The collar worries me. It continues to blink steadily when it’s supposed to stay solid green. I want to take it off her, but I’m afraid. Cutting it off will kill her. Shorting it out will kill her.
“I need the key,” I tell Dillon one night after Opal and Mom have gone to bed, leaving us to cuddle under the blanket in front of the fire. “The special key.”
Dillon frowns. “My mom had one. I’m sorry, I didn’t think to bring it.”
“It’s okay.” I stroke his hair. “You didn’t know.” He won’t accept that. “I should’ve thought about it. I mean, she didn’t use it at home because my dad didn’t have the collar, but she had to use it all the time at work. I’m sure she had it. I should’ve brought it, Velvet, I’m sorry. Your mom…”
“Even if we could take it off, Dillon, it might hurt her more than it being on. I mean, she’s getting better, right? But what if it’s somehow because of the collar? Something it’s done to her brain to reconnect the wires? We just don’t know.” I’m so tired, I can’t make sense of it. “I want to take it off her, but I don’t want to hurt her more. Maybe it’s okay she has it on.”
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.” Part of that’s true, because part of me is angry that he hadn’t brought the key. But it’s not Dillon’s fault. How could he have known any of this was going to happen? How could any of us know?
Neither of us tells the other it’s going to be okay anymore. We just listen to the radio, the same songs over and over, the same lame DJ jokes, even the same weather reports. We wait and wait for news, something to tell us maybe it’s even safe to try and get into town.
We wait for something, for anything, but it never comes.
TWENTY-SIX
I’M CUTTING MY MOM’S HAIR. IT’S SO LONG and thick that it’s hard to keep clean. We can bathe every day with soap and water in the tub, but the days of long, luxurious hot-water showers with lots of suds are over, and we don’t know for how long.
“I’m going to go chin length with it, Mom. It’ll be a lot easier to keep clean and out of your face, and it won’t be so hard to brush.” I’ve already cut Opal’s hair, though I haven’t had the guts to do mine yet. I’ll wash it in a bucket of freezing water and spend an hour combing it, if necessary, to keep it long and pretty.
“Uno!” Opal cries and slaps down the card. She squints her eyes when she laughs.
I catch Dillon’s wink and think he’s letting her win. My mom shifts in the chair. I hold the scissors steady, gather her hair into a ponytail, and cut it as evenly across the back as I can. I put the hair, still tied with the elastic band, in an old brown-paper grocery bag and then trim the ends. Or try to. It’s hard when Mom starts twitching.
“Mom, you have to stay still.”
She twitches again. I put a hand on her shoulder, thinking she’s trying to talk, but her muscles are hard and taut under my hand. She falls forward, off the chair.
“Oh, no. Oh, no…” I drop the scissors and kneel beside her.
I don’t understand. She looks the way she did the day in the apartment when she went into Mercy Mode. But nobody’s threatening her now, and even if she thought me cutting her hair was traumatic, she showed no signs of trying to get away or fight me about it.
“Mom!” I’m not sure what to do, so I tip her head back a little.
Her eyes are glazed. Her jaw opens, snaps shut. Her body goes stiff.
The light on the collar’s gone red. Steady, unblinking red.
“Dillon!”
He’s there in an instant, kneeling beside her. He takes her hand. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. I was cutting her hair, and then she just started… doing this.” I’m aware that Opal’s watching us. I don’t want her to see this, but I don’t know how to keep her from it.
“Malinda.” Dillon says this quietly.
My mom’s eyelids flutter. Is she focusing on him? I can’t tell.
“Breathe slowly,” Dillon says.
I don’t think she can. I don’t think she can do anything but succumb to what the collar’s doing. It doesn’t seem to be getting worse, though, not like in Mercy Mode, when she went into a seizure.
That’s when we hear it from outside. Loud, constant beeping, the sound a huge truck makes when it’s backing up. The warble of a siren. And then, distorted but understandable, the voice.
“… Under government-ordered inspection,” the voice is saying. “All residents will be prepared to allow entry. Repeat, this neighborhood is under government-ordered inspection. All residents will be prepared to allow entry.”
“They can’t do this, can they?” I wasn’t sure I’d be able to speak until the words came out.
Dillon shakes his head. Together, we hold my mom’s hands. She’s gone pale, her face strained. She makes a low, endless mutter of pain.
Who’s doing this? Sending wireless signals into her brain? Killing her by remote control?
“Do something!” Opal screams suddenly. “Help her! Help Mama!”
“We have to help her. We have to get this collar off. They’re only taking people with collars,” I say.
“They took my dad,” Dillon reminds me. “And he’d had the ice-pick treatment, remember?”
“Then we have to get this collar off her and make sure she can speak. That’s all they’ll need. Right? Right?” I cry, desperate.
Unless they want to take us all in for mandatory testing, or if they even do it right here, in the field. Unless they’re just taking us all away again, this time not to assisted housing but to some test labs somewhere, to stick us with needles and try to figure us out.
“You need to get this collar off my mother,” I say to Dillon in a low, steady voice so unlike mine, it’s as though a stranger’s talking. “Now.”
We have no idea how much time we have before they get here, or what they’ll do when they arrive. I just want to save her. Somehow.
“Paper clip.” Dillon strokes the hair from my mom’s forehead. “Get me a paper clip.”
“Opal, go!”
She scampers off. Dillon loosens the buttons at the throat of my mom’s shirt. Her hand tightens on mine, but she seems calmer. Opal’s back in a minute with a handful of paper clips that scatter on the floor.
Dillon picks one up and bends it straight. “There’s a slot on the side. We have to stick this in there. Short it out.”
“No, no. I don’t want to short it out!” I flash back to the training video. I think about losing my mom.
The voice is getting closer. So are the loud beeping and the siren.
My mom doesn’t stop twitching, but she does turn her head to look at me. Her eyes are wide. Her mouth’s turned down in pain.
She shakes her head slowly. She lets go of my hand and puts her fingertips to her temples, one at a time. Then to the collar.
“Take it off,” I hear myself say, looking into her eyes.
She blinks. I think this means she’s relieved. I focus. I remember how she reacted that first night when I brought her home, when she was still so afraid because of whatever they’d done to her before they let her go. How far she’s come since then.
And I think of how much I love her.
It’s a risk we have to take. She wants it, and even though I’m not convinced we can do this—if it were that easy to disconnect the collar with a paper clip, wouldn’t more people have done it? I nod at Dillon.
“Hold her still,” he says. “I’m going to go as fast as I can.”
Opal runs out of the kitchen. I think it’s because she can’t bear to watch, but I hear the front door open. She’s back in a minute while I try to find the tiny hole Dillon says is on the collar.
“They’re in trucks,” Opal cries. “They’re across the street, knocking on the door!”