Torn (11 page)

Mari was silent, and Cole hesitated, wondering how much he should say. “I'm not used to relinquishing control,” he admitted. “I've overseen my own training pretty much my whole life. And now … this isn't just a competition to me. I
have
to win. I
have
to be the best.”

“Why?”

“Because it's the only way to be with the girl I love,” Cole told her. “Davis is sick. She's at a facility called TOR-N. If I have the money to get to her … we can finally be together again. She doesn't even know I'm alive right now. I don't know how she's doing. It's torture.”

“You're in love with a Prior.” Mari's face was expressionless, but Cole knew the significance the revelation held for her.

He rushed on, “And winning means I can maybe get my family away from the Slants—take them somewhere safe and peaceful. My mom's in a home for destitutes right now. She lost her job when the factory she worked at was destroyed in the riots. My brother has dedicated his whole future toward looking after her.” At this, he saw a glimmer of understanding in her eyes. Mari had spent her life looking after her father. She understood what that was like.

“Where would you take them?” she asked.

“I don't know. One of the other territories, where conditions are better for Gens. I haven't thought that far ahead. I just know that money opens doors. And right now, we don't have any. We don't even have any hope for having any … except this. I'm the only one who can save my family. And it's the only way I can be with Davis again. But I
am
sorry, Mari. You're trying to help—you
are
helping,” he said, realizing he meant it. Never had he subjected himself to such a tough workout. Mari knew things he didn't about survival; that was undeniable. He was never angry at Mari, he realized. The whole time he'd been hitting that tree, resenting training with second best, he'd been taking out his feelings of helplessness
.

“What's it like?” Mari asked, avoiding his eyes.

“What?” he asked.

“Love,” she said simply. “And what are
they
like in person? Priors.” She shuddered, like the word was hard to spit out.

“Love is … difficult to describe,” Cole said. He'd never tried to explain to anyone exactly how he felt about Davis. “It's tenderness and trust and knowing that this is your person, someone who's in your corner all the time and just gets you. And you want to take care of them, too. Protect them from everything bad. Make them happy. It's this feeling where you'd do anything to see them laugh,” he told her. “Where their smile is enough to carry you through the day. Their happiness is your happiness. Their stress and fear are yours, too. It's like your soul expands so there's room to carry someone else's, too. It's like having a twin heart. And then there's the rest of it.…” He trailed off, embarrassed. He couldn't believe he'd opened up to someone he didn't even like. Someone who hated him for no good reason. Who saw the world in black and white.

“You asked about Priors,” he said, changing the subject quickly. “How much have you interacted with them?” Maybe some of her hatred would dissipate if he explained that not all Priors were bad, that most were just products of bad influences. Many couldn't think for themselves beyond what they'd been taught all their lives. But some could. It was they who gave him hope.

Mari shrugged in response to his question. “Not much. When I was little, of course. There are photos of me with Priors, from when my dad trained them. They're so beautiful,” she said. “But now I know they're monsters.”

“They're not,” Cole protested. “Not all of them. They're just people, like we are, and they're misinformed. We're all the same, inside. Sure, they're prettier. And they have genetic enhancements. And maybe some of them are a little shallow and cruel—but that's not innate, that's learned. All of this,” he explained, telling her everything he'd learned from loving Davis, “comes from fear and misunderstanding.”

Mari grunted, tossing her long, tangled hair over her shoulder. She looked angry. Cole guessed she wasn't used to anyone challenging her own beliefs—which was pretty ironic, given that that very concept factored into her hatred for Priors.

“Are we going to do this or what?” Cole asked, dropping the subject and gesturing toward the tree.

“Forget the tree. You can handle that on your own time. You wanna see what I've got? Let's get straight to the good stuff.”

Now Cole let himself smile. Pissing off Mari wasn't going to make things any easier on him, that was for sure. “Challenge accepted,” he replied, following her into the stretch of land that extended past the back of the house and on into the forest.

