Connor should have kept the Juvey-cop’s gun, but he wasn’t thinking. He was so freaked out at having tranq’d a cop with his own weapon, he just dropped it and ran—just as he dropped his backpack on the interstate so he could carry Lev.

Dear god is the plotting shit in this.

This actually might be believable if only I’d seen it happen. Also, if Connor showed real emotions, this sort of thing would work much better. Show the kid staring at the gun in shock, show him dropping it like it’s a live snake, and then it comes off as character and not author laziness. And if he’s dropping his backpack for Lev, by god think of a better reason for him to be grabbing Lev and also have it not have the whole thing apparently taking place in two seconds.

Anyway, the backpack thing is a particular problem because his wallet was in there. That’s a dumb move, he really should have had it in his pocket, but it’s a far more understandable error.

It’s late now—or, more accurately, early—almost dawn. He and Risa had kept moving through the woods all day, as best they could with Connor having to carry an unconscious tithe. Once night fell, he and Risa had taken turns keeping watch while the other slept.

When did they have the time to get nuts and berries?

Also, the longer a tranquilizer keeps you out, the more likely it’ll accidentally kill you. Overdosing on something that wears out quickly isn’t too big of a deal, your system might be able to deal with the strain long enough to make it out the other end. Something that lasts this long, though? You can’t just shoot a random person with it and expect them to be okay, especially not when your potential targets range from a burly near eighteen year old and a stunted just-turned-thirteen kid.

(I’m also dubious they’d manage to carry Lev while hiking. Connor hasn’t done anything  to establish he’s unusually athletic and Risa lived in a confined area while studying piano, which really doesn’t lend itself to lots of muscle.)

Connor knows that Lev can’t be trusted, that’s why Connor tied him to the tree—but there’s no reason to trust this girl who had come running out of a bus either.

Yes there is. Aside from the fact she has no reason to lie and wouldn’t have run away just on the off chance he happened to run after her as some insane plan to catch him, there’s the fact that if she was going to betray him she’d have done it when he attacked the cop.

Connor thinks about how now they’ll be on wanted posters as “extremely dangerous”. Bullshit, they’ll just be on posters as runaway unwinds.

Funny how Connor had wasted so much time in school trying to convince people he was dangerous, but when it came down to it, he was never sure if he was all that dangerous at all.

We are never going to get any coherent explanation about what Connor actually did to be considered a delinquent, are we?

Lev warns Connor that his bite will get infected. Lev! You know things! I like you more and more.

Lev continues to study him. “Why are you being unwound?”

And now you’re asking the question I keep complaining about! Best character.

Connor just dodges it to say that he’s not getting unwound anymore, and Lev points out that he totally still will if he gets caught.

“So, what’s it like,” Connor asks, “knowing all your life you’re going to be sacrificed?”

So now Connor does seem to know about how tithing works. He just doesn’t recognize the established tithing clothing.

Lev says it’s great to know your purpose.

Connor’s not sure if that was intentionally meant to make him squirm—as if his life has no purpose. It makes him feel like he’s the one tied to a tree, not Lev.

Connor is king of melodrama.

Anyway, made uncomfortable by this he dodges to another subject:

“I guess it could be worse,” says Connor. “We could have all ended up like Humphrey Dunfee.”
Lev seems surprised by the mention of the name. “You know that story? I thought they only told it in my neighborhood.”
“Nah,” says Connor. “Kids tell it everywhere.”
“It’s made up,” says Risa, having just woken up.

They don’t then go into the story, although they do hint pretty heavily.

Connor says it’s totally real because there was this one time a friend and I tried to find out about it while surfing one of the school’s computers. We hit this one website that talked about it, and how his parents went all psycho.

Why were they doing this on school computers? This is the future, right? Don’t you have computers at home too?

Anyway, as soon as they found it they were hit by a super virus that destroyed all the computers in the network.

Coincidence? I don’t think so.”

Well yes, obviously the site had a virus on it. But that doesn’t actually prove anything further. It could be the government going after anyone who looks at those sites, or it could be someone’s idea of a prank. And let’s face it, if this was supposed to be suppressed, it’s a lot more useful to catch the people looking at it than wipe out a lot of computers.

