Page 80 of A Better World

“Theydo,” Gal said. She sat on the couch they’d once shared. Linda took the musty armchair. It was dark in this room, despite the daylight. “I don’t think anything. I don’t care. I just want my kids.”

“That’s what you meant that night, by turning up the heat,” Linda said. “You meant you were going to set a fire.”

Gal took a breath. She was very different from the woman Linda’dmet in September. She wasn’t agitated. She was still. Heavy, even, like a wounded cat that sneaks to a hidden place to lick its wounds or perish. “My kids are sick,” Gal said. “Dr. Chernin told me they’re not going to get better.”

“Listen, I’m sorry. I should start by saying I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Gal asked.

“I never checked on you or visited before now. I should have done that.”

“That’s okay.Nobodytalks to me,” Gal said.

“Oh,” Linda said. She’d expected rage and hurled accusations. A fewwhy didn’t you help mes thrown in. But either Linda had caught her on a very bad night last time, or the experience of the fire, of her burns, of losing her children, had changed her.

“I must have swallowed a bottle of grain for courage. Or more? More. But I couldn’t go through with it. Fire’s awful. I didn’t think it would be so awful. I couldn’t let them suffer like that…”

Linda’s eyes watered. “But why did you do it at all?”

“Because they’re mine.”

“My God, Gal!”

Gal’s voice didn’t modulate. No pleading. No hollering, either. Just flat and ragged. “I’m healed enough to walk. They said that’s all I get. They’re kicking me out. Can’t even wait for a trial. They need me gone. I was trying to understand why they didn’t kill me and then I thought: It’s not part of the rules. They only follow rules. It lets them pretend they’re civilized.”

“Who would kill you?”

“It’s a break from tradition,” Gal said, ignoring the question. “Every other year, they let the parents stick around. Percy Khoury’s mad as a meat axe. Guy runs all through the Labyrinth making friends out of the lost caladrius down there and he still got a golden ticket out of it, like Trish. That’s how you get your ticket early—you give them something they really need. But I pissed them off. So, I’ll be on the outside. I’d like to take Sebbie and Katie with me. If you can help with that, you’re welcome to sit on my couch all day. And if you can’t, you can get out.”

Linda stood. “I don’t understand any of this.”

“I hurt them, yes,” Gal said. “It was better coming from me. Who do you think was going to set them loose in a freezing tunnel and offer them up to Hollow?”

“That’s not real,” Linda said. “It can’t be.”

“Do you know anything about Hami, China?” Gal asked.

Linda shook her head.

“Me neither. But lots of people there are really sick. The Omnium waste gets in the river. Same thing happens when you dissolve it,” Gal said. “Worse things, too. Black teeth. Messed-up eyes. The animals are mutants over there. Not even edible. I’ve heard they got sick like that here, until the mill closed. Now it’s rare—affects just kids, mostly. Because it’s still in the river. Nobody told me not to let them swim in it. Nobody tells you anything, or maybe it was on purpose. It could have been a deal Trish made before she met me. Trish could be like that—cold. I used to feel so safe with her. I thought I’d be protected by someone so mean.”

She looked right at Linda. “It’s not by chance, who gets black ribbons at the maypole. It’s decided before. It’s always whoever’s sick.”

The contents of Linda’s stomach didn’t want to stay there. “Your kids are in Palo Alto.”

“They’re not,” Gal said. “Trish traded them for a golden ticket and she transferred to a place where they’d honor it because she couldn’t stand people around here knowing what she’d done. My kids are still here. Hidden.”

“It’s psychotic,” Linda said. “Companies don’t intentionally cause cancer. Towns don’t sacrifice children. It would have gotten out by now. It’s not something anyone could keep a secret.” But she knew from experience this wasn’t true. She remembered Glamp.

“Didn’t you tell me your husband, Russell, worked for the EPA?”

Linda looked at the bright spot on the wall, where the inverted cross had hung. It stung, to hear Gal mention his name, to drag him into this ugliness.

“Trish worked for the EPA, too. Don’t you think that comes in handy, when you work on one side, and then you switch to the enemy?”

“He’d never do that,” Linda said. “You don’t know my husband.”

“Maybe you don’t know him,” Gal said without raising her voice.

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