Starts with a Match

When the Calm Breaks

We sit down after grilled cheeses that neither of us had the appetite to eat. I made us both tea, but neither of us have touched our mugs. I'm on their sofa, sitting stiff, and they're by me with their legs pulled to their chest. They haven't let go of my hand for the last hour.

"So u-um. First big thing..." they mutter, cheek resting on a knee, staring at the TV turned off. "Dennis helped me forge my bloodwork years ago, same way he did Meredith's and his own. He worked in the hospital where I had my top surgery, and when the virus broke out and people were illegally looking into patient records, he destroyed mine and faked a new sheet for me. And Meredith did the rest with our IDs, social security cards and everything else. She worked at the DPS, and so did her husband sometimes. He was also a policeman."

"How did Dennis and Meredith know each other?"

"Meredith and Tomlin weren't just my roommates. They were my sister and brother, they were twins. Meredith Jane, and Dennis Tomlin. After I killed our mom and we buried our parents, they were angry at me for a long time. But they still loved me. So they let me live with them."

It goes in one ear and out the other. I'm not mad. I really don't think I'm mad.

But I think of June and our one massive fight over secrets and the silence and the hiding and...

I have to look away from them. But I don't leave. I can't.

"Meredith had two babies, both stillborn. She left her husband and went to volunteer with her VB. So did Dennis. He had a wife, a daughter—I have a niece in Colorado. Dennis got diagnosed with brain cancer. So he thought...better to donate his body now, while it was still pumping blood they could use, than later."

"So they both left," I mutter, looking to my other hand, palm up, resting on my thigh. I washed my skin raw to get all the cherry blood off earlier. Still feel like I can smell it. Now that I know it's been there, every time I had caught a whiff of it in the past. My jaw hurts from my third piece of gum.

I don't leave. I can't. But I take my other hand away from them. Toby doesn't reach out to try to get it back.

"They never made it to the volunteering. Police reports said their van was ransacked, and they may have been killed by gluts. No matter how much I looked into it, how much my brother-in-law Caleb fought to find Meredith, the cops wouldn't pursue it. Said it was either gluts slipping through the border, or a fanatic on a murdering spree. He got shot in the field a year ago. They never pursued his death, either."

"I'm sorry."

"Second big thing."

Oh, there's more? I have to bite my tongue to keep that vicious sentence in. Protection. Denial. They did it to stay safe. I think I get it. I have to get it. "Kit-Kat is part of a larger group that's trying to go against the new President. She moved to Kansas; they're gathering people in the center of the states. She's been fighting against the White Guild for years. I haven't heard from her since April."

"So when I'd ask how Kit-Kat was doing...when I offered to talk to her and you said she was too busy..."

Toby shrugs. "Made stuff up. I mean I've been worried about those still on the res, but...I've learned to lie about Kit-Kat." Wow. Clearly.

"You said White Guild," I whisper. Toby hums. I look at them then, their eyes. They've been locked on me this whole time. "I got some news with that, too, I guess."

Toby lifts their head from their knees. "Yeah?"

"She might have already told you—did she ever tell you things?"

Toby shakes their head. "Plausible deniability."

God. "Okay um. Um." I turn to face them on the sofa, hands clasped in my lap. Toby's look of curiosity twitches into confusion, and they cross their legs. "What I'm going to tell you is going to destroy that, Toby. Do you understand?" They nod. "I need to hear you say you understand."

"I understand."

"Your life will be at risk, now more than ever. Do you understand?"

"I understand," they whisper.

"Right. White Guild has been kidnapping VBs on their ways to the volunteer camps. They've made their own separate bases. One for reproduction with cherries who are fertile. One for scientific testing on those that aren't. Anyone who seems to have 'died' in the vans, or been taken from their homes, is being forced into one of those camps by the WG. They've been working on a cure on their own and aren't planning on sharing, especially with those they're using for their own gain. If you're not fertile, or if you're dying, you're experimented on until they don't need you anymore. Because of this, there are only a hundred cherries left that we know of. You're one of them."

Toby stares at me for so long I'm not sure they heard me.

A twitch takes over their brow, their left eye, their nose, until they're snarling. Foam bubbles around their pink gums. The whites of their eyes grow red.

This is rage I've only seen in the field.

They start screaming so loud I'm afraid their throat's going to bleed.

They leap up from the sofa, trip on the corner of the coffee table, and before I can stand and reach for them, they've flipped it with an ear-shattering roar, tossing books and remotes and mugs of tea all over the rug.

Their favorite mug shatters on the hardwood floor. The rug is stained with black tea and creamer.

I debate standing out of their way. Letting them go for the bookshelf next, toss their favorite novels to the ground, tear the pages into confetti. Smash the ceramic bowls, set things ablaze in the fireplace we've never used. Internally, this is how I feel. I'm watching them explode and living vicariously through their wrath.

But I don't stand out of their way. I dive for them, encase them in my arms, even as they're all claws and snapping teeth. They scratch my cheek, my forearms, fight me for only a second. Until the air they suck in brings me to my toes, and then they're howling into my chest, nails cutting my ribs. Hurts. I don't care. I won't leave.