"Why? So they can imprint on me like ducklings?"

Cavenaugh exhales in mild exasperation. "Hardly. To the best of their knowledge, you are the only one who escaped being t.i.thed. You don't realize the visceral effect your presence has on another child slated for that same fate."

Lev is directed to the ballroom, which remains in a sorry state and is probably beyond salvation. He is sure there is some researched psychological reason for greeting the kids here, but he doesn't really want to ask.

When he gets there, the two new arrivals are already there. A boy and a girl. They've been tied to chairs and blindfolded, making it clear what Cavenaugh means by "unveiling." The man is way too theatrical.

The boy sobs, and the girl tries to calm him. "It's all right, Timothy," she says. "Whatever's going on, it's going to be okay."

Lev sits across from them, feeling awkward and frightened by their fear. He knows he needs to put forth confidence and comfort, but facing a pair of terrified kidnap victims is different from facing adoring ex-t.i.thes.

Cavenaugh is not present, but two adults in his employ stand at the ready. Lev swallows and tries to keep his hands from shaking by gripping the arms of his chair. "Okay, you can take off their blindfolds."

The boy's eyes are red from crying. The girl is already looking around, surveying the situation.

"I'm really sorry we had to do it this way," Lev says. "We couldn't risk you getting hurt, or figuring out where you were being taken. It was the only way to safely rescue you."

"Rescue us?" says the girl. "Is that what you call this?"

Lev tries to deflect the accusation in her voice, but can't. He forces himself to hold eye contact the way Cavenaugh does, hoping he can sell it as confidence.

"Well, it might not feel that way at the moment, but yeah, that's exactly what we've done."

The girl scowls in absolute defiance, but the boy gasps, and his wet eyes go wide.

"You're him! You're that t.i.the who became a clapper! You're Levi Calder!"

Lev offers a slim, apologetic smile, not even bothering to correct the last name. "Yes, but my friends call me Lev."

"I'm Timothy!" the boy volunteers. "Timothy Taylor Vance! Her name is Muh-Muh-I can't quite remember, but it starts with an M, right?"

"My name is my business and will stay my business," she says.

Lev looks at the little cheat sheet he'd been given. "Your name is Miracolina Roselli. It's a pleasure to meet you, Miracolina. Do you go by Mira?"

Her continuing glare makes it clear that she doesn't. "All right, Miracolina then."

"What gives you the right?" she says. It's almost a growl.

Lev forces eye contact again. She knows who he is, but she hates him. Despises him even. He's seen that look before, but it surprises him to see it here.

"Maybe you didn't hear me," Lev says, getting a little bit angry. "We just saved you."

"By whose definition of 'save'?"

And for an instant, just an instant, he sees himself through this girl's eyes, and he doesn't like what he sees.

"I'm glad you're both here," he says, trying to hide the quaver in his voice. "We'll talk again." Then he signals for the adults to take the kids away.

Lev sits there in the ballroom alone for a good ten minutes. There is something about Miracolina's behavior that feels disturbingly familiar. He tries to think back to when Connor pulled him from his limo on his own t.i.thing day. Was he that belligerent? That uncooperative? There is so much from that day that he's blocked out. At what point did he begin to realize that Connor wasn't the enemy?

He will win her over. He has to. All the ex-t.i.thes have been turned eventually. Un-brainwashed. Deprogrammed.

But what if this girl is the exception? What then? Suddenly this whole rescue operation, which had felt like a grand and glorious idea, feels very small. And very personal.

24 * Miracolina

Born to save her brother's life and to be gifted back to G.o.d, Miracolina will not stand for this violation-the corruption of her sacred destiny into the profane life of a fugitive. Even her own parents became weak at the end, willing to break their pact with G.o.d and save her from her t.i.thing. Would this please them, she wonders, for her to be captured and forced to live whole? Denied the holy mystery of the divided state?

Not only must she suffer this indignation, but she must suffer it at the hands of the boy she practically considers to be Satan incarnate. Miracolina is not a girl given to hatred and unfair judgment-but to be faced with this boy proves she is not nearly as tolerant as she had thought.

Perhaps that's why I have been put on this path, she thinks, to humble me and make me realize that I can be a hater, just like anyone else.

On that first day, they try to trick her by putting her in a comfortable bedroom in much better condition than most of the mansion. "You can rest here until the last effects of the tranqs wear off," says a plump, kindly woman, who also brings her a meal of corned beef and cabbage, with a tall, heady gla.s.s of root beer.

"Saint Patrick's Day, don'tcha know," she says. "Eat up, dearie. There's more if you want seconds." It's a blatant attempt to win her over. She eats, but refuses to enjoy it.

