12.
Ty brought home a dog once. That’s all it takes with my mother. She reported the incident to Them. They came and took the dog away.
Pets are against the rules, of course. Animals require care, and They only want you to care about who They tell you to care about.
Ty cried for a few days, and then she told me she didn’t want a dog anyway. We were sitting next to the lake, Ty shredding a fern leaf and me feeding ducks—both illegal activities. I didn’t believe her. She did want a pet. The real Ty did anyway. That night, after she fell asleep, I unclipped her link and plugged it into my comm. The brainwashing voice articulated the evils of pets and, hey, did you know dogs carry diseases?
My transmissions had been about helping my neighbors, serving my community and those weaker than me. That night I learned the transmissions are tailored for each person, each subject.
Each slave.
This dog looked exactly like the one Ty had found. Short brown fur matted with golden dirt. His pink tongue hung out of his mouth, almost as low as his floppy ears. He scratched behind one and yawned. Stinky dog breath billowed in my face. I pushed the dog away, disgusted. The transmissions said . . . I shook my head, fighting for control of my own thoughts.
I called the dog back over. “Where’d you come from?” I asked it, feeling lame. First I was talking to houses and now dogs.
The dog panted and sat.
“Nice,” I said, wishing I’d chosen a different word. “Nice” belonged to Jag.
The sun had drifted a quarter of the way through the sky. I’d have to risk traveling during the day. I had to eat something soon or I would die out here. Then nobody would find me and I’d be a nobody-Baddie that nobody missed.
That’s too many nobodies, even for me.
I got up and started trudging through the dirt. The dog trotted next to me, unconcerned about lingering dust trails and possible hovercopters—which never came. We headed toward the Badlands, me talking to the dog like he understood the English language, and the dog sitting when I sat and walking when I walked. He wouldn’t have abandoned me for calling him “different.” Didn’t Jag know different was good?
Obviously not.
I pounded my anger into my footsteps as I passed building after derelict building. Most of them sported charred wood and twisted metal. This area had been abandoned during the fires and never rebuilt. In a few places, the fire ranger rings still shone on the cracked stones.
The powdery red dirt coated my shoes and the back of my throat. Without a hat, my face was burned by the time evening settled in. Without food, my legs trembled and the horizon blinked between white and sunset.
Lights shone a few miles ahead when I found a stream. Forgetting about purification, I practically inhaled that water. It felt cool against my inflamed neck and ears, and I decided that wearing a hat was actually a decent rule.
Green shoots poked through the soil. Dirty purple bulbs came up, and I hardly rinsed them before crunching them down. They tasted like soap and Jag’s hair gel, with a little onion thrown in.
I didn’t complain. I lay on my back, looking at the sky. When I was a child, my dad had told me stories about how he used to wish on the stars. I’d been mesmerized and wanted to wish on the brightest one.
“Can I fly up there and touch it? I could make a wish on the way back down.”
“You can’t, V,” he’d said. “Nobody can fly. And there’s no use wishing for things that won’t come true.”
“Who says they won’t come true?”
“Violet,” Dad said, crouching down and looking into my eyes. “You must learn to be satisfied with what you’re given.”
I just looked at him.
“Sometimes life doesn’t allow us to be free to fly wherever we’d like. Do you understand, honey?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice small. Dad smiled, took my hand, and walked me home, careful to let go before any of the neighbors could see and report that we’d broken the no-touching rule.
But now I wasn’t satisfied with what I’d been given. I wanted more. I wanted to be free to wish on the stars and eat ham (if I could find it).
In memory of my dad, I wished on the brightest star. A single tear trickled over my cheek. Just as quickly, I wiped it away, determined to find him here in the Badlands.
If you can, the voice whispered in my ear.
I sat up, fear pounding in my ears. Suddenly, under this wide-open sky and without any transmissions hanging in the air, I paired the voice with a person. The man who’d spoken to me in the lab where I’d been tagged was the same man who’d been inside my head since the day I went to meet Zenn.
Thane Myers had followed me. The darkness settled over me like a thick blanket, and it took a long time to fall asleep.
The next morning I woke up alone. Great. Dogs couldn’t even stand my company. I chomped through a couple of bulbs, filled my water bottle, and by afternoon, stood on the edge of the Badland city. I wondered if Jag would saunter by with his real friends, his sun-stained skin glinting in the petering light, his mouth curved up in his trademark smile.
He didn’t.
My hair was wilder than the teens here. Sure, theirs was on the short side, and they didn’t hold back in the color department. Red, orange, bleached, they had it all. No wonder Jag liked my jet-black do—no one had hair exactly like mine.
I watched the Baddie teens roam the streets, living their own lives, free from the imposing rules of a Thinker. From anyone, really. What would it be like to live that way? To live without the guilt of breaking rules and disappointing my mother?
I didn’t know.
Bad girls wore plenty of earrings. Guys could keep the gel factories in business by themselves. Couples held hands, and one boy pulled his girlfriend close and kissed her on the cheek. She tucked her hand in his back pocket as they walked down the street.
Standing on the outside, I realized something. The Baddies aren’t bad because of their skin or the way they do their hair or even because of the revealing clothes. They’re bad because they’re uncontrolled.
They’re bad because that’s what I’d always been told.
A boom rocked me from my thoughts. My inner criminal urged me to run. I hid behind a cluster of rocks on the outskirts of town, expecting hovercopters, red iris recognizers, and a swarm of Special Forces agents to descend around the plume of smoke rising into the sky.
Of course nothing like that happened. A car approached, with its orange lights blinking lazily. Two men wearing blue uniforms with low-class tech lights on their sleeves questioned a few people before cleaning up a blackened mess of burnt wrappers. One said, “Firecrackers,” but I had no idea what that meant.
No intimidation. No threats. I’d been arrested for walking in the park. Apparently in the Badlands, you can blow things up and then get a coffee. I wasn’t sure if this signaled freedom or chaos.
I crouched behind the rock until the officials drove away. My joints and muscles groaned as I straightened. Tonight looked like another starry sleep.
Until I heard a voice behind me. “Vi! You made it!”