Elites of Eden

  Now, though, the water is my enemy and it swallows me down. I flail, and even though I have enough sense in my panic to keep my mouth closed, the water gushes in through my nose and I’m sputtering, bubbling. Then my feet hit the bottom—it’s deeper than I am tall, but only by a couple of feet—and I push off, launching to the surface, where I gasp a deep, grateful breath before a wave crashes over my face and I slip under again.

  I’m thrashing my arms, but it doesn’t seem to do any good. The water, which looked so cool and comfortable from dry land, is like a fist of fire reaching down my throat, choking me. I manage one more breath, and cry out, a raw guttural sound that I’m sure no one can hear over the music and laughter. Before I go under again, I think I can hear Lynx’s shrill giggle. Is she watching me die?

  Then I hear a huge splash and feel a hand grab my arm, dragging me, and I squirm in the grasp, grabbing whatever I can. Dimly, I see the face of the bouncer who wouldn’t let us in. But he’s not a person to me. He’s breath, he’s dry land, he’s life, and I take hold of him with a strength that surprises me and do my best to climb on top of him, pushing him under. I don’t care if I drown him, as long as I live. The snowy air is freezing on my face, but it is the sweetest thing I’ve ever felt.

  He’s twice my size, but in my unthinking terror I manage to hold him under the water just to keep myself aloft. When he finally shakes me, though, he puts a huge meaty hand on the top of my head and pushes me under. I struggle, but I’m at my end. Fuzzy blackness seems to creep in at the edges of my brain. My body grows heavy, unresisting. The world fades . . .

  I wake up I don’t know how long later, retching. I see faces, eyes, all around me, condemning, pitying, mocking. I don’t know where I am. All I know is that it’s not safe here. These people, this openness. I need to be somewhere small, safe, enclosed, out of sight. Behind a wall. Underground.

  It all comes back to me when I see Pearl, shivering, the snow swirling around her disheveled beauty as she stands wrapped in some chivalrous or besotted man’s coat. She winks at me as she rubs her goose-bumped arms, and the last swirls of that little pill she gave me a while ago numb the edges of what just happened, turning it from near tragedy to a bonding moment. Another shared experience, a story to tell.

  The bouncer pulls me roughly to my feet, and Copper hands me my feathered shirt and high black boots.

  “This,” the bouncer says grimly, “is why we don’t allow underage, overprivileged Center brats inside. You can wait in my office for the Greenshirts to come and make a report.” He pushes me along before him, but adds, a little sympathetically I think, “It’s heated.”

  As soon as we’re in the tiny (but blessedly warm) office, Pearl draws herself up with dignity and says, “May we have privacy please?” in a tone that sounds much more like a command than a request. “We’d like to put ourselves together before the Greenshirts come.”

  The bouncer looks uncertain, but I give him my most pathetic, bedraggled look—which believe me isn’t hard at the moment—and he says, “I’ll be right outside.”

  As soon as he’s gone, Pearl says, “There’s no bikking way I’m waiting around for the Greenshirts to charge us and drag us back to Oaks.”

  “I thought you said we wouldn’t get in much trouble if they caught us,” I say, my voice hoarse. My throat hurts, feeling like it has been scraped raw.

  Pearl rolls her eyes. “I didn’t think we’d be caught. And we haven’t. No one has scanned our eyes, no one has the slightest clue who we are. All we have to do is get out of here—”

  “Past the huge guy guarding the door,” I interrupt, but she ignores me.

  “And slip back into Oaks, and no one will be any the wiser. We’ll be in bed before anyone knows we’re gone. The Oaks party is surely still raging. It’s still a few hours until dawn, and you know it will last through breakfast.” She yawns, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. “I know, I must be getting old! You girls can go back to the party if you like.” As she’s granting permission, I notice she’s looking at the other two, not me.

  “Yeah, but how are we going to get out of here?” Lynx asks.

  Now Pearl is looking at me. “Come on, Yarrow. It’s up to you.”

  Me? What am I supposed to do? Fight the guard? Feign a medical emergency? Wait a minute . . . emergency. There’s a fire suppression system, and every room should have a switch to activate the alarm. If I can just . . . There it is! Without thinking, I pull the little lever and immediately a blaring alarm sounds throughout the whole building. I hear screams and pounding footsteps, and we burst out of the door into a frantic crowd. Over their heads I see the furious face of the bouncer—he knows full well we were the ones who pulled the alarm—but he can’t reach us through the masses of screaming people.

