I hear how loud my father’s voice is as he dares to ask this question, and I dart a glance over at my mother to see how she feels about this. Her face shows nothing but pride as she looks at him.
To my surprise, Xander’s father speaks up. “Where are they taking the boy?”
A white-coated Official takes charge, his voice loud so that everyone gathering can hear. His words are clipped and formal. “I’m sorry your morning has been disrupted. This young man received a new work position and we were merely picking him up to transport him. Since the position is outside of Oria Province, his mother became overwrought and upset.”
But why all the Officers? Why all the Officials? Why the handlocks? The Official’s explanation makes no sense, but after a short pause, everyone nods, accepting it. Except Xander. He opens his mouth as if to speak but then he glances over at me and closes it.
Al the adrenaline from trying to catch up to Ky leaves me and a horrible realization begins to sink in. Wherever Ky went, it’s because of me.
Because of my sort, or because of my kiss. Either way, this is my fault.
“Lies,” Patrick Markham says. Everyone turns to look at him. Even standing there in his sleepclothes, his face drawn and thin from al he has suffered, he stil has a quiet dignity—a quality no one can touch. It is something I have only seen in one other person. Though Patrick and Ky are not related by blood, they both possess the same kind of strength.
“The Officials told Ky and other workers,” he says, looking at me, “that they’d been given a new work position. A better one. But in reality, they’re sending them to the Outer Provinces to fight.”
I reel backward as if I’ve been struck, and my mother reaches out her hand to steady me.
Patrick is stil talking. “The war with the Enemy isn’t going wel . They need more people to fight. Al the original vil agers are dead. All of them.” He pauses, speaks as if to himself. “I should have known they’d take Aberrations first. I should have known Ky would be on the list . . . I thought, since we’d been through so much ...” His voice shakes.
Aida turns on him, furious, forgiving. “We forgot, sometimes. But he never did. He knew it was coming. Did you see him fight? Did you see his eyes when they took him away?” She throws her arms around Patrick’s neck and he holds her close, her sobs ringing out in the cool morning. “He’s going to die. It’s a death sentence back there.” Then she pul s away, screams at the Officials, “He’s going to die!”
Two of the Officials move quickly, pinning Patrick’s and Aida’s hands behind their backs and pul ing the Markhams away. Patrick’s head snaps back as one of them gags him to keep him from talking, and they do the same to Aida to stifle her screams. I’ve never seen or heard of Officials using such force. Don’t they realize that doing so gives truth to Patrick’s and Aida’s words?
An air car descends near us and disgorges more Officials. The Officers push the Markhams toward it and Aida reaches for her husband’s hand.
Their fingers miss by centimeters and she is denied that touch, the one thing in the world that could comfort her now.
I close my eyes. I wish I couldn’t hear her screams echoing in my ears and the words I know I wil never forget. He’s going to die. I wish my mother could take me back inside my house, tuck me back in bed like she did when I was a child. When I watched night fal outside my window without a worry, when I did not know what it was like to want to break free.
“Excuse me.”
I know that voice. It’s my Official, the one from the greenspace. Next to her stands an Official with the insignia of the highest level of government: three golden stars, shining visibly under the streetlight. A hush fal s over us.
“Everyone, please take out your tablet containers,” he says pleasantly. “Remove the red tablet.”
We al obey. My hand closes on the smal container with its three tablets secured inside my pocket. Blue and red and green. Life and death and oblivion always at my fingertips.
“Now, keep the red tablets and hand Official Standler”—he gestures to my Official, who holds a square plastic receptacle—“your containers.
Shortly after we’ve finished here you’l receive new containers and a new set of tablets.”
Once again, we obey. I drop the little metal cylinder in with the others, but I do not meet my Official’s eyes.
