The Benders (27 page)

We’ll burn. Die.

We hurdle at the wall. The heat is like nothing I’ve ever felt. It sucks my breath away. My body collides with something, the wall.
We’re done for
, I think. My skin
burns
. I can’t breathe. I can’t see.

When I land on my back, any remaining wind huffs out of my chest. Another form crashes on top of me as I suck for air. Nada. We’re lying outside the warehouse. We made it through. As I gasp for breath, I try to pull myself and Nada away from the heat of the fire. My hands feel raw, my shoulders, too. But when I look up, I see Mister, his partner, the announcer, and Lord Merek looking at us like we’re sprouted two heads. He looks too surprised to shoot us.

Nada and I limp across the finish line and collapse.

“You have to help him,” I whisper to Betsy.

In bed, Betsy has her back to me, a mountain covered with a flowered sheet. I picture horses scampering up her back and down into the folds of her belly. “Miss Nessa already helped Clay,” she says, not rolling over. “Go to sleep.”

“All he does is cry,” I say, feeling baby tears of my own. I order them back into my eyeballs, but they’re dumb and don’t listen, so I flick them away with mad fingers. “He never cried before.”

Betsy is quiet. Outside a Jeep rumbles by. There’s been a lot of Jeeps rumbling by. Something’s gonna happen any day now. Something bad.

“Maybe Clay’s just having a hard time adjusting to his new self,” she says, rolling over. She’s got her wig off again and I try not to look at her cut-up head. “He’ll be right as rain in a few days. Now go to sleep, dunderhead.”

I ball my mad fists up. “He
won’t
be fine. Miss Nessa broke his brain. Like she broke…” I stop and look over at Betsy.

“Like she broke what?” she asks, sitting up in bed. When I don’t answer, she grabs my arm.

“Like she broke you,” I whisper.

Betsy throws my arm down and rolls out of bed. Meaty footsteps thud to the window. She stands in the moonlight and holds herself.

I lie in the bed, feeling bad. Betsy is crazy, but it isn’t her fault. Slowly I get up and stand behind her. Outside more Jeeps rumble.

“Sorry,” I say.

She sniffs. I hear her chewing her lips like my rabbit used to gnaw the wire of his cage. Her lips will be bloody in the morning. Miss Nessa will be mad.

“It’s not your fault you’re broken,” I say, shuffling my feet.

She whirls on me. In the moonlight, she looks scary—her eyes are huge like lizard eyes and they laser in on me. Her lips are bleeding and, with the scars on her bald head, she could be a comic book monster. I back up.

“I could help Clay,” she hisses, coming after me. “I’ve helped Nessa with two of these operations already.” Her spit sprays in my face as she talks. “She put a chip in his brain. She knows how to do it now because of me. Because my brain was first.” She stabs a finger at her scalp as she takes a step forward and her face gets too near.

I step back again.

“I could help him,” she whispers, “but I won’t because you’re being naughty!” She grabs for my arm.

I slip sideways and run to the door. The handle won’t turn. It’s locked. Betsy thuds toward me.

“Stop!” I shake the handle. “Don’t, Betsy!” Big hands reach for me.

I scamper sideways and up onto the bed. “Stop!”

Betsy’s angry face gets even angrier. “Shut up!” Her hands claw my PJs as she climbs onto the bed. She’s gonna kill me. I pull away, terrified.

The door flies open. In the dark doorway, Miss Nessa aims a gun. We freeze. When she sees we’re alone, me on the floor and Betsy on her hands and knees on the bed, she lowers the gun. “What in God’s name is going on?”

Betsy stands up, running nervous hands over the belly of her nightgown. “Ethan…Cole had a…nightmare.”

Miss Nessa’s eyes narrow. Her face turns to me. “Is that so, Cole?”

I nod my head fast. I don’t want Miss Nessa to hurt Betsy. Or me.

Nessa taps the gun against her thigh and looks at us. “So, you were what, Betsy, helping him?”

Betsy folds her hands under her saggy belly and smiles sweetly. “Yes ma’am.”

“Right,” Nessa says. “Get back to bed, both of you.”

We do, folding up into the bed, but lying as far apart as possible. Sometimes I let Betsy hold me and pretend I’m one of her babies. It’s not that I like it. It’s that it makes her less crazy for a while. But not tonight. I’ll punch her face if she tries to cradle me.

Nessa closes the door and we lie in silence. Betsy’s chewing her lips and muttering, “Never, never, never.” Outside, the Jeeps have stopped, but now there are voices, people talking down the street. I listen and stare up at the ceiling. Betsy moans quietly.

