by Linda Marr
I hated her.
But as Blair’s hands worked their way up my arm, it felt so good, my rage faded.
No, I told myself. Don’t lose that anger. You need it, to get away from this place.
But my exhausted mind would not obey. I hadn’t been awake that long, but I was tired already.
As Blair rubbed me gently, my eyes drifted shut. I was falling asleep again, falling into a dream.
This time I didn’t dream of blood filled pipes and unconscious bodies in… what did Jeff say… donor harvesting stations?
Instead, I dreamt of my family. My dad was on the phone with the police, his voice calm, face strained. My mom was trying not to cry, but her eyes were red and swollen. And Troy was murmuring the meaning of my name over and over as if to give himself comfort, “… bright one… shining one… bright one… shining one…”
And the blonde guy from the park, he was standing outside my parent’s kitchen window, watching everything.
What did it all mean?
CHAPTER FOUR
Bright one, shining one… I could still hear my brother’s voice in my head when I woke. But of course Troy wasn’t anywhere near me. Where was he, where was I?
Here in this room, the dark curtains were drawn back now, leaving only crisp white window shades to shield my eyes against what was now morning light. It didn’t hurt nearly as badly as it had the day before.
A new day. My second day in captivity.
I didn’t believe for a second all the things Jeff told me, but the one thing I did believe was that everything happening now was real.
And I was determined to escape.
I wiggled my fingers. I clenched my fist. Good sign - my hands were working. Could I lift my arm?
Just then the door opened. There was Blair in another gauzy dress with Charles right behind her. He looked enormous standing next to her. Both of them were so young, they could’ve just graduated a few years ahead of me in high school. And yet here I was their prisoner.
“Just thought I’d see how you’re doing,” Charles said easily.
Since I was completely dependent on these people I managed an even, “I’m fine.”
“Think you can handle a little more light?” Charles went on.
“I guess,” I said.
“It might be nice to see more of where you’re staying,” Blair added.
Yesterday Jeff called this place “the farmhouse” and as Charles raised one of the blinds, it seemed he’d been telling the truth.
Fields stretched as far as I could see. Overhead, the sky was a dull, dank gray, but on the ground, bright green pastures were interlaced with ripening wheat, and the colors of summer. The emerald of the grasses, the bright orange of the fruit on orchard trees, wildflowers in the field, purple and yellow – all the colors were so shocking against the leaden sky.
The drug they’d given me must still be affecting my vision. Why were the colors of the fields and crops so intense? And the sky so grey? The only thing I knew for sure was that I was out in the middle of nowhere.
Charles propped me up against my bed pillows. Lifting me was effortless for him, and I could see how he could’ve plucked me from my bed at home while I was dreaming without me even realizing it. That had to have been what happened.
I tried to push him away. But I was so weak my push was more of a pathetic slap. Charles was amused.
“Your muscles are coming along, I see.”
I seethed.
“Pretty soon you’ll be able to sit up on your own. Kick my butt,” he grinned.
That day will come.
Charles nodded a quick goodbye to Blair and stepped out of my room again.
I caught a glimpse of someone out in the hall. Another young guy around my age. But there was something really familiar about him. He might have been good-looking except that his hair was tangled and dyed a bright blue. As he slipped past Charles, he smiled at me, and then he was gone.
It was like an electric shock. My mouth dropped. I knew who it was. It was him – the guy I’d seen so many times at home. The guy from the park. The one I chased. The one who disappeared. I’d know that smile anywhere. Except his hair wasn’t blonde.
What did he have to do with all this?
But it couldn’t be him. That made no sense. Yet except for the blue hair, he was almost a dead ringer.
“Who is that guy out there?” I asked Blair. “The one with the blue hair.”
“Kavan? You’ll meet him soon enough.”
What kind of name was Kavan? Blair left the room before I could ask her anything more, but she was back again in a flash. With a tray of food.
Food. I’d forgotten all about it. It smelled delicious, and for the moment it was all I could think about.
“Your breakfast. I’ll help you with it. You’re still too weak to eat by yourself, but that won’t last long.”
I looked down at the tray. Although it smelled wonderful, it looked like a bowl of lumpy mush. “I don’t want it,” I frowned. Besides, could I really trust what these people fed me? They could just keep drugging me.
“It’s pureed oatmeal. We have to go slowly. Your stomach isn’t used to real food.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about, but as she raised a spoon to my lips, I was too hungry to resist. Besides if I was going to escape, I’d have to get my strength back. I’d have to risk it.
But the mush tasted nothing like how it looked. In fact it was amazing.
“What kind of oatmeal is that?” I asked, astounded.
“The average kind,” Blair replied. “With a little maple syrup.”
Maybe it was another after-effect of the drug they’d given me. Like the scent of Blair’s handkerchief, and the bright colors of the farm fields that I could see out the window, flavors, too, were much more intense.
***
Other meals followed that one, equally, astonishingly delicious. I couldn’t understand it. Surely the effects of that drug would’ve worn off by now.
