Dissidence Read online

  “You know you’re going to be the only one to wish me a happy birthday.” I guessed I could let him live a couple more minutes. Only . . . “How do you know what time I was born?”

  “I do work at the archives.”

  “You know that’s creepy, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, in that case, you’re early. Go away.”

  “Honestly, I thought it would take you longer to answer the door, but it’s seven-fifteen now, so happy birthday, Leigh.”

  Dork . . . I meant . . . “Thanks.”

  I managed to convey gratitude, but I couldn’t quite stop the eye roll that accompanied it. It was almost like my eyes had a mind of their own in the presence of stupidity. Resigning myself to exasperation, I let him in and watched as he cut pieces of the nicely decorated cake for each of us. At least he wasn’t dumb enough to try and get me to make a wish. It probably would have involved something very large and heavy running over him right then. Although, even if he ignored every last thing I told him, it was still nice to have him there. Something about spending my birthday alone was kind of depressing, not to mention pathetic.

  “So what do you think?” He lifted his plate slightly to indicate he was asking about the cake he’d brought me.

  “It’s good. Sal make it?”

  He nodded, his mouth too full to speak. Sal had a gift for baking, one that I sorely lacked. Maybe if I had spent more time in the actual kitchen at work . . .

  “Have you checked the mail yet?” Peter inquired once he’d managed to swallow the disgustingly large bite he took and helped himself to my glass of milk to wash it down.

  “My mate file isn’t going to come today, Peter.”

  “It could, you never know. You should check.”

  “Even if it did, I’m in no rush to see it anyway.”

  “Aren’t you curious?”

  “Not particularly.” I shuddered to think what kind of person they were going to pair me with. If my work assignment was any indication, clearly we would be the perfect match.

  “Oh, come on, wuss,” Peter prodded.

  “Well, if you’re in such a rush to get rid of me, why don’t you go and check?”

  He pushed past me to the front door, frowning at my insinuation.

  “Nothing yet.”

  Shocker.

  “Told ya so. Guess you’re just going to be stuck with me a while longer.”

  “Hope I’ll survive,” he teased, flashing me his best grin.

  “You won’t if you show up at my door at seven in the morning on a weekend again.” That smile may have kept him out of trouble with everyone else, but it didn’t fly with me.

  “So, what are you doing for the rest of your special day?”

  “My favorite thing of all time . . . absolutely nothing.”

  Peter peered at me squinty eyed, clearly trying to weigh how serious I was. I was serious enough that if he tried to drag me out of the house, I was going to have to beat him.

  “All right then. I’ll do nothing with you.” Smart man. I knew there were brains in there somewhere.

  Once the sugar rush set in, I found the energy to head back upstairs to shower and change. The rest of the day seemed to fly by as we lounged on the sofa, munching on snacks and watching whatever happened to be on the television. Considering they no longer produced any new programs or movies, we’d already seen almost everything there was to see over the years, but it still kept us occupied and sufficiently brain dead for hours.

  At around seven, the weekly Presidential address took over all of the air waves. Once a week, it overrode every channel, and we were forced to listen to President Syms drone on about the glorious state of the country and how well everything was functioning . . . yada, yada, yada.

  ‘Next year, we will be commemorating the centennial of the worst tragedy in the history of our world,’ our brilliant President informed us. ‘Memorials are already being planned for each of the colonies to remember all that we lost.’

  What exactly was it that we were supposed to ‘remember’? The bombs fell a hundred years ago. No one remembered anything about it. No one was even alive then.

  ‘The millions of lives lost to tragedy…’

  “Tragedy? More like stupidity,” I blurted out, and Peter gave me a patient smile like a parent would give an unruly child. It may not have been the first time he’d heard this particular tirade. “Well, seriously, it’s not like it was an accident. They launched nukes for crying out loud, lots of them, from all over the place.” I whirled my finger around in the air, like I didn’t already sound crazy enough, but once I got started there really was no stopping me. I couldn’t even stop myself. “And it’s not like they didn’t know what would happen when they did it, either. It’s a miracle any of us are still here at all.”

