All Good Children Page 23

  “What the fuck was that?” Omalis’s voice is harsh but calm. There’s a steady hum at the back of her skull, the reverberations of a struck bell. Marla breathes hard through her nose, pushing hot, moist air onto Omalis’s knuckles. Omalis asks again, “What the fuck are you doing to me?” She punctuates her inquiry by knocking Marla’s head against the freezer door.

  Marla whimpers into Omalis’s hand, starts to cry. Omalis brings her knee up to Marla’s pubic bone and presses. Marla closes her eyes and whines but doesn’t struggle.

  Omalis eases up. She says, “Talk,” and pushes away from Marla. Marla folds in on herself and Omalis catches her by the shoulders before she can fall to the hardwood. She steadies her against the fridge.

  “Who are you?” she asks.

  She waits for an answer. Marla coughs, wipes a shaking hand across the red welts on her jaw, licks away the blood on her lip. She takes in breath, holds it, lets it out. She looks at Omalis; Omalis sees her own dark silhouette reflected in the dilated pupil.

  “I never meant to hurt you,” Marla says.

  The humming in her skull fades. There is something she knows, but she can’t hold onto it. She sees her mother’s face through the splintering slats of her old kitchen floor in a house long burned to ash.

  “What did you do?” Her voice is smaller than she wants it to be. Before Marla can respond, she throws a fist into the freezer door. Marla turns her head and makes an involuntary yelp. Omalis feels at least two bones in her fingers snap inward. She tenses her jaw and asks again, more forcefully, “Who are you?”

  “You know who I am, Heaven—”

  “Stop. No. You don’t get to say my name. Stop pretending. You’ve lied enough. Who are you?”

  “I’m…” Her eyes fly over Omalis, seeking something she won’t find. See like Jordan, Omalis wills. See me. “I’m a member of the Resistance. I’ve been using you…to help me fight.”

  Omalis is not surprised because, somewhere buried deep, she already knew this. She grasps onto something else. “You’re a fighter, then, are you?” She licks her lips.

  Marla throws the first punch.

  It doesn’t have far to go before it connects with Omalis’s ear. She takes the low-impact blow and sinks her own fist into Marla’s unguarded stomach. Despite herself, she held back, so she is slightly surprised when Marla doubles over, until she realizes, a fraction of a second too late, that she’s been played. From her crouched position, Marla tackles Omalis at her knees. Omalis’s feet lose purchase, she falls back, her elbow striking the table island, followed by her head. Light explodes behind her eyes. She lands hard on her tailbone. On the verge of blacking out, she sweeps her leg out in front of her, connecting with Marla’s ankle. She hears Marla bang to the floor beside her, and she kicks out without seeing, feels her heel hit against Marla’s fleshy thigh; her toe catches in a cross-stitch of the fishnet stocking. Then Marla’s fist knocks Omalis’s lips against her teeth, and now both of their mouths are bleeding.

  Omalis shuts her eyes against the pain in her head and crawls around the island on her elbows. The towel slips down her mid-section and she hastily pulls it back up, not wanting Marla to see her naked again, at least not yet. She rests her back against the dividing wall of the kitchen and living room, brings her knees to her chest, and holds her head until the throbbing tapers off enough for her to focus. She opens her eyes.

  Marla is crouched directly in front of her. In her left hand, she holds a blue plastic mini flash drive; in her right, a butterfly knife. She presses the edge of the knife to Omalis throat without breaking the skin and forces the flash drive into Omalis closed fist.

  “Just play this,” she says through gritted teeth.

  Omalis lets the drive ting to the floor and tries to hold Marla’s hand but she jerks her elbow back. Omalis says, “I’ve never been more attracted to you.”

  “I know,” Marla says. She backs away. Omalis is afraid she will leave, not sure what she’ll do if she does, but Marla doesn’t leave. She scuttles backward and sits across from Omalis on the floor, her back against the island. She does some lazy tricks with the butterfly knife, eyeing Omalis.

  “Impressive,” Omalis says.

