Authors: Tahereh Mafi
Unravel Me
For my mother. The best person I’ve ever known.
ONE
The world might be sunny-side up today.
The big ball of yellow might be spilling into the clouds, runny and yolky and blurring
into the bluest sky, bright with cold hope and false promises about fond memories,
real families, hearty breakfasts, stacks of pancakes drizzled in maple syrup sitting
on a plate in a world that doesn’t exist anymore.
Or maybe not.
Maybe it’s dark and wet today, whistling wind so sharp it stings the skin off the
knuckles of grown men. Maybe it’s snowing, maybe it’s raining, I don’t know maybe
it’s freezing it’s hailing it’s a hurricane slip slipping into a tornado and the earth
is quaking apart to make room for our mistakes.
I wouldn’t have any idea.
I don’t have a window anymore. I don’t have a view. It’s a million degrees below zero
in my blood and I’m buried 50 feet underground in a training room that’s become my
second home lately. Every day I stare at these 4 walls and remind myself
I’m not a prisoner I’m not a prisoner I’m not a prisoner
but sometimes the old fears streak across my skin and I can’t seem to break free
of the claustrophobia clutching at my throat.
I made so many promises when I arrived here.
Now I’m not so sure. Now I’m worried. Now my mind is a traitor because my thoughts
crawl out of bed every morning with darting eyes and sweating palms and nervous giggles
that sit in my chest, build in my chest, threaten to burst through my chest, and the
pressure is tightening and tightening and
tightening
Life around here isn’t what I expected it to be.
My new world is etched in gunmetal, sealed in silver, drowning in the scents of stone
and steel. The air is icy, the mats are orange; the lights and switches beep and flicker,
electronic and electric, neon bright. It’s busy here, busy with bodies, busy with
halls stuffed full of whispers and shouts, pounding feet and thoughtful footsteps.
If I listen closely I can hear the sounds of brains working and foreheads pinching
and fingers tap tapping at chins and lips and furrowed brows. Ideas are carried in
pockets, thoughts propped up on the tips of every tongue; eyes are narrowed in concentration,
in careful planning I should want to know about.
But nothing is working and all my parts are broken.
I’m supposed to harness my Energy, Castle said. Our gifts are different forms of Energy.
Matter is never created or destroyed, he said to me, and as our world changed, so
did the Energy within it. Our abilities are taken from the universe, from other matter,
from other Energies. We are not anomalies. We are inevitabilities of the perverse
manipulations of our Earth. Our Energy came from somewhere, he said. And somewhere
is in the chaos all around us.
It makes sense. I remember what the world looked like when I left it.
I remember the pissed-off skies and the sequence of sunsets collapsing beneath the
moon. I remember the cracked earth and the scratchy bushes and the used-to-be-greens
that are now too close to brown. I think about the water we can’t drink and the birds
that don’t fly and how human civilization has been reduced to nothing but a series
of compounds stretched out over what’s left of our ravaged land.
This planet is a broken bone that didn’t set right, a hundred pieces of crystal glued
together. We’ve been shattered and reconstructed, told to make an effort every single
day to pretend we still function the way we’re supposed to. But it’s a lie, it’s all
a lie.
I do not function properly.
I am nothing more than the consequence of catastrophe.
2 weeks have collapsed at the side of the road, abandoned, already forgotten. 2 weeks
I’ve been here and in 2 weeks I’ve taken up residence on a bed of eggshells, wondering
when something is going to break, when I’ll be the first to break it, wondering when
everything is going to fall apart. In 2 weeks I should’ve been happier, healthier,
sleeping better, more soundly in this safe space. Instead I worry about what will
happen
when
if I can’t get this right, if I don’t figure out how to train properly, if I hurt
someone
on purpose
by accident.
We’re preparing for a bloody war.
That’s why I’m training. We’re all trying to prepare ourselves to take down Warner
and his men. To win one battle at a time. To show the citizens of our world that there
is hope yet—that they do not have to acquiesce to the demands of The Reestablishment
and become slaves to a regime that wants nothing more than to exploit them for power.
And I agreed to fight. To be a warrior. To use my power against my better judgment.
