Startled by that realization, I look around for something to hold on to as we pull away from the Defense vehicle. The front gate looms ahead. Behind us the world is awash in bright red and blue.
Trigger grips the door handle on his right. The gate begins to roll closed, no doubt in response to an alert that has gone out.
“Faster!” Hennessy shouts, and Margo squeals with excitement while I squeeze her brother’s hand because I have nothing else to hold on to.
The driver stomps harder and the car lurches forward again. The sirens fade into the distance. Our car shoots through the open gate and into the wild.
I am outside Lakeview for the first time in my life. But I don’t truly begin to breathe easier until I turn and see that the Defense vehicles—there are three of them now—have stopped at the city limit, evidently the boundary of their authority.
I turn again to see relief shining in Trigger’s eyes. I give him a nervous smile, then stare through the windshield in surprise. The cars headlights illuminate the road ahead of us, which is how I can see that though it’s paved out here in the wild, probably all the way to the nearest city, there are no more cruise strips.
That’s why guests need drivers. There are no CitiCars in the wild.
“Yeah!” Margo throws her fist into the air, and though I’m unfamiliar with the gesture I can feel the celebration in it.
Hennessy squeezes my hand and I look up to find him grinning at me. He and his sister have no idea what they’ve really done for me and Trigger, but they seem just as pleased with the result as I am. As Trigger is…
But Trigger’s relief is dampened by an edge of caution in the lines on his forehead. In the hard set of his jaw. His eyes silently remind me that we may be out of Lakeview, but we are not out of the woods. Or rather, we’re not yet in the woods.
I nod, telling him silently that I remember the plan: Ditch Hennessy and Margo once we’re in their city. Steal whatever supplies we can find. Then find a way out of Mountainside.
Where no one will be hunting us.
I don’t realize how tired I am until I catch myself dozing off in the car and suddenly sit straight up. Trigger chuckles softly.
Margo’s adrenaline didn’t last long, and once we hit the foothills the gentle rocking of the car lulled her right to sleep.
Hennessy held out longer. He wanted to talk, and eventually I pretended to fall asleep so he couldn’t ask me any more questions that might expose my ignorance.
Then I actually fell asleep.
I look to my right and find Hennessy snoring softly on the bench seat, his head propped against the window.
Trigger has been awake and on alert the whole time.
“How much farther is it?” I ask the driver.
“Just a few minutes now,” he answers just as softly, without taking his focus from the road. “We’ll have you home and in bed within half an hour.”
If only that were true…
“Stop the car!” Trigger says, staring out his window, and the driver jumps, startled.
“Why?”
Trigger turns to me, and his eyes practically glow with excitement in the dim light from the dashboard. “Wild apples,” he whispers.
“Stop,” I whisper, smiling. “Please.”
The driver shrugs, then slows the car to a stop in the middle of the road.
“We’ll only be a minute,” Trigger says as he pushes his door open.
Crisp, cold air floods the interior of the car, and I hurriedly climb over Margo so I can close the door without waking either her or her brother.
“I saw them in the headlights,” Trigger says as he leads me through a patch of crunchy, overgrown grass, his hand warm in mine. Weeds catch on the bottom of my dress and scratch my legs, but I can see where we’re headed. Just yards from the car, a cluster of broad trees stand in the moonlight, branches weighed down by round red fruit.
“Spartan apples,” I say as we come to a stop beneath the closest tree. “Historically harvested in the fall.” But I’ve only ever seen them in the hydroponic orchard.
“Pick one,” Trigger says.
He watches my face as I reach up and touch one of the small, almost perfectly round fruits. Its flesh is rougher than I expected. Its leaves are a bright green, even in the dark.
I give the apple a gentle twist, then a tug. The branch bobs as it pulls free. And I am holding my very first fruit plucked straight from the tree.
I hold it to my nose and inhale. The scent is sweet, with a slight tang. The Spartan is a great apple for juicing. Or for eating right from the core.
I take a bite and my teeth burst through the skin into crisp, sweet flesh. Juice drips down my chin. I laugh out loud.
This apple tastes wild. Like earth and wind, with a wonderful natural sweetness. And though it’s red and round like all the others growing in the branches of the same tree, it is subtly different from all of them.
“They’re still asleep,” Trigger whispers as I swallow my first bite.
I glance back at the car to make sure, then I pull Trigger down and kiss him in the moonlight. Under the apple tree. With fresh juice still damp on my lips.
He tastes wild too.
“I don’t want to get back in the car,” I murmur when that first wild kiss ends.
“I know,” he says. “But we have to. You’re already shivering.”
I hadn’t even noticed. But he’s right. It’s too cold to stay outside without supplies.
“We’re almost to Mountainside. We’ll take what we need, then find a way back through the gate. We’ll be back here before you know it.”
“Promise?” I say as we head for the car.
“I swear.”
“Hey.” Hennessy sits up as I climb back into the backseat, still carrying my apple. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I take another bite, then speak around it. “I got hungry.”
“That thing’s probably dirty,” Margo says, pushing tangled hair back from her face.