It seemed like whenever I wasn’t eating, Blair was massaging me, working my muscles, helping me to be able to move again. I hung onto the hope that my parents would find me and rescue me. But if they didn’t, I was getting stronger. I would get out of here myself.
I could hear the sounds of the farmhouse, I wondered, about all the voices, talking and laughing. Was one of them that boy?
While Blair worked on my muscles, I spent a lot of time staring out the window.
“There’s not much to see,” Blair said, as she massaged my legs. “We’re way out in the country.”
“Why isn’t it ever sunny?”
“It is. At least as sunny as it gets here.”
“Where’s here?”
Blair just smiled. I guess she was afraid if she told me, it would help me figure out how to escape. “So it never gets sunnier than this?” I persisted.
“The computers gave you a life that made the world look the way it was a long time ago. We haven’t seen the sun clearly for years because of all the pollution from the wars.”
“So how does everything grow, and the flowers – they’re all so beautiful.”
“We treat our land specially to absorb what sun there is. We’re one of the few collectives to do so, which is why our crops and flowers are really valued. Remember, this is what you’d think of as the future, Elle.”
The future, again.
I looked back outside. This was some kind of mind game. Yet it didn’t seem like Blair was the type of person who would try to trick me like that. She seemed kind. I stopped myself. What was I thinking? She was a brainwashed conspirator in a kidnapping ring, right?
All I needed to do was wait for a sunny day and I could prove she was wrong.
***
The days went by. I forced myself to keep a picture of my family in my mind every night. But while their faces were once as fixed as my own, they were starting to recede like ghostly images I strained to catch hold of in the dark.
; My own image was somewhat unfamiliar to me.
Blair had given me a mirror and helped me comb my hair. It was still copper, and my eyes were still green, but I just wasn’t as pretty. I couldn’t say exactly why, but I wasn’t. The drug they’d given me must’ve dulled me somehow I decided.
Sometimes I didn’t know what I believed about my situation exactly. I didn’t have that nightmare anymore, a nightmare that felt more like a terrible memory now than a dream. But whatever they told me, I knew I was a daughter, a sister, I was loved. That wasn’t a lie. If I didn’t hold on to that, I’d go crazy.
I had to find out for myself what was real and what was not. Blair removed the bandages on my stomach for good and I got a real look at what they’d covered. My rescuers, my captors, whoever they were, they were right about one thing, my navel was gone. Had they removed it? And why? To make their strange story seem real?
Blair no longer massaged me, now she used something that looked like my father’s stethoscope which sent a line of electric current shooting through me.
“I guess you’re finally showing me your sadistic side,” I said.
Blair didn’t bother looking up, “You need this treatment. You’ll be surprised how fast your muscles begin working now.”
And she was painfully right. She worked on me every day, until evening. We didn’t talk much, partly because of how much the electric current hurt. But maybe it was also because she knew I had so many questions, and she knew as well as I did that I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear her answers.
So it was a surprise one day when she actually seemed to want to talk. “I’m not bringing your food up to you anymore, Elle. You’re strong enough to join us at dinner downstairs.”
My heart skipped a beat. What would be waiting for me ‘downstairs?’ For a moment I thought of Kavan with the blue hair. Would he be there? Did I even want to see him if he was? In some way, I felt safe in this room. I found I was scared at the idea of leaving it.
But I couldn’t allow myself to be complacent. I couldn’t forget that I had to escape.
Just being downstairs I might have a better idea how to get out of this place. I could use my arms and sit up by myself now. It was just my legs that didn’t work yet. Which made me ask –
“How am I supposed to get down the stairs?”
“Charles will carry you,” Blair answered serenely. “And we have a wheelchair waiting.”
“All right,” I said, as my heart pounded.
The stairs seemed incredibly steep as Charles carried me down them that night. But once again it was as effortless for him as it was the first time he carried me. When he kidnapped me, I reminded myself.
When we reached the bottom of the stairs, I saw we were in a narrow old-fashioned foyer that opened in two directions, toward the front door and a large living room with a broad picture window.
Outside, there were more fields and several large greenhouses, reflecting brilliant sunset colored clouds in their glass. Red, gold, pink – even though you still couldn’t see the sun itself, the sky was magnificent. Beyond the greenhouses were windmills, spinning lazily.
“You okay?” Blair asked.
“Yeah,” I said. But I was still terrified of whatever lay ahead of me tonight. I kept my eyes on that beautiful clouded sky.
“The sunset’s always spectacular,” Blair noted. “That’s one good thing about the pollution.”
I nodded. But honestly all I wanted was to be back in my room, the room I still thought of as a prison.
Charles wheeled me through the living room, and Blair stepped in front of him to slide open the panels of a broad cherry wood door. I could hear people talking behind it, a lot of people it sounded like.
Charles wheeled me through. I felt like the new kid on the first day of school. I was in a huge room very much like a school cafeteria. Everyone was talking and eating and laughing together, but as I came in, all of them stopped and looked at me. I stared back. What was this place? And who was I, really? I was lying to myself, if I didn’t admit I had some doubts.
“This is Elle,” Blair said softly, leaning down to drape her arm over my shoulder.
