The Fear Trials (4 page)

Chapter 13

L
ater, I sit on the deck and listen to the sirens wail. Then I wait for Trace's message.

Tonight the moon is covered in clouds as thick as cotton. It is so black I can hardly see my hands in front of my face.

There's a whooshing noise, then a twang, as Trace's arrow lodges itself into the floorboards. I think I hear footsteps behind me, but when I whirl around, no one is there. I set my mother's crossbow down and read Trace's note.

I saw what you did today.

My blood goes cold. I picture Trace standing on her boat, watching me throw a dagger at Peri's head. She must think I'm heartless.

I scribble back an explanation. It looks so pathetic. I shouldn't care about what this girl thinks. And yet I so desperately want her to understand.

I didn't have a choice.

I shoot my arrow and wait. The moon appears, illuminating the sea. I get a glimpse of Trace's boat. I see her slender frame as she bends to get my arrow. And there's another figure, too. Someone tall and strong.

Someone who doesn't belong.

A man.

My heart speeds up, slamming against my ribs. Trace is busy writing a note back to me. She doesn't know he's there. He moves slowly. Methodically. Silently.

I wave my hands, try to get her attention, but the clouds race across the moon again, dousing the light. “Trace!” I scream.

But she doesn't respond. I knock an arrow onto my mother's bow and shoot it blindly, hear the thwack as it hits her boat. “Come on, come on . . .”

There's a scream that pierces the night.

“Trace!” I rush for the railing, set to dive in. But warm hands haul me back.

“Leave it, Meadow,” Koi hisses in my ear. “There's nothing you can do.”

I struggle against him, but he's too strong.

“I have to help her!”

I don't know how he knows about Trace, if he saw me writing to her or caught me stealing his pencils and paper. But he's here now, and he won't let me go. “If you go over there, you will die. You're not ready yet.”

“But she's my friend!”

I feel his hot breath against my cheek. “We have no friends. Only this family, on this boat. Let it go.”

There are no more screams from Trace's boat. The clouds move again, and I see the man's silhouette. He dives into the waves and disappears. I aim for him, but the water is black. It's pointless.

Then a wailing, sobbing. I can't tell if it's Trace or her little sister. I can't see anything, I don't know what happened.

The sobbing continues through night, and when darkness fades and the sun takes its place, I finally understand.

I watch in horror as Trace dumps her little sister's body into the sea.

Chapter 14

W
hen I'm beneath the waves, nothing else matters.

I am a part of the water and it's all around me, and here I feel safe.

It's only an illusion. I have to come up for air eventually, and when I do, my father is watching me. He and Koi are sitting in the dinghy. It bobs up and down in the waves. “How long can you swim for?” my father asks me.

I kick my legs to stay afloat. “I don't know. An hour, maybe.”

“That's good,” Koi says, nodding. He looks at my father before he speaks. “I can go for two without stopping.”

I am tired of him acting like this, like his whole world revolves around my father's approval.

“Oh yeah?” I splash him. “I think you're lying.” He doesn't smile, so I splash him again. “Lighten up, Koi.”

“Stop it, Meadow.”

“
Stop it, Meadow
,” I mimic him, and finally, he smiles.

He dives into the waves, tackling me. We sink under, and it's like we are little kids again.

When we come back up, my father almost looks like he used to. Calm and gentle, without a care in the world.

“You should come for a swim,” I say. “It's hot out.”

Koi nods, running his hands through his hair. “Yeah, Dad. Come on. You could use a day off. We can relax a little.”

Our father almost looks like he wants to say yes. But then, as always, his smile goes away. “I want you both to swim until you can't anymore. No stopping to rest. Meadow, you
will
win.”

I think of all the times Koi and I used to play games as kids. We used to see who could hold their breath the longest. Who could jump the farthest, dive the deepest. I never won. “What if I can't beat him? He's bigger than me. Stronger.”

“You are the stronger one now,” my father says.

And just like that, Koi's good mood is gone. He turns and swims away.

 

For a while, we stay side by side, navigating through the trash and wrecks together. Koi's strokes are long and even. I mirror him, keeping my breathing steady so I don't exhaust myself.