  “Hm.” Marla holds the knife still in her lap. She just looks at Omalis, looks for what feels like minutes but is only seconds. There are footsteps in the hallway and people slamming doors in other apartments. The first light of morning peeks through the kitchen window, but the two women remain in shadow. The automatic air-conditioning system kicks on with a lurch.

  “So I’m your tool,” Omalis says. She scratches at a freckle on her knee. “For how long?”

  “About three years,” she says. “I knew who you were before you told me.”

  “Before you met me?”

  “No.” She closes her eyes, as if remembering the salt of Omalis’s mouth that first night. “Soon after. The Resistance had come up with this idea, this plan, years ago. And I offered my services to help them implement it. I’m only one small part of—”

  “I don’t care what the big scheme is.” Omalis raps the broken knuckles of her left hand against the hardwood. She feels the pain in the hollow of her bones. It keeps her going, reminds her where she is. “What have you used me for?”

  “As a bridge.” Marla shifts her weight from one side of her ass to the other, sniffs air through her nose, tongues her still-sore mouth, but doesn’t continue.

  “The syringe,” Omalis prompts. “You’ve been doping me, and—what? Extracting information somehow.”

  Marla’s interest is piqued. “What syringe?”

  Omalis squints her eyes and tsk-tsks. “You’ve been careless. I found a syringe in my car the other week, before Kyoto. I thought someone had… Hm. I thought someone had attempted to murder me, or was planning to. Wishful thinking.”

  “No, I don’t dope you,” Marla says.

  “Why don’t you? Kill me, I mean. Wouldn’t that help your cause? Don’t you hate me enough?”

  “You’re more important alive. You’re vital.”

  “That’s funny. How do you do it? How am I a bridge?”

  “Hypnosis.” Marla speaks slowly, choosing her words deliberately. “I…put you under and…give you instructions.”

  A synapse inside Omalis’s brain fires. “All good children go to Heaven.”

  Marla nods. “The nursery rhyme is a trigger. It puts you under and then…”

  “You control me.”

  “I instruct you.”

  “You take me over. You use me. Like the Over.”

  Marla is clearly uncomfortable with this description. “No. I… No. I never make you do anything…harmful. I bury the suggestions deep—we’ve worked on this for years, perfecting it—too deep to be rooted out, there’s no danger to you or—”

  “Monsters dig deep,” Omalis says. “You have no idea.”

  “You’re safe from them.”

  Omalis laughs mirthlessly. “I’m your pawn. I’ve always only been your pawn.”

  “No.” Marla rocks forward as if to get up, to go to Omalis and attempt to comfort her, as if they were still partners, as if she still had to pretend to be in love, but then she stops. “It’s not exactly like that.”

  “Your opponent takes out the pawns before the Queen. You’re risking my life.” Omalis smiles, blood staining her teeth. “I approve. What have you been instructing me to do?”

  “You’ve been…helping us attain an insider…someone who will infiltrate the Collective. You’ve been prepping her, and you were meant to administer the virus—”

  “Who?”

  “—What?”

  “Who have I been prepping?”

  “It isn’t really important…”

  Omalis pushes all of her weight into the balls of her feet and propels her body toward Marla, slamming her shoulder into the other woman’s neck, striking her windpipe. Startled, her fingers loosen just enough around the handle of the butterfly knife for Omalis to steal it from
her. She drops to one knee and grabs Marla by her hair—still damp from the shower and smelling like steam—and holds the knife an inch away from her eye. She allows Marla a minute to cough and get her breath back.

  “Who?” She repeats.

  “Jordan,” Marla wheezes. “Jordan Fontaine.”

  Omalis becomes acutely aware of the pain in her body. She drops the knife. When she releases Marla’s hair, Marla immediately scrambles for the knife and stands up, holding the weapon before her and the kneeling killer at her feet. Omalis looks up at her, flushed. “What did you make me do to her?”

  “Nothing,” Marla says. She rubs her throat with her free hand, coughs some more. “You were only supposed to agitate her enough to get her to become violent against you. You told me it wouldn’t take much, that she’s always angry. I just needed her alone so I could deliver—”

  “When I saw her, she… She was afraid of me.”

