City of Savages (23 page)

But Francis ignores me. “Dry yourself off and tie that hairy mess back.” He points to a pile of towels resting on the bathroom shelves. “I’ll be waiting outside.”

I stay on the ground for a minute, heaving, fighting to collect my breath.

Cold.

Shivering.

Terrified.

I pull my knees in tight and try not to panic, but I can’t seem to calm down.

So we’re stuck here?

But Robert said we could leave whenever we wanted. Is he lying about seeing Mom and the guys too? Like he lied about trapping us here? Like he lied about Dad?

Why?

Tears threaten to rain down, a scream teases the back of my throat. But before I really lose it, I hear a soft musical voice from somewhere in the shadows of the bathroom.

“Yes, you’re quite lovely,” the voice says. It’s rough and gravelly, but polite.

Ryder. Ryder is somehow in the belly of this bathroom.

“But my heart’s for someone else,” he says. “Now, I’m begging you, just a minute alone, okay?”

“But Master Wren said you’re not to be alone,” a soft, girly voice answers.

“Even to use the facilities?” Then there’s a pause. I imagine Ryder flashing this girl one of his lopsided smiles, the ones I couldn’t resist, even if I wanted to. “Thank you, Sister Ava. I’ll be out in a sec.”

I hear the softest of footsteps, and then an echoing tinkle of piss.

Ryder, alone. Ryder, steps away. And despite the fact that my own Standard goon’s waiting for me outside, I’ve got to see him.

I throw a towel around my shoulders, tiptoe past the stalls of the women’s bathroom, and follow the mirrored wall to a door, which opens into a dimly lit room of sinks. On the opposite side of the sinks, there’s another door labeled
MEN
. I dash across the threshold and enter the men’s stalls.

Ryder spots me before I can say anything. He runs to me, pulls me in gently, embraces me, like he’s making sure I’m real.

“Where are you guys?” he whispers. “I looked for Sky last night and someone else was in her room.”

I feel a twinge of jealousy but shake it off, just happy that he’s here, and he’s safe. “She’s at my dinner, but they kept us separated all day,” I start stuttering. “And I haven’t seen my mom—Robert talked at me for hours about Wren’s mission, which apparently we’re part of—Ryder, this place is crazy.”

“I know, they’ve separated us, too,” Ryder says. “My escort’s been telling me a little. Trevor got assigned to a ‘junior ward’ apparently, after he had this mini freak-out about being alone in a weird place last night. But I haven’t seen Sam. My escort won’t tell me much—just that he’s an adult, so he’s gone to the heavenly blue.”

“Wait, yeah, that’s where my mom is. Where the heck is it? Is it outside this hotel?”

Ryder shakes his head. “I don’t know.” He looks up at me, and his eyes widen, like he’s shocked I’m crying.

“Phee,” he whispers. “Oh, Phee, don’t cry. You’re tough. Your whole family is tough as nails. Your mom’s going to be okay. We’re going to get out of here.”

But I can’t seem to stop crying. Christ, I can’t even speak.

“Phee, you’re the strongest girl I’ve ever met,” Ryder whispers. “Listen to me. Start paying attention. The first step is finding each other. Note your floor, your hallway—your room number as you enter and leave.”

He pulls me in closer, and I feel the soft, silky hair of his forearms on the back of my neck. Then his fingers in my hair, comforting me. And my fear and anxiety start to melt, replaced by a warm, teasing feeling in the center of my spine.

“They’re keeping us isolated for a reason,” he whispers into my ear. “It’s up to us to find and save our families. Get Sky and find me, all right? Tonight. I’m in 825. I’ll figure out where Trev is somehow. Then we’ll find this heavenly blue and rescue Sam and your mom. I swear it.”

“Room 825,” I repeat, finally finding my voice.

And even though the world’s starting to crack and break open, that teasing feeling crawls up my spine. It tickles the base of my neck, and then crackles like lightning across my shoulders. And the noise about everything wrong with this place becomes quiet, and all I can think about is the guy in front of me. His warmth, his arms, his scent of leaves and daytime.

