The Institute

by Kayla Howarth

  ***

  As I board the train to school, which I have no intention of going to today, I start over-thinking my plans. Aunt Kenna works nights, so she’ll be home, but will she tell Dad that I came? I’m still in Dad’s bad books at the moment, and I don’t want to piss him off any further, but I can’t face going to school either. If I tell him I had “lady troubles,” he might forgive me quicker than if I tell him the truth.

  I haven’t yet had the chance to talk to Aunt Kenna about everything that’s happening. She doesn’t know about the car accident, and I haven’t really spoken to her about Ebb either. She asked me over the phone how I’m doing, but I haven’t been able to give her a straight answer. Instead, I’ve deflected or changed the topic. She doesn’t know that I have a boyfriend-type person—I don’t exactly know what to call him. It’s been a while since I’ve seen her, but I doubt Dad will think that’s a good enough excuse to visit her in the middle of the school week.

  Drew comes and sits next to me on the train and breaks my concentration.

  “Hey,” he says. “Are you okay?”

  “I guess so,” I reply, but I’m not really in the mood for talking. “I’m actually thinking of going into the city today. I need to see my aunt.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “Thanks, but I kind of want alone time with her, that’s why I’m going,” I half-heartedly explain.

  The disappointment in his eyes is obvious, but it’s not like I can introduce him to my aunt. I can see her maybe omitting the fact I skipped school to Dad, but bringing my boyfriend along? I think she’d be straight on the phone. Also, I can’t talk about him if he’s there.

  “Is this about last night?” he asks quietly.

  “No, it isn’t,” I say, confused. I didn’t think there was an issue with last night. Is he angry that nothing happened between us, or does he think I’m still upset about him joking about throwing me in the lake? “I’m just feeling really down about Ebbodine. Aunt Kenna is always good at cheering me up and keeping my mind off things that are troubling me.”

  “What’s troubling you? You can always talk to me,” he says.

  He puts his arm around me, and I almost get lost in the safe feeling I get when he touches me. I don’t want to open up to him right now, though. Partially because he’s one of the things I need advice on, and partially because I don’t want to burden him with more Ebb stuff. He has to still be dealing with Jax’s death, even though he hasn’t really mentioned him.

  “I know. I just need to see my aunt. We used to live with her, and even though it’s been three years, I still miss seeing her every day,” I try to explain.

  I’m at a loss for words to convey how I’m feeling right now. I have Dad, and I have Shilah, and I even have Drew now … sort of, but I’m so alone.

  I’ve gone through these phases before, especially just after my mother died, but I haven’t had one in a long time. I’ll probably feel better later today, but I’m assuming my brain has gone back into defensive mode, and its main function is to make sure I eat, sleep, breathe, and nothing else. Staring right in front of me in a daze, I just concentrate on not crying.

  Drew doesn’t say anything else. When we get to the station near school, he doesn’t even say goodbye when he gets off the train. I stare after him, but I don’t really have the energy to be worried whether he’s upset with me or not.

  By the time I arrive in the city, I’ve started worrying what Aunt Kenna will say when I turn up at her door. Maybe I should just deal with my feelings on my own. I don’t want to make it worse by opening myself up to judgement.

  Even though I am going through a lot of crap right now, there’s always the little voice in my head telling me other people have it a lot worse than me. I envision telling people how I feel and getting responses such as “suck it up” and “we all have problems, why are yours any more important than anyone else’s?” I have to keep telling myself to be strong, be strong for Shilah, be strong for Dad, but sometimes I just want to stop being strong for five freaking minutes to catch my breath.

  Aunt Kenna lives in a small two-bedroom apartment. It was quite squishy with the four of us living there, but I loved the closeness. Aunt Kenna and I shared one room, and Dad and Shilah shared the other. I enjoyed living with her, but I’m glad Dad decided to move to the country.

  I finally arrive at Aunt Kenna’s door after a few wrong turns. This is typical of me. My sense of direction is horrible. I eventually had to turn around and go back the way I came, almost reaching the train station again before I saw something familiar. I got here in the end, and that’s all that matters.

  Taking in a deep breath, I close my eyes and pray she doesn’t tell Dad. All of my nervousness dissolves when she opens the door and takes me in her arms. I’m already crying, and I haven’t even started explaining myself yet.

  “What’s all this about?” she asks in a soothing yet concerned way a mother would if her child was upset. She gestures for me to come in, and we make our way into the small living room. It doesn’t take long for me to break down.

  “Everything is a mess. Jax is dead, Ebbodine is missing and presumed dead, Drew wants to have sex with me, and everyone stares at me when I walk down the hall at school,” I blurt out.

  “Okay.” She pauses for a moment and purses her lips in thought. I don’t even know if any of what I just said made sense or if it was even audible through all of my blubbering. “That’s a lot of information to get in twelve seconds. Are the kids staring at you at school because a boy wants to have sex with you or are they two separate issues?”

  She breaks into a smile, and I can’t help but giggle through my tears. Already she’s making me feel better, and she’s only said a few words.

  “How about we start from the beginning?”

  I let out a sigh and I think back a few weeks to when this all started.

  “I saved Drew from a car accident, and I tried to save Jax too, but I couldn’t. Dad wasn’t impressed, he was worried they would suspect me. I’m worried they do suspect me. What if I’m Defective?” I finally admit the thing that has been scaring me since that day, the thing I haven’t brought myself to question or even ponder.

