Текст книги "UnWholly"
Автор книги: Neal Shusterman
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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 27 страниц)
Then he sits down and leans back in his chair with his hands behind his head, very satisfied with himself.
Miracolina taps her pen impatiently on the page while the other kids write. He wants her dream future? Fine. She’ll give these people something honest, even if it isn’t what they want to hear.
It is years from now, she writes, and my hands belong to a mother who lost her hands in a fire. She has four children. She comforts them, bathes them, brushes their hair, and changes their diapers with those hands. She treasures my hands because she knows how precious they are. She gets manicures weekly for me, even though she doesn’t know who I was.
My legs belong to a girl who was in a plane crash. She had been a track star, but found that my legs simply weren’t built for that. For a while she mourned the loss of her Olympic dream, but then realized that my legs could dance. She learned to tango, and one day she met a prince while dancing in Monaco, and she danced her way into his heart. They married, and now the royal couple have a grand ball every year. The highlight of the ball is her stunning tango with her prince.
With every word she writes, Miracolina is filled with deeper fury at all the possibilities stolen from her.
My heart went to a scientist on the verge of discovering a way to harness starlight and solve the world’s energy needs. He was so close—but then suffered a major heart attack. Thanks to me, though, he survived and completed his life’s work, making the world a better place for all of us. He even won the Nobel Prize.
Is it so strange to want to give of yourself totally and completely? If that is what’s in Miracolina’s heart, why should it be denied her?
And as for my mind—my memories, which are full of a loving childhood—they all went to troubled souls who had no such memories of their own. But now with that part of me in them, they are healed of the many hurts in their lives.
Miracolina turns in her paper, and the teacher, perhaps more curious about hers than anyone else’s, reads it while the other kids are still writing. She watches his face, full of thoughtful expressions as he reads. She doesn’t know why she should care, but she’s always cared what her teachers think. Even the ones she didn’t like. Then, when he’s done, he comes over to her.
“Very interesting, Miracolina, but you’ve left out one thing.”
“What?”
“Your soul,” he says. “Who gets your soul?”
“My soul,” she tells him with confidence, “goes to God.”
“Hmm . . .” He strokes some graying whisker stubble. “So it goes to God, even if every part of your body is still alive?”
Miracolina stands firm against his questioning. “I have a right to believe that, if I want to.”
“True, true. One problem with that, though. You’re Catholic, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to be unwound voluntarily.”
“So?”
“Well . . . if your soul leaves this world, then voluntary unwinding is no different from assisted suicide—and in the Catholic religion, suicide is a mortal sin. Which means that by your own beliefs, you’d be going to hell.”
Then he leaves her to stew with an A-minus on her essay. Minus, she assumes, due to the eternal damnation of her soul.
25 • Lev
Miracolina has no idea how deeply her obstinance affects him. Most kids here are either terrified of Lev, or worship him, or both—but Miracolina is neither intimidated nor reverent; she just hates him, plain and simple. It shouldn’t bother him. He’s gotten used to being hated—for just as his brother Marcus said, as much as the public mourned for poor, corrupted, little-boy-Lev, they also despise the “monster” that he has become. Well, he was innocent, and he was a monster, but here in the Cavenaugh mansion, none of that matters, because here he is one step short of being a god. There’s a heady, awkward kind of fun to that, but Miracolina is the pin that pops the bubble.
His next encounter with her is the following week, at an Easter dance. Tithes are notoriously inept when it comes to male/female interaction. Knowing that dating and all that goes with it won’t be a part of their limited future, tithes and their families don’t give boy/girl stuff much attention. In fact, it’s downplayed, since it would create the kind of wistful longing that a tithe should not have.
“These kids are all smart as a whip,” Cavenaugh exclaims at the weekly meeting of the tithe rescue staff, “but they have the social skills of six-year-olds.” It’s a fair description of how Lev was on his tithing day as well, and he’s not all that sure he’s come much further. He’s still never been on a date.
