Blood and Barbies

The Next Day

It was dark. The stars were hard to see through the smoke of the unattended fires. I passed the huts on the opposite side of my house. I walked barefoot. I had to be as quiet as I could tonight. I was in mission mode. The air smelled like nature and smoke. Leaves and rich soil danced together. I started my journey to the fringe of PKT, where I had picked up the package. Speaking of that package, I had several syringes on me at the moment. I planned on finding the dirt road that Ricky had driven down to get to the POC registration building. That was the building where Flick and I had our first "fight". My goals consisted of stealing log books. I needed to figure out what trades PKT was making with sunset. PKT, and other gangs always keep that logged. Another log I needed had the names of every POC registered here. That would tell me if Flick and I were registered normally, or if they had intel that we were spies. Since I have been hanging out with Flick, my cover has been risked. If someone was suspicious of spying, they could look at who I am associated with. If they pulled in Mouse, Ty, or Lavender for investigations they would be clean. On the other hand, Flick would not be so squeaky. I have to keep seeing Flick despite this. He has to fall in love with me. I battled internally with myself. It truly felt evil to trick him. Making him think that I was a regular POC and then allow him to trust me? It is just wrong. At the same time he thinks he is tricking me. He doesn't know that I know he is a spy. He has been pretending just like me, to be a regular POC. I have to keep this professional. I can not let my values get twisted up in my work. That would result in a half-ass job.

Then there's the whole thing of me liking him. Do I really like him? I mean maybe I just feel that way because he likes me. He is so bipolar. His mind changes quickly and he gets mad out of the blue. Would it be bad to actually like him? I do not think it would because Jade wants him to like me so liking him back couldn't be bad, could it? If it was okay for me to like him, it would still trip up my flow. I have no idea where I will be stationed next. This may be the only time I ever get to be with him. That idea caught me off guard. My stomach fell. That couldn't possibly be true? Maybe we will remain partners. Eventually I would be able to tell him the truth, that I'm a spy. It would not be hard to break the news to him because he would also have some confessing to do of his own, but I still dreaded it terribly. I wonder how that will all play out. At the end of this month I am scheduled to go back to Blood. One more month with Flick. And Mouse! I had forgotten about Mouse, and Ty even. I would have to leave them behind and go to my much more privileged life. I felt my eyes start to well up. I ignored it and kept going. I found the dusty road and started carefully down it's side. If my guesstimation was right, the road had been only about a mile. I had a lot of thinking to do.

As the huge tree of the registration building came into view, I was hyped. The first thing I needed to do was to see if anyone was in the building overnight, waiting to be checked in the next morning. I climbed up the thick trunk, opposite side of the entrance. I struggled up to the top of the building, surprisingly able to do so without making any significant noise. I steadied myself on the old wood roof. I ran my nail across the wood in a vertical direction trying to find the crevice of the planks. PKT really knows how to make sturdy, weatherproof buildings because the planks had no room between them. I took out a one-ounce vial of wood-dissolving acid from my bra and squeezed a drip of the Xylene into the crack. My heart froze as beautiful yellow light came rushing out of the new hole. Someone was in the building, and awake. They couldn't possibly know my plans, only me and the top dogs at Blood and Barbies know...

I carefully brought my eye to the hole of light, not to burn my eye. My stomach sank, I felt so stupid. Tea was sitting at a small table calmly looking up at me. She pointed with a delicate finger to the other, empty chair and raised her eyebrows in a "we need to talk" manner. She must have been waiting for me. I felt nauseous. Had she known the whole time or did she just figure me out? She was acting like she was waiting for me, like she knew for a while. I got up too quickly and almost fell of the side of the roof. Now that I was so disoriented, I practically hobbled over to the side where the platform for the door was. I jumped down and landed hard on my feet. Wow, I am really doing bad tonight! I turned around and Tea was opening the door for me. My hands shook and my mouth filled with excess saliva, like when you are about to vomit. The leader of PKT knowing who I am is definitely not part of the plan. I sat down in the chair and stared at the flickering candle on the table. I could not look into Tea's eyes.