Pucker (10 page)

Panic makes my skin tingle. Things have escalated again suddenly. “Look, I was just trying to be nice,” I say.

“For Christ's sake,” says Dash. He stares at my face and his nose wrinkles with repulsion. “How long ago did that happen?”

“When I was a kid,” I say.

“Bet you don't have many friends.”

“No. No, I don't,” I say.

“Ever kissed a girl?”

“I don't see how that's relevant,” I say in a soft, tremulous voice. Then I screw up my face as best as I can (which is not easy to do when your skin is all puckered), as if I'm close to tears. For the record, I'm not; I've withstood far worse lines of questioning.

Dash gives me a disgusted look, then releases me so quickly I topple to the floor.

“You, my friend, better get with the program,” he says. “Know what the program is?”

I nod. My eyes are watering nicely. Dash is all blurry.

“Oh, stop your bawling,” barks Dash.

I fold my jeans and T-shirt into a neat pile, stuff them in the burlap sack, and hand it back to him.

After Dash leaves my room and the sound of his footsteps recede, I let the upper half of my body fall back on the bed. My feet I keep firmly planted on the floor. I've made it to Isaura and past my Host, at least for now.

NINETEEN

“S
HOWTIME,” SAYS DASH.

I wake to find him standing over me in the dark.

I sit up, totally disoriented. I've only been in Isaura for six hours, yet it feels like a week. I have been dreaming about Patrick teaching me a wrestling move called the Tombstone Pile Driver. I want to stay in the dream. It seemed so real I could smell the school gym: the rubber, sweat, and Dorito stench.

All the Hosts and my fellow immigrants are waiting for us outside. Because it's night I see Emma for the first time. She's taken off her gloves and pulled back her hood. The ends of her long curly brown hair are wet from where she's sucked on them. She smiles at me shyly.

The green has undergone a transformation as I've slept. A stage has been erected. Torches now line the cobblestone walkways and the entire population of the Compound has been assembled. By the looks of it, they're waiting for us.

Michael's Host, Nancy, sticks him with her elbow. “You first.”

Michael lets out a soft groan.

“I don't think I can do it,” he whispers. His forehead beads up with sweat. He breathes heavily, nervously looking across the green at the crowd.

“Sure, you can,” Jerome says. “Hundred feet, that's all. Hundred steps, it'll be over. Come on, we'll count them together.”

Emma takes Michael's hand. He pats her head like she's a small animal.

There are two long rows of benches and a center aisle set up in front of the stage. We have to walk down that center aisle to make it to the bench designated for us. Those last twenty feet are interminable. I can't help but feel this is a church and we are the motley wedding party. Luckily we lurch forward without having to endure any gawking. The Changed barely move. They sit gazing intently forward as if watching some movie only they can see. There are two empty benches up front. We sit in the front row and our Hosts sit behind us.

Dash leans forward and taps me on the shoulder. “Tonight you'll be witnessing,” he whispers. “We do this once a month.”

I get a sick feeling in my stomach. Witnessing. It has a religious ring to it.

“Welcome,” squeaks a voice. The curtains slide open to reveal an ancient man sitting on a tattered and stained red velvet chair. There's only a smattering of applause, as if the real star has been delayed and this act will now have to be endured.

“For those of you who have just arrived, I am Geld 32,783,” he says. Then he shakes his head. “No, Geld 32,784.” He looks upward as if consulting someone. “I think that's right,” he mutters.

I do a quick calculation in my head. This man has been in Isaura for almost ninety years!

The Changed begin whispering and soon they are having outright conversations. Geld doesn't seem to notice. He keeps speaking, but his voice gets softer and softer, and soon I can't hear anything he's saying. I have the urge to steamroll right over him too. I turn to Emma and ask, “Did you enjoy dinner?”

I can't believe I'm asking her something so stupid.

“Yes, I did,” she says brightly.

“Did you prefer the green beans or the corn?” I continue.

“Oh, corn!” she declares, looking like she's about to break into song and tap-dance.

