Authors: Laura Preble
“Read it.” She
sits on the braided green rug at my feet, crosses her legs, and rests her head
in her hands. “Now you know you can trust me.”
I untie the
twine, carefully unwrap the package, and see it’s just some old magazines. The
one on top advertises the latest sex scandal between two Hollywood leading men.
“Hilarious, Jana.” I throw it to the ground. Underneath it, there’s another
much different magazine.
The title is
Liberation, and the subtitle is Writings of the Revolution.
“Is this a
political thing?” I ask, leafing through the first few pages. Jana jumps up,
grabs the magazine out of my hand.
“It's just what
it says, idiot.” The old Jana’s back, biting my head off. At least it feels
familiar. “Writings of the revolution.”
“What
revolution? Is this some history thing?”
“You are dense.”
Jana shakes her head and leafs through the pages until she finds the one she
wants, then thrusts the magazine in my face. “Read it.”
A quick glance
at the front cover tells me what I need to know: it’s a magazine for
Perpendiculars. Why does my sister have it?
We’d been so
involved in what we were doing that we hadn't heard footsteps on the landing. A
sharp knock, and Jana scrambles to put the stack of magazines back in the
drawer, shoves the wooden panel on top, and yells, “Yes?”
“Jana, is Chris
in there with you?” David calls through the door.
“Uh...” Jana
motions for me to be completely silent.
Dammit
. I
feel like I’m going to sneeze. “He was in here. I think he went outside.”
David jiggles
the brass doorknob. “Can I come in?”
“I'm changing
clothes,” Jana calls, opening and closing a drawer for emphasis. “Can you give
me a minute? Want me to come downstairs when I'm finished?”
I can feel David breathing outside that door,
strategizing his next move.
He wants
Jana for some reason, and he wants to speak with her immediately, probably
about me and my maladjustment. We wait him out.
“Fine,” he
finally says. “Come to the parlor when you're dressed.”
“Sure.” Jana
shoves another drawer shut. “Almost decent. Be right down.”
We listen for
the footsteps on the stairs (thank God for creaky wood!) and only after we hear
David's voice booming downstairs do we breathe again.
I stuff the magazine inside my jacket, and
Jana nods silently as she checks the false drawer once more to be sure it won’t
be detected. “Can you go out the window?” she asks quietly.
“What is this,
Jana? Why do you have it?”
She puts a finger to my lips. “Just go
somewhere and read it. We can talk later. Be back for dinner.”
I don’t know
what to do. Is she setting me up? What if I take off and she tells them where I
went, and what I have? “I don’t want to read it.” I try to hand it back to her.
“No.” She pats
my jacket. “I still have two more in the desk. If anyone catches you, you can
tell them where you got it. I’ll be in trouble too.”
“But why are
you—”
“Just read.”
She shoos me toward the window. “Try not to break any bones on your way out.”
She opens the window slowly, so it doesn’t
squeak. A gust of fresh air, followed by the scent of coming rain, washes into
the room, and I feel like a wild creature escaping a too-small cage.
Wind whips my
jacket as I run across the back yard, down the lane behind the house, out into
the main road. I keep running until I can’t run any more. The watery sunlight
drains from the clouds as I trot into a clearing, find a pile of leaves, and
fall into it.
Staring into what’s left of the pale blue sky,
I feel like I could just stay here forever, bury myself under this tree and
forget I exist. Forget Carmen, forget my fathers, forget Jana and whatever
twisted plan she has. Why would she know anything about Perpendiculars? Why
would she have some
Perp
magazine stuck in her desk?
Unless she’s one too.
Could she be
one too?
I yank the
magazine from my jacket. Liberation—what a word. This is prison, if anything.
It’s frightening to open it, like I’m unleashing some demons into the world,
demons that will never go back between those pages.
Liberation. The cover’s pretty plain, just a
grainy photo of an old barn with a group of people sitting in front of it in a
circle, a headline reading Canadian Retreats. I flip it open, and on the first
page there’s an ad with a man and a woman holding hands. Ugh. I get the
pit-of-the-stomach feeling I’ve been conditioned to feel all my life, but then
that feeling’s replaced with something else: is it hope? Joy?
