I have packed just as the door opens. My eyes focus on her shoulder. “We can save your lives,” I say. I stuff the bags with more things. “Yours and Cecily's, but you need to listen. You need to do exactly what we tell you. Do you understand what I am saying?”

“We? Who is we?” she asks. And then she turns around. She looks relieved to see Cecily at first. Then she notices Cecily is holding Gray's hand, and her teeth clench. It is
black and white for her. A monster and an innocent. Her eyes flicker to the floor, and I know she's gauging whether she can reach her butter knife first. She doesn't understand how easy she is for two sleepers to kill. If either of us had wanted her dead, she would be dead already.

“Is there anything you want from your room?” Gray asks Cecily. He doesn't wait for her answer. He just scoops her up and takes her there. Aunt Imogen starts to follow them, but then her eyes jerk back my way. I don't know who is more surprised: I with the gun in my hand or she. She looks at me in the worst way possible. There is power in that look, more than she knows, but I hold my gun steady. I keep my voice calm. “There is an old well at the orchard that Da turned into a storage room. It has—”

“I know what it has,” she snaps. “I grew up there.”

I nod. I search my pockets until I find the keys of the car we stole. “It's parked behind this building. Gray was going to take her there,” I say. “That was—we couldn't think of a better plan.” I give her the keys, the bag, the gun. “You have to go fast and you have to go now. Don't stop for anyone, no matter who they look like, no matter what they say, no matter how young or old they are. Just keep driving until you reach the trees.”

I am not afraid of the look in her eyes when she weighs the gun in her hand. I say, “You need to keep it together for her, no matter what happens next. No matter what you see. You have to protect Cecily—can you do that?”

She pauses. After a moment she puts the gun inside her bag.

Gray and Cecily come out of the room. Cecily is holding an old teddy bear she's had since she was little, and she's crying. I don't know what she heard. I don't have time to ask. “You have to go with Aunt Imogen,” I say, and force a smile as our aunt pushes past me toward her.
Her
aunt. Hers, not ours. When did I stop making distinctions like that inside my head?

Cecily cries harder. Her contorted face is focused on me. “You're leaving me, aren't you?” she asks, and then, before I can say anything, she is hugging me. Her tears stain right through my dress. I pat her hair, her shoulder, her arm. I do everything as robotically as I can manage. It is easier to forget a person who did not want you like you wanted her. Who did not love you like you loved her. Who did not cry a single tear to match what you shed for her, or so I tell myself. I push her away after she has hugged me only a moment.

Cecily stares at me. She can see right through my facade. A part of me even imagines that she might know what I am.
I can't bring myself to ask, especially when she starts to sob again. “I'm scared, Lira.”

I press my lips to her ear. “Close your eyes and pretend you're somewhere else, okay?” I whisper. “Remember what it feels like to be a bird? Remember what it feels like to fly away?”

She wipes her eyes and nods, as if something between us is now settled. She hugs Gray and kisses his cheek. She is calm as she takes Aunt Imogen's hand. She looks back only once as they walk out the door. “You'll come back to the trees one day,” she says. “There's Gigi's magic in the trees. And I've already asked it to bring you back.” As surely as the sun sets and the world spins, Cecily believes this.

I watch her go with a smile on my face that disappears the moment she does.

I am a good liar.

Secretly I was done. I gave her up the moment Aunt Imogen turned up. I am not Edith. I have never once imagined having to look after anyone, have never wanted it. The same empty look clouds Gray's eyes. A bottomless sky that goes on forever. I do not even feel sad about losing that part of him. You have to let go of the stones if you don't want to drown. You must always know who you are; I tell myself I do.
And yet Gray and I don't report to our handlers for a week. We will be questioned and possibly punished for it. Yet we stay in his apartment without talking about why. He kisses me, and I kiss him back, and we hold each other and press our skins together. We confuse ourselves like this. We destroy ourselves like this.

Yet I don't ask him to let go. The boy who drowns me. I don't let him go.

I want Cecily to be right. That there
is
magic. For the first time in my life I want to believe in something better. I am giving myself permission to want that. Because the girl who turns off her watch one week later, who walks toward the flower shop where the rest of her team is already mobilized, that girl, and what she is capable of, and what she is incapable of, frightens me. She shrugs into her skintight fighting suit without asking any questions. She takes the safety off her gun without breathing.

Jack is my excuse. I feel sick inside as I tell them that I had to stay with him until he died. That I had to bury him. That it was a mission I had to see through to the end. This is not the best excuse, but since Jack died alone, there is no way of disproving it. I also tell them that I killed Cecily and Aunt Imogen. And even though I should have reported in immediately,

staying with Jack implies that it is our people who matter to me. So after only an hour of interrogation they let me go with nothing more than a warning that they will be watching me.

But Gray doesn't have a good explanation for why he did not report in. His sister is dead, but the war is more important. It takes precedence over his mourning her.