Just before we swim past the bow of another boat, I look over my shoulder and see my father heading inside the cabin. He won't be watching us now.

That's when I think of Trace, and suddenly I fall back, break away from Koi, and swim in the direction of Trace's boat.

It is smaller than ours, only about a twenty-footer, an old yacht almost rusted out. I swim up to the bow. For a second, I think about turning away. I should forget about her, just like Koi said.

But then I see a flash of red, and her face appears over the railing.

“Wondered when you were gonna stop by.” Her voice is throaty, like it's nearly gone from crying.

“Got a rope?” I ask.

She tosses one down. I look over my shoulder. Koi is lost in the maze of wrecked ships. My father is nowhere to be seen, so I start the climb.

The first thing I notice is the bloodstain on the deck.

“Couldn't scrub the damned thing away,” Trace says. She kicks aside a metal bucket, spilling seawater. “Doesn't matter. Guess it's just a sign that I'm next.”

I keep my mouth closed. If Peri were dead, I wouldn't want Trace to say anything to me.

She leads me inside the cabin. There's an old mattress on the floor that takes up most of the space, a few half-carved arrows nestled in the corner, and a brown teddy bear on the floor.

“It was Anna's,” Trace says, picking it up.

“Anna. That's a nice name.”

“Sit down.” She points at the mattress. “My momma always said you let your guests sit down when they visit.”

I sink down onto the mattress. Trace sits beside me. Her hair is long, nearly as long as mine, but she wears it in two braids, and it shows off her blue eyes.

There's a crazy look in them.

It reminds me of my mother.

“He came out of nowhere,” Trace says. “Your arrow warned me. Thanks for that.”

I nod.

She picks up the teddy bear and squeezes it tight. “He'd already slit her throat by the time I grabbed my bow. And then he just dove into the water. Left her there to die. She was just a kid. She'll never get to ride the train. I told her it was scary, but she didn't care. She wanted to so badly . . .”

“I'm sorry.”

Trace grabs a knife from the floor. “I never did understand why people say that. They're
sorry
, like it's something they did. You didn't murder my sister. That bastard did, and when I get my hands on him . . .” She sinks the knife into the mattress.

I have to change the subject. She's drowning.

“Do you spar?” I ask.

Her blue eyes meet mine. A gap-toothed grin appears on her face. “I was hoping you'd bring that up. I see you training with your brother. He's good. Moves fast, light on his feet.” We go back out to the deck and she turns to face me, her hands balled into fists. “But you could be better.”

She lunges at me, so fast I almost don't react. But I throw my arm up just in time, deflect her punch with my elbow.

“You don't like to fight,” Trace says. “There's no energy in you.” She whirls, throwing her leg up. It comes down on my shoulder and I swallow the pain. “What's stopping you?”

“Nothing is stopping me. I'm just not good enough.” I throw a punch, but she sidesteps it with ease. “My brother failed his placement test. He didn't get a job. What if . . . I can't bring myself to do what needs to be done in this world?”

“You mean the killing,” she says. I nod. “Suck it up. It's the way it is, and there ain't gonna be a sister for you to protect if she starves to death.”

I stumble back, avoid another punch. “It won't happen. My mom's got rations, too.”

Trace stops for a breath. “Your momma's a nut case, you know that? She won't live much longer, I'm betting.”

I punch her in the stomach. “You don't know anything about my mother.”

“Nice hit.” She takes a few steps backward and laughs. “People talk about your mother. She's crazier than a bat thrown to daylight. Everyone says she's twisted as a thorn bush inside that head of hers.”

I slam into her and throw her to the deck. I punch her once in the nose, but before I get a second hit, she launches me sideways. She scrambles to her feet and we circle each other.

“You fight like my father,” I tell her.

“You fight like a pathetic little girl,” she growls, and then she's tripped me again. I fall backwards, my head slamming into the warped floorboards. She plants her foot on my throat so I couldn't move even if I wanted to. And there's that look in her eyes again. I'm about to die. I close my eyes.

“Look at me.”

She crunches her foot down on my windpipe, so I can't breathe. I open my eyes and stare up at her.

“If you want to live then make me a promise,” she says, tears in her eyes, “that you'll fight like hell, every day. You'll learn to kill, and you'll learn to love it. Because if you don't, you'll end up like your brother. You'll end up like me.”

