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CALLIE
IF YOU'D ASKED EIGHT-YEAR-OLD CAROLINE MENDOZA WHERE SHE SAW HERSELF IN TEN YEARS, her answer would be simple: either dead or the principal dancer of the American Ballet Theatre. Or perhaps if you caught her during dress rehearsals when her mom was holding her down to glue big, glumpy, spidery falsies to her poor eyelids, she'd offer a potential plan B: world domination. Sometimes she even let herself have a plan C: a professional food taster for her dad's empanadas.
Her childhood ten-year-plans never included arson. Nor did they include breaking her friends out of prison because they'd been wrongly convicted of a crime she'd committed. (Well, technically, she and Maya had committed. And it had mostly been Maya.)
But, alas, here she is. Eighteen-year-old Callie. The Callie that technically isn't dead, at least, not in this dimension; the Callie that never amounted to much besides the corps de ballet at Berlin Ballet Company; the Callie that glues on her own damn falsies; the Callie that plays the Sims to subdue her lust for world domination; the Callie that can her own Guatemalan food; the Callie that's done a lot of things her younger self never would have dreamed of, namely branching off into a gluten-free diet. That and the whole arson shebang.
After she and Maya fled the scene of the crime, they found their way home. Maya watered their succulents, and Callie fed Fidel Castro. They showered and crashed in their bed, the communist Prime Minister of Cuba purring in between them. Everything seemed to be fine, and that was going to be the end of their story. They'd been revolutionaries; they'd burned the wall that killed so many; they were going to go back to their everyday lives. They'd gotten away with it. They had no idea that their friends had been arrested. They thought that they'd either have died in the fire or would find their way home on their own.
But everything changed when the fire nation attacked.
The next morning, as is custom during Ramadan for Suhoor, they're up before the sunrise. Maya's making breakfast while Callie struggles to get caught up with her schoolwork, half paying attention to the morning news. A coffee pot purrs underneath the Keurig. Callie's just getting up to pour herself a cup of coffee when the reporter mentions the burning of the wall.
Both girls snap to attention, Maya temporarily forgetting her eggs.
Staring at them from the screen is a blue-eyed reporter standing in front of the the remains of the Warwick Wall.
"I'm here to share the story that's shocked the nation," the reporter's saying into a microphone.
Callie feels like she's about to throw upâshe needs Maya, but she's frozen in place, in fear. Maya's skin is clammy and pale; she keeps clenching and unclenching her fists. Neither of the two of them seem to know how to react.
"At around four o'clock this morning, residents of Berlin, New Hampshire were shocked awake by the piercing sounds of fire engines racing to save one of the town's most iconic landmarks: the Warwick Wall, which was built four years ago to protect the city from Warwick's Mara epidemic. The wall and the city of Warwick, pictured behind me, were destroyed. A solid casualty statement has yet to be released; it is unclear, at this time, if there were any survivors."
Maya makes a growling noise deep in her throat at the mention of the wall.
"Officers have investigated the cause of the fire and have concluded that it was a result of arson. The culprit is believed to be seventeen-year-old Silas Darling, a junior at Berlin High School." Suddenly, the image changes to a mugshot of the golden boy. "It is to noted that he didn't act alone: known accomplices of Darling's include Atlas Villa, a BHS junior previously investigated for the burning of the Terranova Institute and an alleged gang member;"âthe screen changes to a mugshot of Atlasâ"Bianca Mendoza, a member of the communist party and a known opponent of the Terranova's methods;"âanother screen change, a mugshot of Biancaâ"Luca Terranova himself;"âthis time the scene changes to a picture of the Luca Terranova of this dimension smiling aboard one of his yachtsâ"an undocumented child believed to be the illegitimate son of Terranova's"âmugshot of Cainâ"ten-year-old Avani Nagarkar"âanother mugshotâ"and, finally, the honor student and vice president of BHS's student council, Meredith virgo." This time, it shows a selfie of Meredith's complete with Snapchat's dog filter.
"They think that they're the versions of themselves from this dimension," Callie notes. "That's why they said that Atlas was investigated for the burning of TI and they think that Cain's Luca's illegitimate son."