They spend hours questioning him. Then they use their lie detector tests to ask him the same questions all over again. Finally they decide to punish him with a demotion. He has been such a good sleeper so far that he could easily be a leader, but when I see him again, he doesn't have the same badge I have on my chest. “It's better this way,” he says with a shrug. “I'd rather not be the one giving the orders.”

Before I can respond, I spot Julia walking in our direction. My body goes cold. Gray has his back to her. He is still telling me about the questions they asked him. Julia has her long hair twisted into a bun on top of her head like Madame's. “Gray,” I croak, but that's all I can manage before she is standing next to us.

“Hi,” she says.

I force my breathing to stay even. It would be stupid to confront her, not just today but ever.

I look at Gray, and his jaw is clenched, his eyes have gone dark. Julia does not seem to notice. She is wearing the same leader badge on her uniform as I am. She smiles. “I have been looking for you all over. We should ask to be assigned to the same places. They might say yes.”

I'm not sure which one of us she is talking to. I have not seen her in two years, and Gray has not seen her since the farmhouse was burned down. She is acting as though Edith had not even existed. As though it were only ever the three of us.

Gray says nothing, so I have to speak. “I have already been assigned my commanding officer,” I say. I try to force some kind of enthusiasm into my voice, but it doesn't work. I look away. “I'm supposed to be reporting in now.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Julia says. She looks at Gray's chest and frowns. “Hey, where's your badge? You're supposed to have a badge, too, right?”

I tense up. Gray actually takes a small, almost imperceptible step forward and then back again. His knuckles are clenched so hard behind his back that they are white. “I'm gonna go,” he tells me.

“Oh,” Julia says, taken aback. I am almost impressed by how unperceptive she is. When she says, “Gray, what's wrong?” I actually begin to fear for her life. Is it possible that
she is this stupid? Or did she think that she had done such a good job that no one would ever guess?

I start to speak for Gray. “Gray is—”

But he is louder. “Edith is dead.” His voice is cold, empty.

Julia flinches, and her smile wavers but only for a moment. She takes a deep breath. “Yes, I heard the farmhouse burned down. How terrible.” The only sign that she is affected is the slight flush in her cheeks.

Gray turns away from her. “I'll see you later,” he tells me.

“Okay,” I say.

“Gray, wait. I'll come with you,” Julia says.

I stare after them. Mostly after Julia. Is she doing this to be cruel? Or does she genuinely think that if she acts like the farmhouse did not happen, then it didn't?

I report to my commanding officer, a woman who gives me a bag filled with knives and guns and tells me to come back in the morning.

The flower shop is our headquarters, but it's the other abandoned buildings around it that are filled with sleepers, some of them already getting ready for bed. While everyone in my team eats and talks and goes to sleep, excited for the new day to come, I am not hungry, have nothing to say, and cannot
sleep. So I am walking up and down the street around the flower shop, kicking at pebbles in the dark when Gray finds me. “Are you okay?” I ask him. What I want to know is what has happened to Julia. Whether she is still alive, whether we need to be worried.

“I don't know if I can work with her,” he says, stuffing his hands inside his pockets. “I don't know if I can even stay in the same room as her.”

I have just one plea. “Please don't do anything stupid, Gray,” I say. And I cannot tell in the dark whether his nod means yes or no. We say good night, and I watch him walk away with his head down. I want to go after him. I want to wrap my arms around him like I did that first night in the apartment. But I can't.

When I get to the cots set up inside one of the empty buildings, I find that Julia has reserved one for me. She waves me over, and I lie down next to her, trying to keep my breathing even the entire time. I lie down next to Julia, close my eyes, and feign sleep, but when everything is dark and quiet, I sit back up. I suddenly don't know if I can do it anymore. I made Gray promise he wouldn't do anything foolish.

But I can kill her. I can give Gray and Edith and all the others at the farmhouse their revenge. No one would know
it was me. I can be so quick about it that Julia would not even have time to open her eyes.

What would that make me?

For hours I sit there, staring at her, until I am so tired that I have to lie back down. But I barely get any sleep. I think of Cecily and Aunt Imogen and how people like them would never be alive right now if they'd been with someone more like Julia. Someone less like me.

When morning comes somehow, there is no blood on my hands. I pack my things and leave before Julia opens her eyes.

“Here is your list,” my commanding officer tells me. They send me and several others back to the countryside. To my neighbors. Knock on the door. Smile and say hello, and then shoot.

They send me to Mathieu. He peers out at me from between the curtains and then rushes to open the door without thinking. Without wondering why I am wearing this uniform. “Where's Cecily?” he asks, looking past me. Expecting her and her mean looks, her bossy words, to flounce out of nowhere. Before I can even answer, before I can warn him about the other sleeper standing next to me with his gun, Mathieu is dead.