Escaping Eleven (Eleven Trilogy)

by Jerri Chisholm

  As I follow, I do my best to pass her without expression. But I am weak and cruel, and I smile a wicked smile as I go. She scowls.

  When we reach the door to the Oracle’s emergency exit, I turn to him. “Why don’t you run along to your girlfriend there and I can be on my way. Please, please, please.”

  He presses his lips into a straight line and looks at the ceiling like he is considering it. Finally, he shakes his head. “I think I’ll stay here, thanks. I’m kind of interested to see what the big deal is.”

  “Sorry, but it’s for my eyes only.”

  He laughs. “You realize I’ve been before, right? On a few occasions, though I can’t say I’ve ever snuck in through the emergency exit.”

  The revelation catches me by surprise, and it must show clearly across my face.

  “My mother’s office, remember?” he adds.

  I nod, then turn to the keypad. But my fingers hover; they pause. If I enter the code, he will see it, and he will be able to access the Oracle whenever he wants, too. Do I want to share it?

  He is a Preme, seemingly a well-connected one. He could probably access the Oracle at his bidding if he really wanted to. So what if he has the code?

  My fingers punch in the digits; I feel him watching and committing them to memory. Then the door opens, and we slip inside. Immediately it strikes me how strange it is that I am here, with him. At the thought, my heart beats harder. Faster. It has nothing to do with him, of course. Just the fact that I am sharing this with someone. Or maybe because it isn’t often I am alone in a room with a boy I barely know.

  “Everything okay, Eve?” he asks quietly. He is grinning.

  “What?”

  “You haven’t moved in a few minutes.”

  I force myself forward and will my shoulders to loosen. A lost cause. “Oh. Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “Okay.” His eyes rise to the trapdoor. “After you.”

  Deep breath, in and out. My boot lands on the first rung of the ladder, and my fingers grip the rungs above my head. There is a fluttering in my stomach that I can’t identify, and as I draw myself upward, I can feel his eyes on me, and every move I make feels forced and unnatural.

  But once I swing the trapdoor open, that feeling evaporates. The Oracle is darker than I have seen it and full of a sound I cannot identify. I scramble in with Wren at my heels, my eyes searching for the source of the noise. It comes from the glass itself—something is smacking against it, millions of fine pieces whipping it like melting beads of plastic. My fingers stretch out and touch the glass.

  “Raindrops,” says Wren from behind me. He stands close, and that feeling in my stomach returns.

  Raindrops. The fine pieces are raindrops. I stare at them as they cling to the outside of the Oracle. They don’t look hard—not as hard as they sound. And they are so shapeless, nothing like the neat teardrops depicted in the books below. Next my eyes travel upward to the sky, one previously so blue. Today it is a dark gray like the walls and ceilings of Compound Eleven, except that it moves and it sways and it is anything but the stifling compound below my feet.

  “What do you think?” he asks me.

  I stare at the trees as they whip from side to side, as leaves are ripped from them and thrown through the darkened air. The northern shards of rock sitting in the distance are unmoved, but set in this context they seem more ominous than before, cold and leering. “I think…I think it’s frightening and beautiful at the same time.” My voice is a whisper, barely audible over the rain.

  Suddenly, there is a flash of light followed by a deafening crack that sounds worse than the breaking of bone. I step back from the window, and my hand falls to my side, spine straight. This is a side to the world aboveground I haven’t yet witnessed. It is cruel and fascinating, frightening and beautiful.

  “Lightning. And thunder. It’s a thunderstorm, Eve,” he says quietly. “It happens from time to time. It will clear.”

  I swallow, and my throat burns. “How do you know all of this?”

  He shrugs, and I notice that the back of my shoulder touches his chest. “I told you. My mother’s in charge of the solar panels. I’ve heard her talk about it, since it interrupts the collection of energy.”

  “Is it still hot during a thunderstorm?”

  “Is it still hot? I don’t know. I think so. Planning on stepping outside?”

