“MOM,I’m home!” I kicked off my flats at the front door and proceeded straight down the hallway to the kitchen, where I heard her laughing.
“Ember, there you are! Look who’s back!” My mother was standing at the stove, beaming like she’d just gotten me a shiny new toy. Skeptical, I rounded the corner and stopped cold.
Chase Jennings was in my kitchen.
Chase Jennings, who I’d played tag with and raced bikes with and had a crush on since before I knew what crushes were.
Chase Jennings, who had grown into a rough-around-the-edges kind of handsome; tall and built and so much more dangerous than the scrawny fourteen-year-old I’d last seen. He was leaning back casually in his chair, hands in his denim pockets, a mess of black hair stuffed beneath an old baseball cap.
I was staring. I looked away quickly, feeling the flush rise in my cheeks.
“Um… hi.”
“Hey, Ember,” he said easily. “You grew up.”
MY eyes blinked open as the FBR cruiser shuddered to a stop. Slowly, I sat up, head heavy and clouded, and pushed the hair from my face.
Where was I?
Night had descended, and the darkness aided my disorientation. I rubbed my eyes, catching a glimpse of the blond soldier’s profile through the thick glass partition between the front seats and the back. Morris. I remembered his name badge. I looked out the front windshield, distorted by the barricade. With a jolt of panic, I realized I was searching for a van. One that was no longer in front of us.
Then I remembered.
The MM. The arrest. Chase.
Where was my mother? I should have been watching! I banged on the glass divider, but Morris and the driver didn’t even flinch. It was soundproof. Frightened now, I crossed my arms over my chest and eased back into the leather seat, trying to gain a lock on my bearings.
Without a car or a television, we’d been isolated in our neighborhood. The FBR had shut down the local newspaper on account of the scarcity of resources, and had blocked the Internet to stifle rebellion, so we couldn’t even see pictures of how our town had changed. We knew Louisville had been relatively lucky during the War. No bombed buildings. No evacuated areas. But even if it didn’t look damaged, it did look different.
We passed the lighted convention center, now a distribution plant for Horizons brand food. Then the airport, which had been converted to FBR Weapons Manufacturing when commercial air travel had been prohibited. There had been an influx of soldiers in this area when they’d changed Fort Knox and Fort Campbell into FBR stations. Row after row of blue cruisers were now parked in the lot at the old fairgrounds.
We were the only car on the freeway. Knowing I was out with the MM when only the MM could be out, surrounded by the flags and crosses and sunrise logos, chilled me to the bone. I felt like Dorothy in some twisted Wizard of Oz.
An exit ramp led us into downtown Louisville, and at the bottom of the curve, we rolled through an empty four-way stop. The driver aimed toward a monstrous brick high-rise, which spread out on the bottom floors like the tentacles of an octopus. Its yellow eyes—windows, lit by a team of generators—peered out in all directions. We were at the city hospital.
I couldn’t see the van anywhere. Where had they taken my mother?
Chase Jennings. I tried to swallow, but his name on my tongue felt like boiling water that I couldn’t push down.
How could he? I’d trusted him. I’d even thought that I loved him, and not just that, but that he’d genuinely cared for me, too.
He’d changed. Completely.
The driver parked the cruiser close to the building in a shadowed lot. A moment later Morris opened the back door and yanked me out by the forearm. The three red lines where my fingernails had raked his skin were bright against his white neck.
The hum of the generators filled the night, a sharp contrast to the soundproof containment of the cruiser. He led me toward the building, where, in the gleam of the sliding glass doors beneath the Emergency Department sign, I caught my reflection. Pale face. Swollen eyes. My boxy uniform shirt drooped on one side where Beth had stretched it trying to save me, and my knotted braid hung down my ribs.
We didn’t go inside.
“I always pictured you blond,” said Morris. His tone, though bland, held a hint of disappointment. I worried again what sort of things Chase had told him.
“Is my mother here?” I asked.
“Keep your mouth shut.”
So he could talk, but I couldn’t? I scowled at him, focusing on the place where my fingernails had drawn blood. Knowing I was capable of defending myself made me feel a little braver. He jerked me across the driveway, where floodlights washed over a navy school bus that cast a looming shadow into the parking lot. Several girls were lined up there, guards posted on either side.
