Chapter One
My fingers stretch over the fifty-six marks I’ve carved into the wall, feeling each groove as a reminder of each painful day I’ve suffered away from my family. Life has gotten difficult these past few weeks. The weather is beautiful, but we are forbidden to go outside. It is holiday season, but we are not allowed to visit our families. Instead we must stay in our residence building, fantasizing about what could be. My roommate, Alaya, spends most of her time writing poetry downstairs in the common area. She’s trying to get over the Incident. I suppose we all are.
My marks tell me that the attack, which I named the Incident, occurred almost two months ago. Scores of men stomped into the small town where I lived with my family. They came into all of the houses and dragged the teenagers out, kicking and screaming, forcing us into different vehicles. These trucks contained us while we were driven away from the ones we loved most. My truck was taken to the building I’m living in now, a building made up of nothing else but rooms to keep us in. Since the Incident, we’ve been living our days out in our rooms, waiting for something to happen. No one has any idea what is happening to us, or what has happened to our families. I try to push it out of my mind. Thinking about it makes me sick.
I’m grateful to be in the same building as my best friend, Jev. He lives on a different floor, so we don’t see each other much, but it’s nice to know somebody. I’m one of the lucky ones. Most of the teenagers here are completely alone. Our leaders keep promising us that something good is going to come out of all of this, but I’m skeptical. Jev doesn’t believe them either, but Alaya is a dreamer.
I lay on the lumpy bed I’ve been assigned and look upwards. My thoughts run rampant as I gaze into the speckled material that makes up the ceiling. I wonder how long these buildings have existed and if they were originally designed for what they are doing: holding children hostage. The walls are a nasty putrid coloring. Obviously the building creators didn’t care about the people who’d have to be surrounded by the horrid shade all day.
It doesn’t take long before my mind goes back to the day of the Incident. I was sitting alone in my room, looking through a photo album of pictures of my friends. If only I had looked out the window…
It hurts too much to look back. I blame myself for the things that happened, even though I know it wasn’t my fault. Every time I think back to that day, the sound of my brother’s screams breaks my heart. I have to shake these thoughts out of my head.
The room is starting to feel stuffy, so I get up from my bed to try to open the window. Despite all my efforts, it won’t budge. Inside the screen, I see a trapped butterfly, its wings fluttering in an attempt to get out. I know that if I try to open the screen, the alarms will go off and I’ll be taken away. That’s what they do when someone breaks the rules. They’re just swept off, brought to a place no one here has ever been to because no one ever comes back. The butterfly will just have to remain as it is: trapped.
I decide to get out of the heat and walk to Jev’s room. The stairwells are dusty and built out of brick. Sometimes I get nervous feeling the rough surface. I feel like I’ll be pushed into the walls like I was the night we were taken. Taking the stairs is better than the elevator though. It’s only one floor, and there have been rumors circulating that sometimes the elevator is stopped intentionally and the ones inside are whisked away, just like the ones who cause trouble.
I open the door to the exit of the stairwell and walk down the hall carefully. Technically, girls aren’t supposed to be on this floor, but these are the rules that are broken all the time and aren’t enforced. Even on the way to Jev’s door, I see a blonde-headed girl run across the hall from one room to the next.
Once at Jev’s room, I knock politely, and a shout comes from inside, “Just a minute! I have to get changed.” Somehow he can tell it’s me from the sound of my knock.
“Alright!” I call back to him. I listen to the drawers in his room squeak as he rushes to change himself into something acceptable. I don’t bother to hide my laugh as I imagine him scrambling around his room.
We’ve known each other for eight years, and in those eight years, we’ve come to be closer than any pair of friends I’ve ever met. We were born sixteen days apart, and for sixteen days, I get to taunt him that I’m a year older than him. While I constantly try to get his approval, I’ve never liked him. It’s an odd occurrence that our relationship has never gone there, but sometimes, certain friendships remain just what they are- friendships.
After a few minutes, the door to Jev’s room swings open and he steps out, looking swept together. He’s wearing some of the clothes the leaders have provided us with, plain colored t-shirts and khaki shorts. His dark brown hair looks rumpled, like he just got out of bed, and there is some gunk underneath one of his blue eyes. I extend my thumb out to his face and wipe it away.
“It’s good to see you, Savina,” he says to me, with his cute smile on. Whenever he smiles at me, he looks like a little boy, trying to impress his mother. The smile makes his eyes scrunch together and shows off his perfect teeth. Everyone has perfect teeth now. My parents said that a few generations ago, there was room for imperfection. Nowadays, there is a simple fix to every aesthetic issue.
Jev isn’t perfect though. He doesn’t conform because he tends to have a rebellious side to him. For one, he needs glasses. Those with eye problems have been encouraged for many years to get an operation done to fix whatever issue they have in their eyes. Eventually, they started requiring the operation in many towns.
