The Always War (2 page)

Gideon Thrall stood offstage, waiting in the wings. The announcer hadn’t called his name yet, but people craned their necks and leaned sideways to see him. Whispers of excitement began to float through the crowd: “There he is!” “The hero …” “Doesn’t he just
look
like a hero?”

Then the PA system boomed out, so loudly that the words seemed to be part of Tessa’s brain: “And now, our honoree, the young man we will be forever indebted to for our survival, for our very way of life—Lieutenant-Pilot Gideon Thrall!”

The applause thundered through the crowd. Gideon took his first steps into the spotlight. His golden hair gleamed, every strand perfectly in place. His white uniform, perfectly creased, glowed against the darkness around him. He could have been an angel, a saint—some creature who stood above
ordinary humans. Even the fact that he walked humbly, with his head bowed, was perfect. At a moment like this most people would have looked too proud, like they were gloating. But not Gideon. He wasn’t going to lord it over anyone that he, Gideon Thrall, had just won his nation’s highest honor, something nobody else from Waterford City had ever done.

Standing at the back of the crowd with the other kids from the common school, Tessa felt her heart swell with pride.

“I know him,” she whispered.

The applause had just begun to taper off, so Tessa’s voice rang out louder than she’d intended. It was actually audible. Down the row Cordina Kurdle fixed Tessa with a hard stare.

“What did you say, flea?” Cordina asked.

Tessa knew better than to repeat her boast. The safe response would be a shrug, a cowed shake of the head, maybe a mumbled, “Nothing. Sorry for bothering you.” But sometimes something got into her, some bold recklessness she couldn’t explain.

Maybe she wanted to brag more than she wanted to be safe?

“I said, I know him.” She cleared her throat. “He was my neighbor. We grew up together.”

Cordina snorted.

“Hear that?” she said to the kids clustered around her.

Her sycophants,
Tessa thought.
Cronies. Henchmen.

The words she’d found in old books were fun to think about, but they wouldn’t provide much protection if Cordina decided that someone needed to beat up Tessa to teach her a lesson.

“Hear what?” one of the sycophants asked, right on cue.

“Gnat over there thinks she deserves some credit for
living on the same planet as the hero,” Cordina mocked.

“We were next-door neighbors,” Tessa said. She stopped herself from adding,
We made mud pies together when we were little
, though it was true. Possibly. Tessa didn’t remember it herself, but way back when Gideon was first chosen for the military academy, Tessa’s mother had started showing around a picture of Tessa, about age two, and Gideon, age five or six, playing together in the mud behind their apartment building.

Gideon had looked like a golden child destined for great things even then, even sitting in mud.

Tessa had looked … muddy.

Tessa was saved from any further temptation to brag—or embarrass herself—because the general who’d come from the capital just for this occasion stepped to the podium. He held up a medallion on a chain, and the whole auditorium grew quiet. The general let the medallion swing back and forth, ever so slightly, and the spotlight glinted from it out into the crowd. For a moment Tessa forgot that the city auditorium was squalid and dirty and full of broken chairs and cracked flooring. For a moment she forgot that the people in the crowd had runny noses and blotchy skin and patched clothing. She forgot they could be so mean and low-down. For that one moment everyone shared in the light.

“Courage,” the general said in a hushed voice, as if he too were in awe. “We give this medal of honor for courage far above the measure of ordinary citizens. Only eleven people have earned this medal in our nation’s history. And now Gideon Thrall, a proud son of Waterford City, will be the twelfth.” He turned. “Gideon?”

The general lifted the chain even higher, ready to slip it over Gideon’s head. Gideon took a halting step forward, as if he wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do.

No,
Tessa thought. To her surprise she was suddenly furious with Gideon.
Don’t hesitate now! Be bold! You’re getting an award for courage. Act like it!

Gideon was staring at the medallion. Even from the back of the auditorium Tessa could see his face twist into an expression that looked nothing like boldness or bravery. How could he be acting so confused? Or … scared?

“For your bravery in battle,” the general said, holding out the medallion like a beacon. He was trying to guide Gideon into place. Gideon just needed to put his head inside the chain. Then everyone could clap and cheer again, and all the awkwardness would be forgotten.

