At the End of Everything, page 6
She makes it all the way to Reid’s body.
Next to me, Logan is keening, a soft, penetrating sound. She’s gone entirely pale.
I reach for her hand, but she doesn’t reach back.
Leah shakes Reid by the shoulders and tries to wake him up. He doesn’t stir. He only twitches as she moves him. It’s impossible to tell if it’s him or if it’s Leah.
The only time I can remember seeing death up close was when my grandfather died. I was seven, and I didn’t really understand what happened. I didn’t know what to expect from the service or the wake, but I vividly remember expecting him to get up at the end of it. Resurrection, maybe. Rousing from a slumber, really.
One of the soldiers makes for Leah. She puts her gun away and tries to pry Leah off Reid. She’s gentle in a determined sort of way. It’s obvious they aren’t as intimidated by a slender girl, and I hate that for so many different reasons.
Leah fights. She struggles. She pushes at the soldier without any coordination whatsoever. “Let me go, let me go, let me get to him.”
The soldier grabs her by a wrist and uses the momentum to pivot Leah away from Reid and back toward us. Leah lets herself be turned, and once she faces the woman, she makes a claw with her hand and scratches.
The soldier releases her with a yelp and a thrust, and it sends Leah stumbling backward. Another soldier uses his gun to push her away. Leah trips over her own feet and collides with Grace, who is scrambling to find purchase.
Next to me, Logan straightens, poised to fight or protect her sister. I reach out to grab her, knowing that she’ll hate me for it—
When another loud gunshot shatters the night sky.
I scream.
Was I screaming before too?
Following the second gunshot, everything and everyone freezes. The soldiers, in front of the barricades and Reid. Hunter and his crew, trying to get to their friend. Leah and Grace and their tangled collection of limbs. The soldier who got scratched—and who keeps a few steps distance between herself and the others.
“Stop this.” The lieutenant’s voice is loud and clear. He’s holding a gun pointed at the sky, like he’s willing to shoot the stars themselves. “Do not attempt to come closer again, or we’ll be forced to use any means necessary to defend ourselves.”
Defend? The word barely registers. From whom? A bunch of unarmed teens in the face of fully armed soldiers. That’s ludicrous.
“We have to get to him,” one of the boys says. I don’t know his name. I don’t care. He points at Reid, who is still lying amid the barricades on the road, but he has no force behind his declaration. His cheeks are streaked with tears. Several crew members have raised their hands and are walking back. It’s been drilled into them to follow orders.
“You have to turn around,” the lieutenant counters. “Go back to where you came from. Everyone is under orders to remain in their homes, and that includes you. We’ll dispose of the body.”
The words are a gut punch. My hands twitch to cross myself. I should say a prayer for him. Anything.
Grace pushes herself up to her feet, and unlike Hunter, she is bleeding from a head wound. She pulls Leah with her. Leah rests her hands on her knees and coughs. She’s struggling to catch her breath. Grace places an arm around her shoulders and gently guides her to an upright position.
The soldiers hold their line around the barricades, though one of them glances at the soldier with the scratch wound. He shudders. It’s like he’s never seen blood before—or anyone in distress.
I don’t stop Logan when she runs toward her sister and takes her from Grace’s grasp. Hunter offers Grace a shoulder to lean on, and I find myself on her other side. She sways and straightens herself. None of us has consciously decided to fall back, but we do. Faced with the fear and anger of the soldiers. The inevitability of Reid’s…body.
And the impenetrable gaze of the lieutenant, who now stands alone, between us and his men. He stands at ease, his hands folded behind his back, and his eyes find mine.
We look at each other.
What are you sending us back to? I wish I could ask him.
He narrows his eyes, and his shoulders drop, imperceptibly. While we help Grace and Leah away from here, while we leave Reid’s body behind, the lieutenant shakes his head.
He doesn’t turn around. He keeps staring while we retreat. Maybe he’s just following orders. Maybe he would’ve done something different if he had the choice. Maybe he’s sorry for sending us back to a correctional facility that’s been abandoned because our lives aren’t a priority in the face of a plague.
But inaction in the face of injustice is injustice all the same. And it’s the same refrain that’s stuck in my head, over and over and over again.
Why didn’t you do something to stop them? Why didn’t you do something to stop them? Why didn’t you do—
I don’t know if I’m trying to reach the lieutenant or my priest or God. It all bleeds together at some point. Authority figures you’re supposed to trust but who’ll let you down.
My court-appointed lawyer, who couldn’t—or didn’t want to—find ways to help me after I was arrested for “running away from home,” though I had actually been kicked out.
Father Michael, who I came out to in the pews of our church. When my skin felt too tight and my heart couldn’t stop racing, I needed him to tell me that we were all made perfect, created after the likeness and image of God. I wanted him to tell me it would all be okay and someone would be there for me. And instead, he told my parents.
My parents, who forced me to choose between conversion therapy, exorcism, and leaving. As long as I “chose” to be nonbinary, they said, there wasn’t a place for me under their roof. My mother prayed for me. My father turned away.
Why didn’t you do something to stop them?
