Authors: M.P. Attardo
Tags: #romance, #young adult, #dystopia, #future, #rebellion, #future adventure, #new adult, #insurgent, #dystopia fiction
Intermix Nation
By M.P. Attardo
Intermix Nation
Mary Attardo
Copyright © 2013 by Mary Attardo
Smashwords Edition
http://maryattardo.blogspot.com/
This book is a work of fiction. The names,
characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s
imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be
construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead,
actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely
coincidental.
All rights are reserved. No part of this book
may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission from the author.
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Table of
Contents
For my mother,
my rock, my Riva.
Nazirah Nation is dead.
She stretches her mind, reaching for her
earliest memories and coming up empty. She remembers playing on the
sandy coast near her home in southern Eridies, the whitewashed
stone of her family’s cottage a comforting constant on the horizon.
She spent hours by the sea, a child of the sun. She roamed the
sand, collecting starfish and seashells that her mother fanatically
glued onto picture frames and proudly displayed throughout their
small home. Mason jars filled with smooth black pebbles lined their
fireplace mantle, coffee table, and bookshelves.
Outside, the water lapped at Nazirah’s feet.
She laughed and built sandcastles that kissed the sky. Lying on the
dunes with Cato, she swore that time could stop like this, and she
would feel complete.
It was a simple childhood, full of the naïve
optimism of youth. It was impoverished. But it was happy.
There was no hate there.
Nazirah remembers her thirteenth birthday
particularly fondly. Riva made her favorite cake, vanilla with key
lime filling, as a treat. Kasimir, fresh from an inspired trip to
the black market, brought Nazirah home a bicycle. They could not
afford such luxuries, Nazirah knew, but her parents said it was a
special occasion.
Nazirah remembers her joy the first time she
saw the bicycle, rusty and bent. She remembers Niko’s envious and
sullen glares over dinner, and how proud her father looked after
fixing it. All summer long, Nazirah rode the dirt paths around her
home, chasing stray dogs, accumulating bruises and scratches,
racing the sunset. Afterwards, she would walk sheepishly through
the front door, gangly legs trekking dirt. Her mother would gently
scold her, hand covering a smile.
There was no hate there, either.
Even in the bad times …
(when Niko tripped her and Nazirah broke her
arm and wore a cast for an entire summer … when her father got so
sick he couldn’t work and their food stores ran dangerously low …
when her parents told her she wasn’t pulling her weight, wasn’t
living up to her potential … when she was teased mercilessly in
school, called intermix, and ran home in tears for months)
… even then, Nazirah did not understand
hate.
That changed four months ago.
Nazirah came home late to a dark house. She
and Cato had been hanging out with some neighborhood friends,
sneaking swigs of homebrewed tequilux on the rundown boardwalk.
She remembers the crooked smile on her face.
She fumbled for her keys, dropping them and silently cursing. She
tiptoed through the front door, a low laugh slowly dying on her
lips. The scents of jasmine and verbena from the front garden were
quickly replaced by the smell of something else. Something foreign
and nauseating.
Something wrong.
Buzz fading, eyes adjusting to the low
light, Nazirah squinted into the darkness.
She only vaguely remembers collapsing to her
knees. Only vaguely remembers her strangled cry. Only vaguely
remembers the acidic taste of vomit in her throat.
Nazirah tries to recall her parents, once so
full of life and light. But now, everything is muted. Now,
everything is numb. Now, when she tries to recall their faces, all
she can think of is this … this moment of pure hatred.
Their bodies: awkwardly positioned on the
living room floor, bent at unnatural angles, so close they might
have been embracing. Their hollow eyes: open but unseeing.
Wet tears still clung to two sets of frozen
eyelashes.
And the blood. There was so much blood …
splattered on the walls, on the furniture, spilling from matching
chest wounds.
Her parents had once been so full of life
and light.
Now, they would never laugh again.
#
“If looks could kill, Nazi Nation.” Cato
slides into the empty seat on the bench. He playfully nudges her
shoulder, setting down his overflowing tray with a thud.
Nazirah stabs a shriveled carrot with her
fork, startled out of her lunchtime reverie. Not a reverie: a
twenty-four hour nightmare, repeating over and over in her mind for
months, with no end in sight, would be more apropos. Nazirah shifts
her body away from Cato, turning only to glare before resuming the
massacre of her plate.
She knows that Cato Caal, her supposed best
friend, is only joking. But she really hates that nickname. She was
teased mercilessly with it at school. In addition to her intermix
status, which already made her a pariah, her parents’ political
leanings worsened matters. But though they had been vocal about
intermix rights, they were hardly Nazis.
At least, Nazirah doesn’t think so. She
can’t exactly walk up to a Nazi and ask. Nazis have been extinct
for centuries, bygone legends from the Old Country – North
America.
Her thoughts turn to her parents once more
and a fresh pang of grief surfaces.
