The Rift Uprising. Amy Foster S.

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СКАЧАТЬ luck, I was born into a naturally solitary family.

      It’s not that I don’t love them. I just don’t know them … and they certainly don’t know me.

      The walls in here are like most of the walls in our house—covered with artwork. A lot of the paintings and photographs I just don’t get at all. For the most part, those are the ones that were done by my dad’s art school friends. Some of the artists are famous now and their stuff is worth a lot of money. My dad never got his big break, even though I think his work is ten times better. He paints portraits mostly. I slide my backpack to the floor and stare at one of my favorite paintings by him. In it, a woman in bed, surrounded by letters, looks out a window. I feel her pain through the canvas. I feel like I know her even though she lives in New York and we have never met. Dad says it was more than twenty years ago and he can’t remember the exact circumstances that led her to sit for him, though he knows her name is Patricia and that they both lived in the same dumpy building. Did she ever get over whatever broke her heart so badly? The letters are yellowed and old and she isn’t exactly young. I used to think it was a love affair, but as I get older I feel like it’s something different; her grief seems deeper. Lately I’ve begun to wonder if she is even alive anymore. It scares me a little, that I feel so connected to an old woman whose sadness is so unbearable. I look away. Patricia is too much for me to deal with right now.

      My father, Dan, is in his office, over our garage. He became a freelance graphic designer once I was born so he could bring in steady money. I’m not the only one in this house who’s had to make sacrifices for the greater good, and this connects me to my father in a way that I cannot connect to my mother. I try not to let this favoritism show. I feel guilty enough as it is. I lean back in the sofa and close my eyes. My dad always goes on about how he wants me to sit for him. I will never let this happen. If he stares at and studies me for hours, I am sure his brushes and mixed-up colors will reveal all my secrets. My parents will figure out that I am hiding something and I know that this will hurt them. My dad’s talent far outweighs my gift for lying, and that’s saying something, because I’m a pretty amazing liar.

      My mom’s name is Vega, which means “star” in Swedish. I get my blond hair and fair skin from her. My green eyes come from Dad, and I got his dimples, too. When I first became a Citadel I hated my dimples because they made me look cute. “So adorable!” everyone would say whenever I smiled. How was I supposed to be a tough guy? A soldier? So adorable might as well be code for soft, and a Citadel needs to be anything but. Now that I’ve been in the field for three years, I am grateful for my dimples. I see death all the time. The hardness comes close to consuming me. My father won’t live forever, but I will always see his smile in my reflection, and it’s a great reminder that I’m the result of two loving people, and not what ARC has made me.

      My mother moved to America from Stockholm for college and met my dad in New York City. My mom is a designer. She had big dreams, too, of being the next Diane von Furstenberg or Miuccia Prada. By the time she graduated from college, I think she let that dream go. Her classmates were risk takers, avant-garde designers who made crazy clothes out of recycled beer cans and raven feathers. She just wanted to make women look good. A school friend helped her get an interview at Nike. Since my dad grew up in Portland and his family was here, it seemed like the right move. They thought that only rich people could raise kids in Manhattan. They wanted children and so they relocated. We are, each of us, a product of decisions that other people made, one long chain of choices that stretch back to the beginning of humanity. Working so closely with The Rift, I have seen this firsthand. People arrive who have never heard of a world war, or who have never seen electricity, or who don’t understand how it’s possible that we are able to move freely from one country to another. History can be entirely rewritten based on one person’s choice. Somewhere out there, through The Rift, is a version of Ryn Whittaker who lives in an apartment building in New York City. She is just a normal seventeen-year-old. I wonder who that girl is and what she’ll become when she grows up.

      I think a lot about her as I sit on the couch, with its hard cushions and unworn feel. I wonder if she’ll ever meet Ezra Massad. Probably not. Then again, I have no idea where he’s from. Rifts on the other Earths open and close randomly. They don’t stay active like ours but flicker off and on, possibly opening once and never again. Scientists theorize that the Earths closest to ours have more frequent Rift activity, as the dark matter in the universe is drawn to these invisible fissures made by our experiment and strike like lightning. But they don’t really know. They can’t know anything for sure because no one goes back through The Rift. Ezra will never go back. The Roones are stuck here, too. The one exception is that Karekins keep coming, though no one can figure out how or why. It’s such bullshit—all of it. I am so drained from today that I just want to sit here and try to think about nothing for a while.

      But I pull myself up from the couch and make my way into the kitchen. We rotate cooking duties in the house. Nike is pretty far from Battle Ground. Sometimes my mom is in the car for two hours a day. Since it’s my fault we’re even in Battle Ground to begin with, I don’t mind picking up some of the slack. My brother, Abel, is three years younger than me and has just started high school. He is useless in the kitchen, so he’s exempt. Cooking is one of the few things he can’t do. He’s one of those people who seem to excel at everything they try. He’s a natural athlete, he’s artistic like my dad, he gets straight As—but I rarely see him doing much work. He’s already over six feet tall and very handsome. He looks Scandinavian, but dark haired, like my dad. Actually, the first time I went to Stockholm to see my grandparents, I saw that most people have brown hair, which surprised me at first. That and the fact that they are insanely good-looking. Like, every random person just walking down the street could be a model. It’s weird. I would be jealous of Abel, but honestly, if he had been average, like me, he might have been chosen to be a Citadel. I am so glad that he’s not one; I can get past the fact that he is so friggin’ good at everything.

      I begin to cook sausage in an old Le Creuset pot that my mom has had since before she and my dad were married. I start boiling water for the pasta. I cut up the smooth-skinned peppers with an efficiency that belies my skill with knives. Even as I do these mundane things, I think, I am a killer. Not really a murderer, because it’s all in the name of defense, of my life and the lives of those in Battle Ground and beyond. But a killer just the same. Sure, the way ARC says it, everything sounds quite reasonable. Heroic, even.

      Then why don’t I feel like a hero?

      Each life I take takes a little something from me. I feel impossibly old for my seventeen years. I am not an innocent. I think about Ezra’s hands when he waved them in front of me, thanking me for not restraining him. Where do you even go from there? Is that any kind of beginning to a romance? I roll my eyes. I can’t have a romance with Ezra and there are so many reasons why that come tumbling into my thought process, they are beyond counting. I put the peppers into the pot and add some garlic as my mom walks through the front door. I hear her kick off her shoes and the thump of her bag on the formal dining room table.

      “That smells good,” my mom says. “Pasta?”

      “Uh-huh,” I reply. I look at her and smile quickly. Her pale blond hair falls loose to her shoulders. She is wearing jeans, a cotton button-down blouse, and sneakers. Since she works at Nike, her clothes are sporty and comfortable, but somehow she always manages to look chic. She layers necklaces, winds scarves brilliantly around her neck, stacks leather and gold bracelets on her wrists, has big chunky belts, and even the cut of her jeans—slouchy but fitted—is elegant. I can attribute this only to her being European. A cultural thing—not genetic—because no one would accuse me of being stylish. I rarely think about what I wear. More often than not it’s yoga pants and boxy T-shirts with Converse sneakers in the summer and boots in the winter. In a way, my sartorial choices are great, because the rules are clear: We are not to draw any unnecessary attention to ourselves. I think I’ve worn makeup maybe twice in my life. I’m sure this must be somewhat disappointing to my fashion-conscious mother, but to СКАЧАТЬ