Vagabond (13 page)

We walked along the lake’s edge and soaked in the moonlight. “I hear there’s moose in these parts. Ever see one?” He asked.
 

“Nope.”
 

“Me neither. Maybe we’ll see one tonight!” He looked out over the water. Where the clouds had been pasted earlier that day had morphed, and the lake mirrored the stars instead. It even looked like the moon had fallen into the water itself. Polo sat and hugged his knees. He rested his chin on them as I sat down too. The silence felt strained until he broke it. “I’m just going to say it. I like you.”
 

“You don’t even know me,” I replied. It was easier to talk when I didn’t have to face him, so I watched the still water. I should have been more surprised by the confession, but part of me guessed at what he’d wanted to say when he suggested the walk. I went knowing that I didn’t know how I’d react when he finally said it.
 

“I could, you know, know you. I gave you your space when Smiles over there made his Claim two weeks ago, but I kept watching.” Polo’s name for Xavi was sour. I guess Polo had never seen Xavi’s lips take on any other shape but a frown, and he couldn’t know how beautiful Xavi was when he did let his guard down enough to laugh.
 

“What do you mean?”
 

“Beyond that first night, he never did anything else to suggest you were more than just travel partners. He never took your hand or touched you. I couldn’t figure it out. Then, it hit me. He’s like a big brother to you. Are you anything more?”

It was a question I didn’t have an answer to. After what had happened in the lake that day? After how I’d handled it? After Xavi stalked off into the woods and left me alone with virtual strangers for the first time since we’d met? There was no real answer. “I don’t know,” I whispered.
 

“You do. You’d know it if it was more.”
 

“It’s complicated.”
 

Polo laughed and nudged his body closer to mine. Our shoulders touched, and my nerves became whiskey shivers. He handed me back the flask, and I took another swig. “Complication is just another form of chains. I know this world is hard, but life doesn’t have to be.”
 

I nodded. It sounded right, but I wasn’t sure I could believe it.
 

“You don’t see it, but he’s all kinds of wrong for you. He’s not what you think he is.”
 

I chewed on the side of my cheek and tried to see Xavi through other people’s eyes. Celeste had similar warnings. Now Polo.
 

Before I could digest the idea any longer, he leaned in and closed the space. His lips reached for mine with a trajectory so straight, I gasped. I wasn’t ready for this. It felt dishonest after the way I felt with Xavi’s lips on mine, and I pulled my face back slightly. He didn’t pick up on my hesitation, or just didn’t care. His lips got closer and closer.
 

It was the gunshot— the boom— the explosion of sound that ripped our lips apart before they met, and we jumped to our feet to run back towards the shouting— towards the fire.
 

Flea was a follower and decided against going anywhere I wasn’t. He didn’t pick up on the hints that I was done. Whatever bond we’d formed was slivered and gone since Roderigo was no longer a threat. I still couldn’t shake the guilt. Randolf and Roderigo, once-upon-a-time friends, were both gone, and we carried their dead-man-packs so we could go on living. They were gifts we couldn’t adequately pay for.

We walked miles upon miles out of town, circumventing the freight-yard. As the night sucked away the sun, the search lights cut back and forth across the sky and trees. I’d been right about the increase in security measures.
 

My heart ached from all the pounding it was intent on doing. There was so much bounce in Flea’s step, and I wanted to slap it out of him. He pretended not to notice my bad mood until we were well out of the grasp of town. I knew he still thought I was upset at having to watch an execution, and not at all the hidden things the execution told me about the world I lived in. I just couldn’t stop thinking of Xavi and how much he didn’t love me.
 

The night wore into my muscles and nerves, and it was time to take a break. The air got colder and added to my shivers. Since Flea hadn’t left yet, I decided to take advantage of his warmth. We’d have to sleep like the night before, with one on alert at all times and our packs ready to go. We half-walked, half-climbed, and mainly slid down the ravine near the tracks, until we found a good tree to prop ourselves up against.
 

