Galdoni (16 page)

“
Brie, I’m not-”

She cut me off with a stern shake of her
head. “Kale, you can argue all day long, but it’s the heart not the
head that falls in love. It might not make any sense to you, and
you might not feel the same way, but that’s how I feel.” She
paused, then dropped her eyes. A faint blush rose to her
cheeks.

I realized then how much courage it had
taken for her to tell me. I put a hand under her chin and tipped it
up gently so that she looked at me. I found a center of calm amidst
the chaos that swirled around us, and realized that the calm was
from her. Her brown eyes held me, captivated me until I was no
longer my own. I knew then that my heart had been hers from the
beginning. “I love you.” I whispered the words I never thought I
would say, words a Galdoni would die for, words of weakness and at
the same time of a strength so profound it filled me with awe. I
could only stare at her.

“
Oh, Kale,” she said so
quietly I barely heard her. She kissed my lips and then leaned
against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her and wished we could
stay there forever. I felt exhilarated, yet so afraid of the moment
ending that I almost couldn’t enjoy it. I knew it was wrong to fall
for her, to allow her to love me, but like she said, though my head
argued, my heart held all my will. I rested my chin on the top of
her soft brown hair and closed my eyes.

Chapter Eleven

“
Sorry to
interrupt.”

Brie and I both started at the sound of
Jayce’s voice. Brie backed up with a cute, abashed smile on her
face. I studied her brother, unsure what his reaction would be.

To my surprise, he just shrugged and grinned
like nothing had happened. “Hey Brie, one of the girls inside had a
haircut disaster today and I told her if anyone could save it, you
could.”

Brie threw me another smile, the kind that
crinkled her nose and laughed at being caught, and she left through
the door into the house. Jayce followed her, then stopped and
turned to me with his hand on the screen door.

“
Just don’t hurt her,
that’s all I ask,” he said in a serious voice, his brow
furrowed.

“
I won’t, I promise,” I
replied.

He nodded and disappeared into the house. I
hoped deep down that I could live up to my words.

I leaned back against the porch railing. My
heart pounded and my muscles ached. I wanted to fly to clear my
head, but flying would only be putting the others in danger. I
rubbed my eyes with one hand.

“
Hey man, what’s up?” Zach
walked up the porch steps and took a chair near where I stood. He
leaned back, propping his shoes up on the porch railing.

“
Not much. Just enjoying
the view.” I indicated to where Rory had just face-planted in the
grass in an attempt to hit a wide ball. Several other students
stood around him laughing.

Zach laughed also. “Yeah, volleyball might
not be the best idea. I like to observe rather than participate.
Save myself for football, you know?”

I nodded and we watched in silence for a
while.

There were several more bad attempts to get
the ball over the sagging rope. It amazed me that the players on
the other side still stuck around, but everyone seemed content to
laugh at whoever’s turn it was.

After a few minutes had passed, Zach put his
feet back down and turned the chair so that he faced me. He cleared
his throat. “It’s wrong what they’re doing to the Galdoni.” He
studied me, his expression grave.

“
You know.” I said it as a
statement, and took a deep breath to calm the foreboding that rose
in my chest.

His brow furrowed, but he nodded. “It made
sense. You’ve been around a couple months, don’t have any history
or past that I can scare up, you always wear the coat, and I’ve
never seen anyone fight like that.”

“
It sort of comes
naturally, if you know what I mean.” I gave him a tired
smile.

He nodded. “I’ll bet.”

Silence fell as several students ran down
the stairs to join the game on the back lawn. “So, what now?” I
finally asked.

“
You mean am I going to
turn you in?” At my nod, Zach frowned. “That wouldn’t be a very
good way to repay you for saving my sister.” Silence followed. I
watched him study his hands out of the corner of my eye. He flexed
one, then the other, looking at the veins on the back. He cleared
his throat again. “I do have a couple questions,
though.”

“
Shoot.”

He picked at a hole in the knee of his
jeans. “I don’t get why they do it. Why do they fight? If it is so
wrong and unethical, why don’t they just say they won’t kill each
other?”

