by Julie Wright
“Summer Dawn Rae. You’re late, dear.” Her sweet voice didn’t at all match her appearance. She looked like the kind of school librarian who ate little kids when they failed to return a book on time. And she’d called me dear? The only person who ever called me that had been the waitress at the Corner Café. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if that waitress had gone to my funeral since she’d been one of the last people to see me alive.
Stupid. I’m not dead.
“I’ll bet it’s been a rough few days from the looks of you.” The woman continued. “I’ll take you to your room where you can clean up and find something more appropriate to wear to your orientation.” She turned a cold gaze to the soldiers. “She isn’t a prisoner or a threat. You can go now.”
They both inclined their heads, murmuring, “Yes, Kathleen,” and bowing back out of the building.
“The soldiers are a little high-handed sometimes. I hope they didn’t frighten you.”
I didn’t tell her that she frightened me more than they had. I didn’t tell her that by the look of those soldiers, she’d frightened them, too. She waved her hand over the door after the soldiers had exited causing the edges of the doors to glow red.
I’m locked in, I thought. She said I wasn’t a prisoner, but she just locked me in.
“It’s to keep people out while I’m gone from my post.” She explained. Can she read my thoughts? I wondered, hoping she hadn’t been able to eavesdrop on me. For all the things Tag had told me about the future, I cursed him for all the things he hadn’t said. If she was eavesdropping on my thoughts, I was in big trouble.
And who knew what testing they did for crazy people. Maybe they let some people who are borderline crazy pass the test and walk around free as menaces to society.
We left the small front entry hall, with its singular front desk, through a set of double doors made out of some dark wood. The paneling on the doors was carved to look like vines.
Through the doors, I felt like I’d entered another world all over again. Two spiral staircases wound around either side of the cavernous room. The room itself looked like an elegant sitting room. Plush lounge chairs, love seats, and sofas were scattered all around. The walls were a pearly blue color that seemed to swirl and shift depending on how you looked at it. Books lined the shelves in one nook under the left spiral staircase, and an incredible fireplace sat tucked under the other staircase.
“This is the casual room,” Kathleen said.
“Casual?” I let out a pshaw noise. She turned and tilted her head like a hawk might before it swallowed a mouse. I shrugged and tried to clear my mind.
“This is where social gatherings are held. Dances are held on the one hundred and thirteenth floor in the ballroom. The dining hall is on the fifty-sixth floor. Your room is on the seventy-second floor. I apologize your accommodations are on a lower level but the upper levels are already occupied.”
A lower level? I looked at the spiral staircase. It went up pretty high, but I didn’t think it went up seventy-two flights. And then I noticed the double-wide wooden doors. They sighed open to reveal a spacious elevator. Going up.
We stepped in and the elevator rocketed us up to the seventy-second floor. Not only did the front doors glow green and red for Kathleen, but every door Kathleen encountered glowed green. She was like some sort of traffic cop who figured out how to make all the lights do her bidding.
“You’ll find adequate clothing that is your precise size in your closet,” Kathleen instructed as we walked down the hall.
Tag must have given measurements or something.
“You’ll meet your classmates for orientation soon. And each of you will meet with Professor Raik privately to discuss your new lives here.”
Professor Raik. I felt a chill at the very idea of doing anything privately or publically with that guy. “What did they do with Tag?”
“Who, dear?” She walked in front of me, her severe bun bobbing with her every step.
“Tag. Taggert.” That was what the general had called him.
“I’m sure I don’t know—oh. You mean the soldier who brought you here. You really don’t have to worry over him. He’s not part of your class. The soldiers are their own class. They take care of themselves and don’t mingle in any other society.”
“Will they kill him? Because I’m late?”
She turned to face me, slight alarm in her eyes at my question. “I don’t know. And you shouldn’t care. What happens to soldiers is soldiers’ business. You’re a New Youth now. You need only worry about things that are New Youth business.”
