BECCA
WAS IT MORNING? AFTERNOON? NIGHT? No clue. They’d gotten me at 3:00 this morning. How much time had passed? I didn’t know.
“Goddamnit!” I muttered, and tried to yank my hands apart for the hundredth time. They didn’t budge, and the zip tie dug more sharply into my skin. I felt the slight, warm stickiness of blood seeping down my hand. “Goddamnit to hell!”
“You!” said a woman’s voice, and my head swiveled blindly toward the sound—I couldn’t see anything through the black hood. I hadn’t seen anything since 3:12 a.m. “You! Swearing is forbidden!”
“Bite a scythe, asshole!” I snapped, and something big and solid slammed against my head. Sparks exploded inside my eyes as I gasped and fell sideways onto a cold concrete floor. “Oof!” I swallowed, tasting blood, trying to stave off a sudden urge to puke my guts up.
Someone leaned over me. “Swearing. Is. Forbidden,” said the woman’s icy voice. “Repeat that after me: Swearing is…”
“The only appropriate response to this shitty sitch!” I wanted to spit blood out but it would have just hit the hood.
A hard, pointed shoe kicked me then, right in my gut, and I almost screamed. Acid rose in my throat as a heavy, burning pain filled my insides. I quickly coiled up as best as I could with my hands tied behind me and my ankles lashed together. What in holy hell was going on? For about a minute this morning, I’d thought it was a prank, at best, and at worst, a warning from Big Ted, who I owed a measly thirty-two bucks. But after the first punch that had knocked my lights out, it became clear that this was some other shit altogether.
Rough hands scrabbled at my neck and I promised myself to bite the hell out of the next asshole who got too close. They untied the hood and yanked it off, making my head snap against the concrete again.
My eyes blinked painfully against the sudden, too-bright light. I wanted to throw up, then get my hands on the strongest painkillers I could find. A shadow blotted out the light, and I glanced up warily. A woman frowned down at me, but all I could do was gape at her. I’d never seen anything like her. Her brown hair was coiled on top of her head, like braided Easter bread. Her eyes had thin dark lines drawn around them, reminding me of those Egypt people who had failed because their system was bad. Her mouth was painted with barn-red paint, and I wondered how she could stand it. Wouldn’t the paint dry and crack? Didn’t it taste terrible?
Shifting a bit more onto my shoulders, I simply looked her up and down, not even caring if this got me kicked again. She was wearing a navy-blue suit, like a man’s suit, but with a skirt. Her shoes were… thin, totally useless for walking in fields. Her shirt was white and almost shiny—not cotton, not linen, not wool. I wanted to touch it.
“My name,” she said in a voice like an icicle, “is Helen Strepp. You may call me Ms. Strepp.”
My mouth has gotten me in trouble my whole life, and it didn’t stop now. “As long as I don’t call you late for dinner!” I said, remembering when my pa had laughed at that.
Ms. Strepp nodded at someone behind me; there was a slight sound, and then a rocklike boot kicked me in the back.
I couldn’t help sucking in breath with almost a whimper. My eyes squeezed shut against the pain and I realized that every part of me felt bruised and broken. If I’d been home by myself with no one to see, I would have cried. But I hadn’t cried in front of Careful Cassie in years, and I sure wasn’t going to give these assholes a show.
“Now,” said the woman, “what is my name?”
“Ms. Strepp,” I mumbled, not opening my eyes.
“Good,” she said, and I hated the satisfaction in her voice. Well, I hated everything about this, no doubt about that.
“Now you know my name, the fact that swearing is forbidden here, and you’ve gotten just a slight taste of what happens when you disobey the rules,” Ms. Strepp said. “The last thing you need to know right now is that you’re in prison. A maximum security prison for enemies of our system.”
That made my eyes pop open again, and I stared at her in disbelief.
“Are you shittin’ me?” I blurted, and was rewarded by a kick so hard I passed out.
