The Wanted (35 page)

ROSA

I knew conversations had to happen. Big, serious conversations. But right then, all I wanted to do was make myself flat as a piece of paper, slide under his shirt, and live against his chest.

Joseph flapped a clean sheet in front of my face. It pushed scents of clean skin and smokiness that never washed out of your hair sailing towards me. I inhaled deeply.

A knock on the door disrupted my roaming thoughts. I moved through this stranger’s house we’d commandeered, scared to touch possessions that didn’t belong to me and had their own lost history.

A ratty hall runner rug gritted under my bare feet. I opened the door, and a gust of rust and smoke met my nose.

“Here.” Gwen pushed an armful of children’s clothes towards me gently. “A woman had these in her bag for her… but she doesn’t need them anymore.” She sniffed, and I knew the rest. “Anyway, you might as well take ’em for the kid.”

“Thank you.” I grasped the clothes from her cold hands. “How’s it going out there? And how are you?” I asked, motioning to the gaping hole and the glow of hundreds of campfires outside the wall. Sad murmurs echoed into the blank sky.

I’d wanted to sleep under the trees too, but it was crowded out there. Most of the citizens were too afraid to step back inside, despite our assurances the rest of the town was not going to sink into the ground. Weirder still was the fact that they were looking to us for answers.

Gwen grimaced. “It’s settling down, I guess…” She hesitated and then said, “I’m good. I’m back with my people. Best feeling ever!” She put her thumbs up, though her eyebrow arched sarcastically. We both knew it would take time for both of us to be ‘good’. “The news of the Superiors’ deaths has caused a lot of mixed emotions. Superiors…” she scoffed. “More like inferiors, idiots, imbeciles… uh… Matthew said I have to stop calling them names in front of the newbies,” Gwen said, winking, her cheeks flushed and pinched with new freedom as she rolled her eyes at the word ‘newbies’. She amazed me.

“You can call them anything you like in front of me,” I said warmly.

“I know,” she replied, gazing at her feet, still wearing my mother’s shoes.

Whispers of Este and Grant’s deaths had grown quickly to loud truths, rolling over the huddles of people like galloping clouds. It caused relief, fear, and displacement. I felt little relief. My own hand shivered from the cold of being dipped in Grant’s blood. I stared down at it, and Gwen dipped her head lower to make eye contact.

“Anyway…the soldiers, Gus and the others disarmed have corroborated our story of the video the Superiors wanted to make and the purpose of it. Man. I think I kept hoping it wasn’t going to happen, that they wouldn’t go through with it, and then…
boom
.” She made an exploding gesture with her hands, and I flinched. “There were other ways, you know?” she muttered, her voice cracking under the weight of it all.

“I know,” was all I could say.

“Matthew says this kind of grief, this massive loss of life, will not be easy to overcome. It’s going to take time and help. I’ll help.” Sadly, thousands of displaced, scared, and grieving citizens was a familiar situation for us.

“Do you want to come in and rest for a minute?” I asked as I yawned a hole in my body.

“Nah, I’m good. I have accommodation. You two deserve and
need
some time alone,” she said, a slight edge of concern underlining the word ‘need’.

“Oh okay,” I replied doubtfully. “Thanks for the clothes.”

“S’ok. Rosa. I’m sorry about your mother,” she said as she walked backwards down the path.

A thread of ice worked its way through my heart, and I shuddered. “It wasn’t your fault.”

She frowned, her cheeks dimpling, her eyebrows working. “It’s just what you say, when there’s nothing else you can say,” she said, giving me a sad smile.

I choked on a weird laugh that wanted to escape. “Thanks.”

I waved as she strolled quickly down the street like she owned it. My eyes tracked her down the road and up the path of another home, a few doors down. The world was inverted, Survivors on the inside and Woodlands’ citizens on the outside.

“Grace!” she shouted.

“Huh?”

“It’s a song. Look it up… but later.” She shut the door. I pocketed the name, knowing it would tear me open—a song for another time when I had the chance and space to grieve.

Passing Rosa-May sleeping on the couch, I placed the clothes at her feet. I sucked in a sharp breath at the memory of my mother. There one second, her face determined, some fight still in her. Then gone. It hurt, but the weight of responsibility to my sister was a round, smooth thing, a warm reminder that kept me from sinking. I pictured her with Orry and it made me smile. It made me frown too. My mother should have been there to meet him. I hugged my body and returned to Joseph.

He glanced up from tucking the sheets in, lifting the mattress with one arm like it was made of cardboard.
I
was made of cardboard. A cut-out of myself. Everything overwhelming. Feelings clashing, crushing me flat. My body mushy with hugs, sharp with betrayal, on fire with desire, and shivering with worry.

“Who was at the door?” he asked, his beautiful eyes pulled back with distance. Too, too far away.

