“Good. Our friend is awake at last.”
“Where am I?” My voice is hoarse, my throat scratchy and dry.
“Someplace safe,” she says.
Am I in the Underground? I sniff, but detect no sharp, cool camphor smell.
“The forest,” I begin, but she shushes me.
“There’s time enough for that later, during your session.” Session? “You should eat something first.” She opens a slit at the base of the door and slides a tray inside.
“Where am I?” I ask again. When she doesn’t answer, I pull myself awkwardly to my feet, only now noticing that my ankles are chained together. My wrists, too.
“You’re in the Center prison, Rowan. But only for a little while.” Her voice is soft and hypnotically soothing. “We have a place for you. A safe place where you can be made whole again. We know you’ve had a great many troubles in your life. You’ve been kept from your proper place as a first child. But now—after a little treatment—you can rejoin society and take your proper place in Eden.”
She tilts her head to the side, the bars slashing her face with diagonal shadows. “We’re so happy to have you back, Rowan. Don’t worry. We’ll make you well in no time. Before you know it, your delusions will be gone.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. How long have I been unconscious? My brain feels fuzzy, my eyes blurry with their new lenses.
“We know that you are the firstborn, that your brother took your rightful place. You were lied to all your life. We know you were tortured by members of a dangerous rebel movement, brainwashed into helping them, drugged, convinced of impossible things. You’ve been raving for days. Things about underground trees, and worse.”
“Worse?” I ask.
She laughs softly. “Don’t be embarrassed. It’s not your fault. They gave you some strange psychotropic drug. You must have inhaled it. We could smell it on your skin for days, no matter how much we scrubbed you. You kept talking about a forest out past the desert. Bees and birds and animals. You described it so clearly. The hallucination was totally real to you. Do you remember? But you’re much better now. A few more sessions and the horrible memory of your ill treatment will fade away.”
No. It isn’t true. The people of the Underground didn’t torture me. Well, they did, but it wasn’t like that. Was it? My memory feels shaky. Brainwashed? No, Lachlan just talked to me, explained things to me. Drugged? I remember the sharp, sweet smell of the camphor tree. Lachlan said the camphor essence could be turned into poison. Was I drugged?
No! I know what’s real, and what isn’t. This woman, with her soft, persuasive voice and calming demeanor, is lying.
“The Earth isn’t dead,” I say firmly, approaching the barred door.
“Now, Rowan, listen to reason . . .”
“The Earth isn’t dead!” I shout as loudly as I can. “I’ve seen it—the forest, the animals! It’s just beyond the desert!” I lunge for the bars, grabbing them, rattling them with all my strength. “The desert is fake. It’s all lies—lies!” My voice has risen to a shrill pitch I don’t even recognize. The words seem to be ripped from my raw throat. “We have to get out of here!” I rave. “We have to go to the forest! It’s alive! The world is alive! It’s Eden that’s dead!”
The woman shakes her head sadly. “I thought you were closer to being healed.” She shrugs. “That’s okay. We have all the time in the world.”
She turns and walks away. Through the bars I can see the prison we rescued Ash from . . . how long ago? Long walls of barred cells.
I put my mouth to the bars. “Do you hear me?” I kick the polished silver food tray aside and pound on the walls until my skin tears and bleeds. “They’re lying to you! They’re lying to us all!”
But no one answers me. No one at all.
Later—a minute, an hour, I don’t know—I fall to my knees, my voice gone. The silver tray is at my side, the food spilled over the bare floor. I bow my head in despair . . . and catch a glimpse of my reflection in the shiny tray. As I bend, the pink quartz necklace slips out of my shirt and dances from its cord.
I pick up the tray and look at my face. At my unfamiliar eyes.
I stare at myself. The eyes are gray and flat, almost the same steely silver of the tray. They’re not my eyes. I’m not myself.
But I fight the despondency that washes over me. I won’t let them win. I’ll escape, I’ll tell all of Eden about the forest. Whatever they do to me, whatever these “sessions” entail, I won’t let them force me to forget. I’ll hold on to the truth, and somehow, someday, share it.
Hold on to yourself, I tell my reflection as I grasp my precious crystal from the Underground. Even if your eyes aren’t your own, you’re still Rowan inside, no matter what they do to you. Hold on to the truth—to Lachlan, and Lark, to the Underground and the camphor tree and the forest.
I make a pact with myself. Every day, I will look at my reflection. I will memorize myself, remember myself, and everything I’ve learned. The Center can’t take that away from me.
I stare at myself now. Aloud, in the barest whisper that’s left of my voice, I declare to my reflection, “I see you, Rowan.”
And from somewhere else, not quite inside of me, I hear another voice, cold and tinny and mechanical, say, “And I see you, too, Rowan.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THANK YOU TO my readers for always being the best friends I could ever ask for. Thank you, Laura Sullivan, for helping me uncover the world of Eden and making my vision come to life. Thank you, Rakesh Satyal, for challenging me and correcting all of my mistakes. Thank you to everyone at UTA and Addition for always supporting me and helping me achieve my dreams. Thank you, Whitney, for always sparking my imagination. And thank you to my boyfriend, Daniel—I’d be forever lost without your constant love and support. I love you always.
Want more from YouTube star Joey Graceffa?
Get to know Joey in this confessional, uplifting memoir about family, love, and fame.
In Real Life
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JOEY GRACEFFA is one of the most popular and fastest-growing personalities on YouTube. His memoir, In Real Life, published by Keywords Press in 2015, was an instant New York Times bestseller. In 2013, between his daily vlogs and gameplay videos, Joey produced and starred in his own Kickstarter-funded supernatural series, Storytellers, for which he won a Streamy Award. Also in 2013, he starred in The Amazing Race on CBS and returned in 2014 for the all-star edition. In June 2016, he debuted a thrilling surreality series on YouTube Red called Escape the Night. He grew up in Boston before moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in entertainment.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Joey Graceffa
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN 978-1-5011-4655-8
ISBN 978-1-5011-4657-2 (ebook)
Children of Eden Page 26
