A Girl Called Fearless (33 page)

Keisha winced, but she still looked at me, expecting an answer.

“He was cruel. Completely controlling,” I said.

“But your boyfriend's nice?”

Nice
didn't describe Yates. Risking prison to help girls escape? I searched around for the right word, but all I came up with was, “He's really caring.”

“And I'm guessing he's cute,” Keisha said.

I bobbed my head, embarrassed at how that made
me
look shallow. “Yeah.”

Keisha asked who Yates looked like, and named some TV stars I used to watch on the kids' channel. I picked a guy with dark hair, but that was basically the only similarity. The worst thing that actor ever had to deal with was being chased by paparazzi.

“What is your boyfriend doing with his life?” Beattie said.

“He goes to college, and works part-time at a restaurant. He volunteers at church.”

“What is he studying?”

“Social justice.”

“A cru-sa-der.” Maggie drew out the syllables, baiting me to look at her. “No surprise there.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because that's what you are.”

“No, I'm not.” Mom was a crusader. Sparrow, too. But definitely not me.

“Then how'd you end up here?”

I glared at Maggie, wishing I could smack that smug smile off her face. She was pushing me like she wanted me to get angry.

“You could have stayed silent when the government lied about Sparrow, but you didn't.”

“Yeah, but that was just me acting on an insane impulse. I'm not like Sparrow.”

“Then why did she choose
you
out of all the girls around her to deliver her message?”

Because she knew I'd do it. Because she knew how I felt about the feds sticking it to us
. “I'd never do what Sparrow did.”

“What did she do?” Keisha said.

“She set herself on fire on the Capitol steps,” Maggie answered.

“She what?”

Beattie reached across the table. “It's a form of political protest. Throughout history, people have immolated themselves to bring attention to war and oppression.”

Keisha ignored Beattie's hand. She turned to Maggie. “But how could she do that!”

“Because she was deadly passionate about her cause.”

Maggie was ticking me off. “No,” I said. “Sparrow was
sick
. People who are passionate about a cause might be so obsessed they take crazy risks or neglect their families or make their entire existence about the cause. But only ones who are really
sick
throw away their lives. Sparrow did
not
have to die.”

Maggie's mouth went flat, and I guessed I'd touched a nerve talking about people who neglect their families.

“You regret blasting that message,” Maggie said. “And not because you're stuck in backwoods Idaho. You're mad, because you know that now you might never get that perfect life you dreamed about in Canada with your cute, caring, socially aware boyfriend.”

A blast of heat roared through me.

“Maggie—” Beattie tried, but Maggie ignored her.

She tapped her finger on the table, punctuating each word. “You can cross that border and reunite with your boyfriend, but your life will
never
be normal. He's probably already seen Sparrow's video, and he's going to ask you about what went down in Vegas. And when he finds out that you're hiding what you've witnessed—that you have evidence that can help bring down the very people he's fighting—”

She was completely wrong. Wrong about me. Wrong about— “You don't know anything about Yates.”

“You're fooling yourself.”

I stood up, dizzy, hot, and ready to shove Maggie out of that chair. “Screw you.” I grabbed my bowl off the table.

She thinks she knows everything. But what if she's right about how I'll never be able to keep Vegas a secret, how Yates will never let it go until he knows the truth?

There was a knock at the door. No one moved, then Beattie chuckled. “I guess we've got company after all. Since you're up, Avie, why don't you get the door.”

Great. Now Maggie could face her unfinished business, just like she was making me face mine. I wrenched open the door.

“Hi.”

Luke stood in the doorway, a pie steaming in his hands. “Sorry I'm late. Nellie sent this. It's apple berry.”

I could feel my cheeks turn as pink as the berries under the crust. “Come in. We saved you a place.”

“Hi, Luke,” Keisha said as he approached the table.

“Hi, Keisha.”

I wondered vaguely if there might be something between them—it's not like there were too many people our age here.

Luke took the empty place across from Maggie. I smiled to myself. Her turn to be in the hot seat.

