Destination Unknown by Katherine Applegate
Authors: Katherine Applegate
Tags: General, Science-Fiction, Juvenile Fiction, Fantasy & Magic, Science Fiction; Fantasy; & Magic, End of the world, Space Travelers, Space flight
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that’s very understandable. Besides, those are your friends, no?”
2Face suppressed a desire to tell the psychiatrist to take a jump. She’d had to talk to shrinks after she was burned. She had no respect for the profession. But this wasn’t the time for antagonizing anyone. She said, “I don’t think we have the right to just kick people out of the group.”
“Is it about rights?” T.R. asked. He wore a pitying smile. “Perhaps it’s more about an unresolved feeling of guilt? We call it survivor guilt. The feeling that one has sinned merely by the act of surviving when others have died.”
“I’m talking to Ms. Lefkowitz-Blake,” 2Face grated.
“No you’re not,” Yago said flatly. “You’re talking to air.”
D-Caf giggled, then stifled the sound with his hand, looked at Yago for approval, giggled again.
Yago pushed past D-Caf and came right up to 2Face. “And, by the way, I wouldn’t push your luck, wax girl. You and the freak-show Madonna and BabyYikes would maybe fit in better with Jobs and the Monkey boy’s crew, you know what I’m saying? They already have that . . . that whatever he is, that Billy the Weird. You don’t like the way things are, you can go, too. You can hook up with Jobs’s freak show.”
2Face fought to keep from showing the fear she suddenly felt. The threat was clear. Unmistakable. There were two classes of people: the normal and the not. And she was in the latter group.
She faded back from the torches, back from the clique around Wylson. She looked for her father. He was slogging along, head down. He wouldn’t understand. Would he?
2Face stopped and turned to search the darkness for Jobs’s group: If she was going to be exiled, maybe it was better to go voluntarily. She didn’t want to be driven out like a leper.
She saw faint light, maybe the torches of the other group. Maybe not. A mile of darkness separated them. A mile of worms, maybe, and the alien Riders.
Besides, Jobs had asked her to take care of Edward. Where was he, anyway? She had to do that. Had to live up to her responsibilities. She couldn’t run away. Why should she?
She touched her face. The burn had beenhorribly painful. The recovery had taken forever. But she’d understood it as an atonement for her sin. And after a while she’d come to see the disfigurement as a useful device for confronting, shocking, disturbing people.
She had abandoned her birth name, Essence, and taken the name 2Face. She had chosen not to hide her face. She thought of herself as an anthropologist studying the strange, inconsistent, hypocritical reactions of the people she met. Here is ugliness, look at it. Let me see your reaction.
But that was back in the world. That was back in a world where physical ugliness was all-but-erased by cosmetic surgery and DNA manipulation. Her split face, ugly and beautiful, had been a statement. And, she had always known, it was temporary — once the healing was complete the surgeries would begin. Twenty-eight square inches of 2Face’s own skin had already been grown in culture at the hospital, ready for transplantation.
That world was gone. This was a simpler world. A more primitive world. “Unique” was no longer a virtue. Here people were powerless, and being powerless, were afraid.
No. She was not going to be pushed out. She was Essence Hwang. She had a scar. But she was not afreak. Not like Tamara and the baby. They were freaks. If anyone was going to be exiled it would be them, not her.
2Face threaded her way through the tired, footsore, hungry survivors in search of her father. He at least would stand by her. That was one. And Edward. Two. Who else?
CHAPTER TWENTY
“THIS IS AN AWFUL LOT OF TROUBLE FOR OUR ALIENS TO GO TO.”
The sun rose, small, distant, and weak. A winter sun. No longer a Bonnard sun.
Jobs called a halt and laid Billy Weir down. He was getting mightily sick of carrying the boy. They had taken shifts, but there were only the
2Face suppressed a desire to tell the psychiatrist to take a jump. She’d had to talk to shrinks after she was burned. She had no respect for the profession. But this wasn’t the time for antagonizing anyone. She said, “I don’t think we have the right to just kick people out of the group.”
“Is it about rights?” T.R. asked. He wore a pitying smile. “Perhaps it’s more about an unresolved feeling of guilt? We call it survivor guilt. The feeling that one has sinned merely by the act of surviving when others have died.”
“I’m talking to Ms. Lefkowitz-Blake,” 2Face grated.
“No you’re not,” Yago said flatly. “You’re talking to air.”
D-Caf giggled, then stifled the sound with his hand, looked at Yago for approval, giggled again.
Yago pushed past D-Caf and came right up to 2Face. “And, by the way, I wouldn’t push your luck, wax girl. You and the freak-show Madonna and BabyYikes would maybe fit in better with Jobs and the Monkey boy’s crew, you know what I’m saying? They already have that . . . that whatever he is, that Billy the Weird. You don’t like the way things are, you can go, too. You can hook up with Jobs’s freak show.”
2Face fought to keep from showing the fear she suddenly felt. The threat was clear. Unmistakable. There were two classes of people: the normal and the not. And she was in the latter group.
She faded back from the torches, back from the clique around Wylson. She looked for her father. He was slogging along, head down. He wouldn’t understand. Would he?
2Face stopped and turned to search the darkness for Jobs’s group: If she was going to be exiled, maybe it was better to go voluntarily. She didn’t want to be driven out like a leper.
She saw faint light, maybe the torches of the other group. Maybe not. A mile of darkness separated them. A mile of worms, maybe, and the alien Riders.
Besides, Jobs had asked her to take care of Edward. Where was he, anyway? She had to do that. Had to live up to her responsibilities. She couldn’t run away. Why should she?
She touched her face. The burn had beenhorribly painful. The recovery had taken forever. But she’d understood it as an atonement for her sin. And after a while she’d come to see the disfigurement as a useful device for confronting, shocking, disturbing people.
She had abandoned her birth name, Essence, and taken the name 2Face. She had chosen not to hide her face. She thought of herself as an anthropologist studying the strange, inconsistent, hypocritical reactions of the people she met. Here is ugliness, look at it. Let me see your reaction.
But that was back in the world. That was back in a world where physical ugliness was all-but-erased by cosmetic surgery and DNA manipulation. Her split face, ugly and beautiful, had been a statement. And, she had always known, it was temporary — once the healing was complete the surgeries would begin. Twenty-eight square inches of 2Face’s own skin had already been grown in culture at the hospital, ready for transplantation.
That world was gone. This was a simpler world. A more primitive world. “Unique” was no longer a virtue. Here people were powerless, and being powerless, were afraid.
No. She was not going to be pushed out. She was Essence Hwang. She had a scar. But she was not afreak. Not like Tamara and the baby. They were freaks. If anyone was going to be exiled it would be them, not her.
2Face threaded her way through the tired, footsore, hungry survivors in search of her father. He at least would stand by her. That was one. And Edward. Two. Who else?
CHAPTER TWENTY
“THIS IS AN AWFUL LOT OF TROUBLE FOR OUR ALIENS TO GO TO.”
The sun rose, small, distant, and weak. A winter sun. No longer a Bonnard sun.
Jobs called a halt and laid Billy Weir down. He was getting mightily sick of carrying the boy. They had taken shifts, but there were only the
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