After I had eaten, barely able to consume anything at all, Calhoun had directed me down the hallway. The bedroom on the right had a shower, and the man trusted me to walk through his house. I could’ve stolen something. I could’ve found another weapon. But he knew I wouldn’t. Not after Daniel. It was Daniel’s bedroom that had the shower. I only knew because Calhoun told me.
His room reminded me of a sea—something one could only see from certain sections in Eastern Vendona—but it somehow comforted me. The blue walls mimicked the afternoon sky I yearned to see, and a dark swirl twisted across the ceiling in the same way the shag carpet moved like waves. The plain bed could’ve been a white boat floating across the world, completely separated from the land I stood on.
I had to force myself to cross the room instead of stare at it, but I found myself frozen next to the bathroom. A small desk rested in the corner, revealing the only photos I had seen since entering Calhoun’s house.
The first was of children—about fifteen kids—and it was ripped at the edges. The colors were already fading too. It was old, and it didn’t hold my attention for long. The other one did.
I recognized Calhoun first. He was still bald, but he was younger, and a boy—no older than six—sat on his lap. While Cal smiled, the boy didn’t, but I doubt he could’ve even if he wanted to. One of his green eyes was swelled shut, and bandagers wrapped around his torso. A sling held his right arm against his chest, a deep-seated bruise smearing across his skin. Bloodstains poked through the cloth that covered his shoulder. It was Daniel. And even now, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“Serena?” Calhoun’s voice tore through my thoughts, shattering my memory of the previous day. We were no longer in his apartment. We had spent the past hour walking to the southern part of town, and I only stopped because Cal reminded me to. He knew the address. After all, I had told him, and he had stayed with me, even though we had arrived.
A large, white house with red trim and brown shutters sat at the end of the cul-de-sac. It glowed in the sunlight, and I blinked to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. My home. It was right in front of me.
“Are you okay?” Cal asked when I didn’t walk up to it. “If you’re family turned you in—”
“They didn’t,” I clarified, knowing exactly what Cal was thinking. Most bad bloods were turned in by their relatives. I was an exception. “They know.”
“Well, then.” Calhoun raised his hand like he was about to pat me, but I shrank away. He dropped his hand and cleared his throat, turning back to my house. “We’re here.”
I rubbed my hands together, feeling my clean skin for the umpteenth time. I wasn’t covered in grime, and my clothes were washed, borrowed from Daniel’s dresser. If the pants hadn’t had drawstrings, they wouldn’t have fit.
“I’ll return everything in a few days,” I started, but Cal shook his head.
“It’s fine.”
When his eyes moved over the house, I followed his stare. The front door had opened, and a little girl ran out. Her laughter soared over us as an older boy chased her out. Steven. He caught Melody in seconds, flipping the four-year-old over his shoulder like a doll. As he tickled her, her giggles grew, and when they went back inside, the laughter disappeared.
I couldn’t breathe.
That’s Melody and Steven, I imagined myself speaking to Cal. I never thought I’d see them again. They look great.
They do, Calhoun would agree. I didn’t know you had siblings.
I wouldn’t be able to tell Calhoun they weren’t related to me, but I would tell him about my sister—the one my biological parents had seven years ago. I still went to their house sometimes. They lived on the western part, two blocks away from Calhoun’s apartment. I was on my way to visit them when I was caught.
“Tell Daniel to stop helping people,” I said before I thought it over, and I continued once my mind caught up, “That’s how I got caught.”
It was Alan I ran into—the boy they executed first. He was hiding in Shadow Alley. When he ran into the main square, I chased him. The police were waiting for him. His parents had turned him in.
“I already have,” Calhoun admitted, slight amusement taking over. “He doesn’t listen.”
I remembered the photograph. “He isn’t your son, is he?”
Cal fiddled with his empty sleeve as I studied him. He didn’t confirm it, but he didn’t deny it either. The crease on his forehead told me I was right, but it also told me I was wrong. Cal loved Daniel like a son. I could see it in the photograph.
“I saw the photo in his bedroom,” I admitted, desperate to understand the two westerners I tried to run away from. “The streets almost killed him, didn’t they?”
Cal’s eyes darkened into onyx jewels. “How do you know it was the streets?”
“When you live on the streets, you know the injuries they cause.” I stared at my house, the one we had for seven years. Before that, Robert and I lived beneath a bridge. I had to tear my eyes away from Cal to speak to him. “You saved him, right?” If he had saved Daniel, Cal had indirectly saved me, but he wouldn’t speak. “Thanks for helping me, too.”
