The Treemakers (A YA Dystopian Scifi Romance Adventure) (3 page)

I sigh. Usually, I’m the instigator. But tonight, I’d rather fall asleep in my lumpy bed and never
wake up.

“Come on,” Jax says. “We
need supplies.”

He’s right. But his eyes also say he means to distract me from the pain of losing our
brother today.

“Okay.” I sigh again. “Let’s
do it.”

After dinner, we file toward the Orphan Dorms, ushered by Emmanuel Superior wearing a purple satin gown and bright red lipstick, which has smeared across half of one front tooth. What a freak show. Platform shoes, paint-chipped beads, rancid perfume. A baby-smooth face and waxed sideburns. I wonder if he has any clue how completely idiotic he looks. He’s gotten much worse over the past few years, prancing around the Tree Factory like he’s queen of all the land and we’re his royal subjects. His emerald-green oxygen tank sits on six tiny wheels and follows him around like a slave. Long tubes from its spout insert directly into his mouth and nose, so he breathes fresh at
all times.

Emmanuel Superior—the main reason I lie in bed at night and fight to keep
from crying.

He once slapped me for helping a little boy who tripped over a piece of wire and landed on the floor. Sliced my face right open with his sharp purple fingernail. I still have
a scar.

“He’ll never become a man with little girls babying him!” He spat rot in my face with
each word.

How would you know anything about becoming a man?
I thought, blood rolling down my cheek. I expected to die within a week from infection, but I didn’t have to defend myself. My daddy did. And I wish he hadn’t.

Emmanuel Superior never looks me in the eye for more than a second or two. He knows I’ll trace his matching scar with my eyes. From the corner of his thin upper lip to the crest of his cheekbone, my stare will scream at it in the silence. He covers it with so much caked-on makeup it’s hardly visible, but it doesn’t matter. I have it memorized, along with the rage on my daddy’s face the moment he gave it to him
. . .
the moment he chose to die
for me.

With a corkscrew from his satin robe pocket, Emmanuel stabbed him—Zephyr the Magnificent, Greenleigh’s only living magic—three times in the chest. And
he laughed.

I shrieked as my daddy’s dying body was ripped from me, taken by Arianna Superior, like all of the injured and dying men and women before him, like my mother. Still, in my panic, I knew I had to act fast. It wouldn’t be long before they cleared out our quarters and sent me to the Orphan Dorms. So I raced there and stuffed a few things away—his old boots; a pack of playing cards missing an Ace of Spades; a worn-out, faded book of magic tricks full of scratched notes in his handwriting—into the empty bag he usually kept his magician stuff in. Someone had stolen its contents from our room before I
got there.

Now, Emmanuel Superior counts us—sixteen girls and twenty-three boys—then takes Jax by the ear. “One of you is missing,” he snarls. A fake eyelash hangs loose from his eyelid. “Who is it, and where
is he?”

Mona Superior, of course, didn’t bother to tell him
about Toby.

“It’s Toby, sir,” Jax replies, unfazed by the intimidation. “He’
s dead.”

“Dead?” Emmanuel Superior releases Jax and smoothes down his satin robe. “How?” He adjusts the bra strap peeking out from under
his lapel.

Jax stands motionless. “He went outside today,” he answers, and for a second, I sense fear in Emmanuel Superior’s beady black eyes. Hard to tell, though, with all of that turquoise eye makeup. But it’s gone with a deep inhale into his nose tubes. He brushes a brown wave of hair from his face like it’s the most precious thing he’s ever done in his life. “Hm. Just as well, he was worthless anyway. Off to sleep, all of you. We have a large shipment of materials early in the morning. You’ll need to be in tip-top shape at six a.m.”

With fire in me, I lead my girls into our room, and he shuts the door with a bang. Seconds later, the boys’ door slams closed next to us. The girls huddle in their usual groups to chatter, and I go to the hole in the wall and unscrew the tack. Jax is already waiting there, leaning against the wall, straight black hair tucked behind
his ears.

“What an ass,” he says. “Don’t let what he says get to you. You know that’s what he’
s doing.”

“I know, I’m trying
not to.”

