The Unquiet (27 page)

A
fter a few months I am back at the flower shop again. My assignment in Bayard is over. Is it intentional that Julia always winds up standing next to me on new assignment days, so that we are picked together? And then she smiles at me, as though she honestly means it.

Oh
, I realize. She thinks I am like her. She thinks I walked away from Edith and Gray and everything that was wrong in the farmhouse. She doesn't know I killed Da's alternate. She doesn't know Cecily is alive.

“I can speak to someone for you,” Julia says, leaning close
to me, and there is something horrible in her voice. A quiet respect for me, as if I am the inspiration for who she is. “When all of this is over, you'll be safe from—well—” She shrugs, and it confirms everything I already guessed. This new world we're creating isn't meant for sleepers. Handlers maybe, but not sleepers.

My hands are stiff at my sides. I make myself smile back. “Thank you,” I lie.

I pitied Julia once, but now I find myself almost afraid. Of the cold twist of her lips, the scowl that she offers the rest of the world. She walks too fast, and I hurry to keep up.

I hope I look like her.

I hope I am nothing like her.

We are given water duty as our new job. We are allowed to choose two more teammates. Julia chooses Gray. She still doesn't notice the way he won't look at her when she talks, how he stands as far from her as possible, or the way his fists clench whenever he sees her.

I don't know anybody else, so I choose the other girl standing next to me. A girl with purple hair who tries to hide the fact that she cannot stop coughing. Her eyes are heavy, and she sways a little. I figure she will benefit most of all from water duty.

“I'm Leah,” she says, holding out her hand.

Only then do we recognize each other. She used to make animal shapes with paper when we were in the cottages. We even slept in the same dorm.

She is not the same girl she once was, but I cannot figure out why. The purple hair? The sick greenish hue of her skin? Or is it the long scar down the side of her face? On their own, none of those things should make me forget her.

“Don't worry,” she says with a sad smile. “Nobody ever recognizes me at first glance.”

It has only been four years since the cottages. But looking at Leah makes it feel like a lifetime.

On our first day we row out into the middle of the water where the portal is. We sit in our boat and act like Madames. We pull out all those who come through the portal. There are fewer and fewer every day, which is just as well. We are becoming weaker. Our bones groan, our noses bleed, and we are only good enough for the water. Julia sits with Gray, says things to him, and he says things back. They have their backs turned to us, and every so often Julia leans closer to him. Hours pass before I understand that she is interested in him. That there is nothing wrong with being together now that the war is under control. A twinge of surprise and something else, something unidentifiable, passes briefly through me.

“They're having serious trouble balancing our medication,” Leah says, shivering violently underneath her blanket. I can hear the noise her teeth make each time they meet, and her eyes are yellowed, only half lucid. She has made only one paper bird today, a small pink swan that floats on the water for a full minute before it sinks. “But Madame says that they've almost got it.”

“I'm sure she's right,” I say.

The surface of the water remains calm. Nothing and no one come up from the portal. Gray asks how Leah is feeling and furrows his brows each time she leans over the boat to throw up. She wipes her mouth and apologizes afterward. “I think I had something bad to eat,” she says, trying desperately hard to stay positive. I can see her veins through her skin.

I hear myself say, “It was probably the sandwiches Julia made.”

“Hey,” Julia says, but she's staring at Leah with something akin to horror. She meets my eyes, and I read her message there:
We'll make it. Me, you, and Gray. We won't be like her.

Leah dies on our fifth day on the water. We've barely rowed out far enough.

We take the boat back to shore, and Madame has someone carry her body away. I still remember the look of hope in
Leah's dull eyes. “Maybe the medicine is starting to work,” she had said, staring up at the sky like it confused her. “I'm actually feeling kind of better.”

“You look better,” I'd lied.

At least at the very end it is a quiet affair, almost a secret. We fall asleep and don't remember how to wake up.

The next day Julia wraps her arms around herself, her eyes wide, and she is quiet. She sits with Gray. I sit on the other side of the boat, staring out at the water. Today we rescue a man and his entire family. They tell us, as we pull them out, that there is only 35 percent of our Earth left now. Less than half, and most of it in shambles. Only the mad ones and the sick ones are left. I stare into the water for so long that I don't feel Gray come up beside me, and we sit like that in silence. He watches the water, too, and then he puts his hand right next to mine on the edge of the boat so our little fingers are touching, but he doesn't say anything.

Behind us, the man is trying to have an animated conversation with Julia about what this new Earth is like. “Is it clean? Safe? Nothing disappearing?” he asks.

He gets a nod in response.

Julia is still shocked by Leah's death. At the inevitabilities that surely lie ahead for her. It has only just now become
apparent to her just how disposable we all are. We have stopped taking our pills, but it doesn't matter now. They were never what we thought they were, and whatever button needed to be pushed to trigger their effects has been pushed. There is more than enough poison flowing in our veins to kill us.

