Heather saw her, Becca could tell. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second before Heather looked away.
Becca blocked her path. “We need to talk.”
Heather tried to walk around her. “Not right now, okay? We can talk later.”
And how long would that be? Another three weeks? A month? By then it could be too late.
But if she was wrong…
She matched her steps to Heather’s, keeping her body in front of her. “No. We need to talk now.”
They stood like that for a moment as people shoved past them. What would Becca do if Heather said no? She had no way to force Heather to talk to her.
At last, Heather nodded. “There’s a table over there.” She pointed to the far corner of the room.
Becca shook her head. “Not here. Someplace quieter.”
They left the cafeteria. On their way down the hall, they passed two of Heather’s old friends headed in the opposite direction. As the girls saw Heather, one of them leaned in toward the other and whispered something. Heather didn’t even look at them.
Becca ducked into their Citizenship classroom, which was empty this time of day. She was afraid Heather would just keep going, but Heather followed her into the room. Becca closed the door behind them. This was as safe as they were going to get. At least she could be relatively sure the classrooms weren’t bugged. Surveillance didn’t need to spend hours listening in on every class, when Monitors were more efficient and didn’t cost anything.
Becca and Heather sat at a couple of empty desks near the center of the room. The shiny desks at this school still unnerved Becca a little. She missed the scuffed and scratched-up desks of the old school. They had felt lived-in. These—and everything else in this school—looked like props from a movie.
“What did you want to talk about?” The grief and uncertainty had disappeared from Heather’s voice. She didn’t sound like the same person Becca had talked to in the cafeteria three weeks ago. But she didn’t sound like her old self, either.
Becca studied the smudged blackboard as though the right words might appear there. All she saw was a list of the ten characteristics of a good citizen, which she had memorized back in elementary school. “If you still don’t want anything to do with me, that’s fine. I can leave you alone after this. But I need to know something.” She stopped, unwilling to even hint at the suspicion that could drive Heather out of her life for good.
Heather waited, so still and quiet that Becca wanted to ask her what she had done with the real Heather.
At least she was looking at Becca now, and listening to her, instead of pretending she didn’t exist. So what if she was acting a little strange. She was still trying to deal with losing her family, her friends, her life. Of course she wasn’t back to normal yet.
“What do you need to know?” Heather asked.
“Do you blame my mom for what happened with your parents?”
“Of course not. She did what she had to do.”
Heather’s answer had come too easily. Like she had practiced it. Maybe Becca’s suspicions hadn’t been unfounded after all. Cold began creeping up her limbs.
“If you’re thinking of… doing anything… don’t.” Becca stumbled over the words. “You’d get caught. You’d end up being executed like your parents. Anyway, my mom isn’t responsible for what happened.”
Heather frowned. “You’re not making any sense.”
What had Becca expected to accomplish by doing this? If Heather wasn’t planning on trying to get revenge against her mom, the idea that Becca would suspect her of such a thing might damage their relationship beyond repair. And if she was, could Becca really talk her out of it?
But as long as the possibility existed, Becca had to do something. No matter what Becca thought of her mom, she couldn’t stand back and let her die.
“You think I would, what, turn into a dissident?” Heather’s voice rose. A little of her old self crept back into her face. “You were the one person in this school who didn’t suspect me. I should have known you’d end up taking their side sooner or later.”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant if you were planning on… getting revenge against her somehow.”
Heather looked at her in horror. “Against your mom? For executing a couple of dissidents? You really think I would do something like that? What’s wrong with you?”
Becca felt like an idiot. The strangeness she had seen in Heather, her too-quick response to Becca’s questions about her mom—they seemed like nothing when put up against the fact that she was all but accusing her best friend of… dissident activity, she realized. She had said she would never suspect Heather of being a dissident, but by bringing up a possibility like this, that was exactly what she was doing.
But still, doubts lingered in her mind.
Heather had said “for executing a couple of dissidents.” Not “my parents.”
Was she trying too hard to sound innocent?
Heather’s chair screeched against the tile as she stood up. She walked to the window.
“I’m sorry.” Becca got up to join her. “Dad told me this story about a friend of my mom’s who tried to kill her after Internal took her husband. It made me kind of paranoid, I guess.”
Heather didn’t look at her.
“It didn’t even occur to me that that would make you a dissident. I just remembered what it did to you when Internal took them, and how mad you got at me for no reason…”
Heather dug her fingernails into her palms. She drew her shoulders up and dropped her head, like a turtle trying to retreat into its shell.
Then, abruptly, her fists unclenched. Her shoulders dropped.
She turned to face Becca. “I’m sorry.”
Becca blinked. If anything, she had expected Heather to demand an apology from her, not the other way around. “For what?”
“You’re right. I was acting suspicious.” She fiddled with something on her shirt. “You believed me when nobody else would, and I screamed at you and pushed you away. You didn’t deserve that.” She dropped her hands to her sides. “I had to work through a bunch of stuff in my head, and every time I saw you it reminded me of all the things I didn’t want to think about.”
Like how Becca felt every time she looked at her mom. The thought of being to Heather what her mom was to her made her skin crawl. She tried to shake off the feeling. “It’s okay.”
Heather shook her head. “It’s not. You were completely justified to suspect me of… whatever. I wasn’t acting like myself.”
She still wasn’t acting like herself. Something about the way she spoke was… wrong. It didn’t sound like Heather.
Heather took a step forward.
The pin at her shoulder glittered in the light.
It took Becca a few seconds to understand what she was seeing. “You joined the Monitors.”
Heather fingered the pin. “A couple of days ago.”
“How could you do that, after everything that’s happened?”
“They didn’t want to let me in at first,” said Heather. “But I explained how much I wanted to make up for what my parents were. They’re going to have to watch me extra-carefully, to make sure I’m not trying to infiltrate them so I can pass information to dissidents, but that’s okay. They’ll start to trust me eventually.”
Becca couldn’t take her eyes off the pin. “That’s not what I meant. How could you join them after what happened to your parents? After what we found in the photo album?”
Heather’s eyes went cold. “My parents were
The classroom door opened.
They both swiveled their heads toward the sound. Mr. Adams, their Citizenship teacher, stood in the