“Can you really fix Clay?” I finally ask.

For a long time, Betsy says nothing. Then, “No, I was lying.”

But her voice is thin. I don’t believe her. She
can,
but she won’t.

I sneak into Clay’s room just before dawn. Nessa forgot to relock the door when she came in to check on us last night. And Betsy’s snoring like a saw horse. I’m like a ninja, curled into the darkness of Clay’s room.

It’s scary in here. Clay is scary. When he’s not crying, he’s talking about weird memories that don’t make sense. Like yesterday he told me, “We were ridin’ horses and a snake came up, but the snake was a man named Warden and it bit me.” Then he looked at me like I should remember. I’m not even the kid he thinks I am, so I just stand there all dumb-like until Miss Nessa comes in and sets a photo album in his hands.

Clay’s breathing heavy, so I move toward his breath. I find his bed and stand by it, looking at his face in the dark. He looks like himself when he’s sleeping, but when he’s awake his face is afraid and lost and he looks like someone else. Part of me is glad Riley isn’t here to see this. She would be mad as hell at Miss Nessa. Probably want to kill her.

I stare at Clay’s head, trying to get up the gumption to do what I came here for. The white bandage around his head is thick, but slowly I begin peeling it like the skin of an onion. It unravels in my hands.

His head is shaved like Betsy’s, but where she has railroad tracks all up and down, he has one long scar, still red and yucky with thick black stitches across it. That’s where she messed with his brain. Where she put in the chip, if Betsy is telling the truth. And could she fix it? Could she really make Clay back to normal?

I wrap up his head and put everything back the way it was. As I’m about to leave, Clay stirs. His eyes flutter open and he sees me.

“Oh, it’s you,” he says, reaching for me. “Bad dream?” His voice is thick and slow like cold honey.

I look at Clay and his face seems… normal. I nod, walking toward him.

“S’okay, lil’ man.” He puts his arm around me.

And I let myself be curled in, tucked beside his warm body. I’m a big boy and don’t need to be held, but I’ve really missed Clay and being beside him feels good. Even if he doesn’t know the real me.

“Night, Ethan,” he whispers before falling asleep.

I almost miss it in my groggy state, but then my brain lights up. He called me Ethan. His brain might not be broke all the way.

I lie beside Clay, my brother even if we aren’t for really real. I gotta make Betsy fix Clay and I gotta do it fast.

I gaze absentmindedly at the moon beaming through the medical building’s window as we wait for Doc. Next to me, Nada has the empty-eyed stare of someone who’s nearly died and then lived, but still isn’t sure how she’ll cope. Shock, that’s what Auntie would call it. I’m sure my face is just as empty. Just as shocked. They tried to kill us, but they failed.

But so many are dead. We never did learn what happened to the two other teams, but I saw a truck with a tarp-covered bed heading out to the sand dunes. I tick off the names in my head: Crete, Michal, Joe, and Harriett. Dead. The weight of that thought is heavy, like a pool of lead in my stomach. I didn’t know them, but they’re just like me. Except somehow I had more luck. Somehow I’m not dead. Yet.

Doc bursts through the door at a full clip and runs over to us. His arms circle Nada in a desperate hug. She winces as he puts pressure on her wounds and bee stings, but returns the embrace.

“I thought you were dead. I really, really thought, ‘This is it. I’m never going to see her again.’” He runs a shaking hand through his hair. “How did you do it?”

Nada looks up at him. “Do what?”

“Survive?”

Nada points at me.

I shake my head. “It was as much Nada as it was m—”

Doc falls on me, hugging me fiercely, and then all at once his mouth presses on mine.

He kisses me. His full lips are soft and warm. He tastes like mint and salt. Salty tears, I realize, because he’s been crying. For Nada. For me?

I lean back and he breaks off the kiss. He stands up, awkwardly running a hand through his hair, his cheeks the crimson stain of embarrassment. My face burns hot, too.

Beside me, Nada chuckles.

A guard walks in the door. Doc whirls toward the man. “Yes?” His voice trembles, but he tries again. “Yes?”

“Lord Merek says to give them the best medical treatment you can. They should be in tip-top form for tonight.”

Tonight? Another challenge. I’ve barely taken a breath since the last one.

Doc nods. “This way, please,” he says, ushering us back to his exam room. When he sees the way we limp, he frowns.

In the exam room with the door shut, Doc surveys Nada’s cuts, bruises, and stings over, growing more and more concerned as he spots them.

“What did they have you do?” He looks up at Nada.

