Текст книги "The Variables"

Автор книги: Shelbi Wescott

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 31 страниц)

CHAPTER FOUR

The festival was intended to boost morale.

People heard about the Brikhams’ fate. Rumor had it that the family was given the tanks for subversive behavior, and no one doubted it. The Brikhams had few allies among the survivors, but while the family’s neighbors wouldn’t miss the late-night shouting matches or their son Charlie’s blatant thievery, their absence created pockets of angsty discussions in hallways. The worry was spreading.

So, according to Lucy’s mother and father, Huck dreamed up a spectacle to while away the hours.

It seemed like an odd juxtaposition: one thousand sun-deprived people with varying levels of cabin fever filing in and out of the Center, participating in old-school carnival games and eating popcorn and hot dogs like it was all they had ever wanted. Rock music pumped through the speaker system and occasionally the MC, a shiny haired former NASA employee and weekend comic, would break in with raffle prizes, booth announcements, witty banter, and all-around good cheer.

The Sky Room chefs hosted a cake walk; someone had brought or pilfered Polaroid cameras and set up a photo booth. People walked away from it shaking the flimsy, slowly developing film in eager anticipation of seeing their expressions materialize from nothing. It was a simple joy. The System’s occupants milled around between beanbag tosses, miniature bowling pins, and face painting stations. Many were smiling, some looked perplexed. Most were enjoying themselves.

At the center of the excitement was Maxine, standing guard with a clipboard. Drawing from her years as the chairwoman for the PTA, she threw herself into leading the event with special attention to the carnival milieu. Huck personally contacted her to fill the role of party planner. She’d organized some carnivals before, so Maxine got straight to work. With a job to do, Maxine had allowed herself freedom and distance from Ethan, who was still mute and refusing his physical therapy.

Maxine’s grief subsided with the project to keep her mind busy. If the elaborate set-up was any indication, the King matriarch was suffering more than she let on.

She’d enlisted the help of many of the System’s occupants, including Grant, who was set to perform as a keyboard player in a cover band.

Perhaps Maxine’s most ridiculous and atrocious act was convincing Cass to don herself in a billowy off-the-shoulder dress and set herself up in a darkened tent in the corner of the Center under a sloppily painted sign that read: Fortune Teller.

At first Lucy was adamant that she wouldn’t visit Cass. It was a silly, degrading, borderline racist assignment. But Cass didn’t mind; her grandmother, who had passed long before the world succumbed to Scott’s virus, had been a firm believer in divination and the power of the Tarot. So, despite Lucy’s eye-rolls and supplications, Cass assumed the role of the System’s oracle.

During the carnival, Lucy was relegated to babysitting duty, following Teddy and Harper around with their trails of tickets and goody bags filled with candy, stickers, and other trinkets—which Maxine had demanded as a necessity for the festival’s success.

Whether Huck had already stocked the System with Maxine’s must-haves or whether he sent his precious military into the nearest city to loot abandoned party supply stores, Lucy didn’t know.

When Maxine King planned parties, she moved mountains. So, secretly, Lucy hoped the latter was true. She pictured a trail of guards, seeking out a Nebraskan strip-mall, locating a party store, and gingerly stepping around bodies while stuffing garbage bags with cheap necklaces, miniature Slinkies, and individually wrapped bubble gum.

Galen, done with his shift at the cake walk, tapped Lucy on the shoulder.

“Your turn?” she asked and thrust the brimming bags outward into Galen’s chest. “Teddy wants to jump in the bouncy castle again and Harper is over there.” Lucy pointed to the fishing game, where Harper stood, her face smeared with the remnants of a chocolate treat. She was holding a makeshift fishing pole, waiting for the tug that indicated her prize was ready.

Galen gave Lucy a look—a cross between resignation and annoyance—and then he plodded away, following after the youngsters.

Lucy spun and looked at the darkened fabric flaps over the entrance to Cass’s domain. She would have wanted to walk around with Grant, perhaps sit with him in the movie theater where her mother had requested old black and white movies to play during the duration of the event. But he was out of commission. So, with a small shake of her head, she walked straight into the tent. Small twinkle lights danced around her and Cass sat at a covered table, a deck of cards spread downward before her.

“You came,” Cass said, and she smiled. “I thought you’d avoid me.”

“I had to see what my mother had done to you,” Lucy replied, and she let her eyes wander around the small interior of the fabric tent. “Where’s your crystal ball?”

