Red’s mind did that thing again, a word so simple and mundane, yet it lost all its meaning on the trip across her head, unrecognizable out the other side, warped and misshapen. How did you even say it again? What did it mean? Did it rhyme with note, and wrote, and quote? All silly little words, when you thought about them, because thinking about them was easier than thinking about what this vote meant.
“No.” Arthur shook his head, teeth bared in horror. “We’re not doing that.
We’re not voting on whether Red gets to live or die. Are you sick?”
“It’s the fairest way,” Oliver brushed him off. “That’s how democracy works, how law and justice work. We each get a vote and the majority wins. That’s fair.”
Was that fair? Maybe Red’s understanding of it was skewed, because it didn’t seem fair at all, her life in the hands of five other people. But when had life ever been fair to her, why should death be any different?
“We can’t do this,” Reyna said quietly, hands disappearing up her sleeves. “This can’t be real. We can’t do this.”
“Does Red stay, or does she go?” Oliver reiterated, setting the rules, the boundaries, the two sides. Stay or go, but really he should have phrased it as
Does Red stay, or does she die? because that was what they were deciding here, wasn’t it? If she left the RV, that red dot was going to find her and she was going to die. That man outside with the rifle was here to kill her, kill her to stop her from testifying. The plan wasn’t worth all this after all, was it?
“And you’ll listen?” Reyna asked Oliver, her eyes sharpening as they met his. “You’ll respect the results of the vote? That’s the only way it’s fair.”
“Obviously,” Oliver spat, scrunching his face. “That’s the reason we’re voting, Reyna.” He said her name differently now, cold, doubtful, like it was only half remembered.
“Does Red get a vote?” Maddy asked, her voice thick as she held back tears. Red knew that voice, knew all of Maddy’s voices, but still not that strange look in her eyes from before.
“Of course Red doesn’t get a vote.” He shook his head, like that would be ridiculous.
“I’m not doing this.” Arthur folded his arms, gaze hard and disbelieving as he shot it at the back of Oliver’s head. “I’m not.”
“Then you forfeit your vote,” Oliver said without looking back at him. “Maddy.” He snapped his fingers in her direction. “Do you have any more pens?”
“Um, yeah, I do,” she said, wiping her nose as she forced her feet back toward the dining table and the booth. Her purse was tucked just underneath the table, where she’d been sitting when she and Red played Twenty Questions a hundred lifetimes ago. Maddy bent down and rustled inside. She came back up with four ballpoint pens clenched in her hand. She dropped them down, plastic scattering over plastic, beside the pen already on the table. “Five,” she said, the word hollow in her mouth.
“Good, well done, Maddy,” he said, stifling a yawn with his fist. “This is crazy,” Simon was saying to himself. “This is crazy.”
Red hugged the walkie-talkie to her chest, the vibrations of the static working against her hummingbird heart as Oliver approached.
“Red, you go stand in the kitchen,” he said, giving her a push on the shoulder. “You can’t see anyone’s papers while they’re voting.”
Of course not, that wouldn’t be fair, would it? But she did, she moved, her legs following Oliver’s instruction before her mind had fully agreed to it.
She passed Simon and Reyna on the way to the kitchen counter, gliding past their downcast eyes. She already felt separate, somehow, her against them, even though it was Oliver splitting the RV up, no one else. She passed Arthur and he didn’t avoid her, he returned the frightened look in her eyes.
Her back to the group, Red placed the walkie-talkie down on the counter, its ridges and edges imprinted in her right hand forever, lines and grooves alongside the ones already there. Should she keep going, all the way into the back bedroom to scream into the pillow again? She wasn’t sure she could, anyway, this was beyond screaming. This wasn’t real.
She spun on her heels slowly, closing her eyes so she could pretend she was anywhere but here. Anywhere was better than this RV. Even at the funeral, Catherine Lavoy’s hard grip on her shoulder, bones shattering under the volley of rifle fire, the sad, high notes of the bagpipes. Or under her comforter, all the way under, pajamas, sweater, and a coat, gloves and three pairs of socks, and still somehow cold. Her cheeks weren’t, though, because she was crying, cursing her mom for leaving them and letting the world fall apart without her. Cursing herself because, actually, Mom wouldn’t be dead without her. It was Red’s fault. She broke the world, she took her mom out of it, and didn’t know how to put it all back after. What would Mom say to her now? Mom used to fix everything; found Red’s keys when she lost them, pulled those silly faces in the mirror to make her snort on a bad morning. Red could almost hear her voice now, the way she leaned into the word sweetie, warm and bright, but she pushed it away under the static of all those bad memories. Everything came back to Mom somehow, but Red couldn’t drag her into this, she didn’t belong. Mom was dead. And now the others were going to decide if Red would die too.
