• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 931 0

afraid. She didn’t want to be cured; she didn’t want to stop loving my dad. I remember she told me that once, just before she died. ‘They’re trying to take him from me,’ she said. She was smiling so sadly. ‘They’re trying to take him, but they can’t.’ She used to wear one of his pins around her neck, on a chain. She kept it hidden most of the time, but that night she had it out and was staring at it. It was this strange, long, silver dagger-thing, with two bright jewels in the hilt, like eyes. My dad used to wear it on his sleeve. After he died she wore it every day, never took it off even to bathe. . . .”

I suddenly realize that Alex has removed his hand and taken two steps away from me. I turn around and he’s staring at me, white faced and shocked, as though he’s just seen a ghost.

“What?” I wonder if it’s possible I’ve offended him in some way. Something about the way he’s staring makes fear start beating at my chest, a frantic flutter. “Did I say something wrong?”

He shakes his head, an almost imperceptible motion. The rest of his body stays as straight and tense as a wire stretched between two posts. “How big was it? The pin, I mean.” His voice sounds strangely high-pitched.

“The point isn’t the pin, Alex, the point is—”

“How big was it?” Louder now, and forceful.

“I don’t know. Like the size of a thumb, maybe.” I’m completely baffled by Alex’s behavior. He has the most pained look on his face, as though he’s trying to swallow a whole porcupine. “It was originally my grandfather’s—made just for him, a reward for performing a special service for the government. Unique. That’s what my dad always said, anyway.”

Alex doesn’t say anything for a minute. He turns away, and with the moon shining down on him, and his profile so hard and straight, he could be built out of stone. I’m glad he’s not staring at me anymore, though. He was starting to freak me out.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” he asks finally, slowly, as though every word is an effort.

It seems like a weird thing to ask in the middle of a completely unrelated conversation, and I start to get annoyed. “Were you even listening to me?”

“Lena, please.” There it is: the strangled, choking note again. “Just answer me. Are you working?”

“Not until Saturday.” I rub my arms. The wind blowing in has a chilly edge to it. It lifts the hair on my arms, makes goose bumps prick up on my legs. Autumn is coming. “Why?”

“You have to meet me. I have—I have something to show you.” Alex turns back to me again, and his eyes are so wild and black, his face so unfamiliar-looking, I take a step backward.

“You’ll have to do better than that.” I try to laugh, but what comes out is a little gurgling sound. I’m scared, I want to say. You’re scaring me. “Can you at least give me a hint?”

Alex takes a deep breath, and for a minute I think he won’t answer me.

But he does.

“Lena,” he says at last. “I think your mother is alive.”

Chapter Twenty-One

LIBERTY IN ACCEPTANCE;

PEACE IN ENCLOSURE;

HAPPINESS IN RENUNCIATION

—Words carved above the gates at the entrance to the Crypts

When I was in fourth grade, I went on a field trip to the Crypts. It’s mandated that every child visit at least once in elementary school as part of the government’s anticrime, antiresistance education. I don’t remember much about my visit except for a feeling of utter terror, a dim impression of coldness, of blackened concrete hallways, slicked with mold and moisture, and heavy electronic doors. To be honest, I think I’ve successfully blocked out most of the memory. The whole purpose of the trip was to traumatize us into staying on the straight-and-narrow, and they definitely had the traumatize part right.

What I do remember is stepping out afterward into the bright sunshine of a beautiful spring day with a sense of overwhelming, overpowering relief—and also confusion, as I realized that in order to exit the Crypts we actually had to descend several staircases to the ground floor. The whole time we’d been inside, even as we climbed, I had the impression of being buried underground, locked several