“I don’t use a crystal ball, silly. Most clairvoyants don’t need gimmicky tools to tell you your past or your futures. Sit.” Cass had adopted a thicker accent for her role; she winked at Lucy and pointed to a wooden chair next to her table, but Lucy hesitated. Cass clicked her tongue. “Please.”

Lucy sat and rolled her eyes. “This whole thing—”

“People needed something familiar.”

“Aren’t there some things we can do away with in this new world? People needed a dunk tank? People needed this?”

“Sometimes people don’t know what they need, but they’ll accept a substitute.”

Lucy put her hands on the glass top of the table and looked at her friend. “You’re good at this. That was a very fortuneteller-y thing to say.”

Cass shrugged, a coy smile tugging at the edges of her mouth. “So, are you here for your fortune or are you here to poke fun?”

“Poke fun,” Lucy answered without hesitation. “I don’t believe in this stuff. I don’t believe in ghosts or mediums. Once, when I was a kid, I thought I saw a ghost, right? My dad came in...told me ghosts didn’t exist. He said science can explain away the supernatural. It was comforting, actually.”

Raising her eyebrows, Cass picked up the deck in front of her and began to shuffle. She raised one hand and then the other, flipping the cards with methodical tenderness. “Your dad believes in science. Grant believes in God. What do you believe in?” she asked, shuffling one-handed now, but never taking her eyes off of Lucy.

“This is weird.”

“It’s just a carnival.”

“I only wanted to say hi.”

“I’ll need a ticket.”

“Oh, come on,” Lucy let out a small laugh. Then Cass raised her eyebrows and held out her hand, and so she was forced to dig deep into her pockets and pull out one of the tickets she had kept for herself. She placed it in Cass’s hand and Cass tucked it into a pocket in her dress, then she smiled.

“Shall we do past, present, future?”

“I don’t know what that means—”

Cass flipped down card number one. “Deluge, reversed,” she read.

“Deluge—”

The fortuneteller nodded. “A reversal of fortune. Something bad that led to something good.”

“It’s not fair. You know too much about me now. It’s like those people that steal your wallets and then tell you that you live in a poor part of town or something. All of this means nothing,” Lucy replied. She leaned forward to stare at the card. It showed a house uprooted by a flood, spinning wildly out of control. Lucy tapped the card with her index finger. “How do I know you even know what you’re doing?”

Cass didn’t acknowledge Lucy’s question and flipped down the second card. She peered at it and tilted her head, then she looked at Lucy, her dark eyes latching on to hers and then she nodded affirmation. “Erzulie La Flambeau.”

“Okay. Flambeau?” Lucy stifled a giggle. The picture was of a black woman dancing among tall grass, her arms raised in jubilation. “Where did you get these?” Lucy leaned over and reached for the deck, but Cass drew them back away from her.

“My grandma,” she answered in a soft voice.

“Of all the things you could bring, you brought these?” Lucy saw a flicker of hurt travel across Cass’s face and she recognized her own harshness. “I’m sorry. I forgot that you had more time to prepare...to grab the things that mattered to you,” she backpedaled.

The statement softened Cass, and she smiled. Still holding the unused cards to her chest, Cass looked at Lucy and asked, “Is there anything you would have brought with you? If you’d have known?”

Lucy closed her eyes and let her memory recreate her house. She felt a pang of sadness, thinking of her home now empty, left to the elements. It was unlikely she’d ever get a chance to return. In the attic, her mother had organized a box with her school awards and art projects; there was a baby book filled with her first words and snapshots of growing up. But of all these things, the two items Lucy longed for most did not belong to her.

Scott’s Victrola was a family treasure and its scratchy records transported her to a different time, a far-off place. She longed to sit and lose herself in the music. It was a large and lumbering item, impossible to transport, but Lucy still wished that her father had made more of an effort to save it.

The other item was her mother’s charm bracelet.

When she was younger, Lucy used to sneak up to her mother’s bedroom and examine the silver bracelet and the accompanying accoutrements with fascination. While the novelty of the charm bracelet had gone out of style when her mother was young, somehow Maxine had still gathered an array of trinkets throughout the years. Charms represented the births of each child, milestones in education, trips to Disneyland. Each one told a story. And Lucy loved to hear the narratives behind the charms.

She cringed to think that the heirloom was left behind, probably still tucked in the jewelry box on her mother’s chest-of-drawers.

“An old record player. And a charm bracelet.”

“Of course, of course. That makes sense. We bring things that have stories,” Cass noted wisely and she nodded toward the cards. “I would not leave these behind.” Then she pointed toward the upturned card in front of them. “The Eruzulie La Flambeau is good. It’s a strong card. For a strong woman.”