I decided to sleep first, since Flea was all pins and needles with excitement. When my head was finally resting on his arm and my eyes were about to send me into oblivion, he asked, “Did I do something wrong?”
 

“Are you really that dense?”

“Tell me how you really feel, why don’t you?” His muscles tensed. I hated how I was getting used to his smell, and how the scent of him was changing to take on the dirt and sweat and earth of travel. It wasn’t a gross smell. Some people we came across had a straight-up putrid stench that overpowered every other smell. Others figured out how to maintain a sense of hygiene. Then there were those who were naturally lucky and smelled of freshness no matter how much sweat poured from their pores. I could already tell Flea was one of the lucky ones.
 

I sighed. “That could have been us back there— with the needle in our arms. Had Roderigo not pushed me from the train, we would have been along side them.”

“I know. Don’t you see how lucky we are?”

“Escaping is nothing to celebrate. Every time the Republic does that, they do it to us. Roderigo and Annabeth may have tried to steal from us, but they are still a part of us. It’s the Bond of the Vagabond. Every death deserves reverence, whether you were the cause of it or one of the ‘lucky’ ones who escaped.” I took a deep breath, because it was the next part that tore at me. It was the next part that filled me with contradiction. “And, we didn’t escape. Not really, at least. We are a threat to Humanity, and the Republic is right to hunt us down, but I’m too scared to die, so I break the laws. One day, they will find me. One day, that will be me. One day, that will be you. It will be our deaths that contribute to Humanity, not our genetics, because anyone who turns to the Tracks is an anomaly. You. Flea. Are an anomaly.”

He said nothing at this. I could tell his smile faded and his mood deflated.
 

I left him to his thoughts and forced myself to sleep.
 

“Mari!” Polo screamed as he ran to the fire, and I stayed frozen behind the tree-line. I’d reached out to grab him, but my hand grasped at air. The space where he used to be was empty, and, instead, I fell into it and landed on my hands and knees. It took everything I had to move my chin up so that my eyes could see. The fire lit it all up and bounced off the bright black uniforms. The older woman was still slumped by the tree, but she was missing the snores, and Mari screamed while she held Goldie. Blonde hair turned maroon in her arms where the gun shot had landed square in Goldie’s temple.
 

Polo ran straight into it.
 

And I was on the ground crying silent tears. They blurred my vision, but not my hearing. Another gun shot rang out, and I didn’t have to see clearly to witness Mari falling back with Goldie in her arms. I didn’t have to see clearly to watch a solider wrestle Polo to the ground.
 

A hand slid over my mouth and made me bite down. I squirmed and kicked my hands and feet out in every direction. “Shhhh. Shhhhhhh. It’s me,” Xavi whispered. “It’s me.” He pulled me through the trees. “We have to go. We have to go.” He whispered in twos. Every time he stopped tugging, my feet planted firm so I could grow my tears up and out. I shed leaves and leaves of sorrow while Xavi repeated, “We have to go. We have to go,” marching the sentences two-by-two into my ears.
 

We had to go, because Polo and Mari and Goldie and Oldie were gone, and we were not. We were still here.
 

Chapter Nine
 

Over the next few days, Flea grew quieter and quieter. I almost felt guilty for making him feel so bad, but he needed to know. He needed to know the danger of it all, and the unfairness he’d encounter with a life on the Tracks. For those days, the only joy we shared was over peanut butter. We stuck my pocket knife into the jar and licked with caution and reverence.
 

The sweet.
 

The salt.
 

The contradiction.
 

A week passed, and he still kept following me. We ran into no one else as we hopped onto trains, then off again when I got the urge. “Why not just travel through and get to where you’re going?”

 
“A friend once told me that I already am where I’m going. Where’s the rush, when I’m already right where I’m supposed to be?” It was a Randolf-ism, and I smiled softly. I pointed at one of the trees that caught my attention. Some Vagabond had climbed high up on it to char the tip of the pine for a trail marker. “We may meet some others, if you’d like.” It was my new plan to get rid of him. Maybe he’d finally let me be if he met someone else who could take him to his precious Rebels?