  “Something like that,” I murmur. Another burst of light pierces through the sky, and I place both palms on the glass in time for the thunder. I can feel it rattle, and its power and fury make me smile. “I’m not staying in Compound Eleven much longer,” I blurt out before I can stop myself. Maybe it’s the storm. Maybe it’s stopping me from thinking clearly, but suddenly I don’t care if he knows. “I’m going outside. Out there. I know I’ll probably die. I’m okay with that.”

  He is silent for a long time, but when he speaks, his voice is surprisingly soft. “Somehow I’m not shocked to hear that.”

  I look at him over my shoulder without moving my hands. “A normal person, Wren, would ask why.”

  “Very funny. It’s no secret you’re unhappy here. When do you plan to go?”

  “Before we have to choose jobs.”

  “Why then?”

  “Let’s just say that an order was issued from the Preme floor once, and it resulted in me losing someone very important. The thought of serving those people—Katz and the others, producing their clothes, growing their food…it makes me sick.”

  He nods heavily, like he actually understands. “What about producing clothes for other Means? Growing food for them?”

  I shake my head. “Every job down there reinforces a system that I don’t support. That I can’t support. Even fighting pro… It’s just a way to keep Means entertained so they don’t rise up. It’s for Katz, all of it.”

  He stares intently at me. After a while, he asks, “How’re you going to get out?”

  I shrug. “I’m working on it. Listen, not that you’ll see them again or anything, but don’t tell my friends, okay?”

  “What do you mean? They don’t know?”

  I shake my head.

  “Wait, let me get this straight. This is something you told me…in confidence?”

  I can feel my cheeks burn pink. “I…wasn’t thinking.”

  He laughs lightly. “I guess not. You know, seeing as how we’re not friends and all.” He pauses, and when he speaks again, his voice is serious. “You’re not the only unhappy one here, you know. Leaving—dying—isn’t the only option.”

  “I’m not the only unhappy one… Surely you’re not talking about yourself.”

  “Remember when I said you’re hard to talk to?”

  “Fine, Preme. You’re unhappy, too. Care to tell me why?”

  “Hmm. Seems like something I’d talk to a friend about.”

  I sit down on the floor and stretch out my legs so that my boots touch the glass. I tuck my hair behind my ears. “Maybe we’re sort-of friends.”

  He sits next to me. “Sort-of friends.” He nods. “I can live with that. Okay, sort-of friend Eve, what do you want to know about me?”

  “Why you’re so unhappy.”

  “Right,” he says in his low voice. “Well, I’m not sure I could put that one into words. Could you?”

  My eyes are unfocused as they stare through the glass wall of the Oracle. “I’m unhappy because I miss that person I mentioned. I’m unhappy because I feel caged. Trapped. Like I can’t breathe, all the time. Like something is wrapping around my neck or sitting on my chest, and no matter how hard I fight it off, no matter how strong I am, it doesn’t go away. Not ever.”

  He stares at the side of my face for a while but then looks away and nods. “Fair enough.”

  “Your turn.”

  “Maybe I don’t know why I’m unhappy,” he says quietly. “Maybe
it isn’t life in the compound. Maybe it’s just…me. Maybe I just…don’t like myself.”

  “That makes no sense,” I say quickly, glancing at him. “Why wouldn’t you like yourself?”

  He shrugs. “So, tell me about this person that you lost.”

  “Way to change the subject, Wren.”

  Our eyes find each other, and he smiles. It is the kind of smile that makes me feel like we are the only two people in the entire world. I look quickly away.

  Then he leans back so he is lying down, and his large hands tuck under his head. His T-shirt rides up so that an inch of skin is exposed, and it is smooth and golden. It is distracting, that inch of skin, and I feel something inside of me stir.

  “You said it was someone important to you,” he continues.

  I have no obligation to respond. I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t share something so intimate—not with this virtual stranger. I turn back to the window, but before I know it, I hear a voice, and it’s my own. “I had a little brother. Jack. Nobody knew, not at first—my mother hid the pregnancy. But then they found out.” I pause. “The Premes in charge.” Ted Bergess, to be exact. Head of Health and Population Control. And, of course, Commander Katz.

