~ Recruit ~
I let out a groan. My head pounded as I tried to remember. There was something...something I knew I needed to remember. I reached up to touch my forehead and felt needles stab every part of my hand. I gasped and opened my eyes.
The pain in my heavily bandaged hand was quickly wiped from my mind as I realized five teenagers about my age were standing at the edge of my bed watching me. I’d never seen any of them before. And they were all wearing full white suits so that only their heads and hands were exposed.
“Good morning,” the boy nearest me said with a smile. “How are you feeling?”
“Terrible.” I looked around the room and realized I was in a small hospital room. “The fire!” I sat up straight. “Did everyone make it out alive?”
“Mm-hm. The firefighters got everyone out safely.”
“Thank goodness.” I sat back in my bed and smiled. That little girl was okay.
But I had to wonder who the people surrounding me were. “Do you mind if I ask who you guys are?” I said.
“We’re here because we want to take you somewhere with us,” the shortest girl said, the only one who had her black hair in a bun instead of a ponytail.
“Where?”
“Up north, farther than most people have ever traveled, to a school for exceptional kids, the kind who would risk their lives without thinking twice to save someone else’s.”
The girl beside her spoke next. “Our headmaster heard about what you did, so he sent us down here to find out about you. We talked to a lot of the girls from the home and your school, your caretakers and teachers. You’re not someone who easily takes charge or does things for glory. You move quietly among others, almost unnoticed. But when it comes down to it, you will always do what’s right. Fear and outside influence won’t affect your decision. You proved that in the fire.”
I raised a skeptical eyebrow. What they were saying didn’t make any sense. “So you came all the way down here from the North Pole to take me to a school for quiet heroes?”
“Not exactly,” the boy who’d spoken before said. “It’s kind of like a boarding school for high school students who possess an unusual amount of good, enough that there’s no room for bad inside them, kids who can do a lot of good in the world in time. I’m Roman, by the way.”
“I’m Hunter,” said the boy with glasses who was standing beside him.
“Nadine,” the smallest girl said.
“Sassy.”
“And I’m Harmony.”
“I guess it would be pointless to introduce myself,” I said.
“Yeah,” Harmony said. “We already know you’re Kristine Ariel Fayre, born April twenty-fourth at six am. Your favorite food is pizza, favorite color gold, favorite animal kittens...I could go on and on.”
I couldn’t decide if I was creeped out or impressed. “Right. If you really want me to transfer schools and go live somewhere else, shouldn’t you be talking to the people who run the orphanage?”
“That’ll be taken care of.”
“No offense, but...”
“We sound crazy?” Harmony asked. She definitely had the prettiest and most genuine smile of the three girls.
“Yeah. I mean, do you have any identification or anything?”
“We’ve got a book in the jet that’ll explain everything. But we really need to get going. We need to get you out of here unnoticed and there’s not a lot of time.”
Jet? Seriously?
“How did you know when I would wake up?”
“We stopped the drip giving you sleeping medication and gave you something to help you wake up. The doctor wanted you to get twenty-four hours of good sleep. No one’ll be checking on you for awhile.”
This still sounded crazy. “So there’s nothing you can offer me to show me you’re for real?”
Harmony and Roman looked at each other for a second. Then she pulled something out of the only front pocket I could see. It was a small silver box, a little bigger than a cell phone. She touched the top and it slid back. Paper-thin blades popped out of the open space inside and began spinning like a helicopter, pulling the box up with it by a thin wire. What was left of the box began unfolding and snapping together until it formed a silver rectangle.
“Hello, Harmony,” a voice said. “What can I do for you today?” I was surprised by how natural it sounded, not robotic at all.
“Would you please show recruit Kristine Fayre a picture of North Haven High?”
“Absolutely.” The flying thing turned around so that I saw a woman with golden blonde hair like mine on a screen. “Hello, Kristine,” she said to me before it began moving in my direction.
I sat up nervously, wondering if the blades came too close if they would slice right through me. “Um, hello.”
The woman smiled and waved before she disappeared and was replaced by a picture of a glistening castle made completely of ice. Snowy mountains surrounded the magical world of white.
For a second I decided it couldn’t be real. A place that beautiful and amazing couldn’t exist. But what about the flying thing the picture was on? I’d never seen or heard of anything like it. I began to let hope and excitement creep in. Maybe I was actually going to get out of the Hell I was living in, the cruelty of the orphanage I’d been forced to endure since I was eight years old, and be able to go live in an ice castle somewhere.