“New Youth?”
“You’re the hope of the future.” She said the words hope of the future with the same sigh as Tag had. They really did hope for their future to be better. “Here’s your room, dear.” She waved her hand over my door and it glowed green at the edges then clicked open. She pushed it open farther.
“This is my room?” I entered the room with my jaw hanging to the ground. No way would they give me a room like this. “There’s a mistake somewhere. This can’t be my room.” I said.
“Why can’t this be your room?”
I shook my head and waved my arms at the room. “Look at all this! This is too much for someone like me.”
“There’s no mistake. The professor doesn’t make mistakes. And you remember that no matter who you were before you arrived, you are one of the elect here. So put your past in the past. And don’t forget who you are now. The professor demanded nothing less than the best for the world’s hope. You will want for nothing here. You’ll have the best of everything.” She smiled at me, and her face looked far less severe with that smile. “Do you like it?”
“It’s . . . amazing.” Even on TV no one had a room that looked like this one. The two canopy beds with the long flowing curtains indicated Tag had been right about me having a roommate, though no one else was in the room at the moment aside from Kathleen and me. The dark hardwood floors glowed against the dim light coming from creamy globes hanging from the ceiling. Cream-colored rugs sat under each bed and the curtains hanging down from the bed so we each had a little privacy matched the rugs and the floors with their swirls and patterns. Near each bed stood a desk and chair. The bed on the right looked rumpled as if someone had jumped on it.
“Is my roommate here?” I asked.
“Oh yes. Alison’s very friendly. She hasn’t been here very long, but she wanted to go see the ballroom straight away after she’d cleaned up. I’m sorry not to be able to introduce you.”
Ballroom? Out of all the things to see here, she wanted to look at the ballroom?
There were three other doors besides the one we came in through and a wall that seemed filled with windows overlooking the city. “Your closet is on the left along with your bed and desk. The bathroom is the first door on the right. The other door is Alison’s closet. You’ll be soon getting an IDR—your soldier explained the IDR, I assume?”
I nodded. “A little.”
“They’ll also be making an appointment with the doctor so you can get your inoculations.”
“Inoculations?” I dropped the edge of the silky bedspread I’d picked up just to see if it was as soft as it looked. My rough fingers had snagged the silk.
“Yes. We wouldn’t want you getting sick.” She seemed to have missed my alarm at the idea of getting a shot—and not just one. There had been an s on that word inoculation; that made the word plural—as in many.
“So do you think Tag’s okay?” I asked again.
“I’m sure he’s fine, dear.” She said, sounding all kinds of motherly. “I’d better be leaving you to get bathed and dressed so you’re clean for orientation. I set your room alarm to give a ten minute warning before you’re to meet the professor downstairs, and then again for when you’re actually supposed to be there. He doesn’t like to be kept waiting, so try to leave at the ten minute alert. You have about two and a half hours.”
“Will he bring Tag back with him? Since h
e’s talking to Tag right now?”
“I doubt that very much.” She moved to leave. I followed her to the door.
“Why do you doubt that? Do you think they’ve hurt him?”
Her eyes filled with pity until it nearly toppled over in the form of tears. “Don’t ask any more questions about him if you don’t want to make trouble for him. If he is still okay, the best way to keep him okay is to let it go. New Youths aren’t allowed to socialize with the soldiers.”
“But he said we didn’t have to be enemies. He said we could be friends.”
“I hope you aren’t enemies. I worry about the New Youth—” She bit off what she’d been about to say. “If you’re his friend, don’t ask any more. It’ll only make things harder.”
I nodded. She nodded, too, putting her finger to her lips in a hushing motion. I nodded again. She patted my check and smiled before leaving the room, shutting the door behind her. I waited to see if it would glow red at the edges, to see if she would lock me in, but it never did.
After several minutes of standing and staring at the door, I went and checked to see if it would open. It did. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and went back in my room to check it out thoroughly.
