Becca couldn’t think about what her mom was saying. About what it meant. Better to focus on what her mom had done. She let the anger fill her, a shield against her mom’s implied accusations.
“So you do wish you had killed him. How old was he then? Thirteen? And you would have shot him along with his sister.” As she spoke, her mom’s features rearranged, became unfamiliar. Her mom had said she didn’t know Becca anymore, but she was the one who had changed.
No. This was who she had always been. Becca had just been too blind to see it.
“I should have gone with Dad when he left,” Becca spat. “Maybe he had the right idea. Maybe he knew the truth about you all along.”
The words hung in the air between them.
They both jumped as the kitchen phone rang.
Becca’s mom got up first. She picked the phone up from the counter. “Hello?” She listened for a moment, then handed the phone to Becca, her face expressionless. “It’s for you.”
Only one person called Becca on the land line instead of her cell phone.
Becca checked the date on her watch. The first Sunday of the month. She had forgotten.
Becca took the phone from her mom. “Hi, Dad.”
Chapter Nine
Becca sat on her bed with her legs tucked under her, cradling the phone against her ear. Somewhere on the other side of the door, her mom was probably still thinking about what she had said. Becca hadn’t meant to say it. The words had slipped out before she was fully aware of them. Had she crossed a line? Said something unforgivable?
Why did it matter? Why did she care whether she hurt her mom, after everything her mom had done?
Her dad had asked her something. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
“How’s school going?” her dad repeated in his soft voice.
She answered on autopilot. “Fine, I guess.” Now that she wasn’t in the same room as her mom, it was harder to keep her anger fresh. She couldn’t renew it by looking at her mom and seeing how the person she thought she knew had actually been somebody else all along. The rest of the conversation, the part she had been trying not to think about, began to creep back into her mind.
Do you understand what you’re saying when you tell me you believe his story over mine? Do you understand what it means for you to imply it would have been wrong to kill them?
“Becca? Are you still there?”
“I’m still here.” Becca tried to focus on her dad’s voice, tried to let it block out the echoes of other voices.
Only a dissident would think any of that could be true.
But she had found proof. That changed everything, didn’t it? How could she not believe, now that she had proof?
Did it still make her a dissident?
Did being glad Jake was alive make her a dissident? Did being angry that her mom had killed his mom?
Dissident. The word echoed through her mind.
Her dad was talking again. Becca tried to concentrate, but he sounded like he was speaking some alien language. He paused. Was he waiting for an answer? What had he asked her?
“Are you okay?” The words came through clearly this time. From the way he said it, she guessed it wasn’t the first time he had asked the question.
“I’m fine,” she said, but winced as her answer came out too fast, too clipped. She struggled to come up with a better response, but her mind dragged her back down.
Dissident.
Becca knew what dissidents were. They were the people Internal arrested every day, the people trying to poison society against the government so they could bring back the old corrupt system. Becca’s mom had raised her to believe in the importance of a safe and stable world, a world ruled by justice. Whatever she might think of her mom now, Becca still believed in that world. She didn’t want any part of the world the dissidents were trying to create—so how could she be a dissident?
But how much of what she knew about the dissidents was true, and how much had been manufactured by people like her mom?
Back to her mom again. Back where she had started.
She tried to build her anger up again, tried to remind herself of all the things her mom had done. All the ways she had lied. But instead of boiling over, the anger sat in her belly like a piece of bad meat. Maybe her mom hadn’t betrayed her after all. Maybe Becca was the traitor here. Dissident.
“If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay,” her dad was saying. “But if there’s any way I can help…”
Her dad’s words barely penetrated her thoughts—but the sound of his voice sparked a memory, one she clung to like a lifeline. He didn’t like her mom’s job either, or a lot of the things Internal did. It was the reason he had left. Becca could still remember the arguments.
If he could have doubts about Internal without being a dissident, so could she.
She tried to lighten her voice, tried to make it sound like this wasn’t a big deal. “Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
She tried to figure out how to word her question without sounding like she was making accusations. “What made you hate Mom’s job enough to leave?”
His answer, when it came, was sharp. “What has your mother been telling you?”
“What? This isn’t about her. I—”
“I never had a problem with her job,” her dad insisted. “No matter what she says.”
Becca frowned. “But… I remember. I used to hear you arguing about it.” The memories, blurry from years of disuse, sharpened as she called them to mind again. A fight in the middle of the night. All she said was that her life wasn’t that bad under the old regime. How is that enough to condemn her to death? Another, hastily interrupted as Becca came in from the yard. I know the kinds of things you do in that place. How can I watch you hug Becca and not think about the blood on your hands?
“I always supported your mother.” Her dad interrupted the memories. Becca recognized the tension in his voice. She could hear it in her own thoughts.
Did he hear the word echoing in his head too?
Dissident.
In his denials, she could hear herself thirty years from now, insisting that she had never doubted any dissidents’ confessions. Pushing the evidence she had found to the back of her mind because the only alternative was to become the enemy.
Lying like everybody else did. Like her dad was right now.
Why couldn’t anyone just tell her the truth?
“If you didn’t have a problem with her job,” she challenged him, “then why did you two argue about it all the time?”
“You were a kid. You misunderstood.”
Maybe she should let him have his denial.
And then what? If he couldn’t admit his doubts, what was she supposed to do with hers? How was she supposed to quiet the accusing voice?
Her voice hardened. “I know what I heard.”
Her dad waited a moment to answer. “Her job brought certain dangers with it. Things I didn’t know if I could live with.”
“What do you mean?” She wanted to know how he was rationalizing this to himself.