  “Don’t say what I think you’re going to say.” His voice is low and husky, and it feels so familiar and warm that I lean back so I am lying beside him. I stare through the top of the Oracle to the gray sky outside. I don’t want to remember it, that moment when Jack was taken. But it is impossible to forget…

  It had been a good day. School, then a short playtime with Hunter and Maggie. Dinner was near, and I sat on my bed with a well-worn and well-loved doll snuggled in my lap. She had red yarn for hair, and I called her Marlow, my sole toy allotment from the compound. My mother lay next to me, long hair sprawled around her head like a halo, Jack in her arms. “Make me go high,” he pleaded. “Evie, are you watching? Mommy—do it quick, make me go high! Please, Mommy!”

  She kissed him on the lips, then lifted him into the air so that he giggled; she did it again and again until he laughed so deeply it was almost a wonder he could force air into his lungs. My father was away, working his fingers raw at the plastics factory, manufacturing wall panels for the Preme floor, and so it was just the three of us.

  “Evie, did you see? Again, again!” Jack shouted. “Mommy, again! Please!”

  My mother looked at me out of the corner of her sky-blue eyes, and both of us grinned. These were my favorite moments. These were happy and secure moments, ones that didn’t come often in Compound Eleven.

  And so it was then, as if on cue, that our cell door burst open and heavy footsteps drowned out the sound of joy. Men, cloaked in black. Three of them. Vaguely I recognized them as guards, but my confusion didn’t snap to panic until a scream erupted from the back of my mother’s throat. From the bottom of her stomach.

  Instantly I stood. Marlow fell to the floor, forgotten. What caused my mother’s anguish I did not know—not then. But it was pure terror, thick and unsettling, and it was upsetting Jack. She would never upset Jack, and so I knew in my bones it must be bad. Very bad.

  Still I pled with her—I begged her to settle, all I could think to do. But it was futile. She was already too far gone.

  Terrified, I turned to the guards. I saw the nearest one look over his shoulder at the one behind, one who was bald and square-faced, and they exchanged a nod. Curt and clinical. All business.

  My mother must have seen it; she must have understood what I did not, because immediately she slid to the back of the bed, as far away as she could make herself in that small concrete box that was our home. One hand held the back of Jack’s head, pushed it so hard against her chest I almost cried out. She was going to hurt him, she clutched him so tight. He may have been three years old, but he was fine-boned like her. With her other arm, she held his body, one that now wailed, laughter displaced by fear of his own.

  The first guard surged forward. He knelt on the bed, and it squealed under his considerable weight. Then as I watched with a sinking feeling in my stomach, his hands wrapped around my little brother, and they pulled with shocking force. With determination.

  But my mother was strong, and she didn’t let go; she didn’t give an inch, and he slapped her across the face, and the sight made my own wet with tears. Now the chorus of screams was bolstered by my own.

  Now I understood.

  The guards were going to take away Jack. He wasn’t supposed to be here, after all—that was why I was forbidden from mentioning him. That was why I had to pretend he didn’t exist. To steal food for him from the cafeteria.

  I tried to help. I did. But I was small and weak—something I instantly resented with all the might a seven-year-old could muster, and the bald guard sent me across the room with one hand. Then he helped the other, he restrained my mother, and Jack was finally wrenched from her warmth.

  We screamed louder now, our three, a frenzy of white-hot hysteria, but it was no use. The guard holding Jack headed for the door. But still the fight had not left my mother, and she pulled herself free of the guard who restrained her; she leaped from the bed and made to chase after her boy—

  For a brief second, a balloon of hope swelled inside my stomach. For a brief second, I actually believed that all would be okay, that those secure moments would be ours once again.

  But the third guard turned. He pulled out his gun. Probably it wouldn’t have stopped her, except he was smart, and so it was me he directed it toward. Instantly my screams were silenced; immediately my mother was still.