The page Jana
wanted me to read is bent slightly, and the magazine opens to it. I stare into
the face of a boy about my age, with night-dark hair and violet eyes like a
storm over the ocean. His expression is angry, defiant; the headline above his
picture reads Rebel Returns, by AJ.
It's
summer, and that means the heat and humidity are back, especially out West,
where the revolution is heating up more than ever. And when you say revolution
and California together the person who springs to mind is M. A., leader of the
west-coast arm of the PLA.
M.
spoke to A J. about life after El Centro
Perp
Reconditioning Camp, from which he recently escaped.
AJ:
How bad was it in the camp?
M:
I was captured in northern California, in transit
to a safe house. Somebody saw my
picture on the FBI
list and tipped off the police,
so they watched me,
grabbed me, and hauled me off.
That was three months
ago.
I was sent to El Centro, to the
Reconditioning
Camp there.
What I saw made me sick. I had heard
about the camps, but never been
to one. We've got to get
those people out of there.
AJ:
What was so horrible about it?
M:
Kids as young as 8 or 9 were there, as well as
adults, old people, anybody
suspected of being a Perp.
There were people there who
actually weren't
Perps
at all,
just supporters. We pretty much
worked all day, sun up
to sundown, and at our camp, at
least, the work
was agricultural.
We picked strawberries, oranges,
almonds, with little rest,
minimal water. I saw at least
three people die in the three
months I was there, from
dehydration and
malnutrition.
AJ:
What did they do to “recondition” you?
(Author's note: M pauses; it is difficult for him to talk about the
experience.)
M:
I can only say what they did to me. They put me in a
room and exposed me to images,
over and over, of
men with women, and…inflicted
physical pain.
They kept me awake for hours,
maybe days, I don't know.
I couldn't sleep, they did
something to keep my eyes open.
When they showed me photos of
women, they...
(he pauses, unable to complete the comment.)
AJ:
Did they torture you?
M:
Yes.
I throw the magazine
away quickly, toss it to the ground as if it were contaminated. I feel
nauseous. Torture. The word echoes against the walls of my mind, rings like a
bell, drowns out everything else I can think about. They tortured this guy,
this kid, because he was attracted to females. Nobody talked about it. Nobody
said anything about it! What about the loving God, the one true God, the one
who forgives all sins and protects the innocent? Such a bunch of hypocrites. My
father, he's the biggest one. Talking every Sunday about God and love, when
he's helping people torture other people for loving who they want to love!
The buzz of the cell phone makes me jump. It’s
Warren. I have to wait another ring to calm down enough to answer. “Hello?” My
voice cracks, and I try to cover up the magazine, even though he can’t see it
through the phone.
“Chris?” Warren
sounds falsely cheerful. “Where are you?”
“Went for a
walk.” I try really hard to sound normal. I’m sure it doesn’t work.
After a pause,
Warren says, “Dinner's almost ready. Can you get home soon?” There’s a rustling
sound coming through the phone, the clang of a pot or pan, then a door closing.
“Yeah, okay.
I’m—”
“Hurry up.
People will be arriving soon.” A door creaks open, and Warren’s voice becomes
louder, more cheerful. “I didn’t make dinner so I could be the only one eating
it. Hurry up.” The phone clicks dead. People arriving. Oh, Jesus, please don’t
let Carmen be there.
Time to go and
pretend I’m a good, dutiful Parallel, which is going to be damned near impossible
if she’s there. I leaf through the magazine again—letters from people who’ve
gone underground, photos with faces blocked out, ads for services. There’s a
whole community of people living under the surface of the “real” world. If I
didn’t have it in my hands I wouldn’t have believed it.
Jana is
obviously not
pranking
me on this. This is too
elaborate, even for her. Which means it must be real. There are groups of
people out there, people who are unashamedly Perpendicular, who live together
and aren’t afraid.