  As I explain everything to Aunt Kenna, I already feel like a weight has been lifted. She, just like Drew, assures me that there was nothing more I could’ve done to save Jax, that if I were Defective the Institute would’ve already come for me, and by the sound of it, I didn’t actually do anything a normal person couldn’t do, except for maybe get Drew out of the car. Adrenaline probably played a big part in that.

  “If you think you’re Defective and were only strong enough to lift Drew out of that car because of that, here”—she gestures to the coffee table in front of us—“lift it.” Is she joking? I look at her and I know she’s serious by her expression. “Only one way to know for sure.”

  I don’t know how I managed to pull Drew out of that car, and I’ve been too scared to try and find out. What if I am Defective?

  Standing, I gather all my strength and lift the table … well, attempt to lift it. It doesn’t budge. I refocus and try again, but it still doesn’t move. I think I needed that little push to truly find out for myself, and now I can let out a huge sigh of relief.

  “There we go. Next problem? Oh, let’s talk about this boy. Do you love him?” she fires at me.

  That’s a heavy and confusing question. How am I supposed to know what love really feels like?

  “Lia, if you have to think about it, the answer is no. Even if you were to come out and immediately answer yes to that question, I’d still remind you that you’re young, your hormones aren’t exactly stable, and you really can’t trust your heart to tell you how you feel. I’m pretty sure throughout your whole teen years, your hormones push your heart all the way down to your lady parts. Trust your head, Lia. Think rationally and your mind will tell you the answer,” she says seriously.

  The fact she referred to
“lady parts” reminds me of a day not that long ago when Ebbodine said she thought mine were broken. I was over at her house, telling her about the boy who helped me up after I fell over at the train station. She knew just by looking at me that I had a crush.

  I believe her exact words were “Oh, thank God. I was beginning to think your lady parts don’t work.” It earned her a pillow to the face.

  I give a little giggle at the memory but then start bawling again. Just when I thought I was all cried out.

  Kenna puts an arm on my shoulder for comfort. “Why does that upset you, honey?”

  “It doesn’t. Not what you said about Drew, anyway. It reminded of my friend Ebbodine. I know she would’ve said something similar if she was here,” I sob.

  She leans in and embraces me again. “It’s understandable for you to be upset over your friend. It’s understandable for anyone to feel that way when they lose someone, but the fact you have been through this before … well, let’s just say I’m proud of you for still being able to function at all. I wish you had come sooner though, Lia, you know I’d help you any way I could. I miss my sister every day, and sometimes I just wish I got to spend more time with you. You’re looking more and more like her every time I see you, you know.”

  I give her a smile and know that I definitely made the right decision coming here. I feel a hundred times better already, but I don’t want to go home.

  “Aunt Kenna, do you think—”

  “You could stay here for a few days?”

  “If that’s okay with you? It’ll be good to just be away from home for a while—even if it’s just overnight.”

  “Well, it’s okay with me, but your dad might need convincing. Does he even know you’re here?”

  I hang my head and shake it ever so slightly, kind of hoping she doesn’t see.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll handle your father,” she says as she gets up and reaches for her phone that’s attached to the kitchen wall.

  I wait nervously. I can only hear her side of the conversation, but she doesn’t seem like she’s needing to do much convincing; I haven’t heard her rationalise my visit yet.

  It’d be so much easier if we had the technology of the old days. They used to have devices to send text messages, so you didn’t even have to talk to someone to tell them something.

  When the pandemic broke out, technology suffered, and the government’s priorities were set on necessities, not luxuries.

  Because the country became independent, we had to start making the devices that were normally made cheaply and shipped in from overseas. The cost was phenomenal, so we kind of went backwards in time.

  No cell phones, no Internet. Government departments still have access to these things, but it’s limited in the general population. Today’s phones are hooked up to the old landlines attached to houses. Even owning a TV these days means you’re doing pretty well for yourself. Not that there’s much to watch other than the news or TV shows and movies that are like sixty years old. They sometimes bring out new productions, but the budgets for them are so small, they can be pretty embarrassing to watch.

  I feel sorry for the older generation who were used to such things, but I don’t miss them because I never knew what it was like to have them in the first place. Sometimes I can’t even fathom what it would’ve been like to have them. I try not to think about it. It seems so impersonal, an invasion of privacy having that much access to the world.

  It doesn’t take long for Aunt Kenna to get Dad to agree to let me spend the night. It seems a little too easy, like maybe he didn’t want to have a certain conversation over the phone and I’ll cop it when I get home. But I get to stay the night, and that makes me happy. I’ll let future me deal with Dad. I’m not going to worry about that now.

  Aunt Kenna and I stay up late talking and eating “junk food.” It’s called junk food because it’s a luxury, but even laboratory chocolate and candy still have nutritional chemicals pumped into them. I often wonder just how great it is when I always feel sick after eating it. Maybe my stomach is just used to fresh food.

  It feels so good getting everything out, and for the most part, I don’t even need her to give me advice. I feel better just getting out what’s in my head. I finally feel at ease and ready for sleep when she lays her last piece of wisdom on me.

  “You have to go through the hard times now, so you know how to handle them in the future. Life isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. If it was, you would have a breakdown every time you broke a nail. You’re better than that, and I can see you’re growing into a woman that your mother would be proud of. This is how strong people are made, Allira.”