by Eliza Taye
Opal sat in one of the empty chairs not harboring a booster seat and rested her arm on the table. “I know what you mean. I often think of Minnie and Annie’s parents myself.”
“Ah, yes, those two sweet little girls. Their parents must be dead. Who wouldn’t want those kind little darlings?”
“I don’t know, but the more time I spend here with the Undecided, the more I understand how uncertain their lives are.” Leena poured herself some tea from the teapot resting on an oven mitt as she spoke. “Sometimes I envy them. They never know what’s coming next. It can be an adventure.”
“Oh no, dear. There is nothing to envy about their lives. I’ve been here much longer than you have. I know their lives are full of heartache and hard work they aren’t often fond of. No, my dear, consider yourself lucky that you were born into the world you were and had the opportunity to maintain your standard of life.”
Once again, Opal’s thoughts drifted to Garrett. In the time span of a week, he could be living on this side of town. The thought was enough to make the color drain from Opal’s face.
Chapter 6
Garrett entered his room and haphazardly dropped his backpack in the corner. Without breaking stride, he continued to his desk and opened the sciorb. After logging in, Garrett clicked the spiral icon for the dataweb and waited for it to load.
Although, Opal had refused to help him investigate the origins and true existence of The Council, Garrett remained determined. He’d spent the ride home from academy trying to figure out why he couldn’t locate anything about The Council on the dataweb. The dataweb connected everyone in the world. It was a network of collective knowledge and resources. How could it harbor no information about The Council?
With Opal going to volunteer with the Undecided, he knew by the time she returned it’d be too late to pester her again for help. He’d have to continue researching without her help.
Garrett straightened in his chair. The Undecided. They were rumored to have an old library in the Undecided sector of the city that held very old books. Ancient books. Books that just might reveal the origins and workings of The Council.
Jumping to his feet and refolding the sciorb back together, he picked up his backpack and slung it over his shoulder. Racing out the door and down the stairs, his mother interrupted him right as he reached the front door.
“Garrett, where are you going?” Mrs. Gibbons stood in the kitchen pulling out the pots to cook dinner.
Without breaking stride, he shouted, “To the library, Mom, I have to look up something.”
Before she could respond, he was out the door. Garrett headed for the nearest transport station only two blocks away. When he got there, he checked the city map and instantly felt stupid. He had no idea how to get to the Undecided sector. None of the stations had it listed as one of the locations. He could ride around the entire city for days looking for it.
Noticing a man sporting an immaculate brown suit disembarking the transporter nearest to Garrett, he grabbed his arm. “Excuse me, sir, but do you know which line will take me to the Undecided sector?”
The man wrinkled his brow, staring at Garrett for several long seconds before inquiring, “Why would you want to go there?”
Garrett decided to lie. “I have a friend who’s volunteering down there. I’m looking for her.” Well, it wasn’t a complete lie. He did have a friend volunteering there.
The man sighed and replied, “There are no transporters to that part of town. I believe transport line number four goes in the direction, but it ends about half a mile before that section of the city.”
“Thank you, sir.” Garrett nodded at the man and reexamined the map, searching for where he could catch transport line four. After examining the map for a few minutes, he realized he’d have to connect with line five and three to get there, but it didn’t matter—he was determined.
Throughout the transporter ride, he absentmindedly watched the different parts of the city whisk by. His thoughts were occupied with what he would find once he arrived at the Undecided sector. He hoped the Undecided sector would have signs like his part of town, but what if they didn’t? Mentally, he kicked himself for not bring his sciorb along so he could search for directions. In the three years Opal had been volunteering at the shelter, she’d asked thrice for him to come along. After he’d waved off the suggestion over and over, she stopped asking. Now he wished he’d taken her up on a visit to the shelter. A bit of experience would have kept him from sticking out like a sore thumb.
The transporter slid to a stop and he switched from line three to four, finding a seat near the door so he wouldn’t have to wait long to disembark. He had no idea when the library in the Undecided sector would close. He wanted as much time there as possible in case the library proved difficult to find information on The Council like the dataweb had been.
The ride was short and Garrett soon found himself at the end of the line. Everyone on board disembarked and took a left from the station. Guessing the other passengers were going in the opposite direction of the Undecided sector, he went right toward the deserted pathway that led through a walking tunnel underneath a gray-brick bridge. Once inside the dimly lit tunnel, he took off at a run, wanting to get to the other side in a hurry.
Garrett was disappointed when the Undecided sector wasn’t directly on the opposite side. Instead, wide fields stretched far into the distance on either side of the increasingly narrow walkway. From the transport station, the walkway had been large enough to harbor four people walking abreast, but it had narrowed to the point where two people would struggle not to trip each other.
Curiosity overruling his desire for speed, he continued to observe his surroundings. At first, the fields had appeared to be homogenous, but upon closer inspection, he recognized differing rows of crops and flowers. Confused, he kept walking, trying to visually measure how far apart each type of crop was. Based on the haphazard growing pattern, he wondered if anyone cultivated them or if they grew wild. This was a far cry from the well-maintained crops underneath the protection of the Cultivation Dome.
