*****
Chapter Sixteen
Life is a Ball
The week passed by quickly, much too quickly for me; when Friday arrived, I realized I wasn’t excited about the Gala at all. I was nervous, and not in a good way, not in a way that you’d expect to be right before a grand party was held in your honor. I was nervous about what it meant for me. I would start my tour the day after the Gala and would be really, truly, and fully thrust into the public eye. It wouldn’t simply be on a video screen anymore.
I was expected to be witty and graceful in front of crowds of people, be charming and dutiful at dinner parties, and be the perfect example of a loyal Citizen in everything I did. Cimarron insisted that I’d be perfectly perfect.
Thorn insisted the same. He said he knew I’d perform exactly as expected and that I shouldn’t be worried. I was thankful for his friendship, especially with Lily so involved with Fisher, and Stone pursuing Rosebud. It was nice to still have someone to talk to every day. My father had accepted my friendship with Thorn without question, but Aspen still questioned it. Whenever she could work it into a conversation, she somehow managed to call attention to the fact that there were better candidates out there. So I was thankful that she hadn’t been around much.
Aspen had been so busy during the week; she was determined for the Gala to be the best one Concord had ever seen. She actually made an attempt to leave messages for me and give me little details in passing. It was an effort on her part and I appreciated it. Thorn told me to give it time to see if my mother was sincere about changing, and during the week I had been encouraged to believe that we were on the right track. It felt really good just to hope.
I hadn’t picked up the mystery tablet again. It was still tucked between my headboard and the mattress. But I did peek at it every day just to make sure that it was still there. I was reaching my hand down in the space to feel for it, when there was a knock on my bedroom door.
“Bluebell, come look at my dress,” Aspen called from the other side of the door.
I got up and opened the door.
“Come see it. It was just delivered,” she said. “I love it. It is a powerful looking dress.”
“You want to look powerful?” I asked. It was a confusing statement. I figured Galas were all about feminine beauty. The dresses that had been paraded in front of me had a soft feminine feel to them.
“Absolutely. I want the 1.15 family to be known as a great and powerful family. Our men are Council members and our women are fertile and Lush,” she explained as I followed her down the stairs.
There were two large boxes in the center of the room. One held my gown, shimmering and soft. The fabric seemed so light and airy. I thought back to when I’d first tried it on and how much I had loved the way the fabric billowed around me as I twisted my body back and forth. Even just lying there in the box, I loved it. The other box held Aspen’s dress. It was a deep black color, so dark it felt like it would absorb all the light around it. The gown had long sleeves, heavy looking fabric, and a high tulle collar.
“Aspen,” I said.
“Mother,” she corrected.
“Mother, that is definitely a powerful looking gown. It looks heavy.”
“It does. I think it shows what a strong woman I am.”
“Ummm, the collar is nice,” I said, not sure what else to draw attention to.
“It reminds me of the one you wore last week. That collar had strength. It framed your face and made you stand out. I loved it, so I ordered one to be added to this gown.”
“Well, you will definitely exude power in that dress.”
“Yes. I also think that together we show all aspects of the 1.15 family. The soft and the hard… You and I,” she smiled, pleased with herself. “But in a good way. I am hard because I must be and you are soft because you can’t help but be the sweet, pleasing girl that you are.”
“I guess we should hang these up for tomorrow evening,” I said. “When will hair and make-up arrive?”
“They’ll be here tomorrow at two o’clock in the afternoon. You’re scheduled for another skin glow treatment before that. So get your beauty sleep tonight and make sure that you eat something solid tomorrow, even if you feel too nervous to eat. I don’t want you fainting on me. That wouldn’t make the family look strong at all,” she teased.
I carefully lifted my gown out of the box. “I will be well rested and well fed,” I promised.
“And I don’t want you going on any walks tonight. It would please me if you just stayed in. Spend a comfortable evening in your room reading stories or maybe watch a video. You like to do that, don’t you? If you fell down somewhere and scraped yourself up, well, it just wouldn’t do. Everything must be perfect tomorrow,” she worried.
I had planned to meet Thorn again, but I could always just video message him instead. “I will stay in my room. No scrapes. I promise,” I said, more than a little disappointed.
“Thank you, Bluebell. I’ll just be in my room dealing with last minute details for the Gala, try not to disturb me. I have a few surprises in store for you. I would hate for any one of them to be ruined,” she winked and dismissed me.
I went back up to my room and hung the dress up in my closet before grabbing my larger personal tablet. I opened the library on it. Lost on the Way to the Beach was back again. I couldn’t believe it. I clicked on the cover image, found my place, and started to read.