I can’t do
that. Even if it is true, I have to bury it. I have to be what I’m supposed to
be.
Carmen’s face
appears in my mind. Her smile, the way her hair hangs across her cheek, the tan
hands, so delicate and strong. When I think of her, it feels like drinking a
shot of whisky or getting a hit of adrenaline. I don’t even know her. It’s
stupid to risk everything for nothing.
I scoop dirt
from the base of the tree, dig with my fingers until I have a hole roughly the
size and shape of the magazine. I drop it in, cover it with the dirt and
leaves, and, on the street side of the tree, I use my house key to carve a
Parallel sign.
Walking home,
the description of the reconditioning camps keeps running through my mind, even
though I try to stop it. The face of that boy, not much older than me…why would
someone torture him? Why would they want to hurt him? They’d hurt me too, if I
ever told anyone. Cold air burns my lungs as I watch my feet walk home.
“You’re back!”
Warren greets me as I softly close the back door. His forearms are dusted with
flour, and something in the oven smells delicious. I’m not hungry, though. “He’s
going to be here in a hour, so you should go shower and change.”
“Hmmm.” I trail
a finger through the leftover flour on the baking center and trace a path that
circles in on itself. “What are we having?”
“Pork roast.”
He opens the oven, pulls the pan out, and checks the dinner. “Looks like it’s
perking along.” He turns to me as he slams the oven door shut. “So? You doing
okay?”
“Sure.”
He blinks at
me, studying my face as I stare down at my flour labyrinth. “I don’t like to
see you like this.”
“Like what?”
He sighs, then
puts a dusty arm around my shoulders. “You’re depressed, Chris. I don’t blame
you.”
“Why?” Does he
know too? God…I hope not. I couldn’t stand that.
“Why don’t I
blame you, or why are you depressed?”
“Either.” I
smudge the labyrinth with my index finger. “I better get ready.”
“You’re not
leaving the conversation there, are you?” He snorts and grabs a bottle of wine
from the counter, pours himself a glass, and points to a kitchen chair. “Sit.”
“I don’t want—”
“I don’t care
what you want. Sit down.” He nods toward the table, and I sit. “Now. What were
you and Jana arguing about?”
“Nothing.”
“Please.” He
takes a sip of merlot. “Don’t insult me. I know something was brewing up there.
I have a sixth sense.”
What do I
say?
I’ve never been able to lie to him.
But this…I can’t tell him. He’d have to tell David, and then what? It’d kill
him to have to turn me in. It would put him in a horrible situation. “Okay.
There was something.”
“I know.” He
stares expectantly at me with owl eyes.
I lick my lips,
stalling for time. “She’s mad at me.”
He rolls his
eyes. “When has that ever not been the case? Give me some new information. You
two have been scuffling since birth.” Birth. That’s it. I can use that.
“She says our
birth mother is the same, but I say she isn’t.” There. Plausible. Emotional.
Fight-worthy.
Warren takes
another sip of wine, and studies my face, weighing whether or not he believes
me. Time to pad that lie.
“I know you
probably think it shouldn’t matter, but I don’t think we are genetically
linked.” I try to sound superior. “Her mother must have had some kind of weird
rebellious streak or something. Or maybe she was mentally ill.”
“Do you think
we would’ve chosen someone who was mentally ill? That’s the whole point of
surrogacy. They screen people, and you choose somebody who is compatible with
your genetics and interests. Mentally ill people do not act as donors or
surrogates.” He seems to be buying it for the moment. “Seriously, Chris, that’s
what you two were fighting about? You could’ve just asked.”
“Oh.” I guess I would’ve asked if it mattered
at all, which it doesn’t. But I’m stuck with it now. “I didn’t know if you’d
want to talk about it.”
“Why not?”
Something beeps. “Oh. Hang on.” He rushes to the second oven and takes out a
perfectly golden apple pie. “All right, well, we can talk all about that issue
after tonight. Let’s just get through dinner and dessert without any major
casualties, okay?”