Kristen Simmons - Article 5

“He’s not really a monster, anyway,” I said. “It’s everyone else that makes him that way because he’s different. It’s sad, you know? How people can tear you down like that. How you try to do the right thing but you just can’t.”

Like telling Roy to stay away from my mother, I almost added, and felt my face heat up.

He tilted his head, eyes peering deep inside of me in a way that made me feel exposed, like I’d never really been seen before, yet at the same time safe, like he’d never tell a soul what he’d found. His fingers laced with mine.

“It sounds lonely,” he said.

I OPENEDthe book and gently unfolded a small bundle of papers, two of them sherbet green. These were legal documents, passing on the deed of his parent’s house to the surviving family member, Chase Jennings. It saddened me to think of this weight he carried.

The next papers, and there were thirty or so of them, were pounded thin and creased so severely they could have ripped if I’d opened them too fast. My pulse raced forward. I recognized the paper … the penmanship.

These were my letters. The ones I’d written to Chase in the MM. I opened a few, knowing I needed to hurry but not able to resist the temptation to verify they were real. I read through my meaningless small talk: what Beth and I were doing, how classes were going, conversations I’d had with my mother. My words produced a flood of nostalgia. The hard feel of the kitchen table and the smell of vanilla candles as I wrote late into the night. The fresh concern for his safety. The longing I’d felt for him.

I’d written about some of this. I’d told him that I missed him. That I was waiting impatiently to hear about his life. That I thought of him constantly. I’d finished each letter with “Love, Ember,” and it had been true. I’d loved Chase Jennings.

I thought of how he’d held me outside and wondered if I didn’t love him still.

Acknowledging this made my heart twist with confusion. He was infuriating and inconsistent. Bossy and overprotective and vague about everything. No one bothered me as much as him.

Because, I knew, no one meant as much to me. No one except my mother, and the love I had for her felt entirely different. Like needing oxygen and needing water.

Somehow, I was annoyed. Why had he kept these letters? At times it seemed he could barely stand being around me, and yet he’d carried mementos of our relationship through the service and halfway across the country. How separate was the old Chase, my Chase, from the soldier, after all?

And what would the hope that he still cared cost me?

I placed the letters back into the novel, careful to leave them just as they’d been found. When I did so, my eyes fell upon a quote, spoken by the narrator, Victor, to his beloved.

“I have one secret, Elizabeth, a dreadful one; when revealed to you, it will chill your frame with horror, and then, far from being surprised at my misery, you will only wonder that I survive what I have endured.”

I shivered involuntarily. Apparently my false identity hadn’t come out of nowhere.

“HOWcome you’re so big?” Ronnie said in wonderment from the dining room. He stood on top of his chair to try to measure up to Chase, but still fell drastically short.

“I eat lots of vegetables,” Chase lied, eliciting an encouraging thumbs-up from Mary Jane. “You mind if I sit here?” He’d chosen a seat that backed against the wall so that he had a clear view of the room.

“Nope,” said the kid.

“Use your manners, Ronnie,” said Mary Jane. I was helping her set the table.

“No, thank you, ” said Ronnie.

She laughed nervously. “I mean, sit down please. Over here, by Mom.” She clearly wanted her son—the only one who seemed comfortable with the dinner arrangement—between his mother and father. Which left me relegated to the stranger’s side of the table with Chase.

I hated that Patrick hadn’t taken us straight to Lewisburg. His earlier friendliness had washed away, and he now gave off the distinct impression that he regretted asking us inside.

And to think I’d banked on just such kindness when I’d tried to run away.

We gathered around the table, and Ronnie gave the slowest rendition of Johnny Appleseed I had ever heard. The tension thickened. Finally we were eating, focused on something other than each other. I had hardly swallowed the first bite of pot roast before jamming the loaded fork back into my mouth. I told myself to eat as much as I could; we didn’t know when we’d get the chance at another hot meal.

I let Chase do most of the talking: He was more skilled at lying than I was. He embellished on his story about his family relations in Lewisburg, never saying enough to draw suspicion. I was impressed at how much he talked. He hadn’t said that much to me in the last week.

While they were focused on him, I snuck a bread roll into my pocket for later.

As the conversation turned to Ronnie, the signs of Chase’s exhaustion became more obvious; his eyes seemed to focus on nothing, he hunched over his bowl. How much had he slept in the last few days? Last night, barely any. The night before we’d been on the run. Before that, who knew?

And tonight he wouldn’t sleep, either. Our next minute alone would be spent deciding to stay the night or sneak out. Either way, there’d be no relaxing.

The mood remained uneasy for the rest of dinner. Unless Ronnie was telling some story, no one spoke. I began to feel more trapped by the second. The threat of a curfew violation and the morning’s ride to Lewisburg were the only things holding me to my seat.

In response to the strain, Mary Jane turned on a countertop radio, and I joined her in the kitchen while she washed dishes. The crackling sound reminded me of the MM radio in Chase’s bag. I hoped for music but was not so lucky.

The newscast had already begun. The reporter, a woman named Felicity Bridewell, clipped the ends of her words with an annoying sense of self-importance. She was talking about an increase of crime in the Red Zones and the FBR’s decree to boost their presence at the borders.

I remembered the highway patrolman with a shiver.

The men’s voices in the other room paused, and I knew Chase was listening now, too. I stood by in anxious silence, my mouth dry.

“… investigating the murder of another FBR officer in Virginia earlier today. Authorities have determined this to be the second victim of whom they are now referring to as the Virginia Sniper. No witnesses have yet come forward….”

A sniper killing FBR officers… was this linked to the stolen uniform truck in Tennessee? I felt an odd tingling in my chest. It wasn’t right to wish for violence, but people were fighting back, and that made me feel hopeful .

Before my mother was taken, I’d accepted how ingrained the MM was in our lives. I didn’t like it, but the truth was that not everything they did was bad. The Reformation Act had instituted soup kitchens and mortgage freezes, things we might have died without. But since the overhaul, my views had begun to refocus. It now seemed blatantly obvious that those programs were just leverage, making us dependent on the very machine that oppressed us. The schism between the government and the people had never felt wider.

The MM had taken away my life. I couldn’t go back to school; I couldn’t go home. I might never see Beth or Ryan again. For the first time since the War, I envisioned what things would be like with no MM. With no Red Zones and curfews. No reform schools and Statutes. And I realized I could survive, because Chase and I were doing it right now.