by Carol Riggs
Across the aisle, Aubrie bends over her own desk, looking beautiful and proper in her uniform of matching pale blue. A corkscrew of indecision twists inside me.
No…hold it. Major plan adjustment. I have to keep this banishment idea a secret so Aubrie doesn’t tell Farrow I’m seeing alien hallucinations and that’s the reason I’m acting out. She doesn’t know it’s a matter of life and death. Yet. Which means I’ll have to keep up my studies and not skip sessions. Like Blake, I’ll have to carry out my undoing on the sly. He did it—somehow—so I should be able to. The Machine will still track my rebellious attitudes and motives so I can get banished.
I drum my fingers on my desk. Speaking of Blake’s low Testing score, was that why he got banished—did he know about our parents being aliens? I guess he could’ve known and done it on purpose, but I doubt it. If he had, he probably would’ve stayed away once he sneaked out, not come back to live in Sanctuary. He wouldn’t have acted as swaggering and casual the whole time up to his ceremony. He would’ve tried to warn Konrad or Peyton, or his best friend, Xavier. Maybe even Aubrie. At the ceremony, he didn’t act especially shocked, but he looked unhappy about the Machine’s score.
It doesn’t matter, really. Whether he knew about the aliens or not, sabotaging our Testing scores is the best and only solution we have right now.
When sessions finally end, I escort Aubrie to the preschool and backtrack to the training compound. I don’t see Harrel, Peyton, or Leonard, so I’ll have to discuss my banishment idea with them later. For now, I’d better fetch our cases from Boggs’s outbuilding to keep up my grades for Aubrie’s sake. I nab my pack and hurry off to the southern dwellings. Boggs and his wife oversee the supply station, and their kids have afternoon sessions, so no one should be home. This bit of sneaking around and trespassing should help lower my Testing score.
Once I gather up the datafilm cases, I hike to the gardens, composing my face and a careful alibi as I go. Mom, armed with a spade and a container of seeds, spears me with a pitchfork-sharp frown as I come through the front gates.
“Where have you been? I could’ve used you earlier with the green beans.”
Careful. I can’t show my resentment. To Mom, I’m the old me, the hard-working, eager-to-please Jay. “Sorry, I got in the mood to study at the square for my biology exam. I still have time to put in my hours here.”
“Don’t forget, you have twelve hours of penalty work to do,” Mom says. “It’d be better if you did your community work during the day and studied in the evenings.”
I repress a shiver, thinking of alien throat vents and how her words are actually coming out of her neck. “You’re right. I’ll do that from now on.”
Leaving her looking more appeased, I head toward the beans and put in a few hours of sweaty work. Then I ride my hoverbike to the Nebula, fast. Inside, I search the scattered crowd.
Harrel sits with Misty across the room, and even though I know he’d rather be alone with her, I walk over. “Can I borrow you for a couple of minutes, Harrel?”
“Sorry, Misty,” he says, throwing her a quick smile. “I’ll be right back.”
She waves him off. We step away a few meters, and I tell him my banishment idea.
“Seriously, that’s our only option?” He looks like I’ve just punched him in the stomach. “We still have a tunnel to escape through, you know.”
I keep my voice a murmur. “Yeah, and look how well that turned out. If we try it with more guards and get caught, the aliens might find out about the tunnel. Then no one else would be able to escape.”
“Banishment doesn’t have any better odds. You’ll get eaten if you don’t flunk.”
“Then I’ll have to make sure I flunk.” I stare him in the eye. “I think we should tell everyone who’s turning eighteen in the next year, so they can start trying to get banished as early as they can. Misty, too.”
“No way,” Harrel says. “Farrow would go supernova if a whole bunch of us started acting out. The Board would clamp down even harder—”
I shake my head. “I think we score higher and have better food value when we choose to obey instead of being forced. I’m not sure what they’d do. The main thing is to do stuff in secret as much as we can to keep them from getting suspicious.”
Harrel mutters something about how he still doesn’t like it and that our options suck, and I let him get back to Misty.
I wander across the room, looking for Peyton or Leonard next.