There are about twenty staff members, and Lev is the only one under thirty. Each of their faces are filled with concern that’s so long-lived, it seems burned into their expressions. He wonders if their passion comes from their own experiences with unwinding. Did they, like the Admiral, unwind their own child, and come to regret the decision? Was it personal for them, or did their dedication to the cause come from a general disgust with society’s status quo?
“We shall have an Easter dance,” Cavenaugh proclaims from the head of the meeting table, “and encourage our ex-tithes to behave like normal teenagers. Within reason, of course.” Then he singles Lev out. “Lev, can we count on you, as our goodwill ambassador, to join in the festivities?”
Everyone waits for his answer. It bothers him that they’re hanging on his response. “What if I say no?”
Cavenaugh looks at him incredulously. “Why on earth would you? Everyone loves a party!”
“Not really,” Lev points out. “The last parties these kids had were their tithing parties. Do you really want to remind them of that?”
The others around the table mumble to one another, weighing what Lev has said, until Cavenaugh dismisses it. “Tithing parties are farewells,” he says. “Ours will be about new beginnings. I’m counting on you to attend.”
Lev sighs. “Sure.” There is no challenging of ideas in the Cavenaugh mansion when those ideas come from the man who shares the mansion’s name.
It is decided that the ballroom is in too poor shape for an adolescent gala, so they use the dining hall, clearing away the tables and chairs and setting up a DJ station beneath the portrait. With attendance mandatory, the entire population of ex-tithes is there.
As Lev expected, they gather by gender on either side of the room like it’s a game of dodgeball, boys against girls. Everyone busies themselves drinking punch and eating cocktail weenies while stealing secret glances at the opposing team, as if being caught looking will get them disqualified.
One of the adults does his best impersonation of a DJ, and when encouragement doesn’t work, he demands that everyone form a circle on the dance floor to do the Hokey Pokey. However, ten seconds into the dance, he suddenly realizes how ill-advised it is for ex-tithes to be putting various body parts in and out. The DJ becomes flustered and tries to skip right to the “you put your whole self in” part, but the kids are so amused by all this that they continue singing and dancing part by part even after the music has stopped. Ironically, it ends up being the perfect icebreaker, and when the dance music starts up again, there are actually kids dancing.
Lev is not one of them. He’s more than satisfied to be an observer, in spite of the fact that he can have his pick of dance partners—although he suspects if he actually did ask one of these girls to dance, she might spontaneously combust on the spot.
But then from across the room he spots Miracolina leaning back against the wall with her arms resolutely crossed, and he decides that this is a challenge worth taking.
The moment she sees him approaching she looks away, a bit panicked, hoping he’s headed toward someone else. Then she takes a visible breath when she realizes she is the subject of his attention.
“So,” says Lev, as casually as he can, “you wanna dance?”
“Do you believe in the end of the world?” she responds.
Lev shrugs. “I don’t know. Why?”
“Because the day after that is when I’ll dance with you.”
Lev smiles. “You’re funny. I didn’t think you had a sense of humor.”
“I’ll tell you what. If you run out of girls who worship the ground you walk on, you can ask me again. The answer will still be no, but I’ll give you the courtesy of pretending to think about it.”
“I read your essay,” he tells her, which gets a nice head-snapping reaction out of her. “You have a dancing princess fantasy—don’t deny it.”
“My legs have a dancing princess fantasy.”
“Well, to dance with your legs, I guess I’ll have to put up with the rest of you.”
“No, you won’t,” she says, “because not a single part of me will be here.” Then she glances toward Lev’s portrait, which is now weirdly lit by colorful strobe lights. “Why don’t you dance with your portrait?” Miracolina suggests. “The two of you deserve each other.” Then she storms out. The adults at the door try to stop her from going back to her room, but she gets past them anyway.
After she’s gone, Lev hears the grumbling around him.
“She’s such a loser,” someone says.
