It is just the type of thing people love to hear. The whole audience releases a collective “Aw . . .” Cam smiles at Risa and clasps her hand tighter.
“We’ve all seen your public service announcements,” says Holly. “I still get chills when I see you rise out of that wheelchair.” Then she turns to the audience. “Am I right?” The audience applauds in agreement; then she turns back to Risa. “Yet I would think when you were an AWOL you must have been very much against unwinding.”
“Well,” says Risa, “who wouldn’t be against it when you’re the one being unwound?”
“So exactly when did your feelings change?”
Risa takes a visibly deep breath, and Cam squeezes her hand again. “It isn’t so much that they changed . . . but I found myself having to accept a broader perspective. If it hadn’t been for unwinding, Cam wouldn’t exist, and we wouldn’t be here together today. There’s always going to be suffering in the world, but unwinding takes suffering away from those of us”—she hesitates again—“those of us living meaningful lives.”
“So then,” Jarvis asks, “what would you say to kids out there who are AWOL?”
Risa looks down rather than at Jarvis when she speaks. “I would say if you’re running, then run—because you have every right to try to survive. But no matter what happens to you, know that your life has meaning.”
“Maybe even more meaning if they’re unwound?” prompts Jarvis.
“Maybe so.”
Then they segue into an introduction of a top fashion designer, here to present a whole new line of trend-setting patchwork clothes inspired by Camus Comprix. Designs for men and women, boys and girls.
“We call it Rewind Chic,” says the designer, and models parade out to gleeful applause.
48 - Risa
Once their appearance with Jarvis and Holly is over, Risa holds Cam’s hand until they are backstage and out of view of the audience. Then she releases it in disgust. Not disgust at him, but at herself.
“What is it?” Cam asks. “I’m sorry if I did something wrong.”
“Shut up! Just shut up!”
She looks for the bathroom but can’t find it. This blasted studio set is a maze, and everyone from the interns to the crew stares at them as they pass, as if they’re royalty. These people must get celebrities on this show every day, so what makes them any different? But she knows the answer to that: After a while a celebrity is just a celebrity, but there is only one Camus Comprix. He is the new golden child of humanity, and as for Risa, well, it’s “gilt” by association.
Finally she finds the bathroom and locks herself in, sits on the toilet, and buries her head in her hands. To have to defend unwinding—to have to say that the world is a better place because innocent kids are being unwound—shreds her inside. Her self-respect, her integrity are gone. Now, not only does she wish she hadn’t survived the explosion at Happy Jack, she wishes she had never been born at all.
Why are you doing this, Risa?
It’s the voices of all the kids at the Graveyard. Why? It’s the voice of Connor, accusing her, and rightfully so. She wishes she could explain her reasons to him, and the deal with the devil she made with Roberta. A she-devil with the power to build herself a perfect boy.
And perfect, he very well may be. At least by society’s definition. Risa can’t deny that with each day, Cam grows more and more into his potential. He’s smart and strong, and has the capacity to be profoundly wise when he’s not being profoundly self-centered. The fact that she’s starting to see him as a real boy and not a piecemeal Pinocchio bothers her almost as much as the things she said today on camera.
There is an urgent banging at the bathroom door.
“Risa,” Cam calls, “are you okay? Please come out, you’re scaring me.”
“Leave me alone!” Risa shouts.
He says nothing more, but when she finally leaves the bathroom five minutes later, he’s still standing there, waiting. He would probably have waited all day and all night. She wonders whether such unyielding resolve came from his parts, or if it’s something he’s developed on his own.
She suddenly finds herself bursting into tears and throwing herself into his arms, not even knowing why. She wants to tear him to bits, yet she desperately wants him to comfort her. She wants to destroy everything he represents, and yet she wants to cry on his shoulder because she has no other shoulder to cry on. Around them, people ogle them, trying to be inconspicuous about it. Their hearts are warmed by what appears to be the embrace of two souls in love.
“Unfair,” he says. “They shouldn’t make you do these things if you’re not ready to do them.” And the fact that he, the subject of all this attention, understands her, empathizes with her, and is somehow on her side, confuses everything inside her even more.
“It’s not always going to be like this,” Cam whispers to her. She wants to believe that, but right now she can only imagine it being worse.
49 - Cam
There are things that Roberta hasn’t told him. Her control over Risa is more than a mere matter of wills. It’s not as simple as gratitude for a new spine, because Risa isn’t grateful at all. It’s very clear that her spine is a burden she wishes she didn’t have to bear. Then why did she consent?
