by Marilyn Grey
A few tables across the room erupted with a bit too much excitement. It’s just a dance, people. Of course I wasn’t exactly a social butterfly.
A random image appeared in my mind. Something about a butterfly.
Something about Blake.
I followed as everyone went to the dance hall. Emily stayed close to me. I appreciated that. No matter how alone I felt inside, at least I wasn’t alone on the outside. She linked her arm with mine as we entered the room.
“Wow,” she said. “I think I expected a little more color and spunk.”
I nodded. No bright lights. No streamers and glitter. It seemed more like a party for adults with the low lit chandeliers sparkling above us, tables covered in fine cloth and topped with wine glasses and cheese, and classical music playing lightly in the background. Didn’t seem like much of a dance. Some of us, Emily and I included, stood against the walls. Others mingled on the dance floor and a few hovered over the tables, stuffing their faces even after our enormous dinner.
“There’s Elizabeth,” Emily pointed across the dance floor. “Come on, I’ll introduce you.”
I followed her through the crowd and felt someone’s eyes on me. Blake? I peered through faces, noting how happy most people seemed, and saw Red. He tilted his glass toward me and smiled. “Be good,” he mouthed. I nodded.
“Elizabeth,” Emily said, tugging my arm. “This is Claire. We met the first day and sleep across from each other. Claire, this is my sister.”
I extended my hand and shook. “Nice to meet you.”
She squeezed a little too hard, pulled me into a hug, and whispered into my ear, “Leave my sister alone or I’ll kill you. I’ve heard about you. We don’t want anything to do with it.”
I moved back and held eye contact with her. “Anything to do with what?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Did I miss something?” Emily interrupted. “Do you guys already know each other?”
I saw Audrey playfully touching a boy’s arm across the room. She laughed and shoved and laughed and shoved. He appeared to like it.
“I’ll be right back,” I lied and made my way to Audrey.
She didn’t smile as I approached. Her eyes lost the brightness they had only seconds ago. The boy turned toward me. He looked so different. Shorter hair, so short he looked bald, and his eyes looked so tired.
“Blake?” I looked back and forth between him and Audrey. “What are you guys doing?”
“What’s it look like?” Audrey said as a dot of her spit hit my cheek. “Can we help you?”
I waited for Blake to say something.
Nothing.
“You okay?” I touched his hand as I always did, but this time, for the first time, he pulled it away and focused on Audrey.
Blake?
A hand warmed my shoulder. I turned to find Red’s smile betraying my rejection. He lifted me from myself for a second and I smiled back, then looked over my shoulder as Audrey leaned her head into Blake. Red pulled my chin back to him and held my face.
“Focus on what’s in front of you,” he said. “Not what’s behind you.”
“But I....”
His other hand landed on my neck. He pulled me toward him so that our lips were centimeters from touching.
“Those lips....” He moved even closer.
“Red, I’m not looking for—”
“A kiss. That’s all.”
Dance music boomed throughout the room. Good excuse for me to jerk away from him and avoid his breath on my face. The chandeliers turned off and strobe lights painted everything in the room with short bursts of color. Red’s skin turned various hues as he pulled me to the dance floor. I tried to walk away, but he didn’t let me.
Blake and Audrey stood close, way too close, by the wall. She never liked Blake. She couldn’t stand him. Thought he was boring and one dimensional and she had something against interracial relationships. Just like Father always said, “Mixing paint is never as good as a quality solid paint color.” I hated that. I hated everything about that.
Why was she in his arms?
She didn’t know him.
Maybe I didn’t either. Maybe she did now....
Red held my hand to his chest. “Let me take care of you,” he yelled over the music.
“They said we aren’t allowed to be friends.”
He smiled. “Once we are out of here we can do whatever we want.”
“But we’re here now and I’m not interested. They’re watching us.” I nodded toward the cameras in each corner of the ceiling. “It’s not you, Red. I’m just not looking to fall in love with someone until I fall in love with myself first.” My cheeks flushed as the room filled with the heat of one too many dancing bodies. “And that could be a while.”
I grabbed my head and flinched. It felt like someone took a rock to my skull a million times and ended the beating by shoving a piping hot rod into my eyes. My knees buckled, but Red caught me and carried me to the tables.
“Drink some water.” He handed me a wine glass filled with ice cold water. “They won’t let us out of here until midnight. Think you can make it?”
I sipped the water, but the cold made my head feel worse. I set my glass on the table and closed my eyes at the sound of something shattering.
“I’ll take care of it.” Red looked around as though we’d get in trouble if someone saw the broken glass. “Why don’t you go sit down over there and I’ll keep an eye on you while I do this.”
The room swirled. So did my stomach.
“You’re not going to throw up, are you?”
I hunched over and shot him a look that I hoped would convey my annoyance. My stomach danced and my heart beat in my ears. The music intensified, each drum beat bursting in my head like a bomb, every strum of the guitar screeching like nails digging into the sidewalk.
I closed my eyes and tried to muster up any level of strength possible and that’s when I found it. My mind’s library. Shelves of books. One spine stood out among the rest. New and shiny and white, it had barely been touched. I pulled it out. Vaughn Kaplan was written in red. I opened to the first page.