It is mid-August, four months since she
found her parents murdered. Four months since she became a homeless
orphan. Four months since her world so spectacularly collapsed
around her.
“Hey, Irri, you okay?” asks Cato, gently
touching her arm. “I wasn’t thinking about what I was saying. I was
just trying to get a laugh out of you.” The concern on his face is
clear.
Nazirah shakes her head a little, trying to
vanquish the ghosts.
Everyone said it wasn’t safe for her to
stay, that it was too risky, that she was tempting fate. So she
reluctantly agreed to abandon her childhood home, leave all of her
memories to rot, and come live at the rebel compound.
Not that she was eager to stay home
anyway.
Nazirah pauses, collecting herself. She
looks up at Cato, amber eyes a bit too bright, fake smile in
place.
Cato. Her best friend, who, against all her
protests that she secretly hoped he wouldn’t listen to (and he
hadn’t) had left behind his comfortable life in Eridies and come
with her. He had no reason to leave. His family was still alive
and, as a pure Eridian, he wasn’t in danger. But he was kind and
foolish, and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Nazirah squeezes his hand in gratitude,
gradually sliding her arm out from under his. “I’m fine, Cato,” she
says, mustering inauthentic cheerfulness. “I’m just especially a
bitch at the moment. The food here doesn’t help.”
Cato shrugs. He reaches over Nazirah’s body,
nonchalantly spearing some of the loathsome vegetables she has been
pushing around her plate. He lazily pops them into his mouth,
grinning widely. “Oh, okay; got it. That time of the month again
already, is it?” He chews, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.
Several nearby teenage boys snicker.
Nazirah’s face burns with embarrassment and
indignation builds inside her. Damn Cato! Even after thirteen years
of friendship, he is still a cheeky bastard. Her voice is a little
shrill as she responds, louder now because she wants those boys a
table over to hear as well. “No, it’s actually not, jerk,” she
informs him, punching him harder than necessary.
Annoyed, Nazirah pushes her tray out of his
reach. But she can’t hide the small grin that spreads across her
face, which she knows is what Cato wanted all along.
Nazirah is surprised whenever she finds
herself smiling. She always feels guilty about it afterwards, like
all of the happiness in her should have died the day her parents
did. It nearly had, she has to admit.
“Hey, that hurt,” Cato says. “Lay off the
protein.” Expressions exaggerated, Cato drops his fork and rotates
his shoulder, rubbing his arm. His dark eyebrows arch in a perfect
imitation of innocence.
Nazirah looks at him, unfazed. “Whatever,
you clown. You deserved it.”
Nazirah is momentarily distracted from their
conversation by loud laughter at a nearby table. She looks up,
gazes around the main mess hall. Long wooden tables line the
otherwise mundane room. Faded and cracked linoleum tiles lift from
the floor, while dusty old windows frame the walls. This used to be
a thriving dining hall, she was told.
Rebel headquarters are stationed on the
grounds of an old Eridian boarding school, where wealthy Eridians
once sent their children to learn away from intermix and the
impoverished. It was abandoned for several years, until the rebels
renovated it for a base. They had transformed it and the
surrounding grounds into a defense compound, a network of buildings
replete with concrete, steel, bunkers, and misery. Nazirah idly
traces her finger around the names carved into the table, watching
the rebels converse around her. Even with the threat of war looming
on the horizon, the majority of them look happy and at peace.
Idiots
, she thinks sullenly.
“So …” Cato’s eyes dart around and he leans
in conspiratorially. “Who’s got the lovely Nazi so pissed off this
afternoon?”
“Really Cato, that name’s not helping you
here,” Nazirah admonishes, lowering her voice a bit. “Besides, what
makes you think it’s a who?”
Cato laughs, dark brown eyes full of
mischief. “Please, Irri. With you … it’s always a who.”
Nazirah smiles genuinely this time. He is
right, after all.
Back in their coastal hometown of Rafu, a
subset of Eridies, Nazirah was never known for her grace or
charisma. She inherited her father’s loud mouth and it often got
her into trouble.
After her parents died, the rebels welcomed
Nazirah with open arms. They fed her, sheltered her, trained her,
and provided her with the safety that she had so brutally lost. But
that wasn’t enough for them. Her brother was a Commander, who had
been stationed at the base for nearly two years. The rebels
expected Nazirah to follow eagerly in his footsteps, taking up
their fight against the government with no questions asked. They
expected her gratitude and enthusiasm, but Nazirah could offer them
neither.
Nor does she want to.
Nazirah hears what they whisper about her,
in combat training and in the hallways. She is Nazirah Nation, the
bitch who lost everything because of the government, but doesn’t
care enough to avenge her parents’ deaths or take up their cause.
She is Nazirah Nation, the girl who won’t even cry over her loss.
Most people steer clear of her, claiming she needs space and time
to adjust. But Nazirah knows the truth: she’s a disappointment.