Imagine, if you will, an 11 year old Steph--long on imagination, short of maturity. Picked on quite a lot, spending more time thinking up stories and reading books than doing anything else. You'll basically have an idea of how this story came into being. Well, technically, I didn't write anything down until last spring when I adapted the larger story into a much shorter one for my Creative Writing class.
It's not... quite what I started out with. Somewhere around age 16 the story went from being about social structure in schools to being about social structure in society in general. Suddenly I had a dystopia on my hands.
Anyway... this is the highly truncated Part 2 of what will eventually be a trilogy. There's a flashback thrown in for background. I'm not sure how happy I am with it, considering how much I had to cut. Some things are in there just because they're important to the broader storyline. And I like them. XD
Also, if you take into account that I conceived of this around 1999-2000, when Animorphs was being published, you'll figure out what my inspiration for John was.
And I'll post some other, shorter stuff later. I have a lot of really short snippets.
[spoiler]A Broken Allegiance
“Lock the door behind me, will you? I’m going out,” I called out as I left my office.
Janie, one of the people on guard duty, left her post by the front entrance to follow me. “Didn’t you just go out last night?” she grumbled, falling into step beside me.
“I’m just keeping an eye out is all.”
We made our way to the back entrance, Janie waiting impatiently but obediently while I unlocked the door.
“There’ve been changeovers before,” she pointed out. “You didn’t go out two nights in a row then.” I didn’t need to turn around to know the expression on her face. “Don’t you think it’s too dangerous?”
“I’ve got my gun. I’ll be fine.” I opened the door and stepped out. “If I’m not back before your shift’s over, tell whoever takes over to unlock the door for me, okay?”
“Sure, John.”
The door closed behind me and I waited to hear Janie relock it before climbing the stairs to the street.
The leader of the aristocrats was dead.
There was no love lost between Bill and me. We probably hated each other more than was normal, even for our groups. It had nothing to with class. He’d had everything that I wanted in his hands and he crushed it. Just because he could.
That’s why I’d been wandering the streets the past two nights, and everyone knew it, no matter what I tried to tell them. I was waiting.
My walk on this particular night took me out farther than I usually went alone. It wasn’t quite off-limits, but it was definitely closer than the authorities would want me coming. It was close enough that the people in the residences on the fringe would hear gunshots.
As I turned to head back, I saw a group of figures heading away from me. I ducked into the shadows, but no one turned around. Still, I waited until they were well out of sight before I started moving again.
I didn’t get very far before I heard her.
I whipped around, staring warily down the alleyway that the group had exited. I took a step closer and I could hear them—a whimper, ragged breathing, a cry. The unmistakable sound of someone in pain.
I hesitated, turning my head to stare behind me. There was no one there. I was standing clear out in the open, like an inexperienced moron, a clear and easy target. But there was nothing.
Pulling out my gun, I moved into the alley, edging my way toward the small huddled mass at the center.
I reached out a hand and touched her shoulder. She gave another cry, recoiling and folding into herself. Even that seemed to cause her more pain. Her breathing became more strained.
“Shh,” I whispered, kneeling down beside her. “It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you.” As gently as I could, I pulled at her shoulder, forcing to lie on her back.
I swore when I saw her face, and nearly dropped my gun. “Oh, Jess…” There was blood everywhere. They’d all but sliced her abdomen clean open. Bracing myself, I put my arms around her and rose to my feet. I noticed vaguely that she felt a lot lighter than she should.
Jessie let out another cry at the movement, this one louder and higher pitched than the others.
“It’s all right!” I tried to reassure her, holding her closer to my chest. “You’re all—“ I stopped. It wasn’t any use. She’d fainted.
Still holding Jessie in my arms, I started again toward the hide out.
“You can’t keep her hidden in there forever.”
I opened my eyes, glancing down to see Cara standing in front of me, her medical bag in hand. I pinched the bridge of my nose. “She’s badly wounded. I couldn’t just leave her out there.”
