Girl Divided Read online

  Lo leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. The kiss was as cold as the wind howling around them.

  "Come with me. Your family is waiting. Your real family."

  Then she turned, roared the bike, and drove them into the night that grew colder and colder as the bike went faster and faster.

  Chapter 32

  The small graveyard sat right on the edge of Stull's busy highway in Kansas, or what used to be busy, before the war broke out. Now it was empty and only shots and explosions could be heard in the distance, reminding Jetta that there were still people in this world other than her and Lo.

  Across from it sat a row of tiny houses, each and every one abandoned. Jetta could picture them back in the day, a local staring disapprovingly from their porch or from behind a closed curtain. Now, they were nothing but shells of what used to be homes with holes like Swiss cheese.

  Within minutes of entering through the gates of the graveyard, Jetta noticed dozens of flames forming small rings in each corner of the graveyard, melting the snow around them. Like the very ground was on fire. In the trees hung dead bodies strung up on thick branches. There were both blacks and whites. This was no man's land. Everyone and anyone was the enemy.

  The tombstones were beautifully dressed in white snow. The small church on the property had no roof, yet no snow landed inside of it. It was like it avoided it like it refused to land inside of the building.

  Lo grabbed Jetta's hand and pulled her forward forcefully through the cemetery. They arrived at a small building, a house of some sort. The sign above the door said WELCOME TO HELL, another blinked OPEN in the window and they went inside, revealing a small gift shop.

  Guess people still need their souvenirs even with a war going on, Jetta thought to herself, surprised the place was open. They walked past aisle after aisle of cups and key chains featuring either the graveyard or the devil.

  A lady sat behind the counter, head on her chest, looking more dead than alive. But she was very much alive. Jetta could smell that she was. On the shelves were hundreds of trinkets and small copies of the roofless church, along with pitchfork-carrying stuffed animals, red devil masks, T-shirts stating THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT, skull stickers, and tombstone pens that the devil popped out of when the button was pressed.

  Jetta accidentally touched a button on a small box and fire burst out of it, followed by a loud supposedly evil laugh. The white lady by the register was awoken by the noise. She grunted and blinked like she was trying to get her eyes to work properly. Her eyes shone a very bright blue in the light.

  "Yes?"

  She saw Lo, then said, "Oh, it's you. Go ahead."

  Lo pulled Jetta towards the back of the store. They passed a display of cups, each with a devil picture and devilish quote on them, glittering pitchforks, and blinking horns to wear.

  "Who was she?" Jetta asked.

  "My sister. One of them."

  Lo pushed through a door stating EMPLOYEES ONLY and revealed a long hallway behind it. The door slammed shut behind them, and the lights flickered under the ceiling like they were fighting to stay lit. Jetta followed Lo across the hallway to another door marked EXIT. Lo pushed it open and they entered, Lo happily stating:

  "Welcome to Hell."

  Chapter 33

  The noise was probably the most overwhelming part. Nine boys together in the same living room, fighting, screaming, running around, jumping on couches, one standing on his head, another crashing into a huge vase that shattered on the tiles, a third one spilling ice cream on the white carpet.

  Lo smiled. She took off her coat and hung it on the wall. "I don't really mean that," she said. "Come. Meet your brothers."

  Jetta chuckled. She felt her face. It had been uncovered ever since Lo had removed the hoodie. Lo had asked her to leave it that way. There was no reason for her to be ashamed of the way she looked, Lo had said, the first person in her life with that sentiment. Her brothers hadn't even noticed that they had entered, but now Lo clapped her hands to get their attention. Still, they didn't stop fighting or doing whatever they were up to. Then, Lo yelled.

  "BOYS!"

  They stopped what they were doing, then looked at their mother. In unison, they all rushed to her.

  "Mama!"

  They were young, all seemed to be about the same age—about five or six years old. Jetta wondered if it was even possible to have ninelings (actually called nonuplets). But, then again, none of this seemed very possible, so why should she wonder?