I remember when they passed the law banning glasses in our hometown four years ago. It was a commonly known fact that the operation wasn’t always successful, so Jev, a scared thirteen-year-old, was afraid he might go blind. I suggested he rebel against the law and continue to wear his glasses. Our two families together helped keep his secret and he never had the operation done.
Unfortunately, he has to hide his glasses from officials now, because if he were seen with them, he’d have to be punished. Thankfully, his eyesight isn’t too terrible without them, so whenever he’s in public, he pockets his glasses.
Jev extends his arm out to me and says, “Where would you like to go, Guardrail?”
I laugh as I wrap my arm around his. “Guardrail” is his nickname for me. He made it up one day after I saved his life for the fourth time. That time in particular, we were walking around town when he almost stepped into a hole in the sidewalk. I pulled him back and then we peered down into the hole, searching for a bottom. I remember him quivering as we realized that we couldn’t find an end to the tunnel of void, which would have been his death. Out of nowhere, he proclaimed, “You’re my guardrail! My own personal human guardrail!” The nickname just stuck.
Since then, I have saved his life countless times, because he tends to be very clumsy. Not too long ago, I created a nickname for him to counter the one he gave me. “Wherever you’d like, Damsel,” I respond. Damsel. He was my damsel in distress, and I am the prince who swoops in every three seconds to save him.
“All kidding aside,” Jev says abruptly, catching my attention, “there is something I need to talk to you about.”
“What is it?” I ask.
“Here isn’t the best place,” he says, taking glances at both sides of the hallway. The walls here aren’t thick. You need to be careful what you say.
He knows where to go. Together we walk to the stairwell and he and I climb up all of the steps until we come to the highest floor, the ninth. There aren’t any people living on this floor, but there will undoubtedly be some coming in soon. The eighth floor is already starting to fill up with residents. For now, this is the only safe place to talk.
We go to our usual spot: the bathroom. As disgusting as it sounds, the janitors do a nice job of keeping the place clean, and because no one ever comes into the ninth floor bathroom, it stays that way. Besides, some people go to hook up in the rooms on the ninth floor, so the bathroom is the safest location.
“What is it?” I ask, taking a seat on the wavy blue tiles that make up the floor. Jev closes the bathroom door behind him and sits down next to me. He takes his glasses out of his pocket and places the brown square frames onto the ridge of his nose. His nose! That’s another imperfection. It’s slightly crooked.
“There have been rumors going around,” he begins. His brow furrows with what looks like frustration.
“Well, of course there are. There are always rumors going around. Have you heard anything interesting?” I ask.
“Yes, actually,” he says. “I was just about to tell you.” He gives me a look that tells me to be patient.
I roll my eyes at him and place my head in my hands. “What is it?” I ask again, this time making it evident I’ll keep quiet.
“I heard,” he lowers his voice, “that there is going to be an attack on this building tonight.”
“What?” I cry in disbelief. “What do you mean an attack?”
“Now I don’t know if any of this is true…” he begins.
“Hence the word ‘rumor,’” I comment sarcastically. He gives me another one of his looks, this time, telling me to be serious. It’s the same look he gave me on my seventeenth birthday, when I met eyes with him for the first time that day. I was ready to make the first snide comment about his age, but he stopped me. His eyes told me everything. Grow up, Savina, they said. You are seventeen.
“I heard that there is some sort of rebellious group that is trying to bust all the kids out of these buildings. We may not know why we’ve been taken here, but you must know it can’t be for anything good. We have no free will here and lack of free will is always a sign of the disastrous conditions we’ll be forced to live under in the future. Plus, think about it. They took us away from our families. Do you ever wonder what’s become of them?” he asks.
“All the time,” I reply thoughtfully. My eyes travel from Jev’s face to my hand, which is balled into a fist. The room gets eerily quiet.
“Why won’t they let us go outside, Savina?” he ponders aloud, sending a shiver down my spine.
My throat dries up as I finally voice the frightening conclusion I’ve been considering for weeks. “They don’t want us escaping,” I say.
“Precisely. If anyone were to get outside and run, they would be after the person in a heartbeat,” he says.
“Well, it’s because they broke the rules,” I reason, my eye finding a spot on the tile to concentrate on. The conversation is beginning to make me feel uncomfortable.
“No, it’s because they are trying to run,” he says. After a long pause, he asks, “Do you feel safe here?”
I don’t take any time to answer. “Yes,” I say, meeting his eyes.
“Why?”
My eyes immediately focus on the window. I remember how not too long ago, my own window wouldn’t budge to open. We’re sealed in tight. “I suppose it’s because I know that no one can get into the buildings and attack us,” I tell him.
