“Well, you remember what happened with your mom’s friend.”
Becca tried to figure out what he was talking about, but nothing came to mind. Had anything actually happened, or was he just making this up to cover over the doubts he didn’t want to admit he had?
“What happened?” she asked.
“You don’t remember?” He sounded surprised. “I guess you were pretty young at the time.” He paused. “Internal took her husband. She blamed your mother for it. Your mother tried to help her at first, but she wouldn’t listen.”
Despite herself, Becca almost felt sorry for her mother. A friend who had lost family to Internal, who turned on her and pushed her away even though she’d had nothing to do with it… Becca knew all too well what that felt like. She kept waiting for Heather to call her or at least say hi at school, but when they passed each other in the halls, Heather’s eyes slid over her as if she didn’t exist.
She forced her attention back to her dad. “What does this have to do with why you hated Mom’s job?”
Her dad hesitated. “Her friend tried to kill her.”
It took Becca a moment to recover her voice. “She what? Why?”
“Maybe she was a dissident. Maybe losing her husband just made her snap. When your mother left for work, her friend was waiting for her. Your mother barely got away in time.”
Maybe her dad was making this up. But Becca didn’t think so. She had a faint memory of police cars in front of the house, of the feeling that something important and scary had happened.
If her mom’s friend could do something like that…
No. Heather could never kill anyone.
But the Heather she saw in the halls these days, the one who had screamed at her in the cafeteria the last time they had talked, wasn’t the same Heather she used to know. Heather hadn’t been that person since the night she had called Becca from 117.
Her dad was still talking, still trying to convince her he had never had any doubts. “That’s why I didn’t like her job. I didn’t think I could live with that kind of danger. It had nothing to do with… anything else.”
But Becca wasn’t listening anymore.
Becca rushed into the cafeteria, out of breath. As soon as she stepped inside, she scanned the tables for Heather. She didn’t see her.
She stood just inside the doors, studying the faces of everyone who walked in. She flinched at the hostile glares some of them directed at her. While the rumors about her and Heather had died down, they still weren’t entirely gone. She wanted to go sit at a table in the corner and pretend she was invisible… but she had to find Heather.
Five minutes went by, then ten. Still no Heather. Was she eating someplace else? Maybe she had decided not to come to school at all.
When Heather finally walked through the doors, Becca almost didn’t recognize her. She was still going without makeup, and her hair was pulled back in a plain ponytail. Her jeans and t-shirt looked more likely to have come from Becca’s wardrobe than her own.
But the biggest difference was in the way she held herself. She didn’t shuffle her feet and hunch her shoulders the way she had the last time Becca had seen her; she walked with her old confidence. No, more than her old confidence—this was something new.
Heather saw her, Becca could tell. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second before Heather looked away.
Becca blocked her path. “We need to talk.”
Heather tried to walk around her. “Not right now, okay? We can talk later.”
And how long would that be? Another three weeks? A month? By then it could be too late.
No, she told herself again. Heather isn’t capable of something like that.
But if she was wrong…
She matched her steps to Heather’s, keeping her body in front of her. “No. We need to talk now.”
They stood like that for a moment as people shoved past them. What would Becca do if Heather said no? She had no way to force Heather to talk to her.
At last, Heather nodded. “There’s a table over there.” She pointed to the far corner of the room.
Becca shook her head. “Not here. Someplace quieter.” Someplace where people won’t overhear.
They left the cafeteria. On their way down the hall, they passed two of Heather’s old friends headed in the opposite direction. As the girls saw Heather, one of them leaned in toward the other and whispered something. Heather didn’t even look at them.
Becca ducked into their Citizenship classroom, which was empty this time of day. She was afraid Heather would just keep going, but Heather followed her into the room. Becca closed the door behind them. This was as safe as they were going to get. At least she could be relatively sure the classrooms weren’t bugged. Surveillance didn’t need to spend hours listening in on every class, when Monitors were more efficient and didn’t cost anything.
Becca and Heather sat at a couple of empty desks near the center of the room. The shiny desks at this school still unnerved Becca a little. She missed the scuffed and scratched-up desks of the old school. They had felt lived-in. These—and everything else in this school—looked like props from a movie.
“What did you want to talk about?” The grief and uncertainty had disappeared from Heather’s voice. She didn’t sound like the same person Becca had talked to in the cafeteria three weeks ago. But she didn’t sound like her old self, either.
Becca studied the smudged blackboard as though the right words might appear there. All she saw was a list of the ten characteristics of a good citizen, which she had memorized back in elementary school. “If you still don’t want anything to do with me, that’s fine. I can leave you alone after this. But I need to know something.” She stopped, unwilling to even hint at the suspicion that could drive Heather out of her life for good.
Heather waited, so still and quiet that Becca wanted to ask her what she had done with the real Heather.
At least she was looking at Becca now, and listening to her, instead of pretending she didn’t exist. So what if she was acting a little strange. She was still trying to deal with losing her family, her friends, her life. Of course she wasn’t back to normal yet.
“What do you need to know?” Heather asked.
“Do you blame my mom for what happened with your parents?”
“Of course not. She did what she had to do.”
Heather’s answer had come too easily. Like she had practiced it. Maybe Becca’s suspicions hadn’t been unfounded after all. Cold began creeping up her limbs.
“If you’re thinking of… doing anything… don’t.” Becca stumbled over the words. “You’d get caught. You’d end up being executed like your parents. Anyway, my mom isn’t responsible for what happened.”
Heather frowned. “You’re not making any sense.”
What had Becca expected to accomplish by doing this? If Heather wasn’t planning on trying to get revenge against her mom, the idea that Becca would suspect her of such a thing might damage their relationship beyond repair. And if she was, could Becca really talk her out of it?
But as long as the possibility existed, Becca had to do something. No matter what Becca thought of her mom, she couldn’t stand back and let her die.
“You think I would, what, turn into a dissident?” Heather’s voice rose. A little of her old self crept back into her face. “You were the one person in this school who didn’t suspect me. I should have known you’d end up taking their side sooner or later.”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant if you were planning on… getting revenge against her somehow.”
Heather looked at her in horror. “Against your mom? For executing a couple of dissidents? You really think I would do something like that? What’s wrong with you?”