I noticed the sweet smell of lavender on her clothes again. I’d grown to like the scent now. It wasn’t that long ago when I hated it. Like I hated this. All these people. All their faces. Who were they?
Now many of them smiled. Some clapped, like I was a celebrity.
As Charles wheeled me out of the spotlight at last, I noticed that many of the people were in wheelchairs, just like me.
“Are all those people what you call… donors?”
“Most of them,” Blair said.
Just using that word almost took my appetite away. Almost, I thought as Charles pushed me close to the table, and all the food.
“But… can’t anyone walk?” Was I always going to be in a wheelchair, like them?
“The older you are when you’re rescued, the harder it is to get your muscles to work.” Blair sat down next to me, and Charles on the other side of her. “Some of them were inactive so long it could take years to see improvement. You’re lucky because you are so young.”
As usual I didn’t know what was a lie and what was the truth. I did know that I couldn’t spend years waiting to walk again. I still had to get out of this place and find my parents and my brother. They were out there. Some computer didn’t imagine them for me. I knew that. At least I thought I knew.
No matter what, I was just going to have to work harder to get out of this chair.
In a room full of people, Blair was even quieter that usual. Without saying a word, she served plates of food from the heaping platters of grilled vegetables and trout on the table in front of us.
I spotted Jeff sitting at the head of a long table chatting with people on either side of him. The others deferred to him, like he was some kind of royalty. I looked away. I was here to have dinner, and get stronger. I focused on my food and I barely noticed someone sitting down in the empty chair to my right.
“Gaining a little weight I see,” an amused voice remarked.
I looked up. It was him.
Kavan. The one with the blue hair that I’d seen in the hall. I was right. He was the same guy from the park at home. How? How was this possible? But there he was. That same stunning smile. The same mocking look in his eyes.
But there was something majorly different now. At home he looked like he could be the captain of the football team. Here, he was a mess. He was thinner, and wearing a rumpled tee shirt. His eyes were puffy from sleep, as if he’d just awakened, and his blue hair was tangled.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he said, joking.
I stiffened. “Really? Where exactly am I?”
“In the real world.”
He turned his attention to his food and ate, as if he talked to people who didn’t know where they were every day. I wanted to slap him.
“I saw you in the park at home,” I said.
He shrugged.
“What are you doing here?”
“Eating, like you obviously.”
Now I wanted to grab him and shake him. “I mean how’d you get here? How’d I get here?”
His eyes seemed to soften a little as he studied me. I realized I was still wearing the only clothes they’d given me, blue checked pajamas with just a robe over them. I suddenly felt ridiculous.
“Yeah, you’ve seen me before. In your dreams. I’m a dream walker.”
“What are you talking about?” We’d only been talking a few minutes and now he made me want to smack him. Why did he have that effect on me? He was almost smug, like he knew so much more than I did.
“I wasn’t asleep when I saw you.”
“You were dreaming,” he said almost gently now. “I enter dreams. Or what you donors know as your lives.”
“You’re a liar.” My head spun.
Why would he say that? Why did people keep saying the same thing! I couldn’t have just dreamed my entire life.
Could I?
I looked outside. The sunset, more intense than I’d ever seen, the overwhelming lavender scent, the way the entire world smelled, the way food tasted.
Those terrible, terrible bloody glass vats.
And suddenly something clicked. All at once I believed I had done exactly that. I’d dreamed my entire life.
I remembered very clearly my mom’s special fudge cake, she made it for every one of my birthdays. And yet – compared to the ordinary fish and vegetables on my plate, that cake was like eating cardboard.
Tears sprung up in my eyes. But it wasn’t all about the tastes and smells. It was about the people. They were still real, they had to be. Troy’s small hand in mine, as he told me the weird stuff he knew about people’s names. My mom singing to me when I was little, helping me buy a new dress for my school dance. My father going over my biology homework.
How was I supposed to believe that my life wasn’t a life at all?
I was reeling. Desperate. I wanted my family back, I thought wildly. I didn’t care if the food never tasted as good. Maybe my mom was just a terrible cook. Maybe the restaurants I went to were just plain bad.
I glanced over at Blair and Charles. Their expressions were sympathetic, as if they knew what I was going through, as if they had seen it many times before. Maybe they had. It didn’t mean they weren’t kidnappers. I pushed my food away, unfinished.
I wasn’t a universal donor. Whatever that really meant. I was a sixteen year old girl with a mom and a dad and a little brother named Troy. I had a home I loved, and friends and a place in this world. I was not some… thing… some being in a watery vat whose sole existence was to provide blood. My entire heart screamed absolutely… unequivocally… not.
And yet in my head I knew they were right.
My name is Elle Jennings. I am 16 years old. And I am dead.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Hey.” Kavan jostled my arm. “You okay?”No, I thought. How could he even ask? My life was gone. I was nothing. But aloud I said, “Just great.”
Kavan shrugged and went on like he didn’t even notice my world had come crashing down on me. “Hardly any donors ever wake up. But you did. That’s a gift. So welcome, good job, all that.”