Sign Here(77)
He fished the cashbox key out from the warmth between them—a skeletal thing with an ornamental bow—and decided it would do just fine.
After all, the brand itself has nothing to do with its power to bind.
MICKEY
IT WAS DARK BY the time they finished dinner, and when they rang the Watersons’ doorbell, Mickey had to quickly pick leaves from between her feet and the soles of her wedge heels. Ruth still had on her flip-flops, even though she was the one who convinced Mickey to wear the wedges. Mickey thought about taking them off right there on the doorstep, but the door opened before she could undo the buckles.
“Hey, party people,” Cody said, standing to the side. They all shuffled in, Ruth kissing Cody on the cheek as she went. It was the first time Mickey had seen Cody blush in years, if she ever had.
“Follow me,” he said, leading the way down the carpeted steps to the basement.
The carpet was the color of oatmeal, and the same consistency. Mickey stared at it from the worn leather couch, watching the way small kernels bloomed out around the heel of her shoe.
“Do you guys want anything to drink?” Cody asked, grinning. “We got the good stuff tonight.” He opened the minifridge and pulled out a handle of rum. “I found it in the boathouse freezer.”
“Yes, please,” Ruth said. Cody balanced the handle with one arm as he poured the rum into red plastic cups and topped each off with Fresca.
“Watch out; these are dangerous. You can’t even taste it.”
Mickey took a sip and winced.
“Mickey can taste it,” Sean said.
“Shut up,” Mickey answered, and took another. “It’s good.”
“As long as it gets the job done,” Ruth said, holding her cup out in salute to Cody before throwing the whole thing back.
“Damn! You’re a badass.”
“Where’s Josh?” Ruth asked, and Mickey could see Cody deflate just a little.
“He’ll be down in a minute.”
“No shit, you got this already?” Sean asked, holding up a video-game case, still wrapped in plastic. He flipped open his pocketknife and split the seam.
Ruth turned to Mickey, pushing their faces together so their noses smooshed.
“So, Harrison,” she whispered. “You ready to get a little fucked up?”
“You promise not to leave me?”
Ruth grabbed Mickey’s hand and linked her pinky with hers, pulling them both to her lips.
“Pinky swear,” she said, before pushing herself off the couch. “Only to make our drinks.”
“You don’t have faith in my skills?” Cody asked, mock-hurt.
Ruth slung her purse over her shoulder and shot Cody a fawnlike look.
“I’ve been taught not to take drinks from boys. So I will be taking care of my bestie tonight, thank you very much.”
Mickey held out her now-empty cup, her eyes tearing as much from the burn of the rum as from the effort to make them the same kind of beautiful-wide.
PEYOTE
HUMAN’S RESOURCE FILE
Name: CALAMITY GANON
Current Location: FIFTH FLOOR
Calamity Ganon, human name redacted, was plenty scarred. She had scars from the arena—some wide and amorphous, some as tight and clean as a nun’s mouth. She had scars on her wrists from her fourth foster mother, and more from the years of travel that came after: a burn on her calf from a bus tailpipe, a knotted mass near her elbow from the time she tucked and rolled out of a semi on the highway.
But there was one scar Calamity Ganon didn’t have. The only one she was promised but never got the chance to earn.
The one she needed for her own escape plan.
“Everyone, go ahead and sit down,” the General said, each step of his boots kicking up dust in the truck’s low-beam golden highways into the darkness. The fire had burned down to embers, heat but no light. Cal leaned on her shovel and saw the boys do the same, all wondering if it was a trap. If she sank to her knees—the desert sand both cool from the evening and still warm from the sun—would her father put her on double duty? This wasn’t her first time digging her own grave, and she knew she couldn’t dig until sunrise.
“That’s an order!” the General barked, and Cal and her brothers dropped their shovels and sat. She waited for someone to ask for water, but they didn’t have anyone new enough for that mistake.
“It is easy to be discouraged when one of your own dies. It is easy to question your own life, your own choices. It is easy to question war altogether. But soldiers are not built easy. If I could spare you pain, if I could take it right into my own nerves, I would,” he said. “If I could spare you—”
He shook his head.
“But the war won’t wait for your childhoods to end. So neither can I.”
The General lingered a beat before reaching into the truck bed, jostling the rolled-up weathered tarp, and lifting it, one armed, over his shoulder.
“We do not fight this war for acknowledgment, for none shall know what we’ve done for the earth. We fight this war so that those we love, and those we don’t, stand a chance. Not only here on this plane, but on the next. We fight thanklessly, men, and we die thanklessly. And it is a God-given honor.”