UnWholly (Unwind Dystology #2)(119)

Miracolina decides to tell them an edited version of the truth, since they’re not going to believe it anyway. “I escaped from a parts pirate with a friend,” she tells them. “We were looking for a place of safety.”

The two cops look to each other. “So you had no idea that the airplane graveyard was an AWOL stronghold.”

“We were just told to go there—that we would be safe from the parts pirates.”

“Who told you?”

“Some guy,” she says, which sounds like something any kid would say, and effectively throws a wet rag over the question.

“How did you get tranq’d?”

When she doesn’t answer, the driver looks at his partner and says, “Prolly a trigger-happy rookie.” His partner just shrugs.

“Well, you’re here, and you’re safe. Was your friend a tithe too?”

Miracolina has to suppress a smile. “Yes,” she says, “he was.” She’s pleased she can lie to them in complete honesty, because after all it is the best policy.

“Well, no tithes turned themselves in,” Shotgun says. “Perhaps he got hauled off with the rest.”

“The rest?”

“Like we said, police action. Rounded up a huge nest of AWOLs. A few hundred at least.”

Again, something that once would have been good news for Miracolina—justice prevailing, order restored—now brings her nothing but melancholy.

“Any bigwigs brought in?” she asks, knowing that if Lev or his friend, the Akron AWOL, were caught, it would be big news—they’d all know.

“No such thing as a bigwig AWOL, sweetie. They’re all nonentities. Otherwise they wouldn’t be where they are.”

Again she sighs in relief, and the cops assume her sigh is exhaustion from the tranquilizers. “Lie back down, honey. You’ve got nothing to worry about. The parts pirates can’t get you now.” But she stays upright, not wanting to slip into a post-tranq stupor. There’s something off about the way they’re treating her. After all, she is an Unwind with a questionable story—and even though she’s a tithe, she’s never known Juvies to be so nice to kids about to be unwound. As they said, they see Unwinds as nonentities. You don’t call nonentities “honey” and “sweetie.”

As they pull into the local Juvey headquarters, she begins to wonder what the process is now. “I was supposed to go to Wood Hollow Harvest Camp,” she tells them. “Will I still go there, or to a camp in Arizona?”

“Neither,” the driver says.

“Excuse me?”

He parks the car and turns to her. “From what I understand, your parents never actually signed the unwind order.”

That leaves Miracolina speechless.

They never signed it. Now she remembers them telling her that as she stood at the door—but she told them it was her choice to go, and she got into the van anyway.

“Even if you had made it to Wood Hollow, you would have just been sent home once they double-checked the paperwork. Can’t unwind without an order.”

She laughs at the irony of it. All this time fighting to finally be tithed, and not only won’t it happen, but it was never going to happen. She wants to be angry—but how can she fault her parents for loving her too much to let her go? She wonders how things would have been different if she had known. Would she still have taken the journey west with Lev after escaping from the parts pirate? Would she have stayed with him long enough to forgive him, granting him that absolution he so desperately needed?

To her amazement, the answer is no.

Had she known she’d never be tithed, that call she made to her parents wouldn’t have just been a message that she was alive—it would have been a plea to come and get her. She would have let Lev finish his journey alone—solitary and unforgiven.

“I know how tithes are,” says the shotgun cop sympathetically. “If it’s what you really want, you can take it up with your parents when they get here.”

And although it is what she wants, she’s coming to terms with the disappointment of staying whole.

“Thank you,” she says. “Thank you so much.” But it’s not them she’s thanking.

Either things happen for a reason, or they happen for no reason at all. Either one’s life is a thread in a glorious tapestry or humanity is just a hopelessly tangled knot. Miracolina has always believed in the tapestry, and now she feels blessed to have had a glimpse of its smallest corner. Now she knows her desire to be tithed was not there to leave her in a divided state—it was there to propel her into the right place at the right time to have a hand in the redemption of the boy who would blow himself up.

Who would have thought that the singular whole of her forgiveness was a more valuable gift than a hundred of her parts?

So she will return into the arms of her wildly emotional parents and will live the life they dream for her until she can find her own dream. She had no tithing party, but right now, she resolves that she will have herself a grand celebration someday. Perhaps a sweet sixteen. And she will find Lev, wherever in the world he is, ask him to attend, and refuse to take no for an answer. And then, finally, she will dance with him.





81 ? Hayden

To the best of Hayden’s knowledge, they’re the last ones left. There are fourteen others in the ComBom with him, all kids from the various communication shifts, who put more faith in him than in anyone else—which shocks Hayden. He had no idea there was anyone who looked up to him. One kid is noticeably absent. Before power was cut to the cameras, Hayden saw Jeevan getting into the Dreamliner with the other storks, his arms packed with pilfered weapons.