Risa gives no fucks either way. I’ll never end up like Humphrey Dunfee, because you have to have parents for them to go psycho—and I don’t.”

So yeah, although the details aren’t explained it seems the parents went nuts. Also, it just irritates me that the kid’s name is Humpty Dumpty. Maybe the parents tried to recollect all the organs so they could put him together again. Although that doesn’t really fit the idea what whatever it was, it was worse than just getting unwound.

Risa then suggests changing their direction, which seems dumb – does anyone even know which way they’re going at this point? Switching directions just means they cover less distance in the same time. I’d be more concerned about getting tracked by dogs or something.

But then she suggests changing their appearance, so I guess she’s okay at this. She considers dressing like a boy.

Connor takes a good look at her and smiles. Risa’s pretty. Not in the way Ariana was pretty—in a better way. Ariana’s prettiness was all about makeup and pigment injections and stuff. Risa has a natural kind of beauty.

Fuck you and fuck this book.

Without thinking, Connor reaches out to touch her hair, and gently says, “I don’t think you could ever pass for a guy—”
Then suddenly, he finds his hand tugged behind him, his whole body spins around, and she painfully wrenches his arm up the small of his back. It hurts so much, he can’t even say “Ouch.” All he can say is, “Eh-eh-eh!”
“Touch me again and your arm gets ripped off,” Risa tells him. “Got that?”

This is because Risa is damaged goods and not because fuck you Connor you creep, but still, at least she does it.

Over at the oak tree, Lev laughs, apparently pleased to see Connor in pain.

Book, the harder you try the less I go along with it. Plenty of people would have laughed at this without it being because of sadistic glee.

Connor’s all :( because he wasn’t gonna hurt her and Risa says well now he definitely didn’t hurt her, but she sounds guilty and like I said, it’s a flaw. And Connor’s all understanding:

He knows about StaHo kids. They have to learn to take care of themselves real young, or their lives are not very pleasant. He should have realized she was a touch-me-not.

Because otherwise stroking the hair of a girl you just met to tell her she’s way too pretty to be a guy is a great idea. Especially when you’re isolated in the middle of nowhere. Only damaged kids would ever be touchy about that.

There also appears to be no real thought to how the state home kids’ lives are. Kids raised in bad environments don’t perform well and tend to grow up into troubled or outright criminal adults. And performance is certainly something the places are concerned about, so from the sounds of it, they should be culling way more of their kids in order to focus resources on the remaining ones.

“Excuse me,” says Lev, “but we can’t go anywhere if I’m tied to a tree.”
Still, Connor doesn’t like that judgmental look in Lev’s eyes. “How do we know you won’t run?”
“You don’t, but until you untie me, I’m a hostage,” Lev says. “Once I’m free, I’m a fugitive, like you. Tied up, I’m the enemy. Cut loose, I’m a friend.”

Okay, look, if he wants to run, let him. The most he can do is point in the direction he thinks you went, and that’s not going to be much use after he’s been running around in the woods too. If anything, he’ll be a distraction because the cops will probably be suspicious he might run off and they’d deliver him first. If you’re really worried, feed him false information about how you will/won’t be leaving the forest.

Also, this is just terrible. Lev is supposed to be thirteen. This isn’t how thirteen year olds talk. I could believe someone that age would express this basic sentiment, but it just won’t be set up in this sort of way. This is how adults frame their arguments.

Risa points out they’ll have to untie him unless they leave him, and I’m not sure she understands that leaving someone tied up in the middle of the forest is may well amount to outright killing them, because she seems to view it as an actual possibility. Untied, he doesn’t run away, and Connor, being stupid, thinks that since the kid doesn’t instantly run away he must have realized they’re right, as opposed to just understanding that he’ll be grabbed again if he runs.

Next chapter switches to Risa’s POV.

Risa finds herself unsettled by the food wrappers and broken bits of plastic they start coming across in the woods, because the first sign of civilization is always trash. Civilization means people who could recognize them if their faces have been smeared on the newsnet.

