by K. Weikel
Chapter 5
The week passes by slowly as Becca waits eagerly to be fully masked.
Her parents walk her down to the garden at the edge of town, their white masks seeming to glitter in the sunlight. They talk about the future and go over the rules Becca has heard and learned about in school since she received her mask when she turned thirteen.
The sunlight shines through the leaves and down onto the surface of her mask. She smiles and looks out at all of the different faces on the white masks around her, as the voices beneath them bubble with laughter and light conversation.
Today is her birthday. The excitement runs through her as she waits for the exact time she had been born at, the moment she will be masked.
Three-oh-one pm eighteen years ago was the moment she was born, when she took her first breath and became a part of the city of masks—the society of masked people.
As she glances up from her watch and calculates the minutes until her masking (exactly thirty of them), she sees Quill over by a tree, looking out among the crowd. She still has not told him about the encounter with Banshee, and at the thought of it her nerves spike up inside of her, hoping he won’t ask her any questions about Banshee. She’d hate to lie to him…
Becca visits with other people in her clan, constantly checking her watch for the time. The suspense with each passing minute is killing her, and her heart feels like it’s going to burst from waiting so long. She tries to move her thoughts away by talking about other things, but she can’t help glancing down at her wrist and calculating the moments until she receives her mask.
Her peers around her ask her questions and laugh with her, although she doesn’t recognize half of them, and she shares her thoughts on the Light Clan, carefully picking her words so that she doesn’t get thrown out on her birthday.
Ten minutes, she can’t help but thinking. Ten minutes and then I’ll be an adult.
She counts down as the minutes pass.
Just a little bit longer, she tells herself as she looks around.
Something shines to her right in the bright sunlight for a second, and she looks to see what made it.
Becca can see nothing as she peers between two trees that make almost an archway over the twisting dirt path. Something shines into her eyes again, and she excuses herself from the conversation about mask decoration as she blinks to try and get the bright stain the light had made in her vision.
The trees stand high above her, and a bird flies out over the crowd that is now behind Becca. Something moves as she passes the trunks of the trees. As she turns to her left, a body covered in blood falls to the ground, his eyes shut and his mask broken in half as it hangs from his face.
Becca cries out as something grabs her.
A man in a white mask and brown hair sticking out from behind it grabs her by her arms and shakes her, wiping something on her with his rough hands. It’s wet and warm and sticky, but she can’t take her eyes off of the plain white mask of the man. She can’t breathe. She can’t think. She’s frozen where she stands, even as the man takes a step away from her and looks down at the body lying dead on the ground.
“Becca!” The man suddenly screams. “Becca what have you done?”
A crowd gathers, chatter, gasps, and screams circling around Becca as she stares at the man. That voice…
“Becca you’ve done wrong! You’ve done wrong!”
The man backs away as Quill walks out from the midst of the thickening crowd. She hadn’t realized how many people came to the party…
“What have you done?” Quill asks, his voice smooth and strangely calm.
Becca looks down at herself. Blood covers her arms and her hands. That’s what the man had been wiping on her!
“Quill!” She cries, breathless. “I didn’t do it—”
“Yes, yes she did, leader. She did. I saw it. She did wrong.”
The man’s voice sends chills up her spine.
“He’s lying!” She cries, keeping her arms spread out so they won’t touch her white dress. She didn’t do this. This wasn’t her fault. “It was him!”
“A white mask is saying she did it, so it must be the truth!” A woman calls from the front of the crowd. “Oh, Becca…”
Quill marches forward, and she looks down at the blood all over her arms, hands, and dress.
“Becca Reed,” Quill says. “Come with me.”
“No—no!” She cries, backing up. “I didn’t do this!”
She trips over a tree root and falls to the ground, sobs escaping her throat as she realizes this is the end of her life in the Dark Clan.
“You have failed,” He says as he towers over her, his shadow blocking what remains of the sun’s light as it filters through the leaves from Becca. “I will see you in court.”
Becca looks down at herself, the blood covering her white dress. She takes a glance at her watch, at the moment she became part of the Dark Clan.
Three-oh-one pm.