Cara moved past me to the door. She hesitated. “They left her there to die. You know most of the others are going to say you should have done the same.”
I didn’t look at her. Instead I stared down at my gun against my leg. When I’d brought Jessie in off the street, I said I’d shoot anyone who tried to get to her. She wouldn’t last long without Cara to look at her, though. She was the closest thing we had to a doctor.
“Just do your job and let me do mine, okay?”
Cara nodded and entered my room.
I slid down the wall, burying my head in my hands. How had I gotten into this mess? Any self-respecting leader would have shot a traitor. Or at the very least let someone else do it if he couldn’t himself.
I was an idiot. A soft-hearted idiot. I’d wasted so much time trying to protect her already. I shouldn’t care so much. It hadn’t done me much good anyway.
Yet, here I was. In the same old problem. Because I still cared too much.
The worst part of it was, if this didn’t work out, there was no other option. It was obvious the Aristocrats didn’t want her—Bill wasn’t dead two days before they tried to murder her. Who knew the sadistic pervert was the one keeping the hounds away?
Maybe Will and them would take her. I’d have to ask him. It was a long shot at best, anyway.
I leaned my head against the wall. A few more hours and the whole group would be awake. I’d have a lot more problems then. I’d have to figure out how to keep everyone out of the room, to keep the little ones out of the scene entirely… and somehow make it out without anyone getting hurt. I couldn’t afford to really shoot anybody. But I couldn’t afford to let them know that, either.
How did I get into this mess? She hated us, she didn’t want to be here. She wanted to be with the Aristocrats, on the other side of the whole stupid conflict. She was half one of them, anyway. But not the right half. That’s why she was here. If her mother had done what was expected of her and married another aristocrat instead a drunken abusive idiot of a proletariat, there wouldn’t have been a problem.
Or maybe I should have let someone else shoot her.
***
Four years earlier…
I could still feel the heat from the fire at my back, even as we moved down the alleyway. We were moving blind. I didn’t have a clue where we were supposed to be going now. Only that we were leaving two of ours behind, and now we were taking the one who’d caused the thing somewhere else.
“Give me your gun,” I said to Charlie, one of the people who were hanging back near me.
Charlie fidgeted, not looking directly at me. “John, maybe you should let someone else—“
“No. It’s my job. Give me your gun.”
“Yeah, but…”
“Charlie, I’m not asking.”
He blinked at me, and for a split second I thought he was really going to say no. This was my first real test as a leader. Were all these people really going to take orders from a fourteen year old kid?
I didn’t need to worry though. Charlie handed over his gun without any more argument.
The crowd parted as I made my way through. That was when I got my first good look at her since that morning, before the fight started. She was huddled on an overturned can, her face blotchy and red with tears still streaming.
Sarah, my sister, hovered nearby, looking exhausted like the rest of us and concerned. “John, maybe you don’t have to—“
“Yes, I do.” I gently pushed her aside, out of the way. “You know the rules.” I hadn’t realized till just then that I was shaking. I must have looked pretty bad right then, because I knew they were all saying these things for my benefit. They could stomach killing one of our own about as well I could, but they didn’t feel the same way I did. And anyway, you had to live by some rules.
I ****ed the gun and pointed it at Jessie’s forehead. She stared at me, mute, and we waited. I had to wait. She had to have a chance to plead her innocence, if she wanted to.
Come on, I silently pleaded with her. My hands were shaking so bad I wasn’t sure I could hit anything, let alone her.
Say it wasn’t you. Say they tortured it out of you. Say something. Give me a reason not to shoot you.
But she remained silent, staring back at me, or rather at Charlie’s gun, which at this point was wavering wildly.
The waiting period ended. I still couldn’t steady my hand.
Finally, I jerked my arm and fired a shot in the air. The sound made everyone jump, and Jessie lurched back, nearly falling off her perch.