“Yeah.” I smile to myself. “It is.”
The car rolls forward again, and the angle of the road steepens sharply. We are driving up the side of the mountain now. Trigger turns in his seat to watch me until Hennessy takes my hand, and for the thousandth time I wonder exactly how close Hennessy and Waverly are. I’ve already deduced that there are no rules against fraternization in Mountainside, which leaves possibilities well beyond what my limited imagination can come up with.
It’s strange and disillusioning to suddenly realize I know very little about the world, and even less about the people in it.
Margo sits straighter when the city comes into view. She stares through the windshield at her home as if the scene means little to her, but it takes every bit of self-control I have not to gasp at the sight.
Mountainside is much bigger than I expected. Much bigger than Lakeview.
From this distance, the buildings don’t look as tall as the dormitories or the Workforce Academy at home, but there are many, many more of them. They seem to climb the side of the mountain, which leaves them in plain view over the city walls, and even in the middle of the night about half of them are lit up.
My heart pounds as we approach the gate. None of my identicals ever left Lakeview. I never expected to see anything of the world beyond the walls of the city where I was designed, created, incubated, and raised.
Hennessy’s driver rolls the car to a stop at the city gate. The road is so steep that I am forced to lean back in my seat, and the windshield seems to face directly up into the sky. The driver presses a button and his window descends into the car door. A guard leans down so he can see inside the vehicle.
I blink, certain my tired eyes are seeing things that aren’t really there.
The guard’s uniform reads GLADIUS 28. But that’s a Lakeview soldier’s name. Does Mountainside use the same names my native city does?
The guard opens his mouth to ask a question, but the words die on his tongue the moment his g
aze finds my face. “Ms. Whitmore,” he says, clearly surprised. He lifts a tablet and taps a few keys. “I have no record of you leaving the city tonight….”
Hennessy laughs. “Surely that can’t be a first for you, soldier. Open the gate and let us through.”
Gladius 28 gives him a sharp nod of compliance, then taps something else on his tablet. The gate rolls open smoothly and relatively quickly, and as soon as the opening is wide enough the driver takes us through it.
Just inside the gate, he stops the car and says, “Automatic engage.” The dashboard hums as the steering wheel recedes into its cavity and a panel slides shut over it. “Whitmore estate,” the driver says and the car rolls forward again, this time following the cruise strip on the road, which looks just like the ones painted down every road in Lakeview.
Though the sun has been down for hours, the area of Mountainside laid out immediately past the front gate is lit up like broad daylight by pole-mounted light fixtures lining the streets. Tall buildings are crammed close together just feet from the sidewalk, and the grounds seem to be entirely paved. I can’t see so much as a blade of grass from my vantage point in the center of the backseat.
Just as I become convinced that Mountainside doesn’t have a thing in common with Lakeview, movement catches my eye through Margo’s window. I lean around her, and as the car rolls down the street I am surprised to see laborers in familiar brown uniforms sweeping trash down the sidewalks while most residents of Mountainside sleep. The longer I stare out the windows, the more laborers I notice. Six women with identical faces, wearing identical green landscape gardening uniforms, kneel in a flower bed between the street and the sidewalk, planting greenery. Another half-dozen men pull garbage cans to the side of the street from the fronts of various buildings.
But the few citizens I see walking down the sidewalk and frequenting businesses this late at night—those who are out enjoying the late hour rather than working—are individuals. No two of them look alike. No two wear the same clothing.
Our car rolls to a stop, and I glance through the windshield to see that we’re sitting in front of a pole suspended vertically over the middle of the street. Hanging from the pole is a single red light. I have to bite my tongue to keep from asking why we’re stopped in front of a red light, because I’m sure that’s something Waverly would already know.
While the car idles, I look out Hennessy’s window and see another group of six landscape gardeners working in the middle of the night, but the timing isn’t what makes my eyes widen until they feel as if they will pop out of my skull.
I know those faces.
The gardeners are all girls, and they all have pale curls, narrow-set dark eyes, and long, straight noses. If I were any closer, I know I’d see a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of their noses.
When the car begins to roll forward again—the red light is now green—we pass closely enough for me to see the name embroidered across the front of one uniform.
AZALEA 19.
I gasp. I know those girls. I know their faces, anyway, because I saw them in the Workforce Academy’s cafeteria every day for years. They are from the landscape gardening class that graduated almost two years ago.
How on earth did six landscape gardeners from Lakeview wind up hours away, working on the streets of Mountainside in the middle of the night?
“You like them?” Hennessy asks, following my gaze.
I have no idea how to answer.
“What about those?” He points through the window and I follow his finger to where another group of six identical brown-clad women are washing the windows of a shop that clearly closed for the day hours earlier. “My father bought a batch just like that to replace his household staff, which is scheduled to expire next week. They should be here in a couple of days.”
The lump in my throat threatens to choke me. He’s talking about the windows. Please let him be talking about the windows.
But he isn’t. Windows won’t replace a household staff. Yet a crew of identical girls from Lakeview’s year-eighteen manual labor division will do that nicely.
I can’t answer. I am horrified beyond words.
