I shake my head. “I was careful. And no one wanted to take that on, anyway. People kept their distance.”
“Not even your parents? Your sister?”
I shove the heel of my palm into my eye to rub away a tear. My face is probably all red and blotchy now, on top of everything else. “It’s better this way, okay?”
He steps closer, and takes my hands in his. “We’re all afraid of things. But you can’t let that stop you from living.”
I stare down at the zipper on his hoodie. “Yeah, right. No one here seems afraid of anything.”
“Sure we are. You think I don’t get scared of stuff? I get scared.”
I peek up at him. “Yeah? Of what?”
He shifts uncomfortably and looks down to our entwined hands. “Well… okay. I’m pretty scared to leave here and go out into the real world.”
“But you’re dying to go see the world! It’s basically all you talk about.”
He sighs. “Yeah… But it’s also pretty scary. I told you I have to wait until I’m eighteen. But, the truth is, if I asked, I think Raina would let me go any time I wanted. I tell myself I’m not ready yet, but, well… I don’t know if that’s something you can be ready for. Maybe you just have to do it. I think maybe I’ve been hiding here.”
His face is turning red and splotchy, and he still won’t look at me.
“Well,” I say, pulling him closer. “It’s nice to know you’re as human as the rest of us.”
At that, he grins. Then, finally, he meets my eyes. They are dark and deep and solemn. “Listen, the point is this. I like you. A lot. You really think you can convince me that never being with you at all is better than being with you for a little while?” Connor steps forward and his chest presses right up against me. When he speaks again, it’s a soft whisper. “Just shut up and stop ruining everything,”
When I look up, a goofy grin is lighting his entire face. He wraps his arms around me tight and kisses me again. Tingly threads of warmth like sunshine spread from my core out into my fingertips and out of the top of my head.
Maybe he’s right, I can’t keep everyone out anymore. Not out here. I relax and let it happen.
It’s perfect.
Or, it should be perfect, except that I know he was right. And Kinlee was right. And I know what I have to do. Now, more than ever, I have to find a way to face my departure.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Gracelyn
Hanna and I have only been at the office minutes when Quinn stops by my desk.
I didn’t come in early today – I have not done that in over a week, ever since Quinn caught me.
“Good morning.” She nods to Hanna before turning to me. “I’m afraid we need to go over yesterday’s efforts in some detail. Let’s grab a room.”
As I get up, Quinn looks to Hanna. “Hanna, this would be tedious for you. No need to be in this one.”
Hanna nods, her ponytail swinging, and turns back to her syncscreen with a smirk at the edge of her mouth, too caught up in her satisfaction at besting me to be suspicious.
“Coming,” I say.
I follow Quinn back to a conference room, a giant ball of nerves. It’s the first we’ll be alone since she caught me. Since she kissed me. Suddenly I feel like my arms are too long, my legs are swinging funny.
But all that changes as soon as Quinn closes the meeting room door. She presses me against the wall by my waist and kisses me deeply. Everything stills.
“Good morning,” she says into my ear.
“Good morning.” My head is woozy with her scent.
“Sorry about that. It was the only thing I could think of to get us alone.”
“What about the watchlizards?” I whisper, breathless.
The edge of her mouth twitches upward. “Don’t worry about it. I did a security sweep.” Then she kisses me again. Her hand brushes up my throat, and my skin tingles under her touch.
“Hanna is going to get jealous if I am always getting all your attention. Even if she thinks it is because she is doing better.”
“Then let her be jealous.” Quinn pulls away, her mouth twisting into a crooked smile. I am inclined to agree. “But I didn’t only bring you here for this.” She presses her lips into mine one more time, then sits at the table. “Let’s talk about that memo.”
I am reluctant to leave her arms, but I hunger for answers at least as much. “Right.”
I sit across from her and stretch out my legs until they are entangled with Quinn’s. I want to be touching her all the time.
She leans over the table. “Tell me everything.”
I do.
I tell her about Evie, and the strange sound I heard that morning. I tell her about how I tried to let it go, how I almost did let it go, until I heard Gunders and Johnston talking. And how after that, the not-knowing ate away at me, until the grief overcame my better sense.
“That is when you caught me. And I am so glad it was you who did.”
She cocks an eyebrow. “Someone was going to. You were being sloppy.”
“I know. And it probably would have gotten worse.” I look down to my hands, fidgeting on the table.
Quinn nods. “We’re going to find your sister. But you need to stop doing that and keep a low profile. The less attention we draw, the easier this will be.”
“You really think she is out there somewhere?”
She looks at me, her mouth set with solemn determination. “I do. Don’t you?”
“Yes,” I breathe. My heart lights up like a switch has been turned on. I’ve hardly dared think it until now, but deep down I know Evie is out there somewhere. She has to be. “But how will we find her if we aren’t looking?”
She leans in and kisses me. “Trust me. We are looking, but we’re doing it the smart way. And that starts with deflecting attention.”
My skin tingles from her touch.
“How did you get involved in all this?” I ask her.
