Brave New Girl

  “You’ve already spoken to me,” he says. “Stopping now is pointless.”

  He’s right. And I can’t resist. “What happened to your arm?” I ask, studying the long, jagged scar winding around the flesh below his elbow.

  Trigger remains focused on my face. “I got snagged trying to avoid a knife. It looks nasty, but there’s no permanent nerve or muscle damage.”

  I only vaguely know what that means. What I do understand is that no two scars are alike. If Trigger 17 were to take off the jacket bearing his name, I would still be able to identify him at a glance.

  “So you stand out.” Gardeners don’t have distinctive scars unless something goes horrifically wrong, which hasn’t happened in my lifetime, and the thought of being so conspicuous sets me on edge. “You’re different from your identicals.” Does that mean he’s no longer an identical?

  If so, what is he?

  The Administrator has no identicals, because when she ascended to her position as the head of Management, her genome was retired—a rare and extraordinary honor. But everyone else is one of many. A part of the whole. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.

  Trigger shrugs. “Most cadets have scars by the time they get promoted to year thirteen,” he says. “So we’re all alike, in that we’re each a little different.”

  My eyes close as I try to puzzle through that. Soldiers are all different from their identicals. They fit in because they’re different.

  That’s so absurd it almost makes sense.

  “Any other questions?” Trigger says, drawing my thoughts back from where they’ve wandered. “We may be stuck here awhile.”

  “What happened to Mace 7?” I ask. “How was he punished?”

  “Um…I think he had to mop our entire dormitory floor for a month. Or maybe he scrubbed toilets. Those are the most common punishments at our academy.”

  There are common punishments at the Defense Academy? I can count on one hand the number of times a girl from my division has required punishment.

  For a moment, I can only stare at Trigger. “Why—”

  But then the lights come back on, blinding us with the sudden glare. I stand as the elevator lurches into motion again and begins to descend smoothly toward the lobby level. One glance at the camera overhead confirms that it’s functioning. I can’t ask Trigger 17 my last question, and I will probably never know the answer.

  I don’t even dare look him in the eye.

  When the doors slide open, we are greeted by a small crowd of Management members in dark suits and skirts and mechanics in gray coveralls. Cady 34 looks relieved to see me in one piece, but the quick flick of her gaze toward Trigger 17 is telling. She knows we were trapped in the dark together for nearly an hour, with nothing but fear to feed growling bellies and wandering minds. But there’s no evidence that we broke any rules.

  “Your work honors us all,” Trigger says, gesturing for me to precede him into the lobby, and his voice is the epitome of professional detachment. There is no sign of the boy who risked punishment to distract me from terror and panic.

  I give him a formal nod and try to follow his lead, even though my guts are twisting with fear and my lungs feel ready to burst with a strange, exhilarating excitement.

  We have a secret.

  In my entire life, I’ve never had a secret more important than having seen Iris 5 take an extra cookie from the snack tray back in the primary dorm.

  Even if I never see Trigger 17 again, he and I have this secret to share. I am on fire with the knowledge that we broke one of the most consequential rules and no one else has any idea. Or at least no one can prove what they might suspect.

  I don’t know what to do with that knowledge, other than swallow it and let it warm me from the inside. So that’s what I do.

  “Thank you for your service.” I step into the lobby, and Cady 34 guides me away from the elevator, giving me instructions for how to get a late lunch and make up the class time I’ve missed. As she ushers me toward the front door of the Management Bureau, I glance back to find Trigger standing alone. He is a cadet, and cadets must be independent and creative. He will procure his own missed lunch.

  Maybe he’ll pluck peaches and dig up carrots growing in the wild.

  His gaze meets mine and he smiles—just the tiniest upturn of lips I no longer hesitate to label beautiful. Then he turns and walks off in the opposite direction, and I know that though I may see his face all over the city for the rest of my life, I will likely never see Trigger 17 again.