“You won’t tell?” The man didn’t trust me, but he wanted to. I could hear it in between his words. I promised to keep them a secret, and he grinned his goofy grin. “You take care of yourself, Serena.”
He turned to walk away, but I grabbed his empty sleeve. “Wait.” I released my grasp as he froze. “You should know something.”
He faced me once more, and I searched his face, trying to find some resemblance of Daniel in his stare, but I found none. They weren’t related. Not by blood.
“The police didn’t know I was a bad blood when they arrested me.” I found my voice. “They forcibly took my blood at the station.”
“They can’t do that,” Cal said through a frown.
“Well, they did.” I wished the needle marks were still on my arm, but my skin had healed. Everything but my insides had. “They tested it, and that’s how they knew I was a bad blood.” I hesitated to tell him the rest. “Logan’s technology already exists.” If he won the election, everyone would be killed. “Let Daniel know that.”
Cal’s jaw locked. He didn’t nod or speak, but his eyes lit up with an internal fire. He would tell him, and my knowledge was the only way I could repay them. It was a warning I wish I had previously known, a threat I had to tell my leader about and soon.
This time, I was the first to turn around. I didn’t watch Calhoun leave, but I listened to his footsteps as I walked in the opposite direction. As my feet moved toward my home, I concentrated on my breathing, and I dug my fingers into Daniel’s jacket to prevent my hands from shaking.
The Southern Flock had to think I was dead. They had probably already mourned my life, yet my heart pounded. Every inch of me pounded, including my palm as I grasped the doorknob and twisted.
Before I comprehended what happened, the door sprung open. It was unlocked, and the entryway faced me, familiar but surreal. I couldn’t move, speak, or step back. I could only stand in the doorframe, listening to the buzzing voices rise into gasps.
A few pairs of eyes met mine before they turned into faces, whole bodies of people I had lived with for years.
“Sissy!” Melody was the first to run up to me, and she was the first person I hadn’t pushed away. She wrapped her arms around my legs before I even realized she was touching me, and I laid my hand on her back before I knew I was capable of returning her touch.
“I knew it.” Another girl—a fourteen-year-old—spoke from the stairway she was now clutching. She had to peel herself away to rush toward me, and her arms wrapped around my torso like chains. Her tears prevented me from stumbling away. “I knew it was you. I just knew it.”
Ami. She smelled like lilacs. I remembered now.
“Come to the front,” Steven shouted as he rushed over to shut the door behind me. “Everyone, come here!”
Within seconds, footsteps
were rocking the foundation of our home, and faces were popping out from various rooms. Squeals of delight followed, and embraces consumed me. Little kids yelped, teenagers hollered, and the ruckus threatened our exposure.
Huey was missing a tooth, Niki was holding scissors, and Justan stood by her with his hair half-cut. Everyone had grown, but—most of all—I could feel myself growing into them.
A single shout shattered it all.
“Quiet down.” The older boy’s voice was loud, clear and practiced, the voice only a leader could have. In one echo, it demanded everyone’s attention, and people dispersed like he controlled them.
“What’s with all the noise?” When he entered the room, I only saw his brown eyes. “Serena.”
I nodded, unable to say his name back. Robert. The leader of the Southern Flock, the boy who took me off the streets when I was five. Back then, he was scrawny, short, and pale. Now, he was broad, and his jawline settled against his angular face. Back then, it was just him and me. Now, there were twelve of us. The Southern Flock was whole again.
“Serena,” he said my name again as he crossed the room and swooped me into his arms. My face buried into his shoulder as he picked me up and spun me around. When he placed me back down, the world continued to spin.
“Serena.” He laid his fingers on my face. His thumbs dragged across my cheekbones the same way his eyes moved over them. “I can’t believe it’s you.”
I didn’t want to think of what he saw. I had avoided my reflection. Even when I took a shower, I kept my back to the mirror until it fogged up. I imagined I looked nothing like I had before. Weak. Thin. I wasn’t me. I knew that. I just didn’t want to see it myself.
“She’s the one who escaped,” Ami spoke over the crowd.
“Escaped,” Robert repeated, but he never looked away from me. He never let me go, but he didn’t say my name again.
I gripped his shirt before he could step away. “I’m alive,” I managed, knowing the thoughts consuming him. “I didn’t tell them anything. They don’t know I was in a flock—”
“Was?” Robert’s lips curved down before they bent up. “You still are.” He wouldn’t abandon me, even if all of Vendona were after my life.