"Yo, your mom's a commie?" Maya asks.
"A socialist. She's a member of the socialist party. But she does hate the Terranova's, so."
Maya mumbles something under her breath, but Callie doesn't catch it.
"As of now, their motives are unknown; however, this is believed to be a part of something larger. The perpetrators' ties to the Terranova Institute suggest that this had potential political motivations. However, Luca Terranova's involvement makes this seem unlikely. Perhaps he was not working out of his own freewill; perhaps the reason that Terranova became involved in something like this was Darling's brainwashing."
Callie's jaw drops.
"That's bullshit!" Maya exclaims.
Callie's cheeks are burning. Her mind is burning. Everything is burning. How fucking dare they. How fucking dare they.
If Silas was white, they wouldn't treat him like this. They wouldn't say he brainwashed Luca Terranova; they wouldn't call him the culprit; they wouldn't call him the mastermind; they wouldn't have used a mugshot. They would have said he was an honor student and his swim team's captain. They would have used a dog filter selfie of his. Like what they did with Meredith. If Meredith was black, they wouldn't treat her like this. They wouldn't say she was an honor student; they wouldn't say she was the student council VP; they wouldn't have used a dog filter selfie. They would have said that she burned down BHS's science lab to postpone their exams. They would have included her suspensionsâthe Nerf war, when they found pot in her car, when she was caught vaping in the restrooms.
You can say it's not a race issue, but what else could it be? Silas Darling is a model student and a model son. Meredith Virgo might be a better student than he is, but she's something of a problem child. The only thing really differentiating her from Silas is race. He's black, and he's a brainwasher, a mastermind, the main culprit. Meredith's white, and she's an honor student and the student council VP.
"That's bullshit," Maya repeats, in case Callie missed her saying it.
Callie feels just as shaken up as Maya seems. "IâI don't even have words. How dare they."
Maya looks more angry than upset. "Fuck them. Seriously, what the fuck? Why would they think that that racist bullshit is okay?"
"Justice was supposed to be blind," Callie mumbles.
"Justice may be blind, but it's not blind to color," Maya bitterly replies.
These things will happen and happen and happen, the same story each time, and nothing's ever really going to change other than the names.
"We need to break them out." Maya slams slices of avocado down on two plates of toast. "I think I have a plan. We're gonna need Hafeez and"âshe adds a fried egg and some olive oilâ"a lot of lipstick."
Callie promptly screams into her book-bag.
"It's not fucking fair!" Maya says, handing Callie a plate of avocado toast. "We have to break them out, Cal. It's our fault they're in there."
"Fine. But this is the last revolutionary act we're committing, okay?"
"Sure." Maya grins, her dark eyes sparkling mischievously.
Callie screams into her book-bag again.
So for the first time since these strangers have entered their lives, Maya gets in contact with someone from their ordinary world: Hafeez Qadir, a twenty-something Spongebob fan that Maya and Callie really only hang around because he knows a guy that knows a guy that knows a guy that collects fake IDs. Because he's a cop, and cops are in-the-know for things like that. (He also knows a guy that was arrested for collecting human heads. Wack!)
(Well. He's not exactly a cop. He works the front desk at the Warwick County Correctional Facility, which still remained open after the wall went up.)
(And even though he works for the police department, he's totally fine with giving eighteen-year-olds like Maya and Callie fake IDs. Because he thinks that if someone's old enough to pick up a gun and fight for their country, they've oughta be old enough to enjoy a nice martini. And, like any rational person, he knows that justice goes hand-in-hand with the willful disobedience of unjust laws.)
(He also didn't seem to question Maya's confession. After all, he's a self-proclaimed friend of the revolution. Whatever that means.)
(And really, that's not the only reason they like him. They like him because he brings gross cop stories to the table without the responsibility of being friends with an actual cop.)
