Six
Eenie
“You wouldn’t do that in front of your people,” I press.
“Wouldn’t I?” He smiles, looking past me as we dance. “You’d look like a little candy cane.”
I pull away, but he pulls me back, making it look like a dance move.
“You’re sick,” I spit.
“At least I’m not the one going insane,” He grins evilly. “Touching the wall could just mean your end—not to mention this dress. Spin.”
He twirls me, and I have an urge to introduce his face to my knuckles.
“Yes, definitely the dress.”
“You’re disgusting,” I hiss.
“Make up your mind, why don’t you? Am I sick, or disgusting?” He chuckles.
I scowl.
“I’ve had my eye on you, Eenie. Oh, please, not like that. Don’t flatter yourself,” He smiles wickedly. I just want to get this over with as fast as I can. “You’ve grown a rebellious side, even if you can’t see it.”
“Let me go,” I say through my gritted teeth as his hands tighten around me.
“A fire has been lit inside of you for a while now, a fire that I haven’t seen since—”
“Let me go,” I repeat.
“Well, since your mother,” His eyes locking onto mine.
I stumble a little, and hear a few chuckles from around us.
My mother?
“Tell me, Eenralla Land, what did your mother do? What was her job?”
“She was a—”
A what, Eenie? A what?
I can’t remember.
“A Government Official,” He finishes.
The song ends, and he tells me to go back to my seat. I’m so stunned by the information given to me, so awestruck and shocked, that I barely notice Ken has disappeared.
o0o0o
On the way back to the Dame’s Dome, the bus is buzzing with energy. The excitement passes all around me, but does not reach my ears, or my brain, or my heart. They’re all somewhere else.
My mom was a Government Official. How did I not know that? How did I not piece together the white dress and the white lab coats she had in her closet, and the white shirt she wore most of the time she came home? Was I a stupid child? And on top of that, how did I manage to get the one guy—the one guy—who is supposed to be there for me, my everything, my knight in shining armor—the ONE guy that would walk out halfway through the ceremony? How can someone be THAT unlucky and stupid at the same time?
I groan and run my hands over my face, intertwining my fingers into the hair at the top of my forehead. I pull the headband off and pick at the diamonds.
I was lucky enough to even know the job my dad had. It’s hard to have an actual conversation about their jobs when you’re supposed to be working on your own. But to not know my mom’s job… that takes stupidness to a whole new level—a whole new area. It must be a gift or something.
BOOM!
The bus rolls over onto its side, and I’m thrown forward. Screams and shouts fill the air, and I stand myself up. The bus driver is making her way down the side of the bus, stepping over windows and trying to calm everyone down. I bolt for the door and force it open.
And suddenly, I’m awestruck.
The sky is dark and laden with stars, and the moon is as full as, well, the moon. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
And then I see the fire.
The flames cover the entrance to the Home Dome. There’s a big, gaping hole in the glass on the right side of the tunnel, and the smoke is gathering fast.
I duck back inside of the bus, and shout, “Get everyone out! There’s a fire!”
I start to help the girls out of the door, and tell them to go through the hole in the glass. Once everyone is out, I follow them, and we stand right outside the tunnel, watching the fire and smoke grow higher. The air seems different out here, but I believe it’s because of the sudden lack of smoke in the breathable air.
“We’ve got to do something,” The girl in the pink proclaims as she limps over to me.
We can’t go back into the tunnel. The smoke will suffocate us, and we’ll all die. The gate to the Dames Dome is closed, and I don’t think they’ll open unless the bus is going to go through.
“Does the gate open up automatically?” I ask the bus driver, who is staring at her bus in sadness.
She gulps and looks at me. “Uh, no. I have to flash my ID at the camera, and then it opens.”
“Okay,” I say, formulating a plan in my head. Maybe we can—”
I hear leaves moving to my right, and I shush the party of girls. Pulling up my dress enough to move well, I slip off my shoes and slowly make my way to the bushes that are maybe twenty feet away. It moves again, and I squat beside it. Slowly, I raise my hands, and then quickly thrust them through the leaves. My hands close around fabric, and I pull it forward.
