Rebels (4 page)

No one ever bothered me with 374 around. “Just do everything like you mean it,” she told me. “And no one will ask questions.”

She should have picked another kid. I was always doing everything wrong. Just stay quiet, that's all that was required of me. I couldn't keep my mouth shut.

“She's gonna bottom out,” the others whispered, staring at me.

I got written up again and again.

One night 374 was braiding my hair before evening confinement. “You're the only one who can make my hair listen,” I told her. She smiled at that. Unlike me, she kept silent until recreation.

“What's ‘bottom out'?” I asked.

Her hands stopped moving in my hair. She sighed before braiding again. “Bottoming out is when you go away and never come back,” she said quietly.

“Like turning twelve?”

“Not exactly.”

“Like 241?”

“Yes,” she said. “Like 241. When you bottom out, that means the Orphanage decides to kick you out.”

“Where do they take you?”

“I'm not sure,” she said. She was working my hair more quickly now and pulling harder.

“But why . . .
ow
!”

“Sorry,” she said, easing up. She turned me around so I was facing her and leaned in close. “I won't lie to you, 242. I already know you can keep a secret.”

I nodded.
Lex and Samantha
, I thought.

“No one knows exactly where they take you, but probably the Lower Levels. The lowest, to be exact. Rock Bottom.”

“Like the stories. Of the mutations.”

“Don't listen to the stories. Rock Bottom's where they find most of us, you know. Bring us here to see if we're worth anything. And if we aren't, they just send us back.” This was a big secret, I could tell. Bigger even than our real names. “Rock Bottom isn't a nice place, either. I can still remember it. Orphans sent back there won't last long. They don't have the skills or strength.”

“That isn't right!” I squealed, horrified. “That doesn't make any—”

She put her hand over my mouth. “Of course it isn't,” she said calmly. “But you can't change it by complaining.”

“Then how?”

She smiled at me. “Someday we'll talk about that, but not today. I'm afraid your hair needs to listen more.”

Gently, she turned me back around to finish my hair. I had a million questions, but I knew not to ask. There was a long silence. The repetitive motion of her hands calmed me. At least for a few minutes. In the end, I couldn't help myself.

“Why do they take some of us and not others?” I said, trying to keep my voice as calm and quiet as hers.

“Lots of reasons.”

“What about 241?”

“The freckles, maybe. Those spots on her face. They didn't like them.”

I didn't understand, but I nodded anyway. I liked the spots. No one else had them. I'd thought 241 had gotten lucky to be so different.

Genetic flaw
was a term I wouldn't know the meaning of until I was much older.

“You have the most amazing eyes,” Samantha said then. “Like none I've ever seen.”

I had never noticed. Though I would spend time later on searching out just what had made her say that.

“But what if they take me?” I asked.

“They won't,” she said firmly. “I promise.”

“How do you know?”

“Because, 242, you're special.”

I smiled to myself. “And they'll never take you either,” I said. “ 'Cause you're special too.”

I really believed that. There was no one else like 374. She could cut the ration line and braid hair and everyone respected her. She and I would be fine.

She didn't say anything, just finished braiding.

But being special doesn't mean you aren't a dumb kid sometimes.

◊  ◊  ◊

Sometimes 374 would disappear for hours. When I asked where she'd been, she just smiled. “You know I can keep a secret,” I told her.

“But if I gave them all to you, you'd burst.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Someday I'll tell you. I promise.”

It was a promise she wouldn't keep.

My eyes popped open right before the official arise sensor. At wake-up, I liked to run over and stare at her until her eyes flickered open. “Oh, hi, 242,” she'd say sleepily. She'd yawn and tell me my hair looked crazy.

But on one morning, her cot was empty. In her place, a cleansing machine hummed, blowing the cot with a steady stream of antisepticizer. No matter how many times she reminded me that when she turned twelve she'd be gone, I was still shocked. I could barely move from her bedside. An orphan with stringy blond hair tapped me on the shoulder.

“I know where she went,” she said, even though she'd never spoken to me before. None of them had.

“She graduated,” I said.

“No, she didn't.”

“She was twelve,” I said, fighting back a sob. “She graduated.”

“No, she was still eleven,” she spit back. “She was bottomed out.”

“That's a lie!”

“No, it's not. We came in the same day. She wouldn't leave before me. Everyone knows it.”

I looked around. Kids were pretending not to listen to us. “Well?” I said to them. No one answered, of course. “Is that true?” I said louder. Pale faces pinched even tighter. One girl looked up and gave me a tiny nod before just as quickly looking away.

“Liar.”

“Believe what you want,” said the one with stringy hair. “But I heard Caretaker say it. Probably happened 'cause of you. 'Cause she spent time with you. And you're bad. Probably happened 'cause you get written up so much, and they figured she was the same.” Then she smugly smiles at me.

I knew another write-up wouldn't matter, so I finished our conversation with my fists.

She lost a tooth, and I won another write-up. But I was right: it didn't matter. I was still alone.

My own turning twelve was so far away, and 374—Samantha—created an absence I couldn't replace.

That night I cried, feeling more alone in my cot than I had ever been, fighting to stay silent so no one could hear my shame. I was still here, stuck, and I cried for the first and last time, overwhelmed by years of abuse for no reason other than being born into misfortune, and blessed with the knowledge that it was on me to make my life better. To become what I wanted to be. I made a promise to myself, one that I would die before breaking:
I won't need anyone else. Not ever.

Not ever, ever, ever.

“She must be initiated into society,” Waslo said, as though I couldn't hear him. As though I wasn't right across from him, lifting spoonfuls of pudding from the bowl in front of me, catching every word.

