Did it still make her a dissident?
Did being glad Jake was alive make her a dissident? Did being angry that her mom had killed his mom?
Her dad was talking again. Becca tried to concentrate, but he sounded like he was speaking some alien language. He paused. Was he waiting for an answer? What had he asked her?
“Are you okay?” The words came through clearly this time. From the way he said it, she guessed it wasn’t the first time he had asked the question.
“I’m fine,” she said, but winced as her answer came out too fast, too clipped. She struggled to come up with a better response, but her mind dragged her back down.
Becca knew what dissidents were. They were the people Internal arrested every day, the people trying to poison society against the government so they could bring back the old corrupt system. Becca’s mom had raised her to believe in the importance of a safe and stable world, a world ruled by justice. Whatever she might think of her mom now, Becca still believed in that world. She didn’t want any part of the world the dissidents were trying to create—so how could she be a dissident?
But how much of what she knew about the dissidents was true, and how much had been manufactured by people like her mom?
Back to her mom again. Back where she had started.
She tried to build her anger up again, tried to remind herself of all the things her mom had done. All the ways she had lied. But instead of boiling over, the anger sat in her belly like a piece of bad meat. Maybe her mom hadn’t betrayed her after all. Maybe Becca was the traitor here.
“If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay,” her dad was saying. “But if there’s any way I can help…”
Her dad’s words barely penetrated her thoughts—but the sound of his voice sparked a memory, one she clung to like a lifeline. He didn’t like her mom’s job either, or a lot of the things Internal did. It was the reason he had left. Becca could still remember the arguments.
If he could have doubts about Internal without being a dissident, so could she.
She tried to lighten her voice, tried to make it sound like this wasn’t a big deal. “Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
She tried to figure out how to word her question without sounding like she was making accusations. “What made you hate Mom’s job enough to leave?”
His answer, when it came, was sharp. “What has your mother been telling you?”
“What? This isn’t about her. I—”
“I never had a problem with her job,” her dad insisted. “No matter what she says.”
Becca frowned. “But… I remember. I used to hear you arguing about it.” The memories, blurry from years of disuse, sharpened as she called them to mind again. A fight in the middle of the night.
“I always supported your mother.” Her dad interrupted the memories. Becca recognized the tension in his voice. She could hear it in her own thoughts.
Did he hear the word echoing in his head too?
In his denials, she could hear herself thirty years from now, insisting that she had never doubted any dissidents’ confessions. Pushing the evidence she had found to the back of her mind because the only alternative was to become the enemy.
Lying like everybody else did. Like her dad was right now.
Why couldn’t anyone just tell her the truth?
“If you didn’t have a problem with her job,” she challenged him, “then why did you two argue about it all the time?”
“You were a kid. You misunderstood.”
Maybe she should let him have his denial.
And then what? If he couldn’t admit his doubts, what was she supposed to do with hers? How was she supposed to quiet the accusing voice?
Her voice hardened. “I know what I heard.”
Her dad waited a moment to answer. “Her job brought certain dangers with it. Things I didn’t know if I could live with.”
“What do you mean?” She wanted to know how he was rationalizing this to himself.
“Well, you remember what happened with your mom’s friend.”
Becca tried to figure out what he was talking about, but nothing came to mind. Had anything actually happened, or was he just making this up to cover over the doubts he didn’t want to admit he had?
“What happened?” she asked.
“You don’t remember?” He sounded surprised. “I guess you were pretty young at the time.” He paused. “Internal took her husband. She blamed your mother for it. Your mother tried to help her at first, but she wouldn’t listen.”
Despite herself, Becca almost felt sorry for her mother. A friend who had lost family to Internal, who turned on her and pushed her away even though she’d had nothing to do with it… Becca knew all too well what that felt like. She kept waiting for Heather to call her or at least say hi at school, but when they passed each other in the halls, Heather’s eyes slid over her as if she didn’t exist.
She forced her attention back to her dad. “What does this have to do with why you hated Mom’s job?”
Her dad hesitated. “Her friend tried to kill her.”
It took Becca a moment to recover her voice. “She
“Maybe she was a dissident. Maybe losing her husband just made her snap. When your mother left for work, her friend was waiting for her. Your mother barely got away in time.”
Maybe her dad was making this up. But Becca didn’t think so. She had a faint memory of police cars in front of the house, of the feeling that something important and scary had happened.
If her mom’s friend could do something like that…
No. Heather could never kill anyone.
But the Heather she saw in the halls these days, the one who had screamed at her in the cafeteria the last time they had talked, wasn’t the same Heather she used to know. Heather hadn’t been that person since the night she had called Becca from 117.
Her dad was still talking, still trying to convince her he had never had any doubts. “That’s why I didn’t like her job. I didn’t think I could live with that kind of danger. It had nothing to do with… anything else.”
But Becca wasn’t listening anymore.
Becca rushed into the cafeteria, out of breath. As soon as she stepped inside, she scanned the tables for Heather. She didn’t see her.
She stood just inside the doors, studying the faces of everyone who walked in. She flinched at the hostile glares some of them directed at her. While the rumors about her and Heather had died down, they still weren’t entirely gone. She wanted to go sit at a table in the corner and pretend she was invisible… but she had to find Heather.
Five minutes went by, then ten. Still no Heather. Was she eating someplace else? Maybe she had decided not to come to school at all.
When Heather finally walked through the doors, Becca almost didn’t recognize her. She was still going without makeup, and her hair was pulled back in a plain ponytail. Her jeans and t-shirt looked more likely to have come from Becca’s wardrobe than her own.
But the biggest difference was in the way she held herself. She didn’t shuffle her feet and hunch her shoulders the way she had the last time Becca had seen her; she walked with her old confidence. No,
