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Behind some branches was a hole so small it was barely noticeable. Teacher Florence inserted the key and in one turn the wall opened out, the doorway finally visible. Then she glanced backward, to the other side of the compound.
“It’s supposed to be an emergency fire exit,” she explained.
The forest spilled out before me, its hillsides lit only by the perfect, glowing moon. This was it. Where I came from, where I was going. My past, my future. I wanted to ask Teacher more—about this strange place called Califia, about the danger of the road—but just then the beam of the guard’s flashlight rounded the corner of the dormitory building.
Teacher Florence pushed me forward. “Go, now!” she urged. “Go!”
And as fast as the door opened, it closed behind me, leaving me alone in the cold, starless night.
Chapter Four
THE FIRST THING I SAW WHEN I OPENED MY EYES WAS the sky: a blue, boundless thing that was so much bigger than I had ever imagined. All twelve years I had been at School I had seen only the stretch between one side of the wall and the other. Now I stood underneath it, noticing the purple and yellow streaks that appeared in that massive umbrella, visible now in the early morning light.
Last night I had run as far and as fast as I could, too terrified to stop. I went under crumbling bridges and through steep ravines, until I saw that beautiful sign 80 lit up by the moon. It was then that I found rest in a ditch, my legs simply too tired to carry me any farther. The bottom of my pants was caked with dirt and my throat was dry.
I climbed up onto a hard, flat ridge and looked out on the morning. The hillside was covered with overgrown flower bushes, tall, terrifically green grass, and trees that sprouted up at unusual angles, winding in and out and around one another. I couldn’t help but laugh, remembering the pictures I had seen of the world before the plague. There were photos of neat, manicured lawns, and rows of houses on paved streets, their bushes trimmed into perfect squares. This looked nothing like that at all.
On the horizon, a deer bounded through an old gas station. Before the plague, oil had powered nearly everything. But without anyone to run the refineries, they had closed down. Now oil was used only by the King’s government, including a set allowance for each School. The deer stopped to feast on the grass that had sprung up between the rusted pumps. Dense flocks of birds changed directions in the sky, their wings iridescent in the bright morning light. I stomped on the ground, feeling the ledge beneath me, so hard and flat. The road was an inch thick with moss.
“Hello?” a voice asked. “Hello?”
I spun around, looking for the source, my fear returning at the sound of a man’s voice. I remembered the tales of the forest and the renegade gangs who camped out there, living in the trees. My eyes fell on a weathered shack a few yards off. It was covered in ivy, the door sealed shut. I crept toward it, trying to hide myself.
The voice spoke again. “Shut up!”
I froze. We weren’t allowed to speak those words at School. They were “inappropriate” and only known to us through books.
“Shut up!” The voice yelled again, from somewhere above me.
I turned my face skyward. There, a large red parrot perched on the roof of the shack, its head cocked to one side as he studied me.
“Ring, ring! Ring, ring! Who is this?” He pecked at something on the roof.
I had seen a parrot in a children’s book before, about a pirate who robbed people of treasure. Pip and I had read it in the archives, running our fingers over the water-stained illustrations.
Pip. Somewhere miles away, she was discovering my empty bed, the sheets crumpled and cold. New plans for graduation would be made in haste. She and Ruby were probably afraid that I had been kidnapped, unable to imagine I would ever leave of my own volition. Maybe Amelia, the all-too-eager salutatorian, would give my speech and lead them over the bridge. When would they realize the truth? When they set foot on the bare bank on the other side? When the doors flung open, exposing the cement room?
I reached for the bird, but it backed away. “What’s your name?” I asked. My voice startled me.
The bird stared at me with its black beady eyes. “Peter! Where are you Peter?” it said, hopping along the roof.
“Was Peter your owner?” I asked. The parrot preened itself with its claw. “Where did you come from?” I imagined Peter had long since died in the plague, or abandoned the bird in the chaos afterward. The parrot had survived, though, for over a decade. That simple fact filled me with hope.
I wanted to ask the bird more questions, but then it flew off, until it was only a speck of red against the blue sky. I followed its path, watching it disappear in the distance. Then my gaze fell on the silhouettes coming toward the road, over the hillside and through the trees. Even from two hundred feet away, I could see the guns slung over their backs.
For a moment I stood in awe of these strange and unfamiliar creatures. They were so much taller and broader than women. Even their gait was different, heavier, as though it required great effort to take even one step. They all wore pants and boots and some were shirtless, revealing their leathery brown chests.
The figures moved as a pack, until one brought up his gun and aimed for the deer grazing near the gas pumps. With one blast it fell, its leg seizing in pain. Only then did the panic set in. I was in the middle of the wild, in unforgiving daylight. A gang was just thirty yards off. I fumbled with the door of the shack, clawing at the ivy until I found the rusty old lock.
The gang came closer. I kept at the lock, pulling and hitting it with my palm, hoping it would break. Please open, I begged, please. I glanced around the corner of the shack again and saw the men beneath the gas station awning. They huddled around the deer. One hacked at the animal, cutting its coat away like a person skinning fruit. It bucked and twisted. It was still alive.
I tugged on the door, suddenly wishing Headmistress would barrel down the broken road and the guards would pull me onto the bed of a government Jeep. We would go back the way I’d come, the men shooting at us, until they were tiny black dots on the horizon. Until I was safe.
But my fantasy evaporated, like fog burned off by the sun. Headmistress wasn’t my protector, and School was no longer safe.
Nowhere was safe.
The lock finally gave and I fell forward into the dark shack. I pulled my knapsack inside and shut the door, pushing farther down a narrow corridor that emptied out into a larger room. The dirt-caked windows were snaked with vines, making it impossible to see. I felt my way in and realized at once that it wasn’t a shack, but a long house that expanded into the side of the hill, half buried by the grass. I kept going, feeling my way farther into the room. The walls were rough and mottled, as though they were made of stones.
The strange voices came closer. “Come on, Raff, just throw the hide in the bag and let’s get off. ”
“Shove it, you filthy crumb,” another shot back. Their voices were deep and gruff. They didn’t speak in the same careful English we’d learned in School.
I had sat in my Dangers of Boys and Men class for an entire year, learning all the ways women were vulnerable to the other sex. First was the Manipulation and Heartache unit. We did a close reading of Romeo and Juliet, studying the way Romeo seduced Juliet and ultimately led her to her death. Teacher Mildred gave a lecture about a relationship she had before the plague and the highs that so quickly evolved into desperate, anger-fueled lows. She cried as she described how her “love” had left her after she gave birth to their first child, a little girl who later died in the plague. He’d claimed something called “confusion. ” During the unit on Domestic Enslavement, we saw old print ads of women in aprons. But the lesson on Gang Mentality was the most terrifying of all.