  Sometimes I marveled at how so few idiots could have gained so much power while so many supposedly ‘intelligent’ people sat back and let it happen. In the end, I chalked it up to laziness. I assumed that everyone held to the theory that if he’s such an idiot then no one would vote for him, but what they failed to consider was that when given the choice between dumb and dumber, even dumb can win. And in some circumstances, when the difference is hard to tell, dumber can even come out on top, which is what must have happened to put that guy in charge.

  “Didn’t there used to be like hundreds of millions of people in this country alone?” I demanded. Peter only nodded, still engrossed in the program. “Well, how many are here now?”

  “A couple million, give or take.” He finally dragged his eyes away from the television long enough to look at me.

  “Exactly,” I exclaimed, feeling justified, “stupidity.”

  Peter only smiled and shook his head before returning his full attention to the President again, but I knew he knew I was right.

  ‘…but we persevered. As a people, as a nation, we overcame the hardships.’

  Like radiation poisoning? Awesome, go us.

  “That was just luck,” I notified the screen.

  “No, that was good planning,” Peter retaliated, like he felt the need to stick up for my television set. “That’s why they broke us up into the colonies. Because maintaining several smaller groups was easier than one large group.”

  “I was in class that day, too,” I informed Mr. Know-It-All.

  I remembered the history lesson as well as he did: twenty-six colonies, all established across the eastern half of the country since the entire western half was uninhabitable, and labeled A through Z. Mmm-hmm, no lack of creativity there.

  ‘Citizens are being asked to show their support by volunteering their time to help make this occasion special.’

  Yeah right, like that was going to happen. The President carried on like that for another hour and a half. I continued to toss out my little pearls of wisdom for a while, but Peter refused to bite again. After a while, I just abandoned any attempt at intelligent debate whatsoever and dozed for a while.

  “I’m sure the President would be glad to know he had such a captive audience.” I blinked Peter’s smiling face into focus as he nudged me awake.

  “Yeah, well, you can tell the President that if someone hadn’t barged in here at seven in the morning, I might have been able to stay awake for the rest of his pointless ramblings.”

  Peter chuckled, getting to his feet and stretching his arms up above his head. “I guess I can let you get your beauty sleep now.”

  It was hard not to notice the inch of bare skin exposed between the top of his low hanging jeans and bottom of his tee. I forced my eyes away quickly, before he noticed me looking. If he had, I may have actually had to die of shame.

  “Are you implying I need my beauty rest?” I asked to distract both him and myself.

  “Of course not.” He gave an exaggerated wink as he slipped out the front door.

  ***

  The following Monday dragged by even worse than usual, but I guess that was Mondays for ya. Customers insisted
on annoying me, Marcus insisted on ignoring me, and I didn’t even have time to take a lunch break. I’d hoped Marcus would let me off register duty that week; he didn’t. I tried playing the birthday card, but he refused to cave. Hence, another day of my life passed pushing buttons and counting money. So glad I could make such a difference in the world. On the whole, the day basically sucked, but finally—a year and a half later—five-thirty rolled around, and I made a bee line for the door.

  Peter was M.I.A, so I was on my own for the walk home. I walked to work alone every day since Peter started later than I did, but for some reason, the walk home always seemed to take longer. Maybe that was because I was always running late in the mornings and usually had to jog it. Technically, I guess I could have jogged home as well, but without the threat of being late and facing a possible pay cut, I just didn’t find myself properly motivated.

  About two miles from home, the sky suddenly opened up. Fantastic. Now I was motivated. I picked up my pace and threw my arms over my head, like that was going to help at all. The sky lit up and thunder echoed off of the surrounding buildings. A perfect end to a perfect day. My hair was dripping and my clothes were plastered to my body when I finally turned onto my street. At least it couldn’t get any worse. By the time I reached the front door, I was so relieved to be home, I almost forgot to check the mailbox until I noticed the large manila envelope sticking out of it.

