Infraction (15 page)

Do you think we could escape?
It all depends on this, whether someone like Jane—who's been
here long enough to have hair a foot and a half long—thinks it's
even possible.

She sits up and the bunk springs groan at her. She
nods her head.

Anyone ever done it?

She shakes her head.

Anyone ever tried?

She shakes her head again, and I allow my heart to
leap just a fraction. That's why they're so relaxed, and that's the
biggest advantage we have. The government is arrogant and will
never suspect that a tongueless girl could engineer something like
this. They're right—I can't. But with Jack, Mary, Madge, and Jane?
Who knows what we'd be able to accomplish.

It's crazy, but would you come with me?

Then Jane speaks her first word to me. “Yes.”

I want to wrap my arms around her right then, but I
figure I'd better start slow. I grin instead, and I'm met with
another one of her beautiful, crooked smiles.

“
When?”

It seems now that the language barrier between us
has been broken she wants nothing more than to speak.

Twelve days.

“
Where?” Her words are music, like
river water on rocks.

I look at my hands. This again is
the tricky part.
I'm from an ocean colony. We could go
there.

She freezes, and I'm worried she'll disappear back
into her sanctuary of silence and stone. The hatred I saw in the
house at the reclamation site flits across her eyes, but she
surprises me.

“
I knew there was something
different about you.”

I can't help but laugh. I try to do it quietly. The
screams have died off already, and the silence is heavy in my ears.
The soldiers would probably think it was just another hallucination
or side effect from an injection, but there's no way I'll raise
suspicion now, not when I have plans to make.

I think I can get a submarine.

“
I'll help you.”

I remember how fiercely she told Madge her feelings
about colonists. Jane sees it on my face.

“
I hate them. I don't hate
you.”

Can you go there if you hate them so much?

“
I hate why they left. I hate how
they abandoned us. If they're willing to help now, I won't turn my
back on them.”

She squeezes my hand with her short, slender
fingers. She has such nimble fingers. When I look at her I see a
blade of grass shivering in the wind, but her fingers are strong
and can do more than I can ever dream about. I need her help.

You've been here long?

She nods. “Three years.”

Outside won't be a problem.

“
No, it won't.”

Inside?

“
Yes.”

I sigh and prop my chin on my hands. I lean back
against the wall and strain my eyes to see the dark slash of ocean
beyond the trees.

“
The soldiers have never checked our
cells before bed.”

I perk up.
We could do it
at night?

She nods. “After dinner.”

That has possibilities.

“
Talk to Madge. She can help
too.”

I knew I would have allies. I
squeeze Jane's hand again.
Sleep. Talk to Madge
tomorrow.

Then I groan. In the cannery with the soldiers so
close, I don't know if we'll be able to talk, and this kind of
conversation will definitely be too intense for the mess hall.

“
What's wrong?”

Can't talk in the mess hall or cannery.

“I think we're done with the cannery. We finished
the corn and the blackberries yesterday. There will be something
new tomorrow. Maybe the warehouse for the things we found at the
reclamation site.”

After breakfast Jane and I enter the warehouse, and
it's filled with the murmur of voices. We have to talk about what
can be salvaged, what can be disassembled into its various parts,
what's worthless. The soldiers and agents allow these small
conversations. They keep an eye on conversations that go on for too
long or are too intense, but if we exchange a conversation over the
course of the work hours, they will never suspect. I hope they'll
never suspect.

Jane is too small for most of the jobs, so she does
the more intricate work that suits her fingers. She usually takes
strings from blinds and sorts the slats into piles by size or mends
old sheets and pillowcases.

Jane doesn't do well in reclamation, but Madge is a
force of nature here. Madge can find a use for just about anything,
and I can tell by the almost approving look on the agents' faces
that they appreciate her work. If they can appreciate anything, I
think this is the closest they would come. They leave Madge alone
because if they were to harass her like the other workers, she
wouldn't get as much done, and they know how valuable she is.

Madge's curly red hair flames out
behind her as she bustles down the aisles between work projects.
She still has the flinty look in her eyes, but she's purposeful. I
wonder if it comes from being a mother in a city
—
the need to make ends meet, to find
new uses for old objects. I remember dipping candles with Nell and
the way we used wicks made from the strings of blinds. It was much
the same there.

Most days Jane pulls away from me as soon as we
enter any work area and goes off to find a job of her own. Today,
however, she stays at my side and scans the warehouse for a pile of
materials. I'm doing the same. I want something that looks tricky
or full of possibilities, something that the agents will expect we
need Madge's opinions on. There might be enough time if I pretend
to be figuring out a problem.

Jane lingers near me like a sparrow who knows there
might be a few morsels tossed her way. She's so used to being on
her own that she wants to fly as soon as someone comes too close,
but she stays long enough to see what might be offered. It's a
tricky situation to be in. I'm actually surprised she agreed to
help me. Maybe the bread crumbs I offered were just tempting enough
to keep her around.

I point to a pile of shiny metal and black electric
cords. Jane smiles.

“
Toasters. Perfect.”

No one else has started working at this station, so
we claim it and sort through them. Would they want them
refurbished? Dismantled? I can see why Madge thrives on this so
much, trying to save something from nothing. I don't focus on the
problem too intently; I watch Madge wind up and down the aisles out
the corner of my eye. She hasn't noticed where we are yet. She will
once Jane gets her attention and we start our conversation that
will take up our ten-hour shift.

Madge finally steps between a pile of old blankets
and a stack of plastic pipes. She gives a half-smile when she sees
us.

“
Toasters, huh?”

I nod and raise my hands as if to
say,
Any ideas?