As we neared, a chill ran through me. The soldier had used the word rehabilitation earlier, but I didn’t know what that entailed or where this facility—if it even was a facility—was located. I pictured one of the massive temporary foster homes erected during the War, or worse, the state penitentiary. They couldn’t possibly be taking me there; I hadn’t done anything wrong myself. Being born wasn’t a crime, even if they were treating me like a criminal.
But what if they were taking my mother to jail?
I remembered the kids who had disappeared from school. Katelyn Meadows and Mary Something and that freshman boy I didn’t know. They’d been involved with trials for Article violations, for benign things like missing school for a nonapproved religious holiday. It wasn’t like they’d killed anybody. And yet Katelyn hadn’t come back, and Mary and the boy had been gone a week or two already.
I tried to remember what Beth had said about Katelyn, but I was shaking so hard my brain seemed to rattle. Her phone number was disconnected. She isn’t on the Missing Persons boards. Her family moved away after the trial.
Moved away, I thought. Or they’d all gotten on a bus and disappeared.
I fell in line behind a heavyset girl with a short blond bob. She was crying so hard she began to choke. Another was rocking back and forth with her arms wrapped around her stomach. They all looked around my age or younger. One dark-haired girl couldn’t have been more than ten.
Morris loosened his hold around my bruised arm as we approached two guards. One had a black eye. The other flipped through a list of names on a clipboard.
“Ember Miller,” Morris reported. “How many left until they transport, Jones?’
My knees weakened. I wondered again where they were taking us. Somewhere distant, otherwise I would have heard about it at school or from the gossip tree at the soup kitchen. It struck me that no one but these soldiers knew our destination. Not even my mother. Beth would look for us, but she’d get a citation or worse if she asked the MM too many questions.
I had a terrible feeling that I was about to disappear. That I was about to become the next Katelyn Meadows.
“Three more. They just radioed in. We should be heading out within the hour,” the soldier responded to Morris.
“Thank God,” said Morris. “These little bastards are vicious.”
The soldier with the black eye grunted. “Don’t I know it.”
“If you’re going to give us a citation, I’ll get you the money,” I blurted.
In truth, we didn’t have the money. We’d already used up nearly all of our government assistance check this month, but they didn’t need to know that. I could hock some of our stuff. I’d done it before.
“Who said anything about a citation?” Morris asked.
“What do you want then? I’ll get it. Just tell me where my mother is.”
“It’s an offense to bribe a soldier,” he warned, smirking as if this were a game.
There had to be something. I couldn’t get on that bus.
He saw my eyes dart behind him and anticipated my flight before I took the first step. In a flash his rough grip locked around my waist.
“No!” I struggled, but he was much stronger and had already trapped my arms against my sides. He chuckled—a sound that plagued me with fear—and shoved me forcefully up the steps with the assistance of the other soldiers.
It’s happening, I realized with morbid clarity. I’m about to disappear.
The soldier with the black eye had climbed up the stairs behind me and was now tapping his baton in one hand.
“Sit down,” he ordered.
I had no choice but to do what he said.
Never before had I felt so heavy. I trudged down the long rubber mat to an open seat in the middle and crumpled onto the bench, vaguely registering the sobs of the girls around me. A trickle of numbness inched down my spine, anesthetizing my fear and worry. I felt nothing.
The girl next to me had long, wavy black hair and mocha skin. She glanced my way then continued to bite her nails, irritated but not scared. Her legs were crossed at the knees, and she wore a tight T-shirt and pajama pants.
“Forgot your shoes.” She pointed at my feet. My socks were muddy and grass stained. I hadn’t noticed.
“What did they get you for?” she asked, without looking up from her hand.
I didn’t say anything.
“Hello?” she said. “Ember, right? I’m talking to you.”
“Sorry. How do you know…” I looked at her face and did recognize her faintly.
“I went to Western last year. Rosa Montoya? We had English together. Thanks for remembering.”
“We did?” I felt my nose scrunch up. I was usually better with faces.
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry. I was only there for a couple months. Between placements, you know.”
