UnWholly (Unwind Dystology 2)

Cavenaugh is not present, but two adults in his employ stand at the ready. Lev swallows and tries to keep his hands from shaking by gripping the arms of his chair. “Okay, you can take off their blindfolds.”

The boy’s eyes are red from crying. The girl is already looking around, surveying the situation.

“I’m really sorry we had to do it this way,” Lev says. “We couldn’t risk you getting hurt, or figuring out where you were being taken. It was the only way to safely rescue you.”

“Rescue us?” says the girl. “Is that what you call this?”

Lev tries to deflect the accusation in her voice, but can’t. He forces himself to hold eye contact the way Cavenaugh does, hoping he can sell it as confidence.

“Well, it might not feel that way at the moment, but yeah, that’s exactly what we’ve done.”

The girl scowls in absolute defiance, but the boy gasps, and his wet eyes go wide.

“You’re him! You’re that tithe who became a clapper! You’re Levi Calder!”

Lev offers a slim, apologetic smile, not even bothering to correct the last name. “Yes, but my friends call me Lev.”

“I’m Timothy!” the boy volunteers. “Timothy Taylor Vance! Her name is Muh—Muh—I can’t quite remember, but it starts with an M, right?”

“My name is my business and will stay my business,” she says.

Lev looks at the little cheat sheet he’d been given. “Your name is Miracolina Roselli. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miracolina. Do you go by Mira?”

Her continuing glare makes it clear that she doesn’t. “All right, Miracolina then.”

“What gives you the right?” she says. It’s almost a growl.

Lev forces eye contact again. She knows who he is, but she hates him. Despises him even. He’s seen that look before, but it surprises him to see it here.

“Maybe you didn’t hear me,” Lev says, getting a little bit angry. “We just saved you.”

“By whose definition of ‘save’?”

And for an instant, just an instant, he sees himself through this girl’s eyes, and he doesn’t like what he sees.

“I’m glad you’re both here,” he says, trying to hide the quaver in his voice. “We’ll talk again.” Then he signals for the adults to take the kids away.

Lev sits there in the ballroom alone for a good ten minutes. There is something about Miracolina’s behavior that feels disturbingly familiar. He tries to think back to when Connor pulled him from his limo on his own tithing day. Was he that belligerent? That uncooperative? There is so much from that day that he’s blocked out. At what point did he begin to realize that Connor wasn’t the enemy?

He will win her over. He has to. All the ex-tithes have been turned eventually. Un-brainwashed. Deprogrammed.

But what if this girl is the exception? What then? Suddenly this whole rescue operation, which had felt like a grand and glorious idea, feels very small. And very personal.

24 - Miracolina

Born to save her brother’s life and to be gifted back to God, Miracolina will not stand for this violation—the corruption of her sacred destiny into the profane life of a fugitive. Even her own parents became weak at the end, willing to break their pact with God and save her from her tithing. Would this please them, she wonders, for her to be captured and forced to live whole? Denied the holy mystery of the divided state?

Not only must she suffer this indignation, but she must suffer it at the hands of the boy she practically considers to be Satan incarnate. Miracolina is not a girl given to hatred and unfair judgment—but to be faced with this boy proves she is not nearly as tolerant as she had thought.

Perhaps that’s why I have been put on this path, she thinks, to humble me and make me realize that I can be a hater, just like anyone else.

On that first day, they try to trick her by putting her in a comfortable bedroom in much better condition than most of the mansion. “You can rest here until the last effects of the tranqs wear off,” says a plump, kindly woman, who also brings her a meal of corned beef and cabbage, with a tall, heady glass of root beer.

“Saint Patrick’s Day, don’tcha know,” she says. “Eat up, dearie. There’s more if you want seconds.” It’s a blatant attempt to win her over. She eats, but refuses to enjoy it.

There are videos and books in her room to entertain her, but Miracolina has to laugh, because just as the harvest camp van had only happy, family-friendly movies, the titles she has to choose from here have a clear agenda as well. They’re all about kids being mistreated, but rising above it, or kids empowering themselves in a world that doesn’t understand them. Everything from Dickens to Salinger—as if Miracolina Roselli could possibly have anything in common with Holden Caulfield.

There are also drawers filled with clothes in bright colors—all her size, and she shudders to think that they took her measurements and prepared a wardrobe while she was unconscious. Her tithing whites have become dirty, but she won’t give them the satisfaction of changing out of them.