Breaking Point

“You did!” I screamed.

His shoulders bobbed as he cried, but I had no pity for him. Only relief as he walked out. The front door slammed, rattling the pictures on the wall.

She pushed past me and raced after him, but he was already driving away, tires screeching around the corner. I met her at the door, the lamp still gripped in one hand, its power cord tailing after me like a snake. I was shaking. I wanted to scream.

“Why’d you do that?” She grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “That was none of your business, Ember. None of your business! What goes on in my—”

I didn’t wait for her to say any more. I ran to my room, hid under the covers, and cried until the power shut off and the sky outside turned black. Until the floor groaned under her weight and she curled up next to me.

“You’re not scared of anything, are you?” she whispered.

* * *

THERE was nothing inside my bedroom. All my things, the bed I’d slept in since I was old enough to have a bed, my bookshelves filled with worn novels, the dresser with the gold handles that my mother had found at a garage sale, they were all gone. Had they tossed them into a junkyard? Given them to a donation center? These were my things. These were the only pieces I had left of my mother. Of my life. Why did they have to take everything?

“Do you have any surveillance, Stephen?” I heard Chase say, leading him back toward the kitchen.

I turned to see Beth holding a paper bag just inside the door. I’d never seen her look timid in my life, and realizing I’d scared her made me feel awful. I couldn’t blame her for not being my mother. I couldn’t even blame her for not knowing the danger she was in. It was definitely something one had to experience to believe.

“Em-Ember,” she stammered. “Why’ve you got a gun?”

I’d forgotten it was in the back of my waistband. She would have seen it, standing behind me now.

“It’s nothing,” I said quickly. “It’s not even mine. It’s Chase’s.”

“Oh,” she said slowly. I could see the whites of her eyes reflected in the glow from her flashlight. “I, um, I brought, like, a ton of food over for Stephen in case some more people came, but no one else has come in the past couple days.” She set the bag on the floor between us like she was offering a scrap of meat to a wild animal.

I knelt, and tore into a package of crackers and peanut butter. I hadn’t realized how famished I was.

Beth inched back toward the door. “I heard the craziest thing. Did you know that they’re saying you know this guy that, like, killed all these people?” The way she said it made me wonder if she really thought it was all that crazy.

“I heard something about that.” I forced myself to put the crackers down.

“They posted your photo at the mini-mart two days ago with four other guys,” she said. “There’s a big sign right underneath that says Have you seen this person? No one at school believes it. Well, Marty Steiner and her bunch do, but you know them, they’re just a bunch of gossip queens.”

I could barely picture Marty Steiner. I couldn’t remember a world where the power of gossip queens outweighed the brutality of armed soldiers.

I realized I needed to tell Beth something to ease her fears, but I wasn’t sure what to say. If she was caught, forced by the MM to talk, she’d know too many things she shouldn’t. I thought of Tubman, the carrier in Knoxville. He had it right, avoiding people’s names. I almost wished we hadn’t seen Beth, but the selfish part of me was glad we did.

“I can’t tell you everything,” I said honestly.

“You’re my best friend,” she frowned. “At least you were. You’re acting really weird.”

“I know.” But I didn’t. Weird had become my baseline. Whatever sense of calm I held now was actually a reprieve from the emotional roller coaster I usually rode.

“Did you kill those people?”

“No!” I stepped forward and she stepped back. She lifted the flashlight like a sword and I felt a sob choke off my windpipe.

“No, I haven’t killed anyone,” I said more slowly, in the kind of tone Chase used when I was scared. “You know me, I wouldn’t do that.”

“You’re wearing a Sisters of Salvation uniform. I would have never thought you’d join them. You’d say it was too pro-government. Like it fed the invasion or something.”

I sighed. She had a point. “When did they come here anyway?”

“Two weeks ago. They’re teaching classes now.”

“At Western?” I asked incredulously.

“Yup. They’re all over town, too. At soup kitchens and stuff. People say they came from some Sisterhood Training Center in Dallas.”

I pictured a manufacturing warehouse. Normal girls entering through one door, and coming out another in full, conservative uniform. For a brief instant I thought of Rebecca. What a zombie she’d been, or at least pretended to be, when I’d first met her.

“Well, I’m not a Sister. The uniform’s borrowed, just like the gun.”

“Why do you need the gun if you’re not shooting people?”

“I was framed, okay?” I said, frustrated. “It’s… for my protection.”

“Stop me if I’m wrong,” she said, “but doesn’t packing heat generally make you less safe?”

I snickered. “I’m not packing heat, loser, I’m… I don’t know.”

“You’re packing heat,” she asserted. “You’re like some crazy secret agent now.”

I laughed despite myself. “I’ve missed you. A lot.”

“Yeah, yeah.” But she half smiled.

“We’re trying to get to a safe house.” Eventually.

“Like the one Truck goes to?” she asked, referring to the Chicago carrier.

“He didn’t tell you where it is?” I asked. She shook her head. She had no idea what she was doing. But again, maybe it was better if she didn’t know.

“Yeah, we’re going somewhere like that. And you should too.”

“Um, sort of got responsibilities here,” she said, sounding more like herself again.

I shook my head, feeling a sharp pang of regret. “I wanted to graduate, too, but…”

She scoffed and crossed her arms over her chest. She only did that when her feelings were hurt.

“This?” I realized. “This is your responsibility? You need to stop doing this. You should get out of town. Take your parents and your brother and go somewhere.”

“Ember, you’re freaking me out.”

I grabbed her shoulders and she flinched. “You should be freaked out!”

She stared at me unknowingly for a second before whipping away.

“It was for you!” she said, crying again. “I wanted to make sure what happened to you never happened again!”

I fell back, stung. Never again? It was like trying to explain to a child why bad things happened. I couldn’t make her understand. And worse, I thought in her shoes I wouldn’t have understood either.

“I… I know, I’m sorry. But, see, I’m okay. So you don’t have to worry about me. And you’ve got your family and yourself to look out for. Let people with less to lose risk it all.” People like me.

“Less to lose?” she said, an edge to her voice. “They took my best friend and killed her mom! What more excuse do I need to try to help?”

As much as I didn’t want to, I got that.

“How’s Ryan?” I asked, diverting her for a moment while I thought of a way to get her to see reason.

She turned toward a shadowed corner and knelt. A shine of the flashlight revealed a moving box.

“I don’t know,” she said petulantly. “I don’t care either.”

“You two broke up?” Ryan, with his studious jacket and school uniform, had had a crush on Beth since our freshman year. I had a hard time believing he wasn’t in the picture.

“Yup.”