Veracity (20 page)

Most of that potential for disaster had to do with the pieces of paper that I'd cut out of the art book to give her, which had only proven to be a burden that became heavier with time. Needless to say, having stolen them was already enough to land me in serious trouble, but when Peik had held out
his
wad of pages, and then cracked and sprinted into the sea, they had suddenly become the sole evidence that was needed to confirm the identity of the paper cutter. And even if it wasn't me, that's exactly what I would have become. Because let's face it: if I were caught with a couple of inconsequential paintings, it would have been doubtful that someone
else
had gone through the considerable trouble it would have taken to smuggle them to me. Their rationale would have been straightforward: the kind of person who would cut something trivial out of the library could
only
be the kind of person who was so used to cutting other things out (i.e. disclosed material) that they'd started pilfering things simply out of interest. They would strip me of my position, ban me from the expedition, and probably punish me for Peik's death; none of which I wanted to take a chance with. So, it was clear that I had to get rid of them. However, knowing this was one thing, whereas finding a way to actually do it was quite another. After Peik's death, Mikkel and I had to be accounted for at all times, with Elders even being assigned to sleep near our rooms (and they were incredibly light sleepers, too, sitting up in their beds when we stepped outside to urinate, alert to where we were standing, waiting for us to go back to sleep), and other Elders to escort us from one site of the island to another throughout the day - not exactly an atmosphere conducive to the disposing of illicit papers. The idea did cross my mind to just leave them where they were (which was jammed between two boards under my bed), but I knew that if anyone ever discovered them after we were gone, they would note that they were
paintings
, which would only have led people to suspect Dana of everything, and I felt like I owed him a little more than to leave him with a brutal onus like that. But as much as I mulled this over, the only way I could think of getting rid of them was to shove them down my pants and walk around with them, waiting for a safe opportunity to bury them somewhere, which, during the last few days of preparation, is what I started doing. And this looked like it was going to work out fine, because as the errands that had to be done before disembarking were growing in number and urgency, everyone was finally too busy to be waddling beside Mikkel and I at every hour, and as I was doing just as much as everyone else, I often found myself running around on errands as well, and knew that a time was bound to come along when I would find myself alone and unwatched. Which is exactly what happened that day.

I was helping with the organization of the expedition's food, gathering things to compensate for what we were falling short on, when I realized that I was the only person on one of the trails. I stopped and, after spinning around, saw a few bushes that I would be able to hide behind while burying the pieces of paper. Wonderful. I craned my neck in every direction, listening for people coming from either side before stepping off the path - but, unfortunately, after a few seconds, I could hear that there was. Frustrated, I slapped my leg and started walking in the direction of the sounds, trying to keep myself from looking either annoyed or suspicious. But as luck would have it, of all the people that could have come into view on that particular afternoon, it happened to be Kara. And she was alone.

It had been so long since we'd met to talk that neither of us really knew what to do at first. We'd stopped in our tracks, frozen, and then, seeming to snap out of abstraction at the same time, started mouthing silent words, both of us pointing at different groups of shrubs where we could scamper to and take cover. Finally, smiling, she shook her head and just started walking into the underbrush toward one of them, and soon sunk out of sight behind it. I followed, trying to remember what we'd talked about last, and, getting a little annoyed at myself that I couldn't, stooped down next to her.

From the outset, things were strange between us that day. There was a nervousness in her movements, and one that was very different from what I'd seen in other people who were saying goodbye. It was guarded in the same way, but beneath it there was this jittery energy, something intense, anxious. For myself, as was usually the case when I was with her, I was struck dumb at first, and though I concentrated on looking her in the face, I couldn't stop my eyes from dropping to the smooth hollows of her neck, or to her chest, or then to her waist, where I stopped; because she was sitting at an odd enough angle that a sliver of skin could be seen between the bottom of her shirt and the waistline of her pants. Soft skin in creamy shadows, which did nothing but make my imagination slide away, helplessly away, onto a warm and smooth landscape where I know I shouldn't have been.

