Then
The children bolted down the long hallway toward the exit. They didn’t know what they’d find at the end of it, but it had to be better than what they were leaving behind.
Jack was at the front of the group, leading the way. He looked back over his shoulder as the others followed him, stumbling along. Brat and Gumball held on to each other while they ran. Perry was a few steps behind them. Lill was in the back, and she was moving more slowly than the rest, still seemingly in a daze.
When he reached the end of the hall and stood in front of the door, Jack turned back. He waited as the twins caught up to him. He frowned as he realized that Lill was slowing down.
“Lill, come on,” Jack said as Perry reached his side, breathing heavily. “Come on, we have to go.”
But Jack could see that something wasn’t quite right.
Lill looked…different. Whereas the others looked scared and almost in a panic to get away, the expression on Lill’s face was hard to define. She seemed to be moving in slow motion, jogging toward them. As they all stopped and watched her, Lill slowed down even more, and then she was walking toward them, not making eye contact.
“Lill,” Jack said, taking a step away from the group and toward her. “Come on,” he said, reaching out a hand to her. She’d always acted like a big sister to everyone, so to see her like this was disconcerting for Jack. She seemed to float slowly toward them, her gaze not focused on anything in particular.
“Come on!” Brat said. “They’re heading downstairs. They’re going to notice that we’re missing any moment now, if they haven’t already. We have to get out of here.”
Suddenly, Lill stopped, and she stared straight ahead, her chest moving up and down.
Jack knew that he was going to have to help her the rest of the way. “Hey,” he said softly as he walked up to her. “Are you ready to go? I know you’re scared, but we have to get out of here. This is our only chance.”
Lill’s eyes had filled with tears, and she finally looked down at the younger boy. “Mother Deena,” she said.
Jack swallowed. “Yeah, I know you’ll miss her—”
“I have to say goodbye to her.”
Jack didn’t know what to say. He wanted to remind Lill that Deena had been in the auditorium, too. She’d seen what was happening, and she hadn’t tried to stop it. But he didn’t know if that was a good idea.
“You don’t have time to say goodbye to her,” Jack said, putting his hand on Lill’s arm. “I’m sorry, but we can’t go back down there. We have to go out that way.”
“No,” she said. “I’m sorry about Mother Breanna. I know how you feel. I get it. I just…I need to say goodbye to her. It will only take a second. She won’t know I’m saying goodbye, but maybe I can meet her in the nursery.”
“We don’t have time!” Brat said as she gripped her sister’s hand. Gumball didn’t say anything, and Shy Perry looked down at his feet. “Come on, Lill. We have to go now.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll be right back. Please. It will only take a couple of minutes.”
With that, she stepped away from Jack and walked quickly toward the stairwell.
“Lill,” Jack called out, but she opened the door and stepped inside.
“I can’t believe she left!” Brat said. “What are we supposed to do? Go after her?”
“The more of us that go down, the more of us that might get caught,” Gumball said.
“We have to wait for her,” Shy Perry said, and everyone looked at him. “Right?”
“Right,” Jack said. “We wait.”
• • •
Lill ran down the stairs, skipping steps as she raced past the eighth floor.
She couldn’t believe what they’d just seen.
Frank had placed both hands over the sleeping infant’s nose, and the entire room had watched as he held it there. The baby woke and fidgeted for a few minutes, and then stopped.
When they lifted him away and wrapped him in a sheet, it was clear that he was dead.
She felt sick, and she leaned forward and threw up in a corner of the stairwell. She took a few deep breaths and then straightened up and kept going.
She couldn’t actually talk to Mother Deena; she knew that. But she had to say goodbye somehow. She stepped onto the third floor and headed back toward the nursery. She walked into the small room where she sometimes slept and grabbed her notebook off the night table. She picked up a pen and started to write.
Dear Mother Deena…
She told her what she’d seen and how she had to leave. She told her that she loved her and that she needed to get away. She told her that she was sorry and that this was the right thing for her to do. She didn’t know what she would find outside, but she couldn’t stay here any longer. And she needed Mother Deena to go, too.
