Traces

I had to get away. The dining zone was suddenly too stifling, the weight of everything pressing heavy against my chest until I felt underwater in it, every breath a desperate, wet gasp. With hardly a glance towards the watch standing at the door, I stumbled outside and ran, my skirt catching along my calves as the day’s heavy rain soaked straight through to my skin in seconds.

If I stood still, stopped fighting, would it drown me?

Please, let it drown me.

I kept running.

I reached the old willow tree, the rain sluicing down it like godly teardrops, and ducked beneath its wisps. It was the only place that brought me a modicum of comfort, and then, only because Ezra was usually with me. I wondered how long it would take until he noticed my absence. Would he have a moment of bright, fleeting panic and wonder if I’d truly been faded, even from here?

Would he even remember?

The tree’s bark was rough against my face and my palms and the pads of my fingers. But I shoved against it anyways, my fingers squeezing, trying to dig into its very center. I tried so hard that I found myself gasping for air again. Then I realized I was weeping.

“Lena…”

It reached my ears in a murmur, though I was sure it was shouted. A slight hum I recognized as relief coursed through me. Ezra. He noticed after all.

I kept my eyes closed and worked to silence the low keening coming from my throat. The thought of it all, of Ezra seeing the naked animal of me, filled me with something like shame. I supposed it showed how close Ezra and I were when, despite the weepy branches of the tree, and the deluge that cast everything in its wake in a drenched, gray pall, he still managed to find me in only minutes.

Maybe it just showed that I was predictable.

“Lena,” Ezra gasped out, parting the leaves like a curtain before bending at the waist to catch his breath. “What’s wrong? What is it?”

I rubbed my face against the wet bark, as if by doing so it could somehow sap every bad bit from my mind. “Tell me again.”

Ezra’s chest heaved up and down as he approached me, hands out in a placating gesture. I didn’t have the nerve to look at his face yet, but he still gave me what I wanted. “You exist.”

“Again?” My voice was small.

“You exist.” He rested his hand on my shoulder and rubbed his fingers against the muscle. His tone was tentative as he began, “Lena, I know it’s hard—”

My scoff was dulled beneath the downpour, so I pulled my arm away for emphasis. “Never mind, Ezra.” I lifted my eyes to him with small bravado. “Just go away and let me drown here.”

One half of his mouth quirked up for a shining second before he grinned. “Well, that’s a bit dramatic, Len. I’m sure you could doggy paddle your way back to the dining zone if you really tried.”

My lips hovered in a spirit place between a scowl and a smile. Ezra was a master in distraction, but I didn’t feel much like playing, so in the end I turned my head away entirely. Between a sliver of branches, I could see the dim orange light of the dining zone; a slash of red as the watch paced beyond the door, his head bobbing with movement before he disappeared from view. Normally, no aberrate could leave their designated zone without consequence, but being friends with Ward Bishop’s son afforded me this small privilege, at least.

Ezra tipped my chin back to him. His eyes, the exact teak of the beds in the women’s quarters, shone down like glass, and I fought twin urges to gaze and not gaze. It had been years since the sight of him turned me inside out, but still, his eyes could lift the weight from my chest and send my breath shuddering past it.

“Lena, they’re watching you. Us.” A warning. “What if they fade you again?”

I flinched. “Well, it wouldn’t matter to you anyway, would it?”

Ezra flinched back. His jaw clenched too tight, and I knew I had almost pushed him too far past kindness. “Come inside,” he bit out, brusquely holding his hand towards me. “Let’s talk when we’re dry.”

I pushed his hand away and grasped at the bark again. “You’re the worst.”

Ezra tried to pry my fingers away from the willow and I screamed at him and batted him away again. Ezra just sighed and rubbed his wet face, as if I were a petulant child he didn’t know how to handle. I didn’t blame him. My parents used to do the same.

And then, all at once, I was sobbing again. Great, heaving sobs that started at my knees and worked their way up and out between us. And then Ezra's arms were around me and his lips were in my dripping hair, murmuring promises that not even Ezra could keep.

I lifted my face from his chest, hiccupping out, "Why spare the expense of fading us again when they can just kill us? It's not like we'll be missed."

"I'd miss you, Lena. I would."

The way he said it, harsh and urgent, revealed he’d finally landed against the heavy stone in my current. Every morning, I pressed silent knees against my bunk and turned it over and again in my mind: here. not here. dead. not dead. can’t can’t won’t.

“I’ve got something for you,” Ezra murmured. He reached into his pocket, emerged with a clenched fist. I brought my palm up instinctively and he dropped a brassy chained necklace into it. Upon closer inspection, the necklace was heart-shaped and hinged on one side.

“It’s…a locket.” I hoped the gray sky hid the sudden deep flush of my face.

“Really? Never heard of it.”

My mouth twitched but my uncertainty prevented me from giving in to his teasing. He’d brought me contraband before, but never jewelry and never, ever hearts.