Lev turns to the kid with a vengeance. It’s Timothy, the boy who arrived with her. “I could say the same about you!” he snaps. “All of you!”
Then he shuts himself up before he goes too far. “No, that’s not true. But you shouldn’t be judging her.”
“Yes, Lev,” says Timothy obediently. “I won’t, Lev. I’m sorry, Lev.”
And then a shy girl, apparently less shy than all the other shy girls, steps forward. “I’ll dance with you, Lev.”
So he goes out onto the dance floor and obliges her and every other girl there with a dance, while his portrait looks down on them with its irritating gaze of holy superiority.
• • •
The next day the portrait is vandalized.
Something rude is tagged in spray paint right across the middle of it. Breakfast is delayed until the portrait can be removed. There is a spray paint can missing from the storeroom, but no smoking gun as to who could have done it. Everyone has a theory, though, and most of those theories point to the same person.
“We know it was her!” the other kids try to tell Lev. “Miracolina’s the only one here who has something against you!”
“How do you know she’s the only one?” Lev asks them. “She’s just the only one with guts enough to say it out loud.”
Out of respect for Lev’s wishes, the other kids don’t accuse her to her face, and the adults are diplomatic enough to keep their opinions to themselves.
“Perhaps we need more surveillance cameras,” Cavenaugh suggests.
“What we need,” Lev tells him, “is more freedom to express opinions. Then things like this wouldn’t happen.”
Cavenaugh is genuinely insulted. “You talk like this is a harvest camp. Everyone’s free to express themselves here.”
“Well, I guess not everyone feels that way.”
26 • Miracolina
After a day of being cold-shouldered by every living thing in the mansion, there’s a knock on her door. She doesn’t say anything, because whoever it is will just come in anyway; the bedrooms here have no locks.
The door opens slowly, and Lev steps in. There’s a quickening of her heart when she sees him. She tells herself it’s anger.
“If you’re here to accuse me of vandalizing your portrait, I confess. I can’t hide the truth anymore. I did it. Now punish me by taking away all my inspirational movies. Please.”
Lev just keeps his arms limply by his side. “Stop it. I know you didn’t do it.”
“Oh—so you finally caught the naughty tithe?”
“Not exactly. I just know it wasn’t you.”
It’s a bit of a relief to be vindicated, although she did take some guilty pleasure in being a prime suspect. “So what do you want?”
“I’ve been meaning to apologize for the way you were brought here. Tranq’d and blindfolded and all. I mean, what they’re doing here is important, but I don’t always agree with how they do it.”
Miracolina notes that this is the first time she’s heard him say “they” instead of “we.”
“I’ve been here for weeks,” she says. “Why are you telling me this now?”
Lev reaches up and flips his hair out of his eyes. “I don’t know. It was just bothering me.”
“Soooo . . . you’re going around apologizing to every kid here?”
“No,” Lev admits. “Just you.”
“Why?”
He begins pacing the small room, raising his voice. “Because you’re the only one who’s still angry! Why are you so angry?”
“The only angry person in this room is you,” Miracolina says, with antagonizing calm. “And there are plenty of angry kids here. Why else would your portrait get vandalized?”
“Forget about that!” shouts Lev. “We’re talking about you!”
“If you don’t stop yelling, I’ll have to ask you to leave. In fact, I think I’ll ask you to leave anyway.” She points to the door. “Leave!”
“No.”
So she picks up a hairbrush and throws it at him. It beans him on the head and ricochets to the wall, where it wedges behind the TV.
“Ow!” He grabs his head, grimacing. “That hurt!”
“Good, it was supposed to.”
Lev clenches his fists, growls, then turns like he’s going to storm out, but he doesn’t. Instead he turns back to her, unclenching his fists and holding his palms out to her, pleading like maybe he’s showing off his stigmata. Well, there might be blood on his hands, but it sure isn’t flowing from his palms.