  "Come meet your sister, dear boys," Lo said and pointed at Jetta.

  Jetta blushed as all eyes were on her. All had little blue eyes in very blond faces, Jetta realized, disappointed. They looked nothing like she did, only like the white part of her.

  "Are you Jetta?" one of them asked, pulling her shirt.

  He looked up at her with a very endearing smile. It was the first time she had stood completely uncovered in front of someone, meeting them for the first time. It felt good.

  She nodded. "Yes, and who are you?"

  "I'm Scabies," he said.

  Jetta flinched. "What an odd name."

  "It's Finnish," Lo said.

  "Are you…I mean are we Finnish?" Jetta asked.

  Lo nodded. "Yes."

  Another boy came up to her and looked up. "I'm Gout," he said.

  Jetta chuckled and tousled his hair. "Hello there, Gout. How are you doing today?"

  He smiled widely. "I'm great. How are you?"

  "I am actually doing pretty good," she said. "Better than I have been for a very long time."

  Lo pointed at another boy. "Now these are Pleurisy, Colic, Rickets, Ulcer, Cancer, and finally Plague. I think that’s all. No, wait, we're missing one. TB? Are you hiding again?"

  A small giggle emerged from behind the couch. Lo laughed and walked there, pretending she hadn't heard.

  "TB, where are you? TB?"

  A boy looking a lot like his eight brothers jumped up from behind the couch with a loud, "BOO!"

  Lo pretended to be scared, grabbed her chest, and laughed.

  "Oh, my. You got me there. Scared me half to death."

  She grabbed the boy in her arms and turned around and around, spinning faster and faster, while laughing loudly.

  "There you are, my little prince. There you are."

  Chapter 34

  They had arranged a feast to celebrate her coming home, they said. A feast of meat and beer with frogs and worms. Even Jetta was offered beer, but she stuck with the water. The meat was good, though, and she asked her grandmother what it was.

  Her grandmother was bent forward, tiny and skinny to the bone, so was her grandfather. Both were small, blond, and wore big smiles from ear to ear as they looked at her.

  "It's swan," the grandmother, Tuonetar, said. "Nothing's too good for our only granddaughter."

  "We're so happy to have you here," the grandfather, Tuoni, said. He had told her to just call him Tuo, but her grandmother had made the same request for herself and Jetta felt confused. She could hardly call them both the same name.

  "Your brothers call them Grandma Tu-Tu and Grandpa Tu-Tu," Lo said, sitting next to her, blood from the swan meat dripping from her teeth.

  "Okay," Jetta said.

  A rattling woman wearing an apron served another plate of meat in front of her. She smelled like the rain. The smell was very strong coming from behind the door she entered and exited through.

  "You sure you don't want any beer?" Lo asked. "Where we come from, everyone drinks this. Even kids. It's good. Have some." She nudged the glass closer to Jetta.

  Jetta shook her head. "I'm good."

  "Give her time," Grandma Tu-Tu said. "To adjust to our customs, it takes time."

  Grandma Tu-Tu was smacking her lips while she ate the raw meat, still grinning from ear to ear, washing it all down with beer. She winked at Jetta, who gave her a cautious smile. There was something intimidating about both her grandparents. Jetta felt very happy to have found her family but sti
ll felt like the odd kid. If it was just her appearance, having half a black side, or if it was because it was all so new, she didn't know. She just knew that she missed having her Nanna close by and wondered if she would show up anytime soon. She missed her greatly.

  "So, you own this gift shop?" Jetta asked, making conversation with her grandparents.

  Grandpa Tu-Tu nodded. "Sure do. We run everything around here. It's a family business, you know."

  "That's neat," she said, holding a piece of meat between her fingers. Blood dripped onto the plate and landed in the pool. She wasn't used to all this raw meat, but she had to admit she liked the taste of it.

