Once you see you can’t unsee.
Rayla lingers in the background. She wants them to get a good look at us. Like we’re creatures in a zoo.
I resent this. I resent her.
“Xavier, we need your car,” I hear her command.
I lose feeling in my fingers. I begin to suffocate, choking on my guilt. I cover my face with my trembling palms and turn away from all the eyes.
“Don’t follow me,” I say to Ava, my voice shrill and distant.
I need to unknow. I need to unsee.
Dry heaving, I feel spit dripping down my chin as I trip my way toward the dying field, away from the house, away from the eyes, with Ava following behind.
It should be me in there, Father.
It should have been me.
“Are they going to kill him?” I ask from the backseat of the car.
“We don’t know,” Rayla says, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.
Ava moves restlessly in the passenger seat as if walls were closing in around her. And I sit still. Very, very still. The monotonous pa-plunk, pa-plunk of the four tires hurtling over potholes masks the silence. Aggravates my brooding thoughts of what’s happening back in Dallas.
We’re going the wrong way.
“Why can’t the Common save him?” Ava asks. She pops her left thumb. Her right. “You obviously have people on the inside. They can help him escape . . .”
“Listen to me,” Rayla says, her eyes never leaving the road that takes us north. “Darren is out of our reach now.”
She says this like it’s final. Like it’s not my father. Like I’m not the reason.
We’re going the wrong way.
“He’s not out of reach!” I snap. “He’s still alive!”
In one explosive motion I reach for the door and flick up the lock. Before I can pull the handle, I hear a click. Locked.
“Let me out of the goddamn car!” I shout, my words trembling, my head splitting, my stomach queasy from going the wrong way.
Rayla’s fingers hover above the lock controls, ready for any sudden movements. “To do what? Turn yourself in? Get yourself caught? That will do nothing for him,” Rayla says, her eyes still on the cavity-plagued pavement leading north.
“We’re going the wrong way!” I scream with a force that tears at my vocal chords, making my eyes water. I ram my shoulder into the glass window. I will break everything to get to him.
“Mira, calm down!” Ava yells at me from the front seat.
“Calm down? Our father is going to die because of us!”
The car keeps moving, and I want to cry, howl, and scream until my voice gives out and someone finally listens, but Rayla cuts me off.
“Do you think freedom comes without a price?”
She shifts her gaze to the rearview mirror. I keep mine on the lock.
“Darren sent you both to me for a reason. The prison surveillance footage only confirmed this.”
Ava stops her fidgeting. “Was our father sending us a message?” She slides off the baseball cap she’s been wearing since we boarded the bus and leans over the center console, entreating Rayla to answer.
“He sent us all a message.”
Rayla twists her head from the passenger seat to me, before turning back to the road.
“Revive the rebellion.”
Ava whispers the three words aloud to herself—considering them, absorbing them, accepting them. She looks at me, but I refuse to digest this insanity.
“To join the Common is a death sentence for our father,” I tell her. “We might as well be the ones pulling the trigger.”
For a microsecond I think I’m calm. Then my body launches forward, my right shoulder shoves my sister aside, and my hands rip Rayla’s arm from the wheel. The car swerves.
“What are you doing?” Ava cries as the car’s lane-keeping system jolts us back onto the pitted asphalt.
I slip through the hands that fight to prevent me from doing whatever the hell it is I’m doing, flip up the lock on my door, and pry open the handle before Rayla can bolt me in again. A tornado of wind bursts into the car, and I’m hit with a chaotic blend of stinging dirt, whipping hair, and horrified shouts that seem to come from far away and all directions.
“Shut the door!”
“Stop the car!”
Master of the wheel once more, Rayla accelerates the vehicle to eighty, eighty-five, ninety miles per hour, the potholes zipping past at light speed.
“She’s going to fall out!” Ava yells over the gale-force winds. She reaches out for me, her fingertips nipping at my collar and sleeves, straining to pull me from the open door and the road that can lead me south. The only direction that connects me to my father.
“We’re going the wrong way!” I repeat, the winds drawing me closer to the blur of black pavement.
“Get back in your seat, now!” Rayla orders. “You’re not leaving this car!”
I do not comply. Rayla increases our speed.
Ninety-five. One hundred.
I can’t jump. But I can’t abandon him.
“Stop the car!” Ava cries, her left hand clamped around my forearm, her right madly frisking the center console for the buttons that control the transmission.
“We can’t just let him die!” I rasp into the violent air, battling to breathe.
Rayla stabs her finger at the dashboard, and the car lurches to a sudden stop. The tires shriek as Rayla jerks the wheel and cuts a hard right, tossing me like a ragdoll against the opposite door.
Everything falls silent and goes still. The dirt and dust settle—on my shoes, the headrests, on the umbrellas scattered across my stomach—and I’m stunned into inaction. I look out the open door, the car positioned smack in the center of the road.
Rayla twists her body and turns her eyes on me. “The cause is greater than you. It’s greater than your father.”
I gaze dully at the southern horizon, counting the strips of clouds stained by the setting sun.
“The United States was once the most idolized superpower in the world. Our power lay in our equality, our liberty, and our democracy of the common people,” Rayla says, her quiet words emanating strength, drawing Ava even closer. “And look what we’ve become.”
She pauses, triggering a wave of images behind my eyes. The first person I see is the homeless man from the train, then Lucía, then my mother. Or is that my mother’s twin? I try to blink them away—I do not want to see any more—but then my father’s ruined face appears. Blinking out his message.
“We’ve allowed our country to deteriorate into a military state. We’ve allowed ourselves to be monitored, controlled, ruled unchecked by the corrupt elite—subservient to leaders like Roth and his State Guard.”
The only way of life I’ve ever known. Or ever will know.
“They will always have the power,” Ava says. “They have the guns.”
“But we have the both of you.”
My father vanishes from my sight, and Rayla stares me dead in the eyes.
“Your very existence as twins is a living rebellion. Together your faces can symbolize a revolution.”
Ava breathes heavily—her chest moving up and down, up and down—taking it all in.
“The US is dried up and dying. All it needs is that one spark, and change can spread like wildfire.”
Rayla’s face softens as she touches Ava’s hand. And mine. She looks at me now not as a former rebellion leader, but as my grandmother. Or as close to that role as she can manage.
“Your father wants a better future for you both. He is a brave man.”
I turn back to the road that points south—the potholes, the painted lines, the horizon all disappearing into the dusk. I feel the spotlight on me as they wait for my response.
Shoving the rucksacks and umbrellas to the floor, I crawl across the seat, and pull the door shut with an unsatisfying bang.
I hear a final sharp click.
Locking me in.
AVA
I can only see three feet in front of me.