Risa, you sound smart. Book, you confuse me. Newsnet is one of those ubiquitous scifi terms. When is this set? What’s the society actually look like? How plugged in are people?

She feels ambivalent about it – she knows people are a danger to them now, but they’re going to need people because they need stuff, and people have stuff.

It’s not just trash now, but the mossy remnants of a knee-high stone wall, and the rusty remains of an old electrical tower from the days when electricity was transmitted by wires.

ACTUAL WORLDBUILDING THANK YOU

But come on, Risa, a stone wall? That doesn’t mean you’re going toward civilized areas. I’m still unclear on where this is taking place as well as when, but in a lot of America, stone walls have been there for a long, long time. Especially if you’re calling them “remnants” because I’ve stumbled over those in woods all the time and let me tell you, those things last a surprisingly long time.

Now, if she was saying say, a brick wall or something, maybe one of those shitty “rock walls” that are half concrete, that’d be a lot more modern, but when I think knee-high stone wall, I picture those things that are just a line of rocks piled on each other.

Anyway. Connor doesn’t agree with Risa:

“We don’t need anyone. We’ll take what we need.”

Then you do need people! Stealing from people is still needing people!

While I am still not in favor of actually murdering Connor, he sure is the littlest libertarian here.

Risa doesn’t think stealing is the best idea anyway. Connor is baffled by this. How could committing crimes when they’re trying not to be noticed go wrong????????

But before Risa can really get into this, she realizes this is a great chance to test Lev!

If he’s going to run, thinks Risa, now’s the time for him to do it, while Connor and I are busy fighting. And then it occurs to her that this is an excellent opportunity to test Lev, and see if he really is standing by them now, or biding his time until he can escape.

For god’s sake, just let the poor kid go. They don’t even seem to have any attachment to him. I regularly feel obligated to help things that don’t like me, but I just accept they don’t like me and try to work around that.

Anyway, so she decides to keep arguing with Connor.

Connor moves closer until he’s deeper into her airspace than she likes anyone to get. “If it wasn’t for me you’d be on your way to harvest camp!” he says. Risa raises a hand to push him back, but his hand shoots up faster, and he grabs her wrist before she can shove him.

Connor is really grabby. I think it’s just how condescending he is each time that’s bugging me. He grabs someone to make them listen to them and prevent them from moving away. Note she wasn’t going to slap him or anything else he needed to defend himself from, she was going to push him away.

Anyway, Risa panics and freezes up, thinking that all she knows about the kid is he’s another unwind and who knows what he did.

Risa is careful not to struggle because struggling gives him the advantage.

This is just really dismal. The book is trying to make it into something where Risa has issues so she’s reacting badly to totally innocent boy, but she’s facing an angry sixteen year old boy who’s in her personal space and grabbed her when she tried to push him away.

She lets her tone of voice convey all the weight. “Let go of me.”
“Why? Exactly what do you think I’ll do to you?”

You know, of the many things I was expecting to hate in this book, this one wasn’t even on the list. Fuck you, book.

“This is the second time you’ve touched me without permission,” Risa says.

Third, Risa. First time was when he grabbed you to tell you to try out escaping together.

she does notice his grip isn’t all that threatening. It isn’t tight, it’s loose. It isn’t rough, it’s gentle. She could easily pull out of it with a simple flick of her wrist. So why doesn’t she?

Ick ick ick. Then she thinks that maybe he’s doing it to show he won’t hurt her, because respecting her feelings obviously isn’t good enough to get that message across.

The correct response here, the thing that would make it what the book’s trying to present, is for her to actually pull loose and for him to let her. A hold being loose when you’re not struggling doesn’t mean anything. Grabbing her wrist but letting her pull back would show that he just didn’t want her shoving him.

Well, it doesn’t matter, thinks Risa. Even a gentle violation is a violation.

Thank you, Risa, that makes up for it a bit. But then instead of kneeing him in the groin she thinks she could kick him in the knee and shatter that, and then decides to not to anything but just threaten she totally could take him down if she did anything which apparently she will not.