Nada lifts her eyes to the ceiling and shakes her head.

Doc turns to me.

“It was a race through booby-trapped warehouses. Oh, and they shot at us when they could find us, so you know, loads of fun.”

“Are you serious?” he says, his mouth falling open.

“No, I’m thinking of picking up a career in fiction writing,” I say sarcastically.

Doc steps back and clutches the table with his medical supplies. “Merek’s gotten so bad.” He whispers, then looks up at me. “He approved of the game?”

I narrow my eyes. “He took shots at us. He loved it.”

I watch Doc’s expression morph from disbelief to anger. “He never used to kill for sport.”

“Well, now he does. And do you hear yourself? Why should he be allowed to kill at all?” Anger pulses at my throat. How can Doc not see Merek for the monster that he is?

“This is terrible,” Doc says to no one. He glances down at Nada and then goes to her, kneeling before her. “You have to get out of the tournament. I’ll…I’ll pull some strings.”

Nada’s face is cold as she looks at Doc. “What for? So I can die in a gun powder explosion? Get beheaded for stealing bread? I will
not
live here anymore!” She shoves Doc’s pleading hands away and crosses her arms. “Save your favors for yourself.”

“Nada,” he reaches for her arm and she pulls away. Doc’s eyes turn to me.

“There are ten benders for every one guard.” I look Doc hard in the face. “We should rise up. We should fight.”

Doc’s eyes flick nervously to the hall. He leans in and whispers, “They have all the guns. We’d be massacred.”

“Crete, Joe, Harriett, Michal.” I tick each name off on my fingers. “Massacred.”

Doc steps back, shaking his head. He grips the table again, his eyes roving around the room. “There has to be something we can do.”

I look at my hands, not meeting Doc’s gaze. I just told him what we can do, but it is clear he won’t even consider it.

Doc tends our wounds. The cream he puts on the burns is so soothing I sigh out loud. Cuts and scrapes are easily bandaged. Nada’s limp, though, won’t be so easily healed. Her ankle is sprained, and Doc wraps it the best he can. It’ll impair her in the last challenge no doubt, but I don’t like to think about that. I don’t like to think about tonight at all. Nada and I will probably have to face each other. There’s no way I could kill her, but if it comes down to it, will I fight her? Will I try to win?

When Nada is all patched up, she limps into the waiting room. I get up to follow her, but Doc shuts the door and turns to face me. His eyes are pleading.

“Riley, I want to thank you for what you did for Nada. That kiss was—”

“A thank-you. I get it,” I say, my own cheeks going hot. “I’m spoken for anyway.”

Think about Clay brings a flood of sadness over me. How long has it been since we were together? A week? Two? I can’t remember.

“Anyway, I just wanted to ask…”

“You want me to try to help her,” I say.

He nods, pushing a hand through his chestnut hair again. “Please.”

“I’ll do what I can, but I can’t let her win if it comes down to the two of us. I have family, too. You know there’s nothing more important than family.”

Doc nods. “Nothing.”

“I’m sorry she won’t listen to reason.”

Doc smiles sadly. “You won’t either.” He lifts his eyes to mine and they search my face. “Be careful out there, Riley. Take care of yourself, too.”

They let us sleep that night and most of the morning. When lunch time rolls around, Nada and I are ushered out of the medic building and across the dusty courtyard. The benders, lined up at the mess hall to get their grub, raise their eyebrows as we pass. They’re surprised to see us alive and still in the game. I can’t help but let a small smile cross my face as they stare in wonder.

That’s right, I did this. I survived. So did Nada.

My smirk falls flat, though, as I see where we’re being taken. The guards march us through Lord Merek’s private gate and into his courtyard. As my eyes fall onto the lawn ornaments, the metal benches, I think of Annabell. First of her head rolling in the dust, but then, when that awful image is shaken away, of her pleading eyes the night we met here. I couldn’t have helped her, could I?

That thought slides away when we enter the Lord’s home. I’ve been here once before, but in the dark with Doc. In the daylight, I can see all the special touches Lord Merek has applied to make this once regular building into a castle. Paintings and rich tapestries, frayed and fading but clearly once valuable, line the walls. At one end on a wood table, the top half of a suit of armor stares at us as we pass. It’s creepy, the fact that he’s missing his lower half, but I don’t have time to contemplate as we walk past an open hallway and see a medieval torture rack collecting dust. Nada shifts closer to me as we pass the wall of battle-axes, swords, and heavy-looking spiked balls bolted to one wall. It’s like a torture museum, with Merek as the insane collector.