Unwind (7 page)

Risa sighs, trying to hold together a patience that has already worn through. “I'm sure you're very good at stealing, but I don't think it's a good idea.”

Connor appears insulted by the insinuation. “What do you think—people are just going to give us food and whatever else we need out of the goodness of their hearts?”

“No,” says Risa, “but if we're clever about it instead of rushing into this blind, we'll have a better chance.”

Her words or maybe just her intentionally condescending tone makes Connor storm off.

Risa notices Lev watching the argument from a distance.
If he's going to run, thinks Risa, now's the time for him to do it, while Connor and I are busy fighting.
And then it occurs to her that this is an excellent opportunity to test Lev, and see if he really is standing by them now, or biding his time until he can escape.

“Don't you walk away from me!” she growls at Connor, doing her best to keep the argument alive, all the while keeping an eye on Lev to see if he bolts. “I'm still talking to you!”

Connor turns toward her. “Who says I have to listen?”

“You would if you had half a brain, but obviously you don't!”

Connor moves closer until he's deeper into her airspace than she likes anyone to get. “If it wasn't for me you'd be on your way to harvest camp!” he says. Risa raises a hand to push him back, but his hand shoots up faster, and he grabs her wrist before she can shove him. This is the moment Risa realizes she's gone too far. What does she really know about this boy? He was going to be unwound. Maybe there's a reason for it. Maybe a good reason.

Risa is careful not to struggle because struggling gives him the advantage. She lets her tone of voice convey all the weight. “Let go of me.”

“Why? Exactly what do you think I'll do to you?”

“This is the second time you've touched me without permission,” Risa says. Still, he does not let go—yet she does notice his grip isn't all that threatening. It isn't tight, it's loose. It isn't rough, it's gentle. She could easily pull out of it with a simple flick of her wrist. So why doesn't she?

Risa knows he's doing this to make a point, but what the point is, Risa isn't sure. Is he warning her that he can hurt her if he wants to? Or maybe his message is in the gentle nature of his grip—a way of saying he's not the hurting type.

Well, it doesn't matter,
thinks Risa. Even a gentle violation is a violation.

She looks at his knee. A well-placed kick could break his kneecap.

“I could take you out in a second,” she threatens.

If he's concerned, he doesn't show it. “I know.”

Somehow he also knows that she won't do it—that the first time was just a reflex. If she were to hurt him a second time, though, it would be a conscious act. It would be by choice.

“Step off,” she says. Her voice now lacks the force it had only moments before.

This time he listens and lets go, moving back to a respectable distance. They both could have hurt one another, but neither of them did. Risa isn't quite sure what that means, all she knows is that she feels angry at him for such a mixture of reasons, she can't sort them out.

Then suddenly a voice calls to them from the right. “This is very entertaining and all, but I don't think fighting is going to help much.”

It's Lev—and Risa realizes that her little ruse has backfired. She had set out to test him with a fake argument but the argument turned real, and in the process she completely forgot about Lev. He could have taken off, and they would not have known until he was long gone.

Risa throws Connor an evil look for good measure and the three of them continue on. It isn't until ten minutes later, when Lev goes off to relieve himself in private, that Connor talks to Risa again.

“Good one,” Connor says. “It worked.”

“What?”

Connor leans closer and whispers, “The argument. You put it on to see if Lev would run when we weren't paying attention, right?”

Risa is bowled over. “You knew that?”

Connor looks at her, a bit amused. “Well . . . yeah.”

If Risa felt uncertain about him before, it's even worse now. She has no idea what to think. “So . . . everything that happened back there was all a show?”

Now it's Connor's turn to be unsure. “I guess. Sort of. Wasn't it?”

Risa has to hold back a smile. Suddenly she's feeling strangely at ease with Connor. She marvels at how that could be. If their argument had been entirely real, she'd be on her guard against him. If it had been entirely a show she'd be on guard too, because if he could lie so convincingly, she'd never be able to trust him. But this was a mixture of both. It was real, it was pretend, and that combination made it all right—it made it safe, like performing death-defying acrobatic tricks above a safety net.

She holds on to that unexpected feeling as the two of them catch up with Lev, and move toward the frightening prospect of civilization.

“You can't change laws without first
changing human nature.”
—N
URSE
G
RETA

“You can't change human nature
without first changing the law.”
—N
URSE
Y
VONNE

The mother is nineteen, but she doesn't feel that old. She feels no wiser, no more capable of dealing with this situation, than a little girl. When, she wonders, did she stop being a child? The law says it was when she turned eighteen, but the law doesn't know her.

Still aching from the trauma of delivery, she holds her newborn close. It's just after dawn on a chilly morning. She moves now through back alleys. Not a soul around. Dumpsters cast angular black shadows. Broken bottles everywhere. This she knows is the perfect time of day to do this. There's less of a chance that coyotes and other scavengers would be out. She couldn't bear the thought of the baby suffering needlessly.

A large green Dumpster looms before her, listing crookedly on the uneven pavement of the alley. She holds the baby tight, as if the Dumpster might grow hands and pull the baby into its filthy depths. Maneuvering around it, she continues down the alley.

There was a time, shortly after the Bill of Life was passed, that Dumpsters such as that would be tempting to girls like her. Desperate girls who would leave unwanted newborns in the trash. It had become so common that it wasn't even deemed newsworthy anymore—it had become just a part of life.

