The Unquiet (14 page)

“Well,” Julia says, blushing, “the bridge is—”

“Okay, I'm gonna stop you right there,” Roberta says, holding up her hand. “It's dangerous enough that we're meeting like this. Am I the only one who thinks we shouldn't be doing things that involve blindness and bridges and possibly never waking up again tomorrow morning?”

We all raise our hands, and Julia coughs. “But that's the whole point.” She sounds young and mousy as she looks around the room at each of us, as if we're back at the cottages and she's trying to become one of us again. I want to hug her, and this surprises me. I want to tell her that there is no us, or if there is, she is more of a member than I will ever be. When Roberta suggests rethinking the list altogether, Julia's shoulders fall, but she hasn't given up yet, and underneath her breath she adds, “Gray found us some motorcycles. They're outside.”

The motorcycles. That's how Roberta loses her battle. One by one we make our excuses and shuffle outside as quickly as we can, heels clicking in excitement. I have never ridden
a motorcycle before, and the rule is this: one of us rides the thing while the other tries to stand on it without falling. “You're being really stupid,” Roberta hisses when she hears this plan. “Let's say we find out that we're not invincible tonight. Then what?” She doesn't wait for an answer; she storms back inside the house and from the window watches us put on our helmets. I stare after her. It's strange because she seems like a tough sort of girl, with her cropped hair and the stud in her nose, but she looks horrified at the prospect of riding with us. We leave her at the farmhouse, and although we don't go far, we go far enough that the noise of motorcycles and raucous teenagers will not wake anybody up.

Nothing is more terrifying than standing unprotected, willing your body to stay upright, to defy gravity. Nothing more than staring danger right in the eye; it makes my cheeks hot and my palms sweaty. But in this moment, standing here on the motorcycle, I do not feel any more afraid than I do on a daily basis. Robbie is driving, and at first he goes slowly, but I say, “Faster,” and then again. Faster, faster, but still nothing. It is the same as waiting to die in those bunkers when we were children, not knowing which ones of us would disappear before we could become our alternates. Still, I fight for it, shutting my eyes and holding my hands up. I am trying to
muster the feelings I'm sure a normal teenager would have. I am trying to prepare myself, trying to miss someone, anyone, but I am still me. I am me, and I can tell when the others are done that they feel the same.

Julia's list hasn't made us normal. It hasn't made us forget, and it's only when we're on our way back that Robbie tells us about Roberta. “You don't know this,” he says, “but her alternate had a brother who died in a motorcycle accident a few months ago. That's why she's being this way.”

“Dammit, Robbie,” Edith says, slapping his arm. “This is something you tell us before we leave her behind. I thought she was just being her usual controlling self. We have to go get her.”

“We have to figure out something else that she can do with us,” Julia says.

I am the one who comes up with the plan. I lead the group to the train tracks near the city where we can hear the howling noise getting closer. The game is this: to come close to something, to that thing, that ending, without letting it touch us. So we press our bodies to the ground in a line, holding hands. Edith on my left, Gray on my right, both of their hands warm and dry in mine. The only part of us missing is Alex. We're lying there for so long that I've almost fallen asleep.

When the train comes, it will crush me. It will tear me up into a thousand tiny pieces that can never come back together again. It is this feeling I am counting on. I fill my head with it until someone swears and we all scramble out of the way with only a hair's worth of time to spare.

But afterward I put a hand to my chest, and it's beating at its usual steady pace. As if I am not frightened enough. Nothing. Nothing is enough.
Why?
We ask this question all night. When we think of Madame, we are afraid. When we think of the cottages and all our training, and even now when we remember our examinations. But standing unprotected on a moving bike, waiting for a passing train, all the things that would frighten a normal teenager . . .

We are desperate now. I know this because just a few hours later Roberta leads us to the bridge. It is a small thing in the middle of nowhere. A crossover landmark, half broken down, with a large river underneath that must run all the way through our orchards. We have to drive nearly an hour from the farmhouse just to reach it, but the drive is worth the isolation it affords us. For a while there is silence as we stare down over the railing.

It's terrible because of what the water means to us, because of how much we hate it. Because of what it did to us, all of us,
growing up. Being dropped into the ocean as children was bad enough, but after Solomon, and after our living through Madame's method of conditioning, it is hard to overcome the idea that water leads to death and near-death experiences. Someone tries to estimate how deep the water might be, but the words are just noise in my ears.

I am not sure at exactly what moment this stops being a contest. I am not sure when it becomes important. I am only aware of my fingers on the buttons of my shirt. I let it fall to the ground, and then I stand there with the others, all of us half naked and shivering. We're supposed to count to ten and jump together. That is the plan. Edith and Gray are on either side of me. I count, “One, two . . .” but I close my eyes and jump on “three.” We all do.

Ten seconds are too long to wait to find out, to be afraid, to feel normal.

I fall too fast to do anything but scream. The moment I hit the water I lose track of everyone else. The river is cold as ice as it envelops my body, but I tell myself that all I have to do to survive it is swim. It is that simple.
Swim
, and the water will become nothing. I flap my hands until my body begins to move toward the bank. Next to me the others are doing the same, frantically. This is not the same as the train.
It is nothing like standing on the motorcycles.