Something touched her floating hand, in the darkness of the backs of her
eyelids, the yellow glow of the overhead lights fighting through. Skin, fingers, intertwining through hers. Red opened her eyes, blinking in the new light, and there was Arthur. Not Mom.
Arthur’s hand gripped around hers, scribbled checkboxes on his skin to match the ones on hers. Checked and unchecked. Things left undone and unsaid. She was never going to get around to calling AT&T, was she?
“Okay,” Oliver said, ripping a fresh sheet of paper free from the pad on the table. He folded it in half, then into quarters, then eighths, pressing his nail along the folds. He opened the page back out and started tearing the paper along the guided lines. An awful sound. “We each get a piece of paper and a pen,” he said, concentrating on ripping the pieces. “If you vote for Red to leave the RV, you write YES on your paper, okay?” He glanced up to check everyone was listening, eyes stalling as they fell on Red’s and Arthur’s hands, still holding on. He cleared his throat. “And if you vote for Red to stay in the RV, write NO on your paper. Does everyone understand?”
No one answered.
“YES to leave, NO to stay.” NO to live, YES to die.
Oliver scooped up five of the small rectangles of lined paper in one hand, the pens in the other. He offered them first to Maddy. She took them, paper fluttering in her grip. Her legs were shaking too, Red noticed, as Maddy slid herself down into the booth.
Oliver handed a pen and paper to Simon next, pointing him toward the front of the RV, in the cockpit.
“We need to stand away from each other, so no one can see how you’re voting. By the door, Reyna,” Oliver said, dropping the pen and paper above her hand, making sure his skin didn’t touch hers. They both fell to the floor, the pen with a small clatter, the paper floating featherlight through the air. Reyna grabbed them both and straightened up.
“Arthur?” Oliver said, holding out Arthur’s blank piece of paper and his pen. “Are you voting or not?”
Another glance down at their entwined hands.
There was a twitch in Arthur’s cheek, his eyes spinning around the RV, pausing on each person. Was he trying to work out the way everyone would vote, counting them up, the fors and the againsts? Whether his vote was needed?
His hand disentangled from Red’s, wet with both their sweat, and he reached out, removing the pen and paper from Oliver’s palm.
“Over there.” Oliver pointed Arthur toward the sofa bed.
Arthur walked away, dropping down heavily onto the sofa, staring down at the tiny, blank rectangle of paper.
“Excuse me, Red,” Oliver said, pushing her out of his way as he bent to open the second drawer down under the counter. He pulled out a cereal bowl, swirling blue-and-white patterns, and pushed the drawer shut with his knee.
“Okay.” He took the bowl with him to the dining table, slotting in opposite his sister. His pen and paper were ready in his hand. “Everyone know what they’re doing?” he called, too loud, the others flinching. “YES to leave, NO to stay.”
And did Red imagine it, or had he said that first part louder, stumbling over the second? She knew which way Oliver was voting anyway, they all did. He was voting for her to die.
“Once you’re done, fold your piece of paper up twice and then come drop it in this bowl here,” he said, giving it a shake, the rim thumping on the wood of the table. “Okay. Vote now.”
Maddy uncapped her pen, the sound hollow and high, riding up Red’s spine as she watched.
Next her eyes darted to Reyna, who was writing something, leaning against her raised leg. Red couldn’t tell by the movement of the pen if it was two letters or three.
Arthur was already finished, placing the pen down beside him, carefully folding the paper, pressing down with his thumbs, that muscle twitching in his cheek again.
Simon’s pen was in his mouth, eyes up on the ceiling, his piece of paper ready for him against the top of the driver’s seat.
Maddy’s hand was cupped around her piece of paper as she scribbled something on it, pen flicking back and forth in her grip, tracing the lines of her chosen word.