They ran through the forest. The woman didn’t know how long it would be until her absence was noticed. She wasn’t allowed to take the girl out for more than an hour or two at a time. Even though she was known to all as the girl’s appointed caretaker, she was watched, she was always watched. It had been a mistake coming to this place and agreeing to this post, because it certainly wasn’t a marriage.
She had told The Council she’d enter into a Marriage Contract with whatever person they determined would be compatible with her. She was so desperate to get away from her home and the shame that her parents had brought to their family. She didn’t spend enough time making sure that the marriage would be a good match. A second wife. How had she allowed herself to become somebody’s second wife?
The man had been so nice at that first meeting; after the older Council member brought him in, introduced him, and left them in a room together. They laughed and talked and shared stories from their time at Training Tech. He told her how much he wanted a child, but said his wife was still unable to conceive even though they had tried so many times. Adoption was discussed, but his wife had thought it would be nice to bring in a second wife. A woman that would be willing to have at least two children, with the first to be thought of as the first wife’s child and the second to be considered the second wife’s child.
The situation seemed ideal, at first, until the woman moved into their home, became pregnant with a child, and was kept hidden for the entire pregnancy. The first wife was determined for everyone to think the child was hers. The woman would be introduced as the child’s caregiver.
The little girl tugged at her hand, drawing her out of her thoughts.
“Did I ever tell you how much I loved to pick flowers when I was your age?” she asked the little girl.
“No, but picking flowers is fun.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
“Yes. They are so pretty,” the little girl smiled.
“Making a wild bouquet was one of my favorite things to do.”
The woman paused and looked around. Her face grew worried and the little girl asked her what was wrong.
“It’s nothing, Bluebell. I just want you to know how much I love you. That is why I never want to lose you.”
“That’s silly. You can’t lose a person. You only lose toys and things,” the little girl replied.
“What?” I stopped reading and stared at the tablet. “This can’t be happening,” I whispered aloud.
How in the world was I reading a story on my tablet that had invaded my dreams. It seemed so much l
ike real memories to me and suddenly my name was printed right on the screen? I was looking right at it. I couldn’t deny it anymore. I wasn’t meshing the two different stories together. They were both the same story. My memories were here, written out by someone else and sent to my tablet. I wanted to scream for my father or message Lily or video chat Thorn. Actually, I wanted to run from the house and find Thorn and ask him a thousand questions about how and why this was happening. But I knew I couldn’t do any of those things until I finished reading.
It took all of the woman’s strength to stop herself from crying. She didn’t want to scare the child. “You’re right, dear heart. We must go faster though. Do you think you can walk a little faster?”
“I could try,” the little girl smiled up at her.
The woman heard something and her eyes darted across the field. “What was that?” There was someone coming, she could feel it. “Hurry!”
They started to run and the woman thought that if they could just make it over the bridge it would all be fine. The beach wasn’t that much further. But in the frantic rush, the woman didn’t realize the little girl had stumbled and fell down. Then she heard the cries.
“Get up, Bluebell,” the woman called out.
The woman looked behind the little girl and then focused on something behind her. Her eyes grew big with fear.
“Get up, Bluebell!” she screamed.
The little girl shook her head, and didn’t move.
“Get up, Bluebell!” she screamed again.
Someone darted out from the trees and grabbed the little girl. Someone else followed and started toward the woman.
“I’ll go after her,” he shouted. “Take the girl back to my home, please.”
The woman turned and ran. She heard footsteps pounding behind her, so she pushed herself even harder.
“Stop, Hope. You can’t go,” he yelled out after her. “Come back with me. Come back and be with our daughter.”
He was closing in on her, she knew it. Then he grabbed her.
“Jackson, let me go,” the woman pleaded.
“I can’t let you go. I think I love you,” he said, and spun her around. “Hope, you can’t leave me.”
“She’ll never let me have another child. You both said I could have one to call my own. Do you know how much it hurts to see Bluebell call that woman mother and know that I may never get to have that chance on my own, because she won’t share you with me? You lied to me. I am not a true second wife. You tell everyone I am Bluebell’s caretaker, and now that she is about to turn five and about to leave for Training Tech there is no way to explain my presence any more. She is going to get rid of me and send me away.
“Jackson, can’t you see that? I am bound to you, we have a Marriage Contract, and nobody knows it but us. I will not be allowed to marry again, because Concord Marriage Contracts are binding for life. So what am I to do? Where will she send me? I think she plans to have me secretly banished and cast out!”