He lived in room 413 before Claire Connelly and he dreamed of her before she even arrived. He knew her. Somehow. He couldn’t explain it.
Snow splashed my face. I opened my eyes.
“Sorry.” Red handed me a napkin. “You looked out there. I didn’t know what else to do.”
I wiped the water from my face and neck. “Did you throw snow at me?”
“Snow?” He shook his head and smiled. “Ice water.”
I finally allowed our eyes to meet. “Is your name Vaughn Kaplan?”
His eyes narrowed and glazed over while his smile dipped into a frown. A single drop of sweat formed by his hair and fell to his cheek. Then, without warning, he screamed so loud even the music couldn’t hide his desperation. “Who am I?” his voice quieted everyone in the room. “Who am I?” he screamed again, drawing out the “I” as he yanked on his hair and scrunched his face into a painful resemblance of himself.
Two men grabbed him and forced him to stand against the wall. He didn’t scream again. Didn’t look up even. He focused on his shoes in complete silence as the man on his left whispered something in his ear. Then the man on the right snapped three times. Red whipped his head up and nodded as though nothing happened.
I backed up into the crowd and bumped into someone.
“Hey,” Brayden said. “I know you hate dancing as much as I do.”
“I thought you loved dancing?”
He laughed. “Nice one, Clay.”
My cheeks stung. “Don’t call me that.”
He touched my face with the back of his index finger. “I’m worried about you.” He dropped his hand to his side. “Worried about me too.”
It wasn’t like Brayden to talk so much. Did they put something in our drinks? I looked around at everyone else, but couldn’t focus my eyes long enough to see how other people looked. Did
they seem as overwhelmed as me? As Red?
Brayden followed me to a chair and sat down beside me.
“I miss the woods,” he said, leaning into his knees. “I miss us.”
“What are you talking about? Stop. Please just stop. I can’t….”
“Claire?”
His voice twirled in a band of green light, carrying my name higher and higher, until it reached the ceiling and everything went black.
EIGHT
Spring 2051
I don’t know how much time snuck by, but when I woke up to snow covering everything outside I felt like I had slept through autumn. Did we pass Winter’s Red Letter Day? Did we even celebrate it here?
Headaches tormented me day and night. My vision was unreliable and when I did remember anything from the day before it was in pieces that blended with my dreams so that nothing made sense. The only thing I could rely on were my memories before arriving. So I often spent time perusing the books in my mind and reading through old stories, grasping for something that resembled truth. My truth. My life.
It helped me on days like today. Days where I needed to fulfill an assignment that I hated.
Today marked our first group assignment, which made me feel a little better about it. A group of us were taken to a large room with hundreds of animals lined against the walls in crates or cages. We stood in the middle, huddled together and waiting for directions. Sir Anthony finally appeared with that annoying smile of his. He stood in front of us and explained our assignment. Each one of us needed to kill an animal with no weapons, then skin it without any knives. He told us we could pick the animal, as though it were some kind of privilege to do so.
I dreaded my turn, knowing I wouldn’t be able to do it.
“This isn’t going to be easy,” Emily said.
Brayden appeared next to me and touched my back the way Blake always did. I wanted to slap his hand a million miles away. The odd closeness he thought we had disturbed me.
I watched Blake since he came in the room. Over there with Audrey. I didn’t love him, not like that anyway, but the way they handled themselves and rejected me in the process hurt. A lot. Maybe they thought no one could see them sneaking those touches, but I could. And if I could....
“There’s something I need to tell you, Claire,” Brayden said. “I noticed something on my hand today.” He put it in front of my face as Sir Anthony called Audrey to go first. My attention was torn between the look on her face and the mark on Brayden’s hand. “Look.”
I looked. “A scar?”
“I never had this scar before.”
“It’s new?”
“No, Clay. You don’t get it. This is Brayden’s scar.”
I sighed. “Brayden, please stop. This is getting ridiculous.”
Audrey stepped up to a chicken. Maybe the easiest animal in the room to kill. If I did go through with it, that would be my choice too.
“Brayden?” he said. “Why’d you call me Brayden?”
“You have five minutes to kill the animal and completely skin it or you will go through the second door over there to be skinned yourself.” Sir Anthony grinned. Was he kidding? “If you succeed, however, you will proceed through the first door for meal time and lucky you, you’ll get to eat the animal you’ve killed.”
“Skinned?” Emily’s voice rose a few octaves.
I shrugged. “Let’s try not to find out if he’s serious or not.”
“You called me Brayden,” he said again.
“Yes, because that’s who you are. Look in the mirror sometime. Don’t you know the difference between the two of you?”
“I know the differences, yeah. Most people don’t though. What do I look like? I haven’t seen my reflection since we got here. How do you know I’m Brayden?”
I touched his hair. “This is different on Blake. His hairline comes down more here.” I touched his temple. “Your mannerisms are different. Your eyes. I can tell, Brayden. I’m not that smart, but I’m not that dumb either. I practically spent my entire life with your brother.”
Audrey had four minutes left and hadn’t moved.