“So is this how it’s going to be?” he asks. “You’re just going to stew and bitch and make things miserable for everyone here? Don’t you want something more out of life?”
“No,” she tells him, “because my life ended on my thirteenth birthday. As far as I’m concerned, from that moment on I was supposed to be a part of other people’s lives. I was fine with that. It’s what I wanted. It’s what I still want. Why do you find that so hard to believe?”
He looks at her for a moment too long, and she tries to imagine him all dressed in white as a tithe. She could like that boy; still pure and untainted. But the kid before her now is a different person.
“Sorry,” she says, not sorry at all. “I guess I failed deprogramming school.” She turns her back to him and waits a few moments, knowing he’s just standing there, then turns again—only to find that he’s not. He has left, closing the door so quietly she didn’t hear.
27 • Lev
Lev sits in on yet another meeting of the tithe rescue staff. He doesn’t know why they include him; Cavenaugh never listens to what he says. These meetings truly make him feel like a mascot, a favorite pet. This time, however, he’s determined to make them listen.
Even before they begin, Lev speaks loudly enough to get everyone’s attention, stealing the floor from Cavenaugh before he has the chance to take it. “Why is the portrait of me back in the dining hall?” he asks. “It was already vandalized once—why put it back?” The question quiets everyone down and brings the room to order.
“I ordered it restored and returned,” says Cavenaugh. “The comfort and focus it provides the ex-tithes is invaluable.”
“I agree!” says one of the teachers. “I think it draws their focus toward the positive.” Then she punctuates her remark with a brownnosing nod toward Cavenaugh. “I, for one, like it and approve.”
“Well, I don’t like it, and I don’t approve,” Lev tells them, for the first time voicing his feelings out loud. “I shouldn’t be some sort of god-thing. I shouldn’t be put on a pedestal. I’m not and never have been this image you’re trying to make me.”
There’s silence around the room as everyone waits to see how Cavenaugh will react. He takes his time and finally says, “We all have our jobs here. Yours is very clear and very simple: to be an example for the other ex-tithes to follow. Have you noticed kids have been letting their hair grow? At first I thought your hair would be off-putting, but now they are modeling themselves on you. It’s what they need at this juncture.”
“I’m not a role model!” Lev yells. He stands up, not even realizing he’s come to his feet. “I was a clapper. A terrorist! I made awful decisions!”
But Cavenaugh remains calm. “It’s your good decisions we care about. Now sit down and let us get on with this meeting.”
Lev looks around the table but sees no support. If anything, he sees them all tallying this outburst as one of his bad decisions, best forgotten. He boils with the same kind of anger that once turned him into a clapper, but he bites it back, sits down, and remains silent for the rest of the meeting.
It’s only as the meeting breaks up that Cavenaugh takes his hand. Not to shake it, but to flip it over and scrutinize his fingers—or more specifically, to look under his fingernails.
“Best clean those a little better, Lev,” he says. “Spray paint comes out with turpentine, I think.”
28 • Risa
Risa does not have an Easter social. She can’t even be sure which day is Easter—she’s lost track of the days. In fact, she can’t even be sure where she is. At first she’s held by the Juvenile Authority in Tucson, then transferred in a windowless armored vehicle to another detention facility about two hours away—in Phoenix, she presumes. Here is where they send in interrogators to ask her questions.
“How many kids are in the Graveyard?”
“A bunch.”
“Who sends your supplies?”
“George Washington. Or is it Abraham Lincoln? I forget.”
“How often do you receive new arrivals?”
“About as often as you beat your wife.”
The interrogators are infuriated by her lack of cooperation, but she has no intention of telling them anything useful. Besides, she knows they’re asking her questions they already know the answers to. The questions are merely tests to see whether she’ll tell the truth or lie. She doesn’t do either. Instead she makes a mockery of each interrogation.
“Your cooperation might make things easier on you,” they tell her.
“I don’t want things easy,” she responds. “I’ve had a hard life. I’d rather stick with what’s familiar.”
