She looks away from him. “I know.”
“What he says those tests prove may or may not be true,” he admits, and her eyes spark with gratitude, but he keeps talking and they dim again, “but everything else he says is. We do need the jobs. We do need the opportunities. We do need the growth.” He pauses, then adds, “Reopening the plant is what lots of folks in this town need and want.”
“Think they need,” Nora amends. “Think they want.”
“Nora, I read through his binder.” There’s an edge in his voice, a warning not that what’s coming is bad, but that it’s good, which is worse. “The test results are impressive. Reassuring. It seems like he’s done his homework. And if the GL606 is fixed—”
“A big if,” she interrupts.
“Yes. Exactly. A big if. But if it is, then the reason to keep them out isn’t safety anymore. It’s spite.”
“That’s a plenty good reason.” Nora’s face is red. Blazing.
“For some people.”
“Yes! Us!” she says, and then, when he doesn’t say anything, “I can’t believe it,” her voice changed completely, her face too, like she’s become a different person in these few sad seconds.
“What?”
“When he told me he was taking this to you, I was thrilled. Overjoyed. Because I knew—I knew—you’d never pick him over us. Over me. But it turns out—”
“I would never pick him over you,” Omar interrupts. He won’t let her say it, won’t hear it.
“That’s not what’s happening here? That’s not what you’re telling me?”
“Nora. It’s not.”
He stops and she stops, and they look at each other while long moments pass. Whatever’s going on between them these last weeks has broken her rage like a fever, but it’s left her fragile, vulnerable. Without the anger toward him, all she has is fear, fear and unguarded hope and the likelihood of being hurt some more. She drops her head.
“I am not choosing him over you or over Bourne,” he says slowly. “Of course I’m not.” A pause, then, “Among many other reasons, it’s not my choice.”
Her head snaps up. She was expecting him to take her side. Then, when it seemed like it would go the other way, she was expecting to be devastated for failing to expect that of course he was taking Belsum’s side. Again. But she was not expecting this.
“I’m calling a vote,” he says, sorry but sure.
It takes a moment for her brain to catch up. “You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“Omar—”
“I have to.”
“You do not.”
“This isn’t your decision, Nora.”
“No, it’s yours.”
“It’s not.”
“Omar.” She makes herself take a deep breath, lower her voice. “This is our chance. Our one chance. You said you chose wrong last time. This is how you—we—make it right.”
“It wouldn’t make it right, Nora. It can never be made right. But that is the choice I’d make if this were my decision.” He pauses and holds her eyes, making sure she’s heard him before he continues. “But it’s not. We need to decide—”
“Yes! Exactly!”
“Not we, you and me.” He puts his hands over his heart. “We, all of us. Bourne’s citizenry. We need to decide—we all need to decide—if this is a risk we’re willing to take as a town in exchange for what Belsum is offering. If we believe them this time. If we think they’ve earned another chance. If we think they haven’t earned another chance but we’re going to grant them one anyway. I told Nathan I’d give him a couple weeks to make his case around here, put that R&D in layman’s terms for people, and then we’ll hold a vote. If the majority wants to give Belsum another go, we’ll repair the dam. But if the vote goes the other way, we’ll proceed with legal action immediately to force Belsum to desist on the grounds that the infrastructure is unsound.”
“You don’t owe him a vote or anything else.” Her voice breaks and she lets it, allows herself to sound—to be—vulnerable before him, allows herself to ask him for this one thing.
“You’re right, Nora.” But he’s shaking his head no. “We don’t owe Belsum anything. But I owe the people in this town.” He looks like his heart is breaking. “At least it will be fair this time. At least you’ll get your say.”
She nods and meets his eyes as hers fill. “It’ll be a landslide,” she says. “Right? Of course it will. It has to be.”
“I agree.” Does he? Or is he just saying that to comfort her? “I bet it’s ten to one, a hundred to one, kicking them to the curb. We’ll get the best of both worlds: everyone has their say and we get rid of Belsum.”
She squeezes her eyes shut and wills his words to God’s ears.
He puts his hands on the bar, palms up, and whispers, “I’m sorry.”
Everyone is sorry tonight.
Slowly, she goes over and presses her hands on top of his, not holding but palm to palm, and whispers back, “I know,” dazed by this latest twist of shared misfortune, which is, however, an improvement over the usual kind which she has to burden alone.
One
He doesn’t answer his phone or return my texts, but maybe he’s not getting them because his reception’s so bad. I can’t call his landline because anyone might pick up. So the only place to have this conversation is at school. And we cannot have this conversation at school.
Or maybe it’s that I don’t really want to have this conversation.
There might be a perfectly reasonable, totally logical explanation, a really good and fair and legit reason why River betrayed me, betrayed all of us, double agented, pretended to be on our side, and then consorted with the enemy. Maybe he got tricked into telling, or his grandfather came into town and kicked him till he confessed, or they threatened to make him drink tap water or bribed him with something great even I couldn’t expect him to refuse, like that box you put people in to saw them in half. Maybe he was hypnotized.
But I don’t ask him, not because these scenarios aren’t possible, but because they aren’t possible enough. Much more likely explanations include: I kissed you, but I was faking. I said I cared about you, but I didn’t really. I only pretended to be interested in you so you’d spill your family’s secrets so mine could get richer. I can’t believe you fell for it. I’d never be interested in someone as pathetic as you.
So I make sure not to be alone anywhere he is. When the bell rings, I’m already packed, the first one up and out of the room, like he used to be when he was getting beat up. When he tries to catch my eye, I flick mine away from him at the last second. When I see him coming in the hallway, I pretend I forgot something and turn back the other way. When a note makes its way to me hand over hand in history, I refuse to take it.
“I shall extirpate this missive for you.” Petra deposits it in the trash can with a flourish, so we know he sees. He looks miserable. But not as miserable as I must.