“Where are you? Just tell me where you are and I’ll come find you.”
No response except more gasping breaths.
Becca nudged the door open the rest of the way and stepped inside. An eerie quiet hung over the living room. She flicked on the lights.
The couch had been gutted. White stuffing spilled out from the cushions onto the floor. Books, pulled from the bookshelf seemingly at random, littered the floor. The computer that normally sat in the corner was gone, wires spilling across the desk where it used to be.
She thought she heard Heather gasp, then realized the sound had come from her own throat.
This couldn’t be what it looked like.
“Whatever is going on, I’ll help you,” said Becca. “I promise. Just tell me where you are.”
A long pause. Then, finally, a clear sentence—one she had never imagined hearing.
“I’m at 117.”
Now, six weeks and an eternity later, Becca sat in the corner of the playhouse, knees pulled up to her chest. She dialed Heather’s number with trembling fingers.
Moonlight shone through the slim rectangle of the doorless entrance. A spider skittered across the illuminated part of the floor, away from Becca, across the pattern her shoes had made in the grime. Becca squeezed closer against the wall.
“Hello?” Heather’s bleary mumble sounded like it was coming from outer space.
Becca tried to speak. Nothing came out. Finally, too late, her mouth had gotten the message to stop talking.
“Hello?” Heather repeated. “Becca?”
“It’s me.” Becca barely recognized her own voice.
“What’s going on?” Heather asked through a yawn.
“I’m at the playground.” She whispered the words without meaning to. As though if she spoke any louder, Internal would hear and come for her.
“What are you doing there this late?” Heather’s voice was thick with sleep and confusion. “Are you okay?”
“I need—” She needed the old Heather. That was who she had tried to call. Instead she had gotten this stranger, the one who had talked about turning her in.
“What do you need? What happened?”
Why had she called Heather? She knew who Heather was now. What she was.
“Never mind,” she said, still in a whisper. “It’s nothing.”
She hung up—and dialed the number she should have called in the first place.
Jake sat with her for hours. He listened to her explanation of what had happened with her mom, and all her fears about what might happen. When she had nothing else to say, he sat with her in silence.
Becca glanced at her watch. Three in the morning. Was her mom out looking for her? Was she sitting in the living room, waiting for her to come back? Or was she already at work again, torturing a confession out of another innocent person?
“Is there anything I can do?” Jake asked, the first thing he’d said in… she didn’t know how long.
Becca opened her mouth to say no. There was nothing he could do to make her mom forget what Becca had said to her. There was nothing he could do to make Becca less helpless; he couldn’t give her the ability to save herself and all the other dissidents Internal tortured and killed.
But that wasn’t entirely true, was it? He did have something he could do for her.
“I need you to give me something.” She spoke quickly; she needed to get the words out before she could talk herself out of this.
“What do you need?”
“Contact information for the other dissidents you were involved with,” she said in a rush.
Jake started shaking his head before Becca had finished speaking. “No. I’ll give you anything else, but not that.”
So close. She was so close to finding a way out of this intolerable in-between… but Jake could stand between her and the solution forever if he wanted to. “I have to do something. I can’t keep going like this, knowing the truth and not being able to do a thing to change any of it. If my mom… if she really does report me… then it won’t matter. But if she doesn’t…”
“You don’t want to get involved with them.” Jake brushed away a fly that had landed on her leg. “They’re useless. They had my sister set up that newspaper, but for what? What good did it ever do? And after what happened, they wanted me to help them like my sister had, but they wouldn’t do anything to help us.” The fly landed on his arm. He smacked it so hard his hand left a red mark where it had struck.
Part of her wanted to give up and leave it at that. But what would she do then? Keep going the way she had been? A week of this had made her boil over. How was she supposed to keep it up for the rest of her life?
“Anything is better than nothing,” said Becca. “At least they’re doing something.”
“Something that could get them arrested. Do you understand the danger you’d be putting yourself in?”
“I’m already in danger just for the things I’ve already said. Heather could easily have reported me for what I said to her. My mom might still report me.”
“You really don’t get it, do you?” Jake shifted so he was sitting in front of her instead of beside her. “With your mom in Internal, you’ve been untouchable your whole life. You think you’re still untouchable. You think actually fighting the government is the same as saying the wrong thing to somebody.”
“Saying the wrong thing to somebody could get me arrested just as easily. It happens all the time. If I’m in danger anyway, I might as well do something that matters.”
“You don’t have a clue how things actually work outside the little bubble you’ve been living in. I bet you think everyone believes all the propaganda Internal puts out, don’t you? Now you’ve finally figured out what Internal is really like, and you think you’re going to save the world. Good luck with that—but don’t expect me to help you get yourself killed.”
Was Jake right about her? Was she too naive to understand what this would mean?
She didn’t care. She had to keep herself from ending up like her dad, forced to deny her dissident thoughts not only to protect herself but to stay sane.
“What do you think I should do, then? Just sit back and pretend none of it is happening? I have to do something!”
“This isn’t some kind of game! Have you forgotten what happened to my sister? To my mother?” This was the Jake who had threatened Laine, the one who had thrown Becca out of his house.
But this time, Becca didn’t shrink away.
“Of course not!” Her voice rose to match his. “Why do you think I want this? I can’t just ignore what’s happening and get on with my life as if nothing’s changed. If that’s all I’m going to do, why does it matter what I believe? I might as well do what Heather wants and join the Monitors.”
“What do you think you’ll really be able to do to make a difference?” Jake pried at a rusty nail sticking out of the floor.
Embarrassed to admit that she didn’t have any idea, Becca crossed her arms. “More than I’m doing now.”
“The answer is no. That’s not going to change.” He tugged harder; the nail popped free. He dropped it and started pulling loose splinters from the wood.
Becca could feel it again, the restless energy surging through her limbs, asking her why she wasn’t doing anything with this new knowledge she had. She forced herself not to get up. “It’s not your job to protect me.” She fidgeted. “Please,” she said, knowing how desperate she sounded. “Let me have this.”
“What do you expect me to do?” Jake’s voice hovered somewhere between challenge and defeat. “Hand over a resistance group to Raleigh Dalcourt’s daughter?”
She jerked back as if he had slapped her.
She had called him here, confided in him, let him comfort her… and this was what he thought of her? That she was, what, faking all of it? That if he gave her what she had asked for, she would turn around and give it to her mom?