Maya details the plan to Hafeez via Snapchat while the two girls snack on their avocado toast. She then prays with Fidel Castro when the sun rises. (When she and Callie first moved in together, he was intensely fascinated by Maya's praying. He'd curl up underneath her and bat at her face, trying to get her to pay attention to him. Maya thought it was adorable and proceeded to try to convert the cat to Islam. She ended up buying him his own little prayer mat, and now, whenever she prays, he joins her. Sometimes on his own mat. Sometimes on her's because he's a cat and a little jerk. Maya thinks Fidel Castro is genuinely Muslim. Callie thinks he doesn't like it when she pays attention to anything other than him.) By the time they reach the prison, it's nearly eight in the morning, and Callie feels like vomiting.
Other than the whole fake ID thing, Callie's usually not a rule-breaker. In middle school, she got voted "Most Likely to Go to Bed by Ten on a Friday."
Now at the prison, Maya and Callie step up to the curly-haired Indonesian guy standing at the front desk. Hafeez Qadir winks at them knowingly, and the familiar warmth of friendship flutters in Callie's chest; she's really missed her normal life, her normal things. After this whole thing gets settled, she's taking Hafeez out for a round of drinks on her and her fake ID.
She feels on the verge of throwing up every avocado she's ever ate, she's so nervous, but she tries to act calm, adjusting her book-bag on her shoulder. It's full of explosives. Kidding, kidding! Just checking to make sure you're paying attention. It's mostly full of lipstick and hair dye. Oh, and a fully-loaded shotgun.
That part she's not kidding about.
Hafeez's presence and Maya's hand placed strategically on her lower back calming her, Callie quickly ducks through the metal detector. Instantly, a loud BRINGBRINGBRINGBRINGBRING bursts to life, a tiny red light over the machine flashing like a strobe light or a defective life support machine.
"Ma'am, I'm gonna need you to take a step back," Hafeez orders. "Let me see what's in the bag."
Her cheeks flushing maroon with the shame of having done something wrong, Callie hands the bag over. Her hands are shaking even though she knows that she's not actually in trouble. Hafeez calmly roots through it.
"Is gold a metal?" Callie asks, trying to act like she doesn't know what set the alarms off, fingering her two-and-a-half inch gold hoops, genuinely confused. She's a chemistry major, sure, but . . . she can't remember if gold is or isn't a metal. Isn't it a metalloid? Maybe an alloy? Definitely not a metal.
Hafeez holds up the shotgun and arches his eyebrows at her.
Silver is a metal, she reminds herself. Malleable and full of luster. If silver is a metal, then gold must be, too. Goddamnit, Callie, you want to be a fucking nuclear engineer and you can't even remember that gold's a metal? How the hell are you going to survive?
"Boy howdy, I forgot that was in there."
Without warning, Hafeez shoves himself into Callie's body, grunting with the effort. She's pushed to the ground, the wind knocked out of her. Some ancient instinct inside of her screams at her to fight back; some other side of her yells at her to flee. The logical half of her brain orders her to stay put. Callie was raised on Bill Nye and socialism; logic always wins out. She lets Hafeez shove his boot into her back to keep her down, her jaw slamming into the cold linoleum tiles. This is all a ploy, she reminds herself, a game, a farce. They're in his apartment, drunk, playing Get Down, Mr. President! They're not in a prison and he didn't just confiscate her gun and tackle her.
Some kind of rush goes through Callie's body, a sort of primitive bloodlust having her drooling over the possibility of any kind of action. This is exciting. Beyond exciting. It's like she's in a book. It's thrilling, knowing something that all the people around her don'tâwhat she's really doing here in this prison. They don't know squat about her or what she's doing here. For all they know, she could have killed Abraham Lincoln. Hell, she could be the true author of My Immortal.
She knows he has to go through with protocol. If they don't, it'll raise suspicion. But did Hafeez really have to go this far-out? Was he just looking for an excuse to pummel her?
"GET ON THE FLOOR!" Hafeez shouts. "SHE HAS A GUN!"
There isn't really anybody else in the prison's entrance, two or three guards sporadically placed inside and outside the doors of bulletproof glass, a detached-looking gray-haired woman in a fur coat despite the heat, and Maya. The woman fans herself. One confused guard drops to the ground. The rest train their semiautomatics on Callie as if she's a dangerous criminal. To an extent, she supposes, she is.
She is an arsonist, after all.
Arson.
Huh.