As he holds me, I close my eyes and stop thinking. Stop breathing.

My hands reach up and wrap around his broad shoulders. Then I lean my lips into his and push.

He pulls away. “Phee—,” he whispers, but he lets my name hang between us. I search his face for an answer. He looks . . . confused, but good confused or bad confused, I don’t know.

But I want to, I need to . . . does he feel what I feel? God, does he share it?

“Brother Ryder, what are you doing?” a female voice cuts across the stalls. We both look to the door.

Ryder’s escort has the door propped open, and she’s tapping her foot and shaking her blond head like she owns him. “You’re going to be sealed with me. Don’t touch her.”

It takes everything I’ve got not to run across the bathroom and clock her.

“Sister Phee,” Francis rumbles for me from somewhere inside the women’s bathroom.

“Find me later,” Ryder whispers. “825.”

Then he walks to link arms with his watchdog in the corner, apologizing like crazy to her before they’re even out the door.

I stumble back into the girls’ bathroom, my cheeks still on fire. Francis stands at the girls’ room entrance. “Where’d you go?”

I keep to the shadows, not wanting him to see me flushed. “I took off my clothes to dry them a little. You soaked me.”

That must satisfy him, ’cause he turns around without another glance in my direction. “Let’s go. Master Wren has missed our presence for too long.”

I follow my designated thug back to the table, my hair and clothes still thick and damp against my skin. A plate of delicious-looking apple stuff is at my seat, glistening in a china bowl under the candlelight. But I don’t want it. Wren and his psycho Standard can’t buy me off with dessert.

I push the bowl away and will Sky to look up at me.

She finally does, once Wren starts droning on about youth missionary duties. She sees me across the candlelit table—hair slick, clothes matted. Her eyes open wide, and she starts signing.
Are you okay?

It’s the first time we’ve spoken since our fight at the YMCA, and I want to say so many things. Things that signing just won’t do justice.

What happened?
she asks.

I slowly put my hand to the back of my neck and thrust it forward gently.
He tried to drown me—scare me is all. I’m
fine.

She nods, but I can tell she’s freaked.

I quickly point one finger towards my eye, then circle my hands forward, like I’m riding a horse with invisible reins
. I saw Ryder
.

Her eyes fly open.
What?

I nod towards the restroom, trying to remember our sister language signs for “shared” and “sinks.”
Near the shared
sinks, in the bathroom
.

She folds back into her seat for a minute. The relief on her face is obvious—but it’s not just relief. It’s longing, maybe even jealousy, that I saw him and she didn’t get the chance. It annoys me, that he’s between us now. That he’s just making the wall that we somehow built higher, making it harder to see her on the other side.

I want to be a bigger person right now, but her face, that
wanting
—it triggers something ugly in me.

Sky lifts up her palms.
Where is he now?

I think of Ryder’s hands in my hair, his lips on my lips—then I picture Sky holding his hand back at the YMCA, and how seeing it felt like someone took a knife and cut me. My mind taunts me with an image of Ryder’s hands in Sky’s hair, his lips on Sky’s—

Before I think better of it, I shake my head:
I didn’t find out
.

Sky collapses back in her seat, defeated.

I know lies have caused us nothing but trouble—Rolladin’s treachery, then Robert’s.

Now mine.

But I owe myself a chance. Just a minute alone with Ryder, without Sky around to make things more complicated. And once we finish our conversation, figure out if there’s more between us, then Ryder and I will grab Sky and find Mom and the rest of our family. It won’t change anything—no harm done, just a little white lie.

I carefully point at her, using my own water glass as camouflage.
Where’s your room?

She sits up again and wraps her fingers around her wine and water glasses, folding the right number of digits around each one. Nine, then two, then four: 924. Then she points to me.

I’m about to start signing my own number when Wren pushes away from the table. “Time to retire.” He nods to Francis and Quentin. “Take our esteemed new members to their quarters.” He looks meaningfully at me and my sister. “I’ll catch up with both of you in the morning.”