  Three of her brothers got in a fight during dinner and had to be separated by Lo, but not until after they had thrown meat and beer at the stone walls, and it was now running down in stripes. Lo told them to go to their room and they did, grumbling and fighting along the way. It made Jetta chuckle.

  As they left, she felt her grandmother's strong piercing blue eyes on her and turned to look. Grandma Tu-Tu reached out her hand and placed it on Jetta's arm. A chill went through her entire body and she was suddenly freezing. Grandma Tu-Tu licked her wrinkled colorless lips and looked into Jetta’s eyes, scrutinizing her, piercing her way into her very soul, her cold breath feeling like ice on Jetta's face. Then, with a satisfied smile, she said, "Let me show you where you'll sleep. I bet you're exhausted."

  Chapter 35

  Tyler was back at the ghetto. After days spent in prison, they had decided to send him back. He was surprised that they hadn't just shot him, gotten rid of him while they could.

  The ghetto was worse than it had ever been. More were sick than healthy and people were dropping like flies. Old people, children, men, and women were lying everywhere.

  Tyler stayed in the courtyard the way he had done earlier, hoping it would help him survive. But he could sense that the long time of starvation and now the gunshot wound in his leg had weakened him. Luckily, the bullet had only scratched the surface of his thigh.

  He kept to himself and spoke to no one. A small group of people had started a protest by yelling at the soldiers at the checkpoint, telling them to open the gates, to let them out so they wouldn't die in there, but they were ignored by the soldiers, whom Tyler assumed could only be robots. They wouldn't risk sending real humans into the camp in case they got sick too. Even though they could probably cure them with antibiotics, it would end up being costly for the military. Plus, there was no way those guards were human. To watch this type of inhumanity and do nothing, they had to be machines.

  Tyler watched as the protestors continued until one of them got too close to a guard and was knocked down.

  When Tyler had first gotten back, he wondered why there were so few children left and believed they had died from the disease, but someone had told him, as he walked past him in the courtyard, that they had taken the kids. Lined up the ones that weren't sick and taken them away in trucks.

  "To do what with them?" he had asked.

  "For warfare. They fill the trucks with black kids, then drive to black-controlled areas and, once the black army sees the black kids, they let them in, and then BOOM." The man showed an explosion using his hands, and eyes growing wild. "It all goes up in flames. Kids, Black Liberty's soldiers, everything. POOF."

  The protestors were chased away and Tyler watched as they retreated. He shook his head, wondering why they bothered. They had no rights in here. No one cared what happened to them. He wondered about his brother and whether he was still alive. What Tyler wanted more than anything now was to get to the black-controlled areas and find him. He still had some fight left in him.

  He got up and walked across the courtyard. He had been observing the soldiers at the checkpoint for quite some time now, studying their daily routine, hoping to find any way, some way to escape this hell-hole.

  When he first got back inside the walls, he had asked for the Johnsons but was told that they didn't come anymore. They had been shot dead in the street for harboring fugitives, said the rumors. Now they had started to burn the dead instead, right in the middle of the ghetto. Every day at sunset.

  Tyler rushed down a street, trying to get away from a fight that had erupted at the checkpoint, getting away from the line of fire, when he passed a man. The man was sitting on the sidewalk in front of a building, a drum between his legs, making music, eyes closed like he was in a trance of some sort. Tyler stared at him as he passed, wondering who on earth could feel like making music in a place as hopeless as this.

  Chapter 36

  As expected, the situation at the checkpoint was escalating, and Tyler hurried down the street to avoid what could potentially end very badly.

  Others had sensed the danger now too and were rushing along with him to be sure to get away in time before the soldiers started to shoot at anything that moved.

  Tyler looked back when he heard a soldier yell. He saw him lift his rifle, then place it on the head of a woman who was crying and pull the trigger. Tyler jumped when he heard the shot. He hurried away, knowing what was going to come next.