  “Heav—” Marla gulps back the name. “I don’t think… I don’t think you hurt her. You wouldn’t.”

  “I would,” Omalis says. She narrows her eyes at the knife. “Maybe you should tie me up or something.”

  Marla looks at the knife then back at Omalis. She attempts a sigh, which turns into a cough. “I don’t want to fucking do this.” She turns at the hip and throws the knife over her shoulder. It skims against the wood of the apartment’s front door on its way into the hall. Omalis hears its muffled thump on the carpet.

  “You’re not safe with me,” Omalis says. “The Over will find you out. Whatever you do with me…they’ll know.”

  “We’ve done this before,” Marla says. “We’ve been here, right here, almost exactly like this. I thought I could…do it differently this time, I don’t know. Gently.”

  “How many times?”

  “Twice. You never…you always lasted longer, to completion. This time we…it’s fucked. We’ll have to try again next year.”

  “Marla…” Omalis lets her mouth hang open; she can’t seem to close it. She looks hard at Marla, her turn to seek something out. For the first time in forever, she doesn’t stop the tears from building. “What are you saying? What are you saying to me?”

  “Baby,” Marla can’t stop herself from putting back on the girlfriend mask. It fits so well, soft and worn in all the right places. She bends down and touches Omalis’s broken knuckles, a whisper of a touch, a suggestion, a promise. Omalis lets her. “Baby, I know it’s hard for you. I know you think I’m…that I’m using you to do something against your will, to…to make you my puppet. I’m not. I’m not like them, Heaven. I’m not trading your soul to save myself. I am not your mother, I am not her. Do you understand me? Look at me. I am trying…to do something good. Good. I’m fighting because no one else can or will. You’re fighting with me.”

  Omalis looks away, to the floor, to her own scarred and faded skin. “All this time, I thought you…I thought you were in love with me.”

  Marla crawls across the floor and picks up the flash drive that Omalis had left against the wall. She crawls back over and presses it once again into Omalis’s palm. “Please, Heaven. Just watch the video.”

  They sit on the floor for an indeterminate amount of time. Omalis listens to Marla breathe, timing her own breaths to leapfrog Marla’s, to not interrupt. Slowly, her body finds its way closer to Marla, thigh against thigh, hand on stomach, knee against back, lips against neck. Marla holds her as if none of this had ever happened, as if they had just had a spat about who left the toilet seat up or the milk out all night. She scratches her fingers lightly through Omalis’s hair and makes many false starts at saying something that simply turn into lengthy, pregnant exhalations.

  Finally, Omalis says, “I know you’re not my mother.”

  “Good.” Marla sighs. “You’re not her either.”

  “Everything I’ve done or failed to do. I can’t erase it.”

  “No.”

  “And I have to keep doing it.”

  “Yes.”

  Omalis pulls her face away from Marla’s neck. Marla wipes a tear from Omalis’s chin with her own reddening knuckles. Omalis says, “You’ll do it again, won’t you? Put me under. I won’t remember any of this.”

  The corners of Marla’s mouth twitch into a frown. “No, you won’t.”

  “But you will.”

  Marla only nods.

  “Then I…” Omalis presses her lips to Marla’s forehead and holds her there, crying into her bangs. She pulls back. “I love you. I don’t want to. Normally, I don’t—” Marla laughs wetly, and Omalis smiles. “—but you’re…not the person I thought you were.”

  “If I could believe you…”

  “But I’ve said all this before?”

  “More or less.”

  “Take it on faith?”

  Marla looks at Omalis, sees what she wants to see, and kisses her.

  FOURTEEN

  JORDAN

  IT’S THE LAST DAY OF camp; they’ve been taking girls since this morning. I would say “since before breakfast,” but today is a ration day meaning we don’t get any. Not even a last meal.

