The Gender Game

by Forrest, Bella

  I couldn't spot any wardens around; perhaps they were outside the door, waiting until the crowd in here settled down.

  Forgetting all about finding a quiet spot, I dumped my plate and cutlery down on the nearest table to me and weaved through the crowd toward them. My eyes trained on Josefine as she picked up one of her bread rolls and handed it to Dina. Before she could do the same with her second roll, I stepped between the girls and gripped Josefine's arm, guiding the roll back to its rightful place on her plate. My gaze was steely as I glared at Dina. Although we were actually almost the same height and roughly the same age, physically, she was much larger than me. This was the first time I’d seen her face up close; her eyes were small and spread too far apart to be attractive, their color dark brown, almost black. Her forehead hung low, and metal braces glinted against her teeth.

  "Who are you?" she asked, her eyes narrowing.

  "I'd like to ask the same," I replied calmly.

  My eyes fell to the roll on her plate that belonged to Josefine. Before she could react, I snatched it up and returned it. Clutching the young girl's shoulder, I pulled her out of the corner Dina had bullied her into and stood in her place.

  "I suggest you keep to what's yours," I whispered.

  Dina's broad cheeks flushed and a muscle in her jaw twitched. Anger glinted in her eyes. Her disposable plate creaked in the tightening grip of her meaty hands. But then she backed down, as I’d known she would, and turned on her heel and steamed away. I knew a coward when I saw one.

  Dozens of eyes were on me as I escorted Josefine to the table where I'd left my plate and cutlery. Nobody had touched it.

  I pulled up a chair for Josefine next to me and we both sat down.

  "You make sure you stay away from that girl, okay?" I told Josefine as I dug into my porridge.

  The girl looked shaken as she picked up a piece of apple. She glanced nervously at Dina, who, having taken a seat across the room from us next to her new crony Vera, was glaring daggers our way.

  "And don't look at her," I said. "Giving her attention makes her think she has power over you. Ignore her."

  Josefine resumed her focus on her plate. She took a bite of everything but the two rolls, which were the most substantial food she'd collected. So I gave her my untouched sandwich. "Eat this. It hasn't been contaminated by Piggy Hands."

  That brought a smile to Josefine's face. "Thanks," she mumbled. She accepted and began munching.

  We spent the next fifteen minutes in mostly silence as we finished eating, and then a bell warned us that breakfast was drawing to a close. We had to get a move on.

  Josefine and I picked up our plates and left the table to get in the line leading up to the trash cans. After I dumped my plate in the waste, someone brushed into my right side. I turned to see that it was Vera. She had a comically solemn look on her face as she leaned back against the wall and crossed her arms over her chest.

  "Mind where you're going," I muttered, before taking Josefine's hand and leading her away.

  "You really shouldn't mess with Dina, you know," Vera called after me. I didn't give Vera the satisfaction of turning around and asking why, but she offered it herself. "I'm serious, Violet Bates. I share a room with her… You don't know where she's come from."

  Oh, please.

  I sped up with Josefine and exited the dining hall, Vera's irritating voice fading out in the crowd.

  * * *

  I asked Ms. Maddox if Josefine and I could share a work station after lunch and she agreed. She allowed us to choose one in the far end of the room, as far from the other girls as we could be. After an hour or so, Josefine seemed to put thoughts of the incident with Dina behind her and became chatty. She asked me more questions about myself; particularly, she was interested in my parents. I told her that I didn't know who my father was and that my mother had chosen to conceive my brother and me in the city's insemination center. She had died from complications during my brother's birth.

  "So you do have a brother?" Josefine asked.

  "Not anymore."

  "What happened to him?"

  I hesitated before replying, "He failed the test."

  "Oh, I'm sorry," Josefine said, subdued.

  She understood that there was only one kind of test that a boy could fail in Matrus, and it had nothing to do with education. Other than the basic ability to read and add up numbers, boys weren't given an education like girls were, just an apprenticeship in manual labor.

