The Torturer's Daughter

Becca started to reach her hand up toward them, then let it fall back to her side. “What happened?”

Jake shifted awkwardly on his feet. “It was a bad day. That’s all.”

She tried to keep her mind on Jake’s problems, tried to block out the questions that still wouldn’t leave her alone. “Bad days don’t usually involve someone trying to strangle you.”

Jake walked the few steps to the swings and sat down. The swing creaked under his weight. “It’s just my dad. Sometimes he’s almost normal, and sometimes he’s… not. Today when I got home from school, he thought I was from Internal.” He clutched the rusted chains and let the swing sway back and forth. “I managed to remind him who I was, but after that it was like I wasn’t there. He kept talking to my mom and Sarra, like they were there in the room with him. I stayed as long as I could, but I had to get out of there. And you were the only person I could go to.” He laughed. Something about his laugh didn’t sound quite sane.

Becca knew she should try to comfort him. but all she could think about was the name he had said. “Sarra. Your sister?”

He nodded.

His sister. She had existed after all. Which meant her mom had been right, at least about that part of his story. And if she had been right about that part, why not about all of it?

It didn’t matter what he had or hadn’t told her. Not right now. He needed her.

But if she ignored this, it would mean she didn’t care that he might have been a dissident. That he might still be a dissident. And that would mean she was turning into somebody who could forgive dissident activity but not a few false confessions, somebody who hung around dissidents as if she were one of them.

Again she felt herself falling.

It was already too late.

No. She could stop this.

She took a step back. “You never told me about her.”

“I’m sorry.” He scuffed his foot along the ground. “I meant to.”

“You told me you weren’t actually dissidents.”

Now he looked up at her, his eyes wide, the moonlight lending them an eerie glow. “We weren’t. I explained what happened.”

“Mom told me there was nobody staying with you. She said your sister was involved with a dissident group. She said all of you were dissidents.”

Tell me she was wrong, she begged inside her mind, just like she had earlier during her mom’s explanation. Make me believe you.

It didn’t work any better now than it had then.

Jake didn’t speak. His swing stopped moving.

It was true. She knew it just looking at him, just listening to the silence between them.

“I didn’t know what else to do.” His words faded into the air. “You were going to leave unless I explained, but if I told you the truth…”

She wanted to forgive him. She wanted to tell him that it was all right, and that she understood, and that she was sorry for everything that had happened to him today and in all the time since his arrest.

But how, after hating her mom for lying about something Internal had ordered her to keep secret, could she forgive Jake for lying about this?

How could she justify that?

“I told you not to lie to me.” The coldness in her voice made her shudder. She sounded like her mom.

Better to sound like her mom than like a dissident. Right?

“What was I supposed to tell you?” His voice roughened. “Was I supposed to say they shot my sister on TV as some kind of lesson? Was I supposed to tell you how it was her fault all along for getting involved with those useless people who were willing to just throw us away afterwards?” He was yelling now. “Was I supposed to tell you how little it all meant to them, in the end? Everything we did for them, to expose this government for what it really is? Everything we went through? Was I supposed to tell you how they came to me after, and asked me to join them, when they weren’t willing to help us in the only way that mattered?”

His words hung in the air, coloring the silence that grew between them as they both realized what he had said.

No lies this time. Nothing getting in the way of the truth.

Jake was a dissident.

What would you do if someone admitted to having contact with a dissident group? She wasn’t sure if the voice in her mind was her mom’s or her own.

I’d report him, of course.

Jake and his family hadn’t been arrested by accident. They hadn’t just said the wrong things in front of the wrong people, either. They had actively worked against the government. And even after Internal had let him go, Jake had been in contact with dissidents, and hadn’t reported them. That alone meant he wasn’t as harmless as Internal thought, wasn’t harmless enough to be released. Becca tried to make herself see that, to make herself understand that he and his family had deserved everything that had happened. That turning him in, now that she knew he’d had contact with the group just like his sister, was the only right thing to do.

She couldn’t.

He stood, trembling. “You’re going to turn me in now.” He said it flatly, like it was an undisputed fact.

“No,” she said, and felt herself hit bottom. “I won’t.”

“I can’t let that happen.” He took a step toward her. “I told my dad I would protect him.”

“I won’t turn you in,” she repeated, backing away. The sound of her heartbeat filled her ears.

He kept advancing on her. “Why should I believe you?”

She had thought it would be difficult to say the words. Instead they fell from her mouth easily, almost eagerly. “Because I’m a dissident too.”

He crossed the final distance to her.

And wrapped his arms around her as she collapsed in silent tears.

Chapter Eleven

“You may think dissidents don’t care about schools,” said Mr. Adams as he shut the classroom door. “After all, why would a bunch of kids matter to them? But if you think that, you’re wrong.”

The Citizenship classroom smelled like chalk and sweat. The breeze coming through the window wasn’t enough to dispel the stale air. Around Becca, her classmates fidgeted at their desks—except for Heather, who was already scribbling down notes.

Failing to report dissidents is a crime, warned the poster that hung beside the blackboard. Becca squirmed until she remembered no one could see how she had changed.

“I don’t know how many of you remember what happened eight years ago,” Mr. Adams continued. “Internal discovered that across the country, dissidents had infiltrated the school system by becoming teachers and were using their influence to pass their ideology on to their students.”

Becca did remember that. Her third-grade teacher had disappeared, and for the rest of the year they’d had a series of incompetent substitutes, from the one who kept forgetting the times tables to the one who burst into tears when someone threw a wadded-up piece of paper at her. Now, of course, Becca knew the truth. Internal had almost certainly manufactured the supposed dissident conspiracy. Had Becca’s teacher even been a dissident, or had Internal started arresting innocent people?

She turned the thought around in her mind for a moment, waiting for the accusing voice. It didn’t come.

Dissident. The word didn’t scare her anymore.

“Yesterday, Internal learned that the same thing has started happening again. In more than a hundred schools—including many elementary schools—dissidents have been teaching anti-government sentiments to their students, and in some cases even recruiting students into dissident groups.”

How many people had Internal framed to make this conspiracy look real? How many false confessions had they gotten? Anger boiled up in her again, but this time, it felt good. It felt honest. She wasn’t using it to block out