Gaping, I starred at her, unable to understand how my brain was playing tricks on me.
“Don’t be angry. I needed to see you.” She pulled the cover higher.
“How…? When…?” I shook my head and managed to get my legs to move me to the bed.
“You wouldn’t answer my letters.” Her eyes fell down my naked body and color spread in her cheeks.
I was touching her arms and shoulders as if to make sure she was real. “Devina, how did you get here? Tell me you didn’t swim.”
“No, I climbed the wall.”
“How?”
“Funny story. The Council banned our book because Motlanders have tried to get over the wall and have gotten injured. My friend Tina is a crime writer and kind of brilliant when it comes to coming up with sneaky plans so to help me, she pretended to be a reader, eager to cross the border. First, we carried a long ladder from our house to the border. Then I hid while she took it the last part of the way and placed it against the wall. Of course, the border patrol drones showed up and warned her to leave, but Tina was amazing. You should have seen the way she began arguing with them that it should be her choice to live in a place where she was free to pursue her art.”
“What art?”
“I told you. She’s an author like me, but she writes crime fiction, which isn’t the same after they made it illegal to portray anything that resembles horror or violence. Now the worst she can write about is insurance fraud and identity theft.” Devina seemed nervous and spoke fast.
“So, after the border control ordered Tina to step away from the ladder, she jogged along the wall leading them away from me, while arguing out loud about the unfairness of it all. All the cameras and drones were fixed on her when she stopped and gave them a speech about freedom. That’s when I took my chance. I’ve never run so fast or climbed a ladder so quickly. There wasn’t any time to be scared. I just did what Tina had told me to do and used the hook-ended rope to climb down on the other side. It took less than two minutes and I could still hear Tina arguing with the border patrol further down when I released the hook and ran to your house.”
“I can’t believe you’re here.” I raised my hands to touch her hair, letting the long strands slide through my fingers, with disbelief that I was touching her. “You know the Motherlands are going to ask to have you returned, right?”
“I don’t think so.”
“No?”
“All the cameras were on Tina so I hope they didn’t catch me leaving. If Tina’s plan goes right, it will look like I killed myself. I wrote a suicide note taking full responsibility for the unintended effect my book has had on women. I apologized and said that I had tried to stop my friend, but that Tina’s obsession with finding love with an Nman had made me realize that I couldn’t live with myself. I wrote that my heart was heavy with grief and guilt and that I didn’t wish to live without my family any longer.
“But if there’s no physical body, will they believe that you died?”
Devina swallowed and looked down. “We burned down the house.”
“Your house?
She nodded and the immense sadness from her made me pull her in for a hug.
“Tina prepared everything with papers on the dining table and left a short candle to burn down and ignite the spark. The plan was for her to stay and argue with the border patrol until the smoke was visible in the sky. That way no one would suspect she set the fire and it would be too late for anyone to save the house before it burned to the ground.”
“But wouldn’t your suicide letter burn with the house then?”
“No, because I stuck it onto a tree outside of the house.”
I shook my head. “Damn, I can’t believe you’d burn down your family house. I know how much it meant to you.”
“It needed to look real.”
“I know, but won’t the police still search for your body in the ashes?”
Devina exhaled noisily. “We’ve had thousands of people dying this year from the epidemic. It’s a rural, understaffed area of the world with little technology. I doubt they will search for my remains since no friends or family will push them. Tina will go back home unless she’s forced to check in to a place of reflection.”
“Shit!”
“I know, but she said that she would use it as inspiration for her next novel. She had an idea of a plot with a lazy woman faking mental instability in order to get out of working.”
“Wow!” I kept touching her. “You faked your own death to come here. Just like Mark in the book.”
“It was the only way. Please don’t be mad at me for coming.”
