10

I lie flat on my back, staring at the ceiling, and try to remember everything I learned from the Meditation Core.

Inhale through my nose. Exhale from my mouth. Focus on a single, freeze-frame image from my future memory. Jessa’s hair falls to her shoulders, tangled and unbraided.

To her shoulders. How long does it take for hair to grow three inches?

Long enough. So no need to panic. Not yet. I can figure out my memory. I can stop it from happening.

I inhale. Exhale. Try to get in some kind of zone. I probe my brain, stretching and distorting the memory. Walking through the scene again, I focus on one specific detail: the teddy bear with the red ribbon. I zoom in until all I can see is that bear—its fluffy, white fur; the gleaming, black eyes; the tattered, red ribbon. Then, I change it. I throw all of my mental power into one image: a crisp, blue ribbon. For just a moment, the color flickers from red to blue, but I don’t have time to see which color wins out before I snap out of the vision.

Dear Fate. My limbs feel like spaghetti left too long in the Meal Assembler. I may pass out.

But the FuMA guards have other ideas. A horn blares through the cell block. I bolt upright, just in time to see my gate slide open.

Open. I move to the door and peek out. Are we free to go?

Wishful thinking. Two heavyset guards stand at the end of the corridor, metal rods clamped in their hands. The batons might look less menacing than a whip, but I’ve seen the news footage scrolling across our desk screens. Those rods contain so much energy they can send you flying five feet.

Footsteps shuffle on the concrete, and girls begin to emerge from their cells. As one of my fellow inmates lurches past, I grab her arm. She has pale eyes and translucent lashes. Not Sully. “What’s going on?”

She shrugs, and her arm slides from my grasp. “The Outdoor Core. Half of us go out today, the other half go out next time, since fifteen minutes a week is all we need to maximize our potential.”

My heart leaps. We’re going outside. The sun! I fall in line behind the others, bouncing on my toes. The girl in front of me shakes her head. I smile in return. Fifteen minutes! Fifteen entire minutes to bask in a light I never thought I’d see again.

In the glass-walled intake office, the machines flash their lights. The door to the other room is shut like last time. One of the guards goes up to the entryway. He scans his body, punches in the numeric code, and then we are out.

He leads us to a small courtyard. It is surrounded on four sides by the buildings, but there’s grass and blue sky and the slightest hint of wind. Brightly colored leaves fall from two large trees, and the sun sits high in the clouds.

It’s even better than I imagined. The rays are warm on my neck, and the air smells like honeysuckle. I tilt my face up, absorbing every ounce of sunshine.

“You act like you’ve never been outside before,” a voice says.

A girl stands before me. Friendly brown eyes. Dark fuzz on her scalp. If she had hair, it might be the same color as Marisa’s, like chocolate swirled with butter as it cooks on the stove.

“It feels like it’s been forever.” I crouch down and pick up a leaf. But my hands don’t stop after one. I pick and pick, until I have a small pile in my hands. Red, yellow, orange, brown—the colors remind me of Jessa.

A slight breeze blows through my hair and I shut my eyes. The next leaf that falls will be yellow. Opening my eyes, I zero in on the falling foliage—dark brown. I was dead wrong. I crack a small grin, feeling closer to home just for imitating Jessa’s game.

“My grandmother used to make flowers by folding leaves and wrapping them together,” the girl says. “Of course, this was when she was a little girl, and there were parks and trees on every corner. Is that what you’re doing? Making roses out of fallen leaves?”

I look at the girl, my heart pounding. This might be the thing I’m looking for. Not sure if sullen girls have any use for imitation flowers, but it’s worth a try.

“My sister does the same thing.” I move to another patch of fallen leaves. “And yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

She falls to her knees next to me and begins picking up leaves, too. A couple of girls racing up and down the courtyard vault over us. “My name’s Beks, by the way. Are you new here? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

“I’m Callie. I have the cell next to Sully’s.” No need for her to know I’m the girl with no black chip.

“Lucky you. She’s not exactly sweet, but she’s got that loose brick in her wall. Some company’s better than nothing, right?”

She gestures behind me. Most of the girls are clumped together in groups of twos and threes, trying to squeeze a week’s worth of conversations into fifteen minutes. But a lone girl slouches against the wall, not looking at anyone. Her skin is stretched taut over a frame of bones, and horizontal marks decorate her arms from wrist to elbow.

“Is that Sully?” I ask.

“That’s what she calls herself. The rest of us call her Calendar Girl.”

“Why?”