Jev’s blank expression curves upward into a smirk. “No one can get in? I wouldn’t dispute that, but I also happen to believe that no one can get out,” he says.
“Don’t be silly. People are coming in and out of here all the time…”
“Well, I meant bust out,” he clarifies.
“Don’t you think you’re taking this a bit far?” I ask him.
“Not at all!” Jev says with a laugh, taking off his glasses and carefully placing them back in his pocket. “Listen,” he continues, “it’s almost time for dinner. We should probably get going so we aren’t late.”
“Yeah,” I agree, my discomfort lessening.
“First,” Jev says, getting up, “there is one more thing I need to tell you.”
“What’s that?”
In one swift motion, his hand extends to me and pulls me up from the ground. My heart starts pounding as he pins me against the wall and presses his body into mine. For a second, I have no idea what he is doing and struggle against him, but then I realize that he is trying to whisper something to me. His warm breath tingles every feeling in my ear and makes the rest of my body shiver as he whispers, “They are coming tonight at 11 p.m. Be prepared. Pack everything you need to survive into a bag. When the alarms go off, meet me in the stairwell on my floor.” He pauses for a second, looking towards the entrance of the bathroom. His eyes widen as he whispers, “There is someone listening at the door.”
His arm yanks my whole body into a stall in the bathroom, shutting the door behind us. He puts a hand over my mouth to quiet the sound of my breathing. I pray that the thumping of my heart does not give us away. As we wait in silence, I concentrate on watching his chest rise and fall, trying to calm myself. My head snaps to the stall lock when I hear the bathroom door creak open. Careful, slow footsteps ring around the room. I know we’ll be discovered. Our feet are visible underneath the stall and our door is the only one that is closed. It’s a dead giveaway.
The steps come closer to us and I look to Jev for what to do. I can tell his brain is working double time. He lets go of my mouth and much to my surprise, takes off his shirt and hangs it over the handle of the toilet. My heart stops when there is a pounding knock on the door. Jev appears comfortable as he reaches for the lock. He pulls my body towards him and it feels odd to be pressed against his bare skin. We’ve never been this close before.
The door swings open to the harsh face of one of our leaders, a woman. Her expression is blank as she looks at the both of us, clenching her jaw tightly. Jev looks at her as if she has invaded our privacy and asks disrespectfully, “Want to watch?”
“Not so fast,” the leader says with anger. She grabs the door and forces it open. “We made it very clear that we can’t have you kids messing around with each other,” the leader says. “I’m sorry to do this, but I’m going to have to take you both back to the cells.”
Rumors have told us about the cells. They lock you up to teach you a lesson. The last place we’d want to be tonight is the cells. It’s impossible to get out of there. Jev casts me a worried glance, then he looks back to the leader.
“Come on,” he pleads. “You were a kid once! You know what it is like to have all these hormones running rampant. We’re young. We don’t mean any harm. We were just trying to have a little fun,” Jev explains.
The leader looks to him like she isn’t buying his story. My hopes in Jev’s persuasion skills drop in one quick swoosh. Without any hesitation, the woman grabs an arm of both of us and takes us out of the bathroom, down all the steps and onto the ground floor, where the officials reside.
She leads us down a long hallway. I glance around and I am disgusted to find paintings depicting children suffering all over the walls. It gives me a very eerie feeling. I look to Jev and he seems to be reacting the same way, as his facial expression appears more revolted with each painting we pass.
We come to a desk with two men seated behind it. The leader lets go of us both and leans in to tell one of the men our situation. On impulse, I grab Jev’s hand. Whenever we have gotten in trouble in the past, we’d always hold hands to express that we shared the blame of being in the dilemma equally. This is one of the things that kept us from ever fighting.
Without another word from the leader, she turns on her heel and stomps away in the opposite direction from us. One of the men arises from his chair and opens the doors to the cells for us. Jev quickly leans in and whispers, “Still be ready to leave. Have faith that these rebels will get us out of here.”
I nod as he pulls away from me. Still holding hands, we walk into the cells with the man escorting us. The cells are not nearly as bad as they are described. It is really just a hallway with individual rooms that have unique lock codes on them. The atmosphere is what makes it uncomfortable. Everything is recently built, so it is all clean and white. There is an impersonal feeling about it that makes me uneasy.
Soon, our escort stops at a room and enters a code into the door. It clicks open and he gestures towards the entrance for me to go in. As I cross the threshold, I catch one last glimpse of Jev. Instead of a look of despair and confusion, I see he is smiling.
Traditionally this can only be good news. Jev’s smile means that he isn’t worried. It means that he has figured everything out. His smile means that there is nothing to fear. It means that we are getting out of here. Tonight.
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