Authors: Lee Kelly
“Hey!” Phee says as she emerges from the soft firelight of the bathroom. I instinctively shut the book. She looks far better than she did a few moments ago. Her bandages are changed, and her face is clean. She looks nervously at Mom and then shoots me the stink eye. “I thought . . . I thought we were reading
Charlotte
together.”
“We are,” I tell her calmly, my eyes wide to telepath,
Please don’t blow it. Please don’t go all Phee on me about this
. “You can catch up later.”
“But,” she fishes, “it’s not the same as reading it together. Wait for me next time.”
And I can tell she’s really hurt that I’d even think of moving forward without her. I shake my head. Sometimes Phee still surprises me, even though I know her better than I know myself. “I will. I’m sorry.”
“Your sister usually has to twist your arm to get you to open a book,” Mom says to Phee, then laughs as she waves me into the bathroom to get ready. “Guess you’re making progress, Skyler.”
As Phee and I swap places, I whisper, “Stop at the subway.”
* * *
Once Mom is asleep, Phee and I sit together in the large marble tub in the bathroom, where the firelight is brightest. We waited until we could hear Mom’s trademark wheeze of a snore, and then I pinched Phee’s arm, as we’d agreed, and we snuck into the bathroom together. I don’t know about Phee, but I’m planning on staying up until I finish the whole journal. I want Mom’s words, her old life, to wash over me like one big wave.
“This tub is uncomfortable,” Phee whispers.
“Well, the light over there is terrible,” I say. “Did you get to the part where Mom and Mary are taking me to the zoo, and they’re stuck on the subway?”
“And Dad’s out making art or something with his friend?”
I nod and open the book again. The firelight dances across the crinkled pages, and we jump back into Mom’s world of long ago.
March 3, later—Still haven’t moved, and it’s been at least two hours. My claustrophobia started to kick in about thirty minutes ago, so Mary, Sky, and I moved to an empty bench in the corner. “Just breathe,” Mary keeps telling me. “Someone will open the doors soon.”
Sky’s been asleep against Mary’s chest, rising and falling with her breath, like she’s on a life raft. Where’s my life raft?
There aren’t many people in our car, maybe ten—a few Spandex-clad cyclists. A homeless guy wrapped in trash. A willowy teen with a cover-girl face, who could plunge even the securest of women back into the mires of high school insecurity.
But it feels like there’s not enough room for all of us. Like we’re all expanding, stretching, hoarding air into our mouths and bags and purses.
“No one’s stealing your air,” Mary said. “Just breathe.”
Mary rarely humors me, and I kind of count on her not to.
March 3, later—We heard muffled, empty assurances from the train conductor, garbled through the speakers.
Silence.
And then darkness.
Sky started to cry and pass out intermittently, so Mary and I took turns dozing off against each other. While Mary was sleeping, I found her lighter (I knew she hadn’t quit). I managed to locate my nursing cover at the bottom of my bag, and draped it around myself to feed Sky for a little.
Ideas have been thrown around of prying the doors open, or breaking the windows if no one opens the emergency exit soon. The man dressed in trash bags suggested pooling our brainpower and using mind control, while the teenager, Bronwyn, played with her hair and told us just to call MTA.
But no one’s
doing
anything. We’re just talking in
circles, providing ourselves with a quiet soundtrack.
March 3, later—I swore we were going to die.
“We’re not going to die.” Mary rolled her eyes. “Please.”
But she grabbed my hand anyway, and my heart slowed down just a bit.
It’s funny how different she and Tom are. Tom’s such an artist, frazzled, impetuous. His sister’s always been the steady one. And even though I wished so desperately that Tom was with us, holding my hand, Mary’s the one who knew what to do and say to calm me down.
“Mom’s never mentioned this Mary chick, has she?” Phee sits up and asks.
“Never.”
“And she’s Tom’s—I mean Dad’s—sister. So she’s Mom’s sister-in-law.”
“Right . . . but this journal was written before the war started,” I think out loud. I fan the pages quickly. “There’s no mention of soldiers, Dad’s family firm was up and running, Mom was taking me to the zoo. Mary probably died during the attacks, and so Mom doesn’t talk about her.”