This is Madame we are fighting against.

I am relieved when I reach Davis where he crouches and retches on the bank. I lie down on my back and try to catch my breath. My arms and legs are numb, but I don't care. My heart is beating so hard it might find a way out of my chest. I hear it. I
feel
it.

This is what we have been looking for.

The water will always be terrible. But I am relieved that there was something, that frantic feeling, that loss of calm. It became a different kind of game there for a while, but we have conquered the cottages. Not completely, but enough.

We stumble back to our farmhouse, collapse inside. We sleep the day away, and then we agree to spend our second night underneath the stars. We toast marshmallows around a fire and make up songs. And now our list consists of books we want to read, of films we want to see, of schools we want to go to. Mostly we're joking, happy to be around one another. Davis does the naked thing again, and Roberta threatens to cut off all the parts that are offensive to her. Davis swears, not sure whether she is serious, and stumbles back into his clothes, and for a little while all we can do is laugh.

At some point it stops being so funny. It becomes a little
sad, but that just means that we try harder to laugh over it. To pretend that nothing is wrong.
Robbie wants to be a dentist one day? Okay, ha-ha. Julia wants to teach kindergarten, ha-ha-ha.
The worst part is Edith. “I want children when I'm older,” she announces suddenly. “And a husband and a nice job and a pretty house.”

I immediately stop laughing. Julia and the others still try, almost desperately now, but Edith will not let go of her sudden melancholy. And without knowing what exactly she is sad about, I am suddenly sad, too. She stares down into the flames, watches her marshmallow burn without retrieving it, and says softly, “Do you remember when we girls had the procedure when we first arrived at the cottages, Lira?”

Everyone looks at me, and I blush. “Yes,” I say.

“We had it, too, in our cottages,” Roberta says. “Madame said it was a new procedure they'd just started doing. For a special kind of sickness that only affects girls. A sickness we could only get from being around boys.”

“The boys had an injection,” Davis says. “For some secret disease, too. We figured it out later.”

Edith touches a hand to her belly. Her eyes are glazed, and I have never seen her like this. “Is there anything they didn't do to us?” she whispers. She suddenly seems older. Infinitely
older, as if there is no touching her and all the wrinkles in the world are not enough to catch up. It is dangerous to be so sad, to be so angry. And it is easy to jump from a small thing like clenched fists to questioning our cause. She continues. “Do you remember Madame said to each of us, ‘Do you want to get better?' Every single one of us. And we had to say yes or she wouldn't do it? As if yes means anything to a kid. As if yes counts when you don't know what you're saying yes to.”

“Stop it,” Gray says quietly. I've almost forgotten he is here, but then he takes Edith's marshmallow stick from her and puts the flame out. “Let's talk about something else.”

No one says anything for a while. We can't think of anything to say.

In the end Edith attempts to make a joke of it. “It's just as well, I suppose,” she says. “With how much fooling around went on at the cottages, the world would be overpopulated by now.”

She forces herself to laugh harder. She acts drunk, but I know for a fact that she hasn't had anything to drink. Gray keeps frowning at her, and eventually she stands. They walk toward the farmhouse together. Davis tries to follow them, but I stick my foot out as he passes, and he falls. “What did you do that for?”

“It's none of our business,” Roberta says, though she has
her head cocked to the side, trying to listen.

Davis sits up and rubs his elbows. “You're such a bloody spoilsport sometimes, Harrison.”

I smile. “Thanks.”

We cannot hear their exact words, but they are arguing. They glare at each other when they return and sit on opposite sides of me. I hold my hands out in front of the fire. I am not cold, but it is something to do while the silence festers.

Nobody, not even Davis, knows what to say to fix the mood.

I nudge Edith with my leg. “What's the silliest thing you've had to do since you became a sleeper?”

My question works. She sits up straighter. “Oh, God,” she says. “That would have to be the time I had to let some idiot mug me. I was fifteen, we were at the farmers' market, and I couldn't exactly break his nose. So I had to stand there screaming like I was the weak pathetic human she used to be.”

We laugh. Davis gives his own exaggerated version of something that happened when he first left the cottages. An incident with a tractor that was harder to drive on their farm than it had been to simulate at the cottages, and all the crops he destroyed in one afternoon.

Eventually Edith is smiling, really smiling again.

Still.

One day we will look back and hate this night.

More and more I get the sense that we think our lives will be short. Shorter at least than they're meant to be. That whole children thing. There isn't going to be anybody in the world like me or Edith or any of us ever again. Right now we are a necessity, but one day they won't need us anymore. I think about the words Edith did not say. I think about all the Madames in all the cottages.

I don't think they expect us to live long at all. I don't think they want us to.

But how long past the war do we have?

W
hen I step out of Miss Odette's office a few days later, he is waiting for me. The rude guy from before. I almost do not see him in the dark and curse the fact that I never remember to bring a light despite the fact that the hallway has been dark for months. “What cardboard face?” he asks, and I jump.

When his flashlight comes on, I hold up my hand to shield my eyes. “What cardboard face?” he asks again, in that same barking voice.

