A Girl Called Fearless Read online

  Today, Ms. A gathered us around her. We moved in close as she squeezed rose petals out of a frosting bag. “The American Civil Liberty Union’s offices in Birmingham, Cleveland, and Philadelphia were bombed,” she whispered. “Six lawyers have received death threats.”

  We looked at her. The Paternalists had been demanding a return to the original Constitution. All men are created equal. Men. We’d counted on the ACLU to fight for us.

  “Great. Maybe the Paternalists can bring back slavery, too,” Sparrow snapped.

  “Indoor voice,” Ms. A warned. “No one is quite sure who’s behind the bombings. The President has pledged that the FBI will investigate.”

  “If the President’s on our side,” Sparrow muttered, “why do the Paternalists keep getting what they want?”

  Ms. A raised her voice. “Class, get your mixing bowls out, and let’s whip up some icing.”

  Beaters whirred as loud as engines as Ms. A went around the table. This was one of those times when she talked to each of us privately, like when she ran alongside us around the track in the morning.

  When she got to me, she put a hand on my shoulder. “How are you holding up?”

  “Just barely,” I said.

  “You know you have options.”

  “No I don’t. I’m Pending Contract to Jes Hawkins and in three weeks my life is officially over.”

  “Yes.” She looked right into my eyes. “You do.”

  A question crossed my face. Ms. A glanced at the monitor, then picked up the vanilla and pointed at the label. She leaned in close. “You can talk your father out of Signing you. You can refuse to sign the document or get a lawyer and fight it like Samantha Rowley. Or you can choose an even more extreme solution.”

  Going on the run like Dayla.

  “You can marry Jessop Hawkins or not. That’s a choice, Avie.”

  Marry Jes or not! Like that’s a choice!

  “You have no idea what this is like,” I snapped. “Your dad didn’t sign you away. You got to marry for love.”

  Ms. A went stiff, eyes wide, and I knew I’d hurt her.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled, instantly regretting what I’d said, but she couldn’t possibly know how it felt to be Signed away. She’d been married for twenty-five years to “Rupert, the love of my life and keeper of my soul.”

  “You’re right,” she said gently. “I don’t know what you are going through or what I would do in your place, but you must not think marrying Jessop Hawkins is your only choice.”

  We iced and decorated cupcakes and she made us take them out to our bodyguards. A man’s heart is through his stomach, she always said. And we all knew, we needed our bodyguards on our sides.

  13

  After school, Roik took us out the back gate so the news vans didn’t see us go. He barreled through the streets and barely slowed through the yellow light by the Lean Dog.

  Yates was cleaning the sidewalk tables when we drove past. I sat up, hoping he’d see in my face that I had nothing to do with Hawkins or my Signing.

  I went to roll down the window, but it was locked in the up position. Only Roik could release it.

  Yates didn’t wave or even nod, he just watched us go by.

  He knew.

  Shame heated my cheeks. And then anger, because none of this was my fault. I didn’t ask for Dad to Sign me. And it was his stupid rules that made it so I couldn’t break the news to my oldest friend in a way that kept Yates on my side.

  I kept my eyes on Yates until I couldn’t see him anymore, because if this was the last time I’d ever see him, I wanted every detail. The way his eyes followed me. The curl hanging over his eyebrow. Becca’s name tattooed around his bicep like an armband.

  “We should change routes,” Roik said. “Securitywise it’s a bad idea to use the same one over and over.”

  He let that sink in.

  This wasn’t about any ambush. Roik just wanted to make sure I didn’t see Yates. Not even driving by.

  Roik pulled on to the freeway and I smoldered in the backseat. This was so wrong, so completely unfair. My heart twinged, seeing the chrome yellow billboard with Ajax the self-defense trainer in his tight, khaki camo tee. Dayla loved to cross her eyes and yell out the headline, “Don’t let your daughter be a casualty.”

  Now we were both casualties.