Gideon made no move toward the chain.

“No,” Gideon said, and in the silent auditorium his voice sounded weak and panicky. “I … can’t.”

“Can’t?” the general repeated, clearly unable to believe his own ears.

“I don’t deserve it,” Gideon said, and strangely, his voice was stronger now. “I wasn’t brave. I was a coward.”

He looked at the general, looked at the medallion—and whirled around and ran from the auditorium.

It felt like Gideon had stolen all the air from the room. For a moment nobody moved; nobody even breathed. Then Cordina, with her finely tuned sense of cruelty, turned to Tessa.

“So, slug,” she said. “If you and the hero are so
close
, why aren’t you running after him?”

“Maybe I will,” Tessa said.

She backed away from Cordina. Her retort was mostly just to keep Cordina from having the last word. But it felt good to move, to pull away from the crowd, which was beginning to unfreeze from the shock. Whispers were starting to ripple around Tessa: “What?” “Did he say ‘coward’?” “How could he—”

Tessa couldn’t stand to hear any of it. She raced out the
door. Nobody tried to stop her. Even the class monitors were just staring toward the stage, stunned and aghast.

In the hallway outside there was more cracked tile, and broken windows, peeling paint, crumbling plaster. Repairs, of course, were on hold until the war ended. And it never ended.

Tessa stumbled, righted herself, kept running down the hall. The cracked soles of her shoes flapped against the broken tiles. She didn’t expect to find Gideon, but the angry words she wanted to shout at him flocked in her mind.

Don’t you know what it’s like for the rest of us, those of us who aren’t heroes? Don’t you know how dreary our lives are? Don’t you know this was going to be our one golden moment, our one afternoon of pride? Don’t you know you ruined it for everyone? You just gave us something else to be ashamed of—

Then she saw Gideon.

He had his golden head bent over an industrial-size trash can. The hero seemed to be vomiting.

“You’re just sick,” Tessa said, the surprise and relief giving her the courage to actually speak.

Gideon lifted his head and blinked at her. A clammy sheen of sweat spread across his face and clumped in his curls. Up close he looked so young—just a boy, not a man.

“Someone should tell them—I’ll go tell them,” Tessa said, suddenly energized. The ceremony could be saved after all. Or—she glanced at his sweaty, wrinkled uniform—rescheduled, anyway. Set for another day. “You’re just sick, not cowardly.” The relief made her giddy. “Even a hero can get the stomach flu.”

Gideon reached out and grabbed her wrist, stopping her.

“No,” he said. “No. Didn’t you hear what I said in there? I was a coward. I am one. I don’t deserve any honors. All I did was kill people.”

“We’re at war,” Tessa said. “That’s what war is.”

But she wanted to pull her arm back. It was thrilling to think of a hero touching her wrist. A killer, though …

It’s not the same thing,
she told herself.
He’s just being modest.

That was the wrong word, and she knew it. She tried to think of something that would make Gideon—and her—see everything the right way again.

“You had to kill the enemy to save your own people,” Tessa said.

Gideon stared at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. Perhaps even the enemy’s language.

And then others were streaming out of the auditorium—the officials who’d been standing on the stage. The mayor, the city council members, the military men who’d come from the capital …

Gideon was still holding on to Tessa’s arm.

“Hide,” he said. “You don’t want to be seen with me.”

He jerked on her arm, propelling her toward a crumbling column. And then he let go.

Tessa didn’t know if any of the officials had seen her. She didn’t know if it mattered. But she stayed behind the column while the officials surrounded Gideon, while they whisked him away.

Her knees trembled so much she had to sit down on the broken floor.

Nobody would ever give me a medal for bravery,
she thought.

Rumors flew after the ceremony.

Gideon had been taken to the finest hospital in the country, to be treated for battle fatigue.

Gideon was almost recovered, almost ready to come back for another ceremony. The only problem was setting a date for the general to return to Waterford City. He had a busy schedule. It was hard fitting everything in.

