Infraction (12 page)

I watch Jane and even with the stubby screwdriver,
her slender fingers move deftly, and she takes down blinds faster
than even Madge. It's like with the corn-shucking in the cannery.
Her hands fly over the task. While she's working, she almost looks
confident. Well, as confident as Jane can look. She sees me
watching her, and I expect her head to bob down, but it doesn't.
She studies me appraisingly. I want to look away, return her
privacy, but I don't. I look her straight in the eye and offer her
a smile.

For just a second the right corner of her mouth
twitches like it might just turn up. But then she turns back to the
blinds she was working on.

“
Life must have been pretty good
before the war,” Madge says, carrying an armful of blinds down the
stairs and adding it to our pile. “Look at this place. Blinds to
keep out prying eyes, a comfy sofa to sit on, plenty of food in the
cupboard. Yeah, most of the cans have exploded, but can you imagine
just walking into a kitchen and having all the shelves
stocked?”

I'm suddenly very busy with a stubborn screw. This
does seem like a decent place; the town could have been idyllic.
But still there were people who left and built colonies on the
bottom of the ocean—the very colonies I was born into. No wonder so
many people on the Burn hate the idea of colonists. Sure they don't
know for sure if the colonies even exist, but just the idea of
anyone turning tail and running for cover while everyone else gets
blown up raises my hackles.

“
I wonder if there'll ever be
anywhere nice ever again,” Madge whispers, studying the
blinds.

She's so full of hate and sadness right now that I
have no idea what to say to her. Jane stands up and puts a hand on
her arm. Madge tries to smile at her, but her expression twists
into something ugly.

“
Do you ever think they're real,
Terra?”

I drag my eyes from the
blinds.
What?
I mouth.

“
The colonies?”

I shake my head. She must see how white I've gone.
Every last ounce of color drains from me. This is the last thing I
want to talk about, especially since Jack doesn't even know
yet.

“
Sometimes I wish they were. Just to
know there's something a little better out there.”

Then Jane speaks. “I hate them.”

It's the first thing I've ever heard Jane say, and
the sound of her voice—small and bird-like—startles me so much that
I drop my screwdriver.

Madge guffaws. “Leave it to Jane to get right to the
point.” Madge squeezes her shoulder. “I couldn't agree with you
more.”

I expect Jane to say more, but her mouth clamps
closed and she returns her fluttering hands to the blinds.

It's not that I don't understand how they feel, but
to hear them say that, to hear the way Mary told me that Dave hates
colonists, feels like a punch in the gut. I want to tell them that
we're not all cowards and not all of us had a choice. But why in
the world am I defending them? Didn't I want to run as fast as I
could out of there? I think of Jessa and Brant and the genuinely
good people there, and I know it's not always black and white the
way I imagined it to be while I still lived there. Nothing ever
is.

We've retrieved all the blinds from the house, so we
each take an armful and carry them down the porch and to the truck.
I grapple with mine, the blinds and cords slipping and swimming in
my arms, but finally manage to dump them in a pile. There are three
women at the truck sorting and boxing and piling, and they take the
blinds off our hands and start loading them.

I look around and realize Kai's not here. I've never
seen her in the cannery either.

Where's Kai?
I ask
Madge.

She pulls away and blows warm air into her hands.
They're red and chapped from all the cannery work, and being out in
the cold doesn't help.

“
Since she's pregnant, the agents
gave her special work hours. She works in the commissary—the
staff's kitchen. You know, feeding the agents and soldiers all that
jam and the other delicacies we'll never see.”

I nod, glad the subject is off the colonies. Or so I
think.

“
Hey, Jane. Do you think they have
jam in the colonies?”

Jane has assumed her hunched
shoulders and drooping head now that we're out in the open again,
but her eyes flick to Madge. They say
yes
.

I want to crawl under a rock.

We spend a few more hours finding small kitchen
electrics: toasters, griddles, mixers—anything with heating
elements or gears—and bringing them back to the truck. Then the
soldiers start rounding us up, and we file back to the bus.

