HEJIRA - Chapter 6
Jondy wakes me up at dawn every day. She strings a punching bag up in all our motel rooms and attacks it for an hour every morning. Sometimes she's crying when she finishes, though I never ask. Zack certainly never asks, he seems to already know, and she keeps her distance from him. Neither of them talk unless they have to, so I've grown accustomed to silence.
I'm getting tired of this life, and I'm getting more and more homesick every day. Zack doesn't seem to be in any hurry to leave me and Jondy, which is odd, and I think almost losing us really got to him, made him think about how lucky we've been for the last ten years. I guess so, anyway. I never actually got the complete story on how we were compromised. We turn heads wherever we go, three beautiful people fairly close in age. This is yet another reason why it surprises me that Zack lets us stay together so long. But every time I think he's about to split us up, he shows no intention whatsoever of doing so. It baffles me and intrigues me all at once.
One day Jondy hauls me out of bed early in the morning and makes me change into one of her tank tops and shorts, and she puts me in front of the punching bag. Without really asking why, still half-asleep, I go at it. Zack has long since gotten up and is out on one of his many errands. It feels good to hit that punching bag, to throw left hooks and quick right jabs, to feel the thing lurch away from my fists, the crunch of leather and stuffing satisfying on my knuckles.
When I'm done, Jondy is standing across the room, leaning against the windowframe with her arms crossed. Her blue eyes look at me intensely before she pushes off from the wall, walking over to me slowly as she holds me in her gaze. I'm older, but I feel like I'm waiting for her approval.
"So," she finally speaks. "You're still a soldier after all."
"Are you?" I ask her.
"You got lost in it," she says, motioning at the bag. I follow the gesture and nod, and then Jondy smiles. "That's good. You were always so completely involved in what we were doing." We lose eye contact as my gaze slides sideways.
Blood heightens everything. We kicked and punched and grabbed, but
when somebody's nails scraped, or maybe it was somebody's teeth, that changed
everything...
"Tinga," Jondy interrupts me, her voice firm. I look at her and I smile,
because I realize she knows exactly what it is I was experiencing. That's the
thing about being with normal people too long- you start to feel like the
flashbacks, the memories, make you a freak. You start to forget that there are
other people, your family, who experience the same thing, know it all like no
one else ever could. And when you're back with your family, things feel right.
You're complete.
"I keep a gun in the wall of my apartment back in Portland," I tell her, and she nods with a slow smile. She's impressed.
"That's good," she says. "That'll come in handy when you go back there."
"Go back?" I repeat, staring at her for a few moments in confusion.
"Don't you think it's time?"
"I..." I trail off and Jondy walks over to me. She hugs me, folds herself into my arms, and I hold her soft, muscular body in my arms. It's like I can feel the sadness emanating outward from her, passing between her skin and mine in little waves. She sighs. "Shh, baby sister," I say immediately, because I'm thinking she's about to cry. She pulls back and smiles at me, shakes her head.
"Not this time," she says. "Don't you miss your son?"
"Of course," I whisper, my voice pained.
"Then go home, Penny," Jondy says firmly.
"I don't want to," I answer, the words coming out almost on their own, and they hang there for a long time, scaring me, maybe scaring us both. Jondy doesn't blink.
"We can steal Zack's car," she says, pretending I didn't speak. Giving me an out from those dangerous words I'd just spoken. "The snow's getting on my nerves anyway, I'd like to go back to California."
"Nobody will be there," I whisper, and Jondy nods sadly. "Zane will be gone, and we know what happened to Brin."
"I know," she whispers back. "Maybe I'll go east..."
"East is off limits," I tell her, but the reminder falls on deaf ears. If Jondy wants to try, I think she should, whether Zack likes it or not. Ben's my brother too, and I don't want to see him end up dead or worse just because he can't separate Manticore's fiction from reality.
"It'll be easier for me to get home by myself," I say softly.
"I'll split with you at the Washington-Oregon border," Jondy agrees. We nod, and I gaze at my sister, wondering when I'll see her again, if I'll see her again. I think of Charlie, of Case, and regret my earlier words.
"I do want to go," I correct myself, and Jondy nods. "I just... I'll miss you." I roll my eyes in the direction of the door. "Him too." Jondy smiles.
"Yeah, me too."
"I love you."
"I love you too, Tinga," she answers, and then she hugs me, holds me close, her hands in my dark hair, soothing and warm.
"What happened to you?" I ask into the safety of her shoulder.
"Shh," she whispers back, and after a little while, "What do you think the best way to Chicago would be? Going through Helena or Salt Lake City?"
"Helena," I answer immediately, my eyes closing. "You'll bypass Wyoming that way."
