Catalyst (3 page)

We had the immaculate brick house, the servants, the cars and the clothing— all to keep up appearances, to prove to others that we were better, or so he thought. Father had dug his heels in on this topic. He would have one sent to me if I didn’t comply. So I would pick the companion myself. And I would pick one that would send him into orbit.

“I will choose.”

A smug, pleased smile spread over his face. “I will complete the application. The pairing ceremony is next week.”

He and Mother turned and walked out the door. It wasn’t until I heard the key in the lock that I realized he was serious about locking me in here. At least it was only for a week.

Only a week.

I laughed hysterically, listening to the sound echo into the silence surrounding me. Wouldn’t it just bust his bubble if I died before the pairing?

/ˈ
plan/

noun
 

1. A set of actions that have been thought of as a way to do or achieve something
   
2. Something that a person intends to do.
   

“WHAT’S UP, MAN?”
Case said, sauntering around the corner of the house. He dropped the swagger when he saw me standing waist deep in a hole in the ground. Using my foot and the strength left in my trembling thighs to push down on the shovel, I took another chunk of dirt and heaved it over my shoulder.

The sun was setting, casting golden light over the land.

Cason spoke first. “He didn’t make it.”

I shook my head. No way could I talk. I’d cry. And I didn’t cry, I wouldn’t.

“Hand me the shovel. I’ll finish up,” he ordered, hopping down into the hole with me. I gave him the handle and hauled myself out of the hole, scuffing along the earthen wall I’d carved. It was time to get my baby brother ready.

The house’s floor had begun to sink; the boards bowed dangerously under my weight. But it had protected us from the elements for so long, I couldn’t help but be grateful for what we did have. Griffin and I had weathered many a storm in this old place. Mom and Dad had gone out on their boat. To get the big fish, you had to cast deep. You had to get far from the shore. It was the only way, and they hadn’t been fishing for very long. They were green. When a gale tore its way to the shore, it must have been too much for them to overcome.

They never came back.

Griffin was only ten when they left that morning, and that was four years ago. Crazy thing was he never gave up hope. He was the most optimistic person I’d ever met. To him, Mom and Dad were washed up somewhere far away, somewhere so exotic that they had to cut their way through the jungles brimming with wide-leaved plants and poisonous wildlife. They used machetes to cut a path home, and it was just taking them a while. To him, the break in his leg would heal. Sure it hurt, but the red streaks radiating from the wound were just part of that healing. I’d known better.

He needed medicine, strong antibiotics. His blood was infected. I’d heard of it before but hadn’t seen it. The thick medical reference book upstairs said he could die, but I’d been the optimist. I thought I could get in and out of Confidence unseen, that I could get his medicine and get back to him in time.

Optimism was complete bullshit. It was for losers. Mom and Dad were dead and because they thought they needed to sell fish to the simples to feed and clothe me, and now Griffin was dead because of me, too. Because I hadn’t gone sooner, or been faster. The hospital at the medical pavilion teemed with guards, and it had taken a long time to slip into one of the supply rooms. I had to search each pill bottle for the names scrawled on the palm of my hand in fading blue ink.

Because I’d gotten caught inside the city and because my muscles weren’t quite as recovered as I’d hoped when I started through the swamplands. It had taken forever to make my way back across. Griffin didn’t have the time that I had wasted.

The trip to the back bedroom was a blur. Griffin was there. He looked like he was sleeping peacefully. His dark hair parted in the middle like he always kept it. Lips slightly parted, a little blue. Peaceful. That’s how he’d gone, or at least that’s how I hoped he’d left this world. In peace. Not in pain.

Tears flooded my eyes. But I refused to let them fall. This was my fault. But even more so, this was Confidence’s fault. If they treated us like human beings, if they gave us a way to earn medicine or the care of their physicians, Griffin would still be breathing. His chest would still rise and fall softly. He would have seen more than fourteen years.

I walked to his bed and carefully wrapped his blanket around him. Mom had made it from scraps of tee-shirts that we’d grown out of. It was his favorite, and he never slept without it. He had to be buried in it. I lifted him up, thinking to myself to be mindful of his injury.

Shaking my head, I cursed. He wasn’t here. He wouldn’t feel anything if I did jar his leg.

Easing him out of the door and through the house, past furniture and all the things that reminded me of our lives together, both with Griffin alone and with our parents.

Cason was almost done with the grave. He worked fast and was strong and thick as an ox. He watched me approach and eased the shovel on the ground that was now even with his shoulders. I fell to my knees and then maneuvered my legs around. Case helped me into the hole where I laid my brother down. Griffin’s dark hair matched mine. It almost looked like me in that hole, and the biggest part of me wished it was.

An almost out-of-body experience, Case and I covered Griffin with earth. I was numb. I’d just buried my baby brother. I just piled dirt on top of him, crushed him with its weight.

He was suffocating.

Case told me to go get cleaned up. He would finish it up.

Mechanically, I followed direction, heading toward the river.

And I let the tears fall.

CASE WAS QUIETLY
waiting on me when I got back. His massive body was perched on the top of the picnic table my dad and I had built, his feet on the bench below. I didn’t want to acknowledge the pile of heaped earth in the back yard so I passed him by as fast as my feet would carry me.

