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.
* * *
“TRUTH or 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:
GIRLS’ REFORMATORY AND REHABILITATION CENTER.
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 i
nto 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 drag
ged 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.
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