Dark World: The Surface Girl (10 page)

              “Mom loves me! She loves
you
! Why would you say that?” Dad held up one of his palms to halt my anger and then held one finger up to his lips. I sighed with frustration. It was hard for me to keep my voice low and quiet when he was saying things like that about Mom.

              “Fear controls her life. I try my best to shield her from anything that could make her unhappy but in the moments that I can't, she retreats into herself. I worry one day she might become overwhelmed and I might lose her forever. I don’t want you to be afraid like her.” I loved my mom. I did. Because of that, I was ashamed that I wanted to admit that I didn’t want to be like her, either.

              “I can handle the truth,” I tried to assure him, “no matter what it is. What I can't handle is
not
knowing.” Dad rubbed his beard as if his mind was struggling with an important decision. I knew what it was.
To tell me or not to tell me.
“You
promised
,” I reminded him. Dad's hand fell to his side. His shoulders rose with a deep inhale. He was preparing. He was gathering his thoughts. I could relate. When his shoulders sank again, he began.
              “I belong to a secret organization. We don't believe the government is honest about certain things. Our basic agenda is to figure out what those things are.” He cringed as if he expected to be punished for his words right then and there. After a moment his shoulders fell just a bit more into semi-relaxation. “We started exploring some of the old passageways. We drilled upwards into the hard soil and penetrated the Earth's surface.” I gasped and covered my mouth with my hands.

             
YOU WHAT?! ARE YOU CRAZY? WHAT IF A CANNIBAL MONSTER ATE YOU? WHAT IF YOU SUCKED ALL OF OUR BREATHABLE AIR OUT THROUGH THE HOLE AND KILLED US ALL? WHY WOULD YOU DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT??
             
Both my mind and my body were begging to scream in his face, but miraculously I managed to hold back and my response was nothing more than an angry roll of my shoulders and a hanging jaw. I pressed my fists against my sides. Dad licked his lips and took a compulsive step closer to me.

              “Ruby.. we could
breathe
.”

             
Wait.... what?

             
“Once we broke through the surface, one of us volunteered to test it. He went up for twenty minutes, and he could breathe. The atmosphere is
not
completely decimated.” I could not feel my legs. I could not feel my hands. Basically, I could not feel any part of my body.

              “We knew the next step was to further explore the immediate surface, but not without precautions. We have no idea what's up there, we couldn't launch a mission like that until we were fully prepared.

              “Extremely early this morning, we returned to the hole to temporarily seal it for our protection until we were prepared for a more extensive exploratory mission.

              “Drilling upward caused a lot of dirt and debris to clutter the cement ground of the passageway. We noticed,” he paused. “footprints in the scattered dirt. Small ones.” He took a deep breath. “I told the others to focus on sealing the hole. I followed the footprints and then, I saw
her
. I saw a little girl.”

              She told the truth. She was a little girl
from the surface
. She was from
the surface of our planet
and she could breathe, walk, and talk just like we could. Didn't that mean...

              “They were wrong!” I excitedly began to blurt. “They said we couldn’t survive up there but we can! We can leave this place and we can see the sky! I know the oceans are gone and we're on the opposite side of the sun right now, but there are other sources of water, right? Water that I can see and feel? Water that can rush over my feet?” I couldn't contain my excitement. I kept my voice low but my body bounced as ideas and flashes rushed through my mind like fireworks.

             
WE

                     WERE

                                   FREE!!!

              Dad's hands practically slammed down on my shoulders like avalanches (or so I read) and the force knocked all of my weight back onto the ground. My ankles took the full impact and they ached a bit. His eyes were wild, darting from side to side as if he had lost his mind.

              “NO!” He spat desperately through his teeth. I immediately quieted down. “Listen to me! We still have NO idea what's out there,
no idea
what roams that surface, and
no idea
why it's not as unlivable as the government has claimed all this time.
No one is free
, Ruby. Not until we learn the truth.”

             
The Truth.
             
I thought that was what I was going to learn tonight. I thought that's what Dad was going to tell me. Now I knew his secrets, or at least some of them, but I
still
didn't understand. I still didn't know the truth, but I knew someone who did.

              “We have to find the little girl again. She might have answers!” Dad shook his head quickly back and forth.
              “No! We don't know what she IS, Ruby! She could be dangerous.” I said that very thing to myself countless times today since meeting her, but hearing my father say it made me realize that somewhere inside of me, I had known since meeting her that she wasn't.

              “I saw it in her eyes, Dad. She was terrified, but I know she understood me. She's not a monster. She's a person, just like us.” He still shook his head.

              “That doesn't mean she's not dangerous, either by intention or by existence.” I leaned softly against our bathroom wall and folded my arms under my chest. The tip of my tongue ran over my lower lip.

              “Just, let me get all of this sorted out in my head. You're part of a secret order. You did something dangerous, risky, because you wanted answers the government doesn't give us. You created a hole that went all the way up to the surface. Now we have a chance to find out
even more
about what's really out there and you're talking like you're too scared to explore! But if you were really that scared... you wouldn't be in the Order, Dad.” Suddenly, his hesitation was clear. “This is about
me
, isn’t it. You don’t want
me
to be a part of this.” Where was this insight coming from? I knew nothing about any of this until only hours ago and suddenly I was talking to my father like he was my equal instead of my parent, an equal that was trying to keep me from something I had every right to be a part of. But did I have that right? I only knew about any of this because I had been doing something I wasn't supposed to do. I let Reese take me into the old passageway and everything had snowballed from there. Maybe this was my punishment. I did something I wasn't supposed to do and it had opened Pandora's Box.
              Even if that were true, it didn't change anything. I
did
know and I couldn't go back to being the innocent naïve dreamer I was only hours ago this morning when I woke up. I couldn't erase today's events because they had already begun to change me.
              “It's true. I don’t want you involved,” he admitted. “I want you to be safe and nothing about what the Order does is safe. You're only sixteen.” I shook my head. I wasn't going to let him convince me to forget about all of this. I couldn't.