“Claire, I’m Blake. I don’t know what’s going on. This is Brayden’s scar. This isn’t my body.” He coughed and choked on his words. “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know who I am. Ask me something, Claire. Ask me something only I would know.”
“Something only Blake would know?”
He nodded.
“What’s my favorite day of the year?”
“Easy. You’ve always said it was my birthday.”
I stared at him, telling myself to blink. “Maybe that was too easy.”
He rubbed his hair, then squeezed his neck.
“Three minutes,” Sir Anthony said to a frozen Audrey.
“Who am I?” Brayden—or Blake?—trembled.
“What’s my favorite color?”
“Green ... like the ocean you’ve always wanted to float in.”
“Blake....” I looked into his eyes to try to find a piece of him behind his brother’s face.
Audrey knelt down and pulled a chicken toward her so that it rested between her legs.
“Two minutes,” Sir Anthony chimed.
Audrey closed her eyes, then twisted the chicken’s neck and caused it to flail around. She held on until the feathers stopped shaking.
“Don’t do that,” Emily said. “They’ll see you as a weak one.”
I wiped my cheek dry. “Can’t help it.”
“Just do what they say,” Blake said.
I turned to him. “Blake?”
He nodded. “It’s me, Clay. I swear.”
Audrey tried to dig into the chicken’s skin with her fingernails, but Sir Anthony told her to stop before her time was up.
“This was an example,” Sir Anthony said, “of failure. Take note, okay? This is not the way to do this.” Someone escorted Audrey toward the door as he continued, “We want to see power and a will to survive. Ready?”
Some of us nodded. Some of us didn’t. You can guess what I did and you’ll be right.
“201,” he said. “You’re next.”
Blake turned to me. “Don’t think less of me.”
“Wait!” I raised my hand like we were taught in school.
“Yes, 413?”
My cheeks flushed and my palms shook as sweat formed. The accelerated thump of my heart loudened in my ears and throbbed in my neck. “Never mind. I’m sorry.”
They took Audrey into the room with a sign on the door that said, Losing Your Mind is the First Step to Finding It.
I wanted to take her place, but when he looked at me I lost the desire behind a heavy coating of fear.
“You’re a horrible sister,” Mother’s voice disturbed me. “Selfish. How could you not take her place?”
Blake also chose a chicken. I counted those of us left standing. Thirty one. And there were only three chickens left. What if I got stuck with a cow? Or worse.
Blake immediately took the chicken into his hands, looked at the ceiling, and broke the poor thing’s neck. He didn’t wait for it to stop shaking to start skinning it. He ripped the feathers with force, then peeled the skin from the chicken’s leg, held it down with his knee, and yanked the rest of the skin until he got every last bit off. I bet his Dad taught him that over the summer. He was a big hunter. Him and Brayden. Not Blake though. He didn’t even eat animals because he thought their lives were more important than his own, which I never quite agreed with, but still.
He held the skinned chicken to his chest, buried his face in it, and although no one else could tell ... I knew he was wetting the bird with his tears.
“Wonderful.” Sir Anthony tapped Blake’s back. “Everyone, this is an example of success. You may exit, 201. Thank you.”
But he didn’t move. He dropped the animal, then his knuckles turned white as he squeezed his face and howled like a wild bear. I ran and knelt beside him as he dug his nails into his cheeks.
“Bla
ke,” I said. “Stop. Look at me.” The whites of his eyes turned red. “Please, Blake.”
“Oh, isn’t that nice?” Sir Anthony said.
I grabbed Blake’s hands as he screamed out in a tone so horrific even the animals quieted. He bent over, sobbed, and when he picked his head up he belted out, “Who am I?” And again. And then again as two men escorted him out, his feet dragging along behind him. They stopped at the door for those who “succeed,” snapped three times, whispered something in his ear, and immediately his legs straightened, his demeanor calmed, and he walked out of the room without their assistance.
I watched the next person kill and skin another chicken with ease and I tried to tell myself to be numb, to turn off my emotions. I thought of Blake, then looked across the room to Brayden who looked like Blake. It didn’t make sense.
I should’ve taken Audrey’s place. I knew I’d be there myself anyway. At least only one of us would had endured more torture.
Torture.
We were being tortured.
A thousand thoughts sporadically entered my mind. Questions. Fears. Regrets.
“Stop!” I screamed. “All of this. What’s the point? Tell me the purpose. Why are we doing this? Why are we here?”
Sir Anthony congratulated the guy who skinned the chicken, then glided over to me in his usual strange way. I swear the man floated like a breeze when he swept across a room. Kinda like that Cinderella character. He stood close to me. So close I could smell his minty breath.
I focused on the crumb between his two front teeth as he opened his mouth to speak.
“The purpose is to develop fine leaders.” He looked up at everyone else, then back to me. “To equip you with the skills to change the world.”
“Change it into what?”
He squinted his eyes. “For your untimely outburst, 413, I’d like you to go next. You have two minutes to skin the cow.”
“But everyone—”
“Two minutes.” He pointed. “The cow.”
I stepped forward and tripped, falling into a pancake on the ground by Elizabeth’s foot. I peered up at her as I stood back up. Obviously Emily’s sister hated me and I had no idea why.