Konrad emerges from the kitchen, lugging a heaping pan of corn. He plunks it into an empty space in the buffet warmer and looks up with a smirk. “Wanna be sure you’re first in line?”
“Take a hike, Zemik.”
Konrad’s eyebrows leap upward. “Touchy tonight? Speaking of hikes, I heard you got busted yesterday for being outside the perimeter fence. Shocking considering it’s, well, you.”
An image of my fist planted in Konrad’s face appears in my mind. The urge dissolves as Peyton comes out of the kitchen, wearing a long white apron and carrying a pan of roasted tuber-squash.
I hurry over. “Here, I’ll help you with that.”
With a grunt, Konrad stalks back into the kitchen.
I lean closer to Peyton’s ear as we settle the steaming pan into the warmer. “This afternoon I got our datafilm cases from Boggs’s outbuilding. I’ll give you yours tomorrow.”
“Great. Today Leonard and I scoped out the perimeter fence by climbing trees and getting onto rooftops. Farrow’s posted at least eight more guards inside. Harder to tell how many extra are posted outside. Maybe six?”
“That sucks if we want to try to escape. But I had a brainstorm earlier today.” I glance around to make sure no one is close enough to overhear. “We could try getting banished. Do things in secret to lower our scores.”
Her eyes go wide. “Whoa, whoa. That’s extreme.”
“It might be the best way to get out, especially with more guards.”
“How do you know the aliens don’t kill everyone they banish, since the ones who flunk aren’t good enough to eat?”
“They didn’t kill Mick or anyone else they brought in from the outer zones for show-and-tell. They let them run around for months and die out there. Maybe the aliens keep the rejects around for genomide dust lessons, to freak the rest of us out and keep us in line.”
“Yeah.” Worry lines crease her forehead. “We’ll just have to be careful how we sabotage our scores. Remember how Mick got stuck in a detention cell at zone hub after he set fire to Farrow’s yard? A week of solitary confinement will really mess with our chances of getting banished.”
“That’s for sure.” I hesitate. “Hey, is it true what you told Farrow about Blake and Shelly making alcohol, or was that a cover?”
“Mostly a cover. Shelly helped Blake dig the tunnel, so he told her how to set up the brew. He didn’t help her make it. I honestly don’t have a clue what he used the tunnel for—the brew is made inside Sanctuary, not by the river like I told Farrow.”
“How on Liberty did Blake know how to make the stuff?”
“Beats me.”
“Was that really your last jug that you handed over to Farrow?”
“No way,” Peyton says with a sly grin. “Wanna try some tonight?”
I hesitate only for a split second.
“Sure,” I say. “Where should I meet you?”
Chapter Thirteen
Tall weeds and grasses slither across the legs of my pants, whispering like ghosts as I head through the fields of the cattle compound. The windows of the farm unit near the road are black, the place shut up for the night, but that’s not where I’m going. My target is the irathon-sided hay barn. A nagging sense of unease hounds me, chilled by the evening breeze.
What in all the galaxies am I doing? I can’t believe I’m taking off after barely a half hour of group study, telling Aubrie, Harrel, and our other friends that I’m going on a walk to clear my brain. Mom and Dad don’t know I’m not at the study session
, at least not yet. Incredible. I’m seriously meeting Peyton and Leonard for some boozing in the hay barn—so I can lower my score at my Testing.
My life has morphed into something unrecognizable in a matter of days.
And yet I can’t deny a perverse delight zipping through my veins. I’m thwarting aliens by sneaking around right under their ugly snouts. Banishment, here I come. I can’t wait to see their shock and outrage when I fail my Testing. It could be an even bigger blowout than when Blake flunked.
I climb over the low timberwood fence at the edge of the fields and jog to the entrance of the feed barn. The thick sweetness of hay saturates my nose. I squint. Peyton said to go left, toward the far corner. Climbing over stacks of prickly bales, I make my way into the darkness.
Still seeing nothing except hay, I whisper, “Anyone home?”
A small glow appears, along with a shadowy figure.
“Hiya, Jay.” Peyton sounds warm and relaxed. “I didn’t think you’d get here this fast.”
