Downburst (8 page)

“I’m Kit.” And then I remember. I’m not Kit anymore.
Kava!

“Where are you from?” she asks.

“Winnipeg,” I answer, getting something right.

“A Canadian,
eh
? That’s cool. I’m from Seattle. What’s your number?”

“I don’t have a cell phone.”

Lila laughs. “Good one.” She waits expectantly, and when I say nothing, she asks, “What number did they assign you?”

Number?
Now I remember.
What number
was
that?
“Um … ”

“Did you forget?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“Well, check your Quil.”

“What?”

She walks toward me and grabs my wrist. Then she slides her finger over the screen of my watch. Suddenly, the
6:34
is replaced by something else. The temperature. Then the date. Then my bunk assignment. Finally, a
273
appears on the band.

“Two-seventy-three. That’s too bad,” Lila says. “I’m one-fifty-eight.”

I don’t know what to say. What exactly
is
this thing on my wrist? And why is my number bad?

“Should we go to dinner?” Lila asks.

“Sure,” I stutter. I climb out of bed and twirl my hair into a bun. I can tell without looking that I didn’t do a good job.

When she sees my bandaged hands, Lila suggests we walk instead of use the pole. As we plod down the ramp, I notice that most of the bunks have received occupants while I’ve been asleep. Not all of them though.

Lila points to one of the empty beds. “Guess my sister was right,” she says. “She told me there’s at least one person from every group who doesn’t make it.”

I purse my lips together and breathe out slowly. There must be a logical explanation—Lila doesn’t seem concerned.
But neither did Jeremy when he said no one would come looking for us.

“All part of keeping the testing grounds hidden,” Lila chirps. “The year my grandfather came to the camp was the year they caught the spy. He got to watch them torture her until she broke. The whole camp did!”

What!
The floor dips away from me, and I almost trip.

“Torture?” I stutter.

“Yeah, you know—when someone impersonated an initiate? They started with her fingers.”

This time I do trip.

“Are you okay?” Lila asks as I scramble back up.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I try to swallow, but my throat is too dry.
Will they torture me if they find out I’m not Aura?
I blink rapidly to control the dizziness, and when we walk across the rope bridge from
wakemo
fourteen to
wakemo
thirteen, I have to fight to keep my lunch down.

As I stagger across the wooden slats, I notice a gleam on the forest floor. I peer over the rope railing at a boy standing on the ground below. He raises his hand, and all I see is a blur of metal whirring through the air before a tomahawk sinks into the tree in front of him. He walks over to the trunk and yanks the weapon free then runs his finger across the blade. Suddenly, I see the switchblade in the Shredder’s hand, see my fingers being chopped off, and the boy and the ground whirl away from me. A blend of sandwich and apple leaps into my throat.

I clamp my teeth together and straighten up quickly. Lila’s curls bounce in and out of focus as I stumble after her. I turn my head to the right and then the left, taking in the wilderness that rolls out on all sides of the camp for hundreds of miles. If they decide to torture and kill me, no one would ever know about it.

I make it to the dining hall without throwing up, but the pressure in my stomach tells me I won’t be able to eat a thing. I look around the room, full of initiates now, all of them wearing brown, beige, or green, laughing and joking just like the counselors had been. Some of them have wet, recently showered hair. Others are still dusty and sweaty, as if they’ve only just arrived. I notice dimly that the check-in tables have been moved elsewhere, probably so that late arrivals won’t have to fight their way through the crowd.

The mob is gathered around a large buffet table brimming with food. While we wait in line, my eyes dart rapidly in all directions, refusing to focus on any one object. It’s then that I detect the retractable metal curtains along the tops of the windows.
This room can become like the steel room downstairs.
I scoop some mashed potatoes onto my plate and attempt to ignore the buzzing in my ears.

There are hundreds of people, and as we look for a seat, I try to invent names for some of them, but I can’t concentrate long enough. Instead, I scan the faces of the initiates around me and look for Charity. I don’t see her, but I do spot Gander—and Dee and Dum.
So they did make it.
I lower my head as Dee turns in my direction.