Every moment they’re together the question hangs heavy in the air, but when he broaches the subject, all Risa says is, “It was something I had to do,” and when he tries to probe deeper, she loses patience and tells him to stop pushing. “My reasons are my own.”
He wants to believe that he’s the reason why she’s doing all the things she’s doing—all these things that clearly go against her grain. But if there are any parts of him that are naive enough to believe that she’d do these interviews and ads for his sake, they are outnumbered by the parts of him that know better.
Their appearance on Brunch with Jarvis and Holly made it painfully clear that whatever pain Risa is feeling over her part in all this runs very deep. The fact that she allowed him to comfort her didn’t change that. If anything, it made him feel a responsibility to get to the bottom of it—not just for his own sake, but for hers. For how could anything between them ever be real without a full disclosure?
It all comes down to the day she signed that consent form—but asking Roberta about it is a useless endeavor. Then Cam realizes he doesn’t have to . . . because Roberta is the queen of surveillance videos.
“I need to see the surveillance records from April seventeenth,” Cam tells the security guard he’s most friendly with—the one he plays basketball with—after they return to Molokai.
“No can do,” he tells Cam, right off the bat. “No one sees those without permission from you-know-who. Get her permission, and I’ll show you whatever you want.”
“She’ll never know.”
“Don’t matter.”
“But it’ll matter if I tell her I caught you trying to steal from the mansion.” That makes the guard stutter. “Allow me,” Cam says. “You say, ‘You son of a bitch, you can’t do that,’ and I say ‘Yes, I can, and who do you think she’ll believe, me or you?’ ” Then Cam hands him a flash drive. “So just put the files on this, and everyone’s life will be easier.”
The guard looks at him incredulously. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that? The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
And although Cam knows who he’s referring to, he says, “I’ve got lots of trees, you’ll have to be more specific.”
That evening the drive turns up in his desk drawer, packed with video files. He doubts he’ll have a basketball partner anymore, but it’s a small sacrifice to make. When it’s late enough to know he won’t be interrupted, he loads the files onto his personal viewer—and witnesses something he was never supposed to see. . . .
50 - Risa
April 17. Almost two months ago. Before the interviews and the public service announcements, before the operation that replaced Risa’s severed spine.
Risa sits in her wheelchair in a sparse cell with nothing to occupy her time but her own thoughts. A consent form folded into a paper airplane lies on the floor beneath a oneway mirror.
She spends her time thinking about her friends. Of Connor, mostly. She wonders how he’ll fare without her. Better, she hopes. If she could only get word to him that she’s alive, that she hasn’t been tortured at the hands of the Juvies—and that she’s not even in their hands, but in the hands of some other organization.
Roberta comes in, as she did the day before, with a new consent form. She sits down at the table and slides the consent form and a pen toward Risa again.
She smiles at Risa, but it’s the smile of a snake about to coil around its prey.
“Are you ready to sign?” she asks.
“Are you ready to see me fly another paper airplane?” Risa responds.
“Airplanes!” says Roberta brightly. “Yes, why don’t we talk about airplanes? Particularly the ones in the aircraft salvage yard. The place you call the Graveyard. Let’s talk about your many friends there.”
At last, thinks Risa, she’s going to question me. “Ask whatever you want,” she says. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t trust a thing I say.”
“No need to ask you questions, dear,” Roberta says. “We know all we need to know about the Graveyard. You see, we allow your little AWOL sanctuary to exist because it serves our needs.”
“Your needs? You’re telling me you control the Juvenile Authority?”
“Let’s just say we have substantial sway. The Juvenile Authority has wanted to raid the Graveyard for quite a while, but we’re the ones holding them back. However, if I give the word, the Graveyard will be cleaned out, and all those children who you fought so valiantly to save will be transported to harvest camps and unwound.”
Risa can sense the rug being pulled out from under her. “You’re bluffing.”
“Am I? I believe you know our inside man. His name is Trace Neuhauser.”
The news completely blindsides her. “Trace?”
“He’s provided us with all the information we need to make a takedown of the airplane Graveyard quick and painless.” She pushes the consent form just an inch closer to Risa. “However, it never needs to happen. None of those AWOLs need be unwound. Please, Risa. Accept a new spine, and do all we ask of you. If you do, I will personally guarantee that all seven hundred nineteen of your friends will be unharmed. Help me, Risa, and you’ll save them.”
Risa looks at the paper, seeing it in a terrible new light. “What types of things?” she asks. “What types of things will you ask me to do?”
“It will begin with Cam. You will put aside your feelings, whatever they may be, and learn to be kind to him. As for what other things we may ask of you, you will know when it is your time to know.”