I pulled a chair up next to him and sat down
to give myself some time to think. I tried to make sense of what I
wanted to say, then finally gave up and shook my head. “It looks so
black and white out here, away from the Academy. But when you’re
there, fighting and trying to survive is all you know.” A memory
swept through me.

Two older Galdoni were beating on a younger
one who had been punished for stealing food and was being starved.
He had snuck out of the barracks one night and broken the kitchen
lock. Guards found him and we had all been called out in the middle
of the night to participate in his punishment. When volunteers were
called for, about half the group raised their hands. The young
Galdoni looked so scared I couldn’t bring myself to join them.

Two were chosen and told to beat him until
the whistle was blown. The young Galdoni tried to fight back, but
by the time they were finished, he would feel his punishment for a
long time.

“
Now, what did he do
wrong?” the lead guard in lean black armor asked. He tossed a
serrated knife in the air and caught it by the blade, then did it
again, catching it by the handle.

“
He stole food,” one of the
younger Galdoni said in a tentative voice.

“
Wrong!” the lead guard
yelled. His voice echoed down the hall like the crack of a whip. He
backhanded the Galdoni who had spoken. “That’s for giving the wrong
answer.” He then kicked the boy in the gut and he fell to the
ground gasping. “And that’s for saying it like a
coward!”

He turned and glared at the rest of us.
“What did PK309 do wrong?”

“
He didn’t fight!” an older
Galdoni yelled out.

The guard sneered down at the beaten
Galdoni. “He tried, but he didn’t fight.” He raised his voice. “Is
trying fighting?”

“
If you try, you die,” we
shouted together one of the mantras that had been drilled into us
until it pounded with our heartbeats.

“
You must do,” the lead
guard said. “Those who fail to do, die.” He glared at the two
Galdoni who had carried out the beating. “Take him
away.”

I shook my head and pulled
myself back to the present. “It’s kill or be killed in there. When
that’s all that matters, it truly becomes
all
that matters. And you’re taught
to believe that your life is only worth those whom you can
kill.”

“
But don’t they know it’s
wrong?” Zach gave me a frank stare. “You know it’s
wrong.”

I met his gaze. “I know it’s wrong because
I’ve lived outside of it. If I had met you in the Arena, there’d be
four fewer humans in the world.”

His face paled slightly, but he didn’t look
away. “I don’t believe you.”

An example came to mind from my history
class. I opened a hand. “Take terrorist attacks. People have been
raised to believe that this nation is full of corrupt, satanic
people whose mere presence defiles the world. They believe that
they are following the wishes of their maker by destroying even
just a few, and usually at the cost of their own lives. And why do
they do it? Because that’s the way they’ve been raised. It’s all
they know, all they’ve been taught to believe, and they have no
reason to question those beliefs.”

“
So the answer is to give
them a reason to question?”

I nodded with a slight frown. “Yes, but the
real problem is how to do it. Do you think if the nation says,
look, we aren’t bad people, anyone will listen?”

He shook his head.

I agreed. “No, of course not. And therein
lays the conundrum.”

He put his feet against the railing and
pushed back so that his chair balanced on two legs. “There’s got to
be a way.”

I glanced at him. “To end terrorism or to
stop the Galdoni from killing each other?”

“
Both.” He smiled. “And
maybe to keep us from killing the Galdoni.”

I fought back a smile. “That would be
good.”

We sat in amiable silence for a few minutes,
then he asked, “What about the masks?”

“
What do you
mean?”

Zach’s brow furrowed. “Is there something
special about them or are they just part of the armor? I’ve never
seen a Galdoni battle where they don’t wear them.”

My gut tightened and I ran my fingers along
the wooden railing beside me. “The masks are sacred,” I said
quietly.

Zach nodded as if he had expected something
like that. “How so?”

My breathing slowed as I thought of the
lectures and of the rituals that were pounded into us until we
accepted them without question, and believed them without
suspicion. I took a deep breath. “The Arena sands are sacred, our
trying ground for heaven. The masks show our respect for the
Arena.”