“Gwen.”

“Oh.”

After his parents, my parents, everything. He hadn’t said much. But then, neither had I. I gulped down my pain in one lump as I recalled telling Pelo about Mother. Hurt and reassurance as I understood that he truly loved her, and now it was too late.

Joseph ran a calloused hand over the sheets and patted them once. He moved to where I stood frozen in the doorway, caught in a memory.

“You looked tired,” he said, eyes glowing. He put his hands on my shoulders and assessed me, words trembling on the edge of his lips. “Are you all right?” His eyes darted away when his gaze reached my injured fingers. I shoved them behind my back. He wasn’t ready for those answers. The ones that came with screams, ice, beggars, and fear.

I shook my head. “I’m fine.” I wasn’t sure I’d ever be fine.

His shoulders slumped. He knew I was lying. I knew
he
wasn’t fine either.

“Do you still have it?” I asked, my eyes searing holes in his pockets.

A distant rumble of a laugh echoed in his chest because he knew exactly what I was asking for. He fished my handheld from his pants pocket, and I snatched it from him hungrily. My palms dipped with the weight of it, heavy with my promises. I turned so we could both see it, nestling the back of my head into his chest. He brought his hand under mine, holding the screen up closer to our faces, and when our fingers touched, my skin hummed golden songs.

The red light blinked an answer to my question. Joseph leaned down and whispered in my ear, his lips grazing my hairline.

“There he is.” He pointed to the red dot resting in one place. Goosebumps rose on my skin.

I tried to nod but I was too torn, too eager to run out of the door and into the forest, climb a mountain, whatever I needed to do to get back to Orry.

“I know he’s okay,” Joseph said, putting both of his warm hands on my shoulders and spinning me slowly to face him. I put my fingers to his chin, running over the stubble. He leaned into my hand and closed his eyes. “Just like I knew you’d survive. I never doubted it,” he whispered without looking at me. My finger ran over his lips. His posture was relaxed and guarded at the same time and I wished I could dive into his head to know what he was thinking.

JOSEPH

I couldn’t look at her. The damage to her hands, the hollowness of her eyes. Torture ran all over her face in messy lines. I knew what she wanted. I wanted it too, but I was afraid of her lips. Or I was saving them. I wasn’t sure. All I knew was those lips would undo me to the point where a confession was all I was, and I wasn’t ready.

ROSA

I wrapped my arms around his waist and put my ear to his heart, the beat unsteady.

“You know me,” I quipped. “Stubborn to the last.”

He chuckled hollowly, and I felt it was the wrong thing to say.

“Always,” he replied.

He turned off the handheld and put it away. We couldn’t do anything tonight. We rocked back and forth, holding each other, the floorboards creaking rhythmically. On the wall, a cross-stitched picture of a house with the words
Home Sweet Home
sewn underneath it glared at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said to his shirt.

“I’m sorry too.”

The reasons behind the apologies were too long and too numbered.

He gathered me up, my bones sagging in my skin, my energy sapped. I ate for the first time in twenty-four hours just before, and it had stretched my shrunken stomach.

“Sleep,” he ordered, laying me down on the bed and folding the sheets and blanket around me. He stroked my horrible hair from my face, his expression conflicted.

Kiss me.

My eyelids fluttered from pure exhaustion as I tracked him walking slowly around the bed. I felt a moment of peace that I held onto. He was here with me.

I was asleep before he had even crawled into the bed.

Just before dawn, I woke. My heart stuttering in my chest as the events of the last few weeks collided in my head. I closed my eyes, and my fingertips pulsed with twinges of pain. I curled them under into a light fist. The insides of my eyelids were a screen, projecting bursts of blood, instruments glinting on a tray, pins, and shiny black doors.

I drifted off to sleep after my momentary panic only to be woken minutes later. Joseph’s hulking body seized next to me, flinging my hand from his sweat-soaked side. He screamed once, low and strangled, and then his body went slack.

It reminded me that we were not a magic cure for each other. There were things I needed to tell him and words he must have for me. I was scared of those words, but I wouldn’t be able to avoid them.

ROSA

The world wants a piece of me, I know. But until I have my son in my arms, it’s like tugging on a curl of steam.

I’m insubstantial.

Ineffectual.

Three pieces out of four.

The white rays of a cold dawn piercing the thin curtains of the bedroom shed unwelcome light on our situation.

So much confusion. So much to do.

I stretched out and the cold, empty place beside me sent a shot of fear through my body. My hand wavered over the cool sheets and for a second, I thought I was back in the Superiors’ compound, but then I heard Joseph in the lounge, talking to Rosa-May. I padded out of the bedroom, but hung back, resting against the peeling hall, and listened to their conversation.