  I had to wrestle it out of the box because it was clearly too big to really fit in there in the first place, but when I did, I dropped down right there on my front porch and stared at it. Why? Why did people have to say stupid things like ‘at least it couldn’t get any worse’? Because then, inevitably, the universe just had to prove them wrong. ‘United States Pairing Dept.’ was stamped in the upper left hand corner.

  Chapter 3

  I couldn’t believe it was there already. I mean, I guess I could. Most people received their mate files within a week or two of their sixteenth birthday, but I must have convinced myself that I had more time. Denial could do that. It took me a full minute to work up the courage, but then I tore it open and dumped the contents onto my lap.

  My future husband was some guy named Scott Maylee. Kaleigh Maylee? Perfect. They so did that on purpose. The file said he was six foot two with blonde hair and blue eyes, and he was training to be a . . . butcher? Were they serious? Great, then our kid could be a candlestick maker and we’d be all set. Un-freaking-believable. Well, stupidity aside, I could have done worse.

  “What are you doing?” Peter was standing on my front walk in the pouring rain.

  “Sunbathing,” I deadpanned, “you?”

  “I came to apologize for not being there today. I had a lot of work to catch up on from the weekend. Besides,” he added, shaking the water from his hair, “your place was closer when it started pouring on me. What’s that?”

  I don’t really know why I hesitated to tell him. I guess saying it out loud just made it real, but it wasn’t like if I ignored it, it was going to just go away.

  “My mate file came.”

  “It did?” He took the steps two at a time and dropped down beside me on the porch. “Let me see.”

  I handed over the pile of papers, and he started shuffling through them.

  “Kaleigh Maylee?” A smirk crept onto his face that sort of made me want to strangle him.

  “I noticed that, thanks.”

  “And he’s a . . .”

  “Yes, yes I noticed that too. Thank you, Peter.”

  Now he had progressed to full out laughing. I tried to yank the papers away from him, but he refused to relinquish them.

  “Where does he live?” Peter sobered, still thumbing through the file.

  I hadn’t actually gotten that far before Peter relieved me of the information. “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s see.” He scanned a couple more pages. “Colony E. Hey, that’s not too far, Leigh.”

  No, that was true, but it wasn’t exactly like people got to make inter-colony visits or anything, so it may as well have been on the moon. “Yeah, guess not.”

  “So, Scott huh?” Peter reclined back on his hands and stretched his legs out in front of him. His gaze settled on the rain cascading off the porch roof. “He’d better be nice or I’ll . . .”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. “You’ll what, Peter? Did you read the file? He’s six foot two and like a two hundred and forty pounds. He could probably crush you like a bug.”

  Probably not the most gracious response, but those were the facts. Peter may have been tall, but he was all arms and legs. If he were a girl people would have called him willowy, but being a guy it was more like . . . lanky. Not that that was a bad thing. Somehow it worked for him. Girls had been swooning over his dark wavy hair and deep sea blue eyes for as long as I could remember. All in all, even I had to admit the whole package wasn’t exactly hard on the eyes.

  “I’m tougher than I look.” He came back with a wink and somehow I didn’t doubt it. “When do you have to leave?”

  That part I was pretty sure I’d avoided intentionally. I really didn’t want to think about leaving colony D. It was my home. The people and places I’d grown up with. I’d never been colony D’s biggest cheerleader or anything, but leaving it all behind seemed unimaginable. I shrugged, knowing I’d have to face it sooner or later. He watched me for another minute, probably trying to gauge if I was ready to hear the answer yet. Tough call since I wasn’t even sure myself. Whatever he saw must have convinced him I was though because he started flipping through the pages again. “Day after tomorrow.”