She feels Hafeez kneel down, his boot digging into her back. A vertebrae painfully pops under his weight. He clicks a set of icy metal handcuffs around her wrists, so loose her hands could slip right through them. He steps off her back and helps her to her feet. Not having her arms to steady herself, she stumbles a bit, relying on the quick movements of her feet to keep her from falling and breaking her jaw open.
"I'll take her in for questioning," Hafeez announces to his coworkers. Then he spins on his heels, looking at Maya. "You. You came with her, right?"
Maya's eyes look like they're daring Hafeez to try her. "Yep. What's it to ya?"
"You need to come with me." Hafeez hefts Callie's bag up on his shoulder. "And I'll be taking this in for evidence."
He's not wearing gloves, Callie vacantly realizes. Isn't he worried about, oh, I don't know, contaminating the evidence?
Maya sarcastically offers Hafeez her wrists. Once he's handcuffed her, he ushers the two of them inside the prison.
"You're a good actress," he tells Maya. "We've got prisoners that act just like you did."
Maya's eyes flash as the insult registers with her. "Not really. I'm just a good liar." She smiles up at him, sweet as honey. "You're a good cop."
Either not noticing the jab or choosing to ignore it, he smiles back at her. "Thank you, but I'm actually a security guard, not a cop.
"Tomato, tomahto," Maya replies. "They're both pigs."
"Meh." Hafeez shrugs. "Can't argue with that."
He leads them up several flights of stairs, around a whitewashed-cinder block and past two sets of double-doors. Then, he opens a locked door and pushes them into a small room so heavy with the scent of antiseptic that Callie bursts out in a fit of tiny sneezes. A mop rests in a bucket to her right. The counter in front of her is full of cleaning supplies decorated with helpful notes scrawled on post-it-notes in thick black Sharpie, half the letters missing. BUG-KILLING BRO. DO DRNK OR DIE. A janitorial closet. Perfect. The door shuts behind them, plunging them into sudden darkness and oppressive silence.
"We'll split up," Hafeez details. "Each of us gets a third of the rooms. We'll use this closet as our rendezvous point. Maya, you get cells 629 and 653; Callie, 674 and 700; I'll get the last three."
"Fabulous." Unsmiling, Callie grabs two plastic Target bags full of supplies from her book-bag. "See ya later, alligator."
Maya grins at her in the dark. "After a while, crocodile."
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CALLIE HESITANTLY KNOCKS on the door of the prison cell. This place is haunting. Mainly because it reminds her more of her high school than an actual prison, all cinder-block walls and clocks hidden behind casings of metal. There isn't a response. She mumbles a string of curses to herself, spinning the cold gray knob even though she knows it's not going to work. The door makes a rough clicking sound, a metallic PING. She pushes it open. Surprised, she tumbles into the room, tripping over her own feet in her frantic attempt to right herself.
Graceful, Callie, real graceful. Fifteen years of ballet and you can't even walk through a doorway without tripping?
A boy sits in the corner, a child brought back from the dead. His arm is wrapped in white medical gauze.
"Uh . . . " the poor kid stammers. "Allie, right? No, it started with a K. Kelly? That's it. Kelly. Hey."
Casual, like they're meeting in the hallway at school to discuss a project. Not like she's breaking him out of prison.
Callie can't help but feel a pang of sympathetic guilt as she looks down at him. She's the one that caused thisâhis injury (what happened? she wonders), his imprisonment, the fire. Did they escape before it caught? Did they even realize that the town was burning? Or . . . when shit hit the fan and things started to explode, were they trapped?
Were any of them hurt?
What about killed?
It was obvious that the fire itself was caused by arson, but nobody seemed to know what actually caused the explosions. Several theories were floating around; Callie had read through some of them on Twitter. Maybe they'd hit several gas tanks; maybe the fire reacted with nuclear residue; maybe it was something to do with the rift.
"It's Callie," she corrects, her voice low, gentle. "With a C and an A."
"Callie, right. Sorry, I'm bad with names." Atlas seems at a loss for words. He just stares up at her for a second, slack-jawed, trying to form some sort of coherent thought. "What are you . . . um, why are you . . . who sent you?"
