Division Read online

  The dream phantoms didn’t notice the disruption they’d caused. They steadily approached the building. Their pace slowed for a moment, and 62 remembered feeling excited as he looked at his new home for the first time. Blue took the lead, heading for the front door.

  “Someone’s been here.” Blue’s voice leaked out of his mask as he spoke to the others, and his words were barely audible where Mattie and 62 sat. Blue inspected the door and added, “I was expecting to have to break in, since Joan didn’t give us a key.” He pushed on the handle and the door groaned as it opened. He caught it in his hand, silencing the protesting of the rusty hinges.

  62 looked across the table at Mattie. “You can’t hear it from here, but when we were standing there, we could hear someone walking around inside. Blue wanted to go barging in, but we wouldn’t let him.” Just as 62 said this, Blue grabbed the machete from 62’s pack and pushed the door the rest of the way open, ready to barge in. The dream-copies of 62 and 00 grabbed him, pulling him back outside and whispering excitedly at him.

  Blue shrugged them off, nodded that he understood, and tapped the edge of the door frame with the machete. Metal on metal pealed out into the air, a sharp tink-tink sound that made the real 62 shrink back in his chair. A moment passed, and a shadow winked inside the open doorway. The three characters in the dream took a step back. The shadow came closer, then the light found Sunny’s gangly body. Blue went toward her, wiping his hands on a towel before grasping Sunny by the shoulders.

  The dream continued to play out, ending with the Boys and Sunny entering the shadows of the building’s interior. The heavy metal door clanged shut behind them. 62 turned to Mattie. “That’s the Woman we met. She told us she’s Sunny and she used to work at the school,” 62 said.

  Mattie’s eyes were wide and her mouth hung halfway open from shock. Her gaze was fixed on the closed door. 62 leaned over the table, trying to get Mattie to shift her gaze from the jailhouse to look at him. “Hey,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “That’s not what she used to look like,” Mattie mumbled in a trembling voice. “I mean, that is her, I’m sure of it. But that’s not the way she was when she left.”

  “What did she used to look like?” 62 asked.

  “She was more… herself,” Mattie stammered. “I don’t know how else to explain it. She stood up taller, I think, and definitely more,” Mattie held her hands out in front of her chest and wiggled them in the air, gesturing at something that 62 didn’t understand. “…more Womanly.”

  “Can you show me what she used to look like?” 62 asked. “Do you think you can imagine her how she used to be, so I can see?”

  “Maybe,” Mattie said tentatively. Then she nodded. “I’ll try.”

  Mattie closed her eyes tight and placed her hands in her lap. She balled her fingers into her palm, forming fists with white knuckles. She concentrated hard until a shadow formed on the ground beside the table. “It’s working,” 62 whispered. “Keep going.”

  The form built itself from the ground up, starting as a hazy gray cloud that spouted arms and legs. A torso solidified and a head peeked out of the smoldering cloud. Long, wavy hair sprouted from the plump head, and a broad smile appeared between full cheeks. The Woman’s eyes sparkled, her whole figure soft around the edges. Her arms spread out in an arc, as if she were built to dispense hugs. There was no mistaking she was the same person that he’d gotten to know up on the hill. She had the same hair, same somber eyes, and same curve of her nose. But nothing else about her looked the same. The Woman in the dream was brimming with life. The person living in the jailhouse seemed smaller.

  The new Sunny had lost all the plump and curve of the full Woman Mattie made appear. These days, she was all sharp angles, flat edges, and sunken skin. While the person beaming down at had a sunshiny grin that matched her namesake, the Woman cowering in the dark corners of the jailhouse was sharp and frail. The Sunny 62 knew seemed on the verge of falling over and never getting up again.

  “What happened to her?” Mattie asked in a trembling whisper.

  “The Oosa,” 62 answered. He couldn’t bring himself to say more than that. “She needs help, Mattie. We hooked up N302 to see if it could help her get well again, and it says she needs a doctor. It doesn’t know enough about females to treat her, and none of us can do anything more to help. But she won’t go back to Hanford the way she is now. She thinks nobody will accept her.”