“Placements?”
“Group homes. Foster care, princesa. So what are you in for?” She spelled the words out slowly. I did remember her now. She had sat in the back of the classroom, biting her nails, looking bored, much as she did today. She’d come in mid-semester and had left before finals. We’d never said a word to each other.
I wondered if there were other girls from my school on this bus. No one else looked familiar when I glanced around.
“The soldier said an Article 5,” I answered.
“Ooh. You got hauled into rehab because your mom’s the village bicycle.”
“The… what?”
A girl in the back began sobbing louder. Someone shouted for her to shut up.
“The village bicycle. Everyone’s had a ride,” she said sarcastically. Then she rolled her eyes. “Ay. Don’t look so innocent. Soldiers? They’ll eat that up. Look, princesa, if it makes you feel any better, I wish I didn’t know my dad. Consider yourself lucky.”
I didn’t like her assuming I didn’t know who my father was, even if it was the truth. Most of the men attracted to my mom’s free spirit tended to beat it for the same reason.
Most, but not all. Her last—and worst—boyfriend, Roy, had thought he could control it, but even he had been wrong.
I was glad Rosa and I hadn’t spoken before at school. I nearly wished we weren’t talking now, but she did seem to have some idea about what was happening.
The bus lurched out of the ER circle, and as it did I felt a physical pain tear through me, as though my limbs were being pulled in all different directions. My mother and I had always been together, through everything. Now I’d lost her, and who knew what she was going to say, what she was going to do, to try to get home.
Anger rose above the grief. Anger at myself. I didn’t fight hard enough. I didn’t play nice enough. I had let her go.
The bus climbed back onto the highway. Garbage was piled up against the line of broken-down vehicles that lined the slow lane. I recognized the old houses and the painted silos in front of the old University of Louisville. The Red Cross had turned the campus into a housing colony for people displaced by the War. I could see dim candlelight still burning in a few of the higher dorm-room windows.
“Where are they taking us?’ I asked Rosa.
“They won’t say,” she said. Then she smiled. There was a gap between her two front teeth. “I already asked the guard back there. The one with the shiner.”
I could picture this girl punching someone in the face. I thought of Morris and the scratches on his neck, and it seemed surreal that I had done that. Attacking a soldier—that was insane.
“Will my mother be there?”
The girl looked at me as if I were a full idiot.
“Kiss that dream good-bye, chica,” she told me. “An Article 5 means that she’s not even your mom anymore. You’re property of the government now.”
I pinched my eyes closed, trying to ignore her words, but they echoed in my head.
She’s wrong, I told myself. And we were wrong, too. I forced myself to picture Katelyn Meadows walking up the driveway of her two-story house in… Indiana. Or Tennessee. She’d moved there because her dad’s job had been relocated. It had happened fast. Jobs were scarce these days. That’s why even her friends didn’t know. She was probably acing her history tests at some new high school. Believe it, I thought desperately; it could happen. But my imagination was too brightly colored to fit reality. It was a lie and I knew it.
My mind turned to Chase, and there was such a harsh burn within me that I nearly gasped. How could he? I pressed my cheek against the cold window as the countryside grew black as the night.
“TRUTHor dare?”
I smiled at his question. We’d played this game a thousand times when we were kids. The dares always got us in trouble.
“Truth,” I said, soaking in this world he’d brought me to. The woods ablaze, the trees defining every graduating degree of red and yellow. The sun, warm on my face, and the chatter of the birds. It was so different here than the noise and asphalt of the city. The perfect place for secrets.
“Have you ever liked someone you shouldn’t?”
“Like someone with a girlfriend?” I asked, weaving around a tall tree in our path
“Yeah. Or a friend.”
His question caught me off guard, and I missed a step.
“Yes,” I answered, trying not to read too much into his smile. “Truth or dare?”
“Truth.” He reached for my hand, and I tried not to be stiff and awkward, but I was, because this was Chase; we’d grown up together, and so what? Maybe I’d loved him for my entire life, but he didn’t think about me that way because… well… we were friends.
Oh.
“Do you like… pb and j? Because you used to, and that’s what I packed for lunch.” I finished lamely.
