Work Text:
Tanya calls Cheedo naïve and tries to hug her, but Cheedo gets angry and pushes the woman away again. Curtis looks at Cheedo with scorn and mouths an offensive word, but she had learned to ignore the spiteful man a long time ago. Gilliam calls Cheedo fragile and smiles so condescendingly, she feels furious and desires to yell at him, but Grey looks at her with a quiet menace, and she just walks from their part of the section, entertaining a haughty smile. She knows that unlike all of them she has an opportunity of getting out of this place, unharmed and beautiful as she is, and live among the front sectioners like Alice did just a year ago. Cheedo does not understand, when women and some men here are referring to Alice, Angharand or any other lucky girl, who was blessed to be taken to the Front Section, as ‘poor’ or ‘unfortunate’. Most men, like Curtis, prefer to use swearing and blaming them for some kind of treason, but that does not bother Cheedo, because she believes these men to be envious of the better life the women they once used to call theirs are currently having.
That is why she would never allow anyone in here to think she belongs to them – she doesn’t even belong to this place, no pretty girl does. She doesn’t know how exactly the ‘better’ life looks or feels like, but she knows she is destined to have it. Edgar, a guy a bit older than her says it is about eating steaks, and not this protein shit, and how he even used to have one when he was already on the train. She has once tried to ask the adults about it, but they only would get angry with her, and she takes it a sign they do not want to be reminded of the lives they had been living before the train. So she talks about it with Edgar sometimes, and it is not that he can remember anything clearly, but he is a dreamer like her – he wants to be in the Front Section, only he wants to walk in there victoriously and be the man who passes the knife to Curtis, before the latter cuts Wilford’s throat. Cheedo doesn’t think it really matters, how exactly you get there – like a victor, or accompanied by the guards. Anything is better than here, and the Front Section is better than anything.
They usually talk on her bunk, because Edgar stupidly feels uncomfortable whenever Curtis sees them together, and thankfully she occupies one of the highest bunks, which are probably the most secluded places in here. Sometimes they touch, and it is nice in a way, because it is nice to be close to someone, even if you are stuck in this ‘tin of sardines’ as some adults quaintly call the crowded tail section. Sometimes they go further, and it feels nice as well, even though it is clumsy, messy, and Cheedo feels like she somehow gets even more covered in filth than they already are. So she hits him, scratches his body, like she tries to tear him in shreds, and he backs away, his eyes wide open, and licks the blood from his bruised lip. He stares at her uncomprehending, and she sees naivety, fragility – all the things that people think apply to her, and she calls him a rude, spiteful word. He hems and jumps down, leaving her.
It is going to take another three years, before she will see Curtis walking through the club car with two kronol-heads. Alice will try to reach to him, but Cheedo will know that someone naïve and fragile, honest and innocent has died, as much as she will know by then that the rattling constructions of this place were not designed for those things to survive.