“Do you mind if I ask how you plan to enter the Olympiads? I mean, being ‘dead' and all.…” Mari trailed off. Was she baiting him? “Training is kind of a waste of everyone's time if you're not able to compete.” Cole felt his shoulders tense, but he couldn't deny that her question was valid. Mari had a direct, confident way about her that he wasn't used to, probably because she hadn't been exposed to social norms. Bluntness seemed to be her way of life.

“I haven't figured that part out yet,” Cole said, his tone guarded. He wasn't sure she wouldn't use his personal life against him. “But I have someone helping me. It'll work out.” He shut his mouth, unwilling to say more. Mari turned sharply at the tone of his voice, meeting his eyes. She nodded once, her expression somber.

“Well, then,” she said. “Let's give you the hardest workout of your life.”

 

 

She wasn't exaggerating. Over the course of two hours, Mari timed Cole with a stopwatch while he ran countless conditionals on a makeshift, roughly surfaced track. It was like she enjoyed watching him suffer. He figured she probably did, and it fueled him even more. After he finished each challenge—discus throwing, long jumps, leaping over makeshift hurdles nearly as high as his shoulders—she shook her head, frowning at the recorded time. Cole pushed himself harder than he'd ever pushed. But after several months in hiding, he was strong from lifting—something he could do within Michelle's hideout—but weak from lack of stamina, given that he hadn't been able to emerge in order to run. His reaction time was also a little slower than it had been when he was in peak physical condition. Finally, Mari motioned him over to a patch of grass and told him to sit down, handing him a water bottle.

“You can't enter with these times,” Mari told him. “You're not even close to a Prior median in most of these challenges. You may not even qualify, let alone win.”

Cole let the news sink in, fighting back frustration. His entire body was spent. He'd pushed himself as far as he could go. And still he wasn't even close. “I'll keep training,” he insisted. “I'll get my speed back, and then—”

Mari shook her head. “Even then, I don't think we have enough time to put you in an advantageous position,” she argued. “Priors have the genetic advantage,
and
a lot of them have spent their whole lives training.”

“There's got to be another event.”

“The rest of the events require equipment. We can't compete with Prior technology. You'd be facing a huge disadvantage, even more so than with gymnastics or track-and-field events.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” Cole asked, running a hand through his hair. His shoulders were tense, and it was all he could do not to punch something—anything—to blow off some steam. “You don't understand. This is my only hope. I don't have any other options. Literally everything rides on this.” He stopped, flushing. He'd let down his guard. He couldn't stand the brief flash of sympathy that crossed Mari's thin features.

“I'll try to think of something,” she told him. “Let's just take a break for a little while, go cool off.”

“Right,” Cole said. “Where are we going to cool off? It's gotta be ninety degrees out.”

“This way.” Mari hopped up from the grass. “I haven't shown you all my spots yet.” She led Cole into the forest. They stumbled over rocks and underbrush for about a quarter mile, until Cole started to wonder what the hell she had up her sleeve. Then the dense thicket of trees broke and opened to a beautiful, sparkling pond. “Let's do it,” Mari said, grinning back at him. Cole hesitated, and Mari rolled her eyes.

“It's fine,” she said. “I mean, there's some algae, and I wouldn't recommend drinking it. But it's a natural pond, totally disconnected from the city runoff.”

Cole still wasn't sure whether to let down his guard, but the pond was tempting. And she was being almost … nice. It was kind of a welcome change after the morning he'd had. Besides, he hadn't been swimming in forever. You couldn't do it in the Slants—swimming in the streams polluted by runoff was strictly forbidden. There were gruesome tales of kids dying or developing disturbing physical symptoms just from touching some of that water.

He watched as Mari stripped down to her tank top and underwear and ran out onto the narrow wooden pier that stretched out onto the pond.

Cole raised his eyebrows. He couldn't imagine anyone else he knew just stripping down like that. For a second he was embarrassed for her. Then he realized: modesty was all a construct, just like everything else. Mari didn't have any social decorum, because she'd probably never had to. In that sense, she was free.

Mari dove in and resurfaced, laughing. “You have to come,” she shouted to him. “It feels amazing!” He hesitated. Was it weird to strip down in front of a girl?