“Yes. Truth?” His thumb skimmed along the inside of my wrist, and my whole body reacted as if I’d been shocked. It scared me how much I liked it, how much I wanted more.
“Sure.”
“Would it be weird if I kissed you?”
We’d stopped walking. I hadn’t even noticed until he shifted his weight, the leaves crunching loudly beneath his feet. He laughed, then cleared his throat. I couldn’t look up. I felt like glass, like he could look inside me and see the truth: that I’d waited half my life to kiss him. That no boy I’d ever met compared to him.
He leaned down, so close that I could feel the air warm between us.
“Do you dare me?” he whispered in my ear.
I nodded, my pulse flying.
He lifted my face gently. When his lips touched mine everything within me slowed and melted. The tightness in my throat disappeared, the nervous tingle in my chest eased. Everything faded. Everything but him.
Something changed between us then, a spark of light, of heat. His lips pressed mine open, teasing first, then tasting. One of his hands pulled me nearer, the other slid under my hair, pressing beneath the band of my loosened ponytail. My fingers longed for his skin and found his face, traced the strong lines of his neck.
He pulled away suddenly, breath uneven, gaze piercing mine. His arms stayed locked around me, though, and I was glad, because my legs were weak.
“Truth?” I whispered.
He smiled, and my heart soared. “Truth.”
“EVERYBODY up!”
I snapped alert at the man’s voice booming off the bus’s elongated compartment.
Morning light glared in through the windows, and I sheltered my face—swollen from my earlier crying jag—from its cheerful mocking. I wasn’t sure if I’d slept or just drifted in and out of consciousness. Since we’d left Louisville, I’d relived Chase taking my mother at least a hundred times.
Rosa and I had talked some more. She’d been charged with an Article 3—her cousin had claimed her as a dependent on her tax forms, which didn’t exactly fit the whole one-man-plus-one-woman-equals-kids thing—but since the West Virginia state line we’d been silent. Cool as she was, Rosa couldn’t fake shock. We were a long way from home.
The bus hissed and slowed to a stop outside a large brick building. Implanted in the dying grass alongside the drive was a green metal sign with glowing white letters:
I looked around anxiously, wondering, hoping, that there was a separate building for my mother. That maybe they’d brought her here to rehabilitation, too. At least that way we’d be close and could straighten out this mess together. But my dismal intuition was right. There were no buses following ours.
We filed out of the seats one at a time. My back and neck ached from spending hours confined to the same position. As we exited the bus, soldiers holding batons flanked us on either side, as though we were running the gauntlet. Rosa blew a kiss to the man with the black eye, and his face reddened.
From outside the bus, I had a better view. We stood before an old building, like the kind you see in history books surrounded by men wearing ruffled shirts and curly wigs. It was red brick, but some of the bricks had faded to gray, giving the illusion that its flat face was potholed. The front doors were tall and freshly painted white and bordered on both sides by stout columns supporting a triangular overhang. My eyes wandered up six floors, squinting in the fresh morning sun. A copper bell hung dormant in a tower on the roof.
Across the street behind me was a clover-patched knoll, and on it a long set of stairs that descended to an open pavilion and a more modern, glass-plated building. Another set of stairs disappeared below this level down the hill. It looked like one of the old college campuses that had been shut down during the War.
When I turned back toward the main building, a woman had materialized at the top of the stairs. Next to the soldiers she was petite but even more severe. Her shoulders arched back beneath her snow-white hair. Her whole countenance seemed to withdraw into each orifice, making her eyes look overly large and sunken and her mouth appear toothless when closed.
She wore a white buttoned-up blouse and a navy pleated skirt, thin enough to show the bones of her pelvis jutting forward through it. A baby blue handkerchief hung in a sailor’s knot around her neck. The MM appeared to be apprising her of the situation and awaiting orders, which seemed odd to me. I’d never seen a woman in the FBR’s chain of command. As the woman glared down the line of girls, all the things I didn’t know, all the uncertainty, swelled within me. Things may not have been perfect at home, but at least I’d known what to expect—at least until yesterday. Now nothing felt familiar. Nowhere felt safe. I hunched, grasping my hands together to keep them from shaking.