  ‘I wake up with a strange ache in my chest and Trigger 17’s face lingering behind my eyelids, and though I’ve woken in the same bed since the day I was promoted to Dahlia 11, for a moment I have no idea where I am. Then Poppy comes into focus, leaning over me from the side of my bunk. Her hand is on my shoulder. Her frown is trained down at me, and when I see that she’s already dressed, I understand.

  I’ve overslept. Again.

  “Dahlia, we’re going to be late,” she repeats, and I practically throw myself out of bed onto the floor. A future instructor would never be late.

  “What’s going on with you?” Violet demands as I pull a gray dress from the closet we share. All our dresses and shirts and pants are the same, because mass production is efficient and we are all the same size. The only variation is in our jackets and aprons, which have our names embroidered on them. “You’ve been distracted for days.”

  For eight days, to be exact. Since the day I got trapped in that elevator.

  “I’m just having trouble sleeping.”

  “You should tell Medical,” Sorrel says from the bathroom, wiping a streak of toothpaste from her chin.

  But Medical can’t know about the source of my dreams or the fear that my secret will be discovered, and the more I think about that, the more reckless my fraternization violation feels.

  Yet even my mounting fear after the fact can’t diminish the thrill that travels down my spine every time I think about being stuck in the elevator with Trigger 17. Every time I see his identicals marching across the common lawn or jogging in formation. I don’t know what this feeling is. I don’t understand why my hands suddenly feel so empty. Why I reach out for him in my dreams.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I insist as I pull my dress over my head. “I just had a bad dream.”

  “Is it Management?” Poppy smooths back her wavy brown hair and secures it with an elastic band. “Is this about your meeting with Cady 34?”

  “Maybe.” I drop my nightclothes into the laundry chute built into the wall, where they slide toward the basement to wait for students from the manual labor division to wash, dry, and fold them. “It was unnerving, being called out by myself.” Technically that’s not a lie. “I’m just…”

  Violet and Sorrel pause in their morning routines to frown at me as my thought trails into silence.

  “She’s nervous.” Poppy steps into the bathroom and runs water over her toothbrush. “Because she’s being considered for an instructor position.”

  Sorrel’s jaw drops open. Violet’s brow furrows above narrowed brown eyes.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to tell you, in case I don’t make it.”

  Violet’s frown deepens. “But you told Poppy.”

  “She tells me everything.” Poppy turns on her toothbrush and sticks it into her mouth, leaving me to dig my way out of that hole on my own.

  “I don’t tell her everything. Besides, Violet, you didn’t tell me when Calla—”

  “Tell us what you haven’t told Poppy!” Sorrel whispers, sinking onto her bottom bunk to put on her shoes.

  “That’s not what I meant. There’s nothing to tell.” I’m starting to think I’m a terrible liar, and for the first time in my life that prospect bothers me.

  Sorrel studies me, and for a second I think she’ll press the issue. Then Violet throws a shoe at her. “Come on! I’m not going to be late just because she can’t make it out of bed on time!”

  Sorrel stands reluctantly
.

  “Go on,” Poppy says. “I’ll light a fire under Dahlia and we’ll meet you in the cafeteria.”

  As soon as the door closes behind our identicals, Poppy turns on me. “Is it the boy?” she whispers, too low for the camera mounted in the corner to pick up. “Did you dream about him again?”

  I haven’t told anyone else about Trigger 17. I can’t tell anyone else. Sorrel is legitimately concerned about me, but she tells Violet everything, and Violet likes to be liked. She’ll tell everyone.

  “Yes.” I run water over my toothbrush and stare at myself in the mirror. I look the same, but something feels different. I can’t get him out of my head. “I don’t understand it,” I tell her as I squeeze toothpaste onto my brush. “I don’t know what made me talk to him. And I can’t figure out why every time I close my eyes, he’s there. Right behind my eyelids. Smiling.” There’s something about his smile. It gives me a strange, unsteady feeling deep in my stomach.

