Emmy Laybourne - Savage Drift

“You saved your friends. That’s what counts. You gotta let the rest go.”

I look at my feet so I won’t see the compassion in Mario’s eyes.

Sometimes it makes me want to break things.

Venger drifts off around the side of Excellence and I decide I can play again.

Courtyard period is almost over and the sun is starting to go down when Aidan suddenly begs Freddy to come to the john with him. And Freddy, of course, refuses, and Aidan starts to race for the building and wets himself.

He stops running, aghast. His chinos are turning dark brown and there’s a puddle underfoot on the cement tile deck.

“Scietto!” Venger’s voice booms out across the courtyard. “Look what your boy did!”

And Mario’s already up, crossing to Aidan as fast as he can hobble. Which is not fast. He’s old.

I get there first. “It’s okay,” I say to Aidan.

Venger is on us.

“How old are you, boy?” he sneers.

Aidan sniffles. “Eight,” through his tears.

“Eight years old and messing yourself like a toddler, aren’t you ashamed?”

My pulse is banging in my neck now.

“All right,” Mario says, drawing near, taking short, gaspy breaths. “Little accident. We’ll fix it.”

Mario puts out a hand on my shoulder to steady himself.

“Can the boy go inside and get cleaned up?”

“Courtyard period’s almost over,” Venger snaps. “He can wait out here with everyone else. It will teach him a lesson.”

A little sob/sigh catches in Aidan’s throat. His face is twisted in misery.

Venger’s a sadistic a-hole and I wish, I wish, I wish I could teach him a lesson.

“But this mess can’t stay on my courtyard,” Venger says.

“I’ll clean it up,” Mario says.

“Darn right you will,” Venger growls. “You’re his sponsor.”

“No problemo,” Mario says. “Say, can I send the girl for a rag?”

“I’d recommend it,” Venger says. “This puddle better be gone by dinner bell or you’re all docked.”

None of the kids can stand to lose a meal. We’re all stick-skinny as it is.

Dinner’s in maybe ten minutes so I run.

My feet slide on the linoleum in my stupid house shoes. Not the first time I’ve cursed these things.

I nearly crash into a fat man in stained overalls who’s gazing listlessly out of a frosted window.

“Watch it!” he yells.

I skid away, not bothering with an apology.

When I return to the courtyard, with one of our two towels, it’s maybe three minutes to the bell.

Mario and the kids are standing there. Aidan’s shivering and crying. Heather’s crying now, too.

I drop to my knees and begin to wipe up the puddle.

Then, bam, there’s a foot pushing me over.

“I said SCIETTO was supposed to clean it up!” Venger says.

“She’s sorry, she’s sorry!” Mario sputters.

For his sake, I speak. “I’m sorry,” I say.

The dinner bell rings.

“Yeah, you’re sorry,” Venger spits. “Seeing as you’re so eager to clean, I guess you can stay out here and clean it good.”

Venger pushes Aidan and Heather toward Plaza 900.

“Say, Mr. Venger,” Mario stammers. “I’ve been meaning to apologize about that mess at the fence a few days ago—”

“Go on,” Venger says. “Scietto, take your brats and feed them!”

“Josie wanted to apologize, too, didn’t cha, hun?”

Mario is telling me to beg.

He knows Venger’s been waiting for some way to pay me back for my defiance at the gate.

I am not going to beg.

I drop to my hands and knees and start to scrub.

“No, she’s too proud to apologize,” Venger says. “It’s okay, Scietto. I’ll take care of your girl. Go on, now, go have your supper.”

Mario says nothing in reply, and for that I am glad.

He gets the kids out of there, before Venger changes his mind.

Astrid was saying, “Oh my God,” on repeat.

I seemed to be stuck on, “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay!” she finally snapped. “She’s totally going to track me down. With that letter she has my real name, my whole story. She’s going to rat me out!”

Her face was flushed and her breathing shallow. She was going to make herself sick with this, I thought, and then I burst out, “Enough! Stop! We have to think about what she said.”

I held her two arms and got her to look at me.

“She said that most women who hear about the testing refuse at first but then change their minds when they hear about the money.”

Her expression shifted into doubt.

“And she said pregnant women who’ve been exposed need special care, Astrid. I think we should come clean with her and listen to what she has to say. We need to think about the health of the baby.”

“Do you think that I’m not worried about the health of the baby?” She was furious now. “I lie there at night and I feel it moving inside me. And I worry so much about what might be wrong! I just want to get somewhere safe.”

“But it is safe here!”

Astrid looked away from me. I went on. “I just… I can’t think that the US Army would take women away without their consent. It would be totally illegal, Astrid. It would be immoral. Wrong.”

I waited for her to say something like, “It’s illegal for them to keep the Os locked up at Mizzou.” Or, “Wasn’t it immoral when the US government made the compounds in the first place?”

Instead she just looked me in the eye and said, “I want to find Jake.”

I fumed.

We searched the camp for Jake and I fumed.

Here I was, totally supporting her, trying to help her to calm down and think rationally, and she was going to turn to Jake at the first disagreement.

Maybe Jake was right. Maybe I was whipped. Maybe I gave in to her all the time. Why else would she shut me down when I tried to talk sense to her?

The man of the hour, of course, was nowhere to be found.

Not in the dining hall. (Thankfully they were still serving breakfast. I wolfed down two bacon and egg sandwiches while Astrid stood waiting irritably, almost tapping her foot with impatience. She wouldn’t eat anything but a banana. Said the smell of eggs made her want to puke.)

He was not on the grounds—that we could see.

And not in the rec hall.

We couldn’t find Alex and Sahalia, either, for that matter.

Finally, we ran into Mrs. McKinley and Mrs. Dominguez, out with the little kids, way, way down on the eleventh green. They were building a playhouse in a thick stand of trees at the edge of the course that bordered the road.

“Astrid! Dean!” All the kids besides Chloe clamored. “Did you see the letter? Isn’t it cool?”