Just as the agent scans my arm and I get ready to
step up, a soldier leans to her and whispers, “A settlement was
taken up north by the Sound. We'll have new workers tomorrow.”

My foot freezes on the step and my muscles refuse to
move. No, no, no, is all I can think. Please don't let it be the
school. My eyes clench closed as I see the settlement in the
afternoon summer sun: the bees buzzing lazily over the strawberry
fields, Red in the kitchen helping with meals, Nell combing through
my hair with her fingers, Dave's mischievous eyes sparkling, Mary
leaning against one of the old trees out back, rolling
bandages.

Please don't let it be them.

I get a sharp jab in the back from a soldier's gun.
“Move, worker.”

The pain pulls me from my paralysis, and I force my
feet up the steps and into the aisle. I shake my head, trying to
shake the memories loose, trying to convince myself that no, it
couldn't be them.

I can't convince myself.

Jane leads the way back to our cell
after dinner. As soon as we cross the threshold, she sits on the
bottom bunk, her arms wrapped around her legs in the
all-too-familiar posture. She looks like she has something to say,
but then she bows her head and her hair forms a lank, yellow wall
between us. I lean against the opposite wall, studying her. She's
carefully not looking at me: looking at the toilet, the sink, the
door, the light flickering from the ceiling, the window with its
fading sunlight. It must face west. I feel the sudden need to see
out the window. After spending the hours in the reclamation town
under the heaviness of gray clouds, I leaned my head toward the bus
window when the sun finally came out on the way back to the camp. I
can't get enough of the outside. I miss waking up with dew on my
sleeping bag and the green of pine needles hovering around me. I
miss the sweet, rotten smell of decaying leaves stirred up under my
feet. I even miss the smell of the government rations Jack and I
ate in the woods; I miss it because we
could
eat it in the woods.

The window is too high to stand on tiptoe to reach.
The bunk is high enough, but I'd have to move it. I stand straight
and wipe my palms on my pants. I need to tell Jane my plan so I
don't frighten her. I've never even spoken to her so I'll probably
scare her to death anyway, though I'm not sure how to reconcile her
weak self with the confident, angry girl she became for just a
moment today when she declared she hated colonists.

I tap her on the shoulder. Her head jerks up and her
eyes are wide, the blue irises completely surrounded by white. I'm
afraid if I touch her to spell my words she'll completely freak out
on me. Instead, I point to the bed next to her and write the words
there.

Jane?

She nods, understanding, but her eyes still look
like a hunted animal's.

I point to myself.
Terra.

She nods again and relaxes a fraction. She tucks her
hair behind her ears like she's tearing down the wall between us. I
venture a smile, but she doesn't look me in the eye now that I'm so
close.

Move our bunk?

She looks away from my invisible words to my face,
and she studies me. I try to appear calm, neutral, kind. I'm
trembling, though; the same kind of nervous tremble I had outside
the settlement for the first time when all I wanted was for them to
accept me.

She mouths a single word.
Why?

She
is
a ghost. Pale, waifish, and silent. Even now that our defenses
are down, she doesn't speak to me.

To see. Do you know what's out there?

She shakes her head.

Find out. Help me?

She nods and unfolds herself. We
both lean against the bunk, but it budges only a mere inch. It's
much heavier than it looks. Jane shrugs. I hold up one finger. One
more time. Then I mouth to her,
One, two, three.
We heave against the bunk and, together, we push
it. It screeches across the linoleum and we freeze, listening for
the soldiers' footsteps, sure they'll come running to investigate
the noise. We stand that way for five minutes, and I feel
ridiculous propped against the metal of the bunk, frozen like some
child with her hand caught in the cookie jar. Honestly, shouldn't
we be able to put our bunk wherever we want to? If they come, they
come.