“I didn’t study long.” I crawl over a wall of bales and drop into a small cave made of hay. A few single bales line the walls. I sit on one of them. Peyton places her lud-light on another bale, causing the beam to create a silhouette of her braid on the wall. The shape of it looks like a curved, beckoning finger.
“Leonard will be here after he finishes helping his dad fix a bathroom faucet.” She pulls a metal cup from a bag by her feet, hands it to me, and fills it using a jug of cloudy red liquid. She re-seals the jug and sits next to me with her own cup held out. “As brew drinkers say in the database stories—‘cheers’!”
“Cheers. Here’s to corroded livers and a bunch of irresponsible actions that aliens don’t like.” I clink my cup with hers and sniff the liquid. A brisk smell shoots up my nostrils. I take a sip, and my eyes water as the stuff slides down my throat. “Argh. What is this, exactly?”
Leaning one shoulder against the hay wall, she eyes me with a lazy smile. “Magic freedom potion. Can’t tell you the exact recipe, or I’d have to de-materialize you.”
I smile and take another drink, even though it tastes pretty nasty. “I bet you don’t even know what it’s made of.”
“Of course I do. You can’t make hard greshfruit cider without using greshfruit.”
“Do you help make this stuff?”
“Nope. I do supply runs. In trade for swiping some of the ingredients from the food center or the Nebula, I get a share.”
She leaps up and pads across the cave to peer out the opening, balancing on her tiptoes. Her pants hug her hips, and a few centimeters of smooth skin show below her shirt. My eyebrows quirk up as I draw in a deep breath. She’s way hot… I wonder whether her parents object to the clothing she chooses from the supply station. Either they don’t care or Peyton wears whatever she wants despite their advice. I suspect she ignores them. She does have a knack for making our plain uniforms look more interesting, whether by cutting the lower edges of the shirts, mismatching the pants and shirt colors, or wearing the outfit more snugly or loosely than anyone else.
“I guess Leonard might be a while.” Peyton returns to sit by me. It could be my imagination, but she seems to be sitting closer than before.
All at once I’m hyper-aware that we’re alone. Really alone. A tucked-into-a-hay-cave-with-no-one-else-around kind of alone. It’s dark, it’s late, and I’m by myself with Peyton Rainey in a way I haven’t been for years. Or maybe I’ve never, ever been alone with her like this. Playing holo-checkers or baking cookies years ago was a lot more innocent. Safer. I take a long drink, lean back against the hay wall, and close my eyes.
“So,” she says.
“What?” I keep my eyes closed. That way I don’t see how she’s only a hand’s span away from me.
“It looks like you’ve fixed things with Aubrie.”
My eyes snap open. I twist to look at her, even with how close she is. “Yeah. But things are…kind of weird between us. I’m mostly pretending to be with her to keep her from ratting me out to Farrow and the Board. She doesn’t believe me about the aliens, and she won’t talk to me about them. She doesn’t know they’re going to slaughter and eat us. Which I guess doesn’t matter, as long as I can figure out a way to get her out of here before her ceremony.”
Peyton shakes her head. “That’s gonna be tough. Maybe we should just exterminate the aliens and take over the zone. Poison them or kill them with laser pistols.”
“We can’t do that. Think of all the little kids who’d suddenly be without parents. They’d be traumatized.”
“Think of all the little kids who’re gonna be alien chow when they turn eighteen. We have to do something.”
“I know.” I start to say more, but a strange mixture of burning and tingling spreads out from my navel and floods my body. I rake my fingers through my hair. “Whew, am I supposed to be feeling this woozy?”
Peyton gives a velvety chuckle. “I can’t believe you’re feeling it already. You’re such a lightweight.”
“Yeah, yeah. Shut it.”
She laughs again. I can’t help laughing along with her. The tingling takes over the muscles on my face, making me want to keep my grin there forever. Peyton’s full mouth reflects the giddiness of my smile, as though her smile is a part of mine. Her slightly crooked teeth glimmer in the muted beam of the lud-light.
