UnWholly

“So is this how it’s going to be?” he asks. “You’re just going to stew and bitch and make things miserable for everyone here? Don’t you want something more out of life?”

“No,” she tells him, “because my life ended on my thirteenth birthday. As far as I’m concerned, from that moment on I was supposed to be a part of other people’s lives. I was fine with that. It’s what I wanted. It’s what I still want. Why do you find that so hard to believe?”

He looks at her for a moment too long, and she tries to imagine him all dressed in white as a tithe. She could like that boy; still pure and untainted. But the kid before her now is a different person.

“Sorry,” she says, not sorry at all. “I guess I failed deprogramming school.” She turns her back to him and waits a few moments, knowing he’s just standing there, then turns again—only to find that he’s not. He has left, closing the door so quietly she didn’t hear.

27 • Lev

Lev sits in on yet another meeting of the tithe rescue staff. He doesn’t know why they include him; Cavenaugh never listens to what he says. These meetings truly make him feel like a mascot, a favorite pet. This time, however, he’s determined to make them listen.

Even before they begin, Lev speaks loudly enough to get everyone’s attention, stealing the floor from Cavenaugh before he has the chance to take it. “Why is the portrait of me back in the dining hall?” he asks. “It was already vandalized once—why put it back?” The question quiets everyone down and brings the room to order.

“I ordered it restored and returned,” says Cavenaugh. “The comfort and focus it provides the ex-tithes is invaluable.”

“I agree!” says one of the teachers. “I think it draws their focus toward the positive.” Then she punctuates her remark with a brow

“Well, I don’t like it, and I don’t approve,” Lev tells them, for the first time voicing his feelings out loud. “I shouldn’t be some sort of god-thing. I shouldn’t be put on a pedestal. I’m not and never have been this image you’re trying to make me.”

There’s silence around the room as everyone waits to see how Cavenaugh will react. He takes his time and finally says, “We all have our jobs here. Yours is very clear and very simple: to be an example for the other ex-tithes to follow. Have you noticed kids have been letting their hair grow? At first I thought your hair would be off-putting, but now they are modeling themselves on you. It’s what they need at this juncture.”

“I’m not a role model!” Lev yells. He stands up, not even realizing he’s come to his feet. “I was a clapper. A terrorist! I made awful decisions!”

But Cavenaugh remains calm. “It’s your good decisions we care about. Now sit down and let us get on with this meeting.”

Lev looks around the table but sees no support. If anything, he sees them all tallying this outburst as one of his bad decisions, best forgotten. He boils with the same kind of anger that once turned him into a clapper, but he bites it back, sits down, and remains silent for the rest of the meeting.

It’s only as the meeting breaks up that Cavenaugh takes his hand. Not to shake it, but to flip it over and scrutinize his fingers—or more specifically, to look under his fingernails.

“Best clean those a little better, Lev,” he says. “Spray paint comes out with turpentine, I think.”

28 • Risa

Risa does not have an Easter social. She can’t even be sure which day is Easter—she’s lost track of the days. In fact, she can’t even be sure where she is. At first she’s held by the Juvenile Authority in Tucson, then transferred in a windowless armored vehicle to another detention facility about two hours away—in Phoenix, she presumes. Here is where they send in interrogators to ask her questions.

“How many kids are in the Graveyard?”

“A bunch.”

“Who sends your supplies?”

“George Washington. Or is it Abraham Lincoln? I forget.”

“How often do you receive new arrivals?”

“About as often as you beat your wife.”

The interrogators are infuriated by her lack of cooperation, but she has no intention of telling them anything useful. Besides, she knows they’re asking her questions they already know the answers to. The questions are merely tests to see whether she’ll tell the truth or lie. She doesn’t do either. Instead she makes a mockery of each interrogation.

“Your cooperation might make things easier on you,” they tell her.

“I don’t want things easy,” she responds. “I’ve had a hard life. I’d rather stick with what’s familiar.”

They let her go hungry but don’t let her starve. They tell her they have Elvis Robert Mullard in custody and they’re cutting him a deal for information—but she knows they’re lying, because if they had him, they’d know it’s not Mullard at all, but Co

This is how it goes for two weeks. Then one day in walks a Juvey-cop. He aims a gun at her and unceremoniously tranqs her—not in the leg, where it would hurt the least, but right in the chest, where it stings until she loses consciousness.

She awakes in a different cell. A little newer and larger, perhaps, but still a cell. She has no idea where she has been transported this time, or why. This new cell is not at all designed for a paraplegic, and her captors have offered no help since she arrived. Not that she’d accept it if they did, but it’s as if they want her to struggle over the lip of the bathroom threshold, or onto her bed, which is abnormally high—just enough to make getting into it an ordeal.

She suffers a week of food brought in by a silent guard in a rent-a-cop uniform. She knows she’s no longer in the hands of the Juvenile Authority, but who her new captors are is a mystery. These new jailers ask no questions, and that concerns her the same way that Co

All this time she’s forced out thoughts of Co

Risa has no idea what her future holds now. All she knows is that she must focus on that future and not on Co

•   •   •

A few days later Risa finally has an actual visitor: a well-dressed woman with an air of authority.

“Good morning, Risa. It’s a pleasure to finally meet the girl behind the hullabaloo. “

Risa immediately decides that anyone who uses the word “hullabaloo” ca

The woman sits down in the single chair in the cell. It’s a chair that has never been used, because it’s not exactly designed for a paraplegic. In fact, it seems specifically designed not to be accessible to Risa, like most everything else in her cell. “I trust they’ve been treating you well?”

“I haven’t been ‘treated’ at all. I’ve been ignored.”

“You haven’t been ignored,” the woman tells her. “You’ve just been allowed some time to settle. Some time alone, to think.”

“Somehow I doubt I’ve ever been alone. . . .” Risa throws a glance to a large wall mirror, through which she can occasionally see shadows. “So am I some sort of political prisoner?” She asks, getting right to the point. “If you’re not going to torture me, do you just plan to leave me here to rot? Or maybe you’re selling me to a parts pirate. At least the parts that work.”