It did look amazing. The water sparkled under the sun-filled sky, and he realized he was thinking too much. The promise of icy water washing over his skin was enough to squash any remaining doubts. Cole pulled off his T-shirt, leaving his shorts on, and dove in after her.

The water felt like heaven. It swept away the stress and frustrations of the afternoon. Cole swam deep, close to the reeds that rose up from the depths. He opened his eyes, enjoying the otherworldly, murky feeling of it. He felt anonymous. He felt free. He swam further. He stayed down, swimming further still, letting the water drown all his worries.

When he rose to the surface, shaking water out of his hair, the sun was like a spotlight. Outdoor noises—birds chirping, the rush of the water, and the splashing of Mari several feet away—replaced the quiet he'd felt only a second ago. He turned to her, expecting her to yell at him for freaking her out. Instead, her face wore a look of quiet approval.

“I think we've found your event,” she yelled across the pond at him. “You have the lungs of a blue whale and you crossed the expanse of the pond in, like, five seconds.”

Cole couldn't help grinning, and his heart soared. Under the water, he'd felt more himself—more
alive—
than he had in many months. He suddenly wanted nothing more than to soak up life, relax in the blaze of the afternoon sun. These little pleasures were what gave him hope. He climbed ashore, and Mari followed a few minutes later, bending over and shaking her dreads out like a dog might shake its fur. She plopped down next to him on the banks of the pond. For a moment, he couldn't suppress his longing—not for Mari, but for Davis. Why couldn't it be Davis there with him, enjoying this moment? It was the closest he'd felt to being at peace in a long time, and his heart ached that the wrong girl was there to share it.

“I'd missed that feeling,” he said to Mari a moment later, when they were lying on their backs, letting the sun warm them after the chill of the water.

“Which?”

“Just being alive,” he told her. “You probably don't know what it's like not to feel free. You have all this land. But I miss my old life. My mom, my brother … my best friend, Brent.”

“And her,” she finished for him. “The girl you miss. The Prior.”

“I miss Davis more than anything,” he admitted quietly. “But she was different.”

Mari's eyes darkened, and Cole knew he'd made a mistake. Her loathing for Priors was too deep-rooted. She'd never understand the depth of his relationship with Davis. How they'd just understood one another, without even having to explain. Mari didn't see Davis as human, though. Cole sort of understood why, but he wished it weren't so easy for her to separate good from bad, Gen from Prior, as if nothing existed in between.

“We should get back,” Mari said, her voice bitter. She jutted her chin toward the setting sun, which illuminated the smattering of freckles across her cheeks.

“I'm going to head back into the Slants tonight,” Cole mentioned as they stood up. “I need to see Thomas about getting me into the Olympiads. I'll be back in the morning.” Truthfully, he thought it was probably better to be away. Maybe it would diminish the tension between them.

“We'll see you tomorrow, then,” she told him.

As they walked back along the bank of the pond, Cole caught a familiar, minty smell.

“Peppermint,” he realized aloud.

“It's all over the place,” Mari told him. “Here.” She squatted down near the bank and picked a bunch of the pointed, rough-textured leaves. “It makes great tea.”

Cole pocketed it, surprised. An olive branch. He thought immediately of Vera; she'd like it. His mom had made peppermint tea when he was a kid. She'd poured it into a thermos for herself but had always given him a sip first—she said it kept her alert all day at work. The smell cleared his head, giving him energy for the half-hour journey awaiting him.

 

 

The trek back to the Slants was much easier this time around, because Mari had shown him a new route.

“You took the
tunnels
?” she'd scoffed when he'd detailed his treacherous journey out there. “Why not just dive into raw sewage next time?” Then she went on to outline a far more direct—and somewhat less treacherous—route, through a mile of woods and over a rickety twenty-foot bridge cobbled together from wooden beams that were half rotted. In ancient times the bridge had functioned as an overpass for horses and buggies. Now, Mari warned him, it was falling apart. He'd have to tread carefully, but she'd done it dozens of times—and worst-case scenario, he'd fall into the water below. Her directions were great; he knew exactly where he was headed, and sort of looked forward to trying a new route.