At the End of Everything, page 14
Get help.
“You have nowhere to go, stop fighting!” I shout.
“I have to get back to her.” She reaches for the counter, and it occurs to me a second too late that she’s near a kitchen block.
I reach for her again, but she has a head start on me. She can barely reach the smallest knife—a paring knife. But she gets hold and uses it to arc around her.
I let go immediately and dodge. I’m not trained to fight. My own instincts are all firmly on the side of flight and stumble.
The girl on the other side isn’t trained either. She holds the knife like it isn’t the first time, but she’s breathing hard, and she’s pale and sweaty. Her eyes dart over the absolute chaos around us: the floor covered in wasted food, the bags that lie torn outside of the pantry.
I can see the bread crumbs on her shirt. The stains from last night’s stew around her mouth.
We circle, and she takes a step to the side, accidentally kicking a can of food to the side.
She raises a trembling hand up to push a strand of matted hair out of her face. Her shoulders drop, and she lets go of the knife.
It clatters to the dirty floor.
I leap forward. To stop her. To restrain her. This time, she’s the one who dodges. She grabs my hand and uses the momentum against me, letting me swing past her, while my arm bends backward.
And two things happen.
My arm bends beyond the point of stretching, but I can’t stop moving. At the very last moment, when I’m sure my arm will get torn in two or my shoulder will dislocate, the girl lets go.
I throw my free arm out, and the floor rises to meet me. I impact on my hand. A quiet but audible snap echoes through the room. It does nothing to slow my velocity.
I stumble forward across my broken wrist and slam headfirst against the wall.
Briefly, I see stars. I never thought that was real, but they’re flickering in front of my eyes. Like needlepoints or pinpricks or pain. And time slows down.
Footsteps crunch past me.
A shadow creeps over me. It grabs at the floor. It grabs at the counter.
“I’m sorry.”
Something hard and heavy comes down toward me, and I can’t move.
Pain explodes behind my eyes.
Then everything goes dark.
* * *
New footsteps.
A scream full of rage and sorrow and anger.
* * *
Violin music echoes around me, that deep resounding echo that only comes from being in a church. But I never played at my parish. I didn’t want to share that part of me with Father Michael or anyone aside from my teachers and my parents.
It’s muscle memory, letting the bow dance across the strings, and it hurts to move my arm, to play, to be here.
It hurts.
It hurts.
* * *
Would I go home if I could?
Would I call home if I could?
No.
* * *
“It was Josie.” A voice that I recognize but can’t place comes through a fog.
“Why would she do that?”
“According to Logan and Nia, she wanted food. For her and another girl.”
“So she figured she should steal it from us?”
“We’re criminals after all.”
“Shut up, Grace.”
“It’s true, isn’t it? If we meant something, anything, we wouldn’t still be here. We’re a bunch of rejects left here to die. No one cares about us.”
“Shut up, Grace. We’re doing what everyone is trying to do right now. We’re surviving. And though that may not seem like enough to you, it’s enough to me, it should be enough to all of us. And not a single person among us deserved this.”
“I wish it were that simple, Case. She stole from us, and we can’t accept that. Because she endangered us, and I have to protect all of you. Logan offered to help you carry Emerson to their room. Please take care of them?”
“Where are you going?”
“To handle this.”
* * *
It still hurts.
* * *
My bed isn’t soft. It’s lumpy and uncomfortable, and I moan. All my words and thoughts tumble together, because violin music still plays in the background.
Everything around me is muted and distant, like I’m floating.
I don’t know if prayer counts if you’re not sure you believe in anything. Maybe that’s why I’m struggling. Maybe none of it matters.
My bed feels like a grave, but I hope the graves I dig are softer. I hope Serenity and Aleesha and Walker and Chloe and Elias and Faith and Mei are comfortable there. Even if heaven doesn’t exist. Even if there’s nothing beyond the peace of the garden. We all deserve a place to rest.
* * *
I’m nowhere, and the violin song won’t stop, and the endlessness is absolute.
I’m scared.
No, I’m not.
* * *
I would go to Confession one last time if I could. Despite everything, I miss it. I miss sharing what is on my mind and in my worries, all the mistakes I made and all the things I would do different now. I miss the soft smell of incense and old stone buildings. I miss feeling lighter afterward.
But right now, I don’t even know what I would say.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned? I have, I’m certain. I am—I was Catholic. I can feel guilty about anything without so much as trying, but I don’t feel guilty about being here. I don’t feel remorseful about being who I am, and I certainly won’t repent.
We’re not rejects. We deserve to be cared for and deserve to be remembered.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I believe the world—Your glorious creation—is broken, and when I’m not scared, I’m so angry, I could break it all further. I won’t honor my parents. I won’t forgive those who trespassed against me. I will not accept a single moment of this.
If You are love or mercy or whatever Scripture tells us, and Your will is being done, You have failed us. You have failed me, and I will not forgive that either.
* * *
In the end, I sleep.
Eighteen
Grace
My anger is all-consuming. It darkens the edges of my vision, and it pounds in my ears. I thought we were safe. I didn’t think anyone would come to aid us, but I also didn’t think anyone would come to harm us. Let alone one of our own.