  The Million Mother Wall rose up alongside, one million rosy tan bricks. Back when all the funeral plots ran out and families had run through their savings buying black market chemo, the state took over cremations so women wouldn’t rot in makeshift morgues. The ashes of a million moms and sisters and aunties were baked into memorial bricks, a little heart stamped into each one.

  Roik turned off the radio. His own wife was at Mile Marker Twenty-nine. He looked at the marker as it flew by, and whispered something I’d never ever caught, even though he’d said it hundreds of times.

  Our family had had plots at Forest Lawn forever, so Mom was in a grave with roses and trees and a real tombstone. When we drove in, the cemetery was empty as it always was on Tuesdays.

  Roik parked the car, but first he turned it around so it faced the exit. “I don’t think the cameramen followed us,” he said, patting the hood. “But if they did, I’ll be waiting for them.”

  I waited by the car as Roik did a quick reconnaissance. We’d never had any trouble at the cemetery, but Roik didn’t like how he couldn’t see past Mom’s grave. The hill sloped down and there was a dirt road from a back entrance that the gardeners used.

  I walked up the grassy slope and unrolled a blanket. The branches of the sycamore in the next row shaded her in summer, but now its leaves were frayed from the November heat.

  I curled up on her grave and laid my hand over where I thought Mom’s heart must be. In the quiet, the sadness I’d tried so hard not to feel overwhelmed me.

  Mom, I miss you so much. You won’t believe this. Dad sold me! He broke his promise and sold me.

  I know! It’s horrible!

  You’d never let Dad do this if you were here. You’d tell him money isn’t as important as love.

  You’d tell him he made a mistake, that Hawkins isn’t right for me. You’d rip up the Contract and tell him to find the money some other way.

  Tears blurred my eyes. I could almost feel her arms around me. Mom would have wanted me to be with someone I loved.

  She left a letter for me to read on my sixteenth birthday and I’d read it so many times I had it memorized.

  “You may fall in love many times, but try to marry only once. Choose the man who thinks you are beautiful just the way you are, who wants to hear what you have to say, who urges you to follow your heart.”

  Jes Hawkins was barely interested in meeting me, so, clearly, when it came to what I had to say or what I wanted, he didn’t care.

  A leaf dropped into my hair, but when I went to brush it away, I realized it wasn’t a leaf at all. It was a note. I glanced at the car, but Roik was on his phone

  I unfolded the note. Yates’ scratchy handwriting zigzagged up the paper. “Go back to church.”

  I sat up and glanced around. Every muscle in my body tensed, and I forced myself to stay still. One move out of the ordinary, and Roik would charge up here to investigate.

  “Yates? Yates!” I said as loud as I dared.

  He peered out from behind the sycamore. “Over here, Avie.”

  Yates was ten feet away, but we hadn’t stood this close since after Becca’s funeral. He leaned against the tree, his hands crammed in his jeans. His cheeks were still hollow, but not as bad as before, and they looked a little tan like he’d started surfing again. But even if he had, the way he stood there told me that he wasn’t the same guy I grew up with.

  “Are you insane?” I glanced at the car. “Roik’ll freak if he sees you.”

  “I heard about your Signing.”

  Yates didn’t sound mad, but I wasn’t sure. “I tried to get a message to you. It wasn’t my idea. Dad didn’t even tell me.”
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  “Yeah, I guessed as much.” His cobalt-blue eyes were alive and defiant, like Michelangelo’s David sizing up Goliath. “Did you meet him—Jessop Hawkins?”

  I could feel myself starting to blush. “No, not yet.” I couldn’t just stand there; Roik would guess something was up. So I took out Mom’s pruning scissors and snipped at the rosebush.

  Yates ducked down and crept behind Mom’s headstone. The falling sun sculpted his arms into light and shadow, and I caught myself staring.

  “You know Hawkins is on our Enemies of Freedom list. We’re going to fight his election.” Yates said.

  “Good. Someone needs to stop the Paternalists.”

  He rested his back against the stone and I worked my way around the rose until he was so close we were almost touching. From here, I had a clear view of Roik tapping away on his phone, playing a game.

  “I’m so happy you came,” I said, “but why did you chance it?”

