space beside her mostly-full plate of lasagna. She couldn’t look at her mom. If she did, she would have to try to figure out whether she was looking at the woman who had raised her or the stranger who had killed Jake’s mother.
“What friend?” Her mom sounded like she really didn’t know what Becca was talking about. Becca knew better. She knew how well her mom could lie.
“The dissident. The reason Jake and his family were arrested.” Becca scraped her fingernail along the pattern she was tracing, trying to scratch a line. “Don’t pretend you don’t know.”
Her mom sat down in Jake’s chair. She scraped the lasagna off her own plate and stacked Jake’s on top of it. “Becca… I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know what kind of lies he told you, but that’s all they were. Lies.”
Becca turned her face away, toward the wall. “How do I know you’re not the one lying?” She didn’t realize how close she was to tears until she heard her voice waver.
She felt her mom pull back. “You’d trust a dissident’s word over mine?”
“It’s not like you haven’t lied to me before.” If she focused hard enough on the wall, maybe her mom’s voice would disappear. Maybe it would all disappear.
“When?” her mom demanded. “When have I lied to you?”
Why didn’t she just tell her mom what she had found in those files? Why had she avoided the subject for so long? Did she really think her own mother would report her?
She didn’t say it.
“If Jake and his family were dissidents, why did you let him and his dad go?” she asked instead.
Her mom sighed. “Turn around and look at me. This is ridiculous.”
Reluctantly, Becca turned away from the wall and met her mom’s eyes. She had expected to see anger there. Instead, her mom looked… scared. No. Terrified.
“Letting them go wasn’t my choice,” her mom said. “The people who make these decisions always have complex reasons, usually involving the benefits of strengthening Internal’s presence in society by releasing the occasional prisoner who has reason to fear us. If it were up to me, it would never happen.” She sighed again. “They said, the way they always do in these situations, that Jake and his father posed no further threat to society. They don’t understand that no dissident is harmless.” She paused. “But even assuming they were right, harmless and innocent are not the same thing. There was never any question that Jake and his family were dissidents.”
What if her mom was telling the truth? What if Jake really was a dissident?
But why should Becca believe a word her mom said?
“Do you want me to tell you the truth about why he was arrested?” her mom asked.
Becca didn’t answer.
Her mom started talking anyway. “His family was publishing a dissident newspaper from their house. He and his parents were only peripherally involved; his older sister was the main problem.”
“He told me about the newspaper,” Becca interrupted. “None of them had anything to do with it. It was their dad’s friend.” But her mom’s words had sparked a flicker of doubt in her mind. Jake had never mentioned a sister. She thought back to how Jake’s dad had reacted to her. When he had looked at her, had he seen a lost daughter?
If Jake’s sister was real… what had happened to her?
“His sister was connected with a minor dissident group. Public Relations appropriated her for televised execution before we could get any names from her, but she herself admitted the connection.” Her mom took hold of Becca’s chin and made Becca look her in the eye. “They were not innocent.”
If this was true, why would Jake have told her about the arrest in the first place? Why wouldn’t he have avoided the subject entirely, instead of telling her a half-truth that might drive her away?
Her mom let go. “His sister was executed,” she finished. “His mother died under interrogation. He and his father were released, against my wishes.”
“What did you want to do with them?” Becca snapped. “Did you want to kill them too?”
She imagined Jake as he must have been after his release. Sent back into the world as if nothing had happened, as if nothing were different. His mother dead, and, if her mom was telling the truth, his older sister too. His father… changed. Day after day of getting beaten up at school, then going home to a half-empty house and trying to take care of his dad. How had he survived?
Her mom pushed the plates aside, stopping just short of sending them crashing to the floor. “I don’t know what’s happening to you, Becca, but it’s scaring me. I could understand your loyalty to Heather; you’ve been friends with her for years. But then you defended that other dissident—Anna—after that rumor she passed on to you. And now…” She studied Becca’s face as carefully as she had Jake’s a few minutes ago. Whatever answers she found there didn’t diminish the fear in her eyes. “Now you’re defending a dissident. Do you understand what you’re saying when you tell me you believe his story over mine? Do you understand what it means for you to imply that it would have been wrong to kill them? Do you?”
Becca couldn’t think about what her mom was saying. About what it meant. Better to focus on what her mom had done. She let the anger fill her, a shield against her mom’s implied accusations.
“So you do wish you had killed him. How old was he then? Thirteen? And you would have shot him along with his sister.” As she spoke, her mom’s features rearranged, became unfamiliar. Her mom had said she didn’t know Becca anymore, but she was the one who had changed.
No. This was who she had always been. Becca had just been too blind to see it.
“I should have gone with Dad when he left,” Becca spat. “Maybe he had the right idea. Maybe he knew the truth about you all along.”
The words hung in the air between them.
They both jumped as the kitchen phone rang.
Becca’s mom got up first. She picked the phone up from the counter. “Hello?” She listened for a moment, then handed the phone to Becca, her face expressionless. “It’s for you.”
Only one person called Becca on the land line instead of her cell phone.
Becca checked the date on her watch. The first Sunday of the month. She had forgotten.
Becca took the phone from her mom. “Hi, Dad.”
Chapter Nine
Becca sat on her bed with her legs tucked under her, cradling the phone against her ear. Somewhere on the other side of the door, her mom was probably still thinking about what she had said. Becca hadn’t meant to say it. The words had slipped out before she was fully aware of them. Had she crossed a line? Said something unforgivable?
Why did it matter? Why did she care whether she hurt her mom, after everything her mom had done?
Her dad had asked her something. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
“How’s school going?” her dad repeated in his soft voice.
She answered on autopilot. “Fine, I guess.” Now that she wasn’t in the same room as her mom, it was harder to keep her anger fresh. She couldn’t renew it by looking at her mom and seeing how the person she thought she knew had actually been somebody else all along. The rest of the conversation, the part she had been trying not to think about, began to creep back into her mind.
“Becca? Are you still there?”
“I’m still here.” Becca tried to focus on her dad’s voice, tried to let it block out the echoes of other voices.
But she had found proof. That changed everything, didn’t it? How could she not believe, now that she had proof?
