Chapter Nine

The sky was still dark as Ben sat on the railing at the corner of the balcony. The raven was perched as close to him as the thickness of the branches would allow, and he was tempted, in the cold cheerlessness of the morning, to reach out and try to pet the creature. He felt close to nature this morning. Later, he would find this strangely fitting.

He sat there for hours and waited for the sun to peak over the canopy. He smelled it before he saw it; first-light always had a slightly biting taste to it, and so many of Ben’s nights had ended early this way, with him watching the morning come, that the experience was like being in the kitchen while the cook prepares a familiar meal.

“Ben?” a groggy, croaking voice came from the doorway behind him.

“Sorry,” he said, turning to look at Martha as she walked out, her arms wrapped tightly and protectively around her. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

She shook her head and yawned. “Gus was snoring; I was bound to wake up eventually.”

Ben smiled and turned back to watch the horizon. “I’m going to see Medias today.”

“I heard,” she said. She came to stand next to him, leaning over the railing. “Geneva works at the employment offices twice a week.”

Ben blinked slowly. “Do you know why?”

She tucked a long, shining black hair behind her ear. “You were labeled ‘denied,’ right?”

“Do you know why?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

Ben sighed. The raven croaked loudly, splitting the silence with a pickaxe. “I wish I could remember,” he said. “I feel like I would know if I…could only remember.”

“I...” Martha started, then seemed to swallow the following words.

Ben turned to her. Her eyebrows were knit together in either confusion or pain or a mixture of the two. “What?”

She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms more tightly around herself. “I…I think I remember something about you,” she said. “Not something that would have anything to do with you being denied. But…I’ve always had this feeling about you, and I think it comes from somewhere, like a memory.”

Ben waited. He watched the conflictions on her face.

“I don’t know, you understand.” She was looking down at her folded hands. “It’s just…a feeling.” She put another stray strand of hair behind her ear. “I can’t say I actually ‘remember’ a time when you weren’t around, when it was just Gus and me, but I feel like that time existed.” She looked up over the yellowing canopy towards the lightening sky. “A time when you weren’t my brother. When I didn’t have a brother.”

Ben still waited. He could see that not only did she have more to say, but he could see that her efforts to remember were hurtful ones.

“I feel like you were in Medias alone before you came to live with Gus and I. I don’t know why you and Gus can’t remember it like I can. I think you looked…younger.” She turned her head slowly and tiredly. “Do I sound crazy, Ben?”

He examined his own expression in his mind. It felt like scared. “I…think…well…don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope you are.”

She laughed. The first yellow beam of sunlight popped over the trees, and both of them knew the conversation needed to turn somewhere else. “Is Tess going with you?” Martha asked?

Ben smiled involuntarily. “What did Geneva tell you?”

“She asked me when you had gotten lashed,” she said, practically grinning.

Chapter Eight

Tamara wiped the mud on her hands off on the hips of her pants, closing her eyes and breathing as deeply as her sore chest could afford her.

“Ma’am? Can I help you?” The shop owner tying his apron around his waist asked from his storefront.

Tamara opened her eyes and didn’t bother to hide the pain and exhaustion that showed in them. “I’m afraid it’s past that now.”

He shrugged and walked back into his store, leaving her alone to slump down into the bench under the window.

You’re stronger than this, she told herself. They’re children; they can’t bring you this far down. You can’t let them.

She massaged her temples, trying to coax rational, coherent thought back into her mind. She had had a plan; she needed to get back to it.

Standing up slowly, she collected herself into the tall, graceful creature she felt like on her good days. There was no way to cure her appearance of its hopelessly disheveled nature, but she brushed the excess dust off her clothes flattened her vest against her stomach. She reached inside of herself and searched for the memory of her sister and the strength that it granted her. She crossed the street to the pharmacy and entered through the tall glass door.

No bell sounded when the door opened, and when it shut, the room around her was silent. No one stood behind the counter, and the dust particles hanging in the streams of sunlight were the only other disturbance of the store’s utter stillness. Tamara walked quickly and quietly to the counter and peered through the door into the backroom. The door to the back alley was open there and there was no person to be seen. Taking her chance, she jumped the counter dove into the storeroom aisles. She knew what she was searching for, or at least she would know it when she saw it. There was a name for the pills she needed, but she didn’t know it. She had seen them before in a container on her sister’s bedside table during the last few terrible months.

Suddenly, she heard the back alley door close and footsteps tromp carelessly across the cement floor towards the counter. Knowing she was hidden from view between two near-walls of pills and pillboxes, Tamara, though shaken, continued her search. After what seemed like long minutes, she came to a clear canister with hundreds of tiny pink and green pills inside. The address on the prescription label was several towns away. Tamara carefully removed the canister from the shelf, looking around for any others of its kind and finding none. She placed the pills into her side pouch, careful not to let them shake around in their container, then slowly made her way to the back door. The doorknob was big and brass and heavily rusted, so Tamara steeled herself for she was afraid would turn out to be a chase.

Taking hold of the cold handle, she tried to turn it, but met impassible resistance. She turned harder. The rust fought her. She bit her lip and gave a final heavy turn with her wrist. The handle gave a creak, earsplitting in the otherwise-silent storeroom, and budged only slightly. Tamara, her forehead sweating now, winced as she heard the druggist’s stool swivel around. She looked around at him, her eyes wide with fear at what she knew had to come next.

“Hey!” he yelled, springing to his feet. “What do you think you’re doing back here?”

Tamara pulled a palm-sized package wrapped in tissue out of her pouch and held it out in front of her. A blue haze began to thicken around it. The druggist stopped walking abruptly and instinctively put his hand out.