I think about all the people, like Mary, who didn’t survive the attacks. All of Mom’s ghosts, and how many there must be. Ghosts who haunt her thoughts, who leave her screaming in the night. And for the first time, I sort of understand Mom’s mantra, maybe even sympathize.
Sometimes the past should stay in the past
.
“Don’t you still think that’s weird?” Phee asks. “For Mom to never mention Mary, even if she died?”
“You know Mom. She doesn’t talk about
anything
. It took her over a decade to bring us to our old apartment.”
“True. Okay, wait, hold on a second,” Phee grunts. “My butt is killing me. This tub’s as hard as cement.”
She shifts her legs up and over me and almost kicks me in the eye. After some finagling, we end up with our knees hanging over the side of the empty bathtub, our heads propped up by towels on the tiled border, like we’re sunning ourselves under the torchlight.
“All right, I’m ready,” Phee says, and I crack open the spine to continue.
March 6—It’s been days. I haven’t been able to stop to write down what’s happened until now.
Suffice it to say, no one came to save us. So we had to save ourselves.
Mary somehow shaped Sky’s stroller into a weapon, and the three men dressed in cycling gear helped her stab the glass and gut the windows of the train. Each one of us carefully crawled out of the belly of the beast, and then we worked on rescuing the other cars. If I didn’t have Sky, I might even have laughed, been excited by the bizarre Saturday adventure.
“You ruin everything,” Phee teases.
“Would you be quiet? I’m trying to get into this.”
But my nerves were so fried all I could think of was getting home.
Once everyone was out, we reconfigured the
stroller and rolled Sky down the tunnel with the rest of our ragtag crew. It was so black that
the dark had texture. The dull blue light from people’s phones did little to light the way, and
hardly anyone had a lighter. Now that New York
is smoke free, smokers are rare commodities,
I suppose. It was just Mary and the lithe teen, Bronwyn, along with every member of a group of sixty-year-old women from Kansas, visiting for a girls’ luxury weekend away.
The women with lighters leading the charge, we all walked carefully on the tracks to the next subway stop, a group of about fifty of us. Mary announced at some point that we were between 33rd Street and Grand Central. It was clear from both her lighter and her stroller-weapon move that she was somehow leading our pitiful brigade. She said the power must be out, that it might be the whole city. And that once we got to Grand Central, we’d know what was going on.
We hear a moan from the bedroom. And then a startled gasp.
“She’s up,” Phee whispers. “Ditch it.”
I close the book and shove it in between Phee and me as Mom frantically opens the door.
“What are you two doing?”
Shadows carve out Mom’s eyes and cheeks, and she looks ancient under the torchlight. I can tell she’s half-asleep. For a second I consider coming clean and telling her that we have her book, that we stole her past, and let her wake up tomorrow and write it off as a dream.
“Just talking,” I say.
“Tomorrow’s our first day in the fields,” Mom mumbles, visibly more relaxed now that she’s found us safe and sound. “You both need to rest. We’ve got a big day ahead of us. Come on, out of the tub.”
We begin to climb out as she limps back to the room.
“When do we finish?” Phee whispers.
“Tomorrow.” I think of this morning, how it feels as if we’ve lived lifetimes since then, and I realize I’m excited for a new day. Even if it means we have to wait. “Hey, Phee?”
“Yeah?”
I put my arm on her shoulder and help guide her into the dark. “Happy birthday.”
We stumble back into the room and I return the journal to the folds of my backpack, then push the bag to the center of the floor under our bed.
I climb in next to Phee and drift in and out of sleep. I dream of dark tunnels. Heroes fighting by firelight. And lonely, beautiful woodsmen.
7 PHEE
I sit down on a rock in the shade of the trees that border the Great Lawn and massage my bruised ribs. For, like, the tenth time this hour. There’re hundreds of workers in the fields, collecting corn from the stalks and plucking apples from the trees. Rows of bent backs and beaded brows. I’m obviously the only one who’s taken a million breaks since dawn.
But no one’s giving me any grief.
