Rise (19 page)

Clara weaved through the girls, helping them float. “See?” she said. “People drown when they panic. Just try to relax—you can always float.” She moved to Bette, pressing her hand on her back. I watched her, wondering how long it would be until we saw each other again, if she'd come back once she was settled in Califia. She'd spent the past two days acclimating the girls to the horses, teaching them the basics of riding. We used the rope we had to create makeshift stirrups, tying one end around the horse's shoulder and letting the other hang over its back, the loop just big enough for one foot to slip through. All the supplies had been jarred, the duffels packed and waiting for the morning's trip. By this time tomorrow, Ruby, Pip, and I would be alone.

I tried not to think about it, instead focusing on what was right in front of me—the afternoon, this lesson. That was the only way it felt manageable.

“How did you do that?” Sarah stood, moving her arms out in front of her. “Show me how you were swimming in the tunnel.”

“You have to go under,” I said, glancing around. Most of the other girls were still easing themselves into the water, barely able to stay afloat. “You'll want to push off the bottom, moving out and forward. Then you use your arms and legs at the same time, almost like a frog.”

I took a deep breath and slipped under. The world felt far away, the girls' voices blending into one. I caught sight of Clara's legs as she stepped around Kit, trying to help her stay afloat. Sarah's skin looked whiter beneath the surface. She cupped the lake in her hands.

When the screaming started, it was hard to recognize at first. The panicked yells came from somewhere beyond me. As I broke the surface, Beatrice's voice filled the air, squeezing all the breath from my body. “Let me through,” she called, pushing past some of the girls.

I scanned the water's edge for Benny and Silas. They weren't where I'd last seen them. Sometimes they perched on a rock several yards out, but they weren't there. It took me awhile before I noticed them, by the opposite shore, clinging to the remnants of the broken dock. They stared back at me, as confused as I was but perfectly safe.

It was then that I saw what Beatrice had seen. She pushed past a few of the girls until she got to Pip, who was submerged in the water. She'd fallen back in the shallows, her hair floating up around her head. Her eyes were unfocused. Beatrice reached down, tucking her hands beneath Pip's arms, trying to pull her toward the shore. As she turned, calling to me, I noticed her clothes were stained. A cloud of blood had spread out in the water. It surrounded them, coloring everything red.

I swam as fast as I could, not stopping until I was there, Pip's hand resting in my own. The skin beneath her nails was a dull gray. “Stay awake,” I said, squeezing the blood back into her fingers, as if that could revive her. “You have to stay awake.”

Ruby rushed forward, grabbing her side, trying to hoist her up. “What's wrong? What's happened?” I looked into the dark water, unable to see our feet. Pip was bleeding so much. It was everywhere, running down her legs, clouding the water around us. By the time we got her to the beach she'd lost consciousness, her body heavy and limp.

The girls ran from the lake, huddling around us, so close I could hear each one of their choked breaths. “Take them inside,” I called to Clara, as a few of them began to cry.

“Is she dying?” Sarah asked. Clara pulled her up the shore, hurrying the rest of the girls along. Her question became my own. I knelt beside Pip, pressing my fingers against her cheek, feeling the coolness of her skin. Her face had no color in it. Her arms were beaded with pale pink water.

The blood kept coming, pooling black beneath her. It seeped into the sand. As Beatrice leaned over, breathing breath into her body, I smoothed back her hair. I kept doing that, gently touching the soft curls around her forehead, as if that simple gesture could keep her alive.

THE NEXT MORNING I PICKED THE PEBBLES OUT OF THE DIRT
, collecting them methodically, careful not to miss any. After I dropped the last one in the bowl, I just sat there, staring at the freshly turned earth. The trees moved above, shifting, giving in to the wind. I found myself making lists of things to do and then carrying them out. Had I cleared the ground of any remnants of the funeral? Did I have the last of the flowers the girls had placed down? Was the dirt level, the grave hidden enough so no one would notice it? These small details were the only things that calmed me.