Shaking off his curiosity, he increased his pace and started running down the pathway. Garrett was by no means a runner, but he wasn’t unfit either. Still, he was slightly out of breath by the time he made it to the entrance of the Undecided sector. It was divided from the fields by two sets of walking bridges. Between the first and second set was an area that resembled a marketplace. At the moment, it was empty. Scattered stands with boxes and compartments meant to hold fruit lay empty but clean. Beyond the stands were buildings rising three to four stories tall. They appeared derelict and unoccupied—something Garrett had never witnessed before.
Passing through the tunnel beneath the second bridge, Garrett made his way into the main part of the Undecided sector. It wasn’t at all what he expected. People walked around at a leisurely pace, not worried about getting anywhere in a hurry. The smiling happy faces he had grown accustomed to seeing in his part of the city were absent here. Many of the adults wore expressions of sadness and fatigue. The only ones with smiles on their faces appeared to be the children playing in the streets—but even among them, smiles were rare.
Garrett swallowed the growing lump in his throat. No wonder Opal had been pushing him to write his Life Plan. If she’d seen people live like this once a week for three years, no wonder she didn’t want her best friend to end up like this. Garrett continued to swallow, but the lump wouldn’t disappear. For the first time since he’d turned sixteen, he felt fear at not being concerned with his Life Plan for so long. Now Submission Day was only a week away and he’d done nothing more than write his name at the top of the page.
Ignoring the lump in his throat, he continued, searching for signs that would lead him to the library. The streets here were different. No cordoned-off lanes for personal transporters to pass lined the streets nor any signs hanging from each street corner or intersection to indicate the street names. How did anyone find their way around this place?<
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Figuring there had to be some type of navigation signs, Garrett paid more attention to each building. Maybe they would have addresses like those on his side of the city. But there were none.
Confused, Garrett pressed on, walking blindly through the city sector until someone marched up to him. “Hey, you look lost. You’re not from around here, are you?”
Garrett peered down to see an old lady bent over on a wooden cane. The wrinkles framing her face surrounded eyes faded to an eerie pale blue from old age. As she stared up at him with an accusatory frown, her entire body shook with the effort of holding up her slim frame.
Garrett had never seen an old person so frail and fragile. For a moment, he was stunned into silence. When he dared to speak, it came out as a stammer, “Um, yes…yes ma’am. I’m looking for the library.”
“The library?” The old woman’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t they have a library on your side of town?”
Garrett couldn’t help wondering what this woman’s problem was. He hadn’t done anything to her. Why was she acting so hostile to him? “No, they do. It’s just that they don’t have what I’m looking for.”
“So what? Our library often doesn’t have what we’re looking for, but we can’t just waltz over to your libraries and find what we want, now can we? No!” The old woman tried to raise her cane and poke Garrett with it. “Why don’t you just go back to where you came from?”
The old woman’s exclamation had garnered the attention of those walking by. They stared at Garrett and the woman. A few started taking steps toward Garrett as if they wanted to intervene.
Not wanting to draw further attention to himself, Garrett quickly clarified. “I’m sorry, I really don’t mean you or your people any harm. I just want to look up something.”
“My people?” The woman’s eyes bulged, and strands of her pure white hair fell loose from her bun as her shaking increased. “What makes us so different from you all on the other side of the city?”
Backing away from the reach of her cane, Garrett held his hands up in defeat. “Okay, okay, I’ll leave.”
“Good riddance! And don’t come back here!” shouted the woman at his back.
Garrett pretended to walk away, but once he was sure the old woman had stopped watching him, he dashed into an alleyway. “What is wrong with that woman?” he muttered aloud.
“Did you say that you were looking for a library?” asked the voice of a little girl.
Garrett twisted around to see a young girl no older than five or six clutching a doll with one button eye missing close to her pink dress. Her long brown hair hung straight down to midway across her chest. Her green eyes shone with a tiny shred of hope. “Yes, I was. Do you know where it is?”
The girl nodded. “Follow me.”
The girl turned and walked out of the alleyway, not bothering to see if Garrett was following or not. She led him around the corner and away from where the old woman was sure to be lurking. She walked two blocks east and then four blocks north before taking one block south, leading him further and further to a less crowded part of the sector.
Eventually, she stopped in front of a tall three-story building brimming with the hints of character and charm that had faded with time. Now, the building lay in a terrible state of disrepair. Shutters hung loose from the windows, a few repaired with strips of tape over old cracks. Paint peeled from the siding covering the structure and several roof tiles were missing. Based on the lack of light emission through the windows, the library appeared to be closed.
“Is it still open?” wondered Garrett.
“Yes,” the girl nodded and held out her hand.
Garrett watched the girl’s unwavering intense gaze, trying to figure out what she was doing. She jabbed forward twice with her outstretched hand, palm up, and Garrett finally got the message. The little girl was begging. Digging inside his pockets, he searched for some money, hoping that he had some trecins somewhere. Garrett might have been a little suspicious, but he wasn’t one to rip off a little kid.
His fingers brushed against a few coins and he tugged them out, dropping three trecins into the girl’s outstretched hand. Without a word, the girl simply turned and left, clutching the money tightly in her fist.
