“Wait!” I called out after him. Eric stopped and turned around to face me, raising an eyebrow. “Would you mind if I kept that?” I asked, pointing to the can. He laughed and tossed it to me.
“So, what are we going to do about your sister?” Lockwood asked as soon as Eric was out of earshot.
I rolled my eyes and tucked the can into my coat pocket. Then I slung the rifle over my shoulder and walked to the shed where the community stored the weapons. “There’s nothing to do but wait. Unless you know how to time travel, I suspect you’re going to have to learn a bit of patience.”
“She’s freaking out, Tess,” Lockwood countered, closing the shed and locking it once I had returned the gun.
“Louisa’s main occupation in life has always been drama. Don’t get swept up in it,” I warned, pushing past him and striding back toward the dining hall. Between working all day with the livestock and training, I was near famished.
Lockwood grabbed onto my arm and halted me. “So, we’re back to being this girl? The I don’t feel anything girl? Let me tell you something about that girl. She’s a real bitch, and nobody likes her.”
“Nobody likes a potty mouth either,” I countered, trying desperately to lighten the mood.
Lockwood continued to stare me down. I looked up at my friend, paling at his words. He was right. I didn’t even like that girl. But it wasn’t as simple as all that, either. I was frightened. Not for myself, but because I was certain that, once again, I was going to fail my little sister. Emma had always taken care of us, during the worst of my mother’s drinking episodes and after my father left; my sister hadn’t been dead for a year before I abandoned Louisa, leaving her to be manipulated and used by the likes of George.
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked, my voice cracking. “Look at my little sister and tell her I don’t know if she’s going to die? Tell her that I was wrong when I thought Sharon could help her? Remind her that I’m the reason she’s stuck in this backwoods place, away from all the comforts the council could offer her? I mean, if she’s going to die, at least she could do it without starving.”
“Backwoods place? Even you have to admit the community is better than the compound.”
I sighed. “Of course. But she won’t see it like that. She grew up believing everything the council told us. Now, she just sees us as the people who took her from that safety. Brought her to a place where she’s scared all the time. You saw her in the woods.”
“Maybe you could help her be less scared.”
I pulled my arm from his grasp. “She knows what happened to Emma. She remembers. Now she’s stuck out here waiting for that thing inside her to crawl its way out and kill her.”
“It’s not some thing, Tess. It’s her child. When I sit with her, she, well, she tries to protect the baby. I can see it in the way she curls in on herself.”
I crossed my arms and tucked my chin down. I couldn’t look at Lockwood, not when I was sure my face radiated all the characteristics that defined the old me. It was the one part of myself that hadn’t been changed since leaving the compound. Even after seeing how great Sharon was with her kids and despite knowing I wouldn’t share my sister’s fate, I couldn’t see the point of bringing any child into such a messed-up world.
I had learned the hard way that us humans, naturals and chosen ones alike, were fragile. And not just in a physical way. We hurt each other with wounds and scars that no one would ever see, but that didn’t mean they didn’t exist. Often, they were the injuries we could never come back from. My mother certainly hadn’t been able to.
I couldn’t even begin to fathom why women like Emma even thought of risking childbirth. So, how was I supposed to offer hope when it all felt so hopeless? Either Louisa was like me and would bring a fatherless child into a world where there were no certainties, only millions and millions of questions that no one bothered to answer. Or, she would be like Emma.
She would die.
I still could remember every moment of watching Emma’s death. Despite the fact that I was currently standing in the middle of a makeshift town miles and miles from the place where she had died, I saw and felt everything from that day. It replayed in my mind like a warning—a more convincing propaganda film than any produced by the council itself.
She had screamed. I’d been able to hear it stick in her throat, caught in a mixture of saliva and blood. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.
She’d reached out her hand to me. I’d hesitated.
I had glared at the midwife who was vainly trying to keep my sister breathing. I wondered what it would feel like knowing no matter how hard you tried, you would always fail. The midwife looked to me and I could read the emotion in her eyes: she was asking my forgiveness. I gritted my teeth and moved my gaze away.