“I found it in my father’s personal quarters. I think…” —his eyes were grave and his voice was just shy of a whisper— “I think it must’ve belonged to my mother.”

My hand clenched reflexively in shock before I shoved the necklace back at him. “Ezra, no. This is special! You can’t—”

“I can,” he interrupted, gently covering my balled fist with his palm. “You’ll have to hide it, of course, but I want you to see this locket and remember that they can’t scrub away everything. There will always be traces of you that they can’t get to.”

I didn’t know if it made anything better, if any of what he was saying was true or just another kind of unkeepable promise. Still, it was kind and tangible and made the here, not here fall away for one perfect moment. I rubbed a damp finger against the metal clasp. The inside was empty metal frame.

“Was there a photo? Do you…do you remember her wearing it?”

Ezra’s eyes went flat. “No.”

I touched his elbow in apology. Ezra didn’t remember his mother at all. As a ward’s child he wasn’t required to take the aberrate test at puberty, his world forever shadowed and half-alive anyway. His father claimed she died in childbirth, but Ezra couldn’t shake the insistent fear that his mind had been touched and his mother taken from him in some phantom time. My presence at Station 12-90 meant, at least, that my mind was my own. But Ezra Bishop, perpetually enmeshed, how could Ezra ever truly know?

Some aberrates, like me, couldn’t be scrubbed. If anyone knew why, the knowledge was kept in surer circles than I could ever traffic. After The Last War so much was lost. Whole nations and swaths of civilizations. And where culture was felled, science flourished. Someone, some textbook name I’d never cared enough to remember in middle school, discovered the Aberrate System; an entire section of the brain’s cingulate cortex that, when mature, held the answers to the body’s whole trajectory. Disease, mental illness, even the statistical likelihood of violent or treasonous activities could somehow be gleaned from the Aberrate System. Then: the power to scrub, to pick and to choose what the people can remember, which people were a potential blight on this idyllic world and fade them from the other’s lives and into a station.

And then the world moved forward.

Most disease was bred out eventually. Most neuroses, too. And where we lost the things they once called denim, diamonds, chocolate, we gained a shadow society used as slave labor to keep the main populace functioning. We were told aberrates were rare. Unlikely. A mysterious byproduct of an ideal civilization. They didn’t tell us what happened when they discovered new aberrates. Who they used to be. There must have been outcry, in the beginning. It wasn’t in the history books. There were three hundred and sixteen of us at this station.

There were no more wars.

"I want to leave, Ezra," I said, as if it were that simple. I pressed my gift against the exposed skin at my collar so tightly that I knew it’d leave an angry heart-shaped mark.

Ezra’s eyes left mine for half a second then returned, dull and resigned, this conversation our minefield. “You know there’s no way.”

"Would you come with me?"

“Yes.”

He was lying. The knowledge welled up and broke over me in an unsteady wave, the way this particular lie always did. As constant and true as Ezra could be, he was living a nightmare, same as any of us.

I pushed away from the willow’s trunk and began to pace, mud splattering my hem with every frantic step. “Janet says she’s heard of a girl. Her best friend was faded but she remembered. The System missed her somehow. And they thought she had neuroses, but she searched and she found her and she’s free!”

Ezra suddenly gripped both my arms, stopping my stride. His eyes flashed something hot as he looked down at me. "How did she find her?"

I hesitated, let the raindrops fall unimpeded against my face. "A boy,” I said finally. “He escaped a station and helped her find her friend. Then they—" I faltered. Ezra’s brow raised, waiting. “Then they…all ran away, and the girl and boy got, ah, married and had children and such.”

Ezra looked disgusted as his arms fell away from me.

“Fine, I suppose Janet was being a bit fanciful towards the end, but it doesn’t mean the rest’s not true!”

“Lena, it’s a fairytale!” he snarled. And for one instant his voice rose higher than the storm. “It’s some stupid romance that a child tells herself so she can sleep at night. It’s not real. It’s all crap, Lena. All of it!”

Tears pricked my eyes again as all my bluster suddenly ballooned out into the bleak distance between us. “You really are the worst.”

Ezra sighed. “Lena…” His voice was a flawless mix of strength and cajoling again. He feathered his thumb over my cheek. “We have to adapt, right? Adapt to survive?”

I touched just under his eyes, wiped away rain instead of tears. This time I knew my look of pity far outweighed any of his.

A staccato whistle sounded above the rainfall, the watch calling us back to our designated zone.

“Come inside, Lena. The rain isn’t letting up anytime soon.”

No, it wasn’t.

I took his hand and together we parted the dripping branches. “You’ll get through it, Lena. You’ll adapt and you’ll live.”

A knot formed in my throat when I thought of the alternative. “But what’s the point of living if you don’t really exist?”

Soft lips met wet knuckles. “Well, that’s the million-dollar question, love, now isn’t it?”