“I know.”
Somehow he also knows that she won’t do it—that the first time was just a reflex. If she were to hurt him a second time, though, it would be a conscious act. It would be by choice.

It would be a perfectly valid choice because she has already used her words to tell him to stop touching her. First he invaded her space, then he prevented her from pushing him out of it, then he demanded she give a good reason why he needed to let go of her, then he ignored her saying he was touching her without permission.

“Step off,” she says. Her voice now lacks the force it had only moments before.

And he listens now that she’s not being assertive, because that sure is the greatest moral.

They both could have hurt one another, but neither of them did.

Yes, but for one of you, it would’ve been self-defense.

Anyway Risa just quietly goes HOW DO U EMOTIONS because she feels angry but she doesn’t understand whyyyyyy. Because he’s a fucking asshole trying to nice guy it up, Risa.

In all this she’s totally forgotten about Lev, who speaks up now to say that fighting isn’t helping anything.

They get back to traveling but when Lev leaves to go pee, Connor reveals he was totally in on the plan.

Connor leans closer and whispers, “The argument. You put it on to see if Lev would run when we weren’t paying attention, right?”
Risa is bowled over. “You knew that?”
Connor looks at her, a bit amused. “Well . . . yeah.”

And yet, instead of keeping the argument to words or letting her shove him and maybe shove her back, he immediately gets close to her and traps her. It would have been very easy to keep things comfortable, he chose to do things in the way that showed how much power he had over her instead, zeroing in on the one thing he just said he understood was a big issue for her.

“So . . . everything that happened back there was all a show?”
Now it’s Connor’s turn to be unsure. “I guess. Sort of. Wasn’t it?”
Risa has to hold back a smile. Suddenly she’s feeling strangely at ease with Connor. She marvels at how that could be. If their argument had been entirely real, she’d be on her guard against him. If it had been entirely a show she’d be on guard too, because if he could lie so convincingly, she’d never be able to trust him. But this was a mixture of both. It was real, it was pretend, and that combination made it all right—it made it safe, like performing death-defying acrobatic tricks above a safety net.

I think I can see what this is saying, that it’s sort of playacting through something serious, and that she’s glad to have gotten through something that could have been violent safely, but it really just doesn’t work for me. I just don’t see why the argument didn’t just involve yelling. That seems it’d fit all this so much better, and it’d have done more to shown Connor isn’t a danger if he kept his hands to himself even when upset. It’d have been a defining of limits then – she’s relieved it was playacting and that Connor isn’t going to throw a tantrum about every disagreement, but also relieved that boundaries exist and Connor isn’t going to grab her in a fight.

Overall, Connor is just giving off a background hum of worrying entitlement. He’s taking every excuse to touch her when the two barely know each other. She’s said (and he’s even acknowledged) that she doesn’t like to be touched. But she doesn’t get to decide that. He decides the rules are that you can touch people and they can’t complain unless you’re hurting them. And then by proving he could grab and hurt her, but not doing so, he proves she shouldn’t object to it because he’s such a nice guy there’s nothing to object to.

The worst part is this is one of the rare things in the book that does seem real. He can’t see that there could be any problem with a sixteen year old boy getting physical while yelling at a younger girl, because he knew he didn’t intend to harm her. He’s able to understand she views things differently, but he just thinks she’s wrong to feel that way so he can ignore it.

It’s interesting to compare this to Wither. In Wither, I was horrified by her refusal to acknowledge rape, but the author was quite aware that sex doesn’t need to be consensual. The threat of sexual violence is everywhere in that book, it’s just treated as how things work. Similarly, rape doesn’t seem to exist here, but here the author has the more male viewpoint – the idea someone could feel threatened at all isn’t factored in. Risa is not reacting understandably but because she’s got issues with getting touched. It’s the idea he has to actually hurt her first, or else it’s not fair to be nervous around him. And, of course, the fact he’s sending up flags about exactly that doesn’t count either, because a stranger saying you’re pretty and touching your face is a compliment, can’t you take a compliment? It’s the attitude you can’t be concerned unless you’re cornered in a dark alley, the guy has just pulled out a knife, and he’s explicitly saying he’s going to rape you now.