“We’l need you to take your red tablets. Official Standler and I wil make sure you do. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Officers seem to multiply. They walk down the street, keeping everyone who stayed in their houses where they are and isolating the dozen or so of us who stand near the air-train stop—the handful of us who know what happened today in Mapletree Borough and across the country. I imagine other scenes went more smoothly than this; likely none of the other Aberrations had parents or family high up enough to know what was real y happening. And even Patrick Markham could do nothing to save his son.
And it’s al my fault. I didn’t play God or angel; I played Official. I let myself think that I knew what was best and changed someone’s life accordingly. It doesn’t matter whether or not the data backed me up; in the end, I made the decision myself. And the kissI can’t let myself think about the kiss.
I look down at the red tablet, so smal in my hand. Even if it means death, I think I would welcome that now.
But wait. I promised Ky. I pointed to the sky and promised him. And now, moments later, I’m going to give up?
I drop the tablet on the ground, trying to be discreet. For a second I see it smal and red in the grass, and I remember what Ky said about red being the color of birth and renewal. “To a new beginning,” I say to myself, and I shift my feet the tiniest bit so that I crush the tablet; it bleeds beneath my feet. It reminds me of the time I saw Ky’s face across the crowded room at the game center just as my feet crushed the lost tablets beneath me.
Except now, when I look up, he is nowhere to be found.
No one has fol owed the orders yet. Even though the Official is the highest-ranking one we’ve ever seen and he’s ordered us to do it, we’ve heard years of rumors about the red tablet.
“Would anyone like to go first?”
“I wil ,” my mother says, stepping forward.
“No,” I say, but a look from my father stops me. I know what he’s trying to tel me, She’s doing this for us. For you. And somehow, he knows it’s going to be al right.
“I wil , too,” he says, moving to stand next to her. Together, as we al watch, they both swal ow their tablets down. The Official checks my parents’ mouths and nods briefly. “They dissolve within seconds,” he tel s us. “Too quickly for you to try and throw it back up, but it’s unnecessary anyway. It won’t hurt you. Al it does is clear your mind.”
All it does is clear your mind. Of course. I know now why we’re going to take them. So we forget what happened to Ky, so we forget that the Enemy is winning the war in the Outer Provinces, that the vil agers there are al dead. And I realize why they didn’t have us take the tablets when something happened to the first Markham boy: because we needed to remember how dangerous Anomalies can be. How vulnerable we would be without the Society to keep them al away.
Did they let that Anomaly out on purpose? To remind us?
What wil they tel us happened to Ky, later? What story wil we al believe instead of his true one? Wil we take the green tablet next, a calm after the forgetting?
I don’t want to be calm anymore. I don’t want to forget.
As much as it hurts, I have to hold onto the whole story of him, the painful parts, too.
My mother turns to look at me and I worry I’l see blank eyes or a vacant, slack expression. But she looks fine. So does my father.
Soon, everyone lines up, red tablets in their palms, ready to get this over with and go back to their lives. What wil I do when they find out I got rid of mine? I glance down at the grass beneath my feet, almost expecting to see a tiny patch of it seared and obliterated, wiped clean. Instead it looks exactly as it did before. I can’t even see the red fragments in the grass. I must have crushed them completely.
Bram looks terrified but excited. He’s stil not old enough to carry his own red tablet, so my father gives him the extra one he carries.
My Official starts checking people, too. She moves closer and closer to me, but I can’t take my eyes from Bram and then from Em as she takes the tablet. For a moment, I remember my dream and I feel horror as I watch her. But nothing happens. Nothing that I can see, anyway.
And then it is Xander’s turn. He glances over and sees me watching him, and an expression crosses his face that is nothing but pain. I want to look away, but I don’t. I watch as Xander nods to me and lifts the red tablet toward me, almost in a toast.
Before I see him take it, someone blocks my view of everyone and theirs of me. It’s my Official.
“Let me see your tablet, please,” she says.
“I have it.” I hold out my hand but I don’t open my palm.
I think I almost see her smile. Even though I know she carries extra tablets—I’ve seen them—she doesn’t offer me one yet.