I tossed the gun down on the ground near her feet. “Go.” She just stared at me. “You want to be one of them so badly? Fine. Go on then. Get out of here. You’re not my problem anymore.”
She still wouldn’t move. It looked like she might be glued to her seat.
“What are you waiting for? Go!”
She didn’t wait to see if I’d change my mind then. She shot up and stumbled through the crowd. I didn’t look to see where she went after that.
***
We wandered like nomads for a while, until we found the abandoned building we were now calling home. We didn’t hear much about Jessie, at least until Bill took over as the leader of the Aristocrat group she joined up with. The rumors that came back from that, though, didn’t make me think she’d found anything better there.
And then, tonight, I’d found her bleeding to death in an alleyway. And I was still too much of a fool to leave her there.
The door to my room opened and Cara appeared. “She’ll be okay,” she told me. “She probably won’t be able to move around too much without pain for awhile, but I did what I could.” She glanced past me, and I turned to see the first few people start to trickle down toward the kitchen. “You going to tell them now?”
I let out a long breath. “Might as well. They’ll hear it soon enough from the people on guard duty, anyway.”
Cara patted my shoulder and moved past me. “Good luck with that.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” I watched her head for the basement, where her make-shift clinic was set up, then turned, resigned, to face the others.
In the old days, back when my parents were still babies themselves and before, there was pretty much open class warfare. It had been escalating for a long time. The basic argument was over money—the Aristocrats, the upper-class, said there just wasn’t enough money to go around. The proletariat, the lower-class, said the Aristocrats were hoarding it all. The Aristocrats said that if they had more money, it was because they were better equipped to handle it. The proletariat said the Aristocrats were using their wealth to lord over the lower-classes.
And the middle-class stayed sandwiched between the two, neither rich nor poor, neither master nor servant, trying to keep the peace. They did okay sometimes, but about forty years ago things had finally gotten to the breaking point.
Someone in government came up with the idea that they couldn’t attempt diplomacy and deal with violence at the same time.
A couple things happened then—and I can only recount what I figured out later on—the old social structure started to become jumbled. Attempts to give more rights to the proletariat had a crumbling effect on the old social order—Aristocrats couldn’t wield the same power they had before, take the same advantages that they used to take. When they tried to reclaim their old rights, more violence broke out.
The end decision was to completely separate the violence and the diplomacy attempts.
The government picked what they saw as their most expendable group, and sent them to duke it out in sectioned off areas of the cities.
Which is why, from ages seven to twenty-one—the age when you could vote and participate in government—children from all three classes have been sent into what’s basically become a war zone.
That’s what we were doing out there. Trying to survive. Trying to keep our friends alive, because we were all each other had.
I became the leader of our particular group of proletariats when I was fourteen, the youngest leader of any group ever, hand-picked by our old leader when he reached twenty-one and entered the adult world.
In the nearly seven years that I was leader, there was nothing I experienced that was quite like Jessie. She had the tendency to turn everything on its head. I’d say it was one of her talents.
When she was feeling up to it, and when Cara gave the okay, we moved Jessie upstairs to the only vacant room in the place. It was where I’d been sleeping while my bedroom was being used as the sick room.
And once she’d settled in up there—and once the others had gotten used to the fact that she was staying—Jessie told me everything I ever wanted to know about the Aristocrats.
It was time for the revenge we’d all been itching for.
It was a couple weeks after Jessie returned to us that I finally decided it was safe enough to leave her for awhile. No one might agree with my choices, but I trusted them not to do anything stupid. Which is probably more than they could say for me.
Jessie entered my office just as I was packing things up.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. She eyed the small pile of books I had on my desk. “You’re going to see Tully, aren’t you?”
There wasn’t much use in lying about it. It was too obvious. “Yes.”
“Wait, I’ll be down in a minute.” She turned on her heel and headed for the door.
I followed after her. “What are you talking about?”