I see the face in the moonlight. Confusion and anger bubbles up inside of me as my brain brings forth a name.
“Ken?”
“Hey!” I hear a girl calling for me. “It’s closing!”
I drop Ken’s collar and run over. Sure enough, the glass is fixing itself. It’s regenerating slowly in a straight line parallel to the ground. I’ve only worked with this once as a Mechaneer on windows for the Domeshouses, and I know you can manipulate it with weight and gravity, but I’ve never worked with it on this scale. If this glass closes, none of us will have a way back into the Domes, and we’ll be stuck outside here forever. We wouldn’t survive out here. Couldn’t.
I lunge forward and jump up to grab on to the edge. The glass begins to give way.
“Jump on!” I yell.
The glass begins to shift itself downwards with every new body. Soon it’s to my stomach.
“Start going over one by one,” I say, exasperated.
“Why don’t we all jump over at once?” The bus driver asks through her heavy breathing.
“Because the sudden loss of weight would send it shooting up, and we’d all be missing our legs,” I snap, frustrated.
With each body thrown over the glass, it lifts a little more.
By the time the bus driver is over, the glass is at my chin. I begin to pull myself up, when something hits my arm, and I fall back to the ground, the glass lifting a little more.
I look behind me, and see a man tossing a rock up and down in his right hand. I can’t see his face in the black of night, and his dark clothes hide him well.
Did he just throw a rock at me?
I pull myself up again, and feel an even bigger rock hit my back. I cringe at the pain, my hands almost slipping from the glass. I can feel them rip open a tiny bit.
There’s arguing coming from behind me.
Welcoming the possible distraction time I have, I heave myself up one last time.
Suddenly, there’s a sharp blow to the back of my head.
My body hits the ground, and everything goes fuzzy. Little pieces of light swirl around my vision, and my body doesn’t want to move. I watch through my watering eyes as the glass seals itself shut, trapping me on the outside of the Domes.
Clumsily, I try to stand, propping myself up against the glass. The girls stare back at me with wide eyes as they cough and try to breathe. Their mouths move as they try to talk to me, but I can’t hear anything through the glass.
I gasp in breaths of air as panic settles in, and point to the Dame’s Dome’s entrance.
“Go,” I wheeze. “Go!”
They reluctantly begin to run, and I fall to my knees, grasping my chest, closing my eyes, and trying to comprehend what just happened. Trying to forget the pain.
It is done, I hear the fat man in my head. It is done.
“Here,” I jump at the sound.
Ken is standing above me, his hand held out.
I glare at him, and then run my hands over each other, looking at the cuts from the regenerative glass. They are
n’t deep, but they aren’t not bleeding either.
“What are you going to do? Pelt me with rocks?”
“Hey, we need you over here!” A voice calls. “Bring the girl!”
“Come on,” He says, and tries to take me by the elbow to help me up.
“No,” I say, ripping my arm away, and standing shakily by myself.
“We have to go,” He says.
“I don’t care,” I say, rage burning inside of me, and tears threatening to give in to gravity. “The only place I want to go is home.”
“Een—”
The sound of motors cuts him off as three airships pull into the clearing. The crowd of people wearing black clothes that I hadn’t seen earlier scatters as light falls upon the grass from the ships.
I start waving my hands. They’re Government ships. If they see me, they might save me and take me home. I never knew the day would come where I would want to be back inside that cruddy Dome—
They’re firing.
Their shots hit the ground and throw people everywhere. People are dying.
“No,” I whisper.
A shot is fired in my direction.
The Government doesn’t kill people like this. Not like this. They don’t do this. They can’t.
The shots get closer.
No one can be that evil, that malevolent, that violent. Not anymore. No one is like that now. We’re built for peace. For happiness. Not war. Not death. Not killing.
Hands grab me, and begin to pull me.
