“No, Kayla,youaren’t safe!” She snaps the book shut, heat flushing her cheeks. “I can’t leave here. I can’t!”
“We could. I figured it out.” I grab her hands, desperate to make her understand. “We’ll go to Penelakut or America. We could still visit here from those places. Or order your insulin. We could get it, even if we’re living there—”
“Stop being a paranoid idiot and think for two seconds! He didn’t recognize you.”
“He might. He might put together where he knows me from—”
“He isn’t going to care! What do you think he’ll do? Cart us back there? We would expose him. He’s got noreason to want us to come with him. If we all ignore each other, it’s going to be fine.”
“The whole island is a problem! How can we trust people who work with Astolia? How can we—”
“What makes you so sure they know what’s going on there?” she demands. “If the Astrologue is lying to everyone in Astolia, what makes you think he’s telling the truth to Salt Spring?”
Damn it. There is nothing more frustrating than having a younger sister who is smarter than I am. I don’t have a good rebuttal for that, except that my gut knows she’s wrong. If we don’t move now, he’ll get us.
“April, we can’t risk it. We can’t.”
“Sid is in politics. Why don’t you ask him?”
“I can’t.” Not after everything I’ve put him through.
“Why not?”
“Because he wouldn’t understand! I never told him about Astolia or—”
“He’s not going to care if you grew up in a cult. His was, like, ten times worse.” April tosses her ponytail over her shoulder. “Whatever. If you don’t want to ask him, I will.”
“No! What if he lies—”
“For fuck’s sake, Kayla, listen to yourself! He isn’t going to lie to us.” April swears so rarely, the outburst shuts me up. “He never has. You know that.”
“I…” I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Or what to do. Or where we’re safe anymore. I want to run. I want to steal the knife from the butcher block in the kitchen. But I can’t force my sister to believe me. “Fine. Fine, I’ll talk to him.”
“Sure, go ahead, if you like. I’m still asking him myself.”
“I said I would talk to him.”
“I want to hear it from him myself. You…” April shakesher head, and it dawns on me: she’s more afraid of me lying to her than him. “I don’t understand you anymore.”
With that, she reopens her textbook, heedless of the knives her words drive through me. My sister. My own baby sister doesn’t trust me.
I can’t stay in this room. It feels as though the walls of our apartment will crash in and bury me. On instinct, I pack my bag. There isn’t much to gather—just a few clothes and books scattered around the bedroom. Most of our survival supplies are still packed. I always knew this day would come and that we would need to run again.
I’ll scout a route. While I wait for April to understand the danger we’re in, I’ll come up with a plan. That way, when we run, we’ll know where we’re going. It’s how we did it in the old days and how we need to do it now.
I head outside, walk toward the road and then…
As I reach the end of the drive, the panic clutching my chest squeezes harder. I might not feel safe here anymore, but it’s even worse out there. I could walk toward the coast if I wanted, but then what? There are stockades around every accessible point, plus constant patrols, keeping me in as much as they keep TNS out.
I hurry back into the acreage, my breath coming easier when I see the house and Wendell splitting wood by the back stoop. I give him a wide berth, avoiding conversation as my head continues to swirl. I circle the whole property—chickens, toolshed, beehives, berry bushes. Every so often, I come across a break in the fencing that would make a good escape route. I mark each spot in my mind.
But what good is any of this? April won’t follow me. How can I ever protect her if she won’t follow me?
Finally, I give up and collapse by the duck pond, pressing my face into my knees. There, the real reason for all my fretful pacing becomes obvious, because while runningaround the farm might not have done any practical good, it kept the memories at bay.
I stare across Sid’s duck pond and wonder if in some other universe, there’s another version of myself who came here at the age of fourteen with her parents. A girl who got to go to a real school and watch her sister grow up without the stress of being her caretaker. Would I have chosen Curtis, if we’d had the option of meeting hundreds of other people? Or one day, would I have gone to the exchange and seen a trio of young men, recently returned from the border patrol, and spotted Sid leading them?
Neither story is likely. A third Kayla would exist. A girl I can’t even imagine, except that I suspect she’s happier than I am. A girl who got to keep all the people who mattered most to her. Mum, Dad, Curtis, even…