  We’ve been confined to our cabins. Every couple of hours—or minutes, who knows? No clocks, no watches, just this plastic yellow-orange-green bracelet some stupid kid made back when she was allowed to be some stupid kid snapping against my wrist to the ticking we’re forbidden to hear. So who knows, but anyway, every now and then, the cabin door opens and a counselor comes in with wet eyes and a pointing finger, and two Beef Bots—that’s the term Taylor coined, Beef Bots, because the guys with the rubber-bullet guns are all muscle and robotic, just carrying out orders, just doing what they can to save themselves, who can blame them, who. The Beef Bots follow the counselor’s finger and take whatever girl she points out by her quivering arms and lead her out the door until we can’t hear her crying anymore, can’t hear the questions she’s desperate enough to believe someone might actually answer now that it’s really the end.

  That’s the worst part. It’s so hard to choose just one but I guess that’s it. That we still don’t get anything from these people, our captors, the Gestapo, Taylor calls them. She says it’s just another way for them to distance themselves from their actions, to convince themselves there are no consequences for calling a person by a number instead of a name, for dragging someone from their bed in their prison uniform and ushering them to a fate they have no control over, honest, not them, the pawns, the foot soldiers, honest, honest. What do we want, anyway? Do we want them to end up like those counselors in Tokyo? Do we want another Kyoto massacre, right here in—wherever the hell we are?

  Yes. I’ve thought it to myself every night since my parents left. Yes, more massacres, more carnage, more blood in our faces to wake us the fuck up.

  So the counselors, they don’t answer our questions, stony silence like when I caught Jason in the bathroom and he covered up quick, and afterward I bugged him about what he’d been doing like I didn’t know he was masturbating. I was eleven, not an idiot. I doubt these old counselor bitches masturbate. Or they masturbate all the time. Well, anyway, they won’t tell us what it means when one of us gets escorted from the cabin. Where we’re going or if we’ll be back. They haven’t even officially said it’s the last day but we know.

  Taylor’s been my shadow all morning. I woke up to her next to me in my bed. It was okay. It was nice. We just lay there, trying not to breathe. She touched me. I don’t know. It felt all right. I started crying anyway. Not real crying, like there wasn’t any noise, like when one of our collies died when I was seven, or when I watched my dad try to hide his face at my grandpa’s funeral. I didn’t even know I was doing it until Taylor kissed my cheek and her lips came away wet. She got upset. Stony silent. But she won’t leave my side, she won’t leave my bed. She asks me things but I think I’ve lost the will to speak.

  “What’s wrong, Jordan? Are you scared? Why won’t you look at me? Stop doing that.”

  She pokes a finger under the worn-down
string of my bracelet. My skin is red and raw from snapping it all day. Taylor caresses my skin. I don’t know.

  She was supposed to come back. Marla, the resistance fighter. I can’t stop thinking about her, the things she said to me, the promises she made me. I really need to stop counting on promises. It’s good that I think about her, her face when she saw how hurt I was; her eyes when she told me how brave I am. It’s good. Takes my mind off Omalis for a few minutes at a time; takes my mind off Taylor’s body, pressed shoulder to shoulder with mine.

  The thing is, I’m ready. Every time I see another girl walk out that damn door—they’ve taken three of us so far; seven to go—my bones ache with it; my blood runs hot with it; my nerves itch with it. I am ready. So where the fuck is Marla? Maybe she thinks she has more time. Maybe it’s only been four weeks, maybe five, certainly not the six they promised. There’s that silly concept again, that silly fucking faith. Promises.

  The bracelet strikes the vein in my wrist, turning blue to red.

  “Here’s your fucking promise,” I tell my skin. Here, here. Take it.

  “Stop doing that,” Taylor says. She curls her fingers around my wrist. “Why do you keep doing that?”

  “What else should I do?” I ask her.

  Across the room, three girls huddle together, their hands folded in their laps and their eyes closed. Sometimes their lips move, sometimes a sob crawls down their spines. Praying. Two beds down on this side, nearest the door, another girl repeatedly makes her bed, sharp hotel corners, sneakers together underneath, pillow nice and fluffed. Unmakes it, remakes it, talks to herself as she goes. The last girl in our cabin stands at the front window and blinks at the waning sun. She’s the first to alert us when the counselors are coming. The first to incite panic. It’s a tough job, somebody’s gotta do it.