Something’s changed since the street-fights last night. I’ve seen it in the looks of other fieldworkers. In the smug smiles of the whorelords during the feast last night, and at this morning’s rundown of duties. There are nods of respect, talks of my “resourcefulness,” whispers of my “potential.”
Sarah, Rolladin has to have her eye on your youngest now
, I’d heard Lauren say to Mom this morning.
You’ll be wearing a warlord shawl by this time next year
.
Mark my words
, Old Lady Warbler had cackled to me at the festival, as I’d moved past her crowded pit to our own penthouse of fires.
Trevor even overheard Council member Lory talking with Cass last night after they were good and wasted, telling Cass she needed to lay off me from now on. That with how impressed Rolladin must be with my performance on 65th Street, someone will pledge me, and I’ll be one of them soon enough.
One of
them
.
I’ve been raised my whole life to hate the whorelords. And I do. At least I think I do. They’re technically prisoners of war along with the rest of us, stuck on this dead island just like we are. But they’re the “chosen” ones—when our city was surrendered to the Red Allies, the story goes, our numb-nuts captors put them in charge. Well, I guess they put
Rolladin
in charge, and she fleshed out her ranks with bruisers and eye candy. Bruisers that get to beat us up and boss us around in exchange for food and safety.
A bit of a bullshit exchange, obviously.
I start picking at my lip as I sit, and the scab that’s formed overnight breaks apart. I think more about the matches, about the way the crowd cheered for me, and the way people looked at me differently afterward, like I wasn’t someone to be messed with. And I wonder, would being a warlord really be the end of the world? Extra rations for my mom and Sky, rooms at Belvedere Castle. And I could pretty much guarantee that no one would ever hurt my family.
I watch Mom and Sky in the fields, as they rip the light-green husks from the yellow cobs. I don’t know why I’m even entertaining this. Mom would kill me. It’s not just that the warlord gig is dangerous—combing the Upper East and West Sides for feeders and raiders, being on the front lines of Rolladin’s crazy moods and whims. It’d also be the biggest insult Mom could think of. She hates Rolladin so much, it’s like a drug, and sometimes I think she’s so hopped up on it, she can’t see straight. If I ever “worked” for Rolladin, Mom might very well disown me.
I think of Mom’s beef with Rolladin. Then I think of Rolladin breaking up my match, of stopping Cass before she reached for that knife—even though Rolladin was the one who forced our family into the whole mess in the first place.
Why?
It doesn’t make any sense. It works me up sometimes when I realize how little we know about my mother, and this city, and why things are the way they are. But unlike Sky, I refuse to let it drive me crazy.
So I take a breath. Then I glance at my mom and sister, at the way the light hits the grass so it looks like they’re working in a field full of silver. And I say thanks for what I
do
know: that I’m lucky.
I eventually get up and work for a few more hours, before a couple of whorelords start shouting over the fields, “Break time!” We all drop our tools and converge on the ration lines like an army of ants. Today’s midday ration won’t be anything as glamorous as last night’s stew, but who cares? I’m starving. Mom takes a break to talk with Lauren near the farming edges, but I can’t wait. I push Sky towards the front.
“Cornmeal or potato hash?” I quiz Sky as we take our place in line behind about thirty fieldworkers.
“Hash, definitely,” she says as she bends backward to stretch.
“No way,” Trevor says as he just magically appears on my other side. “I heard we just started pulling the potatoes. They can’t be ready to make a hash.”
“Um, where’d you just come from?” I ask.
“The zoo,” he says, missing my point. “I saw you near the front and didn’t want to miss my window.”
Sky and I both wrinkle our noses as Trev’s stink settles around us. A few fieldworkers in front of us start murmuring in disgust. Then a couple of boys, maybe a little younger than Trev, start snickering behind us. Soon we’re bordered by two feet of empty grass in all directions.
I take a closer look at Trevor. He has small pieces of carcass on his shirt, red stripes of dried blood across his arms. His smell is so intense it nearly gives me a headache.
“What the hell were you doing this morning?” I say.
“Trevor was on animal guts,” one of the boys behind us answers.
