Cecelia Ahern: Perfect

“I’m okay,” I mumble, hiding my flushed face in the darkness of the Jeep.

Carrick drives and I sit behind him, our eyes meeting often in the rearview mirror. Lennox sits beside him in the passenger seat, equally large in stature. Both of them looking like soldiers.

“Where are we going?” I finally ask.

Carrick’s eyes meet mine in the mirror and my stomach flips. “Home.”

TWELVE

“HOME” TAKES US through back roads and trails, away from towns and main roads. Every lamppost and billboard is covered in election campaign posters. I see Enya Sleepwell from the Vital Party, a politician who attended my trial. I didn’t know it at the time, but she was there to support me. I didn’t even know who she was until journalist Pia Wang questioned me about her. Enya Sleepwell recently became leader of the Vital Party and one of the main items on her campaign agenda is to discuss rights for the Flawed. It’s a risky topic for a politician: The Guild and the government go hand in hand. But despite her choice of issues, her popularity is growing week by week.

On the poster, her cropped hair and reassuring smile stand above the slogan COMPASSION AND LOGIC. These are my words from the trial, when explaining why I aided the old Flawed man on the bus.

Why did I help him? All the confused faces kept asking me during the trial. It was beyond belief, incomprehensible, that anyone would want to aid a Flawed, a second-class citizen.

I helped him because I had compassion and logic. I felt for him, and helping him made sense. They were the first words that came to me in the court, I hadn’t planned them. The only story that had been planned was the lie that Crevan had wanted me to tell. It feels so peculiar to me to see those words in big, bold writing on posters, like they’ve been stolen from me, and have been bent to someone else’s purpose.

I want to ask Carrick and Lennox a million questions, but I know not to ask anything. The atmosphere is tense in the car, even between Carrick and Lennox as they decide which way to traverse.

The Guild has increased the number of Whistleblowers on the ground. Judge Crevan is in a panic trying to find me; the most Flawed person in the history of the Guild is not allowed to just disappear. Crevan has widened searches to all public and private properties, the hope being that there will be less support for me when members of the public are made to look like Flawed aiders in front of their neighbors.

Crevan has even started delaying the Flawed curfew buses. Designed to bring the Flawed population home in time for their 11:00 PM curfew, people are now missing their curfews at the hands of the Guild, and they’re being punished. This is all in my name. Crevan is playing a game with me. I will continue to punish the innocent until you come out of your hiding place.

Riots have begun to break out in the city. The Guild is characterizing them as random outbursts from Flawed groups, but Granddad believes it’s not just Flawed who are feeling angry about the Guild. He believes regular people are feeling uncomfortable about Flawed rules, too, and that they’re starting to speak out. I know now that there is sense in what I once considered Granddad’s nonsensical rants. Whatever excuses the Guild gave to the public, I know that Crevan’s real reason for this surge in Whistleblower activity is to find me.

There are times when I’ve wanted to give myself up, for the sake of others, but Granddad always stops me. He tells me that I can do more for people over time and they will appreciate it then. It just takes patience.

We see a Whistleblowers’ checkpoint up ahead, and take a sharp left down the back of a cluster of shops, an alley so narrow we have to squeeze by the Dumpsters. Carrick stops the car and they pore over the map some more in search of a new route. This happens a few times. The relief that I experienced on seeing Carrick has now dissipated as I realize I’m still not safe. I yearn for that feeling of not having to constantly look over my shoulder.

Beads of sweat glisten on Carrick’s brow. I take the opportunity of sitting behind him to study him. His black hair is closely shaven; his neck, shoulders, everything wide, muscular, and strong. Soldier is what I named him in the castle cells before I knew his real name. His cheekbones and jaw are perfectly defined, all hard edges. His eyes, a color I’ve never been able to work out, still look black in the rearview mirror. I study them: hard, intense, quick, always analyzing, looking for new angles. He catches my stare and, embarrassed, I quickly avert my eyes. When I finally glimpse back I catch him looking at me.

“Home, sweet home,” Lennox says, and I can see them both visibly relax. But I look out the window at our destination and I tense even more. This is not the “home” I was expecting. Or hoping for.

We drive toward a compound surrounded by twenty-foot-high fences with rows of barbed wire. It looks like a prison. Carrick looks back at me again, to gauge my reaction, his black eyes fixed on me.

I have broken the most basic rule that Granddad taught me. Don’t trust anyone.

And for the first time ever, I doubt Carrick.

THIRTEEN

FLOODLIGHTS LIGHT THE SKY, I can barely see past the front window they’re so bright, and a man with a machine gun charges angrily to the door of the car.

“Uh-oh,” Lennox says. He throws a blanket at me and tells me to cover up and lie down. I do it immediately.

Carrick lowers the window. “Good evening, boss.”

“Good evening?” he splutters. “It’s midnight. What the hell are you thinking? The city is crawling with Whistleblowers, and my guys here are loyal, but they’ll start to ask questions if we have too many comings and goings between shift hours. Do you have any idea how much trouble you could have caused being out here at this hour?”

“Could have, but didn’t,” Lennox says.

“Sorry, Eddie. You know we wouldn’t have been out unless it was extremely important.”

He curses under his breath. “You’re good workers, but not that good. I could find replacements for you at a moment’s notice.”

“Yes, us Flawed should always be grateful for every opportunity,” Lennox says sarcastically.

“Len.” Carrick silences him. “It won’t happen again,” Carrick says. “And you know that if anything did happen out there we would never be linked back to here. You have both our words.”

“Scout’s honor,” Lennox adds. “How about you let us in now? I don’t know if you heard, but it’s dangerous out here with Whistleblowers sniffing around the place.”

There’s a long silence as Eddie thinks it over and I feel the tension again. If he cuts us loose, we won’t survive one night out here, off the radar, three Flawed. No more than two Flawed are allowed to travel or be together, and it’s after curfew, and we’re evaders.

“Okay. Don’t think I can’t see a body under the blanket. I just hope it’s alive. I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’m not running a refugee camp here; he just better be a good worker.”

“The best,” Carrick says, and I smile under the blanket.

* * *

“What is this place?” I ask after we’ve driven through the front gates and they tell me it’s safe to remove the blanket. I look out the window and strain my neck to take in the height of what looks like a nuclear plant.

“This is a CCU plant. Next door is a CDU plant. They’re sister companies.”

“What do they do?” I ask as Lennox jumps out of the Jeep before it stops and disappears into the shadows. Carrick parks the Jeep.

“Carbon capture utilization and carbon dioxide utilization,” he replies.

I look at him with even more confusion.