To the Well-Organized Mind

Chapter Eighteen

[Nia]

I once heard this joke that companies would bulldoze a place, put up houses or businesses, and then name the streets after what had been there before, like Pine Tree Circle or Lakeview Trail. I think that's what happened with our names. There has been an explosion of girls called Rose, Willow, Heather, Cinnamon, Sunshine. Boys tend to be Glen, Red, Robin, or Lake. My favorite thus far, though, has to be Chocolate.

-from the annals of Asis

*

The day that changed the course of my life had just the sort of characteristics you'd hope to enjoy on your last day of childhood innocence: lumpy hash for breakfast, an itchy rash on my leg, a crick in my neck from sleeping the wrong way, and the sudden realization that Jaden had made the breakfast hash out of my pet lizard.

I spit out the bite I had taken as, like clockwork, a pounding on the door and a desperate voice begged Jaden to rescue some lost soul. I guess it was to be expected when you were a celebrity, a retired hero. Except that the very heroics that made her a hero were the same ones that kept her saying no, she had no intention of risking her life to save anyone else's. To survive the Barrens once is a miracle. To expect to survive more than once was just giving fate the middle finger.

Sometimes, I was pretty sure people sent the youngest, most innocent ones to our door, begging Jaden with huge eyes, as if that hopeful innocence might somehow change Jaden's mind at last.

But I could have told them all not to bother. After sixteen years living with her, I still couldn't call her "mom." And she had just cooked my pet for breakfast. Jaden hadn't crossed into the Barrens for fifteen years, but she still lived as if she were on the brink of starving to death, needing to treat anything and everything as nutrition, tools, shelter, and protection.

That morning, Ben was arguing with her. Again. He'd been coming for a week now. Ever since he showed up in Asis, blubbering about having lost someone, he pleaded with people to go out and help find her.

I had been there the day he turned up at the gate, collapsing against its meager walls. He turned to everyone when they opened the door for him, and he wouldn't set a foot inside.

"Please, you have to get her back, you have to find her."

It was impossible to make out what had happened. He was so crazed and frenzied that one of the older townsfolk finally knocked him on the head to calm him down, then dumped him on Vitch to take care of. His blathering was forgotten as the ravings of the Barrens. Or irrelevant. If anyone else had been in the Barrens with him but hadn't made it as far as Asis, then they were dead.

It took Ben exactly four hours to figure out who led the expeditions out of Asis into the wilds. And that that same person had survived a crossing of the Barrens. After that, he turned up at our door regularly.

Every time, Jaden's answer was the same, and every time, it was given before he could even explain who he wanted Jaden to rescue or what had happened.

That morning was nothing special. It may have been his eighth attempt. It may have been his thirtieth. The sunlight was shining through the doorway where he had wedged his foot, for Jaden had already been closing the door on him. When I peeked around from the kitchen, I raised my eyebrows. If she had wanted, Jaden could have sent him tumbling to the ground, door slammed shut. I was pretty sure she'd done that to him yesterday. She must have been feeling particularly merciful for some reason.

"Please," Ben begged.

I always listened to the people pleading with Jaden, just to see if anyone came up with anything new or were able to argue their points rationally—just to see what, if anything, would be the argument or situation that would make her say yes. But so far, that'd never happened. I had also never been impressed, and Ben wasn't starting out well today, either.