Thoughts of Tag and Winter stayed in my mind, which made glorying in the fact that the room I now occupied was posh, comfortable, just a bit fancy, and meant for me impossible. Winter could have been my roommate. We could’ve shared this room together. I shook my head. She didn’t die in the car wreck. I had to be grateful for the life she’d been allowed to live, grateful that I still had a shot at my own life.
My closet was a huge cavern of clothing, filled with a vast array of dresses, a few formal gowns, and no jeans. Were they kidding me?
The dresser was inside the closet like the house we’d stayed at in the mountains the last few days. That must be the latest trend in home decorating. I opened the drawers and found unmentionables, which embarrassed me to imagine someone else buying for me. In the other drawers were exercise clothes, yoga pants, a jogging suit, a swimsuit, and one pair of jeans. One. Whose brilliant dumb idea had that been?
The shoes were equally disappointing—only one pair of running shoes. The rest were of the strappy heel variety. I didn’t wear heels. At five foot eight I felt tall enough, and I could never coordinate my feet well enough to walk in heels without breaking an ankle. In the future where cars can fly and sidewalks skimmed the sky, they couldn’t come up with something better than girl shoes with heels? Why did society want girls to look like a bunch of baby giraffes learning how to walk?
And all these dresses? Where were all the women to rebel such things? A few dresses—fine, but a whole closetful?
After several moments of looking at my new wardrobe and several moments more of looking in the mirror at my own reflection, I decided what I currently wore was good enough. I touched the glass in the mirror and mouthed the words, “Wonder twin powers . . . activate.” It was Winter’s shirt in the mirror—her shirt and her face. If I didn’t say the words out loud, I could pretend she stood right in front of me. I drew strength from that, drew strength while swallowing sorrow. I’d find out where she was buried at the very least and put yellow roses on her grave. Maybe I’d put white roses on my own grave.
I opened the door to check out the bathroom. The tub took an entire wall. The shower looked like an emergency escape pod from a space ship. I washed my face and hands, raked my fingers through my hair, and shrugged. I was ready, and it only took four minutes of the two hours and thirty minutes she’d given me. Now what?
I went back into the room and meandered through my roommate’s closet, Alison, I think Kathleen said her name was. She had a lot of dresses, too. I had just decided to start peeking in her dresser when the door to our room fell open and a very bubbly excited sort of voice squealed out, “You’re here!” She said this as though she’d been waiting for days, when Kathleen said she’d only arrived an hour or two ahead of me.
I backtracked out of her closet as fast as I could while trying to look innocent about sneaking around through her stuff. “Hi.”
“Hello!” And she threw her arms around me.
I stood there awkwardly, wondering how to handle this new situation and finally put my hand up to pat her on the back since she didn’t seem like she planned on letting go of me anytime soon.
When she did pull away, it was to grip my arms and say through a grin wide enough to be its own canyon, “We’re going to be the very best of friends!”
I tried to smile back without looking as bewildered as I felt.
“I’ll bet your soldier was completely dreamy, wasn’t he? Mine was. As perfect as a dream! But those soldiers aren’t half as adorable as the boys in our own class. Just wait until you see them!”
My back went rigid upon her pondering over Tag’s looks. “I wouldn’t know; I was too busy fighting to stay alive to pay attention to what anyone looked like.”
“What are you talking about? Your soldier saved you. You didn’t need to fight anything.” She plopped down on her bed and used her arm to prop her up. I could easily imagine her in bobby sox and a poodle skirt.
I couldn’t stand her.
“We must have had different circumstances.” I said.
“I was in a terrible house fire. Smoke everywhere. I really thought I might cough myself to death, and then he showed up—like some hero out of a book to save me. How did you die?”
It took me a moment to puzzle out what she’d said. How did I die? I wasn’t dead. Neither was she, as she herself had already explained. Her “hero” saved her.