  “It sounds weird.” Poppy grabs a pair of socks from my drawer and sticks the folded bundle into my left shoe. “We see boys all the time, and I’ve never dreamed about one. They’re no more interesting than our own identicals. Less so, really.”

  “I know.” But Trigger is different from the boys in the year-sixteen hydroponic gardening class. “Poppy.” I turn to her with toothpaste foam in the corners of my mouth. “He’s…beautiful.” I can’t figure out how else to explain. “And he’s dangerous,” I whisper, just in case the camera in our bedroom can pick up audio from the bathroom.

  Poppy’s reflection in the mirror goes still. “Why are you saying that like it’s an advantage?”

  “I don’t know!”

  She lowers her voice and frowns at me in the mirror. “He spoke to you, Dahlia.”

  “I’m aware.” I run water into the sink to add audio camouflage.

  “He put you at risk. He put us all at risk.”

  “I know, and he terrifies me. But at the same time, thinking about him makes me feel like I’m at the end of a relay race. Like my whole body is alive and I can’t catch my breath.”

  Poppy’s frown deepens. “Dahlia, I think you may be ill. That sounds like some kind of virus.”

  “I’m not sick,” I whisper as I cross into the bedroom to pull on my shoes and socks. But something is definitely wrong. Or at least…different.

  “Dahlia!” Poppy whispers fiercely as she sinks onto my bunk next to me. “You spoke to him!”

  There’s no use denying it. She knows me too well.

  “I couldn’t help it. The power was out, so the cameras were off and he was so fascinating! He doesn’t think about things the same way we do. We were like two people standing in opposite corners of the same room—we see all the same things but from totally different perspectives.” I want to know what else he sees. I want to know how he sees things. I want to know why his view is so different from mine.

  I want to know everything.

  “Okay, we can’t talk about this anymore,” Poppy says as I tie my other shoe. “Ever again. This is unsafe, Dahlia.”

  “I’m sorry to have dragged you into it.”

  She shrugs. “I’m in it anyway. We all are.” Because what one identical does affects all the others. “That’s why you can’t tell anyone else about this.”

  “I know.” And the truth is that I don’t want to. This is my secret. It may be the only one I ever have.

  Poppy and I greet our identicals in the cafeteria, and as I spear a clump of scrambled eggs with my fork I scan the crowd out of habit, looking for Dahlia 17. I find her easily; she always sits in the same place. Her roommates are the Violet, Sorrel, and Poppy from the year-seventeen class, but she seems to be closer to Iris and Rose. I wish I could hear what they’re talking about. They’re just months away from joining the workforce at year eighteen, and I’m dying to know what advanced hydroponic techniques I have yet to learn. What glimpses of life as an adult they’ve already seen.

  I’ll know all that for myself soon, but patience has never been among my gifts. Poppy says my plants must feel the same way, which is why they mature so quickly. I don’t know if that’s true, but I can’t shake the feeling that, much like the plants they grow, my friends are in no hurry to see or experience anything new. They never seem to think about the future or what it might bring.

  I can’t figure out why I feel so different, or why meeting Trigger 17 has highlighted all those differences. But I know much better than to ask.

  For weeks I see Trigger 17’s face everywhere I turn, and I can’t decide whether this new frequency is real or imagined. I’ve probably seen his genome all my life but never had reason to notice. Now every time I see a formation of year-seventeen cadets, my gaze betrays me. I’m losing focus. During sports practice my soccer kicks go wild. I drop the relay baton. I lose count of the seedlings I’m supposed to be inventorying.

  Then, on one warm early fall afternoon more than three weeks after we were rescued from the broken elevator, I step out of the secondary dormitory in line between Poppy and Sorrel and am stunned to see Trigger 17 marching in formation with a squad of twelve cadets.

  His head turns slightly and he sees me.

  My step falters and my chest feels tight. I know it’s him without checking for his name. I can see it in the way his gaze lingers. In the subtle upturn of his lips. In the red braid over his shoulder.