              “I
saw
her, Dad. I spoke to her and I
know
she understood me. And Reese kissed me.” I froze. Did I really just... no, no I couldn’t have. I
did not
just open my mouth and say those four words out loud, even if they were only a whisper. I was the stupidest girl alive. My shock-face solidified my stupidity. My jaw hung wide open, my eyes unblinking and my body seemed to naturally pick up the statue-reaction from my mom. I understood the (ir)rationality of it better now. Whenever something awful happened, if I just stood still, very, very still, maybe no one would notice and the moment would somehow erase itself.
             
“...What?!”
The word was barely distinguishable from a hiss as it was forced out between my dad's clenched teeth. My throat tightened as if it were swelling. I knew I would not be able to swallow. My eyes darted helplessly back and forth, not wanting to settle on his face at all. He took a step toward me but I was already against the wall, I had no where to escape to. “Ruby,
what
?!” I couldn't say it again. I just couldn't. Dad sighed. “Listen to me, they will
put you to sleep
if they find out.” I closed my eyes. It was just for a moment. How ironic it was that all I wanted right now was for Reese to come rescue me from this.

              “It happened right after we ran into the little girl. I was having a panic attack and Reese was just trying to calm me down. That's all. He was just trying to help me.” I cautiously opened my eyes again. The look on my father's face told me he wasn't any more convinced about the innocence of the situation than I was. I tried to clear my throat, it still felt swollen. “I didn't ask him to do that, it just...
happened
.” I needed to stop whispering. Words that could mend this situation did not exist. Dad took a step back and rubbed at his beard again. His shook his head back and forth as if his brain refused to accept what I was trying to tell him.
              “They're going to be watching us, Ruby. They're going to be watching and listening, do you understand? I don't think they know anything about either of us yet, but when they realize they can't trace the origins of my nasopharyngitis, they'll be suspicious. You can't see Reese anymore. If he comes for a visit I'll turn him away. You're not to meet with him under any circumstances. This is serious, this is about your life, his, mine, and your mother's. Look at me and tell me you understand.” His words stung like a scalpel, cutting far deeper than a slap from my old schoolteacher Rita's ruler ever could. How could I not see Reese again? Besides Willow, he was my best friend. He was the one who had given me the strength to get through meeting Connor in one piece, even if he didn't know it. I knew the feelings I had for him were forbidden but they were there nonetheless and the idea of never seeing him again tore my heart in two. My eyes squeezed shut and my body trembled.

             
Ask me anything, but don't ask me to never see Reese.

             
I couldn’t make that promise.

              Dad's hands rested on my shoulders again. “I'm sorry, Ruby, but all of our lives may be at risk and we can't draw any extra attention to ourselves.” Giant tears squeezed out from under my closed lids and slid down my cheeks. I gave up trying to stop them. I wanted to fight this. I wanted to tell Dad that I would rather die than never see Reese again because I wouldn't be truly alive without him anyway. But Dad was right, it wasn’t just
my
life that was at risk. With Dad doing dangerous things and Mom being so afraid all the time without even knowing the dangers we were putting ourselves in, I was now part of a coverup/conspiracy/whatever you wanted to call it and I would have to do things that broke my heart into a million pieces to protect the people I loved. I lifted a hand to wipe at my cheeks. My father had created a hole to potential freedom, but I had never felt more trapped in my life.

              “I understand,” I found myself choking out as if the words were acid rolling over my tongue. “I won't see him again.” Only then did my father's hands slip from my shoulders. I practically felt some of the tension roll off of him as he released a relieved sigh. It was nice that I could agree to something that comforted him, but what comforted him was already destroying me.

              “Good, that's good,” he muttered.

              “But..what about the girl?” Dad tilted his head and sighed.
              “There isn't anything we can do, at all, until we're cleared from confinement.”
              “But Dad, she's stuck in those passageways with no food or water. She's absolutely
terrified
,  and if the Order mended the hole, she has no way out. We
have
to find her again.”
              “I'm sorry, but there isn't anything at all that we can do until we're cleared. We just have to sit tight.” His eyes shifted to the right and then to the left as if he heard a noise, but I hadn't heard anything. Still, I stiffened. “We need to get to bed. We cannot discuss this again until our confinement is over. It's too risky.” I silently concurred, but only because I was too exhausted, both physically and emotionally, to continue this conversation. It occurred to me in that moment that this was the longest talk I had had with my father in years.

              “Dad...?” I whispered as I wiped another batch of sticky tears from my pale, freckled cheeks. I moved toward him and curled my arms around his broad shoulders, resting my head temporarily on his chest. For a moment – just one small, single moment, I was eight years old again. I had just beaten my dad in a game of cards (though now I realize he had probably let me win) and I was so proud of myself. I squealed and leapt at him without reservation. He caught me mid-fling and squeezed me against his broad chest. I snuggled warmly into his big arms and in that moment I knew that with a dad as big and strong, but gentle as him, nothing bad would or could ever happen to me.