Puzzled by the lack of the girl’s reaction, Garrett turned his eyes to the library and wondered if he’d just been ripped off. But at least the sign in the front yard said Darrington Library. She had led him to a library.
Walking down the pathway to the library with the dead grass on either side of it, he opened the door and peered inside. The entire first floor was shrouded in darkness and gave him an eerie feeling. Yet, light filtering from the second story beckoned him onward and up the creaky wooden steps. The tenth one gave a little. Afraid it would break, he skipped it and leaped to the last stair. The light came from the left down a narrow space between rows of bookshelves. Pacing toward the light, he found a young woman holding a lamp over the book she was reading.
“Oh,” she jumped when she saw him and scrambled to her feet. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you coming.”
“It’s okay,” reassured Garrett, shocked at the woman’s reaction.
“Can I help you find anything?”
“Do you work here?”
She nodded, tucking a loose strand of her chestnut brown hair behind her ear. “Yes, I do.”
“Why are all the lights off?”
“Oh, well, when no one is here we try to keep the lights off to save energy. Wait here one moment while I turn them on.”
Before Garrett could say anything, the young woman disappeared into the darkness. Within seconds, a bright, warm, yellow glow lit the entire room. Bookcases upon bookcases became visible, lining every wall and most of the space in-between.
As Garrett admired the scope of reading material, the girl returned. “There, that’s better.”
In the full light of the room, Garrett could see that she wasn’t more than a year or two older than him. Big caramel-colored eyes were deep-set in a round face with high cheekbones. Her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail and ended just beyond the nape of her neck.
A little taken aback at her beauty, he stammered for the second time that day. “Uh…uh…I’m looking for a particular book that I heard you might have in your collection here.”
The young woman’s eyebrows rose. “Oh really, what book would that be?”
“Well, I um…don’t know the name of it, but it’s about The Council.”
“The Council?” The girl pinched her lips together in thought. “I’m not sure if I’ve heard of such a book.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, if we have any books on them, it would be in one place.” Spinning around, she started to walk away, but stopped and looked over her shoulder to add, “Oh, and I’m April by the way. What’s your name?”
“Garrett.”
“Nice to meet you, Garrett. If you’d please follow me.”
Happy to have help without being charged or tormented, Garrett followed her to the corner of the room where a spiral staircase led to the third floor. Once up there, he couldn’t help sneezing. Dust clung to every surface, nook, and cranny. April seemed to be unaffected by it and strode straight over to a bookshelf nestled by one of the windows.
“If there are any books about The Council, they would be on this shelf.” Squatting down to start reading from the bottom shelf, her eyes darted back and forth as she quickly read the titles. Rising to her full height, she pulled one down off the shelf. “This one might contain the information you seek.”
Garrett reached out to take the book from her, glancing down at its thick red cover. There was no title on the front, only on the spine. It appeared that it had been smoothed over at some point like someone had rubbed it until it wore away.
“I’ll leave you to it. If you need anything, I’ll be downstairs on the second floor.”
“Okay, thank you,” muttered Garrett.
Pausing, April twisted back arou
nd and asked, “If you don’t mind my asking, why do you want to read a book about The Council?”
Shaken from his own thoughts, Garrett looked at her perplexed. “I just want to know more about them, that’s all.”
“To better prepare your Life Plan?” wondered April, her head downcast and voice barely above a whisper.
Garrett forgot about his mission for a moment and glanced over at April. Her head was still downcast, eyes focused on the floor. “You knew that I am from the Decided sector?”
April solemnly nodded her head, still not looking up.
“But you treated me so kindly.”
“Well, just because I am where I am doesn’t mean I should be mean to others. At least that’s what I believe,” she explained.
Garrett’s brow twitched into a frown for a moment, then smoothed. “You aren’t that much older than me. Couldn’t you have chosen to create a Life Plan?”
April nodded and finally met his gaze. Garrett was shocked to see tears glistening in her eyes. “I did…write my Life Plan...that is. I had it all figured out. I would be a scholar, learn everything I could about our world. I wanted to be a librarian and work to help others learn more too.”
“What happened? Why are you here?”
“I was born into the Undecided. My mother and I lived alone. She was sad that I would be leaving her but happy I would be living a different life than she had. I’d been ready to hand in my Life Plan on Submission Day and go to the Declaration Day ceremony, but when it was time to submit my Plan, it was gone. All my printed and digital copies had disappeared. My mother and I searched everywhere but we couldn’t find it. Time had run out and I didn’t have enough time to write another one, so I was stuck. Eventually, we discovered my mother’s ex-husband, my former stepfather, had stolen my paper copies and destroyed my electronic ones. It was his last act of malice against my mother for leaving him.”
Garrett was frozen in shock. That was beyond harsh. “Did you ever find it?”
“No,” April sniffed and wiped at the rim of her eyes. “No, I didn’t, but it was too late regardless. The main librarian here was nice enough to allow me to work at this library. I don’t make much, but I get to spend my days around books, reading, and learning as much as I can. It’s an adequate substitute.”