The Rebel Code

Chapter Twelve

When I wake up the next morning, John isn't in the apartment. I start to panic, until I remember his new job. Sure enough, he's downstairs in the dance studio, teaching a young woman how to hold her arms when she's waltzing. As soon as he takes a break for water, I meet him.

"Is it okay if I go out today?" I ask.

He smiles, but his expression turns puzzled. "Out? Where are you going?"

"There's a vendor near the casino with some fantastic cheesecake," I say, without the tension of making up a lie.

"I see." He scratches his beard, thinking. It's hard to tell, since his hair is so tightly curled, but his beard has gotten longer in the time we've been here, making him look older and more serious. "Well, I don't see why not. Just... be careful, okay?"

I nod, understanding. John's an actor, an improviser. It's kept him alive. But I've been around him long enough to know when he's faking calm. My mention of Captain Link rattled him.

The truth is, I don't want to go to the dessert place, not even if Larry said he was going to pay. No part of me sees how a free cheesecake is worth risking my life, but I did tell him I would. I don't like breaking promises. So at a quarter to noon, I leave the dance studio and walk the tile floors all the way down to the casino entrance. I go into the clothing store and up the escalator to the quiet little plaza, with the soft, painted sky. They must filter in natural scents here for psychological reasons, because it smells exactly like a warm summer day. Despite the caution John tells me to take with me everywhere, this place feels safe.

"Jenny!"

Larry is already here, sitting at a table by the fountain. He looks nicer today. Well, nicer by Larry standards. He's still got swim trunks and sandals, but he's wearing a button up shirt that he's almost bothered to button all the way up.

"It's you," I say, not with any particular inflection. I'm not sure how I feel about seeing him again. I'm not happy—I can think of a thousand things I'd rather be doing—but it's still nice to be able to say I know someone, someone who's not "one of us." It feels like an anchor.

"It's me," he replies cheerfully. "I'm really glad you came. Honestly, I'm so sorry about yesterday. I'm not good at just thinking things, you know? For some reason, I always end up saying them. It's so ridiculous."

"No," I say, "don't be sorry. I'm the same way. I'd rather you were honest, really. It's so much less confusing."

"Right?" He grins as I take the chair across from him. "I hate it when you can tell someone's thinking something, but they don't say it, and when you ask them they're all like 'oh, it's nothing'. Talking is weird. How long have you been here?"

The question comes so suddenly I almost don't catch it. "Uh, I just got here."

"No," he laughs. "I mean the mall. Were you born here?"

I shake my head. "I moved here a few months ago from the Aquaculture Province."

"That must be wonderful. I've never seen the ocean before," he says. "That's a lie. I saw it in a movie once. I went to the immersive action theater, and they had a documentary about sharks."

I guess I've never imagined that there are people who have never seen the ocean in person. It feels like something everyone's done at some point, just casually. In Port Carina, a day never passed when I didn't see the ocean.

"Do you ever leave the mall?" I ask, curious.

He shakes his head. "Sometimes, in the summer, my uncle takes me and my cousins downstairs to see the summer block party, and we watch the transports come in. But I've never left. I wasn't born here, though. When I was really little, I lived in the Manufacturing Province with my parents, but they're dead now."