Francis pulls me away from the table, but I manage to point at Sky before he grabs my hands.
I’m coming for you
.

32    SKY

I lean against the glass wall in my bedroom, counting the minutes until Phee finds me. I’ve already spent hours combing Wren’s bedside bestseller,
The Standard Works: God’s New Test for America
, trying to figure out what other evils might await us in this hotel, seeing if I can learn Wren’s language of divinity and destiny and somehow talk our way to freedom. But the book is nothing but a condemnation of a dead world, a call to arms for the devoted—a pale shadow of the monster we’re facing now.

I try to lie down to relax, but I can’t seem to calm down, can’t seem to get a handle on my feelings and steer myself into a place of control.

My sister and I are part of the divine plan of a psychopath. My mom has been whisked away to some secret place called the heavenly blue, while Ryder, Trevor, and Sam are tucked away in the dark, secret corners of this cursed hotel. I think of Phee speaking up about leaving, and Wren punishing her with some time upside-down in a water basin.

There’s a chance, I’m realizing, that we may never leave this hotel again.

It’s been hours since dinner ended, and there’s still no knock on my door. Still no sign of Phee.

I torture myself, and imagine Phee and Ryder in the bathroom again. Even with all that’s going on, all we have to lose, I still can’t shake the jealousy. Still wish it was
me
that was being bullied in the bathroom, if it meant that I was the one who had gotten to see Ryder.

For a second, I wonder if she was lying, and is in Ryder’s room right now, browbeating him into liking her. I’ve never doubted my sister before, and it feels awful. Like I don’t trust her, which makes it feel even more like the entire world is unraveling, coming apart at the seams. I don’t think I’ve ever realized how much I need Phee to keep it stitched together.

I throw myself back down on the floor and will the calm, more rational side of me—the side that’s shrinking every day—to take over.
I’m sure Phee’s trying to find me.

Then a new panic grips my throat. What if Wren caught her sneaking out and she’s in trouble?

I grab my knapsack. I have to distract myself.

I first pull out Ryder’s gift,
Waverley
, and run my fingers over the cover, my cheeks warming at the memory of him giving it to me.
This
is what I should read to pass the time. But I glance again at the backpack, at that taunting, addictive spider and its web.

I pull out the disguised journal. I’m angry with it, want to tear it in two. As if this book of secrets represents everything that’s wrong with this island—the lies, the double crosses, the truth hidden in pages and stored in safes.

I thrust open the journal, cracking its spine in punishment, and try to take my mind off the present for a minute.

November 10—The temperatures have been quickly dropping outside. But we stay warm from one another’s body heat in the zoo prisons, and as POWs, we all get two meals a day.

And life promises to get better. Mary, or “Rolladin” as the Red Allies call her, has somehow made nice with the enemy. The general releases her from our cells sometimes and takes her to his barracks to consult with her. She’s given him information on where she last saw other New Yorkers and has helped him understand the city better. They’ve been strategizing the best way to use the zoo animals for food and clothing, and collaborating on how to plant crops in the Park for extra rations.

I felt like a traitor by association, selling out New York for a polar bear pelt, but Mary didn’t agree with me.

“All that matters now is right here,” Mary said, running her finger like a circle around her, the girls, and me. “And then, right here.” She pointed to the survivors in the zoo. “There is no New York left to protect.”

I just nodded.

I hardly ever fight her anymore. I don’t want to.

December 25—Christmas. After the year we’ve had, Mary’s present moved most of us to tears. She delivered it from the other side of the bars.

“We’re moving to the Carlyle Hotel.”

Whispers from the crowd: What? How is that possible? How did you manage it?

Mary shook her head, tried to calm us down, but she was all smiles herself. She knew she had delivered a miracle. “There will be guards on every floor and in the lobby. But we’ll have beds. And doors. And windows.”

The 6 train survivors were joyous, chanting, “ROLL-A-DIN. ROLL-A-DIN.”