“You’re this close to breathing fire,” Sofia says from a few feet to my right. We’re half a mile away from Hope, off the path that leads up to the building. Khalil saw a figure run away in this direction, so we’re trying to find Josie’s tracks, but the wind is rushing through the trees, and rain clouds are gathering overhead.
I can’t laugh it off. I am this close to breathing fire. “She put all of us at risk,” I seethe. “I can’t believe she could be so selfish.”
“She’s scared,” Sofia mutters. “We all are.”
“And yet none of us have stolen food from each other.”
“Because we have enough to get by. And that counts for a whole lot.” Her words are soft and measured. She’s tired. I’ve seen it happen to others these last few days, as the idea settles in that this is it now, that we’re not going anywhere. Fear and anger get replaced by fatigue.
I need my anger to fuel me. Maybe Hunter was just trying to scare me when he said I’d be responsible for everyone, but that doesn’t matter anymore. I am. I am the one constantly counting how much food we have—and I don’t know how much we have left now. I’m running lists of the dead and the dying. I’m the person Isaiah comes to when the internet is gone again or when all he can find is news reports about rising death tolls and civil unrest and overflowing hospitals and mass graves.
We have to track Josie down. We need the food back she stole from us, because we have enough to get by but not for long. We need to take a stand to make sure nothing like this happens again. We need to—I need to make sure everyone survives.
Sofia kneels in the grass and runs her fingers over the muddy ground. She picks up something and smashes it between forefinger and thumb.
I scan the countryside and try to figure out where Josie might have gone. Toward the hills or the woods? Somewhere she can hide from us or the weather? Sofia and I will have to check our traps too, but we need to do that anyway.
“Are you certain you want to do this?” Sofia looks up at me with an unreadable expression on her face.
I let my rage burn hotter and brighter. “Yes, I’m sure.”
“We could let her have this,” she suggests. “It’s only a few loaves of bread, and in the end, it isn’t going to make a difference.”
“But what if she comes back?” I demand. “It isn’t just about the bread. It’s about the food that got destroyed. It’s about the fact that she nearly suffocated Logan. She broke Emerson’s arm and bashed their head in.”
She took our food and the one person brave enough to care for our dead. She might as well have taken everything.
It’s about Josie attacking people I’m meant to protect.
If I think about it too hard, the fire that burns inside me is the same I felt when I pulled Ian off that girl in school. I saw her struggling. I realized he held one hand over her mouth and had the other pushed down her pants. I saw that she was hurting. And I hit him until my fists were sore. I kept punching and kept punching. I broke his nose. And his arm. My anger is a white-hot fire that will scorch everything in its wake, but I refuse to burn alone.
“So, what? We need to set an example?” Sofia very nearly hisses the words.
“Yes, is that so wrong?”
She spits on the ground. “You sound like the judge at my trial when you say stuff like that.”
The words are a blow to the stomach. I don’t have a response to it. I breathe out through my teeth. “It isn’t like that.”
“Isn’t it?” Sofia holds out her hand, and I nearly laugh and cry when I see what’s on her fingers. Bread crumbs.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say. “What a twisted fucking fairytale.”
“Well, here’s to living happily ever after, I guess,” Sofia says.
We follow the bread crumbs. Sofia leads the way. The wind buffets us and the trees. What was a sea of gold and orange and yellow around us has become a monotone landscape of barren trees and undergrowth. It’ll make our hunting and hiding all the more difficult.
We need to stock up on food—and protect it.
We turn onto the main road in the direction of the roadblock. None of us have gone here since the confrontation with the soldiers. Either Josie found a way past it, or there’s another route out of here.
The bread crumbs are few and far between, on a blanket of muddy-brown fallen leaves. Off the road and on again, and the closer we get to the roadblock, the more anxious I grow. I don’t want to be faced with the guards, with their guns or their determination.
I don’t want to be reminded of how we’re closed in and alone.
And with every step I take, that gnawing grows.
When we come up to the turn, I hold out my hand and brush Sofia’s arm. She stiffens and halts immediately. “What?”
“Maybe we should leave the road,” I suggest.
“The trail keeps going.”
“I know, but…” I wince. A strand of hair flies into my face, and I push it away. “It’s coming up to the roadblock where they killed Reid, that night when we all left the center.”
Her eyes dart in the right direction. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Exhaustion crawls across her features. She scratches behind her ear and sighs. “So you want to keep going, but you don’t want to follow the trail? No, I’m not here for that. If we get turned back, we get turned back. I’m not going to wander around like we don’t have anything better to do. Emerson is hurt, Logan must be terrified. I’m not playing.” Her voice takes on an edge. Finality, and worse, disappointment.
I duck my head and focus on the road. The bread crumbs are spaced out. Hardly enough to form a proper trail. They’ll be covered or scattered if we leave the weather to toy with them. But are enough left to lead us to where Josie must be?
“Let’s continue until we’re turned away, then,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Fine.” Sofia throws up her hands and stalks toward the turn in the road. Her voice echoes around me.
