“Why do you care?” Lena asked, not bothering to keep her voice quiet. “Why should you care? Mom was right. They aren’t human. They don’t deserve our help.”
I jerked away from my sister’s words. “You don’t mean that. You’ve been inside the District. You’ve met them. Rye was nice to you.”
“I mean every word of it,” Lena snapped, louder this time.
Mom coughed, and my gaze shot toward the bed. She wasn’t awake, but if my sister wasn’t quiet, she would be soon.
“Lena,” I said, whispering, “I’m sorry, but you have to know I did the right thing. You have to.”
“You chose aliens over humans. Over me.”
Seeing the hardness in her eyes, the bitterness in every line of her body, made it seem like I was staring at our mom instead of my little sister, and I hated it.
“Don’t be like her,” I said, reaching for Lena again.
My sister pulled away. “I should have listened to her a long time ago.” She exhaled slowly, shaking her head. “You promised you’d look out for me, that you’d help me make something of my life, but you lied.”
“I’ve done everything I could to protect you,” I argued.
“Not everything.” Lena’s mouth scrunched up as she stared down at me. “I had to quit school and get a job on the cleaning crew.”
Her words nearly knocked me over.
It had never crossed my mind that Lena would have to quit school if I left, but it should have. Our mother hadn’t worked in years. Who had I thought would pick up the slack once I was gone? The problem was I hadn’t thought about it at all. I’d seen the Veilorians’ suffering and acted without the least consideration for what that would mean for my sister. She was right. I hadn’t looked after her the way I was supposed to.
And now? What would Lena do now? Where would she go once our mother died? She wasn’t old enough to be considered independent, which meant she’d have to live in a group home for orphans. I’d never been to one, but I’d heard stories. They were crowded and dirty, and the government did little to monitor them. The kids who came out of those places were hard and damaged and everything I’d worked to shelter Lena from.
“Will you have to go to a home now?” I asked even though I knew it was her only option.
“No.” Lena exhaled again, and her shoulders slumped. “I’m going to marry Dean. He’s been checking on me since you left, and when he saw how bad Mom was getting, he offered to marry me so I wouldn’t have to go to a home.”
“Dean?” My stomach twisted in violent revulsion. I had to have heard her wrong. “What are you talking about? You’re not old enough to get married. You’re sixteen years old!”
“I am if I have parental consent.” She sank back like sitting up was too much work. “Mom filled the forms out yesterday. Well, I filled them out and she signed. It was the most she could manage.”
“You can’t marry him, Lena. He’s not a good man. He’s—”
“He’s human,” she said. “Which is more than I can say for Ione’s husband or the alien trash you’re living with.” Lena snorted, sounding so much like our mom I had to blink to make sure she wasn’t sitting in front of me. “Dean told me all about it, by the way. About how you moved in with that halfling. How you’ve turned your back on your own species. It’s disgusting.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How had my little sister changed so much in such a short time? How could she be saying such horrible, hateful things to me?
“Lena,” I grabbed her hand, “you don’t mean it.”
Something banged in the other room, and Lena looked past me, toward the hall.
I followed her gaze, still holding her hand, and a second later the lights flicked on. Someone was here. In the house.
“That will be for you,” Lena said.
I looked back at her, confused and unsure. Male voices, loud and authoritative reached me, followed by footsteps, and a sudden realization dawned.
“You turned me in?”
“It was Dean’s idea.” My sister’s cold gaze stayed on my face as the footsteps grew closer, pounding with the thudding of my heart. “It’s why I gave the note to Brentwood. I knew you’d be more likely to trust him than Dean.”
“Why?” I asked, blinking when tears filled my eyes, blurring my sister’s face.
“You owe me. You promised you’d help me make something of myself, and this is the only way you can still do that.”
I shook my head, confused but unable to find any words.
“There will be a reward,” Lena said. “I won’t have to work on the cleaning crew, won’t have to scrape by. Dean and I can live comfortably. It’s what you’ve always wanted for me.”
I blinked, and tears dropped from my eyes, streaming down my cheeks. I couldn’t talk, but I moved closer to Lena, still desperate to reach her even though deep down I knew it was a lost cause. She ripped her hand from mine, her face a mask of disgust, and I stumbled back just as men burst into the room.
They began to shout, competing with one another to be heard as they called out orders. Yelling for me to get away from my sister, to lie on the floor, to put my hands up, and a dozen other things I couldn’t register over my sobs. I was grabbed from behind and shoved down, so I was lying on my stomach. My hands were yanked behind my back, and a second later plastic bit into the still healing cuts on my wrists. I might have winced, might have even cried out, I didn’t know for sure. I was too focused on my sister. She was standing over me, watching it all