“Car accident.” Is this conversation for real? “What year are you from?” I didn’t care what the answer might be. I only wished I could toss her back to her own year to relieve myself from having to listen to her high-pitched, spastic voice any more.
“1957. It was December. My soldier said it was likely an electric fire from the Christmas tree.” She sighed. “He really was dreamy.”
“By the time you get to 2010, dreamy means you aren’t paying attention. Not that you’re good looking. Just so you know.”
She looked seriously depressed over this news. “Is that true? Oh darn. That’s too bad. Dreamy is a great word.”
It took all my will not to shake my head. Alison went several minutes without saying anything, but I could tell the silence gap tortured her.
“I’m so excited to be here, I could just bust!” She finally gushed, popping up to a sitting position and throwing her legs over the side of the bed.
It was like she’d come from another planet. “Technically, we were kidnapped. What part of the word abduction are you not getting?”
“My soldier saved me!” She declared, planting both her fists on her hips. “I’d be dead in that fire along with my whole family if he hadn’t pulled me out. He saved me!”
I grunted and shoved my drawer closed, standing up straight so I could face her directly. “And it never occurred to you to wonder why he didn’t bother saving the rest of your family?”
“He couldn’t!” She jumped to her feet. “It was already too late for them!”
I turned my back on her, shaking my head. “Whatever,” I mumbled.
She huffed for several moments. “I wanted us to be friends,” she said to my back. “You shouldn’t be making things so difficult for yourself.”
Her comment made me wince. She was right, of course. Making things harder would only, well, make things harder. My tendency to sabotage myself was a natural reaction. But I didn’t have Winter to make up that difference for my behavior anymore. Yes, I despised my roommate on a snap judgment, not that I thought I might be wrong. In fact, I felt pretty sure I was dead-on. The word lunatic had crossed my mind several times already in regard to her, but with Tag’s warning about being careful what I called people, I kept my thoughts on her lunacy to myself. Giving her a chance and at least trying to be civil wouldn’t hurt me. “Look, I . . . we can be friends, ok
ay? I’m sorry if I seemed rude. This is just a lot to handle, you know? So much got left behind. I’m not sure how to make it all okay in my head.”
Her eyes misted, and the hands that had been planted on her hips moments before were now clasped tightly in front of her. “I do know what you mean. My mom and dad and baby brother were in the house. It was a miracle the way one minute I was choking on smoke and the next minute breathing clean air. I asked him to go get them, and even tried to run into the house to save them myself, but he held me back and said it was too late. I’m glad to be taken here, where I won’t have to be reminded of them all the time.”
I pitied her. Her whole family gone. But my whole family was gone, too. Who deserved the greater pity? This is not a competition for who had the worst day. Aunt Theresa used to say that whenever we started whining. “I’m sorry,” I said to Alison.
And in the next moment her eyes were teardrop free. She’d only just come from her tragedy and seemed to be fine with it. I’d had four days to try to deal with mine, and I was still messed up. How could she adjust so well? So quickly?
“When did you leave your time?” I asked.
“Oh, just this morning. We only had a few minutes for me to catch my breath before he whisked me away from that awful smoke and the sight of the burning house. He said he’d timed our window differently so I could have the luxury of a decent bath and the ability to clean up and get myself in order before the other arrivals. I already met one of the others. He was completely drea—” she frowned and brightened in the space of an eye blink. “Anyway, he was nice.” She seemed unsure if nice was an acceptable term or not.
She spoke of that awful smoke and that burning house with her family inside of it as if they were a paper cut on her finger.
“And did you see that bathtub?” Her eyes went huge as though she were trying to make them the same size as the bathtub.
She talked about the new clothes as though she’d never seen new clothes. Even I, with no parents and getting scooted from home to home, had been given new clothes every once in a while. She talked about the size of the room and bathroom. I couldn’t argue with her awe of either of those things. I was just as awestruck. Well, maybe not just as. She acted as though she really had died and this was her heaven.