  How have I never noticed that most cadets don’t wear the braid?

  Each of his classmates wears a backpack heavy enough to press indentations into his shoulders. Their boots are muddy. Their uniforms are layered with dust and they look tired. They’ve obviously come from some kind of training mission outside the city.

  Poppy follows my gaze before I realize I’m staring. “What’s wrong?” she asks.

  “Nothing. I…Did you know they get to eat vegetables picked right out of the ground?”

  “Who?” Sorrel whispers, glancing back at us over her shoulder.

  “The Defense cadets. You know how they have to cook their own food when they’re out in the wild?” I ask, and my roommates nod. “They don’t carry food with them. They eat whatever they can find out there. Growing wild.”

  “How do you know that?” Sorrel asks.

  Poppy gives me a warning look, but I already know I’ve said too much. I shrug. “I heard it somewhere.”

  “Better them than us,” Sorrel says, but I think she’s wrong. I know we grow food more efficiently than it could ever grow from the ground, and I know that our specially engineered strains are hardier and healthier than anything found in the wild. Still, I’d like to see how things used to be. How they still are outside the city.

  “Isn’t that class a little small for Defense?” Violet whispers from behind Poppy.

  “They’re Special Forces.” But as soon as the words are out, I wish I could stuff them back into my mouth. I’m not supposed to know anything about Defense. So I improvise. “Everything special is produced in limited quantities. Like geneticists.”

  “I heard geneticists are cloned in batches of ten,” Piper adds, and I smile at her, thankful for the change of subject. “And their education is so intense that they don’t graduate until year twenty-five.”

  “I heard they’re six to a class,” Violet says. She always argues. “And they don’t finish school until they’re in year thirty. They’re the most elite identicals in the world.”

  I’m pretty sure that Special Forces cadets are at least as elite as geneticists, but I let her statement stand because no one is focused on Trigger’s squad anymore. Except me.

  I wonder where they go, outside the city. I wonder what they do. I wonder what the air smells like in the wild. The plants in our gardening lab smell so good they never fail to make me hungry, but I’ve never smelled them in their natural environment, where the scents are free to mingle with the other aromas of nature.

  Before I realize it, we’ve arrived at the delivery bay behind the Workforce Academy, where carts of gar
dening supplies are waiting to be unloaded. I try to concentrate on counting and lifting and recording the inventory, but all I can think about is the wild. Unlike a landscape gardener, I’ve never sunk my fingers into the dirt. I’ve never pulled a plant from the earth. I’ve never seen trees growing in any formation other than the meticulously planned, geometrically precise layout of the city’s lawns and orchards.

  How wild is the wild, exactly?

  “Dahlia!” Iris 16 snaps softly, and I look down to realize that liquid fertilizer is dripping onto my shoe from the jug I’ve just lifted from the delivery cart. “How could you not notice the leak?” she demands. “These bottles are standing a quarter inch deep in liquid fertilizer!”

  I glance into the crate and see that Iris is right. I haven’t been able to truly concentrate since I met Trigger 17. I want to know what his bureau is taught. I want to see the wild for myself. I want to experience the things Trigger gets to see, touch, and taste.

  I want to talk to him again.

  The thought that anyone other than Poppy might find out about my ambition and dissatisfaction scares me to death. But I still want dangerous things, even though I know how very dangerous they are.

  “Dahlia.”

  I look up, startled, when Poppy takes the leaking jug from me and sets it back in the crate. “Are you still not sleeping well?” she asks while Iris shakes her head in dismay.

  Actually, I look forward to lights-out every night, in case I dream about Trigger 17. Only in my dreams can he and I meet, talk, and look at each other with impunity. But Poppy is trying to help me explain myself.

  “I’m fine,” I assure them both. “I just got distracted.”

  Poppy looks even more worried. A future instructor cannot be subject to distraction.

  “You’re going to have to report that as damaged.” Iris nods at the crate where the leaking jug now sits. “And you’ll have to change your shoes.”