“It’s hard to explain. I got fed up with all the ways the Directorate keeps us in line. Then I found some friends who felt the same way.”
“In line?”
“The controls. All those little ways everything about this place is designed to keep us compliant.”
Something inside me simmers, to hear it out loud. This is exactly what has been agitating within me since Evie’s Departure Day.
“Over time, you start to see it in others, when they can see what you see about the world. That’s how my friends found me – the ones who are going to help find your sister.” She strokes my knee under the table. “And something changed in you.”
“It’s that obvious?” Panic pinches in my chest.
“You’d have to be looking for it,” she says.
“So… you were looking?” I embarrass myself with the question and turn my eyes down to the table.
She leans forward to meet my gaze and pulls my hands into hers. “How could I not look at you?”
It’s nice – more than nice, a relief – to have someone else who sees everything for what it is. Someone who believes me about Evie. Someone who feels the same wild, broken thing driving me to make these terrible choices.
“You said your friends are looking for the same things as I am. Who are they?”
Quinn raises an eyebrow. “You could meet them. If you want.”
“Yes.”
If Quinn and her friends are doing work that could help me find Evie, I need to be there, too. I need to help.
Quinn smiles. “Then I’ll let you know when I can make it happen.” Then she pulls me to her over the table and kisses me so hard that the sparks in my head cloud out everything else. When she pulls away, a small gasp escapes me.
I head back to my desk on wobbly legs, woozy on passion and anticipation. With Quinn by my side and taking control, I feel renewed conviction.
Evie is out there.
I am going to find her.
And I don’t have to do it alone.
***
&nb
sp; The controls.
With this little phrase Quinn blew a door open, one I am not sure I will ever be able to close again.
Now that this idea has a name in my mind, it’s not just something that annoys me when it gets in my way. Now, I see the controls everywhere. Practically everything in the Quads is a construct to keep us in our place, so we fit neatly into the Directorate’s big picture. The tight schedules, the carefully-monitored food, the little ways we watch and compete against one another – we’re doing the Directorate’s work for them.
I already know the lines I will be fed if I bring any of this up. How little the Directorate monitors us compared to what technology could allow. How these constructs are not there for control but to optimize our lives. How there is nothing stopping me from breaking these constructs – not really.
They wouldn’t get it. It is all part of the illusion, like dogs kept in with an electric fence. What is it to the Directorate to leave us in an open field if there are reinforcements to shock us any time we stray too far?
So sure, the Directorate can point to things like low video surveillance and say we are free. But I know the truth – they don’t need it. We are all surveilling one another.
Even now, Hanna is eying me warily from her desk space next to me.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m great. Why?”
“You look…” She frowns, but she doesn’t finish her sentence.
We go to lunch. More controls – logging out of our Directorate-provided, Directorate-monitored desk screens. Tapping out with our digipads at the office entrance. Tapping in at the cafeteria food printer to receive our Directorate-assigned meals. Tapping into the lecture hall. With all our logging in and out all day, the Directorate could pull a minute-by-minute list of our actions any time they wanted.
It builds in me all day, counting the different ways the Directorate has a hold over my life. By afternoon lecture, my entire body is prickling with rage.
The projector screen reads in crisp black and white: Design for Minimized Risk to General Population.
The careful way they monitor our safety. Why haven’t I seen it before? It’s another excuse the Directorate uses to keep us pinned in.
The hall swells with electric hums as our digipads all push the same alert: Lecture begins in 30 seconds. We’ve all been trained to respond to cues like this our whole lives. The room quiets. On cue, Instructor Mathis polishes her glasses and takes the podium.
“Today we are discussing ways the Directorate manages risk to general population well-being through design elements for environment planning, with a focus on understanding why the Quadrant method optimizes the LQM mission of preserving life.”
Instructor Mathis pauses and surveys the room.
Sure. Optimizes life. For who? To what end? It was only weeks ago, but I can’t believe I ever bought into all this.
“Who can give me an example of the ways the Directorate’s Quad construct optimizes daily life?”
Instructor Mathis waits for an answer, and several hands fly up, students eager to be recognized for their knowledge. Hanna is among them.
I slump in my chair and fold my arms over my chest.
She surveys the room, lips pursed, and lands on me.
“Henders,” she says. “You have been quiet lately.”
My hands clench against the arms of my seat.
A cool smile spreads over the instructor’s face. “Do you have anything to contribute?” she prompts.
I don’t know if it’s her detached calm, or the subtle nudge to keep me compliant, or if it’s just the wrong day, but something snaps inside me, and I am not willing to play along anymore.
I mimic her smile back to her and lean forward. “Of course. The provided transit ensures only properly-trained drivers are ever on the roads, and the low speeds reduce the risk of harm even if there was some kind of accident. The Quad domes keeps our day-to-day experience consistent and reinforces routines. The watchlizards wander through the Quads to keep an eye our well-being. But, Instructor Mathis,” I tilt my head, the smile still stiff on my lips. “Did you mean to ask about safety, or compliance? Because we’re told this is all done for our safety, but it also erodes our freedom.”
