“There is good and there is evil in the world,” she went on. “Evil will always try to suppress good. ‘When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail.’ A woman named Pearl S. Buck said that, and she was right, too. What choices have you made against evil?” She stopped suddenly and stared right into the crowd. “I’ll tell you! None! You have made no choice against evil! You have supported evil, you have facilitated evil, and you have excused evil, every day of your lives!”
My eyes widened at this crazy diatribe, but no one else seemed surprised. No doubt they’d heard it all before. The Strepp went on like this, sprinkling in quotes to support her whole good versus evil schtick. I mean, good versus evil. Had she looked in a mirror lately? Irony much?
Despite my being wracked with grief and horror, something about this place still felt soothing. The stained-glass windows were so beautiful, showing different scenes of people I didn’t recognize.
There was a tiny detail in one corner of a window, barely noticeable; basically a couple of dots at the border of a much larger scene. I blinked as I realized it was… a dragonfly. A green-and-blue dragonfly with crystal-clear wings, made of glass who knew how long ago.
Something caught fire inside me. The shock of Robin’s death, the brutality of being here, the absurd but life-threatening tests I’d been put through—my senses exploded.
I am a dragonfly, I thought. I can be a dragonfly.
With no more coherent thought than that, I stood up and shouted, “This is bullshit! You’re a murderer! You’re evil! This place is evil! Murderer!”
38
THE GUARDS DIDN’T WAIT FOR orders. In moments they had seized me, dragged me out of the pew, and shot me with their Tasers. My body jerked and twitched as the electrical current shorted my brain out.
It took a long time for me to join the pieces of myself back together, but right at the moment that I understood I was drooling onto the deep-red carpet, a guard pulled back a heavy booted foot and kicked me so hard in the stomach that I gagged and retched. A terrible, seizing agony gripped me; surely my insides had exploded. A coldness swept over me, and then my system just shut down.
When I came to, I was on a stretcher. I heard someone murmur, “The blood,” and my consciousness slowly swam above the pain to realize that my legs were covered in a sticky warmth.
The lights overhead were bright. I was in one of the hallways with the high windows. I had to throw up and tried to lean over the edge of the stretcher, but didn’t make it.
Well, this day couldn’t possibly get worse, I thought hazily, and tried hard to pass out again—anything to escape this burning, searing pain in my gut. A weird, animal-like moaning reached my ears, and it was a while before I realized it was me.
Blinking, I saw my dragonfly flitting above me. “Hope,” I mumbled.
“It’s too late for that, I’m afraid,” said Ms. Strepp, and my heart sank. She leaned over and motioned to the guards to set the stretcher on a gurney.
“Get her an IV!” she yelled. Turning back to me, she said, “I think you’re having a miscarriage. When were you going to tell me you were pregnant?”
Gasping, I opened my eyes wider. “What?”
“Were you planning to have a baby without a new-birth license? Is that how you were going to rebel against your community?” Her face looked cold, and her jaw twitched with anger.
“No!” I moaned, closing my eyes. “I didn’t know… I’d hoped not… it was a teacher. A teacher forced himself on me. I didn’t want this!”
My mind was reeling, unable to deal with everything—anything. I’d tried to be strong for so long. But this… on top of Robin… now… now I broke down. I couldn’t even pretend to be brave. Not anymore. My raw, ugly, heavy sobs broke free and filled the room. Crying felt like dropping bricks onto my shattered insides, but I couldn’t control it. This was the worst pain I’d ever felt in my entire life, so total and complete that I couldn’t imagine a time that I wouldn’t feel it. Pain was my whole world, and I was living in it.
“I want my ma!” I sobbed. “Why is this happening? Why are you doing this? Robin—I watched her. You killed her! And now you’re telling me…” I ended with a screech of agony, both physical and emotional. I was broken inside. My body was broken, bleeding, rejecting the life I’d refused to admit was growing there. My brain was seared, severed, any ability to think destroyed. Maybe I belong here in the crazy house, I thought hysterically.
I lay there and howled, uncaring of anything, praying that I would die, that they wouldn’t be able to stop the bleeding, that this wretched, ridiculous wreck of a life would finally be over and I would be at peace. A nurse came and started a drip in my arm and the pain eased slightly. Still I sobbed, getting out every last bit of misery, terror, and shame. And right before I drifted off into blessed unconsciousness, my gaze fell on the hateful face of Ms. Strepp. She looked… her eyes looked… her mouth… she looked sympathetic. Caring.
No. That couldn’t be right.
And then I was out.
39
CASSIE
I’D HAD THE REST OF the day to absorb the fact that my sister had been an Outsider and I hadn’t known about it. All the times I’d thought she was out somewhere, hanging out with bad citizen friends, she’d actually been with Nathaniel and the others, coming up with plans to turn the cell upside down.
Why hadn’t she told me?
I pressed my lips toget
her and unpacked my ma’s field glasses from my shoulder bag. She hadn’t told me because I would have been horrified, I admitted to myself. I would have fussed at her, warned her, been scared for her—for us. I would have thought she was making bad, stupid decisions.