Seventeen
He wouldn’t let me bring him with me. He said it was too dangerous if he went, so he told me to just come back for him when I got out. If I got out.
I sneak around the hallways, trying to be quiet, which is easier to do with bare feet than with shoes on, I realize. There aren’t as many guards at nighttime it seems, considering I’ve only come across two and neither of them noticed me. Meanwhile, the purple on my hand has spread. Not a lot, but a little bit to where it starts to worry me. Why am I just now starting to notice this? I hope it’s not deadly or anything…
I reach the area of the people that want to fight. No guards are around to stop me from entering the space. I think it’s probably because everyone can hold their own. They’re probably taught to fight and how to protect themselves. I mean, that’s what I would do if I was running a rebellion—I would make sure that everyone knows how to take care of themselves and each other.
I shake my head. I’m not running a rebellion, and I never will be. No matter how much my mother pushes me, no matter how many people she sends after me, it’s just not going to happen. It’s not who I am.
I walk by a room with a glass window. It’s the length of the wall, but only half as wide.
I peer in and see someone punching a long cylindrical bag hanging from the ceiling. His groans and grunts as he hits it are muffled from the glass barrier that stands in between us.
Peter.
I open the door to the left of the window, and walk in. He turns around to the sound of the metal scraping on the floor, his body rigid. Slowly, the tension leaves his body and the fire burning in his eyes softens as I walk toward him. I stop in the center of the room, trying to control my breathing. The last time we talked, I shouted at him, I acted like he was a complete stranger…
I hear him whisper my name before he strides toward me and wraps me in a hug. I stand still, my body aching and my heart beating hard against my ribcage. Guilt twists in my stomach and leaps into my eyes in the form of water. I want to tell him I’m sorry, that I didn’t mean it back there, that I was hurting, I was scared… But instead I stay silent and feel his arms around me.
He pulls away, holding me at arms length.
“Are you okay? What happened? How’d you get away from Rebecca? Did they hurt you?”
I wipe some of his sweat off of my neck and my cheek and cross my arms in front of my chest.
“They had me in a Simulation Sphere.”
“I know. Been there, done that… Are you okay?”
I nod and pucker my lips, not knowing how to really tell him about its state. “I broke it.”
“What?” He laughs, awestruck. “You broke the simulation?”
I shake my head and look down, backing up a little.
His arms drop to his sides.
“I broke the sphere.”
I close my eyes, ready for the judgment to fall upon me. My heart races at the thoughts of wondering what he’s thinking.
He thinks I’m a freak, doesn’t he? He knows I’m not normal… He hates me now…
I don’t know why I care. My insides twist and turn and my eyes water. Why am I so afraid of what he thinks of me?
Surprisingly, he busts out laughing and looks at me with a smile plastered on his face. It almost takes me off guard.
“At least you’re okay,” He says, wrapping me in another hug.
He’s okay with it. He doesn’t care I’m different, that I’m not normal, that I do things that aren’t supposed to happen, that I break everything I touch…
He cares about me.
“They’re going to kill me...” I choke out, the realization falling upon me like a heavy blanket.
I feel him pull away and he looks at me.
“Come with me. We need to leave.”
“It’s not that easy,” I tell him. “It’s never that easy.”
“What do you mean?”
I lift my palm up to him, and he looks at it puzzled.
“What happened?”
“I touched the wall.”
His eyes grow wide and he grabs my other hand, pulling me behind him as we exit the room.
“I can’t believe I didn’t realize…” He trails off.
“Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you to someone,” He says simply as we turn around another corner.
“Who?”
“Someone who knows what it is. I think I remember where it is…”
We show up at the door. The door behind the hologram on the black wall. I pull and tug at my arm, to try and pull it away, but it only leads to Peter wrapping me in a bear hug and dragging me into the room.
My mom wakes from her sleep on her chair, and smiles at me.
“So you’re back?”
“Not by choice,” I spit.
“We need you to see this,” Peter says to her, holding out my arm.
“No we don’t—let go!” I wriggle and writhe, trying to break free of his grip, but he doesn’t budge.
My mom’s eyes grow wide as her mouth drops open, and she presses back in her chair. It rolls to the wall and she presses into it as much as she can, as if I had caught fire and she’s trying to run from the flames.
“Stay away—stay—stay away!” She shouts, grabbing a knife out of her pocket and aiming it at me. “Keep her away from me!”
“What is it?” Peter yells over her shrill voice.
She keeps her eyes locked on my hand and shakes her head. Peter asks again, more forcefully this time, and she closes her eyes and takes a breath.
“She’s becoming one of… them,” Her voice is shaky.
“How?”
“The Government made a serum… I don’t know from what, or how, or why, but they did. And and they put it in the walls. I don’t know why… they just did, quite a while ago… And—and the spikes on the walls cannot penetrate anything but the first layer of skin on someone. They can’t go through clothing, shoes, or gloves. The gloves you use for tapping on the panels…” She gulps. “It seeps into the brain and rewires it—”
“I know that part,” I say, ripping my hand away from Peter in a huff. “But what else will it do to me?”
“Change your appearance, your insides, your outsides… your DNA.”
I look down at my hands.
“How…? Why?”
“I don't know.”
“How can we fix it?” Peter shouts.
“You can’t,” My mom says.
I smash my hands down onto the table, the loud smack echoing off the walls as I walk out. I’m done with all of this—I’m done. I’m leaving. I’m going home.
Peter runs after me, and I hear my mother pick up her tablet and start to call someone on it, probably to report us, to stop us, to stop me from leaving and keep me in this place containing her insanity.