“So you don’t like toast?” Joseph squatted down with his back to me, hanging his arms over couch. Rosa-May shook her head, gazing at the floor. “What about toast with…” He got up, moving out of my sight to the kitchen cupboards. Jars clunked against each other, boxes scuffed the shelves. “I know. Toast with detergent?”

Rosa-May perched on the back of the dusty pink couch like a monkey ready to jump, her watchful eyes twinkling but her lips set in distrust. She shook her head, her mouth tugging into a very brief smile.

“No. Okay, what about toast with…” He shook a box. “Dried pasta? With drawing pins? Ouch, that’d hurt. Um… sardines?” With each ridiculous suggestion, her face relaxed a little more, her smile growing as she watched him dance around the small kitchen.

She lifted her hand and pointed. “Jam.”

“Jam. Really? Well, it seems a little unorthodox, but jam it is,” Joseph said as I pulled around the corner and met his eyes. His gaze dropped to my bare feet, his fingers flexing at his sides, a jar of strawberry jam in one hand. He seemed to check himself, cracking his neck to one side, and then took a deep breath. Stepping towards me awkwardly, he swept me into his arms and held me close. He breathed in my hair as if he were memorizing me, saving me, like I would disappear. I felt bendy and squeezed of air in his arms, but happy.

The jam jar knocked the back of my skull with a light clunk. I felt Rosa-May’s eyes on us. “Ouch!” I exclaimed, though it didn’t really hurt, and he broke our embrace, leaving me wobbly and rubbery, liable to bend to the ground.

“Sorry if I woke you,” he said, his eyes running over my body slowly. I couldn’t quite work out what he was doing. Or thinking.

“You didn’t,” I replied politely. In agony. Rosa-May clambered over the back of the couch and ran to my side, wrapping her arms around my legs like a vice. I bent down and smoothed her hair, feeling a grief-coated lump rising in my throat.

Joseph’s eyes were sadness rounded with distress when he caught my expression.

“What can I do? I don’t know what to do,” he said, expelling the thought desperately, without meaning to.

I wiped my eyes before my sister could see my tears and we both looked up at Joseph, our faces two halves pressed together, two parts of a whole.

His smile was a clash between guilt and love.

“God! She looks so much like you. She’s beautiful.” He kneeled down and tucked his large finger under her chin. “You’re beautiful, Miss Rosa-May.” The ‘Miss’ sent me tumbling towards a dark tunnel, but I braced myself against the sides.

She narrowed her eyes for a second, like she was sizing him up, and then she barked, “Toast.” Like that, she pulled me back from the edge as we all laughed, truly laughed.

Joseph turned to make breakfast, and we discussed what we needed to do next.

We needed to find Gus and Matthew.

We needed to leave Pau and get Orry.

We stepped from the thin home and into a grey dawn. I tripped and stopped to roll up the long legs of the pants Joseph’s friend Elise had lent me. The shirt she gave me hung over my hands and the boots were two sizes too big, but it was so much better than the torn dress I’d been wearing. Joseph waited, his eyes out over the fuzzy sky, his mouth pulled down.

I knocked his arm to startle him back to the present. “You still asleep or something?”

He dipped his chin to me and forced a smile. “Sorry.”

“No need to be sorry.” I smirked, and he sighed like he’d just expelled a large ghost from his chest. The sigh flapped around me and I pulled my grey jacket tighter around my middle, hoisting Rosa-May onto my hip.

Last night, we’d left everyone to sleep, to rest. This morning’s light showed a world turned upside down. All the Survivors inside the walls, and most of Pau Brazil milling around outside, completely lost.

Matthew appeared from the mist, striding down the dreary street, his face etched in tired lines of worry and held up with purpose. I waved him over.

“Oh good, you’re up. We’re meeting outside to discuss our next move. Joseph, I believe your parents are waiting for you out there too.” His smile was wary.

Joseph tensed at the mention of his parents. Their reunion last night had been joyful but brief with Joseph making excuses and whisking me away before much could be said. I think he was happy to see them, but I also understood his reluctance. We were not the same people who left here two and a half years ago.

Matthew turned, expecting us to follow.

“Where’s Gus?” I asked, running to walk beside him.

“Hunting,” he replied with a hint of amusement in his voice.

We parted the mist and climbed the crest of blown-apart concrete. The view shocked us to a standstill. Thousands of people huddled in small groups, spread out below us like a herd that had lost its alpha.

I gasped.

Matthew heard me. “Yes. It’s quite a sight.”

We moved to the left, hitting the grass and walked towards the chopper. Matthew gestured to Gus, who was squatting by the wall, knife in one hand, the other pressed to the ground.

“What is he hunting exactly?” I asked both of them.

“That little man that went underground, I guess,” Joseph answered.

Matthew nodded. “He has to surface eventually.”

“Oh,” was all I managed before I was swept into a tight embrace yet again.