She shrugs. “Some of them might be able to be saved.
They're a luxury in the cities. We didn't have one, I can tell you
that.”

Jane bends down like she wants Madge to examine
something closer, her hair falling down to block her mouth from the
soldier and the agent across the room, and I busy myself examining
a toaster much too closely. Here we go.

“
We're going to escape.”

Madge goes rigid for just a second before assuming
her normal posture. I've got to give her credit for the way she can
handle just about anything.

“
When?” She picks up a toaster and
peers into one of the slots.

“
Eleven days.”

“
Where?”

Jane glances at me, and I nod almost imperceptibly.
I know that this part about me—being from the colonies—is essential
to the plan and Madge needs to know it, but I don't know how much
further I want the knowledge to spread. Mary told me so many months
ago how much some people on the Burn hate colonists—and rightly so,
in my opinion—and I've caught glimpses of that here. If the wrong
people were to find out, I don't know what might happen to this web
we're so carefully weaving.

I nod one more time.

Jane sucks in a breath. “An ocean colony.”

Madge does more than just freeze then. Her eyes
blaze, and there's such anger that swells over her face, I almost
stagger back. I look around to see if we've drawn any unwanted
attention. The agent by the door is typing something on her tablet.
She yawns. Yes, she has nothing better to do than babysit us. The
soldiers are patrolling the opposite side of the warehouse. I will
Madge to calm down.

“
How're you going to do that?” she
asks, her eyes trained on Jane.

Jane looks unflinching back at her, but she's done
enough already. I grab Madge's hand. So many people have found out
from other sources. I need to do the telling.

I'm a colonist.

She wrenches her hand away like I've
burned her. She does very little to hide the rage boiling on her
face. “What are you
doing
here?”

Jane comes to my rescue before I try to spell out
the words that will take way too long and say far too little. “Move
on for a few minutes, Madge. Please. Take a breath.”

Madge needs no coaxing. She turns and stomps away to
the next pile of junk. I can practically see the steam rising from
her hair.

“
That didn't go well.”

Did you think it would?

Jane pulls her hand away so she can inspect a
toaster. She grabs a screw driver and deftly takes off the housing.
She talks to me out of the corner of her mouth, her shoulders
hunching over again into her defeated posture. “No, but I wasn't
expecting that. Madge is usually so calm.”

She hides it.

Jane nods, staring at the guts of the toaster. I
marvel at the change that's come over her. She used to look beaten
down all the time. Now I see it as the act it is. She's a new
person in the same body. That faint ray of a possibility, the hope
I've given her with our plan, has invigorated her.

“
She's trapped it for too long.
She's a time bomb.”

I peer over a toaster to where Madge stalks down the
opposite end of the warehouse. She looks back at me, sees me
watching her, and jerks away.

She hates me.

Jane shrugs and uses her screwdriver to take more of
the toaster apart. “Maybe, but I doubt it. I think she just needs
to cool down.”

How will we do this?
I
gesture to the toasters, remembering we're supposed to be talking
about our projects here, but Jane knows what I mean.

“
She'll come around,
Terra.”

Before it's too late?

“
She'll come around. She gets worked
up quick and she fizzles quick.”

Sure enough, she literally comes around. She won't
look at me; she only looks at Jane. I can tell by the gleam in her
eyes, though, that she's all for escape.

“
I'll help you,” she says. She has a
clipboard now, and she's writing down what we've done with the
toasters and what more use we could possibly get out of them. “What
do you need?”

I move forward, ready to write the words, but Jane
puts a tremulous hand on my arm. “We think the yard should be easy.
We're worried about inside.”

Madge writes down a few words on her paper and says,
“Mm-hmm. That's right. So you're thinking that's my job?”

I nod, but she's still ignoring me.

“
Yes,” Jane says. “Any plan you can
think of.”

Madge pokes at toaster guts with her pencil. “I've
been thinking about that for way too long. I just never had
anywhere to go.” I hear the sadness in her voice. She has no idea
where her children are or if they're even alive. Escaping wasn't
really escaping if she didn't have somewhere to go.

Thank you,
I mouth. She still
refuses to look right at me, but I know she saw it.

Jane pulls the heating element out of a toaster,
straightens the wires, and places it on a table. “We need a plan in
place soon.”

Madge nods brusquely. “I know. You said eleven days.
For how many?”

Seven
, I mouth to
Jane.

She nods and glances around. As she spots the
soldiers, she tenses like a deer that's caught the scent of a
predator. She lowers her voice. “You, Kai, me, Terra, and three of
her friends here.”

“
That's pushing it.”

I grab her hand, and she doesn't
pull away from me. She sees the burning look in my eyes.
I won't take fewer.

“
Fine, but no more. Seven's risky
enough.”

I nod.

“
I'll talk to you about it in two
days. Don't ask me any more until then. We've talked long enough as
it is.” She walks away, leaving behind her a strange wake of anger
mixed with hope.

I can tell Jane wants to smile, but she won't with
the soldiers and agents so near. For them, she's still broken. Her
hair falls back around her face, and she hunches over the toaster.
We don't say another word.

When the intercom speaks several hours later, I'm
surrounded by a pile of dismantled toasters, and I swear I never
want to see another one for as long as I live. Who needs a small
metal box just for browning bread anyway?

A grin creeps across my face as I remember trying to
swallow down the awful bread I made in the gas station, and the way
Jack never complained. Funny things remind me of him and at the
most random times. Then Jane offers an imperceptible shake of her
head, and I quickly wipe the traitor smile off my face. I adopt her
stance: head down, eyes down, spirit stomped into the ground. If
I'm to last until the escape, I have to make them believe there's
no more fight left in me.