“Don’t!” he yelled. “The medicines! They’ll turn to poison! You’ll kill hundreds of people!”

“You can’t know that I was here,” she said, her voice shaking slightly, but her face set.

“I swear I won’t tell anyone,” he said. “You can silence me how ever you want, just please don’t drop that mushroom.”

Her hand with the package stuck straight out in front of her, threatening to turn over and let the package fall. “This is all I have,” she said. “You can’t know I was here.”

He shook his head frantically, pleading with her with his eyes, his hands, his words, whatever he could. She blinked and turned her hand over like lightning.

As the package fell and the tissue came unwrapped, the druggist ran and dove to catch it, but he fell short by mere inches. Before he hit the ground, Tamara had leapt around him and sprinted back into the front room. She looked back in time to see the package, now slightly unwrapped to reveal a small mushroom whose cap had come off, emitting long strings of thick blue gas that immediately some of which began to spread out over the whole room, while one wrapped itself like a strand of rope around the druggist’s neck. Tamara stood transfixed, watching his hands grope and claw at the impenetrable force constricting his air. She finally pulled herself away as the wandering strands seeped their way under the caps of the pill canisters and the druggist’s eyes began to bulge.

Chapter Six

“I’m sorry. You’re unqualified.”

The child across the counter from Ben was at least four years younger than him. Not that anyone had any way of proving that, but Ben felt patronized being told “no” and getting a petty slap on the wrist from someone who didn’t look old enough to wash behind his own ears.

“You’ve all been saying that these past few days,” Ben said hotly, “but you’ve been slow in response when I’ve asked what you mean by it. What makes me unqualified? What do I lack that you have besides baby teeth?”

The boy flushed. “Excuse me, but I’m just doing my job,” he said quickly. “There is a stamp on your paperwork.” He took the folder he’d been examining and turned around to face Ben. Opening the cover, he revealed the word “DENIED” scrawled across the top in large black print.

“What does this mean?” Ben asked. “Who wrote this?”

“I don’t know who writes it, but the protocol is, when someone’s file has it, they’re deemed unqualified for work,” the boy said, still pink in the cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m just doing my job.”

Ben went back and sat next to Tess.

“What happened?” she asked. “You look…shocked.”

“You know me,” he said, not turning to look at her. “What have I done with my life that anyone outside of my group of friends would take notice of? I’m the most uninteresting person I know.”

“What happened?” she asked again.

“I’ve been ‘denied,’ I guess,” he said. “I’m evidently unqualified, and I don’t know why.” He shook his head and finally looked at her. “I was so hoping for this chance to do something different and maybe even exciting.”

Tess’ brow furrowed and she tightened her lips. “They won’t let you work?” she asked.

Ben shook his head. “No.” He stood up and turned towards the door.

Tess didn’t follow him. She walked up to the counter where Ben had just been standing. “Excuse me,” she said, and the boy, who, while still probably even two years younger that Tess, cowered a little at her glare. “Excuse me, I’d like to speak with your manager.”

“Er…sure,” the boy said. He walked quickly through a door behind the counter.

Ben came up behind Tess. “What are you doing?”

“You’ve been depressed for the past two weeks and you’re obsessed with getting this job. I’m not going to let you continue to make the rest of us crazy because of that.”

Before Ben could respond, a thickly set older boy came out of the door followed by the now brightly blotchy smaller boy. The older one looked about seventeen, three years older than Ben.

“My name’s Riley. What’s the problem?” the boy asked.

Tess looked even more helpless than usual next to his bulk—Ben thought he heard her neck crack when she looked up at him—and she blinked quickly, then hardened herself.

“My friend here would like an explanation as to why he is classified as ‘denied’ on his paperwork,” she said, her face set.

Riley grabbed the folder out of the younger boy’s limp hand and flipped it open to the first page. He examined it up and down, then began flipping through the following pages. When he got to the end, he nodded knowingly, closed the folder, and looked down at Ben.

“I can’t tell you why you’ve been denied; it doesn’t explain that in here,” he said. “I can direct you to someone who could tell you, that is, only if you really want to know.” He emphasized the “really” with a raise of his eyebrows.

Ben narrowed his eyes. “Why wouldn’t I want to know?”

Riley looked away an answered slowly, “I’m not so sure how much you want to meet this person.”

Suddenly Ben felt a strange tingling sensation beginning in his toes and winding its way up his legs, paralyzing him. He tried to look down to see what was going on, but instead he felt himself saying, “I want to see him, Riley. I really want to know.”

He couldn’t move his head, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tess had noticed the strange tone of his voice. “I want to go, too,” she said.

Riley looked over at her. “I’m sorry. This person only allows one person at a—”

“We’re lashed,” Tess said. “You can’t stop me.”

Ben felt the tingling sensation wind up his back and around his arms, one of which then reached over and took Tess’ hand. She looked back at him and he turned his head to her. He tried to send her a message by moving his eyes, the only things he had under his control, but she just looked confusedly back at him.

Riley took Ben’s file back from the small boy. “It says in here that he is alone. Not lashed.”

“That file must be outdated,” Ben felt himself say. “I can’t remember a time when I was alone.”

Riley looked suspiciously at them both. “If you’re lying, it could cost you.”

Tess stiffened, but said, “We like our chances, then.”

“Okay,” Riley said. “You’re going to see Medias.”

Ben breathed in quickly as he felt the paralysis leave him, and his grip on both Tess’ hand and gravity slackened and he almost fell over.

“Will you set up the appointment?” Tess was asking as Ben came fully back into himself.

“He’ll be expecting you within the week.”

She thanked him, Ben tried to follow suit, and they walked out.