I turn around to a pair of dirty faces, all ratty clothes and tweeny smirks. The boys are definitely younger than Trevor, maybe twelve or thirteen. Not that it matters. Trev doesn’t stand up for himself, no matter who’s pushing him down.
The one talking gets all flustered, pink face and everything, now that he’s got my attention. But he recovers pretty quick. “Stupid Red bastard,” he nods at Trev. “Rolladin makes all the rejects do her dirty work.” Then he laughs and looks at me hungrily, like he’s waiting for props.
But something has snapped inside me, and my heart starts clamoring into fight mode, almost like I’m right outside that 65th Street underpass again. Sure, most days I want to strangle Trevor. But that doesn’t mean I want anyone else messing with him.
“That’s a bogus theory,” I tell the kid. “Else your whole family would be working the slaughterhouses all winter.”
Sky shoots me a smile as the boy’s friend starts heckling him behind us:
She got you. You should see your face!
But Trev doesn’t say anything. He never does—in fact, these types of rumbles are the only times the kid’s quiet. He just keeps tailing me and Sky like some fidgety shadow as the line snakes us up to the front.
We get our bowls of what turns out to be some kind of apple and wheat concoction in silence. Then we all settle on a small patch of grass bordering the fields. The midday break is for half an hour. It’s the first and only one before the end of the workday and our nighttime ration.
“This actually isn’t too bad,” Sky says in between bites. Her hands are shaking a little bit, and I can tell she’s already exhausted. I’m exhausted too. We got about four hours of sleep last night, and most of it was just tossing and turning.
“Agreed. The apples are just ripe enough,” Trev says with his mouth full.
“I forgot you worked apples last season,” Sky says. “Hey, why’d they move you off tree picking this year, anyway? I thought you were the Park’s quickest picker.”
She sneaks me a wink. Trev’s always telling us these tall tales that make him out to be Boy Wonder of the Park. My sister humors him more than I do.
“I’m getting older.” He shrugs. “And they want the men and stronger women handling the meat.”
“Men?” I snort. “Aren’t you being a little generous there?”
Trevor blushes beet red, and for a minute I feel terrible. It was just such an easy shot.
“We’re just surprised,” Sky says, covering for me. “You’re only thirteen, right?”
“Fourteen! Almost fifteen. And if not me, who? It’s not like there’s a ton of . . . of
guys
to pick from. I stepped up to help and do my part.”
Well, he’s right on that point. We’re four-to-one females to males on this island, based on Rolladin’s last census. Even less if you take out all the kids and “guys” like Trev. But now I’m wondering why
I
wasn’t sent to the zoo this morning along with the rest of the strongest workers, instead of tilling the fields. Maybe it’s my bruised ribs. Or some weird reward for last night.
As if reading my mind, Trev whispers to Sky, “So how long till you think someone officially pledges Phee?”
Sky looks at him curiously, and I make eyes at Trev to shut it. I didn’t tell Sky any of the rumors I heard about me being plucked to be a warlord. I don’t know if they’re true, and besides, I know how she’ll feel about them.
“What are you talking about? Phee, what’s he talking about?”
“Nothing,” I say loudly, at the same time Trevor blabs, “Pledge her to become a warlord.”
Sky’s face freezes up.
“Trev, you’re as bad as Old Lady Warbler with the gossip.” I look at my sister. “It’s dumb. Just some rumors, Sky. Rolladin’s not going to make me a whorelord ’cause of one measly fight.”
“Duh, of course not. One of the lords would have to pledge you, but that’s easy.” Trev keeps making it worse. “And you’d probably still need to spar next year for your initiation and everything—”
“Assuming all of that happens,” Sky talks over him, her voice all shaky, “Phee, would you really think about doing it?”
I mash around my porridge, trying to find the easiest way to dig out of this. “Why bother with what-ifs? No one’s pledged me.”
“Phee, come on. Answer me. If someone did—if
Rolladin
picked you herself—what would you say? You wouldn’t really think about it, would you?” Sky’s staring at me so hard it’s like she’s trying to see through me.