I understand now why Lakeview has no residential or industrial ward.
Classes that graduate from my native city don’t go to work for the glory of Lakeview after all.
My father bought a batch….
I feel like I’m going to be sick.
I look at Trigger and find his jaw clenched. His hands grip the edges of his seat. He is fighting to control his tongue, or his fists, or whatever part of him most wants to express the rage we’re both feeling as this new reality crashes over us.
It’s time to go. It’s time for us to leave the car and run off into the city to take what we need to survive in the wild.
It’s time to leave both Lakeview and Mountainside in the dust.
I lay one hand on his shoulder. He turns to look at me. My mouth is open, ready to put our plan in motion.
Then the driver slows the car in front of a tall, ornate gate set just back from the road. “Welcome home, Ms. Whitmore.”
What? No.
I can only stare in terrified silence as he presses a button at the gate and tells the face that appears on the screen that he has brought Waverly Whitmore home.
“Excuse me?” the black-clad soldier on-screen says. “Ms. Whitmore went to bed hours ago.”
The driver chuckles. “You’re mistaken.” He angles the screen until the soldier on it is looking right at me. The soldier scowls, then presses a button offscreen. The gate rolls open.
Hennessy’s car pulls forward on its own, driving us past a manicured tiered lawn climbing the side of the mountain until we roll to a stop in front of a huge house eerily reminiscent of the Administrator’s mansion, but built into the earth itself at the back.
My heart thumps in my ears. I can’t get out. I don’t belong here.
The tall, narrow front door flies open and a woman steps barefoot onto the broad front porch, wrapping a long pink robe tight around her slim hips. “Waverly Whitmore!” she snaps, bending to frown at me through the window. “Get out of the car!”
Trigger gets out and opens Margo’s door. He gives me a reassuring look as I climb over her, and as he helps me out he whispers, “Get ready to run.”
I’m more than ready. But when I stand at the edge of the driveway and look up at the woman in the pink robe, every thought in my head deserts me. I am looking at an older version of myself.
Waverly’s mother has my brown eyes, fair skin, and pointed chin. But her nose is different.
“Who the hell is that?” she demands, frowning at Trigger.
Before I can figure out how to answer, the front door opens again. A girl with my face and Poppy’s smile comes jogging down the steps. “Hennessy!” she cries, without even a glance at me, and I realize he’s gotten out of the car at my back. “Look! They’ve got it loaded already! Have you seen it yet? It’ll be on every billboard in the city by tomorrow night.”
She holds up a tablet, but before I can see what’s on it, her gaze finds me.
Her jaw drops and her arm falls slack. “Mom…” Her voice is hoarse with shock. “What the hell is going on?”
Waverly’s mother stares back and forth between us, both hands clasped over her mouth.
And before I can decide what to do, my focus is drawn down to the tablet hanging by Waverly’s right knee. On its screen, I am shocked to see my own face, made up with the paint and glitter Margo and her friends wore at Seren’s party. Standing just behind me in the image is Hennessy, whose arms are wrapped around my waist.
The caption beneath our smiling faces reads, “Don’t miss the wedding of the century—a Network Four exclusive! Lady Waverly Whitmore + Sir Hennessy Chapman Forever!”
This book could not have been written if not for the presence of several very important people in my life. I am thankful, as always, to my husband, who puts up with me on both the good days and t
he bad, and to my daughter and my son, for on-demand opinions from my target audience, as well as for their willingness to eat pizza when deadlines loom.
Thanks to Rinda Elliott, who helped me brainstorm Brave New Girl on the way from Oklahoma City to Dallas. Your friendship and willing ear mean so much to me.
Thanks also to Jennifer Lynn Barnes, for endless suggestions and opinions over weekly working lunches. Sometimes our lunches are the sanest hours of my week.
Endless gratitude to Sophie Jordan, Aprilynne Pike, and Kimberly Derting, who helped me figure out what this book was missing. I miss writing with you all in person!
And thanks most of all to my editor, Wendy Loggia, and to my agent, Merrilee Heifetz, who got the whole thing rolling. Your support means the world to me!
Can’t wait to find out what happens next?
Here’s a sneak peek at the sequel,
STRANGE NEW WORLD.
ONE
WAVERLY
I flop on my bed and touch the center of the screen covering the far wall of my bedroom. Rows of E-scape messages pop up. On the left edge of each message is a photo of the person who posted. Some of the messages are photographs. Others are video clips, playing silently because I’ve disabled the sound. I don’t want to hear about all the fun people are having without me.
Suddenly my bedroom door slides open with a whisper, and I wave my hand in a swiping motion, closing the message stream. The screen flashes white, then becomes transparent, showing the colorful stripes of the wall beneath.
“Knock, knock,” my father says from the doorway, even though the door is already open. I’ve set it to let him in but to keep my mother out. Of course, she can override the settings, but the fact that I want to keep her out will be enough to make my point.
My dad doesn’t say anything, but I know he saw my screen. He knows I was stalking the E-scape. “What, no production crew today?” He glances around my room in mock disbelief as he steps inside carrying a covered tray.