The Unquiet (22 page)

Julia told.
Julia
.

Who else would have known exactly where to stand in order to lure Edith off-camera?

“Go,” Gray says suddenly. He looks so angry I stumble backward. He looks almost as if he thinks . . .

I try to see things from his point of view. They all have been friends for years. I was the newest member of their group. I was the one who didn't agree with what they were
doing and the one they couldn't trust. Nobody else knew. If I'd even hinted, just once, about the farmhouse to my handler, this would have happened. This would be my fault.

“I didn't—I wouldn't—” I stammer.

His voice is a shout now. I have never heard him shout before. “Get lost. Lirael, get the fuck out of here.”

I go.

I retch again before I get on my bike, but nothing comes. My stomach hurts, and my head spins.

Edith
, I think, and as I ride,
Edith, Edith, Edith.
It is all I can think. I swipe at my face whenever the road gets blurry.

This is why I don't trust anybody. This is why we can't trust anybody. None of us.

Julia will become a handler for this. She will not have to work for anyone anymore; it will be the other way around. I will sit in front of her, and she will smile at me, that same innocent smile. “Hi, I'm your new handler,” she will say. She will wear expensive shoes and a suit. She will reek of expensive perfume. They only cost her four lives.

I learn an important lesson today.

About myself.

At the end that's the only person any of us is really looking out for.

“O
kay, I've done all the research,” Cecily says when I pick her up from school. Even though she barely fits anymore, she climbs into the basket of my bicycle, sits at an odd angle, and squints up at me. “I think we should go shopping. I mean, mostly for you because you need an improvement, but if you want to buy me anything . . .” She pretends to consider it. “Actually,” she says after a moment, her voice unnaturally squeaky, “I was thinking, and there's this album I want that all my friends—”

“Oh, God, not another album, Ceilie,” I groan. “It's not happening.”

“But Mathieu says—oh, fine. But can we at least get the dog? You know, the one I told you about
ages
ago.”

I roll my eyes. “You know,” I say, “you're supposed to start big and go small, not the other way around.”

“Says who?”

“Also, it doesn't count when you whisper it in my ear when I'm sleeping.”

“So, you did hear,” she exclaims. “And do you also remember saying yes?”

“It's not happening,” I say again. “But nice try.”

I understand perfectly how this conversation will end before it has even started.

“Okay,” Cecily says, and sighs. She hums under her breath, I ride. I feel uneasy. One of us is more powerful than the other today, and I am not sure which. I am careful on the roads, careful to pay extra attention as I pedal. The farther out of the city we go, the quieter we both become. The farther we go, the more I cannot believe that I am taking my sister back. Back to the orchards that I promised her she would never see again. “Past things have to stay past,” I told her. But perhaps sometimes the past doesn't stay where it is supposed to.

The conversation is on replay inside my head. Cecily stomped around the apartment on one of her tantrum days.
“But everything's fine,” I told her, always so perplexed whenever she got like this. “I told you. I've been there many times. The orchards look
great.
”

“So, then why won't you take me?”

I shrugged. “There's never a good time.”

It was a lie. All I have is time. But the trees are dead.

“I think you hate me,” she said. “That's why you won't take me back. You just hate me.”

I said nothing.

I am not her mother. I am not her sister. I was trained to be a sister, for years, but that doesn't make me one. I am sometimes so out of my element that we storm into separate rooms and stay there, I in the dark for hours, she with her latest toy. I shake my head clear now as the road grows bumpy and untarred. The side bushes have grown, and the path is muddy, but the sun flickers in a promising way. Maybe spring, maybe soon, it says. Cecily kneels in the basket and holds her hands up. A bird. She has not been a bird in a long time, and I have not been her wings.

The thing we're not talking about fades and stays back in the city air behind us. The nightmares. Last night she screamed so loudly I was afraid there was someone in her room. I came ready to fight off a sleeper. But Cecily's eyes
were wide, as if she did not recognize me, her face red and bruised, as if she'd been clawing at herself.

It was a dream, she said. But she wouldn't tell me about it. She pressed her damp face against my chest. “You have to take me back,” she said instead. “I have to see the orchards. They need me.”

Now when we stop, I expect her to burst into tears. I brace myself as I let my bike fall to the ground. But my sister simply bends and straightens her school socks, and when I catch a glimpse, her eyes are made of steel. She walks purposefully through the trees, and I follow, wondering again about her dreams. About what frightens her. It is too quiet here, and the trees are completely void of fruit. The scents linger, though. Of betrayal. Of death. Of memory. Black and whites to contrast the green of my pea coat, the red of Cecily's rain boots.