  The drones. The drones would fly over the place and shoot at anyone who moved. He needed to get away. Out of harm's way.

  Tyler turned around to run when he spotted the odd man once again, this time sitting in front of him on the sidewalk, still drumming and seemingly indifferent to what was going on. He was whistling too.

  When Tyler passed him, he looked up and their eyes met. Tyler wondered for a second whether the guy was mad. Many people had been known to go mad in the ghettos. Yet, Tyler couldn't stop looking at him. There was something very different about this black man. He was wearing red satin pants and a red shirt with white trim. On his head, he wore a crown, a red and white crown. Tyler was certain he saw fire come out of his mouth when he whistled his song. The small balls of fire landed on the pavement, where they died out.

  Maybe I’m the one going crazy?

  The guy smiled at him, still drumming loudly, while panic erupted behind Tyler. The strange man didn't seem affected by it in any way. Tyler couldn't help being oddly spellbound by the sound of his drums and, as though in a dream, he couldn't move.

  "Who are you?" he asked.

  The man looked up again and grinned. Guns were being fired behind him and Tyler was pulled back to reality as he heard the drones make their entrance. A thunder rumbled above.

  "Never mind," he said, then took off.

  Tyler ran down the street until he found an open door, drones whirring in the air behind him, telling the inhabitants of the ghetto to get off the streets, that rioting wasn't allowed, and anyone who was in the streets would be shot. Tyler ran inside a small building where many others had gathered, and they shut the door behind him.

  The sound of machine guns going off filled the air and along with it came screams. A woman next to him whimpered and held her hands to her ears. He grabbed her in his arms and held her while the drones flew by their building, shooting at anyone who moved.

  Tyler thought about the guy in the red pants and wondered if he had made it to safety, then decided he couldn't think about him. If there was one thing he had learned in all this, it was that you couldn't rescue everyone. You couldn't get attached to anyone or care about anyone but yourself. It would only end up getting you killed.

  He held the crying woman in his arms till the sounds of shots subsided. They waited in the hallway of the building for a long time, sweating heavily, and finding it hard to breathe while standing packed so tightly together, before someone finally dared to open the door.

  He poked his head out and told them it was safe. Tyler walked outside into the terror. Women whimpered and children hid their faces as they saw the many dead bodies lying in the streets. People who hadn't managed to get away in time. The guy who had told them it was safe walked to a body, grabbed it, and started to remove it. Several others did the same and not long after, they had the bodies piled up.

  It struck Tyler how normal it had b
ecome. No one mourned the losses anymore; no one got angry anymore. For that, they were too broken. They removed their dead and moved on, worrying only about themselves and their families and how to survive. It was as simple as that.

  Tyler looked down the street and spotted the man in the red pants. He was still sitting at the curb, drumming and whistling like nothing had happened.

  Guess some people are just luckier than others, he thought to himself, then rushed in the other direction.

  Chapter 37

  The following day, Tyler saw him again. The man in the red pants was sitting on the pavement as Tyler walked down the street towards the place where the food truck would arrive in a short while. He wasn't in a rush like most other people who wanted to be first in line. Being tall as he was, he could usually easily get food, as he would grab it in the air when the soldiers threw it at them. He had no need to be first in line. Plus, he never wanted to stand in front of some lady trying to get food for her family and take her place. He couldn't do that. Tyler was hungry, starving even, but still. He couldn't take food from a woman or her children.

  It was the sound of the drums that drew him to look in the man's direction. The streets in the ghetto were packed with people all walking in the same direction towards the food truck and he didn't see the man in the red pants till he heard the sound of his drum. It made him stop. He stared at the man while the people rushed by him, pushing and shoving each other to get ahead.

  Tyler walked closer and stopped to listen. It was actually really good. The guy definitely had talent, and something about the sound was extremely soothing and compelling so that it almost made Tyler want to dance. It was a bizarre ray of hope in the middle of the deep darkness. A streak of white in a wall painted gray.