I was not disappointed. Keisha poured Luke some coffee. Beattie cut into the pie and Luke leaned back in his chair and said, “Who's chasing you, Margaret?”

She sipped her coffee all cool and collected. “It's best we don't discuss that. Let's talk about something else.”

Beattie passed around the pie, and Keisha and I exchanged glances. The tension was thick.

“I hear the trapping's been good this year,” Maggie tried.

“Yeah, bobcat. Some beaver.”

I pictured Luke with a bobcat slung over his shoulders, like a Viking Warrior with golden fur framing his face.

“Barnabas tells me you're building a mandolin,” Maggie said.

“I'm doing the sanding is all.”

Maggie's smile was as tight as a guitar string. “How's school coming?”

Heat was coming off Luke's body, and I caught his warm soap smell. “I'm almost done,” he said. “I'll have my diploma come April.”

Beattie piped up. “He's done well, Maggie.”

Maggie weighed her fork before she spoke. “I've got funds set aside in case you'd like to go to college. I could arrange an identity for you.”

I barely knew Luke, but even I knew Maggie was screwing up.

“I'm not like you,” Luke said, his voice warning her. “I
like
it here. I've got everything I need.”

“I talked to your father—”

“Which father? The one you ran out on or the one you palmed me off on so you could go to college?”

Maggie flinched, and I almost felt sorry for her. “I haven't had a chance to talk to Nellie and Rogan, but Barnabas and I hope you'll continue your education—”

Luke pulled a thick book out of his jacket and slammed it on the table:
Stillness at Appomattox.
“I read plenty.”

Maggie stared at the cover.

“I don't want your world,” Luke said. “Full of theories and philosophies and high-minded principles—but not one ounce of what counts.” He stood up, almost knocking over his chair. “Thanks for the coffee, Pastor Beattie.”

I was surprised by how gently Luke closed the door on his way out.

“Happy now?” Maggie snapped at Beattie

Keisha and I hunkered down over our pie.

“Yes,” Beattie said. “Finally, you're talking.”

We finished the pie in silence, and the way Maggie choked hers down it must have tasted like regret. I didn't know why she'd done what she did, but she was living with the consequences. Maybe that's why Maggie had blistered me with that speech about how I could run off to Canada and reunite with Yates, but my life would never be normal again. Because she'd learned that sometimes what you did couldn't be fixed and it couldn't be erased.

I only hoped that, as far as I was concerned, she was wrong.

74

Keisha got me alone in her room after dinner, and bombarded me with questions about Yates and what it was like to have a boyfriend. And each one I answered made my heart ache. I didn't know if he was safe. If Hawkins was having him tailed. How long I'd have to wait to contact him after I got to Canada,
if
I got there.

Then Keisha wanted to hear all about the world outside Salvation. About fast food and fashion and music, and while I tried to answer, I kept having to explain why I never got to go to arcades or movie theaters or music concerts—places where it was dark and crowded, and Roik couldn't control the situation.

I had to explain that love songs had basically disappeared now that hardly anybody fell in love anymore. How most shopping malls were boarded up, because there weren't many shoppers, and girls could only go to secure gated ones like the Beverly Center. It wasn't the world Keisha remembered. And it wasn't one Beattie'd ever told her about.

I spread out my sleeping bag on Keisha's rug, and she dozed off. But when I closed my eyes, I couldn't sleep.

Finally, I sat up against her bureau and wrapped the sleeping bag tight around me. Outside, wind blew the icy snow so it sounded like rice hitting the windows. Keisha was burrowed down in her covers, and I couldn't shake a story she had told me.

Her older brother had sold her to Cecelia for a Camaro. Custom paint job, V-8 engine, spoiler, aluminum rims.

Cecelia knew Keisha's mom from the army, and when Cecelia heard she'd died, she tracked down Keisha's brother. He didn't want an eight-year-old hanging around his neck and was a day away from dumping her at an orphan camp. All Cecelia had to do was toss him the keys and he was gone.

Keisha's brother threw her away like she was trash.