"Who sent me? I did." She slips her sandal off, using it as a doorstopper. If they let it shut all the way, they'll lock themselves inside this place. "I'm here to break you out."
"Oh, wow. Okay."
"Come here." Callie sits down with her legs spread out in front of him, her ankles crossed, emptying the contents of her bags on the floor. "Can you see without your glasses? They're kind of a distinguishing feature. And what about your, uh . . . ?" She gestures to his arm. "The medical gauze. Can you do without that?"
"If you want me to see the world in, like, negative two-thousand pixels, then sure. And absolutely not. I was attacked by a police dog. My arm will literally bleed out." Hesitantly, Atlas crawls forwards. "What's all this?"
Callie slides his glasses off the bridge of his nose, gently setting them on her knee. "Your ticket out of this hellhole. The guards won't recognize you, so they won't try to stop us."
Callie hums as she works, separating out everything she's going to need. A foundation several shades darker than his skin, a cheap contour palette. Some highlight and blush. Perfume to mask the scent of the prison. A hat to hide his thick head of curls. She smears the foundation all over his face and neck, blending it in with a bright pink makeup brush. The makeup stains it brown. Next comes the countering, a heavy dose of highlight and a light dusting of cherry-red blush. She sprays so much perfume on him that he smells like an old woman. By the time she finishes, he looks like a stage actor, his features flushed out to fool an audience too far away to see the boy beneath them. She feels like she's helping the younger dancers at her studio with their makeup before a performance.
"I feel like a drag queen," mumbles Atlas.
"You are a drag queen," Callie offers, wanting to be encouraging.
"Hell yeah I am."
Callie grins at him, grabbing a cowboy hat from the pile and placing it on his head.
"Country girls make do," says Atlas sadly. He takes it off and hands it back to her. "Do you have anything . . . I don't know, less white?"
"We ain't about this Caucasian nonsense." Callie nods her agreement. "It's too flasy; it would draw too much attention to you. Gimme a sec . . . " She tosses the hat back into the pile, replacing it with a solid black baseball hat that says #1 DAD.
Atlas looks satisfied. "It's true. I am a dad."
"I didn't grab a lot of clothes . . . " Callie mumbles, rooting through until she finds a bright red t-shirt and a pair of gray sweatpants. "Hopefully this will fit."
Atlas doesn't seem to have any qualms against changing in front of her. Probably because they're both queer and actively in a prison so who gives a fuck, anyways? He strips right on down, throwing the clothes on. His stomach is kind of flabby, his legs kind of hairy. Callie didn't think to grab any shoes; his beat-up Converse will have to do.
"Okay," she says, "listen to me. There's a janitorial closet near the doors leading into the main part of the prison. Get in there and don't move for anything. If anyone asks who you are, say you're a journalist doing a report on the prison. That's our rendezvous point. We're all meeting there. Maya is helping me, and so is a guard named Hafeez; if someone you don't know comes in, just ask him for his name. I don't know why we didn't come up with a code. God. Okay. Hafeez is this big curly-haired Indonesian kid. You'll know him when you see him."
"Great," mumbles Atlas. "Just when I thought I was out of the closet, back in it I go."
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CELL 700, Callie discovers, is Meredith's, who is, as Callie also discovers, unbelievably angry. When she opens the door, she runs full-force at her, screaming. She shoves her out of her way, starting to run down the hallway, still screaming.
Callie's knocked back a couple steps, stunned. She takes a second to recollect herself before running after her. Meredith's slow; Callie easily overtakes her, grabbing her arm and shoving her into the wall to keep her from running off again.
"You bastard!" Meredith's screaming, her eyes and skin bright red. "You absolute bastard! Let go of me before I kill you!"
"Shhh!" Callie presses her hand into Meredith's mouth. "You need to be quiet. We can't attract any attention."
Meredith pries Callie's hand off her mouth with her free arm, her eyes filling with tears. "They'll hear us no matter what we do. Let me go. I need to find Silas and kill every last one of them."
"I'm gonna break you out of here," Callie promises.
"No. You're gonna let go of me. I don't care about getting out. I could rot away the rest of my life in this prison for all I care. I just care about vengeance." A pause as Meredith realizes Callie isn't going to listen to her. "Do I need to count to three?"
