The Always War Read Online Free PDF Page A

She wanted them to hurt like she did.
    But of course there wasn’t even a wisp of the spiderweb left. And of course it had never been anything but another illusion. It had been so beautiful—and yet the spider had built it solely to trap and kill.
    Like Gideon looks so handsome, so perfect, so heroic, but all he did was kill….
    The two boys looked up at Tessa. They were little, only five or six or seven or eight. But their eyes held no innocence. They were already filled with hate and anger, greed and fear.
    Tessa began hitting them.
    “Stop it!” she screamed at them, pounding her fists against their backs, their shoulders, their arms. “You’re already ruined! You already ruin things!”
    The boys fought back, their fists small but well aimed.
    “Help us!” they called to the other boys standing around. “Attack!”
    And then there was a whole pack beating up Tessa. She scrambled away, leaving behind a hank of her hair in somebody’s hand. She could escape from children. But she couldn’t escape the new images crowding her mind: the beautiful spider-web falling, beauty itself revealed as a fake, Tessa’s own fists beating up little children….
    She ran until she found herself back in her own room, onthe bare bed frame, sobbing into the wall. She started to move away, then changed her mind. She wanted Gideon to hear her crying. She wanted him to know the pain he’d caused, the misery.
    But he’d killed one thousand, six hundred and thirty-two people.
    Why would he care about one meaningless girl’s broken heart?

CHAPTER
7
    Sunday was dark, rainy, and hopeless. Tessa did her best to sleep through as much of it as she could.
    Oh, Mom, Dad, is this how you’ve always felt? Ever since you gave up?
She wondered if she’d been too hard on them all along.
What made you give up in the first place? Did you ever see what I saw, people dying in the war? Did you ever know anyone like Gideon?
    She didn’t bother standing up, walking into her parents’ room, asking the questions out loud.
    Even if her parents answered her, how would that make any difference?
    Monday morning Tessa had to go off to school. She banged around in her room getting ready, slamming drawers and doors and making as much noise as she could.
    Why should Gideon get to sleep late and relax all day?
she thought bitterly.
He’s not a hero. He’s a killer. He said so himself. I saw what he did. He should be in prison.
    There was an uncomfortable echo to that thought:
And what about me? What do I deserve for beating up children? What if I’m every bit as evil as he is, and always have been—I just never got a chance to drop any bombs?
    At school, kids stabbed pencils in other kids’ backs and tripped people and started fights in the school cafeteria. It was a school day like any other, but somehow even the pettiest cruelty felt unbearable to Tessa. Cordina Kurdle snapped a rubber band at Tessa’s arm, and it was all Tessa could do to keep from bursting into tears. Cordina’s henchmen, seeing this weakness, went for an all-out assault of pinches and shoves and jabs every time the teacher looked away.
    Tessa finally let the tears out after school, as she hunched over, scrubbing floors at the hospital. Sometimes in the past she’d found ways to make her job almost enjoyable—competing to scrub an entire room as fast as she could, or creating designs on the floor in water and suds. But today it was all she could do just to slide her cleaning rag back and forth across the dingy concrete. Tear-blinded, she reached for her bucket. Her hand struck too low and knocked the whole thing over. The gray, slimy water spilled across the floor she’d just cleaned.
    “Clean it up!” the supervisor commanded. “Scrub everything all over again! And I’m docking your pay!”
    Either the supervisor didn’t notice that Tessa was crying, or—more likely—he didn’t care.
    Not fair,
Tessa thought, after everyone else was gone and it was just her and her