  Mattie nodded. “I’m not surprised N302 can’t figure out what to do. We’re made up different than you Boys. And, I think I understand why she’s scared. It would be hard, coming back. She doesn’t look the same. Everyone will be talking about her, if that’s how she looks now. And we all know how well Hanford deals with people who are different.”

  62 grunted his response. If they could send a kid like him into the desert, who knows what they’d do to a Woman who ran away from the Oosa. There was no doubt, especially seeing Mattie’s version of Sunny, that she was in desperate need of help. Far more help than a trio of ragamuffin Boys could give her. 62 looked away from Mattie’s dream-Sunny.

  The copy of the old Sunny remained staring at them, her unblinking face and widespread arms making 62 uncomfortable. “Can you make her go away?”

  Mattie closed her eyes, and the Woman dissolved into the gray fog, dissipating on the breeze that appeared as if it were destined to take her away. Mattie opened her eyes and looked at 62. Her face was etched with worry. “What should we do?”

  “I don’t know. How do you help someone who doesn’t want anyone to know she exists?”

  “I’m sending help,” Mattie said resolutely. She crossed her arms over her chest and stamped her foot. “I’ll go to the hospital and tell them she’s out there. They’ll send doctors and haul equipment out if they know what’s good for them. Or I can tell the guards. Maybe they’d send a rescue team. They can make her come back here and put her up in the hospital.”

  “You can’t do that, Mattie,” 62 insisted. “She made us swear we wouldn’t tell anyone she was there. I’m not even supposed to be telling you. That’s why you’ve gotta keep this a secret. You can’t go sending a bunch of guards and doctors up the hill. If we break her trust, there’s no telling what she’ll do.” Mattie glared at 62 as he spoke, and 62 crossed his arms to try to look as intimidating as she did. “I’m serious Mattie,” he grumbled, “You can’t tell anybody.”

  Mattie slouched her shoulders with a huff. She kicked the dirt under her feet in frustration. “Well, I have to do something. I can’t just leave her up there like that!”

  “I know,” 62 said with a dejected sigh. He leaned his elbows on the pastry shop table and rested his chin in his hands. He felt all mixed up inside. Part of him felt better for having told Mattie that Sunny needed help. It was as if half the weight of the secret he’d been carrying had been lifted. But now, he was worried Mattie was going to do something crazy. His stomach twisted in a nervous knot of anxiety.

  “Maybe there’s another reason we could send someone up there.” Mattie’s voice was slow and deliberate. She locked eyes with 62. “I know you don’t want me to tell anyone, and I won’t. Except for one person.”

  “You can’t tell anyone!” 62 shouted. “Come on, Mattie, you can’t go and make me regret telling you already.”

  Mattie got up from her chair. She walked over to trailhead, as if she were going to hike all the way back to Hanford. After a few paces, she turned back. “I have to tell Auntie about this. She’ll know what to do.”

  “But Auntie’s on the council. If she tells anyone—”

  “I’ll make her promise not to tell them Sunny’s with you,” Mattie assured him. “But I’ll bet she can get someone to help you.”

  “Mattie,” 62 called with a groan. But before he’d finished saying her name, she was gone.

  62 woke with a start. There was nothing he could do about Mattie now. She’d probably woken up and already ran off to tell Auntie all about their dream. 62 covered his face
with his hands. He couldn’t believe that he’d been so stupid to tell Mattie about Sunny. Although Auntie had helped him and his friends before, who knew what she’d do when she found out there was a Woman hiding on the hill? A feeling of dread washed over 62 as he imagined an army coming across the desert, intent on pulling Sunny out of her hiding place. He could almost see them dragging her back to Hanford against her will. What would happen if other people found out about her? Would they stare at her like some freak as she was paraded through town? And what would the doctors do to her? Would they poke and prod her to find out what was wrong? Or worse, would they put her through another round of experiments to sort out exactly what the Oosa had done to her?

  The weight of anxiety pressed 62 into the mattress. As he pondered these questions, every ounce of will to move, or breathe, or exist, seemed to leak out of his body. Not even his eyelids had the energy to blink. He stared at the faint light painted on his ceiling from the afternoon sun leaking around the gaps of his covered window. The building around him was silent, leaving his mind undistracted from the barrage of fear from all the wrong he’d committed.