I shot my eyes back up at her face, my scalp warming with embarrassment. In the short silence that followed, I also became incredibly self-conscious as to how much I was swallowing, sure that I looked as if I were sucking saliva into my mouth just to drink it down. It was time to try and save myself. "I - um..." I began, but my whisper quickly fell away. I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to say, or for that matter, seeing as I couldn't remember what we'd discussed the time before, even what the general topic was that I was supposed to be saying something about. But when I scanned my mind for something else of substance to blurt out, I remembered the paintings. "Oh!" I said aloud, "I - uh... I have something for you!" And then, in a rather ill-advised impulse, I slammed my back onto the ground and shoved my hand down the front of my pants to fish around for the pieces of paper.

She was, to say the least, a little shocked. Until that point, she had seemed unusually passive, sitting fairly still, an amused little smile on her face, but as soon as I started digging around inside my pants, she'd sat up a bit, her eyebrows working between expressions of disgusted curiosity and aversion, her hands placed on the ground on either side of her, as if she wasn't quite sure of whether she should move away from me or not. Understandably, she relaxed when she saw the pieces of paper, smiling with a bit of relief, and then adjusted her legs to kneel down, positioning herself to better inspect the pages.

"I've been meaning to show these to you for quite a while," I whispered as I unfolded them, "but... well, didn't really have a chance." I flattened them as best I could and rotated them until they were oriented for her to see. "I guess... I wanted to find out if there was something
in
them - you know? Like some kind of code, or message or something. And I thought that, if there was anything to see, you'd be the one to see it."

I had always been right in thinking Kara would be affected by the paintings. As soon I put them in front of her, her mouth had fallen open a bit, and she leaned in closer to look at them, her eyes busy, her hand sometimes reaching out to run a few fingers along the glossy surface, as if she'd wanted to feel its texture, her focus seeming to pause at every individual colour, licking her lips like she could taste them. She studied the two paintings for longer than I'd ever expected her to, and as the minutes passed, we could hear the muffled sounds of two people pass by us along the trail.

When she was finally finished, she straightened up, still kneeling, and slid her hands from the ground, over her knees, and onto the top of her thighs. I watched her fingers move over the cloth of her pants until they settled there, and then I shuffled a bit closer. "So," I said, speaking as quietly as I could, just above a whisper, "what - uh... what are they about?"

"Well," she began, searching the leaves around us. Then she reached forward and, quite unexpectedly, placed her hand on my arm. Her thumb swept back and forth along my skin. I swallowed. "To tell you the truth," she ventured to say aloud, "I think they're about how we're worse than we think we are;" and then her face lit up with a curious smirk, "and better."

Even if I'd had hours to think her words through, they wouldn't have meant anything to me then, if only because I wasn't ready to hear them. Though, that isn't why I didn't think about them that day; I didn't think about them because I was concentrating on the warmth of her hand, on the smooth sweeping motion of her thumb, on the pulse that was beating ever louder in my throat, on the fact that both of us had stopped breathing. However, there was an even greater reason why her words evaded me; which was that, before I had a chance to ask her to expand, or even before I could begin to let my imagination run wild with what was going to happen next, another voice entered our conversation.

"Kara?" the voice called out, an accusatory tone ringing between the letters.

Everything stopped. Our mouths dropped open. I saw the pupils of her eyes dilate, the black of them ballooning out toward the edges of her irises. Her hand flung off my skin, her arms shooting out to her sides, fingertips sinking into the soil as if getting ready to launch herself out from the leaves and run. Whereas I had the opposite reaction, in that my body had instantly become useless. I was petrified, and slumped over, settling silently onto the ground, my head to the side. In my mind, I repeated the voice that had called out, and recognized it as Mitra's. It had sounded ridiculously clear, which meant that she was probably standing on the section of trail that passed closest to the vegetation we were huddled in. It would take her five - maybe ten - seconds to get to us. I looked at the pieces of paper in front of my face. It was useless to try and hide them. It was useless to try and hide
myself
. There was nothing to do but lie there and watch Kara as the ugly mess unfolded.