Grace leans heavily on me when we make our way back to the Hope Juvenile Treatment Center. The head wound has stopped bleeding, but a bright-red bruise is spreading along the side of her face and her jaw, and she moans when we jostle her too much.
“How did we all get here?” she asks softly. I don’t know if anyone but me hears.
But I don’t have an answer.
Eight
Grace
The Hope Juvenile Treatment Center looks no different when it appears before us again. It’s the same ugly building we left some three hours ago. A concrete box with a concrete yard. A slate-gray outcropping on a moonlit night, surrounded by darkness and a barbed wire fence encircling the grounds. The lackluster communal garden. The ramshackle shed. A sports field and a gym that we all avoid as much as we can.
It hasn’t changed, but we have.
“God, what a desolate place,” Emerson mutters at my side. Hunter has drifted back to help one of the other boys, and Emerson tries their best to support me alone, but the closer we get to the building, the more they stumble. Exhaustion. Fear. I don’t know. I disentangle myself and bite my lip while trying to stay upright.
“I believe the word you’re looking for is hell,” Maverick snaps.
I wince. Hell, what a place to call home.
And my head pounds. I press a hand against my eye, and the world tilts around me as pain flares through me. I refuse to fall, but it takes everything I have to stay upright. I lean with my hands on my knees and breathe in hard.
Fuck.
“Are you okay?” Emerson asks.
I don’t dignify that with a response. No, I’m not.
At least I don’t have to worry anymore about what it would look like if they give up on us completely. It looks like this. The ten—no, the nine of us. Beat up and terrified. The others have ground to a halt too. Leah sways on her feet. Hunter has ripped off part of his shirt and used it to patch up someone’s arm. He has a smear of blood across his face, but I don’t think it’s his.
I knew we were wrong to leave here, but I didn’t expect the world around us to be on fire. Why wouldn’t they tell us? We have a right to know. We have a right to try to survive.
No one cares about us.
You’d think I would have grown used to that, but I haven’t. Despite the armor of anger I’ve drawn up around myself, there’s still a small part of me that looks at Hope like I looked at all the homes I’ve stayed at. As a chance. An opportunity. A “this time it will be better.” This time I’ll find a way to be the person I was meant to be.
These are the consequences of our actions, Warden Davis said. The bastard. He knew, and he didn’t do anything.
That spark of anger that’s always lurking beneath my skin burns brighter. It’s hot and hungry, all the more so against the chilly night sky, and it helps me straighten despite the pain. It helps me take the next step. And the next. “Come on, let’s keep going.”
“Yes, please.” Surprisingly, Leah is the first to catch up with me, Logan immediately in her wake.
With a foul look at Hope, Maverick snaps, “Why? Do you think the plague will catch up with us if we wait?”
“Mav…” Hunter comes up behind the twins. His voice holds a warning. He uses his sleeve to wipe at the blood on his face.
“What are we going back for, anyway?” Maverick demands.
Hunter stares him down. “Supplies. If we’re taking the long way around, I want to be prepared. We’ll take whoever wants to come with.”
“Like anyone will want to stay in that hellhole.” Maverick snorts, but he falls in line, stomping through the dried leaves as he follows Hunter.
His words nag at me, as I’m sure they’re intended to.
I don’t want to stay. But I definitely don’t want to leave and try to survive the middle of nowhere.
Next to me, Leah plucks at her hand. “I don’t think the plague will catch up with us,” she says softly, “but I’d like to clean this.” Her fingers are bloody from where she scratched the guard, and she has a few scratches herself too. They’re bright red and angry against her pale skin.
Oh. I shudder. “Yeah, good plan. There must be first aid kits somewhere inside.” And painkillers too, hopefully.
Leah shivers, and on her other side, Logan narrows her eyes. She signs something, and Leah shakes her head. “Don’t worry, I’m fine. It’s a—a scratch. And it’s cold out.”
Logan scrunches up her face. She signs again, and Leah shrugs. “Yeah, well, we didn’t know that when we got out, did we?”
I have an inkling what they’re talking about, but I don’t want to get mixed up in it. Everyone at Hope knows that the twins exist in their own little world, and they’re protected by Hunter and his friends. I’m sure they’ll leave with them too.
While the two of them argue, I glance at Leah. I wonder about the soldiers who shied away from her—from all of us. Should we be more worried? Does this disease spread through scratches? Could any of our guards have infected us before they left?
I’m not sure I want to know.
We stick closely together, all the way back into the building. The lights at the entrance are dark, and so is the registration desk. We pass through the first set of doors, breathing in the same stale air we left behind. If we’d never left, the world could have ceased to exist around us, and we would never have known.
“Home, sweet home,” Hunter drawls. He holds the second door open for me, and I swing at him.
He sidesteps my weak attempt with ease, and pain laces through me. I hate him. I hate all of them. I hate the unconscious relief I feel when I slip through these doors, like something inside me recognizes this as the place where I belong.
“Nice try,” Hunter says. He reaches out and taps my bruised cheek. “Let’s wake the others. We need an action plan. I won’t stay here a minute more than is necessary.”
He sounds like he expects all of us to follow his lead, and by the looks of it, he might be right. Logan and Leah are already walking toward their wing, and at Hunter’s command, the others begin to spread out too.
