Unwind

“The first thing they did was to separate the three of them” (267). They tell Risa she should distance herself from Connor. Risa feels bad for Connor, who was not given orientation. “He was left to figure everything out for himself. Risa knew the point wasn’t to challenge him, or even to punish him. It was to give him every opportunity to do the wrong thing” (267). Risa is evaluated and interviewed. She tells the counselor that she knows classical piano. The woman is intrigued.

“Connor wants to fight….But he won’t give in to the urge for two reasons. One: It’s exactly what they want him to do. And two: Risa” (270). All the other kids are impressed with Connor’s reputation. One boy listens to the truth, but still thinks Connor is impressive. The boy tells Connor he’s been around for six months. Connor is surprised, and the kid tells him it is because he is in the band. They play sports while being monitored by the counselors. He learns that tithes aren’t treated the same. Tithes aren’t forced to play sports. He watches a group of them walk by. “For a moment, as the tithes disappear over a hillside, Connor thinks that he recognizes a face among them, but he knows it’s just his imagination” (273).

“It’s not Connor’s imagination” (273). Lev is at the camp. He doesn’t see Connor. He is preparing for his unwinding in 13 days.

The band plays above the “Chop Shop,” where Unwinds go to be taken apart. Risa doesn’t like it, but her bandmates tell her she will get used to it. She asks what happened to the last keyboard player, and they tell her he was almost eighteen, so he was unwound.

Connor notices that some of the beds in the dorm have been stripped, a startling reality. “Connor can’t remember either the names or the faces of the missing kids, and that haunts him” (276). He’s seen Risa playing piano and thinks she is amazing. Most of the time, Connor sits in the dorm and thinks. One day, as he is getting ready to leave the dorm, he notices someone lurking around. It’s Roland.

Roland fights him. He’s stronger than Connor. He gets a hand on Connor’s windpipe and begins to crush it, but Connor doesn’t seem to care:

Would you rather die, or be unwound? Now he finally knows the answer. Maybe this is what he wanted. Maybe it’s why he stood there and taunted Roland. Because he’d rather be killed with a furious hand than dismembered with cool indifference (278).

Roland doesn’t kill Connor, yet “Connor can’t tell whether Roland is disappointed or relieved that he’s not the killer he thought he was” (279).

The tithes are treated well. They have a theater, a pool, and good food. Lev notices that most tithes spend the evening in the rec room or in prayer groups. “Lev attends as often as necessary, and in Bible study he says just enough of the right things so as not to look suspicious” (280). Regardless, everyone else knows Lev is different. His blood showed high triglyceride levels, so he was prescribed extra exercise. The other two kids he was supposedly going to Alaska with have the same problem.

He meets the other two kids secretly. One of them pulls out a number of paper packets and opens one. Inside is a small Band-Aid-like item. The boy reveals they are detonators. In actuality, “There was never a job on an Alaskan pipeline” (283). Their goal is to blow up the facility. “They weren’t just messengers, they were the message” (284).

Connor and Risa meet secretly. Though they only kiss, “Connor knows they would take this further if they could—but not here, not in a place like this. It will never happen for them, but somehow he’s content in knowing that in some other place and time it would have” (285).