The Other Side of the Fence

FICTION

by Kyra Perles

You love the Chorda, and the Chorda loves you.

You have been told, countless times, that this is how it has always been. That from the time you were a wiggling infant, crying and wailing about the hospital room, you have been favored by It. The Chorda whispers to you in a way that, according to your mother, It does not whisper to everybody. This is how you find out about the Them.

“I don’t understand,” you said when you were no older than six. You’d been playing with Charlie, a girl in your class who lived two houses down the street and liked to wear her hair in braids that swung back and forth when she ran or skipped. Charlie had clutched her doll to her chest and giggled that the two of you should kiss because she saw her parents do it last night– only not on the mouth– and it looked silly and stupid and you should try it. The Chorda protested, a clanging rattle in your brain that hurt. It had never hurt like that before, and you asked It to stop. It murmured that It would stop when you made the right choice. You told Charlie the same thing.

Charlie got angry, then. She flung herself to the ground, threw her hands over her ears, and screamed– a loud, awful noise that you decided you absolutely hated.

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” she cried, writhing in the grass, and you had the strange impression that she wasn’t talking to you. Confused and a little frightened, you tried to reach for her but the Chorda stopped you.

Wait, It whispered. Watch.

You waited. A cold, frightened weight settled in your chest as Charlie ran home, and you were equally as upset as you were bewildered– you had wanted to play.

Charlie isn’t in school the next day, or the day after that. You find this strange, but when you tell your mother she doesn’t seem very surprised.

“Charlie is one of the Them,” she says simply. You have never heard this term before. The way she says it makes it sound like the kind of thing adults whisper about that you aren’t supposed to know yet, so you are surprised when she continues.

You learn that you are one of the Praeditus– you try several times to pronounce this word, but you can’t seem to get it right. Your mother quickly runs out of patience and moves on, explaining that you listen to the Chorda when It tells you what to do. You do not go mad when It speaks (and you can’t help but think of Charlie squirming and shrieking in the backyard). You learn that not everyone is this way, that some people do not love the Chorda and are not loved by It in return. Some try to ignore the Chorda. Some even try to defy It. The Chorda doesn’t like that.

“The Them are sent… away,” your mother explains, a note of disgust in her voice and another note of what sounds almost happy. Like pride, only you know it can’t be because the Chorda says you are not supposed to feel proud. “To the other side of the fence.”

You ask, “Fence?”

“It separates the Praeditus from the Them.”

“Oh,” you say. “When do they come back?” Charlie abandoned her doll when she ran away, and you still have it. You think you should give it back.

“They don’t.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

The next day, you ring the doorbell of Charlie’s family’s house, leave the doll there, and run before they can come to the door. The Chorda seems uneasy about this, and a spike of fear shoots through you as you remember how badly It made you hurt just before Charlie disappeared, but a pleased warmth settles in your head once you quickly apologize. It likes when you apologize.

Ten years pass, and the Chorda still loves you. You must love it, too, but occasionally you find yourself grumbling at Its instructions. It still forgives you when you are sorry.

Sometimes you wonder if the Chorda wants you to feel guilty; It does not seem to like it when you have these thoughts, and often sends you a headache to keep you from breaching the topic. It does not respond when you ask It, but you try nonetheless. Everyone says that the Chorda loves you– and that you love It– so you assume that the two of you are friends. You think that friends would answer one another if they had a question, but you’re not quite sure, and anyway– you do not voice these thoughts out loud.

You haven’t forgotten Charlie– her braids or what her doll looked like deserted in the yard. She was the first in your school to disappear, but far from the last. After Mateo’s loud jokes and obnoxious laughter are absent from school one day (Mateo’s family was loved by the Chorda, they’d always been loved by It, and your throat seizes with fear), your peers begin to talk about the Them. Really talk, for the first time you can recall in the decade you’ve known each other.

“I saw the fence once,” Tamara says gravely.

Lydia rolls her eyes. “You did not.”

“I did!” Tamara insists. She shivers. “I even saw one behind the gate, but the Chorda wanted me out and I left.”

You can’t help the way your back straightens, and before you can stop yourself you blurt, “You’ve seen the fence? Where?”

The others stare at you. Some furrow their brows and tense their jaws, gripping their pencils just the slightest bit tighter. A few exchange glances too quickly for you to know if you’d imagined the anxiety in their wide eyes. Surrounding students strain forward in Tamara’s direction, the sideways jerks of their necks not quite subtle enough to cloak their interest. Tamara blushes under the attention, and you think she’s about to reply when a low rumble settles in your head, and it must settle in your friends’ heads, too, because suddenly their faces are slack with fear– some look mildly sick– and you all hurry back to your desks. Unspoken, you all think you’re supposed to forget you had this conversation.