Lucy smiled. Flattery could earn Cass some credibility. She leaned closer and ran her finger over the dancing woman’s curves. It was clear to see that this card had confidence. She wished that she could see that trait in herself. “So...I am, in this present moment, strong?”

Cass shook her head. “It’s not just inner strength that the Eruzile sees. It’s all in the timing. You are encountering obstacles and you are determined to succeed...you will not allow your fear to stop you.”

“Like saving Grant!” Lucy said with excitement, feeling for the first time that she could put the pieces of her life into these cards and make it work.

“Ha!” Cass let out a single, punctuated, laugh. “Yes, yes, dear Lucy. Just like that. So, you are converted now? You believe?” She raised her eyebrows and then wagged her finger. “Then let’s see about your future, eh?” With a steady hand, Cass drew the top card off the deck and went to set it down, but she hesitated. There was a flash of uneasiness and the card hovered in her hand for an extra second before she set it down. Staring at it wordlessly, Cass’s features went dark.

“It’s bad,” Lucy stated, unsurprised. She saw the artwork: a dark woman smoking above three red caskets, each filled with a skeleton, buried underground. A forest bloomed behind the woman, but her body language conveyed a certain carelessness. “Of course it’s bad.”

“More or less,” was the reply.

“At least it’s not the death card. That would be too predictable,” Lucy said, eyeing the word typed at the bottom. Guedeh it read.

“At least it’s not that,” Cass repeated. And she went to scoop up the three lone cards, her hand sweeping them off the table and into her palm.

“Hey—” Lucy put her hand on top of Cass’s and stopped her. “I paid my ticket.”

“You don’t believe. It’s just a deck of cards to you. There’s no point...you’ll think it’s for effect. I should just tell you that the card means hope, love, and prosperity.”

“Oh, come on,” Lucy said and she crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s unfair. I’m willing to listen. I’m sorry about before. Tell me...”

Cass eyed Lucy with reluctance and then she sighed. “The Guedeh are the keepers of the dead. They represent what we don’t know about death and the afterlife. But this card...it’s not good. It means that you will have a great heartbreak. That your life will be marred with a separation. And it will be caused by your own actions.”

Lucy raised her eyebrows. “Goodness,” she whispered, resisting the urge to reply with a dismissal. Playing it off would hurt Cass’s feelings, so she swallowed and listened, trying to hide every shred of questioning that she felt bubbling up around her.

“You will do something that will hurt a great number of people. It will reveal truths about yourself and your values.”

“I think I’d rather have death,” Lucy replied, her throat dry. “You’re going to send me back out to play balloon darts after that?” she managed to add with a half-smile.

Cass picked up the cards off the table. Each in turn. “This is just a snapshot. No future is set in stone, Lucy. Even God and the spirits understand that we can take control, we can set a course. Divination is a tool. It’s not...as you say...a science.”

“But—” Lucy reached out as if she was making to take the cards, but Cass intercepted and took Lucy’s hand. She leaned down and kissed it with a loud smack and then set her free.

“Change your path. Change your future.”

“I don’t think the System supports your cute catchphrase.”

“I think the System was built with that exact idea in mind,” Cass said matter-of-factly. “It’s not the motto that matters, it’s how you interpret it. Everything walks a fine line between good and evil; just a little,” Cass cupped her hands and blew, as if scattering confetti, “and everything changes.” Then she leaned at squeezed Lucy’s bicep, letting the touch linger for a moment.

The tent rustled behind them and Lucy turned. Two boys and a girl entered holding goodie bags and brandishing tickets. One of the boys laughed and ducked behind the others, covering his mouth with a fist and hitting his male friend playfully in the shoulder, as if he couldn’t believe they had entered the tent. Their mockery was evident; somehow Cass as a fortuneteller gave them ammunition. Lucy went tense.

The girl didn’t crack a smile. She examined Cass, scoffing at the ridiculousness of the set-up. Twinkle lights and tarot cards held no magic for her. She was an unwilling tag-a-long and her body language conveyed a mixture of superiority and unease.

Cass looked over to Lucy and motioned for her to stay, so Lucy stood and ducked back into the shadows of the tent. If the boys cared she was there as a witness, they didn’t let on. Instead the tallest one moved forward and held out a single ticket. He sniffed.

“So, Cassandra Salvant...fortuneteller...cute,” he said. Cass stepped forward and took the ticket and put it in her pocket. She tried to smile.