My eyes burned with tears for the first time since my capture, but they disappeared before they ever had the chance to fall.
“Get dinner ready,” Robert called out to no one in particular, but everyone rushed to the kitchen as if he had spoken directly to them. “We’ll eat.”
“I can’t,” I admitted, knowing I couldn’t consume more than the little amount of food Cal had given me. My stomach had shrunk. “Not now.”
Robert laid his hands on my shoulders. “You can.”
I reached up and grabbed his hands. “Okay.”
“Come on,” he said, directing me over to the couch, but he didn’t wait for us to sit down to start talking, “How’d you escape?”
The interrogation was necessary. I knew that. He was the leader, and he couldn’t risk not knowing, but my stomach twisted. Daniel never asked me how I escaped. He only asked me how I was.
I swallowed my nerves. “A woman. She helped me.” I would never forget Charlotte. “I took shelter in the western outskirts. A boy took me in.”
Robert’s eyes lowered to my clothes. “Whose jacket is that?”
“He didn’t follow me here,” I promised Robert, and I kept my promise to Calhoun. I wouldn’t tell. Not even Robert. “He doesn’t know where we live or even that I am in a flock. He didn’t ask questions.”
“People don’t help our kind.”
“He did.”
Robert’s back pressed against the couch, but his hands curled into fists against his sweatpants. His knuckles were white. He glared at the wall. The air became hot, and I knew his powers were consuming him.
I squeezed his arm, careful not to touch his skin. He would burn me if I did. “I was careful.”
The air sizzled down. “I know.”
His tone gave him away. He may have been glad I was alive, but his excitement was dead. He was already refocused on the flock, acknowledging the repercussions of accepting me again. I was a risk. From now on, I always would be.
I buried the tears inside the same hole I kept my memories from the blood camp. It burned between my ribs as I searched the house. The red furniture was the same. Catelyn’s tabby cat hadn’t budged from the loveseat.
“Where is she?” I asked, knowing I didn’t have to clarify. She was practically my sister, and some days, I felt closer to her than to Robert.
“She’s working.” Catelyn somehow managed to get a job as a hairdresser without identification. “She’ll be back in an hour.”
Without warning, Steven appeared from the kitchen and made his way into the living room. He opened his mouth, but he shut it when he read the tension in our expressions.
“What is it?” Robert asked, half-agitated.
Steven pointed to the kitchen. “Niki needs you.”
Robert got up and left without another word. Steven sat across from me, placing his elbows on his knees. His limbs melded into one another, a sign of his bad-blooded nature, but he lifted his arms as if he could hide it.
“How are you?” I asked.
He chuckled. “I should be asking you that.”
I didn’t respond.
“Catelyn will be really happy,” he said. Ever since he had joined our flock four years ago, he had been attached to Catelyn. Their romantic relationship wasn’t a secret. “She’s been a wreck. Almost quit her job.”
My heart squeezed. “You stopped her, right?”
He nodded. As close as I was to Catelyn, she listened to him above anyone else. Sometimes I forgot they were separate people. Steven knew just as much about me as Catelyn did. Whenever I confessed anything to her, he was there, and he kept my secrets, even when he shouldn’t have. Other than Catelyn, he was the only person who knew I spied on my biological family. Robert didn’t even know. It was against the rules. The Southern Flock was supposed to be my only family.
“I was trying to see them,” I whispered, knowing I didn’t have to tell Steven it was how I was caught.
“I didn’t tell him,” Steven muttered back, but he watched the kitchen door. “Catelyn didn’t either.”
My fingers curled against Daniel’s jacket as I nodded. Even when they thought I was dead, they let me take my secrets to my grave. I opened my mouth to thank him, but his hand rose to silence me.
“Don’t.” His mouth formed a crooked line. “We never gave up on you.” His words slammed into me. “You’re home now. That’s what matters,” he paused, “even if Robert can’t see that.”
“He can,” I defended our leader. “But he has others to worry about.”
As Steven searched my face, his hazel eyes reminded me of Daniel’s bright irises. “Worry about yourself right now. Okay?” When he stood up, he gestured to the stairs. “Get some sleep if you need to.” My room. It was still mine and only a staircase away. “Everyone will understand.”
“Thanks,” I said, standing up to go to my bed—a queen mattress I shared with Melody, and sometimes Catelyn too.
Steven went to the kitchen to explain, but when he opened the door, I paused on the stairs. All of their voices—squeaky and low—traveled over me, and warmth radiated inside the darkest hole I created. I was finally back.
Home. That’s what utopia is.