“Great,” Rosa said under her breath. “Sisters.”
“Is she a nun?” I whispered back, perplexed.
“Worse. Haven’t you ever seen the Sisters of Salvation?” When I shook my head, she leaned closer. “They’re the MM’s answer to women’s liberation.”
I wanted to hear more—if the Sisters of Salvation were meant to counteract feminism, what was a woman doing in charge?—but just then her head snapped to the soldier beside her.
“Bring them in.”
We were led into the main foyer of the brick building. Here, the floor was tiled and the walls were painted nursery-room peach. Beneath a staircase on the left, a hallway lined with doors extended to the end of the building.
One by one we were brought to a rectangular fold-out table where two check-in clerks, wearing the same white and navy uniforms, waited with files. After Rosa had identified herself in an overdone Latina accent, I stepped forward.
“Name?” a clerk with braces asked me without looking up.
“Ember Miller.”
“Ember Miller. Yes, there she is. Another Article 5, Ms. Brock.”
The frail but menacing woman behind her smiled an inauthentic welcome.
Article 5. That label was like a pin under my fingernail every time I heard it. I felt a rush of heat rise up my neck.
“Just call me Hester Prynne,” I mumbled.
“Speak clearly, dear. What was that?” asked Ms. Brock.
“Nothing,” I answered.
“If nothing is what you said, all the better to simply be silent.”
I looked up, unable to hide the surprise from my face.
“She’s a seventeen as well, Ms. Brock. She ages out in July.”
My heart skipped a beat.
They can’t possibly hold me until I’m eighteen. I’d considered the possibility of a couple days, or until we could arrange the citation money for bail, but July eighteenth was five months away! I’d done nothing wrong, and my mother, whose only crime had maybe been irresponsibility, needed me. I had to find her and get back home.
Katelyn Meadows never went home, a small, frightened voice in my brain said. A citation suddenly seemed too easy. An unrealistic punishment. Why would they waste money hauling me here if just to send us a bill? My throat tightened.
“Ms. Miller, I have record that you attacked a member of the Federal Bureau of Reformation yesterday,” said Ms. Brock. I automatically glanced back for Rosa. She’d given a guard a black eye; why didn’t she get in trouble?
“They were taking my mother!” I defended, but my mouth snapped shut at her glare.
“You will address me respectfully, as Ms. Brock, do you understand?”
“Um… sure. Yes.”
“Yes, Ms. Brock,” she corrected.
“Yes. Ms. Brock.” My skin felt very hot. I quickly understood what Rosa meant; Ms. Brock was almost worse than the soldiers.
She sighed with infinite patience. “Ms. Miller, I can make this time here very difficult for you or very easy. This is your last warning.”
Her words put an instant chill on my humiliation.
“You are fortunate,” continued Ms. Brock. “You’ll be rooming with the Student Assistant. She has been with us for three years and will be able to answer any of your questions.”
Three years? I didn’t know places like this existed three days ago, much less three years ago. What had she done that had been so terrible that she’d been stuck here that long?
“Over with your cohorts, and remember what I said.” Ms. Brock raised a withered hand to where Rosa and several other girls my age were standing. She had a skeptical gleam in her eyes, as though my birthday was hardly a deciding factor in my discharge.
On my way there I was stopped against the wall, where a stout, droopy-faced woman took my picture in front of a blue screen. I didn’t smile. The cold reality of my situation was sinking in, filling me with dread.
Sisters. Cohorts. Ms. Brock’s superior grin. This was not a temporary setup.
Bright blotches from the camera flash were still blocking my vision when I joined the others.
“I think the nut job is going to try to make us stay until we’re eighteen,” I whispered to Rosa.
“I’m not staying here until I’m eighteen,” she said convincingly. When I spun toward her, she grinned, showing her gapped teeth. “Relax. Group homes like this, they always say that. Screw up enough, and you can get out on early release.”
“How?” I demanded.