Jessie glanced over her shoulder at me as she headed for the stairs. “I’m coming with you, of course.”
“Are you nuts? You—“
But she waved off my protests. “No one will be able to recognize me.” She flashed me a grin. “Trust me.”
Trust her. Right.
Faster than I expected, though, she was back in my office bundled up so tightly I was surprised she was able to move. But the important thing was that the only part of her you could make out were her eyes. She was better disguised than I was.
Still, I had to stand firm. “Absolutely not. It’s too dangerous.”
She scowled at me. “You do it.”
“I don’t have people who want me dead.”
“That’s highly debatable.” Jessie moved past me to peek into my bag. “Come on. I haven’t been to Tully’s in ages. I promise I’ll behave.”
I grimaced. I’d heard that before. “No. I’m going alone.”
Tully cracked open the door and squinted up at me. He jerked a nod before opening the door wider.
“Who’s your friend, John?”
I grimaced, glancing behind me. Jessie, now safely shielded by Tully’s front door, pulled off her coverings.
Tully gaped. “Good Lord. Is that little Jessie?”
She smiled uncertainly. “Hi, Tully.”
The old man shook his head. “I’d heard—well, never mind what I heard. It doesn’t matter.” He held out his hand and Jessie took it. “It’s good to have you back.”
Jessie smiled in relief. “Thanks, Tully.”
Tully’s place is really no more than a basement apartment. There was a tiny kitchen off the entry that didn’t look like it had been fixed up in decades. The vinyl floors were peeling and yellowed and one of the cabinet doors was missing.
At the back was a small bedroom and bathroom. The rest was taken up by the books.
There were shelves against every wall, and it looked like Tully had managed to fit as many more as possible in the space in between. There were stacks upon stacks of books in various places around the apartment. There were even books in the kitchen.
Tully, never much for conversation when it didn’t seem necessary, disappeared within minutes of our arrival.
Tully was one of those strange enigmas. He lived like a proletariat, holed up in his tiny basement, living the hermit’s life he apparently prefers. But the house above him was obviously Aristocrat. And the books… the books were the most confusing part.
Reading was forbidden for everyone under twenty-one, no matter what class. Someone, at some point, had decided to teach the first proletariat leader of our group.
That “someone” was probably Tully. I don’t know why. He is, at least on the surface, a grumpy old man who prefers his own company. And his books. And anyway, he’s never given me a straight answer about it.
He was pleased to see Jessie, though. He wouldn’t let us wander through his library unsupervised if he wasn’t.
Jessie ran her hands along the book spines on a shelf. “It’s been forever since I saw a book.”
The longing was so obvious in her voice. A ridiculous feeling of guilt rose up in me, but I shook it off.
I turned away, heading for the shelves along the opposite wall. “Just don’t take too long looking,” I muttered gruffly. “If you’re not done by the time I’m ready, we’re not waiting.”
If she replied, I didn’t hear her. But when I went to say goodbye to Tully, the books I was borrowing in hand, Jessie was already waiting for me at the door with her own selections.
“What do you mean I can’t come with you guys?” Jessie was standing in front of my desk, turning redder by the minute.
I sighed, rubbing my eyes. “They think you’re dead,” I told her bluntly. I saw her flinch, but I didn’t have a choice—I couldn’t back down on this. “They think they left you to die in that alley. If you show up to a fight, suddenly alive, do you think they’re really going to leave you alone now that you’ve given away their hide out?”
She pursed her lips, obviously trying to think of an argument.
“And besides,” I went on, “you don’t have a weapon.”
“So? I wouldn’t be the only one.”
I stood, staring down at her pointedly. I was more than a head taller than her. “You’re also about half the size of anyone there.”
Jessie sighed, frustrated, and sat down in the chair across from me. “What am I supposed to do then?” She waved her hands around, looking a bit like a frightened bird. “Just sit around and wait for you?”
“Yes.”