“What does this tree need?” she asks me suddenly, stopping.

“I don't know,” I say. The answer is automatic, and Cecily looks irritated. She stays quiet, though, her forehead puckered with concentration as she takes everything in. I know already that we will spend the evening here, and Cecily will do the only thing she remembers, the thing Gigi did when she was well. Walk through the orchards, both hands outstretched
to touch a tree trunk. “A moment of warmth in case it has forgotten,” Gigi said.

I am like Da. I do not believe that ghosts ride the wind, or that people can whisper goodwill to trees, or that trees can whisper happiness back into little children. I don't believe in magic or stardust that will rain down on the ones who wish hard enough. Those are pretty ideas, but they are not the science of a star, a bullet, or the things that make a person good or bad, or bleed.

When Cecily stops again, I walk into her.

“Is this one going to survive?” she says, pointing to a thin tree.

“I don't know.”

This time she plants her hands on her hips. “Yes, you
do
. You just don't want to. If you tell me, I'll know it, too, and then you don't have to worry, I'll look after the trees for us.”

I ignore her and keep walking, but she has more questions.

“If you take my half of the orchard money from the bank, will it be enough to buy it back?”

I pretend her question is a valid one.
This was a mistake; we're not coming back here,
I want to say. But I shrug. “Maybe for the house and a few acres of apple trees.”

“Okay,” she says, nodding. “Okay, that's good.”

I watch her planning her future, and pity changes my mind. I want to give her something to hold on to. I walk over to the first tree she touched. “It takes years for a tree to realize it is dying,” I tell her. “It will be here next year. They all will. There is time.”

She nods at me, smiles this time. I return it.

There is money from the orchards, money to live on, but it won't last us forever. For Cecily, if she's still around years from now, it might last her awhile. She probably won't be. I cannot think about that. Sometimes, though, I wonder past eight-year-olds and think of fifteens, of seventeens, of twenty-fives. I am not sure whether these futures are mine or hers.

I think of the look on Gigi's face the morning after Da died, when she saw me putting on my coat. She didn't ask where I was going, but I could tell she wanted to. I said nothing to reassure her. When I got to the garden behind the flower shop, climbed down the ladder, I was afraid the office would be empty. I had no idea how to find Miss Odette any other way if I needed her. But she was there.

She did not seem surprised to see me.

It was the usual. The blood tests, the questions, the graphs. A refill on my pills, and then she said the thing I'd been
expecting. The real reason I was here. “Lirael, I can make some arrangements for you, speed up the cottage training process. You can have a real sister. One of our own in Cecily's place as soon as you want.”

I stared at her.
There is another Cecily,
I thought, but the words barely penetrated my mind. Of course there was another Cecily, born after my parents gave me up, after I was sent to the cottages. She didn't matter to me. I was thinking about the fact that I had been right. They didn't fully trust me. They'd sent Da's alternate to replace him, and that had failed. Now they wanted to send another one to keep an eye on me.

Why?

Maybe Julia had told them I'd been at the farmhouse with her. Or perhaps Madame had warned them about me, her weak little girl.

Miss Odette leaned across the table and held my hand like a friend, like a mentor. I let her.

This was a test, another one to see where my loyalties lay. The tests never end.

I tried to stay calm, but my hand shook in hers.

“Why do I need another sleeper?” I asked, meeting her eyes. “I thought I was fine on my own.”

She didn't hesitate. “You can accomplish more missions
together,” she said. “And with the hangings, it is safer this way. Two is better than one.”

But she was lying. I didn't need another sleeper to protect me; if anything, an eight-year-old sleeper would be the one to need my protection.

My confusion turned into anger so quickly that I couldn't hide it. I removed my hand from Miss Odette's and reached down for my boot. I pulled out the knife I kept there and slid it across the table toward Miss Odette. “Here,” I said, and I let the remaining words speak for themselves.

I was tired of all their tests. I was not Edith, who had been a traitor. I was nothing like Julia, either, but I was definitely not Edith. And if they could not trust me, then it should all end there, in that room. Better a knife I could see than a bullet in my back. Better then than later, when I would think I was safe again.