Heat flashes over my skin as the students gasp and murmur. Hanna’s hand flies over and grabs my wrist. Opposing forces rise in me like the wrong sides of a magnet: the thrill of letting out the terrible things I have pent up inside me, and the horror of what it could mean for me now that it is out.
Instructor Mathis folds her arms over her chest, her lips a tight line.
“You should know better,” she scolds. “As we have studied, the Directorate’s structure is not about serving the Directorate, but its citizens. Who can demonstrate this with an example?”
Eager hands fly up.
“I have one.” I am on my feet before I know what I am doing. “The data-trail the digipads collect accounts for every minute of our day.”
My head pulses. This isn’t me, this isn’t how I act and it damn sure isn’t how I talk. My voice does not even sound like mine, angry and jagged. I sound like Evie.
Hanna squeezes my wrist so tight that my fingers start to lose feeling.
I tug my arm away from her. What am I doing? But the anger refuses to stay contained inside me anymore. The instructor shoots me a harsh glare, but then, thankfully, she continues, answering her own question with the appropriate lines.
Lines. That’s exactly what it is. Half-truths reshaped to keep us going along.
Before I can stop to think, I am shouting.
“This is all as good as lies. The Directorate doesn’t care about us. It cares about enforcing its order.”
This time, Hanna leans away, as if to imply disassociation.
Instructor Mathis looks me over, a muscle in her cheek twitching. Then she nods. Two large men in black come in from the back. They wade down the aisles towards me and lift me from my seat by my arms.
“No!” I shriek. I try to tug away, but they only grip me harder.
As they carry me out, Instructor Mathis shakes her head. “Tsk, tsk. The stress of this program is too much for some.”
The last thing I see before the doors of the lecture hall slide shut behind me is the students nodding in agreement, their faces smug with the satisfaction that they can handle it. Don’t they see how they are being manipulated? As the doors settle back into place, a new question slams into my brain: Why? What’s the Directorate’s end game in all this? Because they must have one. And it’s not the happiness of its citizens.
The idea makes my stomach churn. I go limp and let the guards carry me away, too caught up in these terrible new thoughts to keep fighting, and afraid that should I manage to find the answers, I might not have it in me to face them.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Gracelyn
The guards take me to a small room down the hall and lock me in. In the silence, my thoughts rush at me in a panicked swarm – this is a disaster. I’ve all but guaranteed that I will be monitored very closely for the foreseeable future. How long will they hold me here, and what will they do to me? Have I just tossed away my future? How will I ever find out what happened to Evie now? How will I ever find out what the Directorate is up to? Under these terrible questions, a deep shame for my actions throbs.
Eventually, an alert on my digipad notifies me that my next appointment with Joyce has been brought forward to tomorrow. No doubt to discuss my outburst. The panic settles deeper into my stomach.
A quarter of an hour later, the door opens and the guard tells me to go home.
***
“Gracelyn. You’re home early,” Father calls from the living room. He sits on the couch, holding a syncscreen as if he were reading.
He’s home early, too. They must have notified him about the lecture hall.
Dread rises in me and I remember the sneer on his face when he caught me in my sadness that first day in LQM. But my resentment is still hot, and
I pull it around myself like armor.
“This is true,” I say. I take off my coat and place it on my designated hook. Everything is designated, everything is labeled. The Directorate is everywhere, hovering around us and sucking up all the extra space.
I hear the click as Father repositions the screen into its holding pod in the wall.
“We got an alert from LQM’s education department,” he says.
“Oh.”
“Come into the living room, Gracelyn.”
I enter. We hardly use the living room now. We killed this room when we sat here all day after they took Evie away. It’s not a living room anymore, it’s a departure room. But we don’t talk about it. Because we are good Directorate citizens, and that means everything is fine.
Mother is on the couch, her hands in her lap and her shoulders hunched. Her eyes are dazed and unfocused – she has taken more of those pills. I want to shake her until she is herself again. Father sits on the cushion next to her.
I stare at the tidy six inches of space between them and I wonder, have they ever felt anything like what I feel with Quinn? No, I don’t need to wonder. I know they have not. Not even close.
“Have a seat, Gracelyn.”
I sigh, and sit in a chair opposite them.
“We know this period has been, well, more challenging for you than for your peers,” Mother says. “But this is too much. We thought – we hoped – you were keeping this under control.”
More challenging. That is what we are going to call it? Because I call it my sister departed. Or rather, she didn’t depart, and maybe something even worse happened to her – maybe she is still out there – but we are all supposed to pretend everything is fine.
Mother continues. “This phase of yours. It is beyond the normal emotional range.”
“Beyond the normal emotional range?” I echo. What does that mean? Is the Directorate monitoring my brain’s chemical levels? Now that I think of it, I would not be surprised. Suddenly the digipad’s cuff around my arm, which has always been a comfort and a resource, feels too tight. I want to rip it off and hurl it against the wall, but I know it won’t allow me to remove it. “Well, I’m sorry that my emotions are not within regulations. Or whatever.”
Departures Page 17
