Your One & Only(47)
On the third day of their visit, they’d been in the fields outside of town and passed a long, low building made of white brick, with thin slats on the roof for ventilation. A Hassan had entered the building carrying a cattle prod. A wild shout soon echoed from inside, followed by the rasping noise of the activated prod and a voice yelling a curse.
Jonah had been in Copan at that time. Thinking of Jack being held in that white-brick warehouse made her shudder.
They approached the Althea dorm, a solid brick building facing east, away from Vispera. Yellow curtains hung from the arched windows, adorning the structure with the Altheas’ color.
Althea-298 left after Althea’s sisters met her at the door. As soon as she climbed the front steps, they all circled her. The anger burning inside her about Copan and Jonah eased away almost instantly as they stroked her back and hair, leading her inside. At first Althea resisted. Surely anger wasn’t always bad. Surely sometimes there was a reason to hang on to it. But it felt good to hear their murmurs of sympathy as they absorbed Althea’s frustration and diffused it throughout their group. The sisters undressed her, and she lifted her arms to let them slip a cotton nightgown over her head. She closed her eyes as they tied the yellow ribbons at her throat and brushed her hair. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she felt them around her so close their breath was on her face.
“Tell us about Jack,” they said. It didn’t matter that it was Althea-318 speaking. The appeal came from all of them, their voices joined as one in her mind. “Think about him now,” they whispered. “And then we’ll feel it too.”
Most of what Althea felt was confusion. The Inga’s words rang in her ears. Her sisters knew her, cared about her. Her secrets had created distance between them, and they wanted to bridge that distance, that was all. Her body relaxed against their stroking hands and their senses wove more deeply with hers.
On the way to school once, Althea had found a caterpillar, a fat, emerald-green thing. She’d cupped it in her palms and carried it with her. It had wriggled, and its feet tickled, sticking dryly to her skin all through class. When recess came, her sisters finally realized she was keeping something from them. They’d opened her hands and sighed and exclaimed over it, passed it around, given it a name, and then kept it in a jar with leaves until it was forgotten about and died. Althea imagined her hands cradling memories of Jack the way they had the caterpillar, her palms cupping them in darkness.
The brush tugged at her hair, and the fingers, caressing softly a moment ago, tightened against her. A longing that had no words seeped into her as her sisters sought to draw her feelings out.
Althea shifted away from them. “I’m tired,” she said.
Their faces darkened as their touch and minds pulled away. Althea breathed in relief even as the emptiness and distance she’d created between them frightened her. But something about the brief times she’d spent with Jack made her want to hang on to those moments and keep them for herself. She’d begun to feel that if she communed, the feeling she had when she was with him wouldn’t be hers anymore. It’d change and be lost, like the caterpillar.
Althea noted the significant looks her sisters passed to one another as they drifted off to their own beds, realizing they would get nothing more from her about Jack. Her thoughts went back to him. She ran her finger along the scar on her wrist, relishing the feel of the soft white skin, and it came to her suddenly that she was, in fact, fracturing. She’d denied it to herself as much as to the Council, but she knew. Her sisters were only just beginning to fear it. Despite the lingering anxiety hovering in the room that emanated from them like a heady perfume, they hadn’t yet let the word creep into their consciousness. But Althea knew what they didn’t.
The night closed in, black and foreboding. Her sisters moaned softly in their sleep, sensing the sudden and chilling disquiet that had come over her. Even in the midst of her fear, however, she knew it was true that she was fracturing. She knew, because she didn’t want a cure.
Chapter Fourteen
JACK
Jack had spent the entire day working in the fields, the massive thrashing combines churning on either side of him. They trundled through the rows like great lumbering beetles, their teeth gnashing into the earth, lifting roots and rocks. More than once, he’d been put to work tinkering with a slowed or stalled machine, but mostly he’d been cutting wheat and barley with nothing but a curved blade. It was such a joke that he was out there for six hours doing work that took a machine twenty minutes. Tired and hungry, he returned in the evening to the yellow barn where a meager plate of food awaited him.
The Hassans who supervised the fields kept an eye on him most of the time, and occasionally a Viktor walked past. Jack didn’t know why the Council cared whether he ran away or not. The Carson who’d come to the barn had certainly thought he was pretty useless. If they would just give him some supplies, he’d leave, and they’d never have to deal with him again. But he had nothing, only the clothes he wore, and he didn’t love the idea of trying to survive in the jungle without food or even a proper knife. Anyway, he couldn’t leave. He needed to see Althea.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, eating from a tin plate, and then she was there, standing at the bars. He stood, wiping his blistered, dirt-smeared hands on his pants, but those were filthy as well. It was hopeless. Althea gave no sign of noticing his appearance. She smoothed her hair, which had curled in the humid air, and placed her hand on a bar of the cell.