“And you should keep on walking,” I say.
He doesn’t. “I haven’t seen you around before,” he says.
“You must be blind. I’m here every day.”
“Nah, I would’ve noticed you for sure,” the gang leader says.
Tawni shrugs again. I’m looking at her, but talking to the guy. “Whatever. Doesn’t matter. Leave me alone.”
I finally swivel my head and make eye contact with him, giving him my iciest stare. I know he’s not scared of me, but I want him to decide I’m not worth the effort.
“Not gonna happen,” he says, moving in close to me.
Something inside me snaps. I’m sick of people ruining my life, acting like they own me. He reminds me of the Enforcers who barged into our house and abducted my parents. Arrogant. Selfish.
I stand up, my teeth bared, my eyes on fire. My fire-eyes barely reach his chest. His sweat-stained tunic is right in my face and makes me nauseous. I push him as hard as I can, which doesn’t do much, but moves him back a couple of steps. My hands are knotted into fists. I hold them out in front of me, ready for the guy’s response.
“You’re a real bitch,” he says. “And you smell like filth. See you around.” He slowly turns and saunters off, chuckling to himself.
I take a deep breath, try to get control of my rage.
“That was amazing,” Tawni whispers from behind me.
I sit back down and try to relax my face as I look at her. Her eyes are wide. “He’s a jerk,” I say through clenched teeth.
“A scary jerk,” she says. “That was awesome how you stood up for yourself.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
Tawny shrugs for the third time. “Honestly, I probably would have tried to run away, or yell for help or something. Not fight—that’s for sure.”
Tawni’s eyes flick back to the fence and I follow her gaze. The parade. Tristan. I forgot all about him when the gang guy approached me.
But now Tristan is gone, the front of the parade having moved out of sight while I was dealing with the thug.
“That was pretty weird,” Tawni murmurs, still looking past the fence.
“What was?” I say, glancing at her furtively. Did she notice the way Tristan looked at me? Did she sense what I had? Had I imagined the look of concern on his face just before the confrontation with the gang guy, or had she seen it, too?
“I didn’t see many photographs being taken of Tristan during the parade. I thought the paparazzi would be out in full force.”
I roll my eyes at myself. Of course Tawni didn’t notice Tristan looking at me. Probably because he didn’t. He’d probably just looked in our general direction, past us. He was probably frowning at all of us—at the criminals. Disgusted by us. Clearly he wasn’t warning me about the approaching gangster. My mind has a way of playing tricks on me. My dad always said I have an overactive imagination. It’s gotten me into trouble more than once growing up. Like the time in Year One when I told everyone in my class about the swamp monster that was hiding in the janitor’s closet. Some of the kids freaked out, crying and screaming and stuff; one boy even peed his pants. Then Mrs. Windsor checked and discovered that my swamp monster was really a savage mop, clearly looking for a young child to feast on.
Yeah, in reality Tristan probably didn’t even look at me. I might have seen his head turn in my direction, perhaps a random glance at best, certainly not the laser-beamed, tethered gaze that I’d obviously imagined.
But still. There is no doubt I felt something for him.
I feel something for him.
“Helloooo? Earth to…What’s your name anyway?” Tawni waves her hand across my face—apparently I’ve spaced out, lost in my own random thoughts.
“Adele,” I find myself saying, to my surprise. Giving my name away so easily like that—what am I thinking? Tawni is penetrating my social defenses faster than a mine cave-in swallows a trapped traveler.
“Well, Adele, it has been a true pleasure meeting you and watching you handle that guy. Truly impressive, really. Would you like to dine with me and my friend Cole tonight?”
Dine? This girl has a funny way of speaking. Like she has no clue that we’re locked up in a juvenile detention center. And that we live underground. And that most of us will never get our freedom back. Certainly not me. Maybe she is just a few days from being released, which would certainly explain why she seems so cheery. I hope so. If I can’t get out, at least someone I know can.
“Uh, yeah, I guess so,” I say. “Thanks,” I add quickly, realizing how rude I sound.
“Great! Meet us in the northwest corner—we’ll reserve a table.”