  The second we’re sure we’re safe we burst into giggles, and Pearl is hugging me. “Quick thinking, Yarrow!” I beam under her praise. Soon we’re out of the building and home free.

  Or so we think. Suddenly there are Greenshirts in the street. “The wet one with the feathers,” the bouncer shouts to the officers, pointing to me. I guess my outfit was the easiest to describe.

  “Come on,” I say, grabbing Pearl and pulling her in the opposite direction. The Greenshirts are delayed by the crowd pouring out from the party, and the holdup gives us a chance to get around the corner.

  “What are we going to do?” Copper pants as we run in our heels and wet, clinging clothes. “We can’t outrun them.”

  Pearl pauses for breath. “One of us can. Yarrow, you run for the school team. You’re the only one of us with a shot at getting away. Listen, we’ll hide, and you lure them away.”

  I don’t like that idea at all. “No! Let’s go. If we hurry maybe we can . . .”

  She silences me with a look. “I’m disappointed in you, Yarrow. I’d do it for you.”

  Some part of me is dying to believe that’s true, so I let them hide in an alleyway . . . and charge at top speed directly toward the Greenshirts. This better be worth it.

  When they round the corner, I come at them like a missile, so fast they stagger back and make futile grabs for me. In a second they’re after me, their boots pounding. They seem to have forgotten there were four of us. I’m the closest target, and they probably figure that if they catch me, I’ll give up the names of my friends. Ha! Not even if they tortured me.

  I’m a little scared, and my feet hurt in these ridiculous shoes. But at the same time, I feel strangely exhilarated. With my blood thrumming through my veins and my legs and arms pumping as fast as they can go, I feel completely alive.

  We run through the streets of Eden, and though I’m faster than they are, my clothes and shoes keep hampering me. After a while they start gaining on me. I feel like it is only a matter of time before they close the distance.

  I dash down a side street, thinking I can lose them. It’s not until I’m all the way down the dim road that I realize it’s a dead end. I’m trapped! Can I turn and get back to the open street before they realize where I’ve gone? No, there’s no time. They’re standing in the alley entrance. Not running now. They know there’s nowhere I can go.

  I can’t let them catch me! This certainty envelops me, overwhelms me. I don’t know why it means so much to me not to be caught. My mom will be mad, sure, but she’s the chief of intelligence. She can sweep this under the rug and there won’t be any record of the incident by tomorrow morning. But for some reason I feel like something truly terrible will befall me if the Greenshirts catch me.

  The street level part of the nearest building is done in the popular style of faux stone that looks as rustic as an old farmhouse back in the pre-fail days. The dozens of higher stories are made of the same photovoltaic, energy-generating material that coats nearly all buildings in Eden. But the decorative lower parts are picturesque.

  And climbable.

  There’s an
open window about twenty feet up. My stomach seems to flip-flop. I want to be at school, safe. I want to go back to the Snow Festival and listen to Hawk call me beautiful, even though I don’t care about him. I want everything to be easy and normal and safe.

  But there’s no other choice, besides surrender.

  I begin to pull myself up the wall. It is simultaneously the hardest and the easiest thing I’ve ever done. My body, strong and flexible, seems to know exactly what to do, my fingertips digging effortlessly into the tiny cracks. Yet with every move something inside me screams No! Go back! I’m afraid I’m going to fall, but it’s even more than that. It’s like there is a special kind of mental gravity pulling me down, that I have to fight with every inch I rise.

  Below me, the Greenshirts are shouting at me to come down. One suggests stunning me. Another points out that if I lose consciousness I’ll fall, and that just means more paperwork for them. Post guards on the doors and wait me out, another logically says.

  Finally I make it to the window. I’m sweating, and my heart is racing, even though my muscles aren’t at all tired. I shove it open wider, so that I can fit through, and slither into a dark, empty room. My stomach lurches again. It seems so far down to the hard pavement. I could have fallen, broken a leg, died. Looking down, I give the Greenshirts a little wave.

  I wonder if they waited for me all night down there. Apparently they didn’t notice when I went to the roof and leaped to another rooftop. From there I just took an elevator down and slipped away into the night.

  IT TAKES A lot to make Pearl look absolutely shocked. I manage to do it just by walking into class the next morning.

  She’s lounging in her Egg. All I can see of her are her long bare legs sticking out, elegantly crossed. Half the class flocks around her. They lean toward her like sunflowers yearn for the sun, all bowing toward her radiance. No one even sees me at first, so I get to hear what she’s saying.