They let her go hungry but don’t let her starve. They tell her they have Elvis Robert Mullard in custody and they’re cutting him a deal for information—but she knows they’re lying, because if they had him, they’d know it’s not Mullard at all, but Connor.
This is how it goes for two weeks. Then one day in walks a Juvey-cop. He aims a gun at her and unceremoniously tranqs her—not in the leg, where it would hurt the least, but right in the chest, where it stings until she loses consciousness.
She awakes in a different cell. A little newer and larger, perhaps, but still a cell. She has no idea where she has been transported this time, or why. This new cell is not at all designed for a paraplegic, and her captors have offered no help since she arrived. Not that she’d accept it if they did, but it’s as if they want her to struggle over the lip of the bathroom threshold, or onto her bed, which is abnormally high—just enough to make getting into it an ordeal.
She suffers a week of food brought in by a silent guard in a rent-a-cop uniform. She knows she’s no longer in the hands of the Juvenile Authority, but who her new captors are is a mystery. These new jailers ask no questions, and that concerns her the same way that Connor is always concerned by the fact that the Graveyard has never been taken out. Are they so unimportant in the grand scheme of things that the Juvenile Authority won’t even torture her to get the information they want? Have they been deluding themselves into thinking they’re making a difference?
All this time she’s forced out thoughts of Connor, because it simply hurt too much to think about him. How horrified he must have been when she turned herself in. Horrified and stunned. Well, fine, let him be; he’ll get over it. She did it for him just as much as she did it for the injured boy, because as painful as it is to admit, Risa knows she had become just a distraction to Connor. If he’s truly going to lead those kids in the Graveyard like the Admiral did, he can’t be giving Risa leg massages and worrying whether her emotional needs are being met. Maybe he does love her, but it’s obvious there’s no room in his life at this moment to pay it any more than lip service.
Risa has no idea what her future holds now. All she knows is that she must focus on that future and not on Connor, no matter how much that hurts.
• • •
A few days later Risa finally has an actual visitor: a well-dressed woman with an air of authority.
“Good morning, Risa. It’s a pleasure to finally meet the girl behind the hullabaloo. “
Risa immediately decides that anyone who uses the word “hullabaloo” cannot be her friend.
The woman sits down in the single chair in the cell. It’s a chair that has never been used, because it’s not exactly designed for a paraplegic. In fact, it seems specifically designed not to be accessible to Risa, like most everything else in her cell. “I trust they’ve been treating you well?”
“I haven’t been ‘treated’ at all. I’ve been ignored.”
“You haven’t been ignored,” the woman tells her. “You’ve just been allowed some time to settle. Some time alone, to think.”
“Somehow I doubt I’ve ever been alone. . . .” Risa throws a glance to a large wall mirror, through which she can occasionally see shadows. “So am I some sort of political prisoner?” She asks, getting right to the point. “If you’re not going to torture me, do you just plan to leave me here to rot? Or maybe you’re selling me to a parts pirate. At least the parts that work.”
“None of those things,” says the woman. “I’m here to help you. And you, my dear, are going to help us.”
“I doubt that.” Risa rolls away, although she can’t roll very far. The woman doesn’t get up from her chair. She doesn’t even move; she just sits there comfortably. Risa wanted to be in control of this situation, but this woman keeps control with her voice alone.
“My name is Roberta. I represent an organization called Proactive Citizenry. Our purpose, among other things, is to do good in this world. We seek to advance the causes of both science and freedom as well as to provide a sense of spiritual enlightenment.”
“And what does that have to do with me?”
Roberta smiles and pauses a moment, holding her smile before she speaks. “I’m going to have the charges against you dropped, Risa. But more importantly, I’m going to get you out of that wheelchair and give you a new spine.”
Risa turns to her, filled with more mixed emotions than she can sort right now. “No, you will not! It’s my right to refuse the spine of an Unwind.”