“Do you see anyone you know?” Lila asks.

I shake my head. “You?”

She looks around. “A couple. The girl with the black hair over there, that’s my friend Holly. And that boy getting a slice of cake is Lester. Oh, and there’s Rye. We go to the same school. Knowing him, he was probably one of the first ones here.”

I glance to where she’s pointing, at a table not far from us. A boy with brown hair is talking with his friends.

“He’s something, huh?” Lila sighs. “I spent the whole trip ogling him. Too bad he’s taken.”

“Too bad,” I say, but I’m not sure I even saw his face.

We’ve just found a seat when the sound of a whistle makes the room go silent. Everyone looks toward the stairs as Naira, the lady with the gray-flecked braid, steps onto the floor and climbs a small platform.

“
Manewa
,
initiates!” she says. “And congratulations. You’ve passed the first stage of your
maitanga
.” Everyone cheers. “My name is Naira,” she continues. “I’m this year’s
Takaito
, and I’m pleased to inform you that so far two hundred and eighty-four of our anticipated three hundred and three have arrived. That’s a new record!” More cheering.

I furrow my brow, press my back against the chair, look up at the ceiling. But the room is spinning there too, so I look back down at my plate.

“Anyone who arrives after midnight will be sent home, as the rules dictate,” Naira says. “In the morning, we’ll send out search parties for the stragglers.”

I raise my eyes. Search parties? Did I hear her right? But I thought …
Idiot!
Of course they weren’t going to let those kids die!
C’mon, Kit, really? You believed Jeremy—the guy whose idea of harmless hazing means throwing a bag over someone’s head and threatening to kill them?
But that still doesn’t answer my other questions. What about the strange language? The guns? The torture?

I’m missing Naira’s speech, so I try to pay attention. “On Day Six,” she continues, “we will celebrate your success and announce your recommended placement among the Yakone. The seventh day you will return home—more comfortably than the way you arrived, of course.” The crowd chuckles.

Yakone. Maybe these people belong to a tribe. That would explain the language.

“Tomorrow, you will have the morning to rest and relax,” Naira concludes. “Breakfast will be served from seven to nine; lunch, from eleven to one. Our first competition will be held at two o’clock in the Aerie. Enjoy the rest of your evening.” She places a fist over her heart. Everyone in the room mimics the gesture, so I do as well. Then Naira steps down from the platform, and the conversations resume.

Even though the cramp in my gut hasn’t disappeared entirely, some of the tautness begins to evaporate, and I can feel color returning to my face. The guns must be for the competitions, the tomahawk too.
See, there’s a logical explanation for everything.
That means there’s one for the torture as well. No need to panic. I’ll just pretend I know what’s going on, get through the next six days, and everything will be fine. Then they’ll take me back to civilization, and I’ll get on with my fresh start.
I regard the food on my plate. Maybe I will be able to eat something after all.

I’m working on a piece of cake when a girl with flawless dark skin and five piercings on her left ear comes over to our table. It’s Lila’s friend, Holly.

“Lila!” she says. “The kids from Billings brought marshmallows! We’re going to make a campfire and roast them as soon as it gets dark. Out past number twenty.”

“Sweet,” Lila answers. “Kit, do you want to go?”

Finally, something normal.
I open my mouth to say yes then remember the rule. “I thought fires weren’t allowed.”

“Well, obviously,” Holly says. “So we have to be careful.”

As much as I would love some s’mores, I can’t risk getting in trouble and drawing attention to myself. “I’m really tired,” I tell them. “I think I’ll just go to bed.”

“Suit yourself,” she replies.

When we’ve finished eating, we
take our trays to a conveyor belt at the edge of the room and exit
through the tunnel.
Holly and Lila walk me back to the bunkhouse then head to
wakemo
twenty for the campfire, leaving me standing on the porch listening to the crickets, wondering what I’m going to do for the rest of the night.

