We dive behind a pillar just as the car charges back into the pitch-black field. Our grandmother means to face the hunting patrols, Roth, the government—anyone and everything that stands in our way—head-on. She means to openly resist. To rebel.
And so the revival begins.
MIRA
White wind turbines sprout from the grass all around me like giant pale flowers, their three long blades spinning slow and dream-like in the hot air. They must grow for over one hundred thousand acres. I wonder if I can pry off the petals and play my own version of the old French game, “He loves me, he loves me not.”
“Father’s dead, he is not dead.”
“Rayla’s dead, she is not dead.”
“We are dead, we are not dead.”
There are three petals and two phrases. Every game ends the same way it starts.
“Less than four hundred miles to the coordinates,” Ava says in front of me, her eyes on her paper map.
And we’re just going to walk all that way?
I stare unblinking at my right wrist, visualizing the chip fixed inside me, lying dormant.
“Did you memorize them?” Ava says.
I open my fist and find the crinkled piece of paper inside. I take out a lighter from my rucksack and raise the flame to the coordinates. They disappear into ashes.
“How’s your ankle?” Ava says. “Can you keep up without a break?”
My focus returns to the spinning blades, sluggish and apathetic to their purpose outside this peaceful metal garden.
“Why are you so quiet?” Ava says, spoiling the solitude.
“Why do you keep asking the wrong questions?” I stop short, loose rocks sliding underneath my worn soles.
Ava must feel the pause in our small procession north, but she continues to charge forward. She eventually pauses, folds the map into a tiny thick square, places the paper on top of her head, and covers it with her washed-out, patched-over cap.
“After everything Rayla’s told us,” Ava says, turning to me, “how can you still be so against this?” She flaps her arms as she speaks every grating word. “How can you still be doubting?”
She looks like a miniscule wind turbine. Trying to energize the world. Trying to pick up my slack.
“I’m not going to Canada” is all I say. It’s all I need to say.
Ava drops her hands to her hips and slowly scans the land and sky, forming the best way to coerce me into following her. Her eyes finally make their way to me, convinced that she’s right.
“What do you think is left for you here? There are no more safe houses. No more maps telling us where to go.” She lifts her baseball cap and grabs the map, wielding it like a weapon as she takes a step closer. “Except this one, guiding us to our only option.”
I look back down at my microchip, seeing past the faint crisscrossed lines of my sunburnt skin, past my veins, bulging and blue.
“Enlighten me. What is the logic in running around and hiding out like cowards until we get ourselves caught? How will that help Father? Or us?” The wind picks up, slapping Ava’s hair against her cheek. She throws it back impatiently.
“You’re not going to hand yourself over to Roth, or you would have done it at the checkpoint. So tell me, what’s your plan?” She takes another step closer, her hands again emphasizing every word. “Do you even have one? Or are you just acting impulsively? Just being stubborn and stupid?”
I take a step forward. My turn.
“I know I’m not going to get myself shot or blown up by trying to cross an impassable border. And I know I’m not going to chase after some hopeless rebellion that died decades ago.”
Ava opens her mouth to counter, but I cut her off before she can utter a syllable. “Our mother died to keep us hidden. To keep me alive. And I’m not going to throw my life away by being a poster child for a half-assed revival that will only put a bigger target on our faces. And a blood-red bull’s-eye on our father’s.”
I take another belligerent step toward her, but Ava stands her ground, shaking her head and squeezing her map so hard I can hear the paper crack in protest beneath her fingers.
“Do you really think the public will rally behind a former Family Planning Director and his twin daughters?” I press, arms outspread. “They’ll crucify him. There will be riots for his execution. And the mob will come for us next.”
I lower my arms. They feel so tired. “We’re running no matter what, Ava. Doesn’t matter if it’s here or in Canada. But if we keep quiet and stay hidden, Father has a chance.”
“A chance for what? Life in prison?” Ava advances another step. “You saw what Roth’s already done to him. Crossing the border is the only chance to save him. There’s hope on the other side.”
She stares at me for a long moment, her face knotted with angry conviction. I notice freckles that weren’t there yesterday above her flared nostrils, below her earnest eyes.
“Reviving the cause will change the future for millions of families. Not just our own. Don’t you see?”
She throws her arms north, begging me to see.
“I see a girl who wants to follow yet another person’s idea of what our lives should be,” I answer. “You’re spewing out words that were fed to you. You’re caught up in your own self-importance, actually believing that anything you do matters.”
“It matters that I try,” Ava says. “Even if we fail, at least we’ll go down showing the people they can defy the government because we ourselves have done it! With no guns, no army—just by the two of us living and existing—our family has proven that we can win.”
“This is winning? Look around you.” I point to the hundreds of metal flowers waiting to be picked. All waiting to tell me another person is dead. “This is victory?”
“Mother guided us here. She led us to Rayla and the Common. She planned all of this with Father. She must have. They both want this,” Ava insists, raising her voice as if I’m just having trouble hearing and will soon reflect her fervor. “I don’t understand! You of all people should want this.”
“Why? Because I’m the second-born? The throwaway?” I fling aside my bangs and toss back the hood of my jacket, suffocating beneath all the layers. “I don’t want any of it!” I hurl my rucksack to the ground, freeing myself from any and all burdens.
“Your guilt is blinding you.”
“My guilt?”
“For getting us caught.”
My eyes turn to slits. “Excuse me?”
She charges toward me, a single step dividing us. “You’re acting like a selfish bitch, considering you’re the one who got us caught!”
Her words detonate inside of me, and I explode toward her, releasing everything I’ve held back and locked away until now. Ava shuffle-steps backward, feeling the force of my pent-up rage.
“Are you serious? You’re the one who broke routine and made me go up for dinner! I would have never been in that greenhouse with Halton if you didn’t always push to get your way.”
Ava tries to speak, but I smother her words.
“You were always the self-anointed tyrant, lording over me, superior about being the firstborn. Ava Goodwin, bearer of our name, owner of our identity and the life-enabling microchip. You made the decision that night in the basement. It was you. You’re the reason we got caught!”