PHOENIX
If ferrets don’t have sex once a year, they might actually die.
A few days later we sit around my kitchen table, a half-eaten cake between us. Gwen has her chin propped in her hand. Jewel is pinching the stray crumbs between her pointer finger and thumb. No one has said a word in the last five minutes, a record for Jackal who has been frowning at me the entire time. My plan isn’t so much a real plan as it is a rough draft. I was hoping they’d have more to say about it, but so far everyone is still in thinking mode.
“I can see why you gave us straight vodka,” Jewel says, breaking the silence. “Get us drunk fast and maybe none of this sounds like a fucking crazy idea.”
I glance at Jackal who is rubbing his jaw.
“It might work,” he says, nodding absently.
I feel a rush of gratitude. He is the last one I expected to go along with this.
“I’m coming with,” Gwen says. “No way am I waiting here while you go for my son.”
“You are absolutely not coming with,” Jackal says.
“Fuck you, Jackal,” she says. “You have no idea what this is like for me.”
“You’re right. I don’t. But if anything happens to you, I’ll have to answer to Foley.”
“Folsom would want me to get Rebel—”
Jackal cuts her off. “—Folsom would want you to stay safe. If something happens to you, who raises Rebel? Langley? Your sister? Worse yet, your mother and Petite?”
Gwen’s face visibly pales.
“You stay here.” He punctuates his sentence with a jabbing finger that he aims downward.
I take that to mean right here, in my house.
She nods.
I purse my lips, eyes wide. That went way better than I thought it would.
“If everything goes as planned with Sean, Phoenix and I will leave a week from tomorrow,” Jackal says.
“Why does she have to go with Sean? It seems risky to involve the fucking governor of the Blue,” Tahira argues. “Like...the fuck?”
“She can’t get the paperwork to leave the Region in time,” Jewel says. She spins her lighter on the table and we all watch it transfixed. “Not even I can get them forged in a week. I’d need at least ten days to put that in place.”
“Look, my only shot at getting to the Red is for the Governor’s Summit. They have their ball and I’ll go as Sean’s date. It’s the only way.”
“How do you know he’ll even take you? Maybe he has another date by now.” Gwen’s untouched piece of cake sits in front of her. She’s lost even more weight since arriving here. As a ballerina who’s suffered from eating disorders my entire life, I’m starting to get worried. She weighs less than me now—less than Tahira.
“He already asked me to go. I made an excuse and said no.” I glance at Jackal who is frowning for different reasons now. I feel terrible about leading Sean on—using him to get to the Red. Not only that, but if we’re caught, there will be repercussions for him—ones that will affect his career. I blow air from between my lips; Jackal sees and cocks his head to the side. I look away quickly lest he reads my thoughts.
“What’s your excuse for being there?” Gwen asks Jackal. She picks up her glass and raises it to her lips, but before she can take a sip, she sets it down again. “I mean, they don’t just let End Men leave their Region.”
“You’re right,” he says. “My mother lives in the Red. I had her put in her official request to see me. As the esteemed mother of an End Man, she gets two visitations with me a year, no questions asked. But it’s no exaggeration when I say we’re overdue a visit.”
I think of what Sean told me that day in the restaurant and my stomach clenches. How long has it been since he’s seen her? Do they keep in touch? There are a dozen questions I want to ask, but Jackal doesn’t know that I know about her.
“Do you...can you…?”
“I will go to the Red under the guise of visiting her,” he says. “See what I can find out…”
“Is that okay? I mean, do you really want to?”
“Visit my mother?” he asks, eyebrow raised. “I’d rather peel the skin from my body, but I’d do anything for Foley.”
My heart is being jerked every which way. I want to tell Jackal that he shouldn’t do something he’s not comfortable with, but this is the only way we can get to Rebel. We need information and Jackal is the only one I trust to get it.
Gwen grabs my arm and I look up at her, startled. “Phoenix, if anything happens to me—you’ll get Rebel to Folsom, won’t you?”
“Of course. I’ll do everything in my power. Nothing is going to happen to you, though. Understand?”
She pats my arm and picks up the dishes, carrying them to the sink.
If baby Rebel is a bad sleeper, our plan will be blown to shit. I focus on the areas I should go in...the kitchen or the study off of the kitchen. I study the layout of the Villanova house and hope to God the staff is a reasonable size. Having spent numerous summers and afternoons with the Starter girls at their estate, Gwen helps me draw up plans.
“The best way would probably be to go through the courtyard and along the lake. You come out here.” I lean in to see the map better. “But there’s also a side door here,” she says, pointing to a place on the map. “It leads to the upper garden. If you follow the path, you’ll come out in the woods behind the house.”
“Is there a way through the woods and to the road?”
“Yes, but it’s at least a mile and it’s rough terrain—tree roots and slopes. Langley’s sister broke her wrist playing back there when we were kids.”
“So we’ll make that plan C,” I say.