6
A POEM by Rebecca Greenfield
Yellow is the color of the sun
Yellow is the color of ripening wheat
Yellow is the color of the hawkweed flowers in summer
Yellow is the color of corn (certain varieties—not Silver Queen)
Yellow is the color of this goddamn freaking goddamn son of a bitch goddamn freaking jumpsuit that they make me wear in goddamn freaking prison
The end.
They took my pa’s watch, which almost killed me. They took my clothes. They were my third-best jeans, the one T-shirt I had with no holes in it, and the soft plaid shirt with the shiny pearl snaps that I’d stolen from Careful Cassie last night. Looked like she wasn’t ever going to find out. Silver lining.
My loose yellow jumpsuit closed with a plastic zipper. There were no shoes of any kind. The one good thing was the Band-Aids they’d put on my wrists where the zip ties had gouged channels into my skin.
And, son of a bitch, this really was a freaking prison. Which meant we weren’t in our cell anymore. I knew every building, every house, every shed, every barn in our entire cell. Everyone did. None of those buildings had high concrete walls topped with cattle wire. None of them had windows with bars.
I was out of my cell for the first time in seventeen years. It was not an improvement. Which meant that the Provost was right again.
“Move!” A man in a gray uniform pointed his wooden billy club at me and motioned me through a barred gate. I walked through, shuffling because I still had ankle irons connected by a chain. The gate slammed shut behind us.
In addition to the huge, swelling bruises all over from being punched and kicked, my head hurt so much that I felt sick. When they’d moved me from the first room I was in to this big building, it had been dark outside. I hadn’t eaten all day and was hollow with hunger, dizzy with fatigue, and nauseated. So far, being out of my cell sucked.
“You will obey all the rules,” Ms. Strepp was saying, spitting out her words like gunfire. “You will try to fit in. You will do what is asked of you. You will speak only when spoken to. Is this clear?”
Pretty much a yes or no question, but my reply flew right out of my head as we moved down the hallway. There were small rooms on either side, like the ones we’d seen in history books about pre-system times. Jail rooms with people in them.
And all the people lining up to look at me, holding on to their bars, were kids.
7
KIDS. TEENAGERS, LIKE ME. WERE they all enemies of the system? I still didn’t understand what I had done to get myself thrown in prison. I mean, what thing in particular.
“Is this clear?” Ms. Strepp repeated more loudly, smacking me on the arm.
But I had stopped dead, because not only were the prisoners all kids, but they were… different from people in our cell. Some of them.
When I saw a slender girl with dark-brown skin and soft-looking, puffy brown hair I couldn’t help staring.
My skin is colored like vanilla ice cream. Ms. Strepp’s skin was chalky white, like cow bones left in the sun. The guard had a red face and neck, like a lot of men in our cell. Every single person that I’d ever seen was some shade of those basic three colors. My skin got tanner in the summer—most people’s did. But nobody in our cell had that smooth dark skin. Nobody had puffy brown hair like lamb’s wool.
The guard thunked me in the back with his club, and I kept shuffling forward.
“You will obey the rules,” Ms. Strepp said again. “You will try to fit in. You will do what is asked of you. You will—”
“Oh, my God!” I exclaimed, stopping again. A boy was holding on to his bars, watching me go by. He was different, too! His eyes were shaped like pumpkin seeds. His skin was golden, like corn silk at harvest. His hair was short and black.
This time the bil
ly club hit me hard against my hip bone. It really hurt and knocked me sideways so that I crashed against the bars. The kids inside took quick steps back, their eyes big.
When I regained my balance I shouted, “Goddamnit! Quit hitting me! What the hell is wrong with you?”
This pushed Ms. Strepp over the edge, and she whirled, punching me in the stomach as hard as she could. I doubled over, and then the worst happened: I puked all over her fancy, impractical shoes.
8
THIS WENT OVER LIKE A hay bale off a truck. The entire jail block froze in silence. I was thinking Ms. Strepp had lucked out, because I’d skipped breakfast this morning and hadn’t eaten anything since then. It wasn’t like after the pie-eating contest, which had been a rainbow of bad.
“Ow!”
