He speaks softly, with a smile curving those lips that hints at what he’s really after.
I gaze up at him, feeling my cheeks growing hot at what he’s suggesting. “I’d rather kiss a toad, Mr. Rasmussen.”
I walk away with my head held high, but my insides are quaking. Before she was arrested, Briar told me about her friends and what they’ll do so that things are made right in Paravel. My family won’t lift a finger to help her. Mr. Rasmussen and the King don’t seem to care about our rights. If anything’s going to be done to help Briar, I’m going to have to look elsewhere for help.
Two nights later, my boots hit the cobblestones with a noisy clatter that fills the night air. I freeze, wondering if I’ve alerted a nearby People’s Republic patrol.
Then I remember that I don’t have to worry about enemy patrols anymore. Varga’s dead, the scarlet People’s Republic flags have all been taken down and burned, and the soldiers who brandished semi-automatic rifles in the streets have vanished. I take a deep breath and pull the hood of my jacket up over my head and peer up and down the alleyway. I thrust my hands into my pockets and walk quickly away, leaving Balzac House behind me.
The night air is crisp and earthy with the first hints of fall. A handful of golden leaves tumble across the sidewalk. I choose dark, tree-lined streets as I head west, keeping to the shadows and hiding behind garden walls and in bushes every time a car slides by. If I’m caught, I’m terrified of what it will do to my father, but staying home means I’m doing nothing to help Briar. I know for a fact she’d do anything to help me if I was in trouble. The first week we were at the polytechnic, she saved my life.
The fact that we were able to enroll at the college at all was a miracle, given the family we’re from. Just the name “Balzac” was enough to make people spit at you. We wrote essay after essay about the might and righteousness of the People’s Republic and how much we hated the former King and Queen so we’d be considered as students. I’m not proud of what we wrote, but it was either the polytechnic, or go to work in a factory. An education meant we might claw a few tiny crumbs of regard from the people who hated us. I wasn’t even hoping for respect. I would have settled for being ignored.
I suppose it was stupid of me to hope for even that.
Briar wanted to train as a lab technician and I thought perhaps a researcher role would suit me. From the moment we stepped foot on campus, everyone gave us hell, from the professors right down to our classmates. We were scrutinized everywhere we went and called out for being late or untidy or not getting an answer right in class. No one wanted to be our friends, but we had each other.
I suppose I was an untidy student. I could definitely be careless. A banned book by a pro-Royalist author became mixed up with my schoolbooks and I took it to the polytechnic by mistake. Briar urged me to take it straight home and hide it, but that would mean missing class. We were already on a knife’s edge and skipping class could get me expelled. Maybe the other students would get away with skipping, but not a Balzac.
I should have kept my mouth shut that day, but being told again that I was wrong and stupid when I knew I’d given a good answer in class made me answer back. The professor made me stand up and open my bag. That’s the way things were then. Anyone in authority could go through your things to see if you were hiding something.
My heart plummeted through the floor and my flesh was cold and clammy. The book in my bag wouldn’t just get me expelled. It would mean a prison sentence, maybe for life. Everyone in my family would lose their jobs and probably be punished as well.
Before I could stand up, Briar jumped to her feet and shouted that yes, we should be searched, and the professor was so clever for knowing that we were bad because she had French cigarettes in her satchel. The day before, France had put further trade sanctions on Paravel and all French products were now banned. Briar sobbed crocodile tears and caused such a fuss pulling out books and pens and ripping up notebooks in search of the non-existent cigarettes, wailing at the top of her lungs how sorry she was. I was able to get the incriminating book out and shove it behind a bookcase while everyone was distracted.