  The same was true of the girls in Patrus who weren't allowed to attend school like the boys. The only semblance of training they received was domestic.

  I was grateful when Josefine redirected the conversation. Talking about Tim was painful. She asked what my favorite subject at school was and I immediately thought of my defense training. My lessons with Ms. Dale had been the highlights of my week. Ever since I could remember, my dream had been to become a warden when I grew up. There was something about their toughness, their strength, that I had always admired. I had never pictured myself pursuing any other occupation.

  That had lasted up until the age of eleven when Tim had been captured.

  A lot of things had changed in me after that. I’d found myself getting into fights easily and had visited the doctor for medication to ease my bouts of anger. Once Tim had gone, all of the attraction becoming a warden had previously held for me evaporated. After my brief spell of imprisonment for trying to smuggle a marked boy to Patrus, I’d still continued my defense training because, well… it was the only thing I really knew how to do well. And Ms. Dale had encouraged me to continue. She'd told me I had a natural instinct for fighting and that it would be a shame to let it go to waste. Maybe when I got older, I'd change my mind. I didn't think so, but I followed her advice.

  Although it had been a long time now since I'd had any formal training, my instinct had never really left me. And over the years of incessant manual labor, my body had kept fit and strong. Plus, I'd grown in height.

  "I wish I could be brave and tough like you," Josefine sighed wistfully as she dipped her hands into a trough of flour.

  "You can be," I told her. "It's about your mindset. Refuse to be browbeaten. Like this morning. You didn't have to hand over your bread rolls. You could have refused, pushed past her, and gone outside to look for a warden."

  Josefine nodded. "I suppose I could've," she mumbled.

  I took my turn in asking her questions—her own favorite subjects, her dreams and aspirations. She told me she wanted to be an environmentalist like her mother. She wanted to help improve the soil in Matrus so that we could produce more natural foods and import less from Patrus. A noble career. I wished I had such a strong vision for my future once I got out of here. I still had two years ahead of me, but Josefine’s focus made me feel I ought to start thinking more seriously about what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

  By the time it was time to stop work, I had developed a thorough liking for the young redhead. Perhaps it was just her age, but she reminded me of my brother—not the timid and shy side of her, but the fiery, feisty side that bubbled to the surface on occasion. I hoped she wouldn't lose that as she got older. If she received the right training and diet, she'd make a good fighter. Unlike my brother, she wouldn't be penalized for her boldness. Unless she started doing stupid things like brandishing dinner forks in a fight.

  We hung up our aprons in the reception room and headed back to our room, where I picked up my nightclothes before heading out again to take a shower. My hair badly needed a wash and I was feeling dusty in the most unexpected of places from having spent the day in the mill.

  I stood for a while in the shower, relishing the warm water gushing down my back. Showers, like rain, always had a way of calming me. The pitter-patter beat, the incessant contact. Nothing made me feel sleepy faster. But my shower turned lukewarm too soon—an unpleasant quirk of detention facility bathrooms. Wardens didn't want girls dawdling— they never wanted girls dawdling. I hurried to fi
nish washing my hair before it could go ice cold. Then I dried, dressed, and left the bathrooms.

  My eyes were beginning to droop as I returned to our door and I wanted nothing more now than to climb into bed and lose myself in sleep, even if it did mean skipping dinner. But my pleasant daze was disturbed as I arrived to find our door ajar. That was unlike Josefine, and I was sure that I'd left it closed.

  When I pushed the door open, I saw Josefine trembling on the floor, her right eye bruised and puffy. Surrounding her were the contents of my suitcase, scattered all over the room. My gaze shot to my most prized possession. Tim's photograph had disappeared from my wall. And on my pillow… lay a pile of shreds. The only relic I had left of my lost brother, destroyed.

  "Dina?" was all I managed to breathe.

  Josefine whimpered a "Yes."

  That photograph had survived with me through a lot of shifts and upheavals. The thought that it should be ripped from me like this, by that… that animal…

  I wanted to both scream and cry at once. But instead, I surrendered to an emotion I had gotten to know all too well, and felt all too often, over the past eight years.