I heard him hop down and follow me toward the house. Dry grass crunched beneath our footsteps. The swamps may lay between our homes and Confidence, but the land from here to the coast, only a few miles away, was dry.

Our home looked worse than it had an hour ago. The clapboard was rotting along the edges. Despite having scrubbed the siding in the spring, it was covered in algae. Slugs had worn trails into the bright green rot in twisting patterns.

The front door opened with a loud squeal. I didn’t stop to tell Case to make himself at home. He’d been at home here since we were toddlers. Instead, I headed toward my room to search for clean clothes to throw on. Griffin’s door was still open. The sight of it stopped me in my tracks and just as fast, I’d stomped over to it and pulled the handle so hard that it broke. The brass knob hung loosely from the hole in the wood that it used to cover. Now, it wouldn’t close at all. I grabbed it and pulled it again. The handle halves clattered to the floor, one of them rolling into my foot, ricocheting off of it and slowly rolling away again.

That set me off. The next thing I remembered was Cason pulling me back, grabbing my hand, which was now throbbing and dripping with blood.

“Calm down!” he gritted out. “Mitis! Get a hold of yourself!”

“He’s dead! He’s dead, and he’s not coming back. Those….bastards! If we’d had medicine. If we’d had help!”

I cried. I cried on my friend’s shoulder.

He helped me to my room and guided me to the bed, where I collapsed onto the lumpy mattress and covered my face. I felt like killing someone. No, I felt like killing a simple, taking from them like they’d taken from me. Revenge was best served cold, or that’s what Dad always said. But I was burning hot with rage, and I wanted to dish it out now.

At the raucous sound of banging metal, I walked into the kitchen where Case was rifling around in the cabinets beneath the sink for a pan. “Why are you still here?”

His lips thinned into a straight line. We looked nothing alike. He had close-cropped brown hair and dark skin, a muscled form that kept expanding each week, it seemed. I wasn’t small. I was ripped, too, but damn he was getting big.

He stood up to full height and pointed the frying pan at me. “I ain’t leaving you like this. You’re a loaded gun. Don’t think I can’t see the crazy in your eyes. You’re fixing to get yourself in trouble, and I don’t want to lose my best friend. So consider me your warden.”

A harsh laugh flew out of my mouth. “I am about to get in trouble. And it’s gonna happen soon. So you’d best steer clear, Case.”

Cason shook his head, always able to be the bigger man. “Let’s eat first. You can tell me what you’ve got rolling around in that head of yours.”

Case was good at cooking anything we could find. We had a small garden this summer, but it had been hot and dry and hadn’t yielded any extra—just what we needed to survive. During good times, we had enough to can and store for the winter. Now, we’d go hungry. I shook my head.
There’s no more we.
There was only me. I’d go hungry. I’d probably starve to death.

He shoved a pot at me. “Get some water. I’ll find some food.”

We met back at the fire pit, the pot dangling from a metal contraption Dad had rigged up for cooking over the fire when I was only a toddler. Case started dicing up some mushrooms and a tomato he’d found. “Got some noodles left over from the market trip.”

Market had been three weeks ago. He’d been rationing. Once a month, we could trade with the simples, in rickety make-shift markets set up just outside each of the city’s four gates. They didn’t want to walk far to buy our goods. A lot of outskirters sold furs or hand-carved art and furniture. Those close to the ocean would bring buckets overflowing with fresh fish, oysters, and crabs.

Case and I brought something different. We brought gator. Both the meat and hides were popular with the simples, probably because it was rare and frightening to them. The Elite of Confidence had more money than brains. They wanted what would show up their neighbors. It was all about who had something different. They’d never stepped foot farther than 20 feet beyond their thick, concrete wall and when they did it was only on market day. Luckily, someone always wanted what we had to offer. The simples let us use the money we earned to buy rations of food we couldn’t produce ourselves: flour, sugar, and other staples.

I glanced into the pan. The water and stuff floating inside it was starting to boil. “You look desperate. Desperation makes a fool.”

“Then I’m a fool.”

He sighed and crouched down across the fire from me. “No, you’re not. But you ain’t thinking straight, friend.”

“I’m going to take one of them out.”

“Take one of them out?” he questioned, eyebrows raised.

“That’s what I said,” I yelled.

He chuckled and shook his head. “Won’t matter unless it’s someone important. An Elite or one of the Elect would send quite a message. It’d get your fool ass killed, but it’d send a message.”

Yes. Yes, it would. And I knew the perfect way to get inside the city—legally.

“When’s the next companion pairing?” I smiled.

“You really are a fool.” He stood up and crossed his thick arms. With a reserved sigh, he told me. “It’s next week.”

I looked at my friend. “Market’s next week, too. We should go hunting.”

“Yeah,” he nodded thoughtfully. “We should.”

I wondered what was going through his head. But, thoughts of gutting an Elect kept running through my mind. I’d carve my brother’s name into his flesh and hang him from that thick, concrete wall for all of Confidence to see.

/
kəmˈ
pan
yə
n/

noun