The grave had been dug past three feet. Beatrice knew the measurement from the burials during the plague—too deep for anyone to notice or disturb the remains. We'd picked the white birch by the edge of the forest, burying her there, just beyond the roots, so I'd always know the place. I'd been the one to prepare her body, washing the dirt and blood from her skin, untangling her hair. I'd wrapped her in one of the blankets from the dugout, a soft gray quilt, the pink embroidering intact. Ruby said something to honor her. It had felt wrong not to, even though we all kept lapsing into silence. The hours had rushed past me, the small, quiet funeral. Her death. I couldn't keep pace. I picked a stray flower petal off the ground and crushed it between my fingers, satisfied when it broke apart.

Beatrice believed she'd been sick for some time, that she was bleeding internally. The blood had come on fast. It had sunk into the sand, staining the beach. I could still see it now, though Clara had tried to wash it away. A dark spot spread out by the edge of the water, the rocks a reddish black.

I felt different than I had when Caleb died. The pain didn't rip through me. I didn't cry once during the ceremony. I just sat there, listening to Ruby's words somewhere outside me, feeling completely removed, as if I were floating somewhere above the group. I kept tracing things back as far as I could. I went to the day I'd visited her at School, wondering if it would have made a difference if she'd escaped then. When was it that she grew so sick? How had I missed what was happening? She'd complained of exhaustion, but nothing more.

Somewhere behind me a twig snapped. I turned to see Clara stepping through the trees. “It's time, Eve,” she said. “The horses are ready. If we leave now, we could set up camp before the sun goes down.”

The ground in front of me was patted down, the pebbles that lined the grave now collected in a neat pile. I moved some of the undergrowth over the soil. Clara stooped down to help. We both spread out the dry leaves and twigs, shifting them around until all the fresh earth was covered. As we started back up the hill, I turned back one last time, looking at that spot below the birch tree. All signs of the funeral, and Pip, were gone.

IT TOOK US THREE DAYS TO REACH MARIN. WE'D DECIDED TO
approach it from the north, avoiding the city, in case any soldiers were passing through. When we were just a quarter mile out, Clara took off across the moss-covered road, her head down, the reins clasped in her hands. The spotted mare she'd ridden in on was calm as she urged it around the abandoned cars, the fallen trees, and trash bags, deflated and broken on the curb. They were moving so fast, nearly at a full gallop, her hair blown back by the wind.

“She's going to do it,” Benny whispered behind me. He kept his hands on the sides of the horse to keep his balance. “She's going to jump.”

I watched the road ahead, where the pavement was obscured by a mangled heap of garbage—plastic bags spilling out clothing, others filled with worn toys or papers. Warped wooden planks were scattered across the road. Clara was racing straight at it, her shoulders down, eyes locked ahead.

The horse lifted off, jumping the massive heap, its coat reflecting the midday light. Helene started clapping, and a few of the other girls joined in. “Did you see that?” Benny asked. He kept nudging me in the back, pointing at Clara, who was already circling back to us. She paused at the side of the road, where Ruby was standing, and helped her back onto the horse. She smiled at me as she threw the packs over the horse's bare rump. I knew she was trying to lift the mood, to celebrate our arrival in the little ways she could.

The days had passed in silence. At night, when we camped, the conversation always found its way back to Pip. Benny and Silas seemed to accept her death in a way the rest of us couldn't. Benny's brother Paul had been killed in a nearby ravine two years before, and it seemed to them some unavoidable part of life in the wild. But the girls wanted to know the details of how Pip had died, how long she'd been in the building at School, if she was sick or if this were something that no one could prevent. I was still puzzling through the answers on my own, and it felt strange to talk about her death out loud. To discuss Pip, this friend I'd known since I was six, with relative strangers. To say
she was, she did, she used to
—all in the past tense.