Suddenly, I hear singing. A group of initiates is walking through the forest below, their clear voices bouncing off the trees. The song is in that Yakone language. I close my eyes, and for a moment it’s like I’m a child again, trying to decipher fragments of French music on the radio.

I enter the bunkhouse—there’s nothing for me to do out here. There’s nothing to do inside either, so I brush my teeth and get ready for bed.

When I return to my bunk, I push aside the pile of trash on my mattress then slip under the sheets. Before my eyes seal themselves shut, I look at the sturdy walls around me, grateful that at least I have somewhere to sleep, that I’m safe from the cops.

I wake up several times the next morning but only for brief intervals—my dreams have too firm a grasp. My nightmares, I should say. In one nightmare, I’m in a shooting contest, and Diva shoots me instead of the target. In another, a zombie version of Aura exposes me as an imposter, and Naira shoots me. In yet another, I get lost in the woods, and men in black tattoos shoot me. After eons of this, I finally force my eyes to open all the way and make myself sit up, exhaling as I lean against the wood panels, blinking in the sunlight, remembering that
no one
is going to shoot me.

I look at my Quil. My number,
273
,
still
circles the band. I slide my finger along the screen, the way Lila did, and the time appears in its place.
12:07.
I rub my head.
How did I manage to sleep for so long?
I climb out of bed and grab my towel.

On my way to the showers, I glance at Lila’s bunk. It’s empty. Most of the bunks are. Two of them contain sleeping occupants—late arrivals, probably—and one of them has never been touched, as the pile of clothes testifies.

When I return to my corner of the bunkhouse, I dress in a green shirt and a new pair of pants, and by the time I’ve plaited my hair and brushed my teeth, it’s almost one.

I enter the dining hall through the glass tunnel again. The sun playing in the leaves makes the outside world shimmer, and I stop to admire the craftsmanship of the tunnel, the way it feels like I’m floating with the pine boughs and the birds.

Lila is inside. When she sees me, she waves me over to her table.

“There you are!” she exclaims. “You’re quite the heavy sleeper. I threw a pillow at you this morning, but it didn’t even faze you.”

“I guess I was tired.”

“I’ll say,” she agrees. “Don’t worry though. You didn’t miss anything.”

We eat our lunch, making small talk about the weather, about how warm it is, how windy it is. I glance around, meaning to look for Charity, but instead, I find myself caught up in the design of the room. Last night I didn’t fully appreciate how perfect the details were, how comfortable the furniture was. I relax into my curvy chair, listen to the popping fire by my feet, and stare out the window at the resplendent landscape. The ground slopes gradually downward from the meetinghouse, and everywhere I look I see trees. Endless evergreens beneath a sapphire sky.

We finish our meal much too quickly. “Ready to go to the Aerie?” Lila asks.

“All right,” I say.
Let’s see what this is all about.
We leave the meetinghouse, and Lila leads the way, breaking every now and then into a skip. We cross the first rope bridge, which leads to
wakemo
one, and take the next bridge to
wakemo
two.

As we walk, I begin to understand the layout of the camp. There are five clusters of bunkhouses, each with four buildings. The five bridges from the meetinghouse lead to the first bunkhouses in each grouping, and more bridges connect those bunkhouses to the other three in their set, like a star constellation.

Once we reach
wakemo
two, we follow yet another bridge, this time moving away from the bunkhouses altogether, and before long, I see it: a gigantic ball of sticks and branches propped up in the trees like an enormous bird’s nest.

The bridge takes us straight there. We walk through the open double doors, and then we’re standing in a narrow hallway that extends in both directions, following the curve of the structure. Directly in front of us are several bins. A counselor removes two facemasks and padded jackets from the containers and hands them to us. Lila puts hers on without question, so I do the same. The counselor points us to the left. We follow the hallway around the bend, and then the walls open up and I gawk at the sight before me.