now
Three days after Thomas brings me the note telling me to wait, he comes again. This time he is carrying nothing. He merely slides open the door, enters my cell, cuffs me, and hauls me to my feet.
“Let’s go,” he says.
“Go where?” I ask.
“Don’t ask questions.” He speaks loudly, no doubt so that the other prisoners will hear. He shoves me roughly toward the door, out into the narrow corridor that runs between the cells. Above us, the cameras set in the stone ceiling blink like small red eyes.
Thomas grabs my wrists and propels me forward. My shoulders burn. I have a momentary flash of fear: I’m so weak. How will I make it on my own, in the Wilds?
“What did I do?” I ask him.
“Breathe,” he answers. He puts on a good show. “Didn’t I tell you not to ask questions?” At one end of the corridor is the exit to the other wards; at the opposite end is the Tank. The Tank is only a cell, unused, but much smaller than the others, and fitted with nothing but a rusted metal ring hanging from the ceiling. If the residents of Ward Six are too loud, if they give trouble, they are strapped to the ring and whipped or hosed, or simply thrown in here to sit for days in darkness, soiling themselves when they need to go. But the hose is the worst: icy water, emerging with such force it takes your breath away, leaves you blackened and bruised.
Thomas does everything exactly as he should. He cuffs me to the ceiling, and for a moment, as he reaches above my head, we’re so close that I can smell the coffee on his breath.
I feel a deep ache in my stomach, a sudden, wrenching pain; Thomas, for all the risks he is taking, still belongs to the other-world, of bus stops and convenience stores and dawn breaking over the horizon; of summer days and driving rains and wood fires in the winter.
For a moment, I hate him.
Once he locks the door, he turns to me.
“We don’t have much time, so listen carefully,” he says. And just like that, my hatred evaporates, is replaced by a rush of feeling. Skinny Thomas, the boy I used to see sometimes hanging around the house, careful to pretend to be reading. How did he become this pudgy, hard-faced man, with hair gelled over a pink scalp, with lines etched deep into his face?
That’s what time does: We stand stubbornly like rocks while it flows all around us, believing that we are immutable—and all the time we’re being carved, and shaped, and whittled away.
“It will happen soon. As early as this week. Are you ready?”
My mouth is dry. The rope is still too short by seven feet. But I nod. I can make the drop, and with a little luck, I’ll hit a deep spot in the water.
“You’ll go north from the river, then head east when you hit the old highway. There will be scouts looking for you. They’ll take care of you. Got it?”
“North from the river,” I say. “Then east.”
He nods. He looks almost sorry, and I can tell he thinks I won’t make it. “Good luck, Annabel.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I can never repay you. . . .”
He shakes his head. “Don’t thank me.” For a second we stand there, staring at each other. I try to see him as he once was: the boy Rachel loved. But I can hardly remember Rachel, now, as she was when I last saw her. Strangely, I can more easily picture her as a girl, always a little bossy, always demanding to know why she couldn’t stay up and what was the point of eating green beans and what if she didn’t want to get paired, anyway? And when Lena came along, she bossed her around, too; Lena trotted behind her like a puppy, eyes wide, observing, her fat thumb stuck in her mouth.
My girls. I know that I will never see them again. For their own safety, I can’t.
But there is a small, stubborn, stone part of me that still hopes.
Thomas picks up the hose coiled in the corner. “I told them you needed to be punished, so we could talk,” he says. He looks almost sick as he aims the nozzle at me.
My stomach rolls. The last time I was hosed was years ago. I cracked a rib, and for weeks I ran a fever of more than a hundred, floating in and out of vivid dreams of fire, and faces screaming at me through the smoke. But I nod.
“I’ll make it quick,” he says. His eyes say: I’m sorry.
Then he turns on the water.