She presses my windpipe, so hard I start to see stars. I flail my arms, try to grab her leg and pull it away from my throat, but she's too strong.

“If you stay soft, the way you are, then everything and everyone you love will be dead. And it will be your fault.”

The world is turning black around the edges.

“Promise me, Meadow.”

I can't answer her. I can't speak because there's no
air.
So I drop my arms. I surrender.

Trace pulls away, and finally, I can breathe.

“You're strong enough to beat me,” she says. “You just don't want to. You don't have the guts. Get up.”

We spar until the sun starts to sink in the sky. She shows me how to throw a better punch, how to dodge certain types of kicks. She shows me where to punch a man so his airway gets blocked, and where to kick him so his legs stop working. She shows me where to stab a person, right through the back, so that the blade sinks into the heart.

“Think of your sister. Think of what you'd do to the person who slit her throat.”

I finally knock Trace down to the deck.

She smiles.

“I'm sorry,” I say.

She places her palm on the bloodstained deck and falls apart. She sobs and I sit beside her quietly and wait until her tears run dry. I put my hand on her shoulder to comfort her, the way my mother does for me, but she whirls, punches me in the jaw and scrambles to her feet.

“Get the hell away from me!” she screams. “Everyone close to me dies!”

I leave without a word. I dive into the waves and swim home, and by the time I make it onto my boat, I'm crying. My father yells at me, and Koi smirks, but I don't care.

I could have died today.

Trace could have killed me, but she didn't.

Instead, she showed me what my life would be like without my family.

She gave me proof, a reason to be strong.

Chapter 15

M
y father takes me to shore alone in the morning. “We're going to the city today,” he says, as we hide the dinghy.

“What are we doing there?” I ask.

“Getting you familiar with the transportation,” he says. “Today is a fun day.”

I doubt that. My father's idea of fun doesn't ever match up with mine.

When we enter the jungle, we pass by a young woman who cradles her swollen belly. She asks us for food, and my father waves her away.

The city looks exactly the same as it did a few days ago. Children laugh and cry, Initiative officers shout orders to the citizens. A body lies in the street, not far from the trees, and the crowd parts to avoid it. Seagulls swoop down from overhead and gnats are everywhere, drawn by the smell of the dead. The train rattles past.

“Stay close,” my father says.

We blend into the crowd. We go left, towards the Library. I think I see our old apartment building in the distance, but the crowd moves to the right and I lose sight of it.

We stop at the tracks. “Your brother proved he could at least hop a train,” says my father.

“He proved he was human,” I say. “He proved he didn't want to kill someone else.”

My father shakes his head. “You're young, Meadow. You don't understand yet. But you won't become like Koi. You'll survive, like me. You'll survive because it's in your blood.”

There's a whistle in the distance. People start pushing and shoving, trying to get closer to the tracks. The ground rumbles, and I see the train heading towards us, smoke rising from its metal top.

“You have to run with it!” My father yells. “Reach your arms out, and when it comes, don't hesitate.”

I nod.

“Start running now!”

The train sweeps by. I run on the balls of my feet, as fast as I can, the way Koi did. I can feel the wind blow back my curls, feel the vibration in my toes. I reach, get ready to leap . . .

A body slams me aside, knocking me off course, as a man jumps inside the train car. I fall down and there are feet everywhere, crushing me. I try to stand but I can't move. I'm trapped. I cry out, but my voice is lost.

Hands find me and haul me to my feet.

My father. “You hesitated. I told you not to.”

“It wasn't my fault, someone pushed me!”

“Someone will always push you. You have to fight for your spot. Try it again.”

We wait for a long time until the train comes back again. This time, I can sense the eagerness. The way everyone seems to lean forward as one. There has to be an easier way to do this. I look at my father.

“Figure it out on your own,” he says.

I step back, away from the crowd, so they can push and shove and fight it out. The train sweeps by, the chaos begins. I wait, counting the seconds, until the last car rushes past, and those who didn't make it, who are still standing, give up.

I turn and chase it. I run as fast as I can. There's a ladder on the back. I jump, grab onto the railing, and hold on tight.

I turn and see my father smile.