There she goes again: speaking as if we’re going out to some fancy restaurant that accepts reservations. I shake my head and realize I’m smiling. Not my normal smile—no, I’m not ready for that yet—but slightly better than the crooked, awkward smile I attempted earlier. Maybe things are looking up for me. I’ve made a friend. At least, the closest thing to a friend I’ve had in a long time.
* * *
There are only two hours to kill before dinner, so I use the time to think. I start with the past—my happiest memories. My father coming home from a long day of work in the mines, filthy and dripping sweat, but bringing my sister and me a treat of some kind. Either a small gemstone that he’d smuggled out or a piece of candy he’d bought in town. He always seemed to have a twinkle in his eye and a bounce in his step, no matter how tired he was. Sometimes he even gave me a piggyback ride before he got cleaned up. My mother hated it when he did that, because then I’d have to take a bath before supper, too.
God, how I love my father.
I love my mother, too, but in a different way. She isn’t as playful as my father, is quicker to punish, and is less rebellious toward the sun dwellers. She says that it isn’t our place to tell the wise leaders—who’d gotten us through Year Zero, she likes to remind—how to run the government. I try to see her point, but it’s been nearly five hundred years since Year Zero, and all of the people from back then are long dead.
I shake my head and try to focus on the happy memories of my mom. When we’d cook radish stew together, play games of chess and checkers, watch the late-night news on our beat-up old telebox.
My mother is the most compassionate person I know. If someone in our neighborhood was sick, she was always the first to deliver a meal to them, using our already scant supplies to help out a friend. Sometimes I got mad at her, wished she wouldn’t do stuff like that, wished she wouldn’t give away our stuff. But I usually felt bad about my thoughts later on. In the deepest recesses of my soul I am always proud of her.
But as usual, my thoughts quickly do a one-eighty. Now I am thinking about all that has gone wrong, all that is bad. About the cruelty of life.
About how I have failed my parents. I don’t dare to hope that they are still alive.
I think about all the waste in the world. Although we live underground now, we still require many of the same basic necessities humans have needed for decades. Toothpaste, for example. Instead of being produced in a factory somewhere in China, it’s produced in a cave somewhere. Certainly not in China. If there is still a China, we aren’t connected to it anymore. China’s just a place on an old map from my history class in school. We are on a lone island.
The point is: we use up the toothpaste and then throw out the container. It is sent to the lava flow for destruction. Have human lives become like a tube of toothpaste? Something to be used up and thrown away? At first the tube seems so big, so full of life. But after just a few uses it becomes dented and lumpy—already life is ebbing away from it—and it’s only a matter of time before the final bit is squeezed out, rendering it an empty vessel, good for nothing.
I feel myself being squeezed out every day.
I try to distract myself, gazing up at the dimly lit cavern ceiling rising more than twenty stories above me. It’s weird being in the Pen, cut off from the town, and yet being able to see everything th
at the non-prisoners can see. From the yard, I can see the same massive cavern that houses our town, the Pen, all of us. If I didn’t know it so well, the 14th subchapter might be a stunning sight, with an arcing roof coated by the glossy sheen of the panel lighting that controls our days and nights. The cavern was excavated more than two hundred years ago, and covers more than five square miles. Most of the rough and jagged rocks were smoothed over, huge stone support columns built, stone roads laid, and houses and buildings erected.
There is a light commercial district, where goods can be bought, sold, and traded. Mostly they’re traded, because the wages are so low that money is short. I remember well the first money I ever had. My father saved for a month so he could give it to me on my tenth birthday. A single Nailin, bright and shiny and round. Printed with the face of the President. I stared at it for hours, trying to imprint its memory in my mind, for I knew it would soon be gone, wasted, on a silly dress I’d coveted for over a year. Every time I passed by the dress shop in town, I stopped to look at the dress. It was black and long, and would sweep the floor as I walked. The sleeves were sheer and translucent, elegant in their simplicity. Simple—that’s the way I like things. There were no frills, no laces, no bows—simple. I bought that dress with my first Nailin.
I outgrew it in three months. Funny the way the world works sometimes.
