Maybe that was why he wasn’t as quick to condemn Heather as everyone else. He’d had his own experiences with people’s vicious assumptions. Nothing weird about it after all.
“Well, thanks for not thinking the same thing about me,” said Becca.
He leaned back in his chair. “You don’t look like a dissident to me,” he said with another smile.
Wait. He was flirting, wasn’t he? She basked in the unaccustomed attention. A wave of guilt followed. Heather was sitting alone in the cafeteria, still thinking she had a chance of getting her parents back, and Becca was in the library flirting with a boy. Some best friend she was.
“Is something wrong? You look upset.”
Becca had missed her chance to flirt back. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m just worried about Heather.” She hadn’t understood until now how much she wanted somebody on her side in all this. Normally she had her mom and Heather—but now Heather was the one who needed her help, and her mom was part of the problem. “I don’t know why everyone keeps saying she’s a dissident. If she were a dissident, they would have executed her.”
“I’ve heard of dissidents getting released every once in a while, if they’ve cooperated.”
“That’s not what happened with Heather,” Becca said sharply. “She wasn’t even arrested.”
“I’m just saying they might think that’s what happened. Or maybe they think Internal let her go so she’d lead them to other dissidents. I don’t think they’ve thought it through that far, though. They’re just vultures feeding on someone else’s misery.”
Hadn’t Becca thought of them in exactly those terms, that first day? She really did have an ally—one she never would have known about if he hadn’t passed by at exactly the right moment…
How had he just happened to be there?
There was something strange about the way he was looking at her. Underneath his casual demeanor, he was watching her with too-sharp eyes.
She blinked, and it was gone.
Well, of course she was feeling paranoid, after what had happened to Heather’s parents. After what she had learned about them.
“Is she doing okay?” asked Jake. “It’s got to be tough, going through something like that.”
Why did he care so much about Heather, anyway? He didn’t know her.
He had that sharp look in his eyes again.
“I mean, she probably didn’t even know they were dissidents.” He watched her like he was waiting for something.
It was as if someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over Becca’s head.
Of course. She should have seen it earlier. She should have guessed.
Jake wasn’t interested in Becca. He didn’t feel bad for Heather. And he hadn’t just happened to show up at the right time.
He was spying for Internal.
The school, like everywhere else, was crawling with Monitors, but everyone knew who they were. Internal needed other people too—people who watched for dissident activity without anyone knowing it. People like Jake. Jake, who had maneuvered her into a conversation about Heather so he could fish for information.
It was bad enough that everyone at school thought Heather was a dissident. If Internal suspected her too, that was a whole different kind of dangerous.
But they had let her go. If they suspected her, why would they have let her go?
It was too easy to think of reasons. Maybe they were hoping she would lead them to other dissidents—Jake had even mentioned that possibility. Maybe letting her go had been some kind of test. Or maybe they just wanted to be sure.
Internal would only need to watch her for a while to realize she was innocent, though. It wasn’t as if she would do anything suspicious. Except that it wouldn’t take much to incriminate Heather at this point. The way Becca’s mom talked about her proved that. All Heather had to do was say one thing that somebody like Jake could misinterpret.
The others might be vultures, but Jake was a predator. He could draw blood.
Jake waved a hand in front of her face. “Becca? You still there?”
“I have to go,” she mumbled. She didn’t look at him as she hurried out of the room.
Only after the library door closed behind her did she realize how suspicious she had just made herself look.
Usually when Becca’s mom got home early—which these days meant before eight—they had dinner together and spent the evening catching up. This time, Becca told her mom she had already eaten, and holed herself up in her bedroom after a few minutes of small talk. She walled her textbooks around herself and let everything but homework fade to the back of her mind.
Even with her door closed, the doorbell jarred her out of her studying trance. She frowned at her computer screen, trying to pick up her lost train of thought. Her mom could deal with it.
“Becca’s not home right now,” she heard her mom say to whoever was at the door.
What? Becca scrambled out of her chair and opened her bedroom door just in time to hear the visitor’s response.
“Actually,” said Heather, “I came to talk to you.”
Becca rushed down the hallway into the living room. Heather stood on one side of the door, her mom on the other. Heather’s hair was mussed, and her makeup was smudged with tears. Her shirt looked like she had pulled it out of the laundry.
Heather’s look of determination changed to a confused frown. “I thought you weren’t here.”
Becca glared at her mom, who was still standing between her and the door. “I was just in my room.”
“You haven’t answered my calls.”
Becca hadn’t meant to keep ignoring Heather’s calls. She had just needed more time to figure out what to say. Now, though, her time had run out. “We can talk now, if you want.” Becca pushed in front of her mom. She glanced back toward her room—and toward her mom, standing behind her. Too close. Any place in this apartment would be too close. “Outside.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said her mom. “You said you had a lot of homework.”
Heather tried to step past Becca into the apartment. “Since I’m here, I might as well talk to your mom myself.”
Becca shifted to block Heather’s path. “Why don’t we go out to the parking lot? We can talk there. It’ll be easier.”
“What did you want to talk to me about, Heather?” Her mom’s voice betrayed only mild curiosity.
Heather took a deep breath. “My parents were arrested a few days ago.” She craned her neck to see past Becca. Another breath. “I thought maybe there was something you could do. You know, to get somebody to understand that they’re innocent.”
Please don’t tell her, Becca silently begged her mom. However hard it would be for Heather to hear the news from Becca, hearing it from Becca’s mom would be so much worse.
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.” Becca’s mom sounded distant now. Cold. Becca shivered. She didn’t think she’d ever heard that particular tone in her mom’s voice before. “I think it would be best if you went home.”
Becca shoved her way out into the hall, all but pushing Heather away from the door with her. “Come on. We’ll go talk outside.” She shut the door behind her before her mom could say anything else.
“What was that all about?” asked Heather as they walked down the stairs.
Tell her what you should have told her on Friday night as soon as you found out. “I asked her about your parents. She…” Becca hesitated. Somewhere, there had to be the perfect way of telling your best friend that her parents were dead, that they had been killed as traitors, that they had been traitors. Becca wished she knew it.
They stepped out into the parking lot. A cool breeze lifted Becca’s hair off her neck. The sky hadn’t gotten dark enough for the parking lot lights to come on; the red-orange glow of the sunset glinted off the parked cars instead.