  She was still, except that her shoulders rounded in defeat; they curled forward and shook as her tears flooded our small cell.

  Off in the distance, Jack screamed our names. “Mommy! EVIE! MOMMM-EEE!” The sound pulsated in my ears like a million hammering needles. But the silence that followed was much, much worse. Vomit ran up my esophagus; it slipped quietly to the floor and over Marlow like a blanket.

  When I finally wiped my mouth, I noticed that the guards had left; it was just the two of us. In body, at least. Already I could sense that where it really mattered, I was all alone.

  “Eve?”

  I startle as I return to the present, as I refocus on the gray sky outside. On Wren next to me. “They took him,” I say. “For being in contravention of the one-child policy. Put him out there, to die. A little boy.”

  The sound of the ticking rain fills my ears, and for a second I think it is going to swallow me whole. I see Wren shake his head, I see his chest rise and fall beside me, but he says nothing. There is nothing to say, nothing that can be said to ease the pain.

  “I guess that’s another reason I need out. It isn’t fair, life down there. And besides, there isn’t anything to stay for. Not for a Lower Mean. Shitty jobs, violence…that’s it. Trust me, I’m not the first one from my floor to try to escape, and I won’t be the last. I’m probably the first one set on going out there, though,” I add, motioning toward the sky. Once again I think about that song—about the possibility, however remote, that Jack found a way to survive, and that I will, too. The swell of grief I felt from reliving that terrible moment nine years ago is replaced with a surge of hope.

  “What about your friends and family?” Wren asks.

  I shake my head. “It isn’t enough. Nothing will ever be enough. I want freedom more than anything in the world. I want to breathe fresh air and feel it on my skin. Even if it’s short-lived, it’ll be worth it.” Even if the possibility of finding Jack is so far-flung it defies all logic, it’d be worth it.

  “But your parents…” His voice trails off until it is swallowed by the sound of rain.

  “What about them? That it would be cruel to make them go through it all over again?”

  “Well…yeah.”

  “I need to live my life,” is all I say, and my voice is firmer than it needs to be. I don’t bother to tell him
that my mother is already gone. She already left. I don’t tell him that my dad would rather have Jack than me.

  “Live your life by effectively ending it?”

  “Who knows what will happen out there. I’ve heard things… Just forget it, okay?” I snap, suddenly annoyed. “You’re probably right. But I’m not asking you to understand.”

  “Okay,” he says slowly, and his voice is calm. So calm that my muscles unclench. “Well regardless, I’m sorry you had to go through that—your parents, too. I know what it’s like to lose someone.”

  “You do?”

  “I lost my father when I was ten years old.”

  So his life hasn’t been a cakewalk, either. He has known despair; he has experienced loss. Even being a Preme.

  All I can think to say is, “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Were you two close?”

  “Closer than my mother and I have ever been. Or will ever be,” he adds bitterly. “Certainly she wouldn’t shed a tear if I were to venture out there.” He laughs a short, hard laugh.

  I listen to the raindrops for a moment, then raise my head, gaze through the glass to the solar panels that sit on the hilltop. I want to ask him more about his relationship with his mother, but I can sense that he doesn’t want to discuss it. So instead I say, “She’s in charge of those?”

  “Her office is, yes.”

  “Has she ever been outside before?”

  “Not sure. I try to avoid speaking with her at every opportunity.”

  His voice is hard, revealing his distaste for his mother even more than his words do. That’s a good thing, I think. Because without a doubt the woman holds allegiance to her colleague and superior, Commander Katz, and so if Wren were to hold allegiance to her, well…

  “What’s the building for, out there?”

  Wren lifts his head and follows my gaze to the small outbuilding sitting at the base of the hill.

  “Control boards for the solar panels,” he says quickly before dropping to the floor again. “The engineers do most of their work from there. Making adjustments to the angles, troubleshooting problems. I think they store tools in there, too, for when the panels need fixing.”