Breakfast was interesting. The dining hall was run less like my parents’ well-organized restaurant and more like a frenzied free-for-all. The “kitchen” was set up at the end of a blocked passageway and was surrounded by rows and rows of mismatched tables, chairs, crates, and boxes, all used as places to eat. Several people ate standing up, scooping their food from the bowls directly to their mouths, hardly bothering with things like utensils or manners. Others squatted on the ground, staying on the fringes of the crowded space, finding a spot wherever they could in corners and against walls, seeming to favor the solitude over being crushed between the bodies that packed the tables.
Eight huge vats were lined up along one entire wall, every one of them filled with steaming breakfast grains that had been cooked to a pasty mush. The men and women who worked kitchen duty were supervising the distribution of the hot cereal, and made sure that no one took more than their allotted single bowl.
Angelina, Sydney, and I waited silently in line for our turn, as Angelina stared in wide-eyed awe at all the sights and sounds and colors. The man standing behind us chatted continually with Angelina. I couldn’t see a single tooth in his mouth, and his lips curled inward, hugging his gums. He asked Angelina how old she was, where she was staying, and what her doll’s name was, although he scarcely took a breath between words and didn’t seem to notice that she never answered any of his questions in return.
When it was our turn, we politely took our bowls, allowing a large woman in a checkered apron to slop her overfilled serving ladle into each of them, and then we wove our way in and around the tables until we found three seats together.
What the soggy bowl of grains lacked in odor, and even color, it made up for in substance. It was thick and hearty, and I encouraged Angelina to eat even though she didn’t want to. I wasn’t sure how long we’d be down here, or when we might have our next meal.
Everything felt uncertain at this point.
I stared at Sydney, sitting across from Angelina and me, and I wondered at her overnight transformation. Last night her skin had been sickly and gray, a pallor closer to death than to life. I knew because I’d lain awake listening to her sleep, worrying over her every breath. This morning, however, after an unsettled night’s sleep, her cheeks were pink again, and her eyes clear, despite the blood that was still caked in her hair and alongside her face.
“Tell me a doctor visited you and Sydney while I was out last night,” I begged Angelina in a whisper that only she could hear.
But Angelina just shook her head and gazed guiltily at her bowl.
I tugged her hand beneath the table, forcing her to look at me instead. “I told you not to help her,” I warned, moving as close as I could so Sydney couldn’t listen. “You can’t go around healing people. What if someone had seen you? What if Sydney realized what you’d done?” I sighed, resting my forehead against hers, suddenly weary. “You have to be careful.” I recited the words my father had repeated time and time again. “Always careful.”
Sydney didn’t know that Angelina was the reason she was feeling better this morning. I could tell by the way she ignored the two of us as she took a hesitant bite of her breakfast. She didn’t bother to hide her distaste for the meal before her.
“It’s not that bad,” I assured Angelina, who was watching Sydney, horror-struck. “You just have to get used to the texture. Come on, try it.”
Sydney closed her lips around the flat utensil—a makeshift spoon—and scraped another bite into her mouth. She tried to smile for Angelina’s benefit, letting her know that it really wasn’t half-bad, although she wasn’t all that convincing, even to a four-year-old.
Angelina’s lips tightened even more.
Brooklynn surprised us all when she sat down on the other side of Angelina, setting her own bowl on the table. “Here,” she offered, pulling out a small container of syrup from her pocket and pouring it generously over Angelina’s bowl. “It makes it better. Not good, just better.”
My sister grinned up at Brook, our old friend, someone she’d seen nearly every day since she was a baby. Brooklynn grinned back at her. The old Brooklynn. The real Brooklynn.
“So, what is this place exactly?” I asked Brook.
Angelina was in better spirits after she’d actually eaten, swinging my arm as we walked. Not that I was surprised; sleep and a meal were general cure-alls for the under-ten crowd.
Unfortunately, I fell into a different category altogether.
“For me, it’s sort of a home away from home, but for many of these people, it is home,” Brooklynn explained as she led us through the tunnels, showing us around.
Sydney had opted to go back to our chamber to lie down after offering up a poorly executed fake yawn, attempting to convince us she was exhausted. But I guessed it had more to do with getting away from Brooklynn, who glared at the Counsel girl every chance she got.
“Most of these passageways haven’t been used in years; some didn’t even exist before the Outcasts began to move down here. We’ve even created new channels that connect the old subway lines to the mines outside the Capitol. It’s like our own city down here.”
“Don’t you worry about getting caught? About the queen’s men finding you?”
Brook made a face as if I was speaking nonsense. “She’d have to know where to look to find us. Even if they could find an entrance, the tunnels are long and winding. They’d get lost before they ever reached us.” Her teeth flashed, dazzling and white. “We’ve been down here for over a decade; no one’s found us yet.”
Angelina let go of my hand when we came to a group of children playing. She stood silently, watching them.
The same checkerboard pattern we’d watched the girl drawing in the dirt when we’d first arrived was also outlined in the dirt before us. Their game was already underway, and they took turns as they tossed pebbles into the squares. Then the players took their places in the square in which their stone had landed. When the last pebble was tossed, they would use their bodies as game pieces, trying to eliminate the other players.
I recognized the game immediately as princes and pawns, a game of strategy that every child in the realm knew.
The children were giggling, something Angelina rarely did.
But she reached again for my hand, jerking it, asking me without words if we could get closer, asking me to help her get closer.
“Go ahead,” I whispered, squatting in front of her so that we were eye to eye. “See if they’ll let you play.”
I grinned at Brooklynn as Angelina left me, easing her way toward the energetic group at play.
“So, what about you, Brook?” I finally broached the subject, once I was certain Angelina could no longer hear. “How did you end up here?”
She didn’t hesitate. “I’ve always been here, Charlie, you just didn’t know it. I was practically born here. My mother was part of the resistance long before Xander was around to lead us. She believed that things would be better if there was no class system at all.” Brook’s brown eyes warmed as she spoke of her mother. “It wasn’t until I was older—just before she died—that she confided her true beliefs, and her passion for the cause. By then, I knew these people; I’d spent so much time down here that I felt like I belonged with them. No one has to pretend down here. There is only one language, one class.” Her voice drifted off. “Sometimes, when I’m supposed to be at home, I come here to sleep. My father never even notices I’m gone.”
I felt ashamed that I hadn’t realized how lonely she’d been. “So your dad, he’s not part of the cause?”
She made a face. “He doesn’t have a clue. He was always happy with his lot in life; he would never want to cause trouble. Besides, he would never cross the queen.”
“And you would?”
She shrugged as if her answer was inconsequential. “I think if my dad had ever known about my mother, he probably would have turned her in himself.”
“Really?” I was shocked by her statement. “But he was devastated when she died. He doesn’t even seem like the same person anymore.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t say he didn’t love her.”
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
“No,” she stated, and even though her denial was absolute—final—I couldn’t help thinking I’d heard just a trace of regret in her voice.
Then she turned her back on me and walked away, leaving me feeling deceived and abandoned. And in need of some answers.