But the thought of laying a hand on someone brings back a world of memories, feelings,
a flush of power I experience only when I make contact with skin not immune to my
own. It’s a rush of invincibility; a tormented kind of euphoria; a wave of intensity
flooding every pore in my body. I don’t know what it will do to me. I don’t know if
I can trust myself to take pleasure in someone else’s pain.
All I know is that Warner’s last words are caught in my chest and I can’t cough out
the cold or the truth hacking at the back of my throat.
Adam has no idea that Warner can touch me.
No one does.
Warner was supposed to be dead. Warner was supposed to be dead because I was supposed
to have shot him but no one supposed I’d need to know how to fire a gun so now I suppose
he’s come to find me.
He’s come to fight.
For me.
A sharp knock and the door flies open.
“Ah, Ms. Ferrars. I don’t know what you hope to accomplish by sitting in the corner.”
Castle’s easy grin dances into the room before he does.
I take a tight breath and try to make myself look at Castle but I can’t. Instead I
whisper an apology and listen to the sorry sound my words make in this large room.
I feel my shaking fingers clench against the thick, padded mats spread out across
the floor and think about how I’ve accomplished nothing since I’ve been here. It’s
humiliating, so humiliating to disappoint one of the only people who’s ever been kind
to me.
Castle stands directly in front of me, waits until I finally look up. “There’s no
need to apologize,” he says. His sharp, clear brown eyes and friendly smile make it
easy to forget he’s the leader of Omega Point. The leader of this entire underground
movement dedicated to fighting The Reestablishment. His voice is too gentle, too kind,
and it’s almost worse.
Sometimes I wish he would just yell at me.
“But,” he continues, “you do have to learn how to harness your Energy, Ms. Ferrars.”
A pause.
A pace.
His hands rest on the stack of bricks I was supposed to have destroyed. He pretends
not to notice the red rims around my eyes or the metal pipes I threw across the room.
His gaze carefully avoids the bloody smears on the wooden planks set off to the side;
his questions don’t ask me why my fists are clenched so tight and whether or not I’ve
injured myself again. He cocks his head in my direction but he’s staring at a spot
directly behind me and his voice is soft when he speaks. “I know this is difficult
for you,” he says. “But you must learn. You have to. Your life will depend upon it.”
I nod, lean back against the wall, welcome the cold and the pain of the brick digging
into my spine. I pull my knees up to my chest and feel my feet press into the protective
mats covering the ground. I’m so close to tears I’m afraid I might scream. “I just
don’t know how,” I finally say to him. “I don’t know any of this. I don’t even know
what I’m supposed to be doing.” I stare at the ceiling and blink blink blink. My eyes
feel shiny, damp. “I don’t know how to make things happen.”
“Then you have to think,” Castle says, undeterred. He picks up a discarded metal pipe.
Weighs it in his hands. “You have to find links between the events that transpired.
When you broke through the concrete in Warner’s torture chamber—when you punched through
the steel door to save Mr. Kent—what happened? Why in those two instances were you
able to react in such an extraordinary way?” He sits down some feet away from me.
Pushes the pipe in my direction. “I need you to analyze your abilities, Ms. Ferrars.
You have to focus.”
Focus.
It’s one word but it’s enough, it’s all it takes to make me feel sick. Everyone, it
seems, needs me to focus. First Warner needed me to focus, and now Castle needs me
to focus.
I’ve never been able to follow through.
Castle’s deep, sad sigh brings me back to the present. He gets to his feet. He smooths
out the only navy-blue blazer he seems to own and I catch a glimpse of the silver
Omega symbol embroidered into the back. An absent hand touches the end of his ponytail;
he always ties his dreads in a clean knot at the base of his neck. “You are resisting
yourself,” he says, though he says it gently. “Maybe you should work with someone
else for a change. Maybe a partner will help you work things out—to discover the connection
between these two events.”
My shoulders stiffen, surprised. “I thought you said I had to work alone.”
He squints past me. Scratches a spot beneath his ear, shoves his other hand into a
pocket. “I didn’t actually want you to work alone,” he says. “But no one volunteered
for the task.”