He had yet to realize the extent of my capabilities, I suppose. To Waslo, I appeared to be a normal child. However, I understood more than he could possibly know, and my memory was sharp enough to recall the smallest incidents.

I had yet to understand this could be used in my favor.

Though as much as I disliked Waslo, without him, there would be no Marius.

She is perhaps the loveliest woman I have ever seen. Most others agree she is fetching, though are quick to add a hushed “despite the obvious misfortune.”

Marius is a mere five foot two, a burden for which most Indrithian women would be utterly devastated. Had they not reached five foot eight by age thirteen, they would have already partaken of every alteration available. They would have sought out Rejuvenation Island for stretching treatments, subsisted on genetic cocktails, and willingly traded a finger for a few added inches. Though I am tall,
Marius has taught me that height is not everything. Even Governess, who by comparison is gargantuan, once told me Marius is rather brave. Marius needs not her pitying admiration, or anyone else's, to accept her genetics. Perhaps she sees things differently from such a low perspective.

Marius is beloved by all, myself included. I often wish Marius lived with me and not on another island.

When I was little, I once asked her if she might relocate to Helix. “Please!” I whined. “We have plenty of room!”

To this, she simply laughed. “Well, in that case, I would have to bring Waslo with me.”

I didn't ask again.

Unlike with Veda or Governess or even Marius, though, I was incapable of reading Waslo's feelings. I found this especially frustrating: my ability to read others filled me with confidence. Though I didn't speak much, I could feel what the people around me were going through. The boredom of a maid as she scrubbed down a corridor, the excitement of a gardener as he programmed new flowers in the orchard. In this way, I was never truly alone.

Yet despite my best efforts, Waslo emoted less than a synth-tree. For this reason, I scrutinized his every last gesture.

“Soon she must enter the rest of Indra,” he continued.

“But it is rather early for all this, dear,” responded Marius. “She is very young.” She moved toward me and gently pushed the hair off my forehead. I smiled up at her. I loved Marius. She was little, just as I was, and always kind to me.

“Perhaps not young enough,” said Waslo. “She is seven now. People wonder.”

“Let them wonder,” said Marius, though I felt her hesitation.

“That is not an adequate solution, my dear. At some point, she must know Indra as we do. I must speak to Governess first, of course. Affirm the necessity of proper discipline. The child has been given
too much freedom here, which will make the transition even more trying. I find it worrying how she will appear to others.”

“I, on the other hand, worry about
her
,” said Marius. I took another mouthful of pudding. Waslo put a hand to her chin and gently turned her face toward his own.

“I know you worry, dear,” he said softly, “as do I. But we have obligations, do we not?”

Marius nodded. Waslo's face changed suddenly, the hardness fading away. He smiled at her, eyes glistening in a way I found especially unnerving.

“My charming little thing,” he said. Then he put his lips to hers.

I'd thought such tenderness was not in Waslo's character. And to others, it wasn't. Soon after, his voice became gruffer when addressing Governess. “Must she dress like this?” he asked, noticing my stained smock and muddy bloomers. Governess acquiesced and forced me into a frilly frock that pinched in strange places. “Have you not groomed her hair?” Waslo would say, and soon after Governess would be drawing screams from my throat with each pull through my tangles.

I began to understand: when Waslo came calling, misfortune soon followed.

I would hide when the maid announced his arrival. In the end, Marius would find me, for which I would be grateful. As much as I disliked Waslo, missing Marius's visits would have been devastating.

Waslo and Marius might live on another island, but they visited Helix often. It seemed unfair, I thought, that they must be taken as a pair.

To cohabitate, I decided, meant spending all your time with someone awful.

“There you are!” Marius would squeal, kneeling low enough to see me underneath the desk in Father's study or buried under the fringed pillows at the base of Mother's air harp. “Found you, my little
firefly!” She would open her arms and I would crawl into the warmth of her embrace.

She was well aware, I suppose, of my locations: the places I felt safest were the ones that had belonged to them.

Mother and Father
. Governess used the words often, yet never explained their significance. Terms as familiar to me as my left and right foot, yet as foreign as the world beyond Helix. They were mysterious strangers, like characters in a make-believe. They had lived here on Helix Island, and now they didn't. They were connected to me, yet somehow not.

And yet, their rooms remained untouched shrines. As though they would return at any moment, Father to revisit his most recent deductions, Mother to compose a new aria.

Marius would never be angry when she discovered me, only wrinkle her nose at my misbehavior. Even her chiding was playful. “You mustn't run off like that, or perhaps one day we will not be able to find you.”

“You will always find me!” I would squeal.

“My love, what will we do with you?”

In the end, Waslo would be the one to answer that question. And his solution would be far worse than new frocks and tangles.

◊  ◊  ◊

I was going somewhere special. That is what Governess had told me that morning.

I was excited. Not excited enough to overlook being pinched in all the wrong places, though.

“But why must I?” I asked.

“Because all the other girls will have dresses as pretty as these.”

“But why should I look like everyone else?”

Governess didn't answer, just kept buttoning. There were so
many buttons running up my back, each tiny and difficult to fasten. I'd come to believe she might never finish and I would stand in this same spot until I grew up, the unfastened buttons popping off on their own accord as my body grew bigger.

“There,” she said, finally finishing the last. Together we looked in the mirror.

I hated what I saw.

A pale pink frock to my knees, layers of fabric lifting the skirt until it rose in a stiff circle around me. Ribbons winding around the entire horrible costume, their ends tied into elaborate bows, as though to keep me escaping my own body.

“Lovely,” said Governess.

“Yuck.”

Still, I couldn't conceal my smile. I was going on
a journey
. This is what Marius had patiently explained. I would meet other girls my age and learn all sorts of fascinating things and no, I could not bring Veda, but she would be right there waiting upon my evening return.