Lucy recognized the kids in the tent. Knew their faces, their backgrounds. Hunter, Noah, and Felicity. They were of the same ilk as the Brikhams—entitled and lost. Back in the old world they had been privileged bullies. Unfortunately, the System disoriented them, so they wandered around without purpose, itching for a fight, and pushing back against the rules out of boredom. It was shocking to Lucy that Huck had not accounted for this group. Everyone underground could see their behavior shifting from calculating to brazen. Power had been redefined. And the rumors about tanking the Brikhams had been the tipping point for a great number of them. Now people saw: The Elektos Board held the keys of power.

Lucy and Cass were the new beneficiaries, the golden children of the underground.

And these teens knew it.

“Tell me my future,” the boy named Hunter continued. “I’m sure you know all about the future. Right? That’s your thing.” He collapsed in the empty chair, and Cass sat across from him. She pulled out her deck of cards and hesitated.

“What kind of reading do you desire?” Cass asked. “Is there someone you are hoping to discover? Love? Business? An upcoming challenge?”

Hunter sneered. “You pick,” he said.

With careful deliberation, Cass flipped three cards onto the table facedown. She went through each card, like she had with Lucy, giving him select information. His past was filled with contentment, good fortune. His present was challenging, feeling concerned, worried. When Cass reached the card for his future, she looked up and made eye contact with Lucy for a brief second, and then she launched into all of the shining opportunities headed his way.

“That’s what that says?” Hunter asked as he leaned over and examined the picture—reversed, it showed a woman standing on a box surrounded by smoke, a snake wrapped around her middle. He reached out to grab the card, but Cass moved in and pushed his hand away. “Hey,” he snapped, affronted. “Don’t touch me.”

“Don’t touch the cards,” Cass said in an even voice. She peered around him to the lurkers in the doorway of the tent. “Who’s next?”

Felicity cleared her throat and shook her head. “You’re a joke,” she said, her voice as slippery as oil. She said it as if it had been the plan since the beginning, as if they had discussed a word-war before entering the tent. It was a rehearsed barb; planned and plotted and executed with ease.

Cass stood up and put her hands on her hips. She elongated her neck, exuding such confidence and élan that Lucy felt momentarily frozen—her friend was not intimidated. Lucy wished she could say the same thing for herself. Her heart was pumping wildly and all the words she wanted to say to stand up for Cass were tumbling away.

“You can leave now,” Cass said and she pointed her finger toward the tent opening. The sidekick, Noah, snickered, a brutish har-har-har as he looked around for reinforcements.

“Not without my future,” Hunter said to Cass and in a swift motion he lunged toward the table and swiped up the final tarot card in his hand. Cass watched the scene unfold, but she had been too slow to react. Instead of pitching forward after him, she bowed her head, and let her shoulder’s drop. The boy flipped the card between his fingers. “Zombi,” he read. “You lied. This card is about something else. Life after death, maybe? This card is about prosperity? I’m not an idiot. Maybe it means you and everyone like you are planning on taking more from us. You’ll go after our souls next. Right?” But something in Hunter’s voice wavered, as if he couldn’t understand how Cass’s refiguring of his future positively could hurt him.

“It’s not that kind of zombie,” Cass said to him. “And if you feel like you’re a better fit to sit in this tent and play-act for tickets, be my guest.” She motioned to the chair. Lucy thought she heard a trembling in her voice, but if so, it was disguised, hidden, buried beneath Cass’s levelheaded charm. She stood firm.

“Playacting,” he repeated. “Sure.”

“So, then, you believe the tarot? You’re confusing me,” Cass said to the group. She pretended to stifle a yawn.

After a quick look to his friends, Hunter turned to Cass and looked her square in the eye. Then in slow motion, he ripped the card he was holding in two and let it float to the floor, its two halves fluttering down and landing inches apart. “No more Zombi,” he said with a wink. And the group turned to leave.

Cass watched them, unmoving.

“How dare you,” Lucy whispered from the shadows. Then she cleared her throat and tried again, “Who do you think you are?” Stepping forward, the group stopped. They assessed her with annoyance rather than fear.

Felicity opened her mouth to respond, but Hunter put his hand up. “Who do I think I am?” he asked. “Who do I think I am?” He turned and looked at his pals. “Lucy King wants to start something.”

“Maybe she’ll get her daddy to poison you,” Noah snickered.

“Cass’s daddy can build a nice big tank for all of us to fit in together,” Hunter added.

Lucy cringed.