“Yes, it is,” Roberta says, way too calmly. “However, I firmly believe you will change your mind.”
Risa crosses her arms, her belief more firm than Roberta’s that she won’t.
• • •
She’s given the silent treatment again—but they must be getting impatient, because it’s only for two days this time instead of a week. Roberta returns and sits once more in the chair designed for people who can walk. This time she has a folder with her, although Risa can’t see what’s inside.
“Have you given any thought to my offer?” Roberta asks her.
“I don’t need to. I already gave you my answer.”
“It’s very noble to stand on principle and refuse an unwound spine,” Roberta says. “It does, however, represent a wrongful mind-set that is neither productive nor adaptive. It’s backward, actually, and it makes you part of the problem.”
“I plan to keep my ‘wrongful mind-set’ as well as my wheelchair.”
“Very well. I won’t deny you your choice.” Roberta shifts in her chair—perhaps a little irritated, or maybe just in anticipation. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” Then she stands and opens the door. Risa knows that whoever it is has been waiting in the other room, watching through the oneway mirror.
“You can come in now,” Roberta says cheerfully.
A boy steps in cautiously. He seems sixteen or so. He has multicolored skin and multicolored streaks in his hair. At first she assumes it’s some sort of extreme body modification, but she quickly realizes it’s more than that. There is something profoundly wrong about him.
“Hi,” he says, and smiles tentatively with perfect teeth. “I’m Cam. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Risa.”
Risa backs away, her wheelchair bumping the wall. Now it strikes her exactly what she’s seeing—exactly why this boy seems so “off.” She has seen a news report about this creation. Her flesh starts to crawl. If it could, it would crawl right through the air vents to escape what she’s seeing.
“Get that thing away from me! It’s disgusting! Get it away!”
His expression mirrors Risa’s horror. He backs away and hits the wall as well.
“It’s all right, Cam,” Roberta says. “You know people always have to get used to you. And she will.” Roberta offers him the chair, but suddenly Cam doesn’t want to be there, he wants to escape just as much as Risa does.
Risa looks to Roberta so she doesn’t have to look at Cam. “I said get it out of here.”
“I’m not an it,” Cam insists.
Risa shakes her head. “Yes, you are.” She still won’t look directly at him. “Now get it out of here, or I swear I will rip every stolen part out of its body with my bare hands.”
She tries not to catch his gaze, but she can’t stop herself. The thing has begun to cry tears from someone else’s stolen tear ducts, and it just makes her angry.
“Dagger plunged deep,” he says. Risa has no idea what he’s talking about but doesn’t really care.
“Get it out of my sight,” she yells at Roberta, “and if you have any decency in you at all, you’ll kill it!”
Roberta looks at her sternly, and then turns to Cam. “You can go, Cam. Wait outside for me.”
Cam quickly, awkwardly, leaves, and Roberta closes the door. Now she’s fuming. If Risa can take anything positive out of this, it’s that she’s gotten the better of Roberta.
“You’re a cruel girl,” Roberta says.
“And you’re a monster to create a thing like that.”
“History will be the judge of who we are, and what we’ve done.” And then she puts a piece of paper down on the table. “This is a consent form. Sign it and you can have a new working spine by the end of the week.”
Risa picks it up, tears it to shreds, and throws the pieces in the air. Roberta must have been expecting this, because she instantly pulls out a second consent form from her folder and slaps it down on the table.
“You will be healed, and you will make up to Cam for how badly you’ve treated him today.”
“Not in this life, or any other.”
Roberta smiles like she knows something Risa doesn’t. “Well then . . . here’s hoping you have a sudden change of heart.” Then she exits the room, leaving the pen and the consent form on the table.
Risa looks at the consent form long after Roberta has gone. She knows she won’t sign it, but the fact that they want her to intrigues her. Why is it so important to them that her broken body be repaired? There’s only one answer to that: For some reason Risa is much more important than she ever dreamed she was. Important to both sides.
