Guilty

Chapter 3-Rosie

I laid on my bed, staring up at the wood engraved ceilings of my antebellum home. It had been built before the Red War, as they call it here, and before many wars before that one. My father told me once that it had been around before even the Civil War, which was almost two hundred years ago.

I'd figured that I would be accepted by the criminals in the lab and not shunned like I had been by everyone I'd known and loved. But even they'd judged me. The only person left in this world was my father, and even he had his doubts sometimes. I'd already received a week of hell for something I'd never done.

I was sitting in my boyfriend's living room, just talking like we always did. He had plans to take me to New York City for the weekend, and we were trying to decide what to do while we were there. Suddenly, I was deafened by a loud gunshot, and he was laying on the floor with a puddle of blood coming from the side of his head. Lifeless eyes, open in eternal surprise. I heard a click, and I turned around frantically to see his younger brother put the gun on the coffee table before he turned to leave the room. Not thinking, I grabbed it and pulled the trigger. I'd never shot a gun before. I'd never even seen a real one in person. But I'd seen them shoot in the movies, and I hit him in the shoulder. Before the bullet hit him, he'd already dialed 911 on his interface, and he took a snapshot of me holding the gun with his telecontacts. Enough evidence to make me guilty. I'd only talked to him once since then. He'd set it up that way, knowing that I would go for the gun to stop him. He never told me why he killed him.

"Rosie," the intercom buzzed with my father's voice, "there's someone at the door to see you."

"I'll be down in a minute," I replied, pushing the button. Things were so empty and the world was so big without an interface. No way to communicate unless you're face-to-face with someone. It made me even more scared to go out in public. But who could have come to see me?

It was one of the girls from the lab, the one with dark hair. She'd come in late the second day, so neither of us had really spoken to each other. Other than Alain, I hadn't really spoken to the others, either. "How did you...?" I began to ask.

"It's not hard to find America's most famous teenage criminal's address on the Internet," she explained. "I would have called you, but..." She glanced down at her bandaged wrist, void of an interface, just as mine. "I figured we're going to spend the next ten years in a lab together, so we might as well get to know each other."

"Sure," I replied. "You want to come inside? Sorry that I'm not really dressed, I haven't been anywhere today."

"Like I care," she said, coming in, "Wow, this place is huge! I knew you were rich, but to afford something like this? I've never seen anything like it. How old is this place?"

"Really, really old," I told her. It took me a minute to get her out of the entryway and upstairs. She kept stopping to look at things, like rugs and wallpaper and paintings on the wall. My father was a sap for antiques. Our house could be a museum. She almost cried when she saw my bedroom. The large, canopy bed, the solid gold lamps, the polar bear skin rug, the velvet couch in the corner, and the tall, arched windows were just too much for her. 

"Oh, I forgot to tell you who I am," she mentioned, "I'm Thalia Jackson."

"We'll, it's nice to meet you," I smiled, "Obviously, you know my name since you were able to find my house. But anyway, I go by Rosie, not Rosamond."

"Cool, much less fancy," she said. "Rosamond's a little old-fashioned."

"Obviously, my dad loves old things," I held my hand out towards our surroundings, "recently, he's become obsessed with 1920s suits." She pondered it for a minute, and I knew it was weird. No one really sticks to a certain decade anymore. They mix and match if they decide to go back in time.

"Well what about you? You like old things or modern?"

"I don't know. I like both. Modern makes things so simple. It makes life easy, but a lot of the time it's not so beautiful. You can only make new things. You can't make old things," I felt both sides. I've grown up in a world of new. Barely anyone seems to stop and realize how beautiful the old things are. How perfectly imperfect they are. I've been reading some classics lately since I don't have friends to hang out with anymore, and I've also read some history books too, and life was so much harder then, but people still had time to make art and handcraft such pretty things. Our life is so easy, so automated, but we have lost our creativity and our desire to create something. Even fashion is so bland now. Nothing has those little details anymore, just solid colored structures that are "elegant" and try to make everyone look like they have a model body. There's the revivalist movement, but they just do it for attention and to feel like something special. Not because they admire the old clothes and wonder about who used to wear them. I like them, but I don't wear them. Old things are associated with the Southern Republic, which actually tries to keep things old, to rebel further from the United States. To be different and unique from us, because they hate us. "What about you?"

"I like what I can afford," she laughed, "Old's pretty, but quite honestly, I couldn't live without all of this new technology and stuff. I suppose if I had to I'd learn, but not having my interface makes me feel so empty and disconnected. I can't talk to anyone without it."

"Same here," I agreed. "So what did you do to get yourself to be a government experiment?"

"I had a Bible," she said, looking down. "I'm a Christian. It's stupid to make a belief illegal. How does me, praying at home, reading a book, hurt anyone?"

"They say it can undermine the government. I don't know, there have been a lot of wars caused by religion. Maybe that's why?" I was glad she hadn't done anything violent, like murder or assault. I wouldn't have to watch my back or anything with her. 

"Maybe," she muttered, "Doesn't make much sense. But they can't break me; I'll get myself another one somehow. You want one?"

"I'm already in enough trouble with the law, no thank you," I declined. She looked at her feet and shrugged.

"So, what do you think of the others? Way do you think they did?" She asked. "I wonder if they did anything really bad... Like murdering their lovers," she laughed. I felt my cheeks turn hot and looked at the ground. Her eyes widened, "You didn't do it!" She cried out, her index finger pointing at me.

"No, I'm innocent. How did you know?"

"I'm from the bad part of town. I know when a person's guilty," she responded. "So, now that that's cleared up, let's try and figure out what the others did. You know their names? I didn't really talk to any of them."

"We'll, there's Alain Moreno, he talked to me for a few minutes the first day. He's a refugee, so he could have done something tiny and gotten thrown in here. We used to have a maid from Germany, and she stole one of my father's watches and ended up getting deported. He felt really bad afterwards, since she only did it to feed her children, and he didn't know that they'd all be sent back. So who knows, he could have just gotten in for petty theft."

"I wonder about the rest of them then," she said. "There's the short blonde guy, and I'm pretty sure he's American. Maybe he like, brutally murdered his parents or something. Or robbed a bank and killed some bystanders, or tried to assassinate the president."

"I think we would have heard if there was a plot to assassinate President Turnbull. He'd have a picture of the suspect sent to every interface in the country."

"True, true," she agreed. "What about the other girl?"

"No clue," I said. "Why are we doing this again? We aren't going to know for sure until we ask."

"I don't know, something to talk about," Thalia sighed. "Hey, it's ten, I have to go."

"You just got here."

"I know, but I have somewhere to be, and on the other side of town. It took a lot longer to get here than I thought. Nice house, though. I'll see you on Monday," she said, getting up and leaving.

"Do you need a taxi?" I asked.

"No, there's a bus stop two blocks over," she said, bounding out the door and across the front law. "Bye!" She called from the distance, and I waved before shutting the door. At least I had one person being friendly to me. Maybe she'd be able to convince the others that I'm innocent. Finally I had a friend to talk to.