Ms. Strepp grabbed my braid and yanked up on it hard enough to pull me off the ground. I pressed my lips together, trying not to say anything more. A crisp white handkerchief floated down to the floor.
“Clean. That. Up.” Ms. Strepp’s voice was shaking with fury.
I did, thinking that now I was the lucky one.
When her shoes were shiny again, she pulled up on my braid until I was standing. Muted whispers had begun among the prisoners. My head swam and I blinked several times, gritting my teeth. The guard pushed me forward with his club, and this time I kept my mouth shut until we stopped in front of a jail room. I gave a quick glance sideways and saw four colorful kids already in there. The guard unlocked the bars and shoved me inside, then slammed the gate closed and locked it.
“Bring your feet over here,” he commanded, and I shuffled forward. Reaching through the bars, he unlocked one ankle iron, then the other, and swiftly pulled the cuffs through the bars.
Ms. Strepp stepped closer and almost hissed at me. “You will follow the rules, you will fit in, you will do what is asked of you, and you will speak only when spoken to. Is this clear?”
I gave an unenthusiastic nod. With a sharp, satisfied grimace that I realized was her version of a smile, she and the guard marched back down the long hallway, her shoes clicking loudly against the floor.
I was in prison. I was an enemy of the system.
And I had no idea why.
9
CASSIE
BY THE TIME I’D SUSPECTED that Becca had been taken, it was 8:00. I’d immediately gone out again on the moped, and this time I went all around the cell on the ring road that follows the cell boundary, all twelve miles of it. No one I knew had ever gone across the Boundary—all we could see were thick, dark, dense woods. One road led into our cell, and the same road led out, but I’d never seen anyone come or go on it, either on foot or in a vehicle.
We’d been taught about the dangers beyond the boundary woods—there were many, many ways to die out there. Inside was better. Still, we’d heard stories of people who had tried to cross the Boundary—no one we knew, just people in the past. There were sensors, so the police and the Provost would know. And it would be bad.
At twelve miles an hour, it had taken me an hour to circle our cell. It was already a little past 9:00, and I still had to get home. But when I reached the boundary road leading out of our cell, I paused for a minute, peering into the darkness. I turned off the moped and looked on the ground, wondering if I would see my truck’s tire treads. They were distinctive because the front left tire had been patched, and the patch made a smooth spot in the middle of its treads.
I didn’t see them. But vehicles had obviously been here, and recently. I was still pondering this when I heard the 9:30 siren.
“Crap!” I jumped back on the moped and gunned it, which made me go slightly faster than a cow walking. The road leading in and out of the cell was in the northeast; I lived in the southwest. With any luck, I would get home with ten minutes to spare.
The moped’s weak headlight picked out the dusty roads I knew so well. I could probably close my eyes and still find my way home.
As it was, I had a problem. Stupidly, I hadn’t charged the moped during the day while I had to stay inside. With all the driving I’d done this morning, and then again tonight, its battery was pretty much drained. I was still a mile and a half from home when it went dead completely, the headlight flickering out and the small, quiet motor sputtering to a stop.
“Crap!” I said again. “Dammit!” I was usually more careful than this. Now I had a choice: abandon Ma’s moped here on the road and race for home, definitely getting there before curfew, or trying to push it all the way as fast as I could and risk missing curfew.
I hesitated for several moments on the dark, empty road, pulled by both choices. Then I grabbed the handlebars, kicked up the stand, and began wheeling it toward home.
I’m a strong girl. I had to be to keep on top of all the work since Pa—
I’m strong. But after only half a mile I was exhausted. My legs ached, it was hard to catch my breath, and I had to keep switching sides because of how the weight of the moped pulled my muscles.
I checked my watch. I had twelve minutes. I had another mile to go. If I left the moped by the side of the road and the police found it, it would be confiscated. People take care of what’s important to them. If I left it, it would mean it wasn’t important to me, that I didn’t really need it. And it would be taken.
If I still had the truck, we could get by without the moped. With no truck, the moped was the only thing that kept us from having to walk everywhere.
Also, the moped had been Ma’s.
