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Pip had decided this explained some deeper truth about Arden: because she had parents, she was not afraid to be thrown out of School. Often her rebelliousness took the form of harmless pranks—rotten figs in your oatmeal or a dead mouse on the sink, complete with a white toothpaste beehive. But other times she was mean, cruel even. Arden had cut off Ruby’s long black ponytail once, just for laughing at the C she’d gotten on a Dangers of Boys and Men exam.
In the past few months, Arden had been strangely quiet, though. She was the last to meals and the first to leave, and she was always alone. I had the growing suspicion that for graduation tomorrow, she was planning her greatest prank of all.
In an instant, Arden turned and started toward the dining building, kicking up dirt as she ran. My eyes narrowed as I watched her go. I didn’t need any surprises at the ceremony; I had enough to worry about with my speech. It had even been said that the King himself would be attending for the first time in the school’s history. I knew it was a rumor, started by the ever-dramatic Maxine, but still. It was an important day—the most important of our lives.
“Headmistress Burns?” I asked. “May I please be excused? I left my vitamins in the dormitory. ” I felt around the pockets of my uniform dress, feigning frustration.
Headmistress stood beside the long table of food. “How many times do I have to remind you girls to keep them in your satchel? Go, but don’t dawdle. ” As she spoke she stroked the snout of the roast boar, the fur on its face singed black.
“Yes,” I agreed, looking over my shoulder for Arden. She had already turned the corner, past the dining hall. “I will, Headmistress. ” I took off running, offering Pip a quick be right back.
I rounded the corner, approaching the compound’s main gate. Arden crouched beside the building and reached underneath a bush. She pulled her uniform dress over her head and changed into a black jumper, her milk-white skin glowing in the setting sun.
I strode toward her as she was tugging on boots—the same black leather ones the guards always wore. “Whatever you’re planning, you can just forget it,” I announced, pleased when she straightened up at the sound of my voice.
Arden paused a moment and then pulled the laces tight, as if she were strangling her ankles. It was a minute before she spoke and even then, she didn’t turn to face me. “Please, Eve,” she said quietly, “just go away. ”
I knelt down beside the building, holding my skirt to keep it from getting dirty. “I know you’re up to something. Someone saw you by the lake. ” Arden moved quickly, her eyes fixed on her boots as she tied the laces in double knots. A backpack sat in a ditch beneath the bush, and she stuffed her gray uniform dress inside it. “Where’d you steal that guard’s uniform from?”
She pretended she hadn’t heard me, instead peering through a hole in the shrubs. I followed her gaze to the compound gate, which was opening slowly. The shipment of food for tomorrow’s ceremony had just arrived on a covered green and black government Jeep. “This has nothing to do with you, Eve,” she finally said.
“So what is this about then? You’re impersonating a guard?” I reached for the whistle around my neck. I’d never reported Arden before, never brought anything she did to the Headmistress, but the ceremony was just too important—to me, to everyone. “I’m sorry, Arden, but I can’t let you—”
Before the whistle touched my lips, Arden ripped the chain from my neck and threw it across the grass. In one swift motion, she pinned me up against the building. Her eyes were wet and bloodshot.
“You listen,” she said slowly. Her forearm pressed on my neck, making it hard to breathe. “I am leaving here in exactly one minute. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll go back to the celebration and pretend you never saw this. ”
Twenty feet away, some female guards unloaded the truck, carrying boxes inside while the others pointed their machine guns toward the woods. “But there’s nowhere to go. . . . ” I wheezed.
“Wake up!” she hissed. “You think you’re going to learn a trade?” She gestured to the brick building on the other side of the lake. I could barely see it in the growing darkness. “Don’t you ever wonder why the Graduates never come outside? Or why there’s a separate gate for them? Or why there are so many fences and locked doors around here? You think they’re sending you there to paint?” At this, she finally released me.
I rubbed my neck. The skin burned where the chain had broken. “Of course,” I said. “What else would we be doing?”
Arden let out a laugh as she tossed her backpack over her shoulder. Then she leaned in. I could smell the spicy boar’s meat on her breath. “Ninety-eight percent of the population is dead, Eve. Gone. How do you think the world is going to continue? They don’t need artists,” she whispered. “They need children. The healthiest children they can find . . . or make. ”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. She picked herself up, never looking away from the truck. A guard pulled the canvas cover over the back of the Jeep and climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Why do you think they’re so worried about our height, our weight, what we’re eating and drinking?” Arden brushed the dirt off her black jumpsuit and looked at me one last time. The area beneath her eyes was puffy, the purple veins visible under her thin white skin. “I saw them—the girls who graduated before us. And I’m not going to wind up in some hospital bed, birthing a litter every year for the next twenty years of my life. ”
I stumbled backward, as if she had slapped me in the face. “You’re lying,” I said. “You’re wrong. ”
But Arden just shook her head. And with that she darted off toward the Jeep, pulling the black cap over her hair. She waited for the gate guards to turn before approaching. “One more!” she called out. Then she jumped onto its back bumper and pulled herself into the covered bed.
The truck bumped down the dirt road and disappeared into the dark woods. The gate closed slowly behind it. I listened to the lock click, unable to believe what I’d just seen. Arden had left School. Escaped. She had gone beyond the wall, into the wild, with nothing and no one to protect her.
I didn’t believe what she’d said. I couldn’t. Maybe Arden would return in a few hours, on the Jeep. Maybe this was her craziest prank yet. But as I turned back to the windowless building on the other side of the compound, I couldn’t stop my hands from trembling, or the bitter vomit of jungle berries from spewing out of my mouth. I got sick there, in the dirt, a single thought consuming me: What if Arden was right?
Chapter Two
AFTER WE’D BRUSHED OUR HAIR AND TEETH, WASHED our faces, and dressed in the identical white nightgowns that came down to our ankles, I lay in bed, pretending to be tired. The dormitory was buzzing with the news of Arden’s disappearance. Girls poked their heads into each room to deliver the latest gossip: a barrette found in the bushes, Headmistress questioning a guard near the gate. Through it all, I wanted one of the hardest things to find at School, something so strange it was impossible to even request.
I wanted to be alone.
“Noelle thinks Arden’s hiding out in the doctor’s quarters,” Ruby told Pip. She surveyed the cards in her hand. “Go fish. ” They were sitting on Pip’s narrow twin bed, playing a game they’d checked out of the School library. The old Finding Nemo cards were faded and ripped, some stuck together with dried fig juice.