She stared at me for a moment. “I don’t think I can do that, John.” Jessie shook her head. “I’ve spent too many fights sitting around, waiting to hear if you were okay.” She shifted in her seat. “If everyone was okay,” she amended, not looking at me anymore.
“I know,” I said, more gently this time. “Just one last time, okay? I just need you to sit this last one out. Then…” I swallowed hard. “Then we’ll figure something out.”
Jessie turned back to look at me again. “You’ll teach me to fight?”
I nodded, feeling a bit like I was signing a death sentence. “I’ll teach you to fight. But right now, I’ve got a different job for you. You won’t just be sitting idle while the rest of us are off fighting.”
She sat up straighter. “What is it?”
“I need somebody to look after the little ones.” We didn’t have control over much, but we at least tried to protect the younger kids as much as we could. We kept them away from the fighting as long as possible.
Jessie nodded. “You can count on me,” she said.
I smiled briefly. “I know. Now get out of here, I have to get ready.”
Jessie
The hideout was a building with seven floors on a street where most of the buildings had been abandoned. Across the street was a burned out husk of an apartment building—it still had a sign out front that read “City View Apartment Complex.” John thought it had probably been destroyed during the last major break out of riots.
Anyway, the top floor of our building had a balcony. The walls came up to my chest and, apparently, if you stood there, the people on the ground level wouldn’t be able to see you.
Not that there was anyone on the street.
Once the younger kids were in bed, I climbed the stairs to the balcony, folded my arms on top of the wall that faced the direction I knew they’d have to come from, and waited.
I was up there for what felt like a long time. My legs were starting to ache, and the bandages over my still-healing wounds were starting to chafe. I knew I should head to bed myself, but I knew, too, that I wasn’t going to fall asleep until I was sure they’d all made it back safely.
Finally, finally, I spotted them entering the street. I didn’t wait to see if I could recognize John. I abandoned my post and raced down the stairs, panting hard and holding my aching stomach by the time I reached the back door.
The minute I heard their feet on the stairs, I slid back the bolts and threw open the door. I was being stupid, careless, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to see him, to see them, to make sure they were all right. That I hadn’t made another horrible mistake.
They stumbled past me through the door, white-faced and exhausted, filing past me without a word. A couple people carried someone—I didn’t see who it was—downstairs to where Cara would probably be waiting.
Sarah shuffled in last, shutting the heavy door behind her. She leaned against the door, breathing hard and staring right at me. She looked like she’d been crying.
John wasn’t with them.
My legs started to shake. I pressed my hand against the wall, trying to support myself. “Sarah? Where’s John?”
Her legs looked like they were about to give out, too. “He’s dead,” Sarah finally choked out. “They killed him.”
“Go ‘way,” I mumbled into my pillow. I didn’t have time for more visitors. I’d been holed up in my room for the last three days.
I heard the door open. I sat up, scowling. “I said go—Will? What are you doing here?”
Will was the leader of the nearest middle-class group. He was also a friend.
“Sarah let me in.” He rocked back and forth on his heels, staring somewhere over my head.
“You heard.”
Will nodded. “I’m sorry, Jess.” He stood there awkwardly for a minute. “He was a good man.”
“You mean boy,” I corrected him.
“I know what I said.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Unfortunately, we’ve got business to discuss.”
“What are you talking about?”
He sighed. “They need you, Jessie.”
It took me a minute to realize who he meant. I let out a choked laugh. “Please.”
“I’m completely serious.” He paused. “Someone has to go through John’s papers. No one knows what they’re supposed to do.”
I lay back on my bed, staring at the ceiling. “You do it.”
“Can’t.”
I sighed. “If it’s because of some stupid class—“
“That’s not it.” He was silent until I finally had to turn and look at him. “I mean I can’t.”
“Oh. Oh.” I could feel my face heating up. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Come on, get up, get dressed. There’s work to be done.”
I rolled into a sitting position on the edge of my bed. “It’s hard,” I told him. But I was already getting up and picking through my things.