Emerson clears their throat. “We should wash our hands first.” We all turn to them, and they swallow hard. “You know, just in case.”
Maverick narrows his eyes and takes a step in their direction. “You think we might be sick?” A whole, complicated range of emotions passes over his face. From confusion to fear to disgust. It makes the lines of his face look harder.
“I don’t know,” they say. “But I don’t want to risk it.”
My shoulders drop.
“Do you think it’ll help?” one of the other boys asks.
“I don’t know that either.”
Emerson’s words fall heavy in the silence around us. Three boys of Hunter’s crew exchange glances. Logan steps closer to Leah and reaches for her unharmed hand.
“But we should try,” Emerson adds, as an afterthought.
Hunter unexpectedly graces them with a smile. “New kid has the right idea. Wash up. Wake the rest of those rejects. We’ll meet in the recreation room in fifteen.”
I lean a hand against the wall and use that to keep myself upright as I walk back to my room.
* * *
The last time I stumbled through the hallways of Hope with my head pounding and bruises all over was an initiation night too. Mine. I wasn’t saved by the end of the world. I let Hunter and his friends beat me, and it was vicious and measured and purposeful. I answered their curious questions and their invasive questions, and no one put a stop to any of it. It was part of life at Hope as much as the unannounced room inspections, the schoolbooks that were held together with tape, and the days in solitary.
That night, when I stumbled back out of the recreation room and began to learn how to avoid the guards, Casey waited for me in my room. He wasn’t a threat. Not quite a friend yet either. Simply Casey, who, on my first day, set his lunch plate at my table and claimed the seat next to mine, like it was the first day of high school instead. Casey, who wanted to make sure I was okay.
When I get back to my room now, I’m not okay, and there’s no one waiting for me. I’m shivering. It’s almost as chilly here as it was outside, and when I wash my hands and the cut across my eyebrow, the water is near freezing. At least the cold numbs the pain.
I press a wet washcloth against my face. Does Casey feel safer here? Do any of the others? Or am I the weird one out?
I set my jaw. I pull on an extra shirt and walk to the recreation room, where I’m surrounded by yawns and confusion, and Hunter’s crew acts like they’re the traffic wardens of Hope, rushing everyone until we’re all gathered. Counting us in.
The recreation room is the only place that feels remotely like it’s ours. The walls are covered in murals and graffiti tags. One of the cabinets holds a collection of board games (though most of the dice and the pawns are long since missing). In one of the corners stands a pathetic fake Christmas tree, left over from last year’s festivities. Give it a couple of weeks and it’ll be timely again. One shelf holds a collection of five books. Well, four and a half.
Hunter’s at the front of the room, near the game cabinet. The unofficial boss of Hope. He has his arms crossed, and he taps his foot. His hair is wild and unruly, but it doesn’t make him look less intimidating.
When I walk up to him, the corner of his mouth quirks up. “Good to be home again?”
I grasp the edge of a table. “Fuck you.”
He raises an eyebrow, and he shifts his weight so he towers over me. “You know the rules that apply in here will apply outside too, right?”
I tilt back my head so I can look him in the eye, and I speak slowly, enunciating every word. “Good, because I’m not going.”
I want to see Paris. I want to see Vinnytsia, where my first foster family was from. I want to try out as many towns and cities across the world and find the one where I belong. I have no idea who I can be yet, but I know I’m meant to be more than a number in a system. So many of us are. I want to figure out who I am when you peel the anger away.
I don’t want to be shot like a dog by soldiers who don’t care for us.
I do not want to die outside.
Satisfaction straightens my shoulders when Hunter frowns and leans back. “You’re not.” It’s a statement, not a question.
“I’m not,” I repeat. “You can take your friends on a wild goose chase through the mountains, but I’ll stay here where I’ll have a roof over my head, food to eat, and oh, what was the other thing again? A future.”
He scoffs. “You’re adorable when you’re upset.”
“And you’re an asshole who couldn’t even protect his friend from getting shot,” I snap.
It happens before I can stop him. He grabs me by the front of my shirt and pulls me close, angling his own body so the rest of the room doesn’t see what’s happening between us. Not that anyone would step in regardless.
“Don’t you dare,” he hisses quietly.
I tense all over. I refuse to flinch away from him and instead lean in closer. “I’ll take my chances in Hope. Let. Me. Go.”
He doesn’t. Not immediately. He holds me close, and it’s as if he stares right through me. Then he shakes his head. “If you think you’ll have a future here, you’re a fool, Grace.” He drops my shirt, and I nearly lose my balance. “But I don’t need you slowing me down. For that matter, anyone else who wants to stay here with you and die is welcome to do so. Just know that everything that happens to them will be your responsibility.”
I flatten my shirt and try to keep my head from spinning. My stomach twists. Being responsible for everyone certainly wasn’t my plan, but if that what it takes to stay safe, so be it. I’ll figure it out.
The room fills up fast around us. We count thirty-something, and it wasn’t built for quite that many, but we’re used to that. Though I can’t help but wonder now if we should all be together in such a small space. What does a plague look like, anyway?