With that one word, she sounds like my friends from school. Like Ariana, my best friend when I stayed with the Marshalls, when she was particularly frustrated by my hardheadedness. Like Ruth, when I lived at the Podolskys. She could groan and grunt dramatically at anyone and anything, but especially me.
For the first time in almost two years, underneath the anger, underneath the humiliation, I feel an ache at the pit of my stomach, an Ariana-shaped hole, a Ruth-shaped hole. An emptiness where belonging is meant to be. I would have done anything to protect them too.
I push my hands deep into the pockets of my work pants, I push the loneliness away, and I follow Sofia in silence.
I’m sorry, I don’t tell her. I’m scared too.
The silence grows until it envelops us both, but we keep walking.
Along the road, toward the narrow pass that leads into the nearest town. I wonder if the people of Sam’s Throne know that we’re here—if they think about us at all. Does anyone even know that we’re left here?
With every step, my anxiety doubles.
We turn the corner toward the mountains and—
There is no roadblock.
No barricades. No floodlights. No soldiers.
No signs of blood from where they shot Reid, either.
I must’ve made a sound, because Sofia stops and turns to me. “Are you okay? Is this it?”
I open my mouth to speak, but my throat clogs up. They forced us to stay here, in Hope, at gunpoint. They told us it was stay or die, and when we were good and well forgotten, they left?
What even was the point of that, beyond sheer cruelty?
When I finally find my voice, it cracks. “I don’t understand.”
The only thing that remains from the roadblock is a truck lying off the road on its side. It looks torn and weathered, older than a couple of weeks. The tires are slashed and a few of the windows smashed in, but it still looks semifunctional. Its canvas flaps and billows. It looks like a good hideout.
The anger inside me has become fire and ice all at once, and it’s devouring me. I raise a shaking hand and point. “Bet you anything that’s where the crumb trail leads.”
Even my voice is trembling. Sofia throws a worried glance my way, but I refuse to acknowledge it. Everything, everything—the anger, fear, betrayal—it’s all wrapped up in that one wreck of a vehicle.
I stalk toward the truck and raise my voice. “Josie! Come out and show yourself!”
“Well, if she didn’t know she was being followed…” Sofia mutters.
“Come on! Coward!”
My words are met with the constant roar of the wind and nothing else. We’re out of the woods now, with no critters around us. No birdsong or the chirping of insects. No shouts from soldiers. No cars coming down the road. All that exists is the overcast fall sky overhead and the ice in my veins.
Sofia walks in the direction of the truck, her guard up, her steps careful around the shards of broken glass glinting in the pale daylight. “Josie?”
The canvas across the back of the truck moves again.
Sofia stalls, but I stomp toward it, crunching something beneath my feet.
Pushing the canvas aside, Josie appears. Her chin is held high, her hands wrapped around a crowbar. Her posture is proud, like she doesn’t care about anything or anyone but herself. And right there and then, I hate her. I hate what she did to us, I hate where she stands.
I’m overwhelmed by the need to hurt her like I hurt.
I take another step closer, and she points the crowbar in my direction. “What do you want?”
I scoff. “What are you going to do? Bash our heads in like you did Emerson’s?”
Josie changes her stance, pushing her feet wider, so she stands more comfortably.
“We want the food you stole,” I say. “You have no right to it.”
“We have as much right as you do,” she snarls. Her shoulders drop, but she raises the bar higher.
“No, you don’t. You left, you made your choice.” From the corner of my eye, I can see Sofia circle around Josie, to get to the other side of her. It isn’t subtle, and Josie must notice it too, but she can’t keep her eyes on both of us. “You had a chance to stay and put in the same work as the rest of us.”
“What, so we only deserve to be fed if we work hard enough? Is that what you’re saying?”
“If you would’ve made an effort to help us out—” I start, but Sofia interrupts me.
“Who’s we, Josie?”
She angles closer to the truck, and Josie swings in her direction. Seeing my chance, I dash forward. When Josie twists back to me, Sofia closes in on her like she’s a trapped animal.
“Get back!” Josie moves the bar around wildly now, forcing us both to keep a distance, but we’re close enough.
We both hear the coughing coming from inside.
And more effectively than any crowbar, that forces us back.
“What the fuck, Josie, you’re with someone who is ill, and you still brought that plague back into Hope?” I would kill her if I didn’t think she’d bash my brains in.
Her face crumples. “She isn’t ill anymore. She reacts to my voice and to my touch. She’ll let me feed her, but she keeps slipping away from me.”
“Who?” Sofia asks, softly.
Josie pushes the canvas open and shows us the makeshift camp they’ve built inside. “Saoirse.”
Saoirse lies on a bed of canvas and leaves. Her red hair lies in knotted strands around her face, and she’s all elbows and hard edges. Her clothes are baggy and dirty. She is as pale as anyone in our infirmary. A cup of water sits next to her, as well as one of the loaves of bread, some late-autumn berries, and the remains of—something. The food they stole when they left? Something Josie scavenged? I don’t want to know.