I keep glancing back at Geld, who seems to shrink in size the longer he sits up there and the louder the audience gets. Finally he's taken away. Once he's out of sight, everyone becomes quiet again and I feel ashamed for ignoring him.

“My name is Mitsuko,” says a voice from behind me.

I swivel around in my seat and see a tall Japanese woman striding up the aisle. Her long hair is wound up in two buns on her head. She wears the regulation brown pants and blue shirt, but she doesn't wear the boots; she's barefoot.

“I've been Changed for ninety-nine days,” she says, walking onto the stage. She looks in our direction but doesn't actually see us. It's more of a sweeping glance that makes it appear as if she does.

“Honored Hosts.” She bows deeply.

Nancy 499 stands.

“I am ready for the questions,” says Mitsuko.

“Why don't you go back to the place you came from?” asks Nancy. “You have free choice. You can leave anytime.”

“I don't leave because I can do this!” Mitsuko cries. She lifts her arms over her head, does three quick hand-springs, and lands in a split.

A jolt of pleasure courses through me. When I see someone do something extraordinary, it makes me want to do something extraordinary too. The Changed do not share my pleasure. Murmurings of disapproval reverberate through the crowd.

“Mitsuko 99, I would expect this kind of behavior from a 24, not somebody who's nearing the hundred-day mark. The three Rs,” Nancy says.

Mitsuko collects herself. She presses her palms together as if in prayer.

“Ruined by chance, Redeemed by invitation, Regenerated by work,” she recites, her head submissively bowed.

Nancy nods her approval as if she were Chairman Mao.

The testimonials go on all evening and each one ends with a recitation of the three Rs. The last two Rs are always the same, but the first can be answered either “Ruined by chance” or “Ruined by genetics.” I guess in this way they account for both tragic accident and cellular abnormality. Finally it's over and everyone begins filing out of the benches and making their way to the dormitories except for us. Dash tells us to wait. He disappears for a moment and comes back with a bearded man.

“This is Adam 856,” says Dash. “He's been sketching you.”

“Your name?” Adam asks Rose. He's carrying a pad of paper.

“Rose Garabedian?” she says like a question.

“That's the last time you'll answer that way,” says Dash. “Tomorrow you'll be Rose 1.”

Adam writes Rose's name on the pad. Then he tears off the piece of paper and places it in her lap. Rose's chin wobbles as she looks at the sketch of herself, her legs strapped to a wooden chair.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask. “She doesn't need a reminder of how she looks. That's why she came here.”

Tears stream down Rose's face.

“It's my job,” Adam says. “What's your name?”

I shake my head. I don't want my sketch.

“Everyone has it done,” says Dash. “There has to be a record.”

“Your name,” repeats Adam.

I refuse to answer.

“Thomas Quicksilver,” Dash answers for me.

Adam scrawls my name on the pad, tears off the page, and hands it to me. I hand it back.

“You got it wrong. That's not my name. My name's Pucker,” I say.

Dash scowls but says nothing.

TWENTY

A
ND THEN I SEE HER. She's standing in the aisle, her head tilted to one side as if she's waiting for a cab.

I've never seen a girl with a gaze like this. It streams from her eyes creek-cold and clear as a November night. She has the look of someone who could have lived in the nineteenth century—no, all the centuries that have ever passed. She's long necked and has a generous mouth. Hundreds of lunar moths hover above her in the trees. Even though she's standing still, she appears to be moving.

My cells feel like they're being rearranged and I can only think of one thing: I can't let this girl see me before I get my new face.

“Hurry up,” I say, trying to move Michael along, hoping she hasn't seen me yet.

There's no rushing a five-hundred-pound man and it's too late anyway: the girl is staring at us openly. She's the first Changed (other than our Hosts) to have done so. In the minutes it takes us to reach her, my heart beats out a tattoo of distress. I think of my favorite painters. I recite them like a litany: Caravaggio, Magritte, Vermeer, and Modigliani. The musicality of their names calms me.