  “I thought you could use someone on your side. And with Dayla gone—”

  A smile bloomed on my lips. “Yeah, thanks.”

  He reached up and squeezed the ends of my fingers, and suddenly the air felt charged, and I couldn’t look straight at him. I wasn’t used to this closeness after years of looking at him through a window.

  Yates cleared his throat softly. “This thing with Hawkins must seem unreal,” he said.

  “It’s like watching my life being taken away.”

  “When’s the Signing?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Two.” Yates swore under his breath. “Just like what happened to Becca. You need to go back to church.”

  “It’s too painful. All the memories.”

  “I’m serious. You need to go.”

  I glanced at Yates’s T-shirt, relieved that even though it was black, it wasn’t the one he wore nonstop after Becca’s death, the one with the quote from Poe: “I became insane with long periods of horrible sanity.”

  Memories strobed in my head. Yates collapsed on our doorstep holding Becca’s cardboard box. “Becca wanted you to have these.” Roik letting him in even though I wasn’t allowed visits from boys. Yates disappearing into a hospital, and Roik refusing to take me to see him.

  Suddenly, I guessed why Yates wanted me to go to church. “You want me to meet Father Gabriel, the priest who kept you from—” Killing yourself.

  Yates winced. “Father Gabe’s a good guy. I think he could help you.”

  “But I don’t think I’d ever—” Be that desperate?

  “Father G helps people in lots of ways.” Yates rested his hand on my foot. “I thought maybe you could give him a chance.”

  Yates was risking a Tasing from Roik, so the least I could do was meet Father Gabe. “Okay. Sure.”

  Yates tugged my shoelace until the bow fell apart, and then smiled like he used to when I was ten, daring me to retie it.

  Roik was still absorbed with his phone. I bent down to tie my shoe. Yates leaned over and stretched out his hand, and I was intensely aware of his strong fingers and the vein tracing across the back of his hand.

  He touched the silver dolphin hanging from my neck and bounced it lightly on his fingertips. “Becca would be happy to see you wearing this.”

  Yates’ eyes met mine, and I rested for a moment in their deep blue. The charge was still there, but it felt safe somehow. Yates was my oldest friend and he understood what I was going through, and he’d do everything he could to help me.

  “Miss Avie!”

  I bolted upright. Roik was waving me back to the car.

  “Coming!”

  I slapped grass off my skirt and Yates handed me the pruners. “Women’s mass is at nine. Can I tell Father Gabe you’ll be there?”

  “Yes. Okay. Fine.” Yates worshiped Father Gabe, but I didn’t see how meeting him was going to do a thing. Still, I hadn’t been back to church in forever. Maybe it was time.

  Roik was hoofing it up the path. “Now get out of here, will you?” I told Yates. I grabbed the blanket and shook off the grass, then hurried down to meet Roik halfway.

  He tossed the blanket in the trunk, and I crawled into the backseat and stuck my earphones in so Roik would leave me alone. L.A. sailed past the window, and I felt my heartbeat start to slow.

  Yates was lucky Roik hadn’t seen him. Roik would have Tased him for sure.

  I felt the note in my pocket and played the scene over in my head. The intense look on Yates’s face when he talked about Hawkins and Father G, the silly smile when he fooled with my shoelace, the moment when we held each other’s eyes. His fingers brushing my neck.

  I caught myself smiling.

  Stop it, I thought, wiping the smile off my face. That—whatever that was—wasn’t anything.

  Yates thinks of you like a second sister. He’s just trying to keep you safe.

  I stared out the glass. My Signing was two weeks away, and nothing Yates could do or say could save me from Jessop Hawkins. And even though it was probably a waste to go see Father Gabe, I owed it to Yates. I’d promised him, and it might be the last promise to him I could ever keep.

  14

  Hawkins’s bid for governor was all over the news, which meant I was, too. By morning, the media was eating up everything about me like I was a fresh shipment of imported Kobe beef.

  Reporters and photographers couldn’t get past the Flintridge community gates, because Jes had kindly paid for additional guards. Once we were outside, though, they were on us. Roik kept the radio low in the front seat, but every time I heard my name mentioned, I flinched.