This time I do not hesitate. “Well, I'd imagine that it's cardboard since it only has the one angry look. I figured it was
either that or plastic surgery.” He splutters. I take the opportunity to add: “If you were a person on the street I was walking past, I would still greet you. I don't know why you had to be such an asshole.”

I leave him standing there, gaping at me, and think that I will never see him again. But a few weeks later we're in front of the shop at the same time again. This time he pulls an apple out of his bag. “Here,” he says without meeting my eyes. “I've got this if you're hungry.”

I feel the confusion flood my face. “You're trying to feed me?” I ask after a moment, holding the apple as if it were poisoned.

The guy shrugs. He looks embarrassed all of a sudden. “You look like you need it.”

I recognize an insult when I hear it. I throw his apple onto the road. I pull my patched-up coat tighter around my body, and I walk away without looking back.

The next time, a box of biscuits. Which I actually don't mind, but they meet the same fate as the apple. Though this time he walks with me. He is still holding the skateboard in his hand, and I shake my head. “You're a very confusing person, you know.”

“I know,” he says, staring at me, and then he sighs
dramatically. “This is me trying to apologize here. I realize I was rude when we first met.”

“Okay,” I say, taken aback. When there doesn't seem to be a catch, I add, “Apology accepted.”

He holds out his hand, and when I shake it, he smiles. “Great. See? And now we'll get along.”

“Oh, I doubt it,” I say, pulling my hand back. “Anyway, why do you have that?”

He follows my eyes to his skateboard. “This? I'd never had one before. You ever wake up and have one of those days when you think,
Oh, crap, I'm twenty-three, and I've never even
been on a skateboard
. Or a bike. Or a horse. And you're shocked because you always
thought
you were more interesting?”

I give him a blank look. He shrugs and runs his hand down the skateboard. “It seemed like something I should have, so I just walked into a store and bought the first one I saw. You see, I've decided to renovate my life. I quit my job, got a haircut, bought a skateboard, started writing a play.”

We walk until the flower shop is out of view. I glance skeptically at the skateboard again and then at his shiny leather shoes. “So, how good are you?”

“Good?” he asks, and then he understands that I am still talking about the skateboard. He makes a face. “Oh, I'm not
actually going to get on it. God. I would never do that.”

A smile escapes my lips, unbidden. Who buys a skateboard just so he can carry it around while wearing a suit and expensive shoes? “I can't decide whether you're fifty or ten,” I say.

He laughs. “That's good,” he says. “It means you're wondering about me. Which means that I'm already more interesting than I used to be.” Before I can say anything to contradict him, he turns off onto a different street. “See you later.” When he walks away, he limps a little and grimaces, as if he's in pain. He might be wearing an expensive suit and holding a skateboard, but he's toothpick thin underneath. I suddenly understand that this might be more than friendliness. He might be a sick sleeper looking for someone to care for him, one of the jobs Miss Odette told me would be a possibility. And I've probably failed his test.

Good.

I stare until he rounds a corner and then decide to forget about him.

I ride my bicycle toward the orchards and pick Cecily up from school. “I'm in the mood for some crazy,” she says gravely the moment she sees me. I have no idea where she comes up with these things. We spend half the ride home trying to
come up with her
crazy,
with me fending off everything that crosses over from crazy to suicidal. Finally Cecily is sitting on my shoulders while I ride my bicycle, and she tells me it makes her feel like a flying bird. “Faster, faster,” she shrieks. “Lira, why are you going so
slow
? This is basically nothing.”

“Oh, well, I'm sorry that you're
basically
about to break my neck,” I say. Her schoolbag swings into my cheek. “What's your problem anyway?”

“I live for the thrills, Lira,” she says slowly, superiorly. “You wouldn't understand. Mathieu says his brother is going to jump from a plane tomorrow afternoon and land on his feet. Because that's what people do in the city. They live for the thrills.”

I squint at her. “Yeah, you know, most people who say that never get the chance to say that they shouldn't have.”

She is quiet for a while, and I make the mistake of thinking that it's because we're almost home. But just as we reach the orchards, she begs me to put her down. Suddenly I'm chasing her past the trees. I know where she is going even before we reach it. The river breaks off into a stream that has formed a small lake behind our house, that we sometimes sit by in the summer. “Just one quick swim,” Cecily pleads, even as I argue with her. “Just one. Philip, tell her.”

I turn around and find Philip standing there, frowning at the water. He has a bucket of soil in his hands, which means he has been helping Da all day. Then he looks at me. Cecily has him wrapped around her little finger like thread, so I know even before he does that he will grab my little sister and jump into the water with her. I resign myself to it and sit by the lake, watching Cecily wade in. But Philip doesn't join her; he joins me. Sits beside me and yells to Cecily, “We'll watch you from here.” She waves, and he waves back, laughs when she does a somersault. He grimaces when the water splashes him, but then he jumps up and applauds Cecily wildly, and she laughs. But he doesn't go anywhere near her. Or the lake.

I try not to let my hands shake. I force a smile and look away, pull a fresh blade of grass from its sheath.

Because I know the boy
she
loved is dead.