“Mary,” I said, waving her over as the crowd bubbled over. “How did you do this?”

“I never gave them a reason not to trust me.”

She grabbed my waist and pulled me against her, the bars in between us. Phoenix on my back in a harness. Sky beside me, holding my hand. It was a rough kiss, but tender, promising things to come. And I thought, This is my family. This is us, in a dangerous, new, savage city.

“Someday,” Mary whispered, her eyes on fire, “this will all be ours.”

I shook my head and laughed, asked her what she meant.

She just jangled the zoo keys in her pocket and told me she had big plans for us.

She released us from our cages, tens, hundreds of us. We stumbled like mad, happy drunks into the freezing air and, guards flanking us, we crossed the Park and poured into the Carlyle Hotel.

I look up from the journal and think about Rolladin’s annual Christmas lecture at Belvedere Castle. It’s the first time I’ve thought about the Park in a while. I can close my eyes and practically hear Rolladin’s self-important speech echo through the Great Hall. But reading this, it sounds like maybe she
was
that instrumental. Because as dingy as the Carlyle is, it was better than the zoo was for Mom back then. It wasn’t freedom, but it wasn’t exactly prison, either.

I anxiously watch the door, praying for a sign from Phee.

But still, there’s nothing.

February 14—Winter has passed by quickly, easily. Short, quiet days where I curl up with the girls and read books in the Carlyle’s small library, or play checkers or chess with Lauren in the game room. Sometimes I even get a sliver of an afternoon with Mary—she’s barely here anymore.

Last week Bronwyn came back after disappearing into the Red Allies barracks for months. It nearly broke my heart when I saw her. Her once startlingly perfect face looked . . . distorted, as if it had been broken and healed over. And there’s now a small bump underneath her sweater. Three months pregnant? Four? I guess now that she carries extra baggage, her Red soldier is done with her, has tossed her like garbage back into the Carlyle slums. I wanted to roar at the skies, just tear down the walls of the Carlyle for this broken girl . . . but I’ve become an expert at swallowing screams.

There’s a few of them wading around here now, girls careless enough to get pregnant, eyes cast down, with small bellies that might as well be scarlet letters.

Women with no pride, no tribe.

Women with nothing left.

Sky won’t go to Bronwyn now—it’s like she knows she’s a different person. And after days of trying to break through to Bronwyn, trying to help her forgive herself, this city, God—everyone and everything I know she blames for what’s befallen her—I’ve let her be.

I pray for that baby.

March 1—The Carlyle was aflutter with news and rumors.

“The Red Allies are combing the streets again for prisoners,” Mary told us. “There’re still other survivors out there. They’re bringing them to the Carlyle.”

The others folded in on themselves with speculations and excitement. But I no longer had any hope. I’ve let it go, left it behind in the darkness, like Mary told me to, before yearning swallowed me whole. No, Tom and Robert were gone.

Mary pulled me aside as the others compared notes in the lobby.

“Remember what I told you,” she whispered. “Don’t trust anyone else who comes through here. We don’t know what their motives are. As far as you’re concerned, there’s only the 6 train.”

I nodded but didn’t give her anything more. She’d been talking to me like this recently, almost as if
I
was her prisoner, as if now there was something that separated us. And deep down, I knew there was—Mary had almost become our warden, both aligned with us and aligned with our enemy. I knew the pressure on her, the singularity she must have felt, weighed heavy. So I decided to cut her some slack and threw my arms around her. Sky mimicked me by throwing her arms around Mary’s leg.

“Don’t worry,” I told her. “We’re all yours.”

April 2—Another small band of prisoners has been brought to the Carlyle. They’re packing us in tight here, and the once spacious hotel now feels like a tenement.

Still, we’ll manage. We’ll adjust.

These past few weeks, Sky has become a little person. There aren’t too many toddlers padding around the Carlyle, let alone ones as happy as Sky, so people love her, and clap their hands in applause every chance they get. Her words have multiplied, and now she’s chatting up strangers, sticking her nose into other people’s business, making friends.