First chance you get, leave this place.
She was folding the note when she heard a noise.
She looked up, and there was a figure standing there in the doorway.
Ellis.
“Hey,” he whispered, looking around.
“What are you doing up here?” Lill asked, using one hand to wipe at the tears on her face.
“I just came to say hi,” he said.
“You’re not supposed to be up here.”
“Kinda funny you saying that,” he said. He pointed at the note in her hand. “What’s that?”
Lill struggled with what to say. How to convince him that she had to go, and he had to, too. Ellis always followed the rules; how could she get him to believe her?
She stepped forward.
“It’s for Mother Deena,” she said. “I… We have to leave this place.”
“What?” he asked harshly. “What are you talking about?”
“A few of us are upstairs. We found a way out,” she said. “Come with us. You don’t know what they’re doing here. We saw Frank…”
Ellis reached forward and grabbed the letter from her hands. Opening it, he scanned it quickly before folding it back. He shook his head. “Lill,” he said. “What are you doing? What are you thinking?”
“I—”
“Do you know how much trouble you’re in? All of you. How many are up there?”
“Four,” she said.
“Who?”
He seemed angry, and Lill couldn’t tell if it was at her or about what he’d just learned. Did he believe her?
“Jack, Perry, and the twins.”
He seemed to mull it over for a moment, and then his expression changed. And the soft-spoken boy, the one who’d followed her in adoration, disappeared.
“You can’t go, Lill.”
“What?”
“You can’t go. I need you. I…I love you.”
“Ellis,” she said, stepping forward and grabbing his arms. “Come with me. You’ll never understand what I saw—”
“I was there,” he said.
“What?”
“I was there. Frank asked me to come. He wanted me to see the ceremony. He explained to me why they have to do it. You don’t understand, Lill. He’s doing it to protect this place.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“You don’t understand how we are,” he said. “Boys. Men. We’re responsible for so much of the pain and misery that takes place in our world. It’s our nature. Women—you all are not like that. Don’t you understand? He has to keep the balance. He has to limit the number of men in our community. It’s the only way it works. Women are the key, and there can only be a few special men here to guide them. And I’m one of them.”
He said this proudly, and Lill shivered where she stood, the look on his face haunting and sickening. For the first time in her life, Lill saw her home for what it really was, and she wanted to leave. Now.
“I’m going,” she said. “If you don’t want to come with me, you don’t have to. But this is not okay.”
She moved to step past him, and he grabbed her arm roughly.
“If you leave, I will wake every adult, and we will come after you. All five of you. There’s no way you’ll get out of here. They’ll catch you. They always do. And you’ll all be punished.”
Lill could barely breathe, and she cried out as the grip on her arm tightened.
“Or you can stay with me, like you’re supposed to. We are supposed to be together, Lill. You know it just as much as I do. If you stay, I won’t say anything. The others will get away. Frank never liked Jack anyway, he told me. He just wanted his mom. So let them go, and stay with me. Please.”
It wasn’t an offer, but he made it sound like one, and Lill felt as if she were suffocating. The sobs escaped her lips, and she stared at him, unable to process what he was saying. But then he made it crystal clear.
“Either you stay and they go, or all of you stay,” he said. “It’s up to you, Lill.”
Her shoulders slumped. She stepped near the door and looked across the hall at the dark nursery where the infants and toddlers were sleeping. She thought about one boy in particular—a one-year-old with dark eyes and a sweet giggle that sounded like a hiccup.
“If I say okay,” she said, “you have to let me send up Steve. Please. Let him go.”
Ellis didn’t say anything for a moment. “Fine,” he said, shrugging. “Anything else?”
“What if they send someone back for me? Jack isn’t just going to leave me here. They’ll go out, and they’ll find someone to come back for me.”
“You’re right,” Ellis said, nodding. “That’s the other thing. You’re going to tell them not to do that.”
“What?”
He lifted the note that she’d written for Mother Deena and ripped it in half. “You’re going to tell them not to,” he repeated. “Time for you to write another note.”