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“I bet she’s just trying to get out of the ceremony,” Pip added. The freckled skin on her face was dotted with dried toothpaste, which she called her “miracle blemish remover. ” She kept glancing at me, expecting me to speculate about Arden’s whereabouts or comment on the packs of guards outside who were searching the grounds with flashlights. I didn’t say a word.
I thought about what Arden had said. In the last months, Headmistress Burns had become increasingly concerned with our diets, making sure we were eating enough. She appeared at our weekly blood tests and weigh-ins and saw that we were all taking our vitamins. She’d even sent Ruby to Dr. Hertz when she got her period a week later than everyone else at School.
I pulled the thin white blanket up to my neck. Ever since I was small, I had been told there was a plan for me—a plan for all of us. Complete twelve years at School, then move across the compound and learn a trade for four years. Then onto the City of Sand, where life and freedom awaited us. We would work and live there, under the rule of the King. I had always listened to the Teachers, had no reason not to. Even now, Arden’s theory made no sense. Why would we be taught to fear men when we’d ultimately have children and families of our own? Why would we be educated if we were only going to breed? The emphasis they’d put on our studies, the way we were encouraged to pursue—
“Eve? Did you hear what I said?” Pip interrupted my thoughts. She and Ruby were staring at me.
“No, what?”
Ruby gathered up the cards in her hand, her thick black hair still short and uneven from where Arden had cut it. “We want a preview of your speech before we go to bed. ”
My throat tightened as I thought of my final address, the three scrawled pages crumpled inside my nightstand drawer. “It’s supposed to be a surprise,” I said, after a moment. I had written about the power of imagination in building The New America. The words I had chosen, the future I’d described, seemed so uncertain now.
Ruby and Pip stared at me, but I turned away, unable to look them in the eye. I couldn’t tell them what Arden had suggested: that the freedom of graduation was just an illusion, something created to keep us calm and content.
“Fine, suit yourself. ” Pip blew out the candle on her night table. I blinked a few times, adjusting my eyes to the dark. Slowly, her round face became visible in the gray moonlight streaming in from the window. “But we are your best friends. ”
Within minutes, Ruby’s faint snoring filled the room. She always fell asleep first. Pip stared at the ceiling, her hands resting over her heart. “I can’t wait to graduate. We’re going to be learning things—real things. And in a few years we’ll be out in the world, in the new city beyond the forest. It’s going to be amazing, Eve. We’ll be like . . . real people. ” She turned to me and I hoped, in the dim moonlight, she couldn’t see the tears gathering in the corners of my eyes.
I wondered about the life that Pip and I would really have. Pip wanted to be an architect, like Frank Lloyd Wright. She wanted to build new houses that wouldn’t deteriorate without human care, houses that had shelters stocked with canned edibles, where even the most microscopic of deadly viruses could not get in. I’d told her that when we finished learning our trades we’d live together in the City of Sand. We’d get an apartment like we’d read about in books, with queen-sized beds and windows where we could look out to the other side of the City, where the men lived, far away from us. We’d learn to ski on the massive indoor slopes Teacher Etta had told us about, or use our manners in the restaurants with crisp, white tablecloths and polished silverware. We’d order our dinners from a menu, asking for our meat to be cooked just the way we pleased.
“I know,” I choked out. “It’ll be great. ”
I dabbed at my eyes, thankful when Pip’s breaths finally slowed. But then the guilt came, and the growing fear that tomorrow, I might not just be giving some deluded, wistful speech. I might be leading my friends to their demise.
I WAITED FOR SLEEP BUT IT NEVER CAME. AT THREE o’clock, I knew I could not lie there any longer. I got up and went to the window, looking across the compound. It was empty save for a lone guard, identifiable by her slight limp, canvassing the lawn in a routine sweep.
Our room was only two stories above ground. Once the guard was out of sight, I opened the window as I always did on warm nights. Then I perched on the ledge. Every year the School ran drills: what to do in a raid, what to do in an earthquake, what to do when confronted by a dog pack, what to do in a fire. Now, recalling the simple, worn diagrams Headmistress Burns had passed around at the end of class, I lowered myself outside the building and hung from the window ledge, preparing myself for the fall.
I let go and hit the ground hard. Pain shot through my ankle, but I pushed myself up from the dirt and ran as fast as I could toward the lake. Across the glittering water, the brick trade building was a black rectangle against the deep purple sky.
As I stood before the lake, its gentle waves lapping at my toes, my courage drained. We’d never learned to swim. The teachers often told stories of the days before the plague, and how people had drowned in ocean waves, or been fooled by the deceptive calm of their own man-made pools.
I glanced back at the open dorm window. In another minute the guard would round the corner with her flashlight and catch me out after dark. She’d already discovered me in the bushes after Arden had gone missing, vomit covering my dress. I had explained that I was just nervous about graduating, but I couldn’t give her any more reason to be suspicious.
I waded in. Thornbushes lined the narrow shore, reaching over the water’s surface. I took off my socks and wrapped them around my palms so I could grab the sharp branches. Slowly I pulled myself across, the lake water rising to my neck. I was only a yard in when the soft ground suddenly dropped out beneath my feet. Water rushed into my mouth and I squeezed the branches tighter, the thorns piercing my skin through the socks. I couldn’t stifle my cough.
The guard paused on the lawn. The flashlight beam stretched across the grass and danced over the surface of the lake. I held my breath, my lungs aching from the pain. Finally the bright white beam returned to the grass and she disappeared once more around the other side of the compound.
It went on like that for over an hour. I struggled across, stopping whenever the guard limped past, careful not to make a sound. When I finally reached the other side I heaved myself up into the muddy grass. The socks around my palms were soaked through with blood and my cold, wet gown clung to my body. I peeled it off, sitting beneath the monstrous building while I wrung the water out of it.
This side of the compound was strangely empty, except for the long wooden bridge that lay across the grass, ready for the following day’s ceremony. Unlike School, there were no flowers surrounding the brick structure. We were told that the Graduates were too busy to come out of the building, that their schedule was even more rigorous than the schedule at School, and what time was not spent eating, sleeping, or in class, was used for the perfection of the trade. Twelfth-year students whispered and worried about the sudden loss of the sun, but that kind of dedication had always sounded exhilarating to me.
The tall grass came up around my body, but it was not enough cover. I pulled my damp gown back over my head and ran around to the corner of the building. It did have windows, about five feet off the ground, just not on the side facing School.