I thought we’d done all this last night: The hugs, the kisses, and the happy reunions, which lacked happiness. But Rash had me off the ground, with Rosa-May still in my arms, before I could stop him.

We teetered together.

“In the cold light of morning, your hair really does look like shit,” he joked as he planted me back in the grass. His eyes darted to Joseph, who shook his head.

“I know,” I said, attempting to tuck it back and losing.

Joseph marked my side. “Considering everything she’s been through, actually, despite any of that, I think she looks incredible.”

Rash scowled. “Enough with the sappy romantic crap dude, I just ate,” he said, holding his stomach and pretend-retching. Rosa-May giggled as I scowled at him.

Rash winked and pinched her cheek. She smacked at him with tiny fists.

“Whoa! Got your sister’s temper I see, mini-Rosa.”

Joseph loomed over Rash. “Don’t call her that,” he threatened.

I waved them both off. “Calm down you two.” Their interaction was strange and left an icy, acid feeling in my stomach. I left them exchanging frigid stares and peered over Rash’s shoulder to see Pelo and Joseph’s parents talking seriously. I’d forgotten they knew each other. The image of a parent-teacher conference hovered like a bubble over their heads. When Pelo noticed me, he broke his conversation and strode over, the sun spilling through the frosted leaves and dancing off his dark hair.

“How are you, my girl?” he asked, bending down to peer into my eyes like they somehow held the answers more than my mouth could. Rosa-May pushed his face back from mine protectively with her chubby fingers. Pelo’s eyes were strained, his mouth fighting to turn down, despite his best efforts.

“I’m fine. I’m good actually.” Today, I was going to get my son and the dark blades of the chopper loomed with promise. “What about you?” I asked. Joseph’s arm crept over my shoulder and grounded me.

“I have no right to be as sad as I am. You,” he poked my chest and I stumbled back, “you have
all
the right,
all
the permission, to drown in your grief, yet here you are, stronger than ever.” So many pages of lies piled on top of each other they were as thick as a textbook.

I ran my fingers along the side of the craft. “Do we have the pilot?” I asked, changing the subject.

Pelo nodded, for once understanding that now was not the time.

Deshi approached us exclaiming, “Remarkable. She looks just like you, Rosa.” His expression was tired but cheerful. He held out his hand to Rosa-May, who inspected it and passed it back with a brief grin. She hadn’t said anything except ‘Toast,’ and ‘Jam,’ since yesterday, and it worried me. I pressed my cheek to hers. It was very cold.

“So you’re thinking what I was thinking, then?” Deshi continued. “This would be perfect.” He slapped the black plastic and the whole craft wobbled, distorting the reflection of the forest that called to me.

Jonathan appeared, inserting himself easily into the conversation. “Is it safe?”

I almost laughed in his face. Nothing was safe. I didn’t know what
safe
was.

Joseph spoke through tight lips, standing behind me like a solid wall. “I’m sure it’s fine, Dad.” Jonathan slapped a reassuring hand on Joseph’s back and chuckled.

He was about to say something when Matthew cleared his throat and called us to him. The Survivors pressed their backs into the trees, like me. It was reassuring. A reminder of home.

“We need to make a plan going forward. We have thousands of people here looking for guidance, support. We also have an unknown number who have fled into the forest. I know the original plan was to move onto the next town, but that seems impossible now. After the information Rosa and Gwen have given us about the new Superior Grant and after…” he shook his head and ran a hand through his hair, grey strands belying unease, “after Olga, we have to assume that they will anticipate our planned moves and may retaliate against the people in the remaining four towns. I can’t see any other option other than to abandon our plans for the other towns. We need to help
these
people
now
. We need a Woodlands’ liaison and a spokesperson for the Survivors.”

Scrabbling feet and muffled breathing.

Gus pulled the small man with the silver case by the collar, holding him off the ground like a kill to be skinned. The little man fought listlessly against Gus’ firm grip for a moment, before his head sunk below his shoulders. Some people turned his way in disgust, but most ignored his presence.

“I move that we stay put. Organize ourselves. Recruit and assist the citizens of Pau Brazil. I truly feel we shouldn’t risk anymore lives,” Matthew finished.

“Rosa would rock it!” Gwen shouted enthusiastically. Alarmed, I found her face and shook my head at her hopeful, dimpled expression. “…or not…” she muttered. I rolled my eyes to the sky, wondering whether she had just said that to get out of it herself. The clouds were streaked, combed up like a wave threatening to crash down over us, and it seemed fitting to our enormous task.

There was little discussion. A few murmurs. But everyone seemed to agree that I was a good spokesperson. Matthew invited Joseph and me to the front. I placed Rosa-May gently on the grass, the wet blades darkening her tights with moisture. I opened my mouth to speak and Jonathan interrupted me, both he and Pelo pushing their way to the front.