“Good. So, after storytime, we leave. Square?” I guess he sees my sadness. He comes nearer and puts two fingers on the lip of the hole. I link mine with his. “It’s okay,” he whispers. “I know it’ll be hard, but you have to. For them. They’re upset enough already.” He nods toward the younger boys
behind him.

“I know,” I whisper back, breathe deep, and prepare to act strong, even if I don’t feel it. “Anyone who wants to hear tonight’s story,” I announce, “must first hose down, brush, and use the toilet. Once everyone’s ready, I’
ll begin.”

We have to be stern with the rules, otherwise things would be all finfannery and crockus—nothing would be
in order.

All at once, thirty-something sets of feet thunder across the two rooms as children scramble for the wash areas. Aby’s on spray duty tonight; she’ll hose down all the littlest ones while they wash. Once they’re finished, the olders will go, two at a time, holding the hose for one other. Hygiene is very important; if you develop something that was preventable, like a cavity or an infection
. . .
it’s not
your day.

Last year, Molina let a wound get infected and couldn’t work for a week. When she was well, the Superiors punished her by taking away two meals a day “until further notice.” By the end of the first week, she was famished and wobbly, and couldn’t concentrate. She pushed the wrong button on the sun torch and it backfired, burning her up in seconds. Had I been working the chopper back then, I might’ve saved her. The Superiors, of course, claimed it was merely one of those “factory accidents”—a terrible stroke of luck. But we all know
the truth.

One by one, the girls finish up and, freshly washed, take their seats at my feet. I scoot my storytelling stool to the corner by the hole where I sit every night so the boys can hear me, too. As I scan slicked hair and clean faces, I notice a lot of them match mine. Sad. Confused. Angry. My palms begin to sweat. Jax is right there, closest to me on the other side of the hole, where he usually is. But right behind him is an empty space on the bed in the corner where Toby sat every night, eagerly awaiting
my story.

He’ll never hear another
one again.

There’s a lump in my throat. My strength threatens to cave as my vision wades through tears. Crying for someone you love is a natural, healthy thing, but I have to be strong for the little ones. If I start crying, then they may think,
Who’ll take care of us, now that Momma Joy has lost her strength?
No. Poor things have been through enough. I sit up straight and breathe in deep. Everyone’s seated, and Aby holds Baby Lou in her lap. At least she’s too young to understand the horror that
occurred today.

“What story you gonna tell tonight, Momma Joy?” Chloe asks. The hair-braiding chain begins at my feet and curves in a semi-circle around me; little girls learning the ways of girl things, like hair, and giggles, and secrets. On my other side, another group has curled up in blankets, chins rested in their hands, staring up
at me.

“Okay.” My voice is crackly and weak. I clear my throat, and start again. “Okay, first, I want to have a moment of silent reverence for our brother, Toby, who died outside today. He was loved and cherished by us all, and he’ll be greatly missed.” I lower my head to hide my tears, and wipe at them while I say a silent prayer that God, or Who or Whatever is out there, took our brother to
someplace beautiful.

“May Toby go to Paradise today,” I say, “where he’ll dance, play, and be
loved forever.”

“And so it is,” we say
in unison.

I lift my head, wiping wetness from my face again. “In honor of Toby, I’ll be retelling the first story I ever told, the one I made up the night he became our brother: the story of Billy’
s Dragon.”

A hush falls over the room, and I close my eyes to lose myself in it. Jax says I’ve got a gift; not everyone envisions things in full color, with intensity and complexity. I didn’t even know I could, until that
first night.

“Once,” I begin, “there was a little boy named Billy. He was sad, because a giant storm came and swept his town away, with his whole family, too. Everyone drowned, except for Billy. Soon, the water filled up his house, so he climbed inside a washtub, scared. He floated out the second floor window and away in the washtub with only a pocketful of magic stones his daddy had given him for his birthday. If only he could’ve floated by the kitchen on his way out, then maybe he could’ve gotten
some food.

“Hours went by as the roofs and treetops disappeared beneath the water, and still he floated farther and farther away. Billy cursed his daddy for lying to him about the stones’ power. He’d tried for months to get them to do something, give him wings to fly maybe? Or even X-ray vision to see through things
. . . .
But nothing he’d wished for had ever
come true.