We began the journey in, and I picked up on the trail clues. A ribbon of torn fabric tied here, an X cut into the bark there. As we walked he slowly pulled himself back out of his shell. He began to read my face like a mood ring and knew when to shut up. I was thankful for that, and it made me less annoyed with him. But, sometimes a voice is good to hear when you’re in the middle of nowhere. It keeps the sanity sutured to the brain.
 

Every morning, something about his face would grow on my memory. Some people were calluses on the mind like that, and their connection forms before you can stop it. His face still bugged me. It was as if I’d seen it before and it meant something important. Every time I’d get close to figuring it out, it’d hang on the tip of my tongue and taunt me like a phantom limb.

I pushed a branch forward and held it so it didn’t snap back to hit him in the face.
 

“What’s a fish without an eye?” he asked. I sighed, and shrugged. “Fsssssshhhhhh. Get it? Eye. Like eyeball. And I like the letter?” He slapped his knee as he laughed.
 

“Yeah. I got it. Corny.”
 

“What about this one? Knock knock…” he looked at me expectantly, and the expression pulled out a laugh that surprised me.
 

“Who’s there?” I gave in.
 

“Oink, oink.”
 

“Oink, oink, who?”
 

“Make up your mind! Are you a pig or an owl?” His giggles were rambunctious as they rumbled out.
 

“Those jokes are so sophomoric!”
 

“Ohhhhh. Look at you with those big words!”

I laughed. “I was smart, once upon a time. First in my year at Institute.”
 

“Thought you were a Stationary?”

“Thought you didn’t want me to lie. Truth? I was kind of a genius.”
 

He thought it was a joke and laughed even harder. His peach-brown lips stretched over bright teeth, and his eyes crunched up so that the blues and greens grew watery— almost sparkly. I had a feeling he’d get plenty of attention when we finally ran into others, especially after witnessing the looks the girls in the Colonies snuck him during the execution. His genetics were too telling.
 

I’d heard the rumors about people in my generation nearing perfection. I wasn’t in that category, of course, but my pairing was supposed to set my children on that path. My partner and me? Our potential genetic cocktail gave my entire family hope before everything was demolished. Sometimes I mourned the children I would never have. So much possibility was stolen from me when they killed my parents, and I wondered who they partnered Paramonos with when I ran away? The G.E.G. had scheduled our meeting for a year out to give me time to say goodbye to the life I’d known. They’d asked me to change Colonies for the pairing, and I was to have the honor of “providing diversity to a new gene pool.”
 

I’d spent my entire childhood wearing the red-mark of shame— that flagged status that meant one thing more often than the other. For most of my life, I ran on the assumption that my genome was inadequate rather than being needed to provide diversity. My imperfect body led all logic to convince me I was a dead-end. Then, the notification came. The G.E.G. gave me no information, other than a name, and that he was the son of someone very important.
 

Being around another Colonial did strange things to my thoughts. Even though he was just telling stupid jokes to pass the time, he brought all those wonders to the forefront of my brain. My past had always been so solid in my mind, but lately, even that was a fleeting memory as I learned the Tracks. Venturing into a different life than the one I’d begun to imagine for myself made it difficult to remember the moments that used to feel so steady. My reality, in comparison to what was supposed to be, was so vastly different. I tried to avoid thinking about it the past two years, but Flea rubbed it all in my face.
 

Flea.

The poor sap still didn’t realize everything he’d given up by shunning the Republic. I wondered how he’d react when he figured it out? I wondered if it’d hurt him the same way it hurt me?

“Niko! Honey! You’ve been paired!” Mama squealed and held her tablet out so I could see. On it buzzed a letter from the Department of Human Relations. “He’s the son of some official! You’re moving up eight Castes! Eight! Oh, honey! Things are going to get very exciting for you! See! I told you it was your brains they wanted! I told you!”