But it couldn’t be over. Not yet. “Please. I promised Heather I’d—”
Her mom’s brow furrowed. “I told you how I feel about you spending time with Heather in light of all this.”
"I can’t just abandon her. She’s my best friend. And she doesn’t have anyone else right now."
Her mom rubbed her temples. "In addition to your safety, you have to consider how this could affect your future prospects. You’re graduating next year. If Heather is arrested for dissident activity, a close association with her could seriously harm your chances of finding a good position with Internal."
"I’m not interested in working for Internal." Becca wasn’t going to let her mom sidetrack her with this old argument. "Please just say you’ll look into it. Do it for me."
“Becca.” Her mom rested a hand on her arm. “It’s over.”
“You could have misunderstood them.” She was reaching now, she knew. “Or maybe they—”
Her mom held out her other hand to stop her. “Becca… I executed them the night they were arrested.”
The ground dropped away underneath her. Her vision blurred as the room spun.
“It was necessary. They didn’t know as much as we had hoped, so we didn’t make much progress in finding the other members of their group. There might still be dissidents inside Internal. If we’d waited any longer, they could have been rescued.”
I talked to my mom like you asked, but she couldn’t get your parents released, because she had already killed them. Hysterical laughter rose in her chest.
“Becca. Say something.” Her mom’s hand tightened on her arm.
Becca struggled to bring the world back into focus. “It’s okay.” She cleared her throat. “It’s okay. They were dissidents, right? So you had to do it.”
Her mom still looked concerned. “It’s understandable for you to have trouble with this.”
“Was it…” Becca gestured toward the TV. Most dissidents were shot without ceremony on the underground levels of 117, but some executions were televised, the dissidents confessing their crimes into the camera before they died. Sometimes the executions were replayed for days afterward. When she had flipped through channels earlier, had she narrowly avoided seeing Heather’s parents die?
Her mom shook her head. “Considering the Thomases’ former positions in Surveillance, Public Relations wanted to keep the details quiet.”
Good. At least there was no chance Heather had seen it.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine. Really.” What else had she expected? As hard as it was for Becca to believe, they had been dissidents. They wouldn’t have confessed otherwise. What was her mom supposed to do, let them go anyway just because their daughter missed them?
Becca pulled her arm into her lap, away from her mom’s hand.
She understood. She did.
But what was she going to tell Heather?
Chapter Three
Becca had never been so grateful for a weekend in her life.
But the two days passed too quickly, and before Becca had gotten past There’s something you need to know in her imagined speech to Heather, it was Monday morning again.
Avoiding Heather before lunch wasn’t hard. The only class they had together this year was Citizenship, in the afternoon. But when lunchtime came around, she stood in front of the cafeteria doors for a full five minutes as the river of students flowed around her. Two choices—sit with Heather and answer questions about her conversation with her mom, or sit someplace else and let Heather think she had abandoned her along with everybody else.
Or option three—skip the whole thing. She turned around. She wasn’t hungry anyway.
“The smell of the meatloaf scared you away too?” a voice behind her asked.
Becca spun around. It took her a moment to figure out where she recognized the boy from. It was the hair that did it—the black hair falling into his face. He was the one who hadn’t looked away when she had caught him staring on that first awful day.
Now he smiled, a slow smile that filled up his entire face. Becca made herself remember that he had been one of the gawkers that day, craning his neck to get a glimpse of Heather’s tragedy. She didn’t smile back.
“Where are you headed?” he asked.
Becca shrugged. “I don’t know. The library, I guess.”
“Good, me too.” He started walking. Now that Becca had said she was going to the library, she had no choice but to walk there with him.
He moved clumsily, like he had only recently gotten tall and hadn’t quite realized it yet. “I don’t blame you for not wanting to eat in there,” he said. “I’ve seen the way everyone looks at you and Heather now.”
“It’s not like you weren’t watching too.” She studied him out of the corner of her eye as she spoke, trying to figure out who he was. He had to be new; she hadn’t seen him around here before that day in the cafeteria. But something about him made her certain she knew him from somewhere.
He looked faintly embarrassed. “I heard the rumors like everyone else. I wanted to know what was going on. It took me a while to figure out they were all going after your friend for no real reason.”
He started up the stairs. Becca followed him, struggling to keep up with his long-legged stride. “What changed your mind?”
“Everyone has a different story about the two of you. All anybody really knows is that Internal took her parents. And having dissident parents doesn’t make you a dissident.”
Becca wished more people saw it that way. Weird, though, that this stranger would, when none of Heather’s friends were willing to stand by her. So did he know her and Heather from somewhere? The more she talked to him, the more she got the sense that she should remember him.
“Do you mind if I ask you something?” she asked as they walked. “Don’t be offended, okay?”
They reached the top of the stairs, directly in front of the library. He stopped outside the door. “Go ahead.”
“Are you new here, or do I know you?”
“I’m new.” He smiled again. “I’m Jake, by the way.”
Becca let her breath out. “Good. I haven’t forgotten you, then. But…” She frowned. “You still seem familiar. Are you sure we haven’t met before?”
“I lived around here a few years ago.” His voice dropped as he pushed the library door open. “We went to junior high together. I think you were in my English class.”
Jake. Right. She thought she remembered him now—a short skinny kid who had always been joking around. The time away had agreed with him. His chatter that had bordered on obnoxious seemed to have mellowed into a quiet friendliness… and, she had to admit, he was a lot nicer to look at now.
She looked away and hurried into the library before he could notice her studying him.
The library—twice the size of the one at the old high school, with shelves that towered above Becca’s head—was empty except for a couple of girls at the computers and a boy with a stack of books beside him. Becca sat down at the nearest table. Jake took the chair across from her.
“You left halfway through the year,” Becca remembered aloud. “Actually, I heard—” She closed her mouth before the rest of the sentence could escape. I heard Internal took you.
“You heard I was a dissident? Yeah, I’ve heard that one too.” He smiled, as if to reassure her that he wasn’t offended. Becca smiled back in relief.