But Kara had composed herself in an instant, and was busy staring forward, thinking. "Yeah?" she called out in reply, just before the pause would have become a suspicious length. But she didn't wait for Mitra to say anything before moving onto the next task that she'd somehow organized inside her head within the few seconds that had passed. She rocked forward onto her feet, being careful to keep her head low and out of sight as she did so, and turned to the side. Then she proceeded to untie her pants, and tucked her thumbs into the hem at the waist, ready to pull them down.

"What are you doing?" Mitra pressed.

"Well - if you must know - I'm taking a pee," she said, poking her head above the bush and flinging her hair to look behind her. At that point, she slid her pants down her legs with the most fluid motion she could, making sure that her head didn't drop a subtle inch out of Mitra's sight as she did so. For my part, even being as terrified as I was, I still had the presence of mind to take in every smooth detail of her thigh that I could.

"And talking?" asked Mitra.

"Singing, actually. But apparently not very well," Kara replied jokingly. It was amazing how calm she was, how shamelessly truthful she sounded.

"Oh." All at once, Mitra's voice had lost its sceptical edge, "Sorry."

Kara pulled up her pants as she stood up, looking down at the strings as she tied them, and then walked out from behind the shrubs and toward the trail.

"Are you going back to the gardens?" Mitra asked, her tone completely back to normal.

"Mm-hmm."

"Good. So am I."

The dampened sounds of their walking on the bare soil began to recede, and I could hear snippets of their conversation as they walked away, talk of who would be doing what chores and when. I listened to their voices until they faded, until the whispering sounds that the trees were making drowned them out. When I was sure I was alone, I started to breathe again, the air cooling the inside of my mouth, my tongue, my throat.

At first, it was all I could do to just stare at the cleanly cut edges of the papers, watching as they shifted with a bit of breeze, one of the folds in the middle acting as a fulcrum, and the lazy weight on either side of it trying to decide which end was heavier. After a few minutes of staring forward like that, completely stunned, I lifted my head off the ground, tiny balls of dirt falling from my hair. I'm sure that the reason I was so dazed wasn't only to do with what had happened, it also had to do with the countless underlying urges and possibilities that had just been rendered null and void
because
of what had happened. I brought a slow arm up to my face until I could look at the spot where Kara had touched it, at the semicircle she had run her thumb across, at the tiny hairs there that were pointing in different directions. It was obvious that we would never touch each other again, never see each other again - ever; except maybe to wave goodbye as the ship set sail. I flopped my hand onto the ground in front of my face.

There are few words that could describe how frustrated, how furious I let myself become. My hand flexed. And then I watched my fingernails claw into the soil, the tendons bulging straight, digits sinking beneath the surface, digging their way deeper. I remember the shadows of the leaves darkening behind my hand, a ringing in my ears, and then my head clearing, just before it became very, very busy. The truth is, I don't even like to think of what went through my mind at that point - or at least not of the bleeding details.

They were images mostly, cold, flashing pictures in bluish-grey hues that told the vicious story of how Kara could come with us on the expedition. Sequences of running to get Mikkel, of finding out how he'd once planned on smuggling people onto the ship. I pictured nodding at him, smiling a cutting smile. Then both of us bursting into the kitchen area. Throwing the men and women aside to get to the drawer of knives. Spinning around and sweeping a blade through the air. The walls spattering with dark dots. People backing away, showing their palms, staring at the floor, at the twitching, gurgling evidence of just how serious we were. The slamming open of the door again. The wild rushing to the ship. The crew scurrying to raise the sails. Kara and the children huddled below. The knives in our hands, thrashing through the air, through skin, through muscle tissue. The hollers of the Elders, the frightened, desperate hollers, commanding us to stop. Our blaring deafness to those commands. Mikkel and I, shoulder to shoulder, gripping the handles of our blades.