  Wrong call. Two days?! That seemed way too soon. It suddenly felt as if the air was too thin. I stared down at the wide wood planked flooring of the porch trying to get the world to stop spinning around me.

  “Relax.” Peter scooted closer, and I would have hit him for saying something so benign if I didn’t feel like I might fall over.

  “I can’t believe this is happening.” I didn’t realize I’d said the words out loud until I heard them with my own ears.

  “It’s all right, Leigh. Everything’s going to be fine. You knew this was coming. It’ll be my turn next. You’re ready for this.” He paused there, waiting for some kind of response I guess, but I was still busy waiting for my surroundings to stabilize. “Leigh, you’re the strongest person I know. You can handle anyone they throw at you.”

  “I know, but . . .”

  “Hey,” Peter ducked his head, urging me to look him in the eye, “it’s not like you have to marry the guy right this second.”

  “Oh no, I get two whole years for that,” I snapped at him. “Let me tell you something, Peter. People do not change in two years. People don’t change at all. The day after tomorrow I get to find out what kind of idiot I have to spend every day of the rest of my life with.” Oh man, this was even worse than I’d realized. The spinning was starting to pick up momentum again.

  “Give the guy a chance, Leigh. He could surprise you.”

  “Not many people do.”

  “I know.” A smug grin replaced the look of concern on his face.

  I didn’t realize he was holding my knee until he gave it a small squeeze. Then I just felt foolish. I didn’t freak out about things. That was Peter’s area of expertise. If I wasn’t leaving in two days I probably never would have heard the end of it. A few deep breaths, and things started to come back into focus again.

  “I’d better get packing then.” Even though that’s the last thing I wanted to do.

  “Come on. I’ll help you.” Peter pulled me to my feet and the rest of the night was spent packing box after box of everything I owned. I owned a lot of stuff. Too much.

  As we unearthed relics from our younger years—like the baseball Peter had sent sailing through our front window the first day I met him that I’d refused to give back—we laughed and rehashed old stories, which inevitably led to old debates. I still refused to return the ball.

  It was hard to imagine li
ving someplace else. That house was home, not just to me, but to all of my memories. Every memory I had of my dad, my mom, and what it was like to be part of a family lived in that house. They really wouldn’t be happy until they’d taken everything from me.

  “So, am I the only one who finds this slightly sexist?” I asked, mainly to banish my depressing thoughts.

  “What?”

  “That it’s always the girl who has to pack up and move.”

  “Not always. Sometimes the guy moves.”

  “Only in special circumstances. Wouldn’t it make more sense for the guys to have to do the packing?”

  “Who’s doing most of your packing?” He hoisted the large box in his arms with a laugh. “Besides, isn’t that kinda sexist?”

  “Not the point. Seriously though, doesn’t it bother you?” I tried again.

  “What?” Peter knew I was just looking to vent, but as usual he was willing to hear me out.

  “Not being able to pick your own mate.”

  “That’s just the way things are, Leigh.” I swear he had that answer on permanent standby just for me.

  “I know, but you of all people should agree with me. You could have your pick of almost anyone if it were up to you.” I hated to stroke his ego, but it was the truth. Almost immediately I regretted it when he responded with a quirky grin. Why did I bother? “Forget it.”

  “Well really, Leigh,” he sighed, “why do you always have to make yourself crazy about things that you can’t change anyway?”

  “I’m not making myself crazy,” I shouted, sounding . . . okay, well maybe a little bit crazy.

  “Clearly.”

  “Shut up. I just hope you can tolerate whoever they pick for you.”

  “After years of you? I don’t think there’s anything I can’t tolerate.” He said it with a smile, but it was probably the truth. “It serves a purpose. The pairings unite the colonies. Everyone does their part to keep the peace . . . except maybe you,” he continued when he clearly should have stopped.

  “Whatever.” I wanted to glare at him, but I just didn’t have the energy to sustain it.