She opened her mouth to answer, but we were interrupted by two guards who entered through the main doors, escorting a girl in a hospital gown. They led her past the sign-in table and down a hallway to our right, holding her elbows as though she might fall without their support. The few seconds I saw her were enough to make my skin crawl. Her eyes stayed pinned to the floor, and the black, messy hair made her pallid face and exhaustion-bruised eyes stand out in sharp contrast. She looked like an overmedicated mental patient, but worse. She looked empty.
“What do you think happened to her?” I asked Rosa, disturbed.
“Maybe she’s sick,” she speculated weakly. Clearly she was contemplating her early release theory. Then she shrugged. I wished that I could be so dismissive, but I could not deny the impression the girl had left on me. She did look physically ill, but something told me a virus had not been the cause of her symptoms. What had she done? What had they done to her?
I wanted to ask, but just then we were corralled into a common room with chartreuse low-backed couches that smelled like moth balls. There were eight of us labeled for our age. Eight new seventeens. In a huddled mass across the room were at least a dozen others, probably sixteens or fifteens. I recognized at least two of them. Both underclassmen at Western. I was pretty sure one was named Jacquie, but she didn’t meet my eyes when I glanced her way.
A group of residents had also arrived, all flashing eerily robotic smiles. They were dressed like clones of one another: Little black flats met long navy skirts, and matching long-sleeved tees topped them off. It was an utterly drab outfit, even for a fashion moron like me.
“Attention please, ladies,” called Ms. Brock. The room silenced. “Welcome. I am Ms. Brock, the headmistress here at the Girls’ Reformatory and Rehabilitation Center of West Virginia.”
I shifted uncomfortably. Ms. Brock turned and seemed to stare straight at me.
“Section 2, Article 7 mandates that you become ladies, and until your eighteenth birthday you will be groomed to be nothing less than the very finest models of morality and chastity.”
At the word chastity, Rosa snorted. Ms. Brock shot her a look of pure venom.
“The world has changed, my dears,” she continued through her teeth, “and you are fortunate to be a part of that change. From today forward, it is my great hope that you press on with open minds and modest spirits. That you embrace your call to the Sisters of Salvation, and return to the dark world with one true mission: to spread the light.
“Now the hall monitors will show you to your dormitories.”
I took a deep, quaking breath. No. I could not stay here five more months. I wasn’t going to be a light-spreading messenger of crazy. I couldn’t end up like that empty girl the soldiers had practically dragged down the hall. I had to get out of here and find my mother.
The crowd of androids parted, revealing a bright-faced girl with spirals of blond hair cascading down her shoulders. Pretty blue eyes matched a perky smile. All that was missing was the halo.
“Hi! I’m Rebecca Lansing, your roommate.” Her annoyingly high-pitched voice sliced through the shuffle. “I’m so pleased to meet you, Ember.” She motioned for me to follow her down the hallway beneath the stairs. I wondered how she knew who I was.
“I’ll bet you are,” I replied sourly, glancing around for Rosa. She’d already disappeared.
Rebecca frowned at my tone. “I know it’s hard at first. But you’ll get used to it. Pretty soon this will feel like home, but better. Like summer camp.”
When I realized she wasn’t joking, I swallowed hard.
Rebecca led me into a dorm room. Something about being around her made me feel grimy. My school uniform was still stained with grass and dirt from yesterday.
“This will be your side.” She pointed to the twin bed nearest to the door. The mattress was thin as cardboard, covered by the thin pink blankets you see in hospitals, and flanked by matching furniture: a dresser on one side, a desk on the other. Atop the desk was a small aluminum reading light, a few thin notebooks, and a Bible. Rebecca’s bed was pressed against the far wall under the window. Just as mine had been at home.
Tears stung my eyes, and I turned toward the wall so that Rebecca wouldn’t see.
“I went ahead and got your uniform,” Rebecca told me helpfully. She handed me a neatly folded blue ensemble and a gray wool sweater. “And I brought you up some breakfast. We’re not supposed to have food in our rooms, but they made an exception because I’m the SA.”
Whether Rebecca was human or not, I was grateful for the food.
“You’ve really been here three years?” I said between ravenous bites of granola.
“Oh, yes,” she said in a sugary voice. “I love it here.”
I felt as if I were in a science fiction story. The kind where they make you take pills that control your mind.