  I didn’t want to be Breaking News. Didn’t want to think about my future. Didn’t want to deal with the tsunami coming down on me.

  I was stressing so bad I let fly when I stepped out on the track for the Daily Five. Today I pushed until the voices in my head dropped out, and for five sweet miles, all I heard was the thump of my heartbeat and the pull of my breath.

  When my classmates quit, I took off up the bleachers, doing the first round two steps at a time and then down. Then the second round one step at a time and then down. Then three steps at a time and then down.

  Ms. A waited at the bottom while everyone else went to the showers. “Talk to me,” she said, when I’d finally run out of breath.

  “I can’t stand this. I feel so trapped and I wish there was some way to put an end to this torture.”

  Ms. A scanned the bleachers as if she was trying out what she should say. “You’re not—thinking of hurting yourself?”

  “No. No, I would never.”

  “Good. Walk with me. You need to stall your Signing. You’re in a state of shock, and you need time to explore your options.” She looked at me for a long moment, holding my gaze with something significant in her own.

  She was right. If I didn’t slow down my Signing, in a few days, my life would be over.

  We did a mile cooldown as she helped me plot how to persuade my father to stall the Signing. We broke it out—what to say, how to act, what not to mention at any cost.

  Plot in hand, I waited until dinner, until after Dad had finished his pork roast and glass of wine. Wait until he’s eaten and appears relaxed, Ms. A had told me.

  “I want to have a big Signing,” I said.

  Dad looked up. “I’m surprised to hear you say that.”

  Even though I’d rehearsed, I fumbled to get into character. “I know I gave you a hard time the other day.”

  “Well,” Dad said, “looking back on it, I shouldn’t have sprung the Signing on you that way. It must have come as a shock, and I apologize for that.”

  He didn’t regret what he did, just how he did it. “Yeah, it was a shock.”

  “So now you want a big party? You told me when you turned sixteen you don’t like big parties.”

  “Yeah, I know I said that, but this is different.” I tried to look expectant. “All my friends are talking about their Signings. I guess it hit me this is the most important day in my life besides my wedding day.
”

  Dad searched my face and his eyes relaxed, and then I knew it was just like Ms. A predicted. He really wanted to think I was happy.

  “All right,” he said. “How big are we talking?”

  “Well, Ms. A says…” Dad’s mouth got tight, which I’d expected. She’d lectured the dads every year at Open House about not Signing us until we’d finished college. “Ms. Alexandra says a Signing is the modern-day equivalent of a debutante’s coming-out. She told me we need to invite not just friends and family, but people you want to impress. Like business contacts, people in government who can help you get contracts.”

  “Ms. Alexandra said this?”

  “Yes, and Letitia Hawkins, Jessop’s mother, was connected everywhere. She was a huge philanthropist. She gave money to the Museum of Modern Art, the zoo. She practically owned the Santa Barbara symphony.”

  Dad looked puzzled. “How do you know all that about the late Mrs. Hawkins? I don’t recall telling you any of it.”

  I swallowed, trying to remember exactly how Ms. A said to explain it. “Ms. A did a search. She said Jes would be pleased if I knew about his mother’s accomplishments.”

  Dad shook his head. “I’m having a hard time believing Ms. Alexandra supports Contracts.”

  “She’s changed her thinking.” I bowed my head so I’d look penitent. “She’s realized that our fathers love us deeply and only want the best for us, and she told me I should respect your decision.”

  Dad couldn’t look at me, and I watched him run his thumb over the cuts on his crystal wine glass. When he finally said, “All right, then,” his voice was quiet and strained.

  I reached for the silver folder in my lap. “So the school counselor gave me this Signing Planner. It’s got sample invitations, menus, band recordings. He said if we want to use the City Club, they’ve got openings in January and March.”

  “Your Signing’s scheduled for November twenty-third.”

  “Daddy, we can’t get anything in two weeks. Everything’s booked. We can’t even get tents before January.”