I covered my face with my hands, glad no one could see me. The world was full of messed-up things but I'd never really thought about anybody's life but mine. I lived in my rich-girl cocoon, completely focused on what
I
was going through. What
I
didn't get to do. I had passed the L.A. orphan ranch probably once a week for five years, but did I ever think about the girls inside?

The girls I went to school with, Dayla, Sparrow, Portia, Sophie, we didn't have a lot of freedom, but none of us had a brother who'd sell us for a
car
. None of us became escorts like Splendor so we could buy out our sisters' Contracts.

No, we were protected by gates and bodyguards and dads who could afford to feed us and clothe us and send us to a fancy school.

I laid my head down on my knees, feeling horrible.
I'm so selfish.

Even when Mom made me go to church and serve that free Thanksgiving dinner, the next day I barely thought about the people I'd seen. But not Mom.

She always met someone who would be her next crusade. Somebody who needed a heavier coat or qualified for free medical care they didn't know about.

I remembered getting mad, because the day after Thanksgiving was supposed to be
my
day with Mom, but she'd be out, taking care of somebody else.

I heard her calm and loving voice in my head. “If I don't speak up for people in need, honey, who will?”

Mom wasn't silent. She cared about people and fought for them. Yates, too. It's time I did the same.

75

It snowed for a day and a half, blowing so hard that I couldn't see past the porch rail. Somewhere out there, agents were hunting Maggie and me, and I had no clue how close they were to finding us.

Stuck inside, unable to get out and run, I bounced off the walls like a squirrel in a cardboard box. The electricity in the cabin was barely cranking, and it wasn't like Beattie had a Sportswall to distract me.

She and Keisha tried to keep me busy, kneading bread and playing marathon card games, but I couldn't keep Yates out of my head. I was sure I'd set the dogs on him by calling him from the truck. The feds chasing Maggie and me probably intercepted the phone signal.

And you didn't have to be a genius to guess that if Hawkins hired Retrievers to track me down, the first thing the professional hunters would do is monitor Yates' phone. I had no way to warn him even through a friend, because my phone was completely useless. No reception, or at least that's what Beattie told me.

Maggie kept to herself by the fire, holding a beat-up paperback, but rarely turning a page. I felt her eyes on me every time I circled the room, and when, around noon on the second day, I started to pace along the windows she snapped, “Would you stop that, for God's sake. No one's looking for us in this.”

I glared at her. “You know damn well they are,” I said.

If a look was a shove, Maggie's would have nailed me to the wall. “The only thing you can think about is saving your own skin,” she said. “Nothing and no one else matters.”

“You're wrong,” I threw back.

“I wish I was.”

I turned my back on her, hating Maggie for believing that about me, and hating myself for the things I'd said and done to make her believe it.

The wasp sting of what she said was still sharp hours later when the snow finally quit. Maggie made me give her my phone, and she took off to see Barnabas. She'd barely left before Beattie took me out to the porch and handed me a pair of cross-country skis. “Being snowbound can bring out the worst in people. I recommend a dose of fresh air,” she said.

It wasn't going for a run, but it was close enough, I thought. I stuck my head in the house. “Keisha, you want to ski with me?”

“Not unless I have to,” she called back.

Beattie smiled. “Winter's not her season.” She wrapped a bright red scarf around my neck. “We don't want the neighbors mistaking you for a deer.”

The wind had scooped the snow into white drifts and blue hollows, and it sparkled like someone had poured sugar sprinkles over it. Across the road, a boy and a girl were digging out a chicken coop while their older brother pushed snow off the roof of their house.

I headed for the far end of the valley. Jemima waved as I passed the barn. She was brushing off the solarskin with a broom while Caleb dug out the solar water barrels.

Running on tiptoes up the frozen valley, I got into a rhythm.
Left right glide breathe left right glide breathe.
It felt good, pushing my body after being cooped up so long. My head began to clear, but the cold and the altitude made me feel like I was dragging a parachute. I had to stop, drink, and catch my breath every hundred meters or so.