Maybe the ones shooting at us aren’t us. Maybe they aren’t the Domes. Maybe they’re aliens. Other beings. Another government. Another thought. They can’t be us. I can’t believe that it’s us. Our government. My world.
BOOM!
Ken and I are launched into the trees and brush from the impact. I land on my right shoulder, and cry out in pain. My ears ring. The world spins, and my vision goes blurry.
“His name was Peter,” Nad said one day while we were working. “My brother.”
“That’s a strange name,” I said, looking up from the control panel we were fixing.
She laughed. “Yeah. I don’t know why my parents named him that. It sounds like a really old name.”
She fell silent.
“I don’t talk about him much,” She said uncomfortably. “It makes me sad.”
“If it makes you sad, then why are you telling me?” I asked, looking at her.
Her big, green eyes focused on me.
“Because you’re my best friend. And best friends tell each other everything.”
I stand up slowly and look out into the clearing at the wreckage. The Domes are reflecting the moonlight as if they were the moon themselves.
Nad will be fine without me. I know she will. She can take care of herself. I just hope she’s wise in what she chooses to do…
Another explosion knocks me from my thoughts. Another one falls to the ground. Another. People are dying right before my eyes, and I’m just standing here watching it happen. Standing here doing nothing. NOTHING.
Anger boils inside of me, and I start to march forward. I can’t just sit here.
“Eenie!” I hear Ken shout, and feel him grab my arm.
I turn toward him ferociously, and scowl at him as he tries to pull me into the woods.
“Let me go!”
“You can’t save them!” He yells over the explosions and the shouts.
“I can try!”
I yank my arm free, and start to run.
Then suddenly I’m flying through the air.
The next thing I see is darkness.
o0o0o
My eyes open to brilliant sunlight. Actual sunlight.
I sit up and look around. The trees hang low to the ground. They’re greener, fuller, and more beautiful than the ones in the Dame’s Dome. The sound of a river—an actual river—dances into my ears. Birds sing and fly around, their wonderful colors looking like rainbows in the trees.
Then I see Ken, and it all comes rushing back. The fire, the screams, the explosions, the sounds, the bodies—
I pull my knees up to my chest sharply, and tears start to make their way down my cheeks. I stand quickly, clumsily, and look for something—someone to tell me this is all a dream, and that I’m in my bed late for work—but there’s nothing. No one. Not a whisper, not a word, not a familiar sound.
I rest my head against a tree, the bark cutting into my forehead.
This is what I’ve always wanted. My own freedom. My own life. And now that I have it… all I want to do is go back. Back to the place where I’m safe. Back to the place where I know every outcome, I know every turn, every person’s face… and away from the unknown. Away from the world I’ve landed in. Away from this situation.
I turn back to Ken, who has his face in his hands. His dark hair rustles in the wind.
“Where am I?” I ask angrily. “What happened last night?”
Ken slowly lifts his head to look at me. Dark circles poke out from underneath his bloodshot eyes.
“You’re in the forest outside of the Home Dome,” He slurs.
“Yes, but why?”
“I carried you here. It’s safe here,” He rests his head on his hands. “Last night was supposed to be a rescue mission.”
“For who?”
“For you,” He says, and looks me straight in the eye.
“What?” I ask, walking closer to him.
“It was a rescue mission for you.”
“What would I need rescuing from?” I throw my hands up in exasperation, and look at him expectantly as a tear tumbles down my cheek.
“From the Dome Monsters.”
I shake my head, and chuckle hysterically. “Monsters? There are no flipping monsters, Ken!”
I’m furious. I had a job. A life. A friend. A friend—I had a friend! I’ve never had a friend. I had a future—
Future.
My future is supposed to be with Ken.
This guy.
This guy who snuck out of the ceremony and let someone throw rocks at me so I couldn’t go back. This guy who saved me from myself and the airships.
But what does it mean to me now?
“Who are you?” I shout.
“I’m part of the rebellion.”