  Anger. My fury consumed me and every fiber of my being felt like it was burning up.

  I couldn't even bring myself to care if what I was about to do would prolong my sentence by months. Feeling my fists connecting with that monster's face would make it all worthwhile.

  My chest heaving as I attempted to regain some semblance of control, I thundered out of the room.

  That girl is going to regret ever crossing paths with me.

  3

  I stopped the first girl I came across in the hallway—a rotund fifteen or sixteen-year-old—and gripped her shoulders. "Which room is Dina Bradbury's?" I demanded of her in a menacing whisper.

  "I-I don't know," she stammered, trying to shrug away.

  Cursing beneath my breath, I let her go before moving on to the next girl, and then the next. The fourth girl I stopped knew which room Dina resided in, and the moment the answer left her lips, I hurtled there.

  Arriving outside the door I burst in, my fists balled so tight my short nails dented my flesh.

  Dina was standing on the opposite side of the room with her back toward me. I couldn't see what she was doing exactly, but as she twisted around, her eyes bulged. I had found her alone, with nobody to obstruct my path to her.

  I lunged forward and grabbed hold of her shirt. Swinging a leg behind her knees, I sent her crashing to the floor. I leapt on top of her, pinning her down. Then I began pummeling blow after heavy blow against her face.

  She groaned, her large form struggling beneath me as I straddled her hips. Her head shifted from side to side, trying to avoid my beating. Then she raised a hand and managed to catch the next punch before it could connect. Her grip closed around my fist and I fought to maintain my dominance as she twisted forcefully beneath me. She managed to dislodge me with a speed I hadn't been expecting, getting me on my side. She thrust her knee upward to collide with my groin, but I shielded myself with my shins. We broke apart, scrambling to our feet. Her nose was already bleeding. Next, I would squash it flat.

  I was about to close in on her again when, to my confusion, she reached into her mouth. When she withdrew her hand, she was holding the top and bottom layers of her braces.

  Removable braces.

  She'd managed to keep them from the wardens.

  My pulse raced as I realized what she was doing. She quickly broke off the smooth rubber seal at the end of each of the wires, leaving them bare and pointed. Then she held a brace in each hand, positioning the wiry ends between her fingers so they stuck out like claws.

  As she lashed out with her right arm, I swiped it with mine, knocking it away from me.

  She has weapons. I can't get caught up in this. I need to get out of here, my brain was telling me, and yet my mind and emotions were dictating a different thing entirely.

  I hadn't hurt her enough yet. I wanted to break her nose. Give her a black eye. Split her cheekbone. I wanted to give her some kind of permanent scar so that she would always have something to remind her of what she had done to me.

  She swung out at me again, this time with both hands. I ducked, but not fast enough. She managed to catch my right shoulder, splitting the fabric of my shirt and etching a stinging cut into my skin.

  And then she launched all her weight toward me at once, crushing me against the floor as I had done to her. She raised both hands and attempted to bring them down against me, wires pointed downward. I gripped her wrists, stopping them a few inches away from my body, using every muscle in my arms and shoulders to keep the wires from plunging into me. Catching the glint of malice in her eyes came as a wake-up call. I realized in this moment, she was as crazy as I was.

  Neither of us are thinking straight.

  Even though my rage was still running wild, this was just stupid. Really stupid.

  So she ripped up Tim's picture. I can try to piece it back together again. But I can't get involved in this.

  What the hell am I doing?

  As I strained beneath her weight, I struggled to slip out of the lock she had me in.

  I had made my bed, and now I was forced to lie in it.

  If I'd had longer nails, I could've dug them into her flesh in an attempt to loosen her grip. Instead, I had only my bony fingertips to use to press down hard against her pressure points. I managed to make her left hand release its hold on the brace, but with this hand now free, she used it to clamp around my neck, crushing my windpipe.

  As I gazed into her dark eyes and fought to breathe, I wondered if she would actually go so far as to kill me. Maybe Vera had been right in her warning. Maybe Dina was insane.