She answers every question the man asks with “Yes.” No matter what he asks.

“But how will we live?” the man asks. “What houses will we be assigned?”

“Yes,” Julia says.

The following day she is the same way.

Despite what she did to Edith, it is getting easier to be around her. It is easy to see that she thought she was protecting herself all along. She did it wrong, aligned herself with the wrong people, but her goal was the same as that of all of us. To survive. To live.

I will never forgive her for her choice, but I cannot kill her either. The most I can do is keep my back turned and stare out at the water, thinking,
I cannot die like this.

I cannot die like this.

Here, doing this. I cannot die like Leah, on a boat, pretending that I am going to get better. Buried by people who will not remember who I was the moment I am in the ground. I think
this, standing next to Gray, our hands touching for the second day in a row. Today is going to be exactly the same as yesterday, minus the man we rescued. But then Gray turns to face me, waits until I meet his eyes before he continues. “You don't get to punish yourself, Lira. Every wrong thing you have done, I have done, too. We are exactly the same, you and I. Why do you think you're the one who deserves to be alone at the end?”

I shake my head. “Gray, I—”

“You're good in spite of what they wanted you to be,” he says. “You're good, and that's why you're different, and that's why I love you. You think it's a flaw. That you have to hide it. But it's the very best thing about you. And there are many, many other things.”

I open my mouth and shut it again. I do this three times before I give up. I look down at my arms. I am so cold these days I wonder whether the sun is playing tricks on us. Maybe it is really winter instead, and the stones on the ground are covered thickly with ice. Is anything in the world as real as we want it to be? “I don't know what to say,” I admit finally.

Gray shakes his head. “I wasn't expecting you to say anything. But if you want to end this on the basis that things are going to get complicated, then you should probably know that they already are, for me.” A small smile twitches on his lips. “And have been for a while.

“Give me a day,” he says softly. He waits until I meet his eyes before he continues. “I know why you're watching the water like that. I've been thinking it, too.”

He sits down suddenly. His body is dying, too. I sit next to him. Julia watches us quietly, her own eyes lost in a place I cannot imagine. I hate that she is here. I hate that neither I nor Gray has done something terrible to her yet. Worst of all, the way she doesn't mention the promises Madame has made her, of how we will be the only sleepers to live through this. She says nothing at all.

“Just one day,” Gray says. He takes my hands, but I am the one who lowers my head to kiss his. Each one of his knuckles, which are bonier than ever now, and then his palms. He pushes the hair from my face like he used to, and when my eyes meet his, I am sad, but not really.

“Oh,” Julia says suddenly, staring at us.

“Just one day,” Gray says again.

I whisper, “Okay.” He kisses me, and I allow myself to think the thing I have been thinking for nearly all of my years in this world.

I want my freedom.

I want to go home.

W
e plan carefully. We have to ask for special permission from Madame, but that's easy. We tell her that we want to spend the morning on the beach instead of our rooms, so we can watch the sunrise. We are allowed to ask for things like that now. Sentimental things. Our favorite box of chocolates. A new pair of shoes. A new dress. Perhaps they feel guilty. Now that the war is mostly over and all that is left is a bunch of sick sleepers, the people of this world can tell themselves that they did only what they had to in order to survive. Perhaps they have decided that if they are kind to us, then they
are not monsters. Especially now that we are almost dead.

In the state we're in, I suppose Madame assumes we cannot get up to much. She says yes without even glancing our way. I tell Julia about the plan when we are alone. I say, “You have to do this one thing for me. Because you said I was your friend.”

She doesn't understand why I would want to leave. “But this is our home now,” she tells me.

I shake my head, dismissing her words. “We need a boat,” I say. “No one can know.”

She is silent for a long time before she nods. “Okay,” she says. “Leave it to me.”

Gray drives us to the orchards with supplies for Aunt Imogen and Cecily. He has been doing this for months, even after I told him we were over. I suppose he and Cecily still enjoy each other's company. “She asks of you every time,” he tells me, stopping the truck, but I just turn my head away and look out the window. I don't want her to see me like this.

But even as I watch him walk away, somehow I know what will happen. He will tell Cecily I am here. She will insist on coming up. Gray has walked only a few feet away from the car before I climb out. I pull the hood of my coat over my eyes. We don't say anything as we climb down the well. Cecily
runs to him first before it registers that he is not alone, and then she squeals.

I wear the very best smile I have. It's not much, I know, but I wear it for her. I've never done that for anyone before. She tells me how terrible life is, living underground, all the things she misses doing. Meanwhile Gray is talking to Aunt Imogen. “When your supplies run out this time, come up,” he tells her. “There's money inside that bag. It's enough for a place to live. When you come up, move far away from here, and wherever you go act like everyone else. Act like you belong there. The world is different now.”

