Your One & Only(25)
For some reason, the image of Jack climbing that tree to rescue the injured monkey kept coming back to Althea. The monkey had died in the end. The Ingas mocked Jack when he took the body outside and buried it in the ground, a strange, human ritual. The Ingas were as bad as the Carsons sometimes, blaming Jack for Inga-296 fracturing years ago. The more Althea thought about Jack, the more she realized how terrible everyone had been to him. True, no one ever attacked him the way he had Carson, but Althea was beginning to understand that there were other ways to hurt someone. And she’d thought it didn’t have anything to do with her, but it did, didn’t it? She could have at least tried harder to be nice.
She thought perhaps she should go to him and apologize.
“It’s sabotage!” Carson-292 yelled suddenly, startling Althea back to the meeting.
They were still talking about the cornfields. A whole section of field had failed, and when they tested the soil, they found the ground had been doused with vinegar. No one knew how it happened. The Hassan at the table in charge of food production was alarmed.
“If it was the same vinegar we use to treat weeds,” Inga said, “it must have been an accident. The machines in that particular field simply malfunctioned.”
“The machines can’t hold enough vinegar to drown a whole field,” Carson-292 said. “This was no accident. This was purposeful.”
“Who would sabotage the field, Carson? That’s our food,” Samuel-299 said. “If the crops fail, we all suffer. No one in Vispera would do such a thing.”
The Samuel was right. The community always worked together. The idea of any brothers or sisters sabotaging Vispera was inconceivable. They’d only be hurting themselves. It simply made no sense.
Carson-292 raised his eyebrows. “No one?” he said.
Samuel-299 glared. “It wasn’t Jack.”
“And I suppose it wasn’t him who stole the timers for the amniotic tanks? We can’t have him wandering around, free to do whatever he wants.”
“We should lock him in the labs again,” Hassan said. “This wasn’t some prank. We’ll have grain shortages in the fall now, and nothing to send to Copan.”
After several more moments of discussion, the Council adjourned the meeting, and Althea caught Samuel-299 as he headed for the door.
“Samuel?” she said.
His eyes grazed over her face. He was distracted by the debate inside, the way they’d all accused Jack.
“Can I help you, Althea?” he said.
“I wanted to say that I was sorry.” Samuel clearly had no idea what she was talking about. She continued, “About Jack, I mean. I feel like that night I could have been nicer about everything. I was mad, and I took it out on him. Not that he was really nice about anything, but anyway—” She shook her head. “That’s not the point.” She stopped and thought out what she really wanted to say. “You remember that day when you taught our class, the day you brought Jack to school?”
Samuel-299’s mouth turned down. “Of course.”
“That day, you told us to behave. You told us, actually, to be kind. We weren’t very kind. And no one has been very kind since.”
“The Carsons tend to—”
“No, I don’t just mean the Carsons,” Althea said. The Samuel might not know how badly her Gen had treated Jack whenever they’d seen him around town. How they mocked him, called him names, tried to get him to lose the control he always seemed to be clinging to. “The Carsons behave badly sometimes, but that’s nothing new. It’s the others, too. And those of us who don’t do anything about it, we’re just as bad, aren’t we?”
Althea couldn’t see Samuel-299’s face. He seemed to be studying the palm of his hand, rubbing it with his thumb. Maybe he was thinking of himself that day. While the Carsons threw pebbles at Jack, he’d been standing behind a window with a notepad.
“Can I ask you something? Do you really think he’d try to hurt us? That he’s the one doing those things to the fields and the tanks?”
“I think he’s given them reason to suspect him, and they’ve given him reason to do those things. But he didn’t, and so far, the Council has decided to tolerate him.”
“But you think they’ll change their minds.”
“Yes, I do. But don’t worry. You’ll know when that happens.”
Samuel turned to walk away, his shoulders tense.
“Wait, what do you mean?” she called after him. “What happens when they change their minds?”
Without slowing down or turning back to face her, he replied, “He’ll be dead, Althea.”
Chapter Eight
JACK
It was the sixth week Nyla-314 had come to him, and each time was wonderful and different, and they learned more about each other. He felt he knew her inside and out, the feel of her skin on his, her breath in his ear, their legs entangled, her soft whispering. And when she left, he’d lie on his bed and replay everything in his head, eyes closed, dazzled by the way she’d changed everything. How long, he always wondered, before she’d return?
Jack spent the whole week waiting for the night she’d arrive, waiting to spend those few hours with her. He’d think of her, of her depthless dark eyes, the way it felt when she touched him. And as much as he loved what they did together, he cherished more the moments after, when they’d lie together and his hand would drift over her body and he’d listen to her talk about the parties she’d be going to, or the experiments she was working on in one of the labs. In the daytime, he would seek the Nylas out in town and watch them from a distance. He could always pick her out from the way secret smiles seemed to pass between them. He wanted to be with her the way her friends were, but he couldn’t ask for too much, not so soon. He didn’t want to do anything that could jeopardize these few nights they were able to share.