Descent

13 - "Risk Assessment"

All the kids split up: the twins dashed away to the bathroom as soon as possible, Thierry and Jake each found their own corner of the living room, and Tommy rummaged in his pack for a granola bar before settling down on the couch. Leslie took one of the apples Ms. Eleanor always brought for them to eat and made a beeline for him.

"Talk." She ordered.

Tommy munched thoughtfully on his snack for a moment. "I made something happen. I think."

"In your dream?"

"I know it sounds stupid, but yeah." He tapped his bottom lip with the granola bar, "The dreams have been like movies or, more like a video game, where I see out her eyes..."

"Like Doom." Leslie said,

"Yeah," He shot a look her way--he'd forgotten who he was talking too. Leslie was cool, "Exactly. But I've just been, like, along for the ride. I can even hear her thoughts, and it's not like I know they're her thoughts, you know? Like me, Tommy..." It felt weird saying his own name, "Like I know they're her thoughts but..."

"You don't think about it. You don't have to."

"...yeah." He looked at her, "How do you know this?"

Leslie's gaze had been intense, focused, fixed on Tommy, but now she looked away, down at the carpet. She looked around the room, very discreetly, like she was used to being very aware of who was listening. She brought the apple up to her mouth and spoke around it. Very quietly, she said, "It's been happening to me too."

Tommy thought his brain was going to explode, "Fuck off!" He exclaimed, and he leaned forward when he said 'off' like an exclamation point.

"Yes." Leslie hissed around the red flesh of the apple, still unbitten.

"We need to tell Ms. Eleanor."

Leslie grabbed Tommy's wrist with her free hand and gripped him, hard, "No."

He tried to pull away but she held on tight. Her eyes held him in place.

"Everything okay over here?" It was Ms. Eleanor. Tommy couldn't decide if he'd been so focused on his conversation with Leslie that he hadn't heard her approach, or if she'd actively snuck up on them. She sat cross-legged on the carpet between him and Leslie.

Tommy realized that he didn't really know Leslie at all. They'd only spoken a few times on the bus and on breaks in drama class. She never spoke to him at school. She never spoke to anyone at school, really--just kept her head down and worked quietly. Was an interest in video games and theatre enough to trust someone? For Arjun it was, but Arjun had never asked him to lie to a grown-up before. And besides, how did Tommy know she was really into video games? He'd never met another girl who was. Maybe she had a brother that she got all her knowledge from. Maybe she was a faker about this dream thing, too.

"Yeah," Tommy said, "We were just talking about the curfew."

Leslie took a bite out of the apple.

"What are we thinking?" Ms. Eleanor asked.

"How often does something like this happen?" Leslie asked, chewing.

"Kidnapping?" Eleanor asked.

"No, putting a whole town under a curfew." She took another bite, "Seems extreme."

"I think the people in charge are just being careful," Ms. Eleanor said, "If they do this and nothing happens, well, some people were inconvenienced for a few days. If they do nothing and something does happen, well..."

"Risk assessment." Tommy said, and when they both looked at him, he shrugged, "My dad talks about it all the time."

"Make sense?" Eleanor asked, and the two kids nodded, "Then let's get back to work."

----

That night, Tommy tried to recreate the conditions of the meditation in the Gannet house by lying under a blanket and using heavy books to weigh him down. He tried to do the same breathing exercises Ms. Eleanor had used and think about sinking deeper and deeper into the earth. He focused on bringing his attention to the moment after he had lashed out on the altar, to see what had happened after, but he just couldn't fall asleep. He tried for hours to sink back into that space, but some combination of intention and fear kept him solidly anchored in his bedroom in the present. Frustrated, he let his mind wander to what Ms. Eleanor had said, about risk assessment, and that got him thinking about his dad.

Tommy's parents had separated in June of that year. They had all moved out of their big house on the same day, separate moving trucks splitting off in different directions at an intersection. Tommy and his mom had moved into a tiny duplex for just over a month before moving to Rosshaven while his dad had moved into a really nice apartment downtown. Things with his mom had been tense: here in Rosshaven they had settled into a simmering mutual irritation, but back in the duplex they had fought all the time. He spent his weekends with his dad and they were a lot more fun: they ate out every night and went to the movies and he bought Tommy whatever he wanted. It seemed like the rules just didn't apply when Tommy was with his dad, and the rules were the only thing that mattered when he was with his mom. She was so busy Tommy often had the house to himself, whereas his dad always made sure to have the whole weekend off so they could hang out.

The whole situation was terribly unfair.

Why couldn't she go play by the river with Charles?

"Because you are becoming a young lady," Mother said, her grip on Clara's arm tightening, "And such activity is unbecoming."

Clara's mother hauled her up to the side of the cart and began fretting over her dress. She 'tsk'd' at the mud on her shoes and set about wiping it down with a kerchief. Over her mother's shoulder, Clara could see Charles still staring up at them, but he soon went back to stomping in the water.

As Clara's mother went on about 'marriageability' she let her mind wander off. Far down the track, she spied her Father making big, long strides in his high work boots. He held one hand on the top of his wide-brimmed hat to keep it blowing away, and in the other he held a length of hempen string. She knew, though she couldn't hear, that he was counting steps. As she watched, he stopped and took a wooden stake out of his bag, then drove it into the earth. He tied the string around the post, then kept walking. The string-tied stakes followed her father backward, like the tail of a snake, far to Clara's left, in the direction they had come. There was a tall wooden pole, carved from the trunk of a tree--that was where the string began. The pole had brothers, at regular spaces, stretching far into the distance. Each was topped with a sort of hat that look like branches, and from those branches hung silvery wires.

Clara had no idea what her father did, except they were no longer farmers--a point of great pride for her mother--though they lived on what used to be a cattle ranch. It had something to do with 'technology' though no one had explained that word to Clara's satisfaction. About a year ago, a man had come to their old farmhouse dressed very finely and had sat at the kitchen table for a long time. A week later, the family had taken a trip to a 'new town' but when they arrived, the town was actually nothing more than a few houses joined by a dirt road. Mother had seemed upset by the, what did she call it? Desolation? But Father was ecstatic. He'd picked Clara up and spun her round and round, laughing and cheering, while Charles ran about them in circles.