He doesn't tell her that there are pockets where the fighting is still strong, though. Where sleepers still work to control towns and cities that are run by members of the Resistance. They trained their own assassins—and possibly turned some of our own—to murder as many sleepers as they could. And they were even good at it. All those hangings. All those couples with red ribbons tied to their hands. Many sleepers, the healthy ones, have been shipped off to these locations. There will be no mercy for these resisters when they are captured. They will die in all the worst possible ways we can imagine.

That is what we have been told.

But a small part of me isn't so sure. A part of me wonders whether it is enough that there are people out there like Da was, like the real Lirael was, who are strong enough to try, to fight for their lives. And maybe eventually they will begin to win.

This is the version of the story that I secretly prefer, whether it is a fantasy or not.

Gray doesn't tell Aunt Imogen or Cecily about it. About the ones still fighting for the old world. With the way she looks now with her gun, it is the kind of thing Aunt Imogen might want to join. Might want to take Cecily along for. It is the kind of thing that will kill them.

In the end I don't remember saying good-bye to Cecily. Maybe I am still there in the orchards with her like she thought I would be. I think that, even as I spend the rest of the day with Gray on the beach. We don't do much. We kiss and we tell stories and we sit around a fire toasting marshmallows. The wind is our enemy, but we ignore it because Gray opens up his coat and motions for me to come closer, and when I'm cuddled up against him, he covers us both. I think I cry. I think I cry and cry and cry until I don't remember why I am crying. In those moments, if someone asked me what I wanted most from the world, I would say, “I want to learn how not to love, and how to unlove, and how to be content being alone.”

Early the next morning Julia wakes us. “I have the boat,” she whispers, and we all climb on board quietly. We row along the water. Even though we've made the trip at least a dozen times, our arms are tired today. There are moments when I cannot feel my legs. When the boat stops, I stand. I climb out of my coat and stand there in my simple clothes. Gray does the same. Julia won't look at either of us. I cannot believe that she is the last person I know at the end.

“You can come with us,” I tell her, surprising myself, but she crosses her arms and shakes her head.

“Madame is on my side about this,” she says. “There has to be a way to fix us.”

I have never seen her look so young.

There probably is,
I want to say.
They won't give it to us.

I kiss Gray instead with all the strength I can muster. “I'm sorry I didn't love you earlier,” I whisper. “It's almost over already.”

“Is it?” He smiles.

We hold hands. We are young, but at the same time we are not. We are old souls. We are tired souls. At the last moment Gray hesitates, and I know him well enough to know why. His hand tightens around mine as he turns to look at Julia, and a big part of me breathes a sigh of relief. I've envisioned
this moment for so long, but it did not belong to me, and I had no right to instigate it.

“I have to tell you something,” he says quietly to Julia.

Julia's face changes, surprise to confusion, and then finally, finally it settles on something dull and broken that looks right through us. She understands, but Gray takes a deep breath and says the words anyway. “I know what you did to them at the farmhouse,” he says. “To Edith.”

For a long time Julia just stands there, not denying it but not confirming it either. Then finally, when she speaks, her voice is so small it almost doesn't exist. She is looking down at her hands, at her shoes, at anything but us. “We had a duty to our country.” She sounds as if she is only reciting our sleeper anthem. “We had a duty to help our people, no matter what.”

Gray shakes his head, his hand clenched around mine. And though his voice comes out soft, it is strong and unyielding. “No, Julia,” he says. “That wasn't for our country. That was for you.”

Instead of arguing with him, Julia turns to me. She is crying now, and I don't know whether it is because she feels guilty about Edith or because she doesn't like the things Gray is saying to her. She meets my eyes and pleads with me. “
You
understand, don't you, Lira?” she says. “You understand why I had to do it.”

Gray is so mad he actually laughs.

“The irony,” he says, “is that Edith's the only reason you're still alive right now. She would have asked us to let you go. That's the
only
reason.”

Julia is staring at me, waiting for me to refute his words. To be on her side. She stands there with no apology written on her face. She feels bad, but if she had to do it over again, she would. I know she would. And I cannot forgive her for that.

“Good-bye, Julia.” With those words, she finally knows how I feel.

I don't know what happens to Julia after that. Perhaps she sits crumpled in the boat for hours with tears running down her face, until she wipes them away and rows back to Madame, and Madame gives her the cure and she lives a full life. She becomes a teacher or a nurse or goes to the university while working as a waitress part-time. Perhaps she receives what she wants: her chance to live. In this war perhaps she is the only one who wins.

I don't know.

The water is cold. Difficult to swim through when your
bones are fragile, your muscles wasting away right before your eyes. At the end you start to ask yourself whether it is the right white light you are swimming toward. Whether it is light at all or just a trick the darkness plays on you.