The girl I’ve been in love with for almost three years is working for the enemy.
An hour into our journey, I pass the time by slowly unraveling a thread from a hole in the arm of my school suit. Then I start to play with the gauze around my shoulder. It itches. I decide to take it off and stuff it into my pocket. Underneath, my skin is as smooth as it ever was. Weird.
Whatever they did to us before chucking us into the cell certainly did the trick.
Avery’s slumped over, fast asleep with her head on my shoulder. Normally I’d be mass psyched about this little turn of events, but not now. Not with so much to think about.
She’s working for the enemy, the Unified Party-the group everyone’s warned me about since I was a kid.
She’s clever, that’s for sure. She fooled the faculty. She fooled me. Yet somehow I don’t think it’s all an act. Maybe with the rest of them, but not with me.
My mind rockets back to the day we first met. I was at Lookout Park, hiding behind the thickest tree I could find, pressed up against the protective dome. August Bergmann and his cronies had threatened to stuff me into one of the supply lockers and rig it shut. I’d slipped away after class, pressing through the crowd of students into the elevators before they could come after me. I spent the next period squeezed behind the tree. Not my proudest moment.
Then I heard her. “Hey kid,” she’d said. I looked up and there she was, perched in the branches like some crazy animal. I’d never seen a girl like her before. Turned out she was skipping class too, though not for the same reason as me. We spent the next hour talking. She seemed to understand it all-the big picture. She knew everything I was going through.
Now I understand it. She’d been spying on me before that conversation. She did know everything about me, maybe more than I knew myself. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that she’d cared enough to comfort me. Nobody else had.
Before meeting Avery, I’d had to make do with my teammates. Skandar’s cool, but never really understood things like she did. And Eva… Eva obviously had ulterior motives.
I do my best not to move, taking light breaths so I won’t wake her. Most of the passengers in our car have fallen asleep, too. I don’t blame them. There’s nothing to see outside beyond the darkness. Twice we’ve passed tiny Fringe Towns with one or two makeshift lanterns perched on tall wooden posts. The lights whipped by so fast that I barely noticed them. It’s better that way. After what happened back in Syracuse, I’m not too eager to try my luck again in the Fringes.
Then something hits the window on the far end of our cabin, breaking the stillness. My shoulder jerks back into the seat. The poor old woman across from us pops up with a start, looking around.
Avery shifts in her seat. I freeze, hoping that she won’t wake up. Too late.
Another microsecond and the noise rattles the window once more. Then again. Again.
A volley of rocks batter the outside of the Chute like maniacal, heavy rain, pelting the windows. The cabin jostles, waking up those who weren’t already alert. Muted shouts of anger echo outside.
A second later and it’s gone.
Avery’s head darts up from my shoulder. She looks at me with groggy eyes. “What’s happening?”
“Fringers,” I respond, “I think. Throwing rocks.”
“Oh,” she yawns. “I woke up for that?”
“Probably their goal,” I say. “I mean, it’s not like they were going to stop the Chute.”
She glances over to my shoulder. “Did I-I mean-”
“Yeah,” I reply.
The captain’s voice comes over the intercom, letting us know that everything’s going to be okay, that we just experienced a bit of Fringe turbulence. People chuckle. Me, not so much.
Being forced into a burning brick wall by a trio of bloodthirsty teenagers? Now that’s Fringe turbulence.