“Marika, there’s something I want to tell you. Something you should know.”
“I don’t understand why you’re doing this to me,” I say to Vosch. I know he’s watching.
“I forgive you,” my father says.
I can’t catch my breath. There’s a sharp pain in my chest, like a knife driving home.
“Please,” I beg Vosch. “Please don’t do this.”
“You had to leave,” my father says. “You didn’t have a choice, and anyway, what happened is my own damn fault. You didn’t make me a drunk.”
Instinctively, I press my hands against my ears. But his voice isn’t in the room; it’s in me.
“I didn’t last long after you left,” my father tries to reassure me. “Only a couple hours.”
We made it as far as Cincinnati. A little over a hundred miles. Then his stash ran out. He begged me not to leave him, but I knew if I didn’t find some alcohol fast, he’d die. I found some—a bottle of vodka tucked underneath a mattress—after breaking into sixteen houses, if you can call it breaking in, since every house was abandoned and all I had to do was step through a broken window. I was so happy to find that bottle, I actually kissed it.
But I was too late. He was dead by the time I made it back to our camp.
“I know you beat yourself up over that, but I would’ve died either way, Marika. Either way. You did what you thought you had to do.”
There’s no hiding from his voice. No running from it, either. I open my eyes and look straight into his. “I know this is a lie. You aren’t real.”
He smiles. The same smile as when I made a particularly good move in a match. The delighted teacher.
“That’s what I’ve come to tell you!” He rubs his long fingers against his thighs, and I can see the dirt encrusted beneath the nails. “That’s the lesson, Marika. That’s what they want you to understand.”
Warm hand against cool skin: He’s touching my arm. The last time I felt his hand was against my cheek, in hard, stinging slaps while the other hand held me still. Bitch! Don’t leave me. Don’t you ever leave me, bitch! Each bitch! punctuated by a slap. His mind was gone. Seeing things that weren’t there in the profound darkness that slammed down every night. Hearing things in the awful silence that threatened to crush you every day. On the night he died, he woke up screaming, clawing at his eyes. He could feel bugs inside them, crawling.
Those same swollen eyes staring at me now. And the claw marks beneath them still fresh. Another circle, another silver cord: Now I am the one seeing things, hearing things, feeling things that aren’t there in awful silence.
“First they taught us not to trust them,” he whispers. “Then they taught us not to trust each other. Now they’re teaching us we can’t even trust ourselves.”
And I whisper back, “I don’t understand.”
He’s fading away. As I drop deeper into lightless depths, my father fades into depthless light. He kisses me on the forehead. A benediction. A curse.
“You belong to them now.”
55
THE CHAIR IS EMPTY AGAIN. I’m alone. Then I remind myself I was alone when the chair wasn’t empty. I wait for the pounding of my heart to subside. I will myself to stay calm, to control my breathing. The drug will work its way through my system and I’ll be fine. You’re safe, I tell myself. Perfectly safe.
The blond recruit I punched in the throat comes in. He’s carrying a tray of food: a slab of gray mystery meat, potatoes, a mushy pile of beans, and a tall glass of orange juice. He sets the tray by the bed, pushes the button to raise me to a sitting position, rotates the tray in front of me, then stands there, arms crossed, as if he’s waiting for something.
“Let me know how it tastes,” he whispers hoarsely. “I can’t eat solid food for three more weeks.”
His skin is fair, which makes his brown, deep-set eyes seem even darker. He isn’t big, not buff like Zombie or blocky like Poundcake. He’s tall and lean, a swimmer’s body. There’s a quiet intensity about him, in the way he carries himself but especially in the eyes, a carefully contained force coiled just beneath the surface.
I’m not sure what he expects me to say. “Sorry.”
“Sucker punch.” Drumming his fingers on his forearm. “You’re not going to eat?”
I shake my head. “Not hungry.”
Is the food real? Is the kid who brings the food real? The uncertainty of my own experience is crushing. I am drown
ing in an infinite sea. Sinking slowly, the weight of the lightless depths forcing me down, forcing the air from my lungs, squeezing the blood from my heart.