There are videos and books in her room to entertain her, but Miracolina has to laugh, because just as the harvest camp van had only happy, family-friendly movies, the t.i.tles she has to choose from here have a clear agenda as well. They're all about kids being mistreated, but rising above it, or kids empowering themselves in a world that doesn't understand them. Everything from d.i.c.kens to Salinger-as if Miracolina Roselli could possibly have anything in common with Holden Caulfield.

There are also drawers filled with clothes in bright colors-all her size, and she shudders to think that they took her measurements and prepared a wardrobe while she was unconscious. Her t.i.thing whites have become dirty, but she won't give them the satisfaction of changing out of them.

Finally a bald middle-aged man comes in with a clipboard and a name tag that just says BOB.

"I used to be a respected psychiatrist until I spoke out against unwinding," Bob tells her after the obligatory introductions. "Being ostracized was a blessing in disguise, though, because it allowed me to come here, where I'm truly needed."

Miracolina keeps her arms folded, giving him nothing. She knows what this is all about. They call it "deprogramming," which is a polite term for undoing brainwashing with more brainwashing.

"You used to be respected, which means you're not anymore," she tells him, "and I don't have respect for you either."

After a brief psych evaluation, which she refuses to take seriously, Bob sighs and clicks his pen closed. "I think you'll find," he says, "that our concern for you is genuine, and we want you to truly blossom."

"I'm not a potted plant," she tells him, and hurls her gla.s.s of flat root beer at the door as it closes behind him.

She quickly discovers that her door is not locked. Another trick? She goes out to explore the halls of the mansion. She can't deny that even in her anger at having been abducted, she's curious about what goes on here. How many other kids have been torn from their t.i.thing? How many captors are there? What are her chances of escape?

It turns out there are tons of other kids. They hang out in dorm rooms or public areas. They work to repair the unrepairable damage and rot around the mansion, and they have cla.s.ses taught by other Bob-like people.

She wanders into a social area with a sagging floor and a pool table propped up with wood to keep it level. One girl glances at her, singling her out, and approaches. Her name tag says jackie.

"You must be Miracolina," Jackie says, grabbing her hand to shake, since Miracolina won't extend it. "I know it's a tough adjustment, but I think we're going to be great friends." Jackie has the look of a t.i.the, as do all the other kids here. A certain cleanness and elevation above worldly things. Even though no one wears a st.i.tch of white, they can't hide what they once were.

"Are you a.s.signed to me?" Miracolina asks.

Jackie shrugs apologetically. "Yeah, kind of."

"Thanks for being honest, but I don't like you, and I don't want to be your friend."

Jackie, who is not a formerly respected psychiatrist, but just an ordinary thirteen-year-old girl, is clearly hurt by her words, and Miracolina immediately regrets them. She must not allow herself to become callous and jaded. She must rise above this.

"I'm sorry. It's not you I don't like, it's what they're making you do. If you want to be my friend, try again when I'm not your a.s.signment."

"Okay, fair enough," Jackie says. "But friends or not, I'm supposed to help you get with the program, whether you like it or not."

An understanding reached, Jackie returns to her friends but keeps an eye on Miracolina as long as she's in the room.

Timothy, the boy she was kidnapped with, is in the room as well, with a former t.i.the who was apparently a.s.signed to him. The two talk like they're already great friends. Clearly Timothy has "gotten with the program," and since he was not too keen on being unwound anyway, all it took to deprogram him was a change of clothes.

"How could you be so . . . so shallow?" she says to him, when she catches him alone later in the day.

"If that's what you want to call it," he says, all smiles, like he's just been given a new puppy. "But if it's shallow to want a life, then heck, I'm a wading pool!"

Deprogramming! It's enough to make her sick. She despises Timothy and wonders how anyone's lifelong faith could be traded for corned beef and cabbage.

Jackie seeks her out later in the day-after Miracolina has determined that her "freedom" ends at a locked door, which keeps all the ex-t.i.thes in a single wing of the mansion. "The rest is still uninhabitable," Jackie tells her. "That's why we're only allowed in the north wing."

Jackie explains that their days are spent in cla.s.ses designed to help them to adjust.

"What happens to the kids who fail?" Miracolina asks with a smirk.

Jackie says nothing-just looks at her like it's a concept she hasn't considered.

Within a few days, Miracolina has all she can stand of the cla.s.ses. The mornings begin with a long emotional group therapy where at least one person bursts into tears and is applauded by the others for doing so. Miracolina usually says nothing, because defending t.i.thing is frowned on by the faculty.

"You have a right to your opinion," they all say if she ever speaks out against their deprogramming. "But we're hoping you will eventually see otherwise." Which means she really doesn't have a right to an opinion.

There's a cla.s.s in modern history-something few schools actually teach. It includes the Heartland War, the Unwind Accord, and everything surrounding them, right up to the current day. There are discussions about the splinter groups within many major religions that took upon themselves the act of human t.i.thing, becoming socially sanctioned "t.i.thing cults."