Of course they knew. Of course the System’s rumor mill was a well-oiled machine—and while Lucy’s negative energy was directed toward Huck, Gordon, and Blair—for most people there was no difference between the Truman family and Scott King or Claude Salvant. She realized now that the hostility was warranted, even if it was bred from misinformation. For a moment she felt compelled to defend her father; she wanted to say that they didn’t understand, he didn’t have a choice, he was going to do good—he had saved Grant, after all. But before the argument left her mouth, she knew it would be in vain.

Lucy took a step toward the trio and bolstered up her strength as best she could.

“Apologize to her,” Lucy said. “Those cards were special. Maybe it’s all a joke to you, but these cards meant something to Cass.”

After a moment, Hunter stepped forward. “Oh yeah?” He turned and gained support from his friends. “They meant something to her?”

Lucy nodded and swallowed hard.

“You know what meant something to me?” he asked, taking another step, the distance between him and Lucy shrinking. She resisted the urge to take a step away. “My house. My friends. My life. My dad wakes me up and tells me to pack one suitcase because we have to take a little trip. Some car picks us up and takes us to the airport before the sun rises and off we go. You know what’s in my suitcase? Nothing. I don’t have shit. I thought my dad was taking me to boarding school, so I left my bag empty. I don’t have anything that means anything to me.”

“You have your life,” Cass interjected without missing a beat. Then she walked with a steady click-clack of her feet against the Center’s tiled flooring and put herself in front of the boy. One of her shoes partially covered the Zombi card on the floor, the tiny wisps of white fog visible underfoot. “The moment you forget that the very fact that you can breathe...the very fact that your heart beats...that your brain thinks...is a gift, then you’ve lost sight of everything that matters. Someone in your family earned your right to live here. And you risk it...you dare to risk it all.”

The trio froze, halted by her intensity. Cass hadn’t sounded overtly threatening, but it was still there: intimidation thinly veiled.

“Go,” she commanded and they tripped over each other to exit—swearing at the girls under their breath and mumbling on the way out—the sounds of the festival outside filling the tent for a brief second before the door flapped closed.

When it was clear they were gone, Lucy rushed forward. She bent down to retrieve the pieces of Cass’s tarot card. “I’m so sorry,” Lucy said. Cass walked back to her table and Lucy held the torn card in her hand. “You didn’t deserve this. I’m so sorry,” she said again. “It feels like we let them get away with it. It feels like they won.”

“What have they won?” Cass asked. “What did they gain? They left, didn’t they?”

“Nothing, I suppose,” Lucy answered. “A fleeting sense of power, maybe. But your winning argument is that they should feel lucky to be here? Lucky to just be alive?” Lucy stopped and waited for Cass to contradict her. When she didn’t, Lucy asked tentatively, “You don’t really believe that. Do you?”

“Being alive is never enough,” Cass said to Lucy slowly and she sat down in her chair. “You’re nothing without your freedom.” She pulled the rest of her undamaged cards out of her pocket and put them in front of her.

Lucy walked over and put the ripped card on top.

“We’ll tape it,” she said.

Cass nodded. Then Lucy watched as her friend wiped away a single tear.

The curtain rustled again and Lucy spun. She half-expected to see Hunter back with more cronies, but instead it was Blair standing at the tent entrance. She was dressed in black leggings and big brown boots; an oversized sweater dwarfed her small shoulders. She didn’t have a loot bag or a string of tickets, only a serious expression, and an ounce of self-awareness.

She looked at the girls and then closed her eyes. When she opened them, she seemed surprised to find them both still staring at her.

“This was a mistake,” Blair mumbled and turned to leave.

“No, no,” Cass called out. “Please...you don’t have to go.”

Blair looked at Lucy and Lucy stared back. Then she walked forward and pulled a single ticket out of her pocket and placed it in Cass’s outstretched hand.

“How does this work?” Blair asked. “Can I ask specific questions?”

Cass tilted her head and nodded. “Yes. And then we can see what the cards say.”

“Alone,” Blair said. She didn’t have to look in Lucy’s direction, but Lucy could still feel Blair willing her to exit.

“Of course,” Cass answered, a little too quickly for Lucy’s liking. Her friend turned to her and tried to look apologetic, and Lucy tried to play it off. She waved goodbye and made a face at Blair’s back before exiting out into the bright fluorescent lights of the Center. The noise hit her instantly—the cheers, the music, the rumble of a bass. Children laughed, some cried, and there was a huge splash from the dunk tank. The cacophony was overpowering: Lucy put her hands to her ears to tune some of it out.

Inside of Cass’s tent, Lucy had heard nothing from the carnival. The world had gone silent under the big heavy flaps. She wondered, just for a second, how her mother had managed that trick.