Clara called out to the girls as she started ahead, seeming satisfied that they were smiling now. She had led us most of the way. As we kept on down the roads, mile upon mile, it was hard to do anything except follow behind. I listened to the dull, hypnotic sounds of the hooves on pavement. I thought of Arden and the last day I'd seen her, when I'd given her the key. It was possible she'd been inside the City during the siege. I tried to push down the possibility that kept resurfacing, the lingering feeling that she too was dead. She could've been one of the rebels who'd been found and executed. There was no way for me to know now, with so little word from the Trail. There was a chance I would never know.

Three days had gone by and we hadn't encountered any soldiers along the way. I wondered if most of the King's forces were concentrated inside the City now, around its walls, with less support in the wild. When we were at the dugout, Ruby had mentioned the raids. The boys had visited the storehouses three times in the prior month and never gotten caught. When they'd returned, the rooms were just as they'd left them, the shelves nearly bare, the lock still broken.

But even if surveillance in the wild had dwindled, it was only a matter of time before the troops were dispatched again. How long could I possibly stay in Califia? We'd left the settlement after discovering Maeve was prepared to use me as a bartering chip—a way to negotiate Califia's independence if it was ever discovered by the King. Would I be safe there? How long would it be before I was sent back to the City to be executed? My body had changed even in the past few days. I could feel the slight difference. My pregnancy was getting harder to conceal. If the rumors were true—if the King had always suspected there was a settlement beyond the bridge—I'd have only a few months before he came to find me, to take my child away.

“It's just over this hill,” I said, urging the horse past the rows of abandoned cars. I knew this road, had rummaged through the vehicles myself, looking for any usable clothes or tools. Once, I'd found two sacks of rice in a rusted car. Brown bugs had gotten into them and bred, thousands crawling over the trunk's insides. “There's only two guards who watch the north edge of the settlement, and I know them both.”

As we crested the hill, I made out Isis up ahead, perched on the high lookout platform they'd built into one of the trees. Her hair was pulled back in a bandana. I waved, staring directly at her, but she still didn't set down her weapon. Instead she lowered the rope ladder and climbed down, holding up her hand for us to stop. She studied my face, my hair, the tattered sweater I hugged to my body.

“Eve? What are you doing here?” she finally asked.

“I'm bringing some of the escapees from the Schools to stay—permanently. They want access to the settlement.”

Isis scanned the crowd of us, the horses lined up, awaiting entrance. She ushered us off to her right, having Clara lead the horses down the hidden path to Sausalito. She threw up her hand when she noticed Benny, barely visible behind me. “Who are the two boys?” she asked, pointing to Silas as well, who rode with Beatrice. His hair was long and tangled. I'd secretly hoped if we moved quickly enough we could get them into the settlement and argue with the Founding Mothers later.

“They have nowhere else to go,” I said.

Her hand rested on the rifle at her side, and she smiled, revealing the gap between her front teeth. I thought of that night, how she'd come to Maeve's house to discuss my place in Califia. She was one of the women who believed I had compromised the settlement's safety. She'd argued so fiercely for Arden and me to be forced out, never acknowledging her doubts in my presence, always keeping that same smile as I sat with her, drinking at her kitchen table.

She studied them, trying to place their ages. I didn't wait for her to decide. “I won't leave them,” I said, maneuvering my horse around her. I signaled for Beatrice to move out front, following Clara down the path. “They have no one else. If you'd rather shoot me than let me in, so be it.”

She looked up at me as we passed. Benny held on to my sides, his fists closing tight around my sweater. Isis didn't raise her gun. Instead she just watched us as I eased the horse down the side of the hill. I steered us past some of the houses that were overgrown with moss. The recovered bookstore where I used to work was dark, a black bandana tied around the front doorknob, signaling it was closed. We passed a few more homes, the fire pits disguised with ivy nets. The horse moved down the uneven cliff ledge, and I struggled to keep balance, pressing my legs into its sides.

The bay was just visible beyond the trees. The water was calm, the last of the day's light reflected on its surface. The familiar sight comforted me. As we turned onto Califia's main street, the road hugging the shore, I spotted Quinn on the deck of her houseboat. She was hanging T-shirts over the side, fixing them on a few old nails. Her curly black hair had grown down her back, and she looked plumper, less muscular, than she had before.