"These weren't gra.s.sroots movements," the teacher tells them. "It began with wealthy families-executives and stockholders in major corporations-as a way of setting an example for the ma.s.ses, because if even the rich approve of unwinding, then everyone should. The t.i.thing cults were part of a calculated plan to root unwinding in the national psyche."

Miracolina can't keep herself from raising her hand. "Excuse me," she tells the instructor, "but I'm Catholic and don't belong to a t.i.thing cult. So how do you account for me?"

She thought the teacher might say, You're the exception that proves the rule, or something equally insipid, but she doesn't. Instead she only says, "Hmm, that's interesting. I bet Lev would love to talk to you about that."

To Miracolina, that's the worst threat the teacher could make, and she knows it. It keeps Miracolina quiet. Even so, her resistance to the resistance is well known in the mansion, and she is called in for an unwanted audience with the boy who didn't detonate.

It happens on Monday morning. She's pulled out of her intolerable therapy group and taken to a section of the mansion she hasn't seen before-escorted by not one, but two resistance workers. Although she can't be sure, she suspects at least one of them is armed. They take her to a plant-filled arboretum, all curved gla.s.s and sunshine, kept heated and restored to its former glory. In the center is a mahogany table and two chairs. He's already there, sitting in one of the chairs, the boy at the center of this bizarre hero worship. She sits across from him and waits for him to speak first. Even before he speaks, she can tell he's genuinely interested in her: the only square peg in the whole mansion who can't be whittled round.

"So what's up with you?" he says after studying her for a few moments. She's offended by the informality of the question-as if her whole stance on everything occurring in this place is a matter of "something being up." Well, today she'll make it clear to him that her defiance is more than just att.i.tude.

"Are you actually interested in me, clapper, or am I just the bug you can't squash beneath your iron boot?"

He laughs at that. "Iron boot-that's a good one." He lifts his foot to show her the sole of his Nike. "I'll admit there may be some stomped spiders between the treads, but that's about it."

"If you're going to give me the third degree," she tells him, "let's get it over with. Best to withhold food or water; water is probably best. I'll get thirsty before I get hungry."

He shakes his head in disbelief. "Do you really think I'm like that? Why would you think that?"

"I was taken by force, and you're keeping me here against my will," she says, leaning across the table toward him. She considers spitting in his face, but decides to save that gesture as punctuation for a more appropriate moment. "Imprisonment is still imprisonment, no matter how many layers of cotton you wrap it in." That makes him lean farther away, and she knows she's pushed a b.u.t.ton. She remembers seeing those pictures of him back when he was all over the news, wrapped in cotton and kept in a bombproof cell.

"I really don't get you," he says, a bit of anger in his voice this time. "We saved your life. You could at least be a little grateful."

"You have robbed me, and everyone here, of their purpose. That's not salvation, that's d.a.m.nation."

"I'm sorry you feel that way."

Now it's her turn to get angry. "Yes, you're sorry I feel that way, everyone's sorry I feel that way. Are you going to keep this up until I don't feel that way anymore?"

He stands up suddenly, pushing his chair back, and paces, fern leaves brushing his clothes. She knows she's gotten to him. He seems like he's about to storm out, but instead takes a deep breath and turns back to her.

"I know what you're going through," he says. "I was brainwashed by my family to actually want to be unwound-and not just by my family, but by my friends, my church, everyone I looked up to. The only voice who spoke sense was my brother Marcus, but I was too blind to hear him until the day I got kidnapped."

"You mean see," she says, putting a nice speed b.u.mp in his way.

"Huh?"

"Too blind to see him, too deaf to hear him. Get your senses straight. Or maybe you can't, because you're senseless."

He smiles. "You're good."

"And anyway, I don't need to hear your life story. I already know it. You got caught in a freeway pileup, and the Akron AWOL used you as a human shield-very n.o.ble. Then he turned you, like cheese gone bad."

"He didn't turn me. It was getting away from my t.i.thing, and seeing unwinding for what it is. That's what turned me."

"Because being a murderer is better than being a t.i.the, isn't that right, clapper?"

He sits back down again, calmer, and it frustrates her that he is becoming immune to her snipes.

"When you live a life without questions, you're unprepared for the questions when they come," he says. "You get angry and you totally lack the skills to deal with the anger. So yes, I became a clapper, but only because I was too innocent to know how guilty I was becoming."

There is an intensity about him now, and a moistness to his eyes. Miracolina can tell that he is sincere, and that this is not just a show for her. Maybe he's even saying more than he meant to say. She begins to wonder if she has misjudged him, and then gets angry at herself for wondering such a thing.

"You think I'm like you, but I'm not," Miracolina says. "I'm not part of a religious order that t.i.thes. My parents did it in spite of our beliefs, not because of it."

"But you were still raised to believe it was your purpose, weren't you?"

"My purpose was to save my brother's life by being a marrow donor, so my purpose was served before I was six months old."