“Dammit!” Hot tears made tracks through the dust on my face. “This is Becca’s fault!” Then I remembered that Becca might have been disappeared, and found I couldn’t blame her—I was too worried.
I tried to go faster.
I was just slogging through our gate when the curfew siren sounded. From our yard we could see four other houses; the closest was half a mile away. I saw their lights blink out.
Barely able to breathe, every muscle screaming, I shoved the moped under the carport, letting it fall, and then I scrambled into the house as fast as I could, hoping with all my heart that I hadn’t been seen in the yard a minute after the siren.
I climbed upstairs in the dark and fell across my bed in all my sweaty, dirty clothes. This was the first night that my sister hadn’t slept under this roof. The first night in my entire life that I was totally, completely alone. Tears came then, and I fell asleep while I was still crying.
And I slept about twenty minutes that night.
10
BECCA
I LOOKED AT MY FOUR roommates with equal amounts of curiosity and caution. There were two brown people, one tan person, and one cream-colored person like me. They were all staring back at me, but maybe they’d never seen quite so many bruises on a girl.
Did we all introduce ourselves now? Shake hands? Was there a prison etiquette? If there was, I was sure I’d be forcibly educated in it momentarily. As it was, I was left being me.
“What the hell is this crazy house? And who was that evil woman?” I demanded.
The kids seemed startled, one of them laughing nervously, and then the dark-brown girl glanced up and to the left, very quickly. I followed her line of sight and saw a tiny camera mounted high on the wall on the other side. As I watched, it swung in an arc, then swung back.
A surveillance camera. We were being watched all the time. How prisonlike.
“My name is Becca,” I said. “I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know what this place is. I don’t know how to get out of here. Like, can my fam—can my sister come bail me out or something?” Despite our differences, I knew that Cassie wouldn’t hesitate. If it was possible, she would already be working on getting me out. I hoped it was possible.
This time all four of them looked solemn.
“I’m Robin,” the dark girl said.
“I’m Diego.” The tan boy bit his thumb and then dropped his hand, as if he was trying to break the habit.
The tall dark boy with straight hair stepped closer. “I’m Vijay
.”
I’d barely noticed the other girl, except to see she had the same color skin as me. Now she nodded at me shyly. “I’m Merry. Like Merry Christmas. Not like Virgin Mary.”
Vijay pressed his lips together and Robin held up a warning finger. “Don’t even,” she said.
“She’s got to find some other way of describing it,” Vijay said defensively. “It leaves her set up perfectly, and it’s unfair that I have to suppress every humorous instinct I have.”
“Not this again,” Diego muttered, while Merry crossed her arms over her chest and gave Vijay a look I recognized: fed-up impatience. Having often been on the receiving end of that look, I sympathized.
“Maybe just spell it?” Vijay suggested helpfully. “Leave the Virgin out of it?”
“What is this crazy house?” I said again, a little louder this time to get their attention. “Why are we here? Why are you here? What’s going on?”
Their faces fell again. I sure was a killjoy.
“This crazy house, as you call it, is a maximum security prison for enemies of the system. Strepp is the deputy warden.” Vijay had a dry, precise way of talking, as if he’d been picked for higher schooling.
“To answer your other questions,” Robin said, “we don’t know why we’re here. We don’t know where ‘here’ is. And there’s only one way out.”
“In fact,” Diego said, his voice tense, “kids get out that way all the time.”
“What is it?” I asked eagerly, ready to sign up for good behavior or whatever.
Merry sighed. She was younger than me, with light-brown hair we call “mouse-colored” in our cell. “Diego is… kidding,” she said. “Sort of. What he means is, this isn’t just a prison, and we’re not just prisoners. This is death row. We’ve all been sentenced to die. And that’s the only way out.”
11
CASSIE
AT 6:00 A.M., I WAS awake and dressed, gritty-eyed and shaking with panic, perched on the edge of a kitchen chair. The moment curfew was over, I tore outside and plugged in the moped. It had rained during the night, and even now fog and mist shrouded the world, blurring outlines and muffling sounds.