“What’s plan B?” Gwen asks.
“I’m still working on that.”
Jewel looks back and forth across all of us before laying her palms flat on the table and standing up.
“My part here is done. If you’ll excuse me.” She leaves through the back door.
“Gwen,” I say. I chew on my lip, unsure of how to continue. I’m bringing up a touchy subject matter. I don’t want to hurt her any more than she’s already been hurt.
“Do you have any idea why your mother would do what she did?”
Gwen’s voice is steady when she answers me. “As in betraying her daughter and handing her grandchild over to that bitch Langley?”
I grimace. “Yes...that.”
Gwen shrugs, her thin shoulders lifting all the way to her ears. She blinks rapidly, her eyes narrowing like she has a headache and her pain so evident I wish I could take back my question. I press my lips together and squeeze her arm.
“We had differences of opinion on things all the time. But, we’re family, so it was easy to move past that, keep our views to ourselves. To her, the End Men are doing their duty and serving the nation. She sees them as civil servants rather than human beings. Most people do, you know. I thought that too, until I met Folsom. She believes what she’s doing is the right thing. Even by taking Rebel. In the end, she thought I’d gone crazy and she was protecting him from me. And she’s protecting the Regions by keeping him safe as a future End Man.”
“How do you think she feels about all of this now? Petite having you thrown in prison without a trial. The movement you started…”
“I can’t be sure. I thought I knew her. I was wrong. I thought I could make her see the truth, but she’s not able to see past what she’s always been told. She wanted me to be something else, and when I disappointed her, it was like she stopped being my mother.”
Gwen’s words hit me hard. I have two mothers like that. Granted, they’ve never sold me out, but I’ve never gone against them either.
“I’m glad we could all bond over our mommy issues,” Jackal says. “But we really need to head back to the city, Phoenix.”
“Not all mothers are shit,” Tahira says, ignoring Jackal. “Mine is exceptional. And you won’t be a shit mother when you get that little boy back,” she says the last part to Gwen who smiles weakly.
I stand up. My legs are tingling. I have pins and needles.
“All right. Here we go. Wish us luck, ladies,” I say to them.
“Luck,” Gwen and Tahira say at the same time.
Their eyes are bright as they lock hope on me. It’s a heavy thing to carry. I wonder how Gwen bears the load of the Regions when I feel so weighed down by her alone. We touch knuckles and then Jackal and I are out the door, heading for our separate cars.
“Phoenix!” he calls before I can round the house.
I turn to wait for him as he jogs over. Before I know what hits me, he’s pressing me against the side of the house, his body wedging between my legs. The brick digs painfully into my back, but for some reason, I don’t mind. I rest my hands on his biceps, unsure of where else to put them. Being this close to him makes me feel drunk. His size, the muscle beneath his shirt. I know exactly what he looks like naked and worse—what he looks like when he fucks.
“Luck,” he says, bending down to kiss me.
I tilt my head back and let him part my lips with his tongue. And then there are soft, soft lips cushioning the erotic feel of his tongue in my mouth. I moan into his mouth and he pulls away breathless.
“Don’t do that, don’t do that,” he says. His head is tilted back, away from me, and his eyes are closed.
“What? What?”
“That thing. That thing you just did with the noise.”
I bite the insides of my cheeks to keep from smiling and manage to say, “Okay,” without breaking character.
“One more kiss,” I request softly.
As soon as his lips lower to mine, I moan again. I can feel his erection pressing against my belly. I shift my body so that I’m pressing back. Jackal is breathing hard. His kiss moves past recreational and now he’s kissing me like his life depends on it. I gasp when he lets up and that seems to excite him more because he comes back at me full force. I’m drunk with his kisses, my head light and my breathing ragged. His hand slips between my legs and I open up for him, lifting one leg and wrapping it around his waist. He rubs me through my clothes and I forget everything—where I am, who I am—all I can feel are those slow, excruciating circles. I cling to him, frantic for more. He tries to get beneath my tights, but I’m wearing a leotard over them.
“What the fuck, what the fuck!” he says into my neck. “It’s like you’re wearing a chastity belt.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Something women had to wear to keep them from having sex. Waaay back.”
“To keep them from it? Why would anyone not want to have sex?”
Jackal laughs, the spell broken. He kisses me softly on the lips, his arm leaning against the wall above my head.
“People didn’t always want to get pregnant, Phoenix.”
“Take me back to that time,” I say.
“You should come back to the compound with me tonight. Sleep in my bed.”
I duck underneath his arm and stare at him. “Are you crazy? We can’t be seen together. Ever. It would wreck everything.”
“I take lessons from you. I’ve kissed you in front of a room full of people—what are you talking about?”
“Well, that’s the last time. If we’re going to steal a baby together, we can’t take any unnecessary risks.” I fold my arms across my chest and he watches, amused.
He pulls my arms down and tugs me close. “You’ve become a very necessary risk that I want to keep taking.”