Or—Gideon had already been given his medallion, in a private ceremony. He was so humble; that was the problem. He certainly wanted to share his honor with the entire community, with the entire country. But he didn’t feel that he needed to stand on a stage to do that.

There was going to be an official announcement. Maybe next week. Maybe next month.

Tessa slogged through her everyday life. Home. School. Her after-school job scrubbing floors at the hospital. Twice a day she passed the Thralls’ door down the hall in the apartment building, on her way to and from the stairs. Once, early on, she paused before it, her fist raised to knock.

What would I say?
she wondered.

Back when Gideon had first been chosen to go to the military academy, years ago, Mrs. Thrall had made it clear that she thought she was better than all her neighbors. She didn’t mingle. She was the mother of a boy who had beaten the odds—he was one in a thousand, maybe one in a million. No one ever actually released the statistics about how many children were accepted. They were the best of the best of the best. Why break it down any further than that?

Tessa wasn’t best at anything. She wasn’t even particularly good at scrubbing floors at the hospital. Robots could do a better job than her. But all the robotics companies were dedicated to building machines for the war. That left people like Tessa to scrub floors.

I’m fifteen years old,
Tessa thought.
Will I still be scrubbing those floors when I’m thirty? When I’m forty-five? Sixty?

She didn’t knock at the Thralls’ door.

And then one day there was an ambulance out front when Tessa got home. She hurried up the stairs, a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

It could be here for anyone,
Tessa thought.
Mrs. Evers on the third floor has a bad heart. Mr. Singleton never really recovered from that stroke last year. Maybe he died. Even my own parents look so frail sometimes, so beaten down….

But somehow she couldn’t talk herself into worrying about anyone but Gideon.

She reached the fifth-floor landing, her floor. She peeked out. The Thralls’ door was open just a crack.

Tessa didn’t intend to stop outside it, listening. Or, rather, she didn’t intend to get
caught
outside it, listening. But she tiptoed past as slowly as she could.

“—have to keep him medicated,” a man was saying, just on the other side of the door.

“He doesn’t like the medication,” a woman’s querulous voice complained. Tessa knew this was Mrs. Thrall. “He says it makes it hard to think.”

“Some people are better off not thinking,” the man replied.

And then the door began to creak open, and Tessa scurried past it. She yanked her key out, rushing to get into her own apartment before anyone saw her.

Why did it matter?

Tessa didn’t know. But as soon as she got the door open and rushed inside, she shoved it shut and stood there breathing hard, her back against the hard wood.

That night Tessa lay in bed, staring blankly up at the ceiling. Her room was small; her bed was narrow. Years ago she’d gotten into the habit of pressing her head against the wall and sprawling diagonally across the mattress, so she could trick herself into believing she had more space than she really did. But now something kept hitting against the other side of the wall.

Tap-tap-tap-thump-thump-thump-tap-tap-tap.

And again.

Tap-tap-tap-thump-thump-thump-tap-tap-tap.

And again.

Tessa remembered whose apartment lay on the other side of the wall.

Tap-tap-tap-thump-thump-thump-tap-tap-tap.

It’s just some machine,
Tessa told herself.
Maybe Gideon Thrall’s honor came with some practical benefit. A washer. A dryer. An automatic vacuum.

But the tapping and thumping was not quite precise enough to be mechanical. Tessa could hear the very human hesitation between the taps and thumps.

He’s listening to music,
Tessa told herself.
Tapping his foot. Maybe it’s not even Gideon. Maybe it’s his mother.

Tessa couldn’t fit the rhythm of the tapping and thumping into any song she’d ever heard. Maybe it was some other kind of rhythm, some kind of code.

Tessa got up and turned on the light. She reached to fire up the ancient laptop computer that sat on her desk, then stopped herself. The kids at school said anything you searched for online left tracks. It could always be traced back to you.

Tessa reached instead for the even more ancient encyclopedia set that had come from her grandparents’ apartment when they died. Tessa’s mother had wanted to throw the books away, but Tessa had rescued them. Some of the volumes were missing, but fortunately the
C
and
M
and
S
books were in the stack.