  There was nothing he could do to make it right. He could tell Sunny about his dream, but he was afraid of how she’d react if she knew he’d shared a dream with Mattie and told her about her secret. But it was so much worse than that. He’d shown Mattie his own memories, and she’d seen for herself the person that Sunny had become. Why couldn’t he have imagined Sunny a little happier? A bit less frail?

  He’d shown Mattie the truth because she was his friend. And that’s exactly why she’d decided to go get help. Even as 62 realized this, his body ached with worry. Eventually, he found the will to roll over. He dragged the blankets over himself and buried his head in his pillow. He knew Mattie wanted to help. But her decision to talk to Auntie filled him with dread.

  CHAPTER 15

  The best thing about living in a fortress on top of a hill in the middle of a radioactive desert is that if you don’t want to talk to someone, it’s pretty easy to avoid them. After sharing his dream with Mattie, 62 couldn’t bear to be in the same room as Sunny. He also didn’t want to spend too much time with 00 or Blue, for fear that he’d let it slip that he’d told Mattie about Sunny. Blue knew that he’d been trying to reach Mattie in his dreams, but seemed to assume that he hadn’t been successful yet. 62 wasn’t about to correct him. As for 00, he seemed more concerned with whether or not 62 could figure out a way to get medical books from the library for N302 than anything. N302 wanted one of them to give Sunny an exam. 62 was even less excited about that idea.

  62 decided that the best course of action was to stay locked up in his room as much as possible, pretending to keep trying to fall asleep. If anyone knocked on his door, he’d just say he was too tired to talk to anyone. He didn’t have to do much in the way of pretending though, since his guilt and anxiety were eating him alive. Instead of sleeping, 62 spent long hours lying under the covers, hiding from his problems and hoping that eventually he’d fall asleep.

  There were times, of course, when he couldn’t avoid leaving his room. He had to eat sometime, and there wasn’t a bathroom in his closet. He’d go down to the cafeteria at odd hours to pick through the leftovers from the others. He found snacks in the storeroom, when no one was around, and ferreted as many cooked and dried foods to his room as he could so he could gnaw on them whenever his anxiety let up enough for his stomach to grumble. Occasionally, he tiptoed through the halls as quietly as his bare feet would carry him to the toilets.

  Although in Hanford all the indoor plumbing had been long dismantled, there were still a handful of indoor toilets that worked in the rarely used jailhouse. 62 was lucky that there was one such toilet on his floor. It didn’t work well, exactly, but Blue had stocked the room with several containers of water, and had shown him how to force the units to flush by flooding their bowls. It was labor intensive, but it worked, and meant he didn’t have to walk all the way through the building to get to the outhouses. That meant less of a chance of running into someone who might want to talk.

  His plan of avoidance worked for two whole days. Blue and 00 finally began taking turns checking on him, and he kept on complaining he was having trouble sleeping. On the third day, Sunny arrived with a bowl of soup. He could smell the warm broth before she knocked. Her soft voice barely permeated the room, but he knew that she’d probably heard the loud bed frame squeak when he’d sat up to sniff the air. Even if she hadn’t, he’d been talking to himself aloud just before he’d heard the light rap of her knuckles on the door.

  “Coming,” he called. “Just a minute.” 62 tossed his hair, pulling at it with his fingers to make it look as wild as possible. He rubbed his eyes hard with his knuckles and tugged the waistband of his pants to the side to make sure it looked like he’d been tossing and turning for hours. When he opened the door, Sunny stood with the bowl of soup held out in one hand, while her other was balled up in a fist, as if she’d been about to knock a second time.

  “Hello,” Sunny said. The thin line of her mouth turned up at one corner in a sort of half-hearted smile. Her drawn cheeks and dark-circled eyes made the grim grin devastatingly underwhelming. 62 stared at her, trying to imagine her as the person Mattie had shown him. The difference between her two personalities was overwhelming, and 62 could feel his heart breaking as he took her expression in. Sunny noticed his delay and tilted her head to one side. “62, are you doing okay?”