“
What would happen if you
fought without one?”

I shook my head and rubbed my brow. “No
Galdoni would enter the Arena without a mask or take his mask off
during battle. To do so would forfeit one’s chance of making it
into heaven.”

“
Do you believe that?” Zach
asked quietly without any hint of derision or judgment in his
voice.

“
I don’t know what I
believe anymore,” I admitted. “My whole world has turned upside
down.”

Zach gave me a sympathetic glance and let
the topic go. I watched the volleyball players, but my mind stayed
in the Arena.

***

We got home well past midnight, but none of
us felt quite ready for bed. Brie and Jayce checked in with their
dad, then came over to lounge on the sofas and chat about
insignificant things while Nikko clicked away on his laptop
searching for information for yet another of his research projects.
Brie rested her head on my shoulder and Jayce sprawled on the other
couch with one foot on the top cushion and the other on the
floor.

Jayce and I talked about other animal traits
Galdoni could have used. We had gone through the major defense
abilities of the common predators and Jayce was now reaching for
any we had missed. It took several minutes for my mind to register
that I could no longer hear the rhythmic click of Nikko’s
typing.

“
How about long necks like
a giraffe?”

“
Why, so we could eat from
tall trees or something?” I replied with a glance at Nikko. His
brow was furrowed and lips tight as he stared at the computer
screen.

Jayce laughed and slapped his knee.

Nikko's jaw twitched from gritting his
teeth.

“
What’s up, Nikko?” I
asked, concerned.

“
Or a beaver’s tail,” Jayce
continued, oblivious. “Could be handy if you ever want to take up
pottery.”

Brie noticed Nikko’s lack of response and
sat up. “Nik, whatcha looking at?”

Nikko finally looked up. He met my gaze.
“It’s not pleasant.”

At Nikko’s tone, Jayce stopped laughing at
his own jokes and sat up straight.

Nikko turned the computer so we could see
the headlines.

“
Galdoni Attack Citizens in
Bar, One Dead, Three Injured,” a news page proclaimed.

My heart skipped a beat. “There must be a
mistake. They wouldn’t attack defenseless civilians, would
they?”

Nikko rubbed his eyes. “It says they were in
the back corner of a bar at a table when the Arena fight aired. No
one noticed them because they wore long coats.” He glanced at me
but continued, “Apparently, some guys in the bar started joking
about the fight and saying derogatory things about Galdoni, and the
two Galdoni attacked. By the time the police got there, the place
was torn apart.”

“
And the Galdoni?” Jayce
asked.

“
One was shot, and the
other taken back to the Academy.”

Silence filled the room. It pressed around
me until I couldn’t breathe. I rubbed my palms on my knees in an
effort to bring the feeling back to my hands. “That's really bad.
How is anyone going to accept Galdoni into normal society with this
kind of stuff happening?”

Nikko stared at me. “You have a plan?”

I shook my head. “No, just something Zach
and I were talking about.”

Brie stared at me and Nikko’s eyes widened.
“You mean, he knows?”

At my nod, Jayce hurried to the window and
peered out into the night. “Are you crazy?” he said over his
shoulder. “He probably told the cops.”

“
No. We have an
understanding.” Jayce looked at me like I was crazy and I shrugged.
“He called it a fair trade for me saving his sister. I trust
him.”

Jayce glanced out the window one more time
and shook his head. “Okay; it’s your decision.” He sat back down on
the couch and gestured at the computer. “But that’s definitely not
going to help things.”

“
Not at all.” I rose and
made my way to the bedroom. “I’m going to try to get some shut-eye.
See you guys in the morning.”

I closed the door behind me and settled on
the bed, but too much had happened for sleep to claim my weary
brain. I felt caged, trapped, like the inevitable was drawing
closer and I wouldn’t have my freedom much longer. Finally, I
couldn’t take it anymore. I opened the door, made my way through
the now empty living room, and left through the back door into the
welcoming embrace of night.