Rebecca had been dropped off by her parents before President Scarboro had instituted the Moral Statutes. They were missionaries and had gone to serve God overseas before international travel had been banned.
As Rebecca told me more, my shock wore off and turned into pity. Her parents hadn’t contacted her since leaving the country, and though she adamantly defended that they were alive, I was doubtful. There was a lot of anti-American sentiment abroad during the War.
I couldn’t help thinking what terrible parents they were to abandon their child, especially in a place like this. I questioned again if I had tried hard enough to reason with the soldiers who’d taken me, but though I swallowed the guilt, it weighed down my stomach like a rock.
Rebecca sat on the end of my bed and braided her yellow hair over her shoulder while I changed. She prattled on about how excited she was to have a new roommate and how we were going to be best friends, which put a halt to any questions I’d been thinking I might ask her about Ms. Brock and the Sisters of Salvation. Because the conversation seemed so superficial it had to be fake, and because I was pretty sure it wasn’t fake, I blocked out her voice and checked my reflection in the mirror.
I’d never been conventionally pretty: My eyes were big and brown and I had long black lashes, but my eyebrows didn’t arch right and my nose was slightly crooked. Now my complexion was ghoulish—not entirely unlike the girl the soldiers had escorted back into the building—and my cheekbones appeared too prominent, like the last hours had added ten hungry years to my life. The navy uniform was even worse than my school uniform, probably because I resented it a hundred times more.
I forced a deep breath. My hair smelled like the synthetic seat of a school bus. I quickly combed out the kinks with my fingers and tied it back into a ragged knot.
“Time for class,” Rebecca chimed, catching my attention.
My brain began flipping through my options. I needed to find a phone. I’d try home first, just in case the MM had released my mother. If not, I’d call Beth to see if she’d heard anything about where they’d taken the Article violators.
When I glanced down at Rebecca, I found her overly excited at the prospect of showing me around. She had a position of some power here as a Student Assistant and could potentially tell on me if I got out of line. She looked like the type.
I was going to have to be covert.
A few minutes later we were walking to the pavilion, just across from the cafeteria, where nearly a hundred girls milled about. It could have been high school—the whispered gossip that preceded all new kids was here, too—but the mood was too somber. Instead of being curious or petty, they were afraid of us. As though we might do something crazy. It was a strange reaction considering I was thinking the same of them.
When the bell tolled, all conversation ceased. Girls darted away to their classes, where they fell into cookie-cutter lines. Rebecca pulled my arm, and I complied like a rag doll, allowing her to set me in place. Silence reigned over the pavilion.
Within moments, soldiers appeared to lead, follow, and flank each line. A young man with pockmarked cheeks and the build of a weasel passed me on his way to the back. His uniform read RANDOLPH. Another, at the front of the line, had an almost glowing complexion by comparison. He had a neatly shaved jaw and sandy-colored hair and would have been handsome had his blue eyes not been so vacant.
What does the MM do to suck out a person’s soul like that? I banished the automatic conjuring of Chase from my mind.
“Ms. Lansing,” acknowledged the almost-handsome guard.
“Good morning, Mr. Banks,” she said sweetly. He gave her a quick, emotionless nod, as if to approve of her line formation. The whole interaction seemed awkward and forced.
“Hola, princesa,” whispered a girl behind me. I turned to see Rosa, noticing how she’d refused to tuck in her navy blouse. The redheaded girl behind her—the roommate, I guessed—had a look of disapproval on her face. Clearly, she wasn’t pleased with the new living arrangements.
Her red hair reminded me of how much I already missed Beth.
It was comforting having Rosa nearby. Even if she was rude, at least she was real, and when the bell tolled and the heads of the lines dispersed, we stayed close, bound by our mistrust of the others.
We followed Rebecca down the stairs, past the laundry facility, medical clinic, and a squat brick office with a fire hydrant out front. There, the seventeens separated from the other lines and marched over a plot of grass connecting to a path that led us between two tall stone buildings. I hungrily surveyed the grounds, trying to form a mental map in my mind. It appeared there was only one way in and out: the main gate.
When Rosa spoke again, it was barely above a breath.
“Watch and learn.”
I turned back, but she was already gone.