“We don’t have much time. Get me out of this place. Now,” I say through gritted teeth.
He doesn’t protest and starts weaving in and out of the halls. We reach the door of the room I almost drowned in when we first entered this wretched place. Peter opens the door, and presses a button. I hear the doors seal themselves, and the large one on the other side starts to slowly open, letting water in by the gallon.
“Don’t let go,” Peter tells me.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
The water reaches the roof, and he drags me out of the large door. We swim up for a long time, and, suddenly, there is air.
I breathe it in and grab on to Peter’s arm with both hands. He wraps his arm around me to help me swim. I wipe my face off, moving the sopping wet hair from my vision, and he starts to swim again. I look up at him and his face glows in the moon, tan and strong. The memory of us as children surfaces in my brain as we start to walk through the water, not touching any more.
“I remember you,” I say over the rushing of the river.
“What?”
“You wanted to be a Cooker. I never said sorry to you.”
; He looks at me and smiles.
“It’s okay. I forgave you long ago.”
I give him a slight smile.
Footsteps.
I freeze where I stand.
Who is out here? Did Murkas find me? Find us? The Rebellion? Is that him, coming to take us away, to take me home? If he found out about all of this, I doubt he would spare me, the victim. But am I really the victim?
My blood runs cold at the thought.
“Hey! Hey, Hemmings! Hemmings! Over here!”
Ken.
I breathe a sigh of relief, letting it wash over me like the water rushing over my bare ankles and feet.
Peter laughs and runs up to Ken, giving him a high-five. I step out of the water and the wind raises goose bumps all over my body. Ken rushes over and hugs me. I laugh, and pat him on the back with one hand. The other stays around my stomach, trying to help me warm up.
“I was starting to worry. Y’all were gone a while.”
“Yeah, well we’re okay now,” Peter says forcefully.
I look at him. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing. We just gotta go. They’ll be looking soon. We gotta get you home.”
Home.
What is my home anymore? Everywhere I go, people are either looking to destroy me or control me. And through everything I’ve had to deal with the past few days, I’ve forgotten where my real home is. Nad is back in the Domes, but my heart hurts when I think about going back. My mom lives outside of the Domes with the rebellion, and thinking about living with her scares me. Home isn’t supposed to be scary or make your heart ache… It feels as if neither place is my home anymore, and since I got trapped outside the Domes, all I’ve wanted to do is go home. But now I don’t know where that is.
I look up at the sky, the stars twinkling. My mom always told me to make a wish when a shooting star would pass by. Her parents did it, and their parents, and so on, and as one passes overhead, I feel almost at ease, the tail bright behind the gleaming ball of light.
I wish I could go home, I think, closing my eyes as I let the wish fill my heart, my body.
I open my eyes again. The bright full moon stares down at me, so big, so full…
It flickers.
I stop. Stare at it for a few more seconds.
Nothing. Not even a glimmer.
Did I imagine that?
“Eenie,” Ken says to me, holding out his hand to help me out of the water. I brush past it, staring at the moon. It can’t be a…
“Hold on,” I say, going one step deeper into the water. I keep my eyes on the moon, just waiting for something to happen, something to tell me I’m wrong, that I’m just insane. But my brain won’t settle for that. What I saw just a moment ago drills into my brain, and I feel my heart rate speed up. “Has anyone checked the limits past the river?”
“We never needed to,” Peter says in a tone that tells me to hurry. “We have everything we need right here.”
I let my eyes fall to the trees on the other side.
I have to know.
Peter takes a few steps closer to me.
“What are you doing?”
“I have to see something.”
He laughs at me in confusion, probably waiting for an explanation. One he won’t get until I know for sure, until I get there and see for myself.
I keep moving forward. The water reaches my hips, my neck. I’m on my tiptoes when I feel the current start to pull me.
“Eenie, come back!” Peter shouts, but I can hardly hear him.
I can do it. I just have to kick. Keep kicking, and I can make it across.
I hope.
I take one more step, and my head goes under water. I fight my way to the surface, drifting down stream further and further. I kick, trying to get to the other side, but the current is too strong to let me swim straight.
“Don’t panic,” I tell myself through mouthfuls of water as my heart picks up. “Stay above water.”
There’s a splash behind me.
I turn to see Peter swimming my way.
I kick away from him and propel myself along with the current. He catches up with me and grabs my arm.
“Let go!” I spit out water as the words do the same.
“Are you crazy?” He shouts.
“I have to do this! Let go!”
I rip my arm away, and he starts drifting away from me, despite his kicking. We drift down two different paths branching off the river bend, mine thin and calm while his moves fast. He pulls himself to shore with little trouble, and I turn to see where I’m headed. The water seems to go on forever and ever—
And that’s when I hit the wall.
I knew it.
I study the wall in front of me, the water pressing against my back. It’s smooth, unlike the walls of the domes. The panels are smaller, the size of the panels on the tablecloths at the Matching Ceremony.
The water pushes my legs past where the wall should be. There’s a hole in the wall. Where could it lead?
I push myself under the water, feeling for the bottom of the wall, and pull myself below it. The water helps push me forward a littler more, and I kick my way up to the surface.
Air.
I hear shouting as my ears break the surface. By the time I wipe my eyes and look around, everyone is gone. I crawl out of the water and step onto the small patch of grass around the small pool of water. The air seems thinner out here, as I start to have trouble with my breathing. My vision starts to blur, spots popping up. I’m not getting enough oxygen to my brain.
Where am I?