“Hello there,” I say as we approach, and immediately cringe. I sound like a librarian.

She sticks out her hand. I go to shake it and she quickly withdraws her arm, leaving me hanging. Had we known each other, had we been old friends this would have been funny. But given our circumstances, it's hostile.

“That wasn't very nice, Phaidra. Keep it up and you'll have to go through orientation again,” says Dash.

Phaidra looks at Dash with amusement, her arms folded across her chest. Around her neck she wears a delicate filigree chain. I know from my
Barker's
that all the personal possessions of immigrants are confiscated. I wonder how and why she got away with keeping it.

“It's all right,” I say, not wanting her to get into trouble.

Dash turns to Phaidra. “Shouldn't you be getting back to the dorm?”

She shrugs.

“Let me rephrase that. Get back to the dorm,” he says.

Phaidra shrugs again, as if nothing he could ever say would matter, then saunters off slowly.

Dash watches her go, and, despite myself, I watch her as well.

“She's trouble. Get her out of your mind right now,” says Dash.

“She wasn't in my mind.”

“Sure, she wasn't.”

Phaidra is so beautiful it's hard to imagine she was ever not that way. “Why's she here?” I ask.

“You mean what was wrong with her?” says Dash. He smirks. “I'll never tell. That's rule number one. We don't discuss what brought us here. That's why none of the Changed looked at you tonight. You're invisible until you're Changed.”

“Then why wasn't I invisible to Phaidra?”

Dash rummages around in his pockets. “No idea. Must be something special about you. That what you want to hear? She saw beneath your monstrous face to your handsome, noble self?” He pulls out a pack of cigarettes, shakes one out, and places it between his lips.

That's
exactly
what I had hoped.

“You were Phaidra's Host?” I guess.

Dash peers at me through squinted eyes and inhales deeply. “Aren't you the perceptive one?”

“You had her before me?”

I cringe when I say this, realizing how it sounds. What I meant to ask was if Phaidra had been Dash's recruit before me.

Dash knows exactly what I meant, but he decides to toy with me. He laughs cryptically. “You could say that.”

Jealousy rockets through me. I can taste it in my mouth, dirty and copperish. This is crazy. I've just met the girl, but I can't stand the thought that Dash has been with her. Now the necklace makes sense. She has it because he let her keep it.

“She's had a hard time giving up her wild ways. If she doesn't watch herself, she's going be in a boatload of trouble,” says Dash.

I wonder what a “boatload of trouble” means here among the Changed. How is punishment meted out? I don't know. But one thing I do know is that the brighter the shine, the bigger the shadow—and Phaidra glows like a klieg light.

TWENTY-ONE

I
SNEAK OUT THAT NIGHT to do reconnaissance. Partly because I need to find out if I
can
sneak out and partly because I'm going stir-crazy. By eight that evening Dash is snoring away.

I'd forgotten about this. Everyone goes to sleep early in Isaura because once it gets dark, there's nothing to do. I have little desire to sit around the kitchen table and watch the candle burn down to a stub. Dash has locked me in my room, which I find more than a little creepy, but I climb out the window easily enough and drop to the ground.

Tonight I intend to find my way back to the portal. I want to make sure that it's still there and that I can get back on my own.

I get lost, but eventually I find the tunnel. It's deserted, completely unguarded. I guess no one ever tries to sneak out of Isaura; I find this really depressing. I walk through the tunnel and stick my hand out into the cone of shimmering light that pours down from the sky. The air nips at me gently, like a kitten.

It's a perfect summer night. I'm seventeen years old. I should have no cares other than what I'm going to do on Saturday night. But that is not my life. That has never been my life.

I step into the light. I think of our apartment. Its worn couches, its blender and coffeemaker. The electricity, the invisible current of energy that warms us and keeps our rooms lit. The portal begins to tug on me. I stagger backward and grab the hedgerow with two hands. I can't stop thinking of my mother. What's happening to her now? Are the visions coming so quickly and in such a torrent that she's no longer even conscious?