I turn my cup in my hands, swirling the blood-red fluid. “Why do you drink this stuff, anyway—do you just like the rebel thrill of it?”
She surveys the hay ceiling as though the answers are displayed there. “Like Leonard said, to have fun. Also, to ditch the hassles of life. To forget. To be numb. And yeah, to see if I can get away with it.”
I wonder exactly what it is she’s trying to forget. Work, responsibility…bad memories? I hope I’m not the cause of those bad memories…like that whole mess of starting out with her at the Harvest Equinox party and ending up with Aubrie. I take another swig of brew and look into her dark brown eyes, noticing the intriguing way her eyelashes fringe them. She’s gorgeous. Not counting our recent crying fest in Boggs’s outbuilding, I haven’t sat this close to her since the party two years ago.
The night of that party, at least the first half of it, I wanted to kiss her…it would’ve changed our friendship into something more. But it didn’t happen, thanks to her and Blake’s buddy, Xavier. I came back to the greshfruit bobbing area with two cups of redberry punch for us, and he was there, laughing with her. Tall and dark-haired, leaning over her with a gleam in his eye. It looked like they were sharing some personal kind of joke. Her face was flushed as she laughed, and she shoved him away with a playful hand. Weirdly, she never hung out with him much after that night, but it sure looked to me like they were flirting then. So I left the building and went outside. That was when I asked Aubrie to do the sack races.
Clearing my throat, I look away, across the hideout. “Since Shelly’s gone and you don’t brew this magic booze, then who makes it?”
“Who said anyone did?”
I give a short laugh and dare to face her again. “You used present tense when you said you go on supply runs for ingredients and swap for a share.”
“Ah, you’re way too smart.”
I grin wide, and then blink. Whoo-ee! Either the hay bales next to me are shifting before my eyes, or she’s leaning even closer to me. Our eyes meet. My gaze travels from her long lashes, slides down her cute nub of a nose, and comes to rest on her mouth.
“Miss Rainey,” I say. “Are you going to tell me who brews this potion, or not?”
“Oh…maybe.”
“Don’t you trust me with your rebel secrets?”
She smiles. Right as I think she’s about to say something, she pauses. At the same time, she tilts her head ever so slightly. The moment is impossibly full and…enticing. I lean to eliminate the short distance between our mouths.
A rustling by the opening in the bales makes me jump back.
“Peyton, ole buddy!” Leonard’s lanky f
igure tumbles into the place with a wild shedding of hay. “Don’t worry, I’m finally here. How’s it going, Jay-Jay? Welcome to our secret little booze club. On weekends a few other people join us, but tonight we’re it.”
I stare into my cup, which is two-thirds drained. Potent stuff, this brew. I almost kissed Peyton, when I’m supposedly with Aubrie. That’s bad form even if my Spoken-For relationship is broken, and way beyond the call of duty to get myself banished. I wish I could make the breakup public.
“Thanks for the welcome, Leonard,” I say.
He accepts a cupful of hard cider from Peyton and guzzles it down like it’s water. Belching, he holds his cup out again.
“Easy, yar-head,” Peyton says as she pours him more. “This stuff doesn’t come easy, and I don’t want you barfing on the hay. I barely got you outside last time.”
“One cup’s enough for me,” I say, trying to shake off the sensation of the kiss I almost had with her.
Leonard snickers. “Feeling the effects already, dude?” He sprawls across a bale opposite me. “It gets me into really creative moods. I wrote this fantastic song last time. You oughtta hear it.”
“Some other time, Len,” Peyton says quickly. “Jay and I were brainstorming how to kill the aliens so we can liberate the masses. Feel free to share your inspirations.”
“Rise up and stab ’em in their beds,” Leonard says, his scratchy voice matter-of-fact.
“How do we know stabbing will kill them?” I ask.
“Slice their heads off, then,” Leonard says with a shrug. “No one can live without a head. We’ll target Farrow first, since he’s their leader.”
Peyton leans back on her elbows. “Since he’s the only one who’s so hot-shot important that he doesn’t have to take care of kids, no one will be orphaned when someone knocks him off. I wouldn’t mind targeting him myself.”