“I know.” I heard him open the door. I half-expected him to say something about what John would want, like they do in books sometimes.
But, of course, Will never read those books, or heard those lines.
“You just have to keep going,” he said.
When I emerged from my room at last, the hallway was quiet. I made my way to the stairwell at the same time Sarah was coming down. We stopped and stared at each other for a minute. She nodded to me, finally, and then continued down the stairs, with me trailing after her.
We parted ways at the door to John’s office. Again she didn’t say anything, just looked at me, at the door, and back again. Then she walked away.
That, I guess, was Sarah’s version of giving her blessing.
Taking a deep breath, I pushed open the door and entered John’s office.
It hit me almost immediately. I braced myself against the wall to keep my legs from giving out. The pain, white hot and like I thought I wasn’t capable of feeling anymore, surged through me.
He was everywhere. He was at his desk, reading or making notes to himself. He was at the window, peeking through the boards that covered the outside.
I don’t know how anyone would ever be able to take his place in here. It was John’s office. It had never been anyone else’s. It was like he’d been absorbed into the walls and floorboards, into the worn and faded leather of his chair, into his desk.
When I’d recovered from the initial shock, I moved slowly toward the desk, running my hand along the edge. It was all exactly as he’d left it, still waiting for him to come back. There was a pile of books in the corner, waiting for him to read. I wondered briefly how I was going to return them to Tully, if anyone would come with me. It would be stupid to go alone.
I sat, hesitantly, in his chair, feeling overwhelmingly like I was an intruder. I didn’t belong.
I focused for a moment on the space in front of me. There was a half-finished list of supplies Cara needed, but otherwise it was empty.
I shook my head, forcing myself to focus. If I knew John, he wouldn’t have changed the hiding place. He’d hide it in the same place he hid it in the old hide out. And if I remembered correctly…
“Yes!” Feeling along the underside of the desk, my hand caught hold of the key. I smiled triumphantly, my first real smile in days, and peeled back the tape, letting the key drop into my hand.
I spent the better part of the night poring over John’s papers. If they were organized in some way, I couldn’t figure it out. So I spent hours hunched over the desk, reading each one. Someone knocked on the door at one point and told me to come eat dinner, but I ignored them. There was too much to do. And I finally had a purpose.
That had been hours ago.
Finally, exhausted, I forced myself out of the chair and left the office, intent on getting a couple hours of sleep before going back to work.
That didn’t happen either, though.
I was starting for the stairs when I heard it. Loud banging. On the back door.
I glanced down the hall toward the front, where I could see the two people on guard duty talking. They hadn’t heard it.
I turned and headed for the back stairwell. The back door opened onto the landing between the first floor and the basement. It was the only one that wasn’t boarded up, our secret entrance.
I hesitated at the door, trying to think who might be out at this time. An invading Aristocrat group wouldn’t knock. Someone from another proletariat group, seeking help?
I slid back the little door over the peephole, stretching up to peer through it.
My fingers slipped on the locks as I hurriedly tried to open the door. “Oh, God, oh, God,” I muttered, half a prayer, half a plea. The last lock finally turned and I yanked open the door. “John.”
He looked like death, swaying in front of me, his face gone stark white and his eyes unfocused. He stumbled toward me, and I pulled him inside.
I wanted to cry, to throw my arms around his neck and hold onto him for dear life. “Wait here,” I said, leaving him propped against the wall next to the door. “I just need to check…” I slipped out the door, not waiting for him to respond.
I moved through the small cement courtyard beyond the door and climbed the steep steps to the street level, poking my head over the top.
The coast was clear. The only person out on the street at this time of night was a policeman. He saw me and immediately changed his direction, moving away from our hideout. He obviously didn’t want to be caught in the crossfire if a fight was about to break out.
Satisfied that, for now, no one seemed to be coming, I went back inside and relocked the door.