  My vision started going hazy, and I couldn't even yell out for help. I scooped up the brace she dropped, but every part of me was screaming to not go down that road. Not to even cut her arm in an attempt to free myself. That slope was far too slippery. I was already on my last warning.

  I wriggled wildly, forcing her to reposition her body in order to maintain her dominance. And as she did, I was finally able to put my legs to use. I slid both knees upward in one forceful thrust, causing her to jerk forward. Her hold on my neck loosened.

  I gasped, heaving oxygen back into my lungs. My instinct was to immediately brace myself for another attack… but it didn't come.

  Then I realized that my right hand—the hand that had been clutching her second brace—felt moist. In fact, my upper chest and right shoulder felt moist, too. A trail of moisture.

  My eyes refocusing, I scrambled to sit upright, heaving her weight off of me.

  Harrowing déjà vu washed over me as I stared at Dina, lying on the floor while choking and clutching her throat, blood spilling from her neck and pooling around her.

  The door shot open behind me.

  A scream erupted. Vera Sykes's scream.

  "OH, MY GOD! VIOLET'S KILLED DINA!"

  I haven't killed her! I thought to myself in a panic. She's still alive! She just… She just needs to get to the hospital, dammit!

  But the amount of blood that was spilling from her throat… As Vera raced away, shrieking for the wardens, I already knew what would happen next.

  4

  Footsteps pounded outside. Five wardens spilled into the room—Vera and several other girls looming behind them.

  I was in a daze, still not believing what had happened. My sodden hands were trembling as two wardens flipped me over and pinned me against the floor. The other three picked up Dina and rushed her out, before dragging me to my feet and pulling me into the hallway after her.

  My blood pulsing in my ears, everything around me was a blur. As we approached Josefine's and my room, I managed to catch a glimpse of her terrified face, but they pulled me right past her. They wouldn't bother to stop to collect my things. What use would they be to me now?

  We arrived at the stairwell and my feet dragged and tripped as we wound our way down the steps. Reac
hing the ground floor, we moved through the work room and the reception where Ms. Maddox was sitting. I didn't even get a chance to witness the expression on her face. I was forced forward as the wardens escorted me out of the mill.

  We came upon four more wardens here. Two of them raced off around the side of the building, returning in two trucks. Dina was loaded into the back of one, myself into the other. As they slammed the doors shut behind me, I was plunged into darkness — the nightmare replaying over and over in my mind. Those few seconds before Dina's end. My knees thrusting upward. The moistness of her blood. Her choking.

  The vehicles trundled down the long track that led to the city, but it sounded like they parted ways as they reached the end — mine split to the right, Dina's to the left. Both headed to different destinations. Very different destinations. I clutched the base of my seat as beads of sweat formed on my upper lip.

  The road was bumpy. My elbows and the back of my head banged against the walls, but I could hardly make an effort to hold myself still. It was as though the life had been sucked out of me already. Everything seemed pointless.

  I'd imagined this moment a number of times since claiming my first life. I'd imagined this journey, across the bumpy outskirts of Matrus, blending into the smooth roads of the city, where the labs were situated. A small part of me had always known that my anger would get the better of me again.

  Closing my eyes, I lost track of time.

  Finally, the doors opened, letting in a stream of streetlight. Hands grabbed me and pulled me out and I found myself standing on a sidewalk, my surroundings not what I had expected them to be. I was not outside the labs, but the gates of Frenton, another detention center—the most central to the city. Then I reminded myself that this should not be surprising. It was nighttime and lab technicians didn't work at night. Of course, I would spend the night in a cell and be taken to the labs tomorrow morning.

  The wardens led me to the main rectangular gray building and into a reception area where they picked up a set of keys from the woman behind the desk. Then we walked along a hallway before moving down a stairwell, down, down, down, until we reached what had to be the lowermost floor. We arrived at the end of a hallway lined with cells, all empty. They stopped outside the third one on our left and thrust me inside.