“When he’d asked his daddy why the stones didn’t work, his daddy said, ‘They’ll work when you need ’em most. You have to believe.’ Billy thought it was stupid, that his momma and daddy were treating him like a baby. He’d thought every day about throwing the stones in the garden, not that anyone would notice. They were just stones. Plain ol’ ugly brown rocks. Nothing special
about them.

“Still, he kept them in his pocket every day, until the storm came. They were all he had left. That, and his washtub. On the third day, he was so parched from the sun, and surrounded by saltwater,
leagues deep—”

“Momma Joy?” Chloe tugs my pant leg. “Is that the ocean?”
she asks.

I wink down at her
and nod.

“And Billy knew his time had come to die,” I resume. “Angry, he took the stones from his pocket and hurled them into
the sea—”

“I thought it was the ocean,” Chloe
says again.

“Chloe, shh,” says Aby. “It’s the same thing.” She waves at me to
go on.

“He threw the magic stones into the sea,” I continue, “and a second later, a great green-and-blue dragon shot up from the water with a splash and flew over him. At first, Billy was scared; he’d never seen a dragon before, and it was enormous, it could very easily eat him up if it wanted to. But it didn’t. ‘Hop on my back,’ the dragon said, ‘and I’ll take you to Paradise
. . . .
’”

Twenty minutes later, as I finish the story, half of the girls and boys are asleep on the thin floor pallets. I told it a little longer than usual tonight because I was lost in it. In my mind, Toby was Billy, living happily ever after on his dragon’s back, flying through the heavenly blue skies, dipping down into the crisp blue ocean and back up again. I desperately want to believe my brother is
there now.

Sometimes I wonder, though, if it’s foolish to think that there’s some kind of paradise after death. Mother never believed it, but Daddy did. And I’m torn. I don’t know what to believe. I know what I want to believe, yet I hear my mother’s voice as she argued with my daddy from her deathbed behind closed doors: “There is nothing left. No happy ending,”
she said.

No happy ending on this Earth, I believe. Except in my stories. But what comes next, after the dead Earth, and the tragedy of death before life has even been lived?
What then?

Aby and some of the older girls help me get the little ones tucked away safe in their beds, and I meet Jax at the hole. Sliding the metal cover up and affixing it to the latch, I peek in to scope out the boys’ side. Jax sits on the edge of the twins’ bunk, talking softly to them. Their sad eyes hit me like fists to the stomach. Toby was a big brother to them more
than most.

If I could shut off my brain and never think again,
I might.

“Hey.” Jax’s voice startles me from
my daze.

“Hey.”

“Ready?”

“Yeah.”

I flip the cover back over the hole, and find Aby braiding her hair in the greenish-yellow glow from a liqui-light lantern on our shared bedside table. “Hey,” she says. “
You leavin’?”

I nod.

“Humphrey’s gonna let you go, after what happened
last time?”

I shrug. “I guess he’s
over it.”

“Where’re you going?” She ties off the braid’s end, then gives the lantern a shake. The light intensifies to illuminate her face in a sickly green color that clashes with her red hair, making it dark-brown. “You gonna need one?” She taps the
safety glass.

“I don’t know. I think Jax still has a few light sticks. They’re easier to manage
down there.”

Aby stretches and tilts her head until her neck pops in three spots. She repeats it on the other side. “Yeah, true.”

A sniffling in the corner of the room grabs my attention. Someone’s crying. Maybe one of the little ones. I start to go
to her.

“No,” Aby says. “You go. I’ll take care
of it.”

“
You sure?”

She nods. “Please
be careful.”

“I will.” I peek at Baby Lou sleeping soundly in
her crib.

“We’ll be fine,” Aby assures me. “Tell Jax I
said hi.”

“Okay. And maybe next time you and Miguel can go
with us.”

“Really? That would be great! It’s been like
a month—”

“I know, it’s time.” I hug her, breathing in the nasty scent of Tree Factory soap on her skin. Someone taps on
the door.

“Be safe.” Aby blows me a kiss. “And
have fun.”