"Meredith, they'll recognize you. I need to disguise you."
"I don't give a fuck if they recognize me! I'm going to kill all of them!"
"Take a deep breath. What did they do?" Besides the obvious.
Meredith doesn't offer any sort of explanation. "I need to find Silas," she cries, tugging at Callie's arm pinning her to the wall, begging, pleading. "I need to find him. Let go of me! LET GO OF ME!"
Callie might be quicker than Meredith, but she knows that the other girl's stronger than her and twice her size. If she really wanted to be let go, she'd be free by now.
"Listen to me." Callie grabs hold of her other arm. "You're going to get yourself killed."
"I don't give a shit!"
"And you're going to get me killed, and all of your friends killed, and Silas is going to be locked in this prison for the rest of his life. You know they're blaming him for all this, don't you? The rest of you are only being charged as accomplices." Callie's the one begging now. "Please, Meredith. Please listen to me."
"Fine." Meredith looks down at her, the fight hardening in her warrior eyes. "But you're going to hurry. And then I'm going to find Silas. And you're going to get him out of here. And I'm going to kill every last one of them."
"Sure. Yeah. Totally." Callie has no intentions of letting Meredith kill anyone. She also doesn't think that she'll be the one to find Silas; either Hafeez or Maya must have gotten to him by now. "Come on, we need to get back to your cell."
But something's gone horribly wrong. Footsteps pound through the hall. Her breath caught somewhere in her chest, Callie drags Meredith back into her cell, swearing. She slams the door behind them, and she and Meredith shove their backs against it to keep it in place. The doors are locked from the outside in; people on the outside can open them, but people on the inside can't. They just locked themselves inside a prison cell.
"What's happening?" Meredith whispers, her mouth pressed against Callie's ear, crinkling her hair.
Callie aggressively shrugs.
She hears doors slamming, more footsteps pounding along to the same desperate rhythm as her heartbeat. Panicked yells echo through the halls. She squeezes her eyes shut, praying. "Please, God . . . please protect us . . . please, please, pleaâ"
All of a sudden, the door falls out from underneath her. Shit. It opens outwards. Meredith lets out a howl of surprise, spinning on her heels to face the faceless monster, her hair whipping her skin. Acting purely on instinct, she punches the man in the face.
"Ow!"
Luca Terranovaâthe good one with the tattoos, not the asshole of this dimension with the suit and the yacht and the wifeâis shoved back a step with the force of the punch; Meredith really is one strong motherfucker. He stares at her, the confusion and betrayal of a puppy accidentally stepped on by a human clear on his face, his hand cupped over his nose. A thin stream of red blood trickles through his fingers. "âMeredith . . . " he finishes, and Callie realizes that he'd been the one yelling. They all had. Their friends.
Realizing who she punched, Meredith lets out a yelp of joy and throws her arms around Luca. It's like she'd been reunited with her own father. He looks like a total dumbass, a cheap white wig on his head, thick makeup caking his skin, a purple suit jacket over a pair of women's yoga pants.
Her face contorted with terror, Callie elbows past Meredith, peeking her head around the doorway. The coast is clear. No cops, no guards. She lets out a sigh of relief.
"I'm sorry for punching you," Meredith's mumbling. "You scared me."
"Prison's changed you," Luca says somberly.
Meredith grins.
Having finally overcome the shock of being punched in the nose, Luca makes the face of a student realizing they have a test next period. "Oh, shit. Fuck. We have to go. Now."
"What?" asks Callie. "Why?"
"They know we're in here! We need to get out of here. Come on. Maya found a fire escape."
"I'm gonna pass out," Callie mumbles. Her body feels like it's breaking apart at the molecular level, she feels so sick with fear.
"We need to hurry," Luca adds.
"Don't worry, I won't let them get to you." Meredith grabs hold of Callie's hand. "You're safe with me."
"Hey! I'm the adult here. I won't let them get to either of you." Luca wags his pointer finger in their faces. "Now get moving."
"I'm eighteen," Callie mumbles. "I don't need protection."
The three of them race towards the holy grail: the fire escape.