The Gender Fall (The Gender Game #5)

The night had faded away into a gray, overcast dawn, the threat of rain bearing down in the form of ionized air. Everyone else had gone inside at one point or another and gotten some rest.

I hadn’t slept—I couldn’t even bring myself to try. Instead, I worked. I helped Lynne, Morgan, and Jay unload the vehicles they had packed up as a precaution. The work suited me just fine. I was in no mood to deal with human interaction, and our ceaseless labor didn’t really make talking practical.

Once that task was finished, I moved on to another job, then another. I took the jobs nobody wanted: splitting firewood, digging out areas for people to relieve themselves and marking them with strips of yellow cloth, building more targets for the firing range… I did anything and everything I could to remain alone. The latest chore was laundry duty, which was probably the most annoying task in the camp, as it required me to fetch water from the rusted-over pump on the side of the house, heat it over a fire, and then dump it into a trough and scrub at the dirty clothes and bedlinens for grueling minutes. Even with the heavy plastic gloves I wore over my bandages to keep my raw knuckles from bleeding on the clean clothes, the heat of the water felt as though it was scalding me every time I put my hands into it.

It was perfect.

News of Owen’s loss had hit the camp hard, muting the normal sounds of a waking, bustling camp of over fifty people. A somberness seemed to hang over us, just as heavy and thick as the clouds overhead. I kept my head down as I worked, making it known that I was not in a mood for conversation, and, for the most part, people left me alone.

Physical activity was a distraction, one I sorely needed to keep myself from going off the rails. I didn’t think I could ever explain my turmoil to anyone, not even Violet. It was like a poisonous sack of bile writhing under my torso. It wouldn’t do me the courtesy of letting me vomit, nor would it become less corrosive with time. It just sat there, periodically twitching, reminding me a boy had died, and I was more than likely responsible for it.

I knew Violet and Ms. Dale and… well… everyone except Owen didn’t feel like I should blame myself. But I couldn’t help it. I was the one who had fought him. I was the one who had wrapped my arm around his tiny neck and squeezed. If I had just been able to…

My gloved hand convulsively closed into a fist, and I had to swallow the urge to start hitting something again—a feeling I was growing more and more familiar with. I winced as my knuckles throbbed, almost able to feel the broken skin splitting further, and then relaxed into it, letting the pain roll over me, recognizing on some dark level that I deserved it. On an even darker level, I knew it wasn’t enough to make up for my failings.

I released my clenched fist and exhaled before plunging my hand back into the soapy water, just shy of scalding, and beginning to rub the clothes against the washboard in the tub. I was engrossed in my work, but even so, time moved at a snail’s pace.

There was a subtle clearing of a throat behind me, and my hands stopped in their vigorous scrubbing. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Violet there, her face somber. Her bruises had faded quite a bit over the past few days, but they lingered in yellow and green, almost fluorescent spots on the side of her face. I hadn’t stopped to look in a mirror, but I assumed I now had a set to match.

“It’s time?” I asked, and she nodded.

Swallowing the excess saliva that had built up in my mouth, I pulled the sheet I had been working on out of the water and dropped it into the next tub, which held cooler, clean water for rinsing. “I’ll be there in a minute,” I announced. “Just want to finish this.”

I heard her sigh softly, but her shoes began to move, crunching over the soil and fading as she headed away. Exhaling in relief, I quickly rinsed out the sheet, wrung it out, and then threw it over one of the lines strung between two trees to dry. It took a few minutes, but when it was done, I felt just a fraction more mentally prepared for what was to come.

I gave a dark, strained chuckle as the thought went through my mind. Who was I kidding? I was nowhere near prepared for this.

Steeling myself, I turned back toward the house, where I could see Ms. Dale, Amber, Lynne, Morgan, Jay, Thomas, and, of course, Owen, standing on the porch. Owen held Ian’s small body in his arms, cradling the young boy, and even from this distance, I could see the sad draw in his mouth and eyes. The gray day, with low rainclouds drifting slowly across the sky, seemed designed to reflect our sorrow.

Violet placed a hand on Owen’s shoulder, and together, they all started to move to the place where Violet had tasked a few of the refugees to help her in constructing a grave. She had picked a good spot for it: near the woods, just off the side of the barn, in the shade of the trees and out of the way of the daily routines of the camp. I watched as they moved, my throat tight.

The entire short day, I had been riddled with indecision on what I should do about this funeral. On the one hand, I needed to go—honor demanded it. On the other, without a doubt, I knew Owen didn’t want me there. With how he felt right now, it would just be an affront to him if I were at the ceremony. It was a conundrum. I still felt strongly that I needed to be there.