You cannot forget. No amount of medication has stopped the roaring headache in your brain, but you’ve searched anyway, knowing that you’ll never sleep until you do. You find the fence on your third day of trying, after exploring every square inch of town and all the unclaimed territory near the woods that you ever remember seeing on old maps or textbooks. Secretly and however unlikely it may be, you wonder if you’ll see Charlie. Or Mateo, or Leah, or Ismene, or any of the other faces you can recollect in varying detail who weren’t there to raise their hand or offer you a piece of gum one day. You don’t know what you would say to them if you do. You don’t even know if you’d prefer for someone to be behind the gate or for no one to be there at all.

Stop, whispers a voice you know isn’t yours. You absentmindedly push it away.

It comes again: Stop!, and the urgency is almost enough to make you turn back. You have not heard the Chorda scold you like that– like the blare of a siren– since the day Charlie asked to kiss you. Only blind determination carries your feet forward.

The fence is in pristine condition, although you know it must be very old, and you can’t see how far it stretches to the left or the right. Dotted along the mass of wire are jagged cut-outs just big enough for a person to squeeze through, and you can’t help but stare, counting seven holes in your line of sight before the fence becomes a tiny dot on the horizon.

A noise like someone clearing their throat sounds from somewhere to your right, and you startle. A boy is standing on the other side, thin strips of barbed wire partially obscuring your view of him. His head is tilted in thought and his brown curls tumble into his eyes, tangling with his glasses. He looks about your age, and his sweater is olive green and looks very warm.

“Hello,” you say. “Hi,” says the boy.

“I like your sweater,” you offer weakly.

“Thanks.” The boy puts his hands in the pockets of his jeans and smiles. “My brother made it for me. I’m Lee, by the way.”

“Your brother, is he… there, too?” you ask. Too late, you wonder if this was an impolite thing to say. You apologize, but the boy– Lee– tells you there is no need.

“He’s here,” Lee says, laughing. “Had a good three months to himself before his little brother followed him.” He shrugs. “I visited the border all the time for those three months, anyway. Figured I’d save time if I just came through.”

You rear back. “You chose to be one of” –you don’t know whether ‘the Them’ is a term that the people on the other side of the fence use, and for some reason you don’t want to offend this boy. “You chose?”

Lee gives you a pitying look and moves the hair out of his eyes. “Yeah,” he says simply. “I chose.”

There are a lot of questions you want to ask, like whether that’s really true, or whether he’s the only person who wasn’t forced to become part of the Them. Instead, you hear yourself ask, “So someone could step across” –you point at the nearest opening in the wire– “and become one of you, just like that?”

Lee nods. “Just like that.”

You plop to your feet and sit with your legs crossed. Lee does the same, and scoots over so you sit directly on either side of the gap. You learn that Lee likes to paint, and that he has a birthmark on his right elbow that looks like a cat (he shows you, and he’s right– it does). Lee notes that when you laugh your ears turn pink. He asks about your family and your friends, about school and whether you prefer science or art, about your favorite color and type of weather and film and book. You answer, and you ask him the same things. You talk until the sky has gone from a dull gray to a pale orange, and the sun threatens to disappear from sight.

“Here’s one,” Lee muses. He points at you, closing one eye and scrunching his face in a way that makes you laugh again. “Why did you come to the fence?”

You think for a long moment before replying, “I was tired of not knowing.” “Not knowing what?”

“Anything.” You are aware that this is much too broad of an answer, but Lee is nodding like he understands. You like the way this makes your chest feel, like a tangled coil of knots loosening for the first time in a very long time. The pair of you are quiet for a minute before Lee sighs and rises to his feet.

“I should probably go,” he says. “It’s late.”

“It is,” you agree, but you do not move. Neither does he. “Does the Chorda still talk to you?” you ask suddenly.

The corner of Lee’s mouth quips upward and he glances at the ground. “I was wondering when you were going to ask me that.” He looks up at you again. “No. It doesn’t. And it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

You nod slowly. “I could… I could understand that.” The knot untangles a little bit more. “Do you–” you hesitate, not quite knowing what you’re going to say. “Do you think I could go with you?”

Lee purses his lips. You expect him to be shocked or maybe horrified, but if he is, he doesn’t show it. “Do you want to?”

The reply comes surprisingly fast. “Yes,” you say softly.

“It’s not something you can take back,” Lee warns. “You can choose to cross, but you can’t cross back.”

You realize that your hands are trembling, but when you search inwardly for the familiar clench of your stomach or shortness of your breath, you find nothing. You grip your hands into fists. Firmly, you say, “I know.”

Lee stares at you. He blinks once, then twice, and says, “Okay.”

You do not realize that you were expecting him to refuse you until he doesn’t. “Okay?” “Okay,” Lee confirms. He offers you his hand, which has three freckles dotted across it, and you let him pull you to the edge of the gap, where suddenly he loosens his grip and looks at you expectantly. You understand that he wants you to take the final step yourself, for it to be your choice. You have never been able to make your own choice before, and the idea of this being your first one makes you want to– of all things– laugh. You do, a little, and Lee raises an eyebrow.

“What’s funny?” he asks.

“Nothing,” you say. “I’ll tell you later.” You tighten your hold on the boy’s hand and follow him through the fence.

You are aware, miraculously, that your head doesn’t hurt anymore.