Red couldn’t stand it, the scratching of the pens. She bit down on her bottom lip to stop it from shaking, her eyes darting around too fast that they
started to water.
Simon was writing now, and then it was over in less than two seconds, pocketing the pen to fold up his vote.
Red realized she hadn’t been the only one watching, studying the others. Oliver had been too, only now turning to his own vote. He leaned over it and pressed the pen down, moving it up and across in jagged lines. Then he laid his pen down neatly on the surface, straightening it so it ran parallel with the side of the table. He folded his vote, once, twice.
“In the bowl, everyone,” he said, dropping his own in.
Maddy leaned across the table, placing her vote in next. She didn’t retake her seat, standing instead, pacing to the front of the RV, where she brushed past Simon.
Simon sidestepped over, just as Arthur pushed up from the sofa with a fake-leather creak. They dropped their votes in together, at the same time, the small puff of the paper landing.
Reyna was last, walking across from the door, eyes straight ahead. She reached over and let go. It fell, not featherlight this time, into the bowl.
She stepped away, the sofa catching her in the back of her legs, pulling her down.
Simon and Arthur were in that middle space between the kitchen and the front door, Red still behind the counter, separate from everyone else. Maddy up front.
Oliver stood up, a bone cracking somewhere beneath his skin. He sidled out of the booth, coming to stand in front of the table. He reached back to slide the bowl over, dragging it against the wood and against Red’s ears. Too loud, every sound was too loud and every breath was too hard, her ribs folding in, one by one.
This was it.
Did she live or did she die?
They couldn’t have voted for her to die, could they? These were her friends. Simon, who could always make her laugh, even on this awful, endless night. Maddy, her Maddy. Arthur, not hers, but maybe he could have been. Reyna, and that understanding they had between them, the knowing glances.
Oliver picked up the bowl and gave it a shake, the pieces of paper sliding over each other, whispering and shushing. What did they know that Red didn’t? Oliver placed the bowl back down and nodded. At least he was kind enough to not be smiling.
His hand moved into the bowl, shuffling through the papers. He pulled out the first vote, plucked between his finger and thumb.
He unraveled the double fold, eyes skipping across the word written there. “No,” he read aloud.
No. Red’s heart leaped to her throat. No. One vote for her to live. Her hands were shaking, but she needed them, sticking out the thumb of her right hand to keep the tally. One vote to live.
Oliver was digging through for the next vote, pulling it out. His lips tensed.
“Yes,” he read.
Red’s heart sank again, dropping into the acid of her stomach, where it fizzed and fizzed, like a two-way radio. Yes. One vote for her to die. But she’d known that was coming. She knew Oliver was voting yes, she didn’t need to be scared. But her heart didn’t listen, drowning down there. Red stuck out the thumb on her left hand to match. One vote each.
Oliver picked up the next folded bit of paper, pulling it apart.
“No,” he said, dropping the opened vote on the table, beside the others.
No. Thank you, thank you. Red stuck out the index finger on her right hand. Another vote for her to live. Two against one. They’d already had Oliver’s vote, wouldn’t the rest be NOs, filling up her right hand?
Red’s eyes dried out, scratchy and raw, staring too hard at Oliver’s hands, fingers dipping into the bowl for the fourth vote. He pulled it out and unfolded it.
He breathed in, held on to it just too long. “Yes,” he said.
No, no, no.
Red’s throat constricted, cutting her breath in half. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Another vote for her to die. This wasn’t just fear anymore, was it? This was what terror felt like, her body reshaping around it. But who? Who
else voted yes? Her eyes snapped wider, panicked, skipping from Maddy to Arthur to Reyna to Simon. Which one of them was it? Which one wanted to force her out of the RV, out into the wide-open nothing? Which one of them was okay with her dying out there? They all looked shocked, afraid, wretched. Red couldn’t tell. But someone wasn’t shocked, that vote belonged to someone.
She raised another finger on her left hand. Two votes each. To live or to die.
“Last vote,” Oliver said, scraping the final piece of paper out of the bowl. The deciding vote. Live or die.
He twisted it between his fingers, taking too long. Unpicking the first fold, then the second.
Oliver spun the piece of paper around. He cleared his throat.
