UnWholly (38 page)

The guard looks at him incredulously. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that? The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

And although Cam knows who he’s referring to, he says, “I’ve got lots of trees, you’ll have to be more specific.”

That evening the drive turns up in his desk drawer, packed with video files. He doubts he’ll have a basketball partner anymore, but it’s a small sacrifice to make. When it’s late enough to know he won’t be interrupted, he loads the files onto his personal viewer—and witnesses something he was never supposed to see. . . .

April 17. Almost two months ago. Before the interviews and the public service announcements, before the operation that replaced Risa’s severed spine.

Risa sits in her wheelchair in a sparse cell with nothing to occupy her time but her own thoughts. A consent form
folded into a paper airplane lies on the floor beneath a oneway mirror.

She spends her time thinking about her friends. Of Connor, mostly. She wonders how he’ll fare without her. Better, she hopes. If she could only get word to him that she’s alive, that she hasn’t been tortured at the hands of the Juvies—and that she’s not even in their hands, but in the hands of some other organization.

Roberta comes in, as she did the day before, with a new consent form. She sits down at the table and slides the consent form and a pen toward Risa again.

She smiles at Risa, but it’s the smile of a snake about to coil around its prey.

“Are you ready to sign?” she asks.

“Are you ready to see me fly another paper airplane?” Risa responds.

“Airplanes!” says Roberta brightly. “Yes, why don’t we talk about airplanes? Particularly the ones in the aircraft salvage yard. The place you call the Graveyard. Let’s talk about your many friends there.”

At last,
thinks Risa,
she’s going to question me.
“Ask whatever you want,” she says. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t trust a thing I say.”

“No need to ask you questions, dear,” Roberta says. “We know all we need to know about the Graveyard. You see, we allow your little AWOL sanctuary to exist because it serves our needs.”

“Your needs? You’re telling me you control the Juvenile Authority?”

“Let’s just say we have substantial sway. The Juvenile Authority has wanted to raid the Graveyard for quite a while, but we’re the ones holding them back. However, if I give the word, the Graveyard will be cleaned out, and all those children who you fought so valiantly to save will be transported to harvest camps and unwound.”

Risa can sense the rug being pulled out from under her. “You’re bluffing.”

“Am I? I believe you know our inside man. His name is Trace Neuhauser.”

The news completely blindsides her. “Trace?”

“He’s provided us with all the information we need to make a takedown of the airplane Graveyard quick and painless.” She pushes the consent form just an inch closer to Risa. “However, it never needs to happen. None of those AWOLs need be unwound. Please, Risa. Accept a new spine, and do all we ask of you. If you do, I will personally guarantee that all seven hundred nineteen of your friends will be unharmed. Help
me
, Risa, and you’ll save
them
.”

Risa looks at the paper, seeing it in a terrible new light. “What types of things?” she asks. “What types of things will you ask me to do?”

“It will begin with Cam. You will put aside your feelings, whatever they may be, and learn to be kind to him. As for what other things we may ask of you, you will know when it is your time to know.”

She waits for Risa’s response, but she has none. The shrapnel of this bombshell has yet to come to rest.

Risa’s silence seems to satisfy Roberta, so she stands, leaving Risa with the form and the pen. “As you pointed out before, I won’t take away your choice—it remains in your rights to refuse . . . but if you do, I hope you can live with the consequences.”

•   •   •

Risa holds the pen in her hand and reads the document for the fourth time. A single page filled with incomprehensible legalese. She doesn’t need to decipher the fine print—it’s pretty obvious what it says. By signing it, she gives her express permission to replace her damaged spine with a
healthy one, harvested from an anonymous Unwind.

How many times has she imagined what it would be like to walk again? How many times has she relived that moment at Happy Jack Harvest Camp when the roof collapsed and crushed her back, and wondered what it would be like to have that moment erased?

The way Risa saw it, however, the cost of the new spine would be her soul. Her conscience couldn’t allow it, not then, not ever. Or so she thought.

If she looks at the big picture and refuses to sign it, she makes a personal statement against a world that’s lost its way . . . but no one will ever know, and her statement will cause hundreds of her friends to be unwound.

Roberta claims that Risa has a choice, but what choice does she really have? She holds the pen firm, takes a deep breath, and signs her name.

Roberta is overjoyed by the response to the
Jarvis and Holly
appearance. She’s already fielded dozens of interview requests.

“We can afford to be choosy,” she tells Cam the morning after he views the surveillance video. “Quality versus quantity!”

Cam says nothing, and Roberta is so wrapped up in her own plans, she fails to notice that Cam isn’t himself.

You will put aside your feelings, whatever they may be, and learn to be kind to him.

He takes his frustration out alone on the basketball court, and when that doesn’t calm him down, he takes it to the source. He searches the sprawling manor for Risa. He finds her in the kitchen, making herself a late-morning sandwich. “I get tired
of being served all the time,” she says casually. “Sometimes all I want is a PB&J that I make myself.” She holds out the sandwich to him. “You want this one? I’ll make another.”

When he doesn’t take it, she looks at his eyes and sees how off he is. “What’s the matter? Have a fight with Mommy?”

“I know why you’re here,” he tells her. “I know all about your deal with Roberta, and your friends at the Graveyard.”

She hesitates for a moment, then begins to eat her sandwich. “You have your deal with her, I have mine,” she says in a peanut-butter-muffled voice. She tries to walk away, but Cam grabs her. She quickly pulls out of his grasp and pushes him against the wall. “I’ve come to accept it!” she yells at him. “So you might as well too!”