“She’s a cutie,” a man, about sixty, said to me from a couple of chairs away in the library. He’d been brought in with the most recent group of survivors, though I’d forgotten if he was captured in the subway or on the streets.

“Thank you.”

“What’s her name?”

“Sky. Well, Skyler,” I said. “She was born when the day was breaking open, and then my husband and I couldn’t name her anything else.” But the words felt odd as soon as they left my mouth, and I realized I hadn’t referred to Tom out loud in months. “Late husband,” I added, again without thinking.

I looked up into the man’s eyes. They were dark and serious, and I immediately felt uncomfortable.

“Sky, come here,” I said quickly.

“What’s your name, dear?” the man asked me.

I didn’t have to answer him, because Sky blurted out, “Mommy SA-RAH.”

“Skyler,” I admonished, and gathered her onto my knee as Phee slept on my other side.

“Is your husband Tom Miller?” the man asked me.

And then I couldn’t breathe. It had been so long since I’d heard his name. “I’m sorry. Did we know you? I don’t recognize you.”

The man moved forward onto the edge of his chair. “Apologies for the twenty questions. Forgive me. Tom was just a friend of mine. From the tunnels.”

“The tunnels? Where? How long was he alive for?”

“Oh dear, I—I’m sorry. I haven’t seen him in months. He and that artist friend of his . . . Robert . . . they left with those missionaries, who came down from that West Side hotel. He was upset after the summit. He was . . . looking for answers.” The man gave me a forced smile. “Tom always said, ‘My lovely wife will protect her only piece of Sky, even in darkness.’ I loved that. Your husband was a poet in the truest sense.”

“Wait,” I said, my whole body shaking. “Wait, where were you? Where was he?”

“We were moving around a lot, before we split,” the man said. “But we were trapped on the 1 line when the city was first attacked.”

“But that’s impossible,” I said. “Back in the summer, we sent Mary—our representative—with a list, to the E-train summit to compare the names of survivors. And his name wasn’t on any list.” Now my mind and my heart are both racing out of control. “Why wasn’t Tom on your list?”

“Of course I remember the E-train summit.” The man knew he had upset me, and he threw his hands up in surrender and shifted uncomfortably. “But Mrs. Miller,” he said, shaking his head. “Tom
was
our representative.”

My hands start shaking too intensely to keep hold of the journal. I throw the book aside, livid for Mom, enraged myself. The E-train summit—which Rolladin promised my mom she’d attended. Where she’d said she was jumped, her escort beaten and murdered. But if Rolladin had really gone to the summit, she would have found my dad. If she’d gone, Mom would’ve had our father.
We
would’ve had our father. Things would have turned out wildly different.

So why did Rolladin lie and say she went? Just to quiet my mother? Just to keep her, and our family, to herself? I guess Rolladin built an entire island premised on lies. So why not lie to steal, to
hoard
, a family?

Now I understand the full extent of my mother’s hatred.

I can’t imagine what the years of picturing Dad still out there in Manhattan must have done to Mom, wondering what could have been if Rolladin had attended the summit.

I think back to Mom’s face when Robert told her that Dad had found peace, that he’d gotten a second chance at the Standard. Robert’s words had released her, and Mom actually looked freer,
lighter
.

A sickening, clawing feeling crawls up my throat when I think back to Wren’s speech at dinner, how he’d said Dad laid his life down for the Standard.

Was anything Robert told my mom true?

What happened to Dad inside these walls?

What’s going to happen to us?

I scramble to my feet. I need to talk to someone about all this,
now
, and the only person who will really understand is Phee. Regardless of what’s going on with us right now, and how mad she got at me when I tried to figure things out the first time. I need her. I don’t work right without her. So I scramble to the door, journal in hand.

I creep out into the hallway, carefully look each way,
will
her to emerge from the shadows.

But still, nothing.

For a brief, paranoid moment, I wonder if I gave her the right room number, and I check the big handwritten laminated sign, hanging from a nail lodged in the door: 924.