Six Years before the Accident
JULY 1977
On the one occasion that King Bash and the RonDon spoke of Genesis—not to the public, of course, but to all current members of The Plan—they lamented the loss of such a young girl, so bright and so troubled, a roaring fire extinguished too soon. If they could all take one lesson from her tragic and untimely death, let it be that we are all unique and irreplaceable, and it is imperative to protect ourselves by mastering the tenets—particularly, in this case, Recast Your Past, Reject and Release, and, most important, What You Think, Is. Genesis would still be here with us today, improving herself and aiding in the development of The Plan, if only she’d been able to craft the narrative of her own thoughts.
Even after a year, Jude could not forget the words Gen spoke and the questions she asked right before she died: the manufactured reality of the Island, the nature and destination of the pictures, what might happen when they go to the Big House—a graduation that now, at age seventeen, was imminent. At the next rabbit recruitment, Jude met Kat and Violet at Rittenhouse Square, leading them to the bench where she’d first recruited Gen. For a moment Jude closed her eyes, letting the memory come: dealing Gen a poker hand, commiserating about their moms, the stories behind their names. She made an announcement: No more pictures. No going to the Big House. And the upcoming Think Is Games would be their last.
“How?” Violet asked.
“I think,” Jude said, “that we—”
“—have to kill them from the inside,” Kat finished.
To seal their pact they slashed a knife along their arms, obliterating THE PLAN tattoos, sucking the blood from each other’s wrists, connecting them all forever.
Deftly and discreetly, they prepared. They collected vegetable oil in old soda bottles and stashed them behind bushes in their respective backyards. They drew a map of the Island, marking the spots where King Bash and the RonDon slept, where the Power Tower loomed, where the carcasses of old rides rotted beneath the sun. They asked strangers for lighters and packs of matches. They enlisted the most trusted rabbits in their cause, including Melisa and Lola and Marcus and Jimmy, all eager to atone for their part in Gen’s death.
All of them arrived on the Island brimming with bravado and hope, the young ones feeling they were involved in something important and special, something that would save them in ways they didn’t yet understand. Kat took charge, praising them for sneaking from their sheds, calling them all by name, unraveling every lie they’d been told. “What you think isn’t necessarily so,” she said. “What you think is a wish, and you have to work very hard to make it so. You must be stronger and smarter than all the people who want to scare you, all the people who want to keep you small. You have the right to be who you are. You have a duty to be who you are.”
Jude was in awe of her, commanding a crowd, giving perfect voice to their shared thoughts.
The players had their places, their orders, their cues. They carried tree branches and leaves and the remnants of wooden roller coasters and piled them near the Power Tower. Kat clapped her hands and everyone changed costumes: monkeys into chameleons, scorpions into parrots, rabbits into wolves. They would stir chaos and confusion. They would start a fire. They would smoke everyone out and burn it all down.
And from there it all went wrong. Later, the memories would come, as they always had, by strobe light. Flash: the spreading panic that the adults had learned of their plan. Flash: a ruthless stampede, a frantic hunt. Flash: Violet plunging down a deep ravine, her knee a mangled mess, helpless to run away. Jude heard Violet scream her name, a scream so soaked in anguish and despair that Jude still hears it in her dreams.
Flash: King Bash, back in the city, calling Jude into his office, inviting her to sit down across from him and discuss what happened like mature and reasonable adults. She tried not to look at him but his power over her was such that, wordlessly, he directed her eyes to meet his. She could not stop it, and when he smiled at her, understanding and kind, she felt her lips mimic his smile in turn. She was terrified at the idea of banishing him from her life. She was desperate to escape him.
“Jude,” he said. “What happened out there? You know if you ever have a problem, you can come to me. You’ve known this since the first time we met, way back when you were just a kid. You are never alone.”
Her mouth moved, miming her thoughts, but no sound came out. She had so much to say. She had nothing to say.
“You’re upset,” he said. So calm, so smooth, his blond hair so soft and bright, the gold ring twisting and twisting on his finger. “I’m upset, too. We can get through this. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone deserves forgiveness.”
The scab on her wrist itched. She sat on her hand and made herself speak: “I’m sorry, King Bash, I really am. It wasn’t you. It was…”
“What, Jude?” he asked. “What was it?”
She wished Kat were there to finish her sentence.
“Do you have something to confess?” he asked. “Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
His questions gave her the answer she needed. “Yes, it was me. It was all my idea, my planning. I don’t know what got into me. It was just a joke that went too far.”
He nodded, pleased with her honesty. “Did you have any accomplices in this joke?”
“No,” she said. His eyes were so bright, so blue, so terrifying to look at directly, so welcoming if you could get past your fear. “But my sister, Kat, and my friend, Violet, both tried to talk me out of it. They tried to stop the whole thing.”
King Bash nodded. “I understand, and thank you for telling me. They deserve to be rewarded.”
“Yes, yes, they do,” Jude said. Maybe she could squeeze one triumph from this failure.
“Well, Jude, you know how important you are to The Plan, and to me, personally. And I have always encouraged you to challenge the limits of your own power. So today, I’m going to give you the chance to be more powerful than ever before.”
“How?” She leaned forward. She imagined the chance to rewrite the tenets, set new rules, banish the old and elevate the new. “How will I be more powerful?”
He leaned forward, too, clasping his big tan hands on his desk. “One of them, Kat or Violet, will be rewarded for their foresight and loyalty. You get to pick who.”
“May I ask, what is the reward, King Bash?”
“I know all of you have so been looking forward to practicing the tenets at the next level,” he said. “So whomever you choose will graduate early and go right to the Big House, and have more power, too. Isn’t that wonderful?”
Jude understood that it was the exact opposite of wonderful, the very outcome she and Kat and Violet had been trying to avoid, but King Bash seemed genuinely delighted. He reached across the desk and extended his hand. Jude extended a hand, too, the one without the blistering scab, sliding her fingers into his damp palm. He shook it once, firm, and released her.
“Deal,” they said in unison.
In the end, Jude knew that she had no choice at all.