our skin has made contact and my face is now in the crook of his neck, and to notice that smell of his, a spicy earthiness mixed with his fear and wonder and the purity of The Rift. I have just enough time to pat him lightly and step back. We walk a couple more minutes in silence until we are just a few feet from the jeep.
“Just promise me that this won’t be the last time I see you?” It’s a statement, not really a question. Ezra’s intake coordinator, Kendrick, is standing right behind us. I look over at him, and he raises his eyebrows. I stop for a minute and wonder why Ezra would ask me this. Does he like me? Does he think we can hang out later or something? He just saw what I did to those two Vikings. Didn’t that freak him out? Or maybe it’s because I was just the first person he saw when he got here and I was nice.
“Yeah. Okay,” I say, and Kendrick gives me a stone-faced look. “Ezra—sorry, what’s your last name?”
“Massad.”
“Is that Arabic?” I ask, because it would explain his remarkable coloring.
“Well, yeah, my dad is Moroccan and my mom is American.”
“Cool. Well, this is Kendrick. Kendrick, this is Ezra. Kendrick is going to be your main guy here for a while and answer all those questions you must have.” Kendrick is one of the better intake coordinators. He has a calming vibe about him and is pretty much a straight shooter.
“As-Salaam-Alaikum,” Kendrick says, putting his hand out.
Ezra shakes his hand. “Wa-Alaikum-Salaam. But I’m not really a practicing Muslim. And after today … well, I might have to table the whole religion thing.”
Kendrick laughs genuinely and opens the rear passenger door of the car. “I hear ya, man.”
Ezra and I look at each other. There is too much to say.
There is nothing to say.
“Bye.” I give him the warmest smile I can.
“Bye,” he says, also smiling, but his eyes are not happy. “Thanks again.” Not sure how to take that thanks, though. Everything above his mouth is a mixed bag of terror and crushing sadness. I watch the car drive off down the path and stare after it. I know Kendrick didn’t say anything at the time because he thought it would be easier for me to lie. Yeah, sure, I’ll come and see you. No problem, Ezra. The thing is, Citadels my age don’t go to the Village. You don’t have to be an adult to kill here at Battle Ground, but for some reason you need to be one to get posted to the Village. I have always known this, but now, suddenly, it strikes me as extremely worrisome. However, little does Kendrick know that I was being honest. Whatever it takes, I’m going to get into the Village.
I have decided that Ezra is going to be the only person in the world I will never lie to.
It always feels surreal to walk away from The Rift, from combat, from hours of intensive training—and then straight into Safeway. But it’s my turn to cook, and that means it’s my turn to shop. Have to keep up the pretense and all that.
I push my cart up and down the aisles. I notice the cans stacked neatly one on top of the next, the endless rows of cereal boxes and the bright reds and oranges of the fresh peppers in the produce department. Shoppers pull items off the shelves and fill up their carts, totally unaware of what’s going on just a few miles away. They might notice me, they might pick up that there is something different about me, but they would never be able to guess that I just put the smackdown on a bunch of actual Vikings.
When I get home, I have about thirty minutes until I have to make dinner. So I decide to just sit on our living room sofa. It is a couch we rarely use in a room we use even less. We are not a “Game night!” family. We are more of a “Great having dinner with you all, I’m going to my room now” family. I wonder if I caused this. I wonder if the thing in my head programmed me this way and my parents and brother just followed my lead. Or maybe, in a rare stroke of good luck, I was born into a naturally solitary family.
It’s not that I don’t love them. I just don’t know them … and they certainly don’t know me.
The walls in here are like most of the walls in our house—covered with artwork. A lot of the paintings and photographs I just don’t get at all. For the most part, those are the ones that were done by my dad’s art school friends. Some of the artists are famous now and their stuff is worth a lot of money. My dad never got his big break, even though I think his work is ten times better. He paints portraits mostly. I slide my backpack to the floor and stare at one of my favorite paintings by him. In it, a woman in bed, surrounded by letters, looks out a window. I feel her pain through the canvas. I feel like I know her even though she lives in New York and we have never met. Dad says it was more than twenty years ago and he can’t remember the exact circumstances that led her to sit for him, though he knows her name is Patricia and that they both lived in the same dumpy building. Did she ever get over whatever broke her heart so badly? The letters are yellowed and old and she isn’t exactly young. I used to think it was a love affair, but as I get older I feel like it’s something different; her grief seems deeper. Lately I’ve begun to wonder if she is even alive anymore. It scares me a little, that I feel so connected to an old woman whose sadness is so unbearable. I look away. Patricia is too much for me to deal with right now.
My father, Dan, is in his office, over our garage. He became a freelance graphic designer once I was born so he could bring in steady money. I’m not the only one in this house who’s had to make sacrifices for the greater good, and this connects me to my father in a way that I cannot connect to my mother. I try not to let this favoritism show. I feel guilty enough as it is. I lean back in the sofa and close my eyes. My dad always goes on about how he wants me to sit for him. I will never let this happen. If he stares at and studies me for hours, I am sure his brushes and mixed-up colors will reveal all my secrets. My parents will figure out that I am hiding something and I know that this will hurt them. My dad’s talent far outweighs my gift for lying, and that’s saying something, because I’m a pretty amazing liar.
My mom’s name is Vega, which means “star” in Swedish. I get my blond hair and fair skin from her. My green eyes come from Dad, and I got his dimples, too. When I first became a Citadel I hated my dimples because they made me look cute. “So adorable!” everyone would say whenever I smiled. How was I supposed to be a tough guy? A soldier? So adorable might as well be code for soft, and a Citadel needs to be anything but. Now that I’ve been in the field for three years, I am grateful for my dimples. I see death all the time. The hardness comes close to consuming me. My father won’t live forever, but I will always see his smile in my reflection, and it’s a great reminder that I’m the result of two loving people, and not what ARC has made me.
My mother moved to America from Stockholm for college and met my dad in New York City. My mom is a designer. She had big dreams, too, of being the next Diane von Furstenberg or Miuccia Prada. By the time she graduated from college, I think she let that dream go. Her classmates were risk takers, avant-garde designers who made crazy clothes out of recycled beer cans and raven feathers. She just wanted to make women look good. A school friend helped her get an interview at Nike. Since my dad grew up in Portland and his family was here, it seemed like the right move. They thought that only rich people could raise kids in Manhattan. They wanted children and so they relocated. We are, each of us, a product of decisions that other people made, one long chain of choices that stretch back to the beginning of humanity. Working so closely with The Rift, I have seen this firsthand. People arrive who have never heard of a world war, or who have never seen electricity, or who don’t understand how it’s possible that we are able to move freely from one country to another. History can be entirely rewritten based on one person’s choice. Somewhere out there, through The Rift, is a version of Ryn Whittaker who lives in an apartment building in New York City. She is just a normal seventeen-year-old. I wonder who that girl is and what she’ll become when she grows