I count again and we push the bunk, leaving white
gouges in the floor. By the time the bunk bumps up against the wall
under the window, we're both panting and sweating. Jane gives me a
goofy smile expanded by adrenaline and accomplishment. She has
yellowed, crooked teeth underneath her thin lips, but her smile is
the most beautiful thing I've seen since I got here. She feels like
we got away with something too, and I can't help smiling back.

I climb up the bunk and crawl to the window. Our
window does face west. There's a thick line of trees, mostly
evergreens with deep green, pointed tops. They cut a jagged line
into the horizon. I look beyond them and discover I'm holding my
breath. The sun is setting, sending yellow-orange light skittering
across the clouds in a rainbow of colors, and then the light
bounces off the thin ribbon of water in the distance.

The ocean.

I wave Jane up, and she climbs beside me. She looks
out and her smile deepens. I lean against the wall, and she
surprises me by grabbing my hand. I squeeze hers gently, and
together we watch the sun set. It disappears beyond the water and
trees, but I can watch it again tomorrow. They can't take the sun
from us.

Jane jumps when the anthem begins to play. She's
usually asleep for this part.

Tonight I don't think about the government or the
agents or the soldiers. The anthem playing is somehow suited to the
majesty before me. I watch the violet haze creep over the building
and toward the horizon. Soon the sparkling water is nothing more
than a dark line between trees and sky. I reach and put my palm
flat against the glass. It's cold and covered in a film of
condensation. I pull my hand away, tuck it under my blanket to
warm, and study the outside world through the shape of my hand
print left there.

When the sky is completely black and the lights have
gone out for the night, before the screams and moans begin, Jane's
head droops and she falls asleep on my shoulder. Her thin frame is
hardly a whisper leaning against me. Her breathing deepens. I'm
awake, though, straining my eyes for the horizon.

I'm
this close
to the water. The spark I felt three days ago
riding in the cattle truck to the labor camp returns. I'd forgotten
it until this moment. If the ocean is only beyond that line of
trees—maybe two miles at the most—how hard would it be to get a
small group of people there and into a sub?

Gaea watches me; I know she does. I can picture her
in her small cave of a room, the dozens of computer monitors all
trained on the views of other satellites. I roll the stump of my
tongue inside my mouth, close my eyes, and find I still have tears
for that woman. Mother. I thought I had matured, moved past it, or
whatever psych term my therapist in the colony would have used.
Repressed it, more like. But I haven't; she still haunts me. The
mother I should have known, but she was too afraid to face her
problems and she ran. I can see that about her now. I feel a
strange mixture of anger, sympathy, and pity, and I'm not sure
which one wins out. I have every right to hate her, but I can't
bring myself to do it. She acted so self-assured those few minutes
with me before I left for the Burn. Now I think it was a mask. She
ran from the colony, but wasn't courageous enough to run all the
way to the surface. She hunches over those computers, drinking in
the pictures she'll never be brave enough to see for herself. It's
sad, really.

Does she watch me closely enough that I could send
her a message? Could I tell her I need a sub—for how many? Five,
six? Ten?—and would we be able to time it exactly right?

All of this would depend on escaping the camp. My
gut clenches. I stare out the window at the guard towers. All but
one is empty. In that one, in the northwest corner, there's a
single soldier. The flare of a cigarette illuminates the dark
silhouette. But there's no one patrolling the yard, no
searchlights. Just the huge fence and the curls of barbed wire.

Do they really believe we're all so broken that no
one would dare escape?

My heart leaps in my chest. Yes, yes they do. The
steely glint in Madge's eyes tells me that. The soldiers and the
agents never see that, but she's shown it to me. How many others
have that same fire they don't readily share with everyone? I'm
hoping it's more than they can guess. If so, this could possibly
work.

The first moan starts—low and throaty, and then it
grows and becomes a wail. I've only spent two nights here, but I'm
already starting to be able to ignore the awful noises now. Jane
nuzzles into my shoulder, and I pull my blanket up over her. She's
too frail. She would be the first one I get out of this place. Her
and Kai. I frown. With her growing belly, would Kai be able to make
the two-mile run to shore?