The Divided Line: Juno [Part 1]

Bombed building in Ukraine

Алесь Усцінаў via Unsplash

Rain beat against the tin roof of Juno’s apartment. Water streamed down the windows and through the cracks between bricks, pouring into the street to feed the rushing rivers along the roadsides that swept away the rot. 

It had come on suddenly, the sky cracking open with a bolt of electricity and a sharp clap of thunder.

And how fitting a night for it to strike. Nature’s encore of the bombs that’d burst mid-evening. Now the rain smothered the smoking debris and washed clean the bloodied rubble. 

Juno tapped the screen of her phone to wake it, heart pounding with nerve-addled hope in the fleeting moments before it illuminated. Hope that Atticus’ name might be on the screen with two words trailing it. 

I’m safe.

But Atticus hadn’t replied—hadn’t even opened any of the last ten messages Juno had sent after the first bomb erupted, after the aerodyne roared overhead, after the ground quaked beneath the bombardment that followed. 

Juno tried to leave, tried to get to the site of the bombing where she knew Atticus had been. But gunmen patrolled the streets. Some corpocratic militia made of once-impoverished men whose eyes gleamed with the ravenous hunger of newfound power. 

A boy, no older than 18, aimed the barrel of his rifle at Juno and said with a cold brutality: “Go home.” 

Dust and ash billowed from the ruins he guarded. Bodies lay strewn beneath collapsed beams and tumbled concrete. They’d desolated the whole block. 

“Turn back,” said the boy with the gun. “Go home. I won’t warn you again.” 

He wouldn’t. She knew it by the still-bleeding corpse just beyond the soldiers’ line, its back shredded by a spray of bullets. 

So Juno went home and spent the hours pacing the length of her apartment, feverishly checking her phone. 

She should have been there, should have gone to the protest with Atticus first thing in the morning. But she’d been afraid. She’d begged them not to go, to fight some other way, but Atticus heard none of it. Atticus went anyway. 

Juno downed the final dregs of the bitter regulation coffee in her mug and typed another message. 

Call me when you see this. I’m worried. 

Even if unopened, to send it left room for the infinite potential of the unknowing—the potential that maybe, just maybe, Atticus would respond. Juno hit send and flipped the device over, banishing its screen and its denial of her hope from view. 

But time crept onward, the dawn drew near, and the hope of the night dwindled, leaving in its place a sharp and wretched grief. 

Three screens at the edges of the room quietly replayed the evening news, flashing images of the officers the first bomb had killed, voices muttering about terrorists in the lower city. It would play through the night, forcing itself into the homes of the masses, conditioning them while they slept. Words repeated, unable to be muted or turned off. 

Artist—Rebel. Intelligentsia—Insurgent. Protest—Riot. One word tied to the next, until society deemed them synonymous. 

She’d already seen it happening. The grimace of the mouth before saying the word “art,” the upturned chin at a human-made painting or poem. The horrific disgust at the sound of music. These things, society decided, these lapses of humanity, were primitive and old fashioned. Traitorous to the pursuit of happiness and progress both. 

That is what Atticus had wanted to fight against, what Juno should have had the courage to fight against. 

Where are you?

A soft knock rapped against the door. Juno’s heart skipped, and she sped toward the sound, hope returning to her chest like a bomb, fuse lit. She threw open the door.

No one was there. 

Here at last came the breaking. The final cataclysm of the night. She dropped to her knees, tears welling in her eyes, the pieces of her heart settling like ash in the pit of her stomach. 

Detailed sketch of an ibis

New York Public Library via Unsplash

Atticus was gone.

Here instead, at the foot of the doorway, was a small manila envelope with a long extinct bird stamped upon its surface—the ibis. A delivery for the archive. 

Juno scooped it up, holding it with the reverent care owed to a fallen young bird. She carried it to her desk, covering the nearby screen as she passed, muffling its quiet demands of society. Once safe from the eye of the screen, she booted up the computer Ezra had built for her.

Inside the envelope was a small USB. She inserted it into the computer and opened the file within. 

Nearly 200 photos loaded onto the screen. 

A young boy with a paint can in hand, standing before the red symbol of the visionaries; a quick snapshot of a play mid-performance, actors garbed in tattered costumes; the ranks of Conformist officers beyond the barricade; and there: Atticus. Alive. Eyes bright. Hands grasping tight to two others as they danced to the percussive rhythms of the nearby drum circle. 

Juno scrolled feverishly through the remaining photos, desperate for any glimpse of Atticus and what may have happened to them. 

There was only the one.

It would have to be enough.

She downloaded the lot, tucked the USB into the drawer for safe keeping, and packed up the computer. 

She plucked up her phone and backed out of the text feed with Atticus before the ache of all the things unanswered, unsaid, could strangle her, and she opened a separate group—the one marked with the symbol of the ibis.

Sweet is the truth, she wrote, then hit send.