“She wouldn’t do that. I won’t let her.”
“What power do you have? None. Her father is on The Council. She pulls all the strings here. I should never have come here and accepted a life as a Second Wife. It was unfair to me, it was unfair to you, and it was unfair to Aspen. She always wanted you all to herself. And I don’t even hate her for that. I’d want you for myself as well. But most of all I want my daughter. I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her in Training Tech for twelve years, and not being able to see her or touch her or hug her or show her the love she deserves.”
My tablet flashed for a second then reverted to the home screen. The book was gone once again. My head was spinning. It felt like my whole life had been crumpled into a ball and thrown down the street. It was bouncing away from me, too fast for me to catch it.
I quietly opened my door and crept over to Aspen’s room. My brain had erased the word Mother from any association with her… instantly. The door to her room was cracked open. She was sitting at her dressing table, in front of her mirror, brushing her hair as she spoke with someone on video chat.
“It is all going just fine,” Aspen said. “She is really warming up to me.”
“If you had nurtured the relationship from the beginning you wouldn’t need to try so hard to fix it now,” came the reply.
I couldn’t see the face in the screen, but I knew the voice. It was my grandfather’s.
“How was I to know she’d end up Lush like her mother? You never thought it could happen either, admit it, Father. If she had simply been fertile, or better yet, infertile, you wouldn’t have felt the need to make a spectacle out of her. This is your doing.”
“Her mother ran because YOU forced her to be invisible, I refuse to take any responsibility for that. That was all your doing. You could have let Jackson father another child with her. She probably would have been manageable if you had lived up to your promises when she came to your home.”
“Father. There was no way I would share my man with any other woman. You brought her to us… YOU. Remember that?” Aspen hissed.
“Aspen, we need to stop laying blame. Jackson barely remembers her, though how you convinced him to willingly take those medicines I don’t know.”
Aspen gave a small laugh. “He wanted to forget her. It was easy to convince him. And when he showed his loyalty by returning our daughter and living the way we wanted him to, you rewarded him with a seat on The Council. He got what he wanted. I got what I wanted. It will all work out in the end.”
“What did you get out of this, Aspen?” Grandfather asked.
“I got a child,” she answered.
“You never wanted a child,” he said.
“But of course I did. How else could I continue to convince my friends that I was fertile? I purposely made myself violently ill the day of our final Citizen Brands. I drank chemicals just so the doctor would have to keep me in the Medical Center. My bandages were removed, and my brand revealed, in private. There were no witnesses. I’ve been wearing rows of beaded crap on my arm for over twenty years. Convincing that woman to live in our home and have a child for me in secret was the best decision I ever made. When Bluebell arrived and I told everybody she was mine. It created a lie that everybody believes to be true. I am a fertile woman and everybody knows it,” Aspen smiled.
I could see her face through the crack in the door, reflected in the mirror. Her smile was full of venom and malevolence.
She put the brush down on the table and started to remove her bracelets. One by one she pulled them off her wrist and placed them in the jewelry box by the table.
“But you are not fertile,” Grandfather said. “That mark on your wrist proves it.”
I squinted my eyes to see if what he said was true. She held her wrist up closer to her face, took out a cloth, and started to wipe at her skin. Then it appeared and my eyes fixated on it.
Aspen looked at her wrist and her face went blank. “But nobody knows it is there,” she said, staring at the black X that was her Citizen Brand.
The End…
…for now.
Look for the next novel in the LUSH story – coming October 2013
HUSH (a LUSH novel)
Other Novels by S.L. Baum
THE IMMORTAL ONES SERIES – YA paranormal romance
A Chance for Charity (The Immortal Ones – book one)
My Link in Time (The Immortal Ones – book two)
Of Fire and Brimstone (The Immortal Ones – Elizabeth’s Novella)
Our Summer of Discontent (The Immortal Ones – book three)
The Eve of Destruction (The Immortal Ones – book four) - coming June 2013
You can catch up with all the random stuff that I do (not that it’s really all that interesting to anyone else but me)… at any one of these places…
https://twitter.com/slbaum
https://www.facebook.com/slbaumnovel
https://mywriteroad.blogspot.com
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Thank you so much for downloading LUSH.
SL Baum
*A special thank you to all my Beta Readers (Al, Allie, Gayle, Lala, Vickie, and Win) – those wonderful sets of extra eyes, and all with massive brain power. You’ve helped so much in getting this book ready to be put out there for all to see. You are invaluable to me!
*I would also like to thank my editor for this novel: Andrea Harding at Express Editing Solutions.
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