The pinnacle of the town, however, is the mine. All things considered, we are lucky. Many of the other subchapters in the Realm have mines, but none so valuable as ours. For ours is full of gemstones, raw and uncut—and worth a fortune to the sun dwellers. So you’d expect us to be a rich town. We should be, but once the taxes are taken out of the workers’ wages, it’s a pittance, barely enough to survive on.
When my father complained, they took him away. My mother, too, guilty by association. I was sent to the Pen and my sister to a crummy, broken-down orphanage. Yeah, life is good as a moon dweller.
Given my dark thoughts, I am glad when the two hours pass. I leave the yard, weaving my way through the kids who are still lounging about. Some are clustered in groups, speaking in hushed whispers, trading pages of books for cigarettes, and cigarettes for socks, and socks for whatever else will help them forget they are prisoners, that their lives are forfeit. Others are sprawled out on the rock, sleeping their sentences away. I wonder if their hearts have died, too, like mine had before it was resurrected by my glimpse of Tristan.
Inside the Pen it is like a cattle call. Kids are pushing against each other like a mob, all trying to get to the cafeteria. Feeding time is about the only time any of the kids show any kind of energy. Also when they are fighting. Interesting how both instances are a matter of survival.
I ease my way into the mash-up of bodies and manage to find a human flow that is moving swiftly in the right direction, like a strong current in one of the many underground rivers of the Tri-Realms. Soon—after only a few minor collisions—I am in the cafeteria.
Given the crowds, one might expect that the food is to die for. Perhaps it is a trendy new restaurant, one where you have to make a reservation, like Tawni suggested earlier. However, one bite of the lukewarm mashed potatoes or a spoon of the mystery stew is enough to clinch the notion that the executive chef would be much better suited to some other occupation—any other occupation. Seriously. It is bad. Tasteless. Like eating a shoe. And not a new one. One that has been worn for years by someone who suffers from severe foot sweating.
But we have no choice. It’s the only show in town, a monopoly—on our stomachs. So we add lots of salt, which by some miracle they provide in plenty.
Once in the food line, I order—by pointing at things and grunting—a gob of something covered in brown gravy, a noodle dish that looks like dead worms, and a plastic cup of brownish water. Yum.
I find Tawni right where she said she’d be—at one of the corner tables. Most every table is already full, so I’m glad she arrived early enough to get it. Usually I just take my food outside, to eat alone in silence.
There’s a guy sitting across from her. He’s naturally dark-skinned, which is the only way to not have pale skin when you live underground; unless, of course, you reside in the Sun Realm, where tanning beds are a staple in every household. He’s wearing a shirt with the sleeves cut off, highlighting his muscular arms. He’s tall, but not as tall as Tristan. Funny how I’m already comparing other guys to Tristan, like I even know him.
Tawni spots me and motions for me to join them. I manage to squeeze through the throng of eaters and slide onto the bench next to her.
“Hi!” she says brightly, like we are just a bunch of friends going out to eat at our favorite haunt.
“Uh, yeah, hi.” I still can’t seem to remember how to speak like a normal human being. I glance at the black guy. He smiles.
“I’m Cole,” he says, extending a hand.
When he grasps my hand it disappears, as if it’s been swallowed up by his enormous paw. I shake his hand firmly, trying to act tough, but to my surprise he doesn’t return my iron grip. Nor does his hand crumple under the raw power of my squeeze. It’s just sort of there. It’s like his hand absorbs my strength, simply by the sheer solidity of his bones. His hand is also somewhat tender and gentle, smooth and well cared for. Somewhat feminine, if I’m being honest. It’s a contradiction, which I’m always intrigued by. Like bittersweet chocolate, which, by the way, I’ve only tried once in my life when my dad gave me a square for my eighth birthday.
By just shaking Cole’s hand I’ve started to like him. Can it be: another friend? Two in one day? It’s like a Christmas miracle.
“I’m Adele,” I say, feeling quite gabby all of a sudden.
“I know,” he says. “Tawni told me. She said you’re a badass.”
I feel my face flush slightly. “Oh. Not really. It was just some punk who’s all talk.”
