Article 5 (Article 5 #1)(30)
I glowered at him but slammed the door. As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. We shouldn’t both be showing our faces if we didn’t have to.
Chase removed a worn red flannel shirt from the back of the cab and buttoned it up over his T-shirt. He untucked the bottoms of his pants from his boots, and hid his MM jacket, and it hit me, a furious pang of nostalgia. A vision of him sitting on his front steps, long legs stretched out and crossed casually at the ankles. Eyes, dark and watchful as a wolf’s, still piercing even from a distance. His smooth bronze complexion, a reflection of his mother’s Chickasaw heritage. His hair was short now, cleanly cut like the other soldiers’, but then it had been thick and glossy and black, hanging around his angular face.
He looked like the old Chase, even if he didn’t act like him. I swallowed hard.
The change made me suddenly self conscious of my appearance: My gray sweater and pleated navy skirt screamed “reform school.” I scanned the parking lot for any bystanders, worried that I might be recognized.
Chase disappeared behind the tinted glass of the mini-mart. As the minutes ticked by, my paranoia intensified. I’d believed his story about leaving the MM without question, but I didn’t know what had really happened. He wasn’t telling me anything, not why he’d arrested us, not why he’d come back. For all I knew, he could be contacting the MM right now. My heels drummed a cadence on the rutted rubber floor mats.
The sun was just above the tree line now. It would be getting dark soon.
What was taking so long?
I was just grabbing the door handle, intent to check for myself on Chase’s intentions, when I saw it. A large bulletin board on the far side of the store window. The blood drained from my face. Though I was twenty feet away I knew exactly what it would say.
MISSING! IF SIGHTED, CONTACT THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF REFORMATION IMMEDIATELY!
I had seen this board before, of course. At the mini-mart near school.
My photo from the reformatory would be posted just as soon as Brock figured out I’d escaped. A desperate need arose in me to see if it was there now, but I couldn’t risk being spotted. What if the clerk inside had already caught a glimpse of me when I’d opened the door earlier? How could I have been so careless?
It’s too soon. You’ve only been gone a few hours, I reminded myself.
I envisioned Beth and Ryan scanning through the pictures the way we had looked for Katelyn Meadows. Defending me when people whispered about what I’d done to be arrested. They were true friends, not the kind that would turn their backs. It struck me that they didn’t even know Katelyn was dead. I shivered, frightened by the reality that my friends would never know if I was dead.
The door lurched open, catching me off guard. I nearly leapt out the window.
“Here,” Chase said. The change was sliding off the top of a wrapped flat of plastic water bottles he shoved onto the seat, and I grabbed it before it fell to the floor. The total on the receipt was over three hundred dollars. I hastily shoved the assorted bills into my pocket, uncomfortable with any money sitting out in the open. I was shocked by the amount of cash he’d been carrying.
“I worked for it,” he told me snidely before I could ask. “Soldiers collect pay. It’s a regular job.”
“It’s hardly a regular job,” I grumbled.
I placed the supplies on the floor while Chase filled up the truck. Among the groceries—peanut butter, bread, and other staples—was a chocolate bar with almonds. Had he remembered that this was my favorite kind of candy? Probably not. He didn’t do things out of the kindness of his heart anymore. Still, it seemed too frivolous to be anything but a peace offering.
It only took him a few moments of connecting the exposed wires beneath the wheel before the truck thrummed to life again. As we pulled onto the street, I stared out the back window at the Missing Persons board, in grim awe of how my life had changed. My freedom from the MM’s clutches had come with a stifling loss. I would never be able to walk around in the open again.
*
CHASE flipped on the MM radio. A man with a cool, flat voice was talking.
“… another FBR vehicle stolen outside Nashville earlier today from the parking lot of a textile plant. The truck contained uniforms to be shipped to bases throughout Tennessee. No eyewitnesses. Rebel activity suspected. Any suspicions should be reported to command.”
“Who is he?” I whispered to Chase, as though the speaker might hear me.
“A reporter for the FBR. He does a newscast for the region every day. They cycle through it at the top of the hour.”
“Are there lots of rebels?” I liked the idea of people striking against the MM. I wondered what they planned to do with the uniforms.
“Occasionally someone gets it in their head to steal a rations truck, but not often,” he informed me. “Mostly it’s just anarchy. Ripping up the Statutes, attacks on soldiers, mob riots. Things like that. Nothing that can’t be managed.”
I frowned at his confidence. There had been a time he was much like the people he now denigrated.
“The overhaul of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia is nearly complete. Oregon, Washington, Montana, and North Dakota will be overhauled beginning June one, with estimated compliance by September.…”
Anticipating my questions, Chase explained that an overhaul was when the MM systematically went through a city’s census to weed out Article violators.