“Sooo—that’s a real high school and they actually go there?” I asked, feeling like a complete idiot talking to the picture on the screen. But I had to be sure before I let my guard down.
“Yes. Roman Armstrong, Hunter Bradshaw, Harmony Foxen, Nadine Rodriguez, and Sassy Johnson are currently attending North Haven High School,” the voice said. Clips of each one moving through school hallways, sitting in classrooms, and walking around all bundled up out in front of the school played across the screen. The fact that they were always under surveillance came across as odd, but the place was obviously real, and everyone looked really happy there. Finally, I decided I could trust them and let myself look forward to going to their unbelievable school. I climbed out of bed and smiled at what I hoped were my new friends and castle-mates. “I’m in.”
“Yay!” Harmony ran to me and gave me a hug.
“Good.” Roman picked up the folded white suit at the foot of my bed that I hadn’t noticed until then. “Put this on and meet us in the hallway.”
Four of them started moving toward the door, but Harmony stayed where she was. “Harmony Con, return.” The screen still hanging over my bed moved toward her as it began folding up. “Don’t worry, you’ll get one too,” she said to me. Then she held out her hand and let the little box fall into it. “So, do you want some help getting dressed since you’ve got a busted hand?”
“I might. Maybe you could stay, just in case.” I wasn’t shy. I’d been changing in front of other girls for years. Of course, I doubted I would look as good as they did in my own bodysuit. I wouldn’t call myself overweight. Body-wise, I’m pretty average. But the girls all had perfect bodies under their suits and the guys were just as outrageously fit. I wondered if they took some futuristic pills that gave them perfect bodies and if I could get some too.
Roman handed me my suit when he walked past me. As soon as the door shut behind him, I pulled off my hospital gown and tossed it on the bed.
“What about a bra?” I asked.
“It’s built in,” Harmony said. “And the suit was made specifically to fit you. It should be in exactly the right place.”
She took the suit and held it out so I could step in. After sliding my arms through the sleeves, she zipped it up in the back, and, just like she’d said, it was a perfect fit. It even came with built-in slipper type shoes.
“I wonder what they did with what I was wearing,” I said.
“I’m sure they cut it off of you to check for more burns. They’re probably in the trash somewhere.”
“The trash? But...they were all I had left. Everything else went up with the fire.”
“It doesn’t really matter. You’ll find everything you need in your room at North Haven High.”
As excited as I was, I got even more excited when she told me this. I was about to ask her what my room would be like, if by some miracle I would get my own, but she put her hand on my shoulder before I could and said, “Let’s go.”
I followed her to the door and into the hallway. The others were standing against the wall.
“Ready?” Roman asked.
Harmony looked at me. “I’m ready,” I said. I was born ready. The whole thing sounded like a fantastic adventure, better than I could have ever imagined.
“All right, keep quiet until I say otherwise.”
The others kept in a single file line as they followed Roman down the hall. Harmony held a hand out, inviting me to go in front of her, so I fell in step behind Nadine.
It felt kind of like I was being guarded by these mysterious kids walking in front of and behind me, like if I made a move to run they’d all tackle and handcuff me or something.
But I also felt a certain familiarity and safety with them. If this school was for real, then these were kids like me. Kids who truly cared for every other human being, who didn’t let fear get in the way of doing what was right. The kind I could lean on whenever things were rough. We turned left and found ourselves facing three elevators. Remaining at the head of our perfect line of six, Roman got out his con. Surveillance footage of a woman sitting behind a desk next to a revolving door appeared on the screen. We watched her for a couple of minutes before she got up and walked away. Roman immediately hit the down button and the elevator door in the middle opened. We all climbed in.
When we stepped out on the first floor, I stared at the empty front desk as we passed it. Then we were moving through the rotating glass door and into the dark night.
We walked silently through the deserted parking lot.
And just as I was thinking how it might have been smarter to wear black, I noticed Nadine’s suit darkening in front of me. It took all my willpower not to say anything as I watched it slowly fade to black. Holding my arms up, I saw that mine was doing the same. Only the bandages wrapped around my hand remained white. I smiled like a goof as I tilted my head enough to see the clothes on the three kids in front of Nadine do the same thing.
They’ve got to be for real. Clothes don’t go from sheet white to oily black in seconds. It’s impossible.
As we crossed the street and began walking under side awnings in downtown, Roman held up his arm and froze. I bumped gently into Nadine as everyone else copied him. “Sor,” I began to whisper, but stopped and bit my tongue. She stood there like a statue.
“Cinders,” Roman turned his head to say.