  62 laughed nervously and ran his fingers through his mussed-up hair. “Me? Oh, yeah. Just tired.”

  “So I’ve heard. May I come in?” Sunny didn’t wait for him to offer an invitation. Instead, she slid her slim frame through the opening, handing 62 the bowl of soup in the process. He had to let go of the door handle to hold the warm meal in both hands. She ducked around him, moving into the room and exploring the small space with her eyes. “I’ve never been in here before. It’s nice.”

  “All the rooms are the same,” 62 muttered. Then, he remembered his manners. “Thanks.”

  Sunny walked to the window and tugged on the blanket hung up on the bars. She checked the knots tied around the window frame, nodding to herself. “This is a good idea,” she offered. “I’ll have to do something like this in my room. I get tired of seeing the sun.”

  62 didn’t know what to say, so he simply went to his bed and sat down to eat. The soup wasn’t piping hot, but it was warm, and the thin liquid soothed his insides. He’d slurped up half the soup before he found the courage to talk again, and then all he said was, “This is good. Thanks.”

  Sunny nodded and sat down on the bed beside him. She let out a heavy sigh, filling the air around them with a sadness that matched 62’s own misery. Then, she surprised him by wrapping a long, bony arm over his shoulders, giving him an awkward one-armed hug.

  “There are days when I can’t get out of bed either,” Sunny said quietly. Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat before speaking again. “When I was with the Oosa, I wasn’t allowed to get out of bed. All I wanted then was to get up and move. But here, it seems pointless. There’s nowhere to run. No one chasing me. I realize how small I am. How small we all are in this great big world. We’re born, we live, we die; and for what? Does anyone miss us after we’ve gone?”

  “Parker misses you,” 62 answered. Sunny’s body froze against him. She was so stiff, he wondered if she’d even stopped breathing. He pressed his body against hers, hoping to feel life clinging to her bones. As he shifted, she exhaled, and he was glad that she was still with him. She remained silent, so 62 continued. “When I was taking classes in Hanford, he told us that he’d decided to become a teacher for the refugees because it’s what you used to do, before you left. He said he wanted to teach because it helped him to feel closer to you.”

  Sunny let loose a bitter laugh and shook her head. “He misses the person I used to be. I do, too.”

  “What do you mean?” 62 asked cautiously. “Aren’t you still yourself?”r />
  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I used to be somebody else. I was happy all the time. I loved to be with people. I was always volunteering to try new things. I looked different. I wasn’t all skin and bones. There was more of me. Inside and out.”

  “Isn’t there some part of you that’s the same as before?”

  Sunny shrugged her shoulders. She pulled 62 closer and sighed. “I still like hugs. I’ve always been a hugger. It drove Parker crazy the first time we met. I gave him a hug, and you’d have thought I’d tried to murder him with how fast he backed away.”

  “How long have you known him?” 62 wondered aloud.

  “It’ll be four years in the spring, I think. He was in my class when he came to Hanford. He was skittish. You all are, when you first come out. None of the Adaline refugees know what to do with anything. But you all seem especially afraid of hugs.” Sunny made a strange sound, and 62 realized she’d chuckled

  “We don’t touch each other down there,” 62 said. “Not after we’ve gotten out of the Nursery, anyway. After that, we’re sent to our own cubes and taught to live alone. Forever and always, no exceptions.”

  “Were you a different person when you were there?”

  62 considered the question. The truth was, he had changed since his time in Adaline. He was growing up. Getting taller every day. He also supposed that he’d become braver in his time above-ground. In Adaline he’d been afraid to break even the smallest of rules. He was constantly afraid the bots would reprimand him with their sticky sleep-spray or a trip to the doctor. In Hanford, however, he’d flouted nearly every rule he was aware of.

  “I have changed,” he finally admitted. He thought again about the laws he’d broken. Not only was he hated for being a dreamer, and a refugee, but he’d also stolen, lied, and smuggled. Not to mention that he’d put his friends in danger every step along the way. And then, he thought of the moment he was in now, sitting under the arm of a Woman who’d asked him to keep a secret. He’d broken his promise to her the first chance he’d gotten. “I’m not sure all the changes are for the best,” he admitted.