"Good point," she says. Then she lets me go, throws a punch at the the bag, and flops onto the bed. "Oh good, Zack's home. I'm starving." She's always had better hearing than me so I trust it, and before my eyes can settle on the door it's opening and Zack is walking in.
"Hey," I say. He drops fried chicken onto the bed and Jondy starts devouring it, graciously handing me a piece before she inhales the whole thing. She eats an incredible amount of food, and because she barely sleeps, she never gains a pound. Not that it even matters, probably. I doubt any of us could be obese if we wanted to- the beauty, I'm sure, is written into our genes in more ways than one.
"When are we moving out?" Jondy asks when she can speak without disgusting us. I glance at Zack curiously.
He shrugs. "Why, are you in some kind of hurry?"
"We're soldiers, " Jondy says, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "I thought we were supposed to move around all the time."
Again, Zack shrugs. " Lydecker's not on to us. We're safe together for a while." And I wonder, did losing Brin, almost losing us, really freak him this much?
I swallow my chicken. "It just seems unlike you."
Zack smiles. "Don't worry. I know what I'm doing." Then he gets up, gathers the garbage, and starts packing. "Though you're right... it is time to move on from here." He grabs some stuff and heads outside to the car. At this Jondy grins, and that's when I know she has some kind of plan. Not that I'd ever ask. And not that she'd ever dream of telling me.
"It's a battlefield," Ben says. The others have long since gone to
sleep, except Max and Jondy who are playing on Max's bed across the room. We're
supposed to be sleeping too but Ben wants to talk and we're always there to
listen. The three of us are always there for each other.
"A battlefield?" Eva repeats, her voice calm. I've never seen her lose her cool, I don't even think she's capable of it. When she smiles, her whole face looks serene. My siblings say mine lights up when I smile, but I don't smile very often. Sometimes they try to make me, but I usually get irritated and the game stops being fun then.
Ben nods, continues, "Where only the best soldiers get to fight. It's how you prove you're worthy of the Good Place." Ben's definition of how to prove you're worthy of the Good Place changes every day, but no one ever questions how he knows what he knows. He just does.
Eva shakes her head slowly, thoughtfully. "It's probably a lot different. It's probably sunny all the time, and I bet no one makes you train if you don't want to. I bet people smile a lot more, and if you want to leave they don't try to stop you. They just let you go. You can do whatever you want, and it's okay. You can live the way you want to. No orders."
Ben rolled his eyes. "That doesn't make any sense," he says, then turns to me. "What about you? What do you think?"
I look at him, shrug. "I don't care." And it's the truth, I don't. Eva and Ben exchange a small smile.
"Play the game, Tinga," Eva gives a gentle order, so I sigh and put on my best thinking expression. But all I can picture is Manticore. I've never really had a great imagination.
"It's probably just like here," I say.
"No," they both answer firmly in unison. Ben adds, "It's not like here at all."
That said, Eva stands up. "Sleep," she announces in an authoritative voice. Every so often she allows herself forget her duties as 2IC, to be with the two of us mostly, but she always remembers them again.
I frown as they head back to their beds, Ben's by Max's and Eva's next to Zack's. I settle into my own bunk between Dar and Brin, and frown at the ceiling. "It's probably just like here," I say under my breath. After all, Lydecker lives in the Real World too, doesn't he? For all we know, he made that one too.
We were a sub-unit. Not officially, but we felt like one, just the three
of us. We were so close, so similar in a lot of ways. We understood each other,
were in tune to each other the way Max and Jondy were, or Lex, Dali, and Tosh.
We saw the world in the same way, and we were going to be together, forever. We
were in this together... that's what we thought.
I did run with Ben, but not with Eva. She died. They killed her. He killed her. Broke us apart, made us lose one of our own.
And now... and now Ben is heading down the same path. We drifted. We all drifted. We knew each other so well, and now I have a sister dead and a brother who's either not who he used to be, or more himself than he's ever been before. I change my mind on that almost daily.
I look up. "Jondy?"
"Hmm?"
"Are you really going to go East?" I ask her. She turns to me slowly, like she'd been expecting this, and there's a small smile on her face, though her eyes are tense. She has the most interesting and most upsetting eyes of anyone I've ever seen. They have more shadow than colour.
"What's stopping me?" she asked me, instead of answering.
"If you do end up over there... tell Ben..." I trail off. Tell him what? That I love him? He knows that. "Tell him..." Again, I falter, but Jondy's looking at me with such patience that I get the impression she'd wait all night for me to finish. "Tell him I have a son," I finish finally. Jondy smiles, seeming pleased with this answer. She waits. "And also..." But I can't think of anything more. I want to, but I can't. I haven't seen Ben in over eight years... I can't imagine what to say.