“I’d say no, of course. No way.” I hate holding back from Sky; it makes my insides churn. But I tell her what I think she wants to hear. “Are you kidding me? Mom would kill me.”
“So because of Mom, you wouldn’t.” Her eyes become a little watery as she looks at me. Sky rarely full-on cries, but anytime she’s worried or confused, or angry, her eyes swell up like storm clouds. They’re like that now, all glossy and unfocused.
“Exactly,” I hesitate. I can’t tell whether that’s the right answer anymore.
“Not because the warlords are animals. Not because they beat people senseless for stealing an extra ration.” Sky’s shaking her bowl so hard now that little bits of apple porridge bail out onto the grass. “Or because even though they’re prisoners too, they treat us like we’re slaves. But because
Mom
would be
mad
.”
I look back and forth between a flushed Sky and a confused Trevor. He looks how I feel. He doesn’t say a word, though. He knows better.
“One match, one night of cheers from the crowd, and you just—
forget
—that they’re monsters?”
“No,” I say quickly. “I just meant it’s pointless to even think about it. ’Cause it’s not like I’d really have a choice.”
“But if Mom didn’t care, you’d be ready to throw on that lesser lord pelt and start doing Rolladin’s bidding. Just turn on a dime. Everyone you’ve loved and known and worked with, you’d be fine treating them like trash. And for what? Didn’t you see how they threw away Philip after he lost?”
Of course I’d seen Philip the match loser this morning. He reached too high and got cut down, so now he’s limping around the Great Lawn like any old fieldworker. Rolladin threw him away, and no worker can stand him. He’s a one-man island now.
“Sky, you’re totally putting words in my mouth. I didn’t say I wanted to be one—”
“You didn’t have to.” Sky shakes her head. “It’s what you didn’t say.”
I don’t know how to come back at that one.
My face is on fire and my mind is racing, but I can’t find any words. I can’t retrace how we got here. Why’s she so pissed off? All I know is now I’m angry too, but I can’t pinpoint the reason. Maybe it’s because she’s angry with me.
Or maybe it’s because Sky
always
makes sure I hear her feelings, but most times I can’t figure out how to voice my own.
I break from her eyes and look down at my lunch.
“Trev, I’m going to kick your ass,” I finally mutter into my bowl.
“What the heck are you mad at me for?”
“Just shut up already about the street-fighting, all right?”
* * *
We finish our lunches in silence before the lesser lords start poking everyone to get back to work. Trevor heads back to the zoo houses, and I follow Sky into the cornstalks. Sky settles on Mom’s left and I stand on Lauren’s right. I think we need a break from each other. It’s like this with us, sometimes.
Most days I feel like we’re the last members of some awesome tribe. Just me, Sky, and Mom against the holdouts, the whorelords. The whole world, if they’d ever stop screwing around and end this stupid war. But sometimes Sky and I just don’t speak the same language. My sister’s always dreaming about the world beyond the skyscrapers, but the truth is, we live
inside
their fence. And while we do, this is the way things are. Questioning things, wishing things were different, seems like a total waste of time.
I roll up my sleeves to start picking, still lost in thought. I know the whorelords can be assholes. Of course I know that. But sometimes bad things, used in the right way, can bring about good things—like my fight on 65th Street. It let us stay in the Park and score double rations, and earned me some respect. Being a warlord might be like that all the time, for all three of us. What’s that saying?
The ends can justify the means
.
But I know Sky wouldn’t get this. And after sixteen years, I know it’s pointless to try to make her, even if I could find the perfect words.
I take a deep breath to calm down, and grab a collection bucket.
* * *
Day bleeds into evening in the cornfields. We work in silence, picking the corn off the stalks one by one. Tearing the silky husks. Cleaning the cobs. I have to admit, I like working with my hands out here. It’s peaceful, letting the hours slide by as your fingers work in silence. The quiet massages my mind, the evening wind cools my temper. And by sunset, I’m not mad anymore. I’m just wiped. It’s a good wiped, though, a soreness that says,
You’ve been useful
.
The sky finally turns dusty and pink, promises food around the corner. But it’s not until the light is nearly gone altogether that someone finally speaks.