“She told me who it was. He’s not all talk. I’ve seen him bust some heads before. You were lucky; you don’t want to mess with that dude.”
“I can take care of myself,” I say. I hear a coldness creep into my tone. I grit my teeth and try to relax.
Cole shrugs. “If you say so. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Whatcha in for anyway?” he asks.
Geez, this guy cuts right to the chase. But I tell him anyway.
“Mass murder. Got burned by the shallow graves—I knew I should have dug deeper.”
Cole’s face doesn’t flinch. “Oh yeah?” he says. “Me, too. Weird coincidence, huh?”
My jaw drops open.
Cole grins. “Gotcha!” he says proudly.
I realize that, like me, he’s joking. The way he delivers the line, combined with his soft handshake, combined with the fact that I’m actually speaking to real humans for the first time in a long time, makes me completely miss his sarcasm. Me, the queen of sarcastic comments—self-declared—has been outsarcastified.
“Cole can be quite sarcastic,” Tawni explains, one of her white eyebrows rising apologetically.
“You don’t say,” I reply, grinning at Cole. That’s when I notice the strength of his eyes. When I say strength, I mean strength. Most people talk about eye color when they talk about people’s eyes—I certainly do. And yes, Cole’s eyes are a beautifully warm shade of milky chocolate brown. But what I notice is what’s behind his eyes. It’s like he’s wearing steel-plated contacts or something. There’s no trace of nervousness, or fear, or worry, or any of those other feelings that I constantly have; the feelings that lead my eyes to look away, to flutter, to close. Right away I know Cole is someone you can count on in the most dangerous situations.
“Nah, I’m not sarcastic at all,” Cole says. Again, I can’t detect even the slightest trace of sarcasm in his voice. He’s good, that’s for sure. I’ll have to listen closely whenever he speaks.
Despite having only just met these two people, barely spoken three sentences to either of them, I find myself opening up.
“I’m the daughter of a traitor,” I blurt out.
<
br /> “Well, you’ve got us beat,” Tawni says. “I got caught trying to travel interdistrict without a travel card, and Cole here stole a couple of loaves of bread to feed his starving family.”
Cole says, “It was six loaves of bread, which, let me tell ya, are hard to carry when you don’t have a bag and you’re in a hurry. When we didn’t have anything to eat for three nights in a row, I came up with a plan. I was so stressed that sweat was dripping off my forehead and into my eyes. I could barely see when I smashed the bakery window. My hands were cold and clammy, but somehow I managed to grab the six loaves. Someone shouted at me, an Enforcer, I think, and I started running. Right away one of the loaves slipped out of my fingers. I grabbed for it, but that made another one slip, then another. Soon I was juggling the bread, batting it up in the air over my head. I did pretty well, too, keeping all six up in the air for like five seconds before one fell. My luck didn’t get much better at that point. I slipped on the loaf, which, for your information, was about as slippery as a banana peel, and went down hard. They brought me here.”
I almost want to laugh. Cole has a twinkle in his eyes, so I don’t think he’ll mind. But laughter is still coming hard for me, so I just smile lightly. “Truth,” I say, starting a game that has the potential to last for a long time.
Cole grins. “Correct,” he says. “As stupid a way as that was to end up in the Pen, it’s all true.” I’m starting to get a better read on him, noticing subtle things like the way his bottom lip pouts slightly when he’s being honest. His eyes are always the same, though, strong and confident, so I won’t be able to use them to read him, like you can with most people.
“How long you in for?” Tawni asks me.
I raise my eyebrows. “How long?” I parrot.
“Yeah, you know,” Tawni says, “a year, two years, what?”
“Try forever,” I say.
Cole stares at me. “Truth,” he says.
“No, that can’t be right,” Tawni says. “Lie. She’s messing with us.”
With tight lips I shake my head. “Not a lie. They told me rebelliousness is passed through blood, genetically, like eye color or being able to snap your fingers. They won’t ever let me out. I mean, when I turn eighteen I’ll move out of this place and into an adult facility—probably the Max—but I’ll never have my freedom again.”