Beks puts down the leaves and holds out her forearms. “She cuts herself every time we go outside, to keep track of time. It’s pretty gruesome. Instead of doing it to ourselves, the rest of us use her as our calendar.”

Even as I watch, a couple of girls approach Sully and count the marks on her arms. They don’t speak to her, and she doesn’t acknowledge them in any way.

I think suddenly of the tree that grows in the middle of our school lobby. Students cover the bark with their initials and drawings—the only place in school where graffiti is tolerated. The only place it’s even possible. Everything else is metal and plastic.

Living things, it seems, are easier to disfigure.

“How does she do it?” I whisper. “Does she have a knife?”

Beks wiggles her fingers. “You might think someone’s smuggling in nail tints. But that’s not tint on her fingernails. It’s dried blood.”

My stomach churns like I’ve eaten too much glop.

“When I got here, she only had five marks on her arms,” Beks says. “And Gia over there arrived when she had twelve. You should go count her marks, so she can be your calendar, too.”

“Um…that’s okay.” I turn back to the leaves. My fingers chafe from handling their crumbling surface, and my mouth is dry at the thought of a girl who cuts herself to keep track of time. “Beks, have you seen anyone use any needles here?”

Maybe I won’t have to win Sully over after all. Maybe I’ll be able to keep the imitation roses for myself.

She shakes her head. “You mean, as a weapon? I’ve never seen the guards with anything that subtle. Why do you ask?”

Disappointment blooms in my chest, and I scrape up some grass along with the leaves. “No reason.”

We work in silence until the horn blares, signaling the end of the fifteen minutes. As I carefully put the leaves in my pocket, Beks holds out her pile.

“For me?” I ask, shocked.

“I don’t have any use for them.” She shrugs. “It was fun to feel close to my grandmother for a few minutes.”

I take the leaves, and we fall in line behind the other girls. Before we go inside, I turn back to Beks, plucking a red leaf from my pocket.

I hand it to her. “To remind you of the sun,” I say and hope it gives her a fraction of the comfort Logan’s leaf gave me.

I fold a leaf in half and roll it into a tight cylinder. Taking another leaf, I wrap it around the cylinder. Fold and wrap, again and again, until the creases resemble the petals of a rose. I tie off the bottom with a sturdy stem, repeating until I have enough “roses” to form a bouquet.

Biting my lip, I survey my handiwork. Fallen leaves are fragile by nature. I lift the bouquet gently, praying it holds. The action opens a floodgate and questions rush in, one on top of the other. Did they call my mother yet? Does Jessa miss me? Who does Marisa joke with in class?

I shouldn’t care. I’ll probably never see them again. This is my life now. These walls. A tray of glop. A loose brick with an eye on the other side. The sooner I get used to that, the better.

“Nooooooo!”

My fingers close over the roses, and at the last second, I stop myself from crushing them. That noise. High-pitched. Keening. The wail of a soul being separated from its body.

I hear it again, louder this time, coming from the hallway. “You can’t make me!”

I lurch to the front of my cell and press my face against the bars.

It’s Beks, being propelled down the hall by a burly guard with whiskers. Her hands are caught behind her in a pair of electro-cuffs. He pushes her with the butt of his baton. She pitches forward, and he yanks her back up. The whole process starts all over again.

“I won’t do it!” She curls into a fetal position on the ground. “I won’t!”

The guard lifts her by the arm, and her body unfurls. Up and down the hallway, I see elbows poking out of the cells. I imagine the girls from the courtyard, all with their faces straining against the bars. All with their hands pressed against their chests.

The guard prods Beks with the baton. She flies forward, landing on her stomach in front of my cell.

She looks around wildly before locking onto my face. I can’t be sure she recognizes me, but she reaches through the bars and grabs my ankles.

“You have to stop them,” she says hoarsely. “You can’t let them do this. To me. To any of us. You’ve got to stop them!”

I crouch down. I want to touch her face, but I can’t reach it.

“Please.” Beks’s eyes reach right inside me and yank. “Help me.”

Before I can respond, the guard wraps his arm around her stomach and lifts her up. He flings her over his shoulder and carries her down the rest of the hallway. He stops in front of the mysterious door at the end, the one that’s always been shut until now.

“I’m sorry,” he says gruffly. “But you have no choice.”

He tosses her inside the room beyond. The next few moments are a blur. I hear a rush of footsteps. The screech of a table as it’s being pushed to one side. A man yells, “No!”

And then, a gunshot sounds.