Funny, but the Bill of Life was supposed to protect the sanctity of life. Instead it just made life cheap. Thank goodness for the Storking Initiative, that wonderful law that allows girls like her a far better alternative.

As dawn becomes early morning, she leaves the alleys and
enters a neighborhood that gets better with each street she crosses. The homes are large and inviting. This is the right neighborhood for storking.

She chooses the home shrewdly. The house she decides on isn't the largest, but it's not the smallest, either. It has a very short walkway to the street, so she can get away quickly, and it's overgrown with trees, so no one either inside or out will be able to see her as she storks the newborn.

She carefully approaches the front door. No lights are on in the home yet, that's good. There's a car in the driveway—hopefully that means they're home. She gingerly climbs the porch steps, careful not to make a sound, then kneels down, placing the sleeping baby on the welcome mat. There are two blankets wrapped around the baby, and a wool cap covers its head. She makes the blankets nice and tight. It's the only thing she's learned to do as a mother.

She considers ringing the bell and running, but she realizes that would not be a good idea. If they catch her, she's obliged to keep the baby—that's part of the Storking Initiative too—but if they open the door and find nothing but the child, it's “finder's keepers” in the eyes of the law. Whether they want it or not, the baby is legally theirs.

From the time she learned she was pregnant she knew she would end up storking this baby. She had hoped that when she finally saw it, looking up at her so helplessly, she might change her mind—but who was she kidding? With neither the skill nor the desire to be a mother at this point in her life, storking had always been her best option.

She realizes she's lingered longer than is wise. There's an upstairs light on now, so she forces herself to look away from the sleeping newborn, and leaves. With the burden now lifted from her, she has sudden strength. She now has a second chance in life, and this time she'll be smarter—she's sure of it.

As she hurries down the street, she thinks how wonderful it is that she can get a second chance. How wonderful it is that she can dismiss her responsibility so easily.

Several streets away from the storked newborn, at the edge of a dense wood, Risa stands at the door of a home. She rings the bell, and a woman answers in her bathrobe.

Risa offers the woman a big smile. “Hi, my name is Didi? And I'm collecting clothes and food for our school? We're, like, giving them to the homeless? And it's like this competition—whoever gets the most wins a trip to Florida or something? So it would be really, really great if you could help out?”

The sleepy woman tries to get her brain up to speed with “Didi,” airhead for the homeless. The woman can't get a word in edgewise because Didi talks way too fast. If Risa had had a piece of chewing gum, she would have popped a bubble somewhere in there to add more authenticity.

“Please-please-pretty-please? I'm, like, in second place right now?”

The woman at the door sighs, resigned to the fact that “Didi” isn't going away empty-handed, and sometimes the best way to get rid of girls like this is just to give them something. “I'll be right back,” the woman says.

Three minutes later, Risa walks away from the house with a bag full of clothes and canned food.

“That was amazing,” says Connor, who had been watching with Lev from the edge of the woods.

“What can I say? I'm an artist,” she says. “It's like playing the piano; you just have to know which keys to strike in people.”

Connor smiles. “You're right, this is way better than stealing.”

“Actually,” says Lev, “scamming IS stealing.”

Risa feels a bit prickly and uncomfortable at the thought, but tries not to show it.

“Maybe so,” says Connor, “but it's stealing with style.”

The woods have ended at a tract community. Manicured lawns have turned yellow along with the leaves. Autumn has truly taken hold. The homes here are almost identical, but not quite, full of people almost identical, but not quite. It's a world Risa knows about only through magazines and TV. To her, suburbia is a magical kingdom. Perhaps that's why Risa was the one who had the nerve to approach the house and pretend to be Didi. The neighborhood drew her like the smell of fresh bread baking in the industrial ovens of Ohio State Home 23.

Back in the woods where they can't be seen from anyone's window, they check their goody bag, as if it's full of Halloween candy.

There's a pair of pants and a blue button-down shirt that fits Connor. There's a jacket that fits Lev. There are no clothes for Risa, but that's okay. She can play Didi again at a different house.

“I still don't know how changing our clothes is going to make a difference.” Connor asks.

“Don't you ever watch TV?” says Risa. “On the cop shows they always describe what perps were last wearing when they put out an
APB.
”

“We're not perps,” says Connor, “we're AWOLs.”

“We're felons,” says Lev. “Because what you're doing—I mean, what
we're
doing—is a federal crime.”

“What, stealing clothes?” asks Connor.

“No, stealing ourselves. Once the unwind orders were
signed, we all became government property. Kicking-AWOL makes us federal criminals.”

It doesn't sit well with Risa, or for that matter with Connor, but they both shake it off.

This excursion into a populated area is dangerous but necessary. Perhaps as the morning goes on they can find a library where they can download maps and find themselves a wilderness large enough to get lost in for good. There are rumors of hidden communities of AWOL Unwinds. Maybe they can find one.

As they move cautiously through the neighborhood, a woman approaches them—just a girl, really, maybe nineteen or twenty. She walks fast, but she's walking funny, like she's got some injury or is recovering from one. Risa's certain she's going to see them and recognize them, but the girl passes without even making eye contact and hurries around a corner.