“So was it all just pretend? Was being nice to the freak just a performance to save your friends?”

“Yes!” snaps Risa. “At first.”

“And now?”

“Do you really think so little of yourself? Do you really think I’m that good of an actress?”

“Then prove it!” he demands. “Prove that you feel anything but contempt for me!”

“Right now that’s all I feel for you!” Then she storms out, hurling her sandwich into the trash.

Five minutes later, Cam swipes a pass card from an inattentive guard and uses it to get past the security door into the garage. Then he steals a motorcycle and takes off down the winding path out of the estate.

He has no destination, just a burning need for acceleration. He’s sure there is at least one speed freak in his head, maybe more. He knows several of his constituents drove motorcycles. He takes every turn too fast until he finally gets to the town of Kualapuu, giving satisfaction to every self-destructive impulse that resides within him. Then he takes a turn too sharply, loses
control, and flies from the bike, rolling over and over on the pavement.

He’s hurt, but he’s alive. Motorists stop and get out of their cars to help him, but he doesn’t want their help. He gets to his feet and feels a sharp pain in his knee. His back feels shredded; blood from beneath his hairline clouds his eyes.

“Hey, buddy, you okay?” yells some tourist. Then he stops short. “Hey! Hey, it’s you! You’re that rewind kid! Hey, look, it’s that rewind kid!”

He hurries away from them and gets on the motorcycle again, riding back the way he came. By the time he arrives, there are already police cars out front. Roberta sees him and runs to him.

“Cam!” she wails. “What did you do? What did you do? My God! You need medical attention! We’ll get the doctor right away!” Then she turns angrily to the house guards. “How could you let this happen?”

“It’s not their fault!” yells Cam. “I’m not a dog that got off its leash, so don’t treat me like one!”

“Let me look at your wounds. . . .”

“Back off!” he yells loudly enough for her to actually back off. Then he pushes past everyone, goes up to his room, and locks the world out.

A few minutes later there’s a gentle knocking at his door, as he knew there would be. Roberta, trying to handle her volatile boy with kid gloves. But it’s not Roberta.

“Open up, Cam, it’s Risa.”

She’s the second-to-last person he wants to see right now, but the fact that she came surprises him. The least he can do is open the door.

She stands at his threshold with a first aid kit in her hand. “It’s really stupid to bleed out just because you’re pissed off.”

“I’m not ‘bleeding out.’ ”

“But you
are
bleeding. Can I at least take care of the worst of it? Believe it or not, I was the chief medic at the Graveyard. I dealt with stuff like this all the time.”

He opens the door wider and lets her in. He sits at his desk chair and allows her to clean the wound on his cheek. Then she has him take off his torn shirt and begins cleaning his back. It stings, but he bears it without wincing.

“You’re lucky,” she tells him. “You have lacerations, but none of them need stitches, and you didn’t tear any of your seams.”

“I’m sure Roberta will be relieved.”

“Roberta can go to hell.”

For once Cam agrees with her. She takes a look at his knee and tells him that whether he likes it or not, he’s going to need to have it x-rayed. When she’s done assessing his wounds, he takes a good look at her. If she’s still angry at him from before, it doesn’t show. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Going out like that was stupid.”

“It was human,” she points out.

Cam reaches out and gently touches her face. Let her slap him for it. Let her rip his arm out of its socket, he doesn’t care.

But she doesn’t do either of those things. “C’mon,” she says. “Let’s get you over to your bed so you can get some rest.”

He stands but puts too much weight on his knee and almost goes down. She holds him, giving him support, the way he once gave her support on the first day she walked. She helps him all the way to the bed, and when he flops onto it, her arm is looped around him in such a way that she’s pulled down onto the bed too.

“Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing for everything,” she tells him. “Save it for your more important screwups.”

Now they lie side by side on his bed, his aching back stinging even more pressed against the blanket. She could get up,
but she doesn’t. Instead she rolls slightly toward him and brushes her fingers across a scrape on his chest, checking to see if it needs a bandage, then determining it doesn’t.

“You’re quite the freak, Camus Comprix. How I got used to that is a mystery to me. I did, though.”

“But you still wish I was never made, don’t you?”

“But you were, and you’re here, and I’m here with you.” Then she adds, “And I only hate you sometimes.”

“And other times?”

She leans toward him, thinks about it for a moment, then kisses him. It’s more than a peck, but only slightly more. “Other times, I don’t.” Then she rolls onto her back and stays there beside him.

“Don’t read too much into this, Cam,” she tells him. “I can’t be what you want.”

“There are lots of things I want,” he points out. “Who says I have to have all of them?”

“Because you’re Roberta’s spoiled little boy. You always get whatever your rewound heart desires.”

Cam sits up so he can look at her. “So unspoil me. Teach me to be patient. Teach me that there are some things worth waiting for.”

“And some things you might never have?”

He thinks about his answer, then says, “If that’s what you have to teach me, then that’s what I’ll have to learn—but what I want most is something I think I can have.”

“What might that be?”

He takes her hand and holds it. “This moment, right now, in a thousand different ways. If I can have that, then the rest won’t matter as much.”

She sits up and pulls her hand away from his, but only so she can brush it through his hair. She seems to be just looking at the wound on his scalp, but maybe not.

“If that’s really what you want most,” she says gently, “maybe you can have it. Maybe we both can.”

Cam smiles. “I’d like that very much.”

And for the first time since being wound, he feels tears welling in his eyes that he knows are truly his own.

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