Miss Odette's eyes widened. I couldn't imagine what she was thinking. She picked the knife up, but she only turned it over in her hand; she didn't leave her seat. Minutes passed. When she still didn't use it, I stood and walked toward the door. I had my fingers on the doorknob when she finally spoke again, clearing her throat. “Lira, you haven't answered my question. About your sister. Would you like her replaced?”

I turned around and found her watching me.

I knew the wrong answer. And I knew the right one. I opened my mouth, knowing what I was going to say, already knowing before I'd ever come.

“Will you bring me here again?” Cecily asks, tugging on my arm as we ride home after our orchard visit.

I tell her the truth. “No.”

She doesn't argue. Just pretends to be a bird, all the way back to the city. Then she rests her chin on the table and watches me paint.

I watch her back. Sometimes the sister who sits down across from me is actually too calm, too docile these days, the way children are when they pass through the cottages. Yes, she is younger than I was when I passed my examination, but that doesn't make it impossible.

Miss Odette does not need my permission to kill my sister.

A little girl with brown eyes might have washed up from the ocean. And she might be waiting somewhere now, or this might be her.

Nothing is more frightening than not knowing exactly who it is you are standing in front of. Sometimes you cannot trust your own family entirely.

Cecily laughs, and I open my eyes. “You've done it again,” she says, pointing to my hand. I am holding a tube of blue paint upside down and have squeezed most of it out onto the floor. I jump up and run for the mop, trying to clean it up before it stains. Cecily helps me, and by the time we're finished, our hands and knees are blue. “You always waste all the paint,” Cecily says with a sigh, but I am barely listening. I am still thinking about what I have to do, and I am not here.

“Lira?” Cecily says, after a while. There is concern in her voice, but I cannot snap out of it.

There is a delicate balance between a thought and memory. They both feel exactly the same, the way your fingers go sweaty and your heart races. You're standing on the edge of a railway track all over again and the train is coming and you're about to die. Then you open your eyes and realize that you're a sister, a daughter, a friend and that you are supposed to be breathing and that you are supposed to be here.

But I cannot be here. I cannot be a good sleeper and sister. One of those things has to suffer. Tonight, when we go to bed, Cecily waits an hour before she tiptoes to my door and pushes it open. She climbs into my bed and curls up next to me. She thinks I'm asleep. She whispers, “I am learning to be strong for you. For one day when you can't be strong and I can.” And
then she goes back to her room, not knowing what kind of damage she has just done.

Those words haunt me.

When I finally open my eyes, those words are still in the air, but I am alone in my room, lying in the dark, knife always underneath my pillow.

She may have been crying when she whispered them, but I don't go to her room to check on her.

This is harder than I ever thought it would be
, I tell myself.
But I'm doing the best that I can.

Yes.
That was my answer.

I said it calmly, as if it meant nothing to me. I told Miss Odette that I wanted Cecily replaced with her alternate.

“But I'll kill her myself when the time is right,” I said. Miss Odette smiled, nodded, but I could tell that she wasn't completely happy with me. I don't know why I said that last bit, about killing Cecily myself, why I didn't take it back. The last thing I needed was to give my handler fresh reasons to distrust me, but there it was. And here it still is now.

A whole year has passed.

Any day now I'll kill her.

Any day.

That is what I am supposed to say.

I hate the city. I hate the noise and the people. I miss the smell of apples and peaches and the calm in the country. But Cecily is safest here, where for the most part I hide her without her knowledge, where she thinks living in an apartment with five locks and being walked to school and back every day is something everyone does.

I do not trust the world with her.

She does not know this yet, but the world is not on her side.

I know what that feels like.

The afternoon after we visit the orchards it seems that chaos falls from the sky like a dead bird. Men and women crowd the streets as we walk home from her school. Fights are breaking out. I abandon my bike and pull Cecily close to me, pushing past people as carefully as I can. I ask a woman carrying her own child what is happening, and she points to the sky. “They're disappearing,” she says breathily. Inside one of the shopwindows people are crowding around; a television flickers. On the screen is a world where all the streets have collapsed and the air is black with smoke and ashes. There are fires. Holes in the ground. There are people who have lost their entire families and have nothing else to do but wander
the streets because they have gone mad with grief. A caption underneath the television has the word
Earth II
in large letters. I haven't seen my Earth in so long that I do not recognize it. I cover Cecily's eyes too late. She clutches my hand and starts to cry. Despite all this, I am calm. Until the woman next to me adds: “Some of them have managed to come here. Some of them are right here among us.”