John had slid down the wall and was sitting, half-sprawled on the floor. He tried to stand again, but his legs didn’t seem to want to respond anymore.
“I’ll get help.” I started for the stairs.
“Cara,” he croaked behind me. “Get Cara.”
I paused only for a split second, then turned back and headed down the basement stairs. It would take less time to cut through the clinic.
Cara didn’t ask questions when I arrived at her door. She took one look at my face and grabbed her bag, letting me lead her back to where John was.
“Help me lift him,” Cara ordered, hunching down to take John’s arm. “Careful of his shoulder.”
Somehow we managed to lift him onto his unsteady feet and half-carry him to the basement. We didn’t have nearly the strength to lift him onto the table, so I pulled the mattress off the cot in the back and lay it on the floor. We lowered John onto it.
“Are you squeamish?” Cara demanded, setting her bag on the floor next to the mattress.
“What?” I stared at her stupidly.
“Are you squeamish? If you’re going to stay, I don’t want to have to worry about you throwing up.”
I felt my cheeks reddening. “I’ll be fine.”
Cara nodded. “Good. Help me get his shirt off, then. Remember, watch his shoulder.”
I realized why Cara kept warning me the minute John’s shirt was off. A bloody bandage was covering most of his right shoulder.
“Figures,” Cara was saying. “It’s close enough that it must’ve looked like a chest wound with all the blood.”
John was silent while Cara examined him, staring at the tiled ceiling above us.
After awhile, Cara furrowed her brow. “John, where’d they hurt you? All I can find is the gun shot wound. They must’ve done something, I mean, three days…”
John let out a weak, humorless laugh. “There’s more than one way to torture someone, Cara.”
Things around the hideout slowly started going back to normal. John returned to working in his office the minute that Cara gave her okay.
Something was still off, though. All anyone could get out of John about the time he was away was that he’d been tortured—but he hadn’t given away our location. We were safe. Or as safe as anyone could ever be.
Still, he wouldn’t talk to me. I’d go down to his office in the morning and sit across from him. He’d mutter a “Mornin’” and that was about it. It was like I wasn’t even there.
I’d wander off after awhile, frustrated, but I’d come back the next morning.
Finally, after over a week of this, I finally threw up my hands, slamming them back down onto the desk. “What is your problem?”
John paused in what he was doing, staring at me. “What?”
“You’re not the only person who’s had bad crap happen to them. I know you know that. So what is your problem? Stop acting like I’m not here.”
“I’m not acting like you’re not here,” he muttered.
I glared at him. “Yes, you are. And didn’t you promise to teach me how to fight? What happened to that?”
John looked away. “Ask someone else.”
I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. “Why?”
He shook his head. “I can’t do it. Ask someone else.”
I sat there for a long moment, staring at him. “Did they tell you something?” I asked, hating how my voice shook.
“What are you talking about?”
“When you were… when you were there, did they tell you something?” I swallowed. “About me?”
John didn’t say anything for a minute. “No,” he said finally. “I told them something about you.”
I just stared at him stupidly.
John sighed. “Under torture, I told them you were still alive. That we had you.”
“Oh.”
He let out a choked sound. “Oh? Oh? I give you away and all you can say is ‘Oh’?” He leaned his head against the back of his chair. “They know you’re alive. They know you betrayed them. They’re on the move now because you gave away their hideout.” John shook his head again. “They’ll be out for your blood more than ever.”
I didn’t say anything for awhile, just watched him. Finally, I said, “Then that’s all the more reason why I need to learn to fight. I need to know how to protect myself.”
John ran a hand over his face, looking wary as ever. “You’re nuts,” he muttered, but I knew I had him beat already.
I smiled. “No. We’re even. When do we start?”
“We don’t.”
“Right. Sure.” I stood up. “I’ll be on the balcony when you’re ready.” I headed for the door.
“I said—Oh, forget it. Fine. I’ll be there in a minute.”
[/spoiler]