  About me.

  “I don’t know what’s going on in that poor girl’s head,” Pearl says. “First she makes that hysterical, unfounded accusation against Hawk.” There are murmurs of sympathy around her.

  What? I feel my face flush. She’s the one who insisted that I lie about Hawk. The shame I felt when he gave me that look of hurt confusion still burns inside of me.

  “And then when we were in the Temple, she starts raving about needing to escape, to be free. Next thing we know, she’s gone. I figured she went back to her room, but this morning I heard that she actually snuck out of Oaks! Can you imagine? Now no one will tell me if my best friend is rotting in jail or sent home to her family or, I don’t know, expelled from Oaks and sent to Kalahari School!”

  They laugh, as if going to that good but second-tier school is a fate worse than jail.

  “You know,” Pearl says with a cloying kind of sympathy I recognize, the sweet act she can put on so well when it suits he purposes, “I really think Yarrow might be becoming a little bit unbalanced. Poor thing.”

  My jaw clenches until it hurts, my back teeth grinding. I can’t believe she’s saying these things about me, making me out to be crazy. Practically criminal. I understand that she’s doing it to cover their tracks, so that no one will suspect that she and the others went out last night. But does she have to malign me like that?

  And then it hits me. No one will tell her what happened to her best friend. Best friend.

  I feel like a glacier melts within me, flooding me with warm emotion. Like I’m a synthmesc addict getting a fix. A button has been pushed somewhere deep within me. It is utterly surprising and completely soothing. Like love. Like food when you’re starving.

  Not that I’ve ever been starving. Or been in love, for that matter.

  I forgive Pearl instantly. I would do anything for her, follow her anywhere. Because I’m her best friend. My face loses its flush and my jaw has unclenched by the time I saunter up and say, as if nothing in the world is amiss, “Good morning. Miss me?” I cast Pearl a slow, mysterious smile just as our professor tells us to enter our Eggs so our Eco-history lesson can begin.

  The rest of the class goes to their Eggs, but Pearl just stands there, her mouth open, for an awkward few seconds after everyone else is seated. “How?” she mouths. She looks almost annoyed, as if my returning apparently unscathed is a feat so momentous only she should have been able to pull it off.

  “After class,” I whisper back, and slip into my own Egg. Immediately, my pod lights up with our lesson for the day: pollination. I’m in a field of virtual wildflowers, at the center of a seemingly endless meadow. The Egg creates a perfect environment, the toasty sun that warms my shoulders tempered by a cool, gentle breeze. A butterfly in vibrant orange and black stripes flutters around my head before landing on my arm. I can feel the tickle of its tiny feet. Nearby, a fat honeybee dusty with pollen lands on a golden flower, its weight bending the stem. It sips at nectar, bobbing up and down. Around me I hear the hum of a hundred other bees. Bees that have been extinct from even before the Ecofail.

  “By 2010,” my professor says, “humans realized that many of the pesticides they used were dangerous for bees.” His droning voice seems to meld with the buzzing bees in the virtual world within my Egg. “Many were killed, and those that survived were so weakened that the hives succumbed to fungal invasions and colony collapse. By 2070, no species of colonial bees survived. Although scientists engineered robotic bees, they could not . . .”

  He breaks off suddenly. “Yes? Can I help you?”

  I lean my head out from the paradise of the sunny meadow back into the chilly, bare reality of the classroom to see what the interruption is. The artificial sun still beats on my lower back, but when I see the cause of the disturbance I feel a chill down my spine.

  It’s a girl. Just a girl, with an ordinary face and long, fine, lilac-colored hair. I seem to hear Pearl’s voice in the back of my mind mocking her for her unfashionable color, the way she did me yesterday. But Pearl’s voice is only a distant whisper behind the sudden roaring in my ears. It sounds like the ocean. I’ve been surrounded by simulated ocean noise in my Egg during lessons, but this time it is coming from inside my head. It grows louder as I look at her, vibrating like seismic shock waves.

  And then it fades, and I feel calm. No, not calm. Empty.

  I look at her objectively, sizing her up as if she were prey. Easy prey. Clothes that are well made but not exquisite. She comes from money—of course, if she’s here—and can shop at the best stores. But she doesn’t have the connections to buy custom creations from the best designers. The style is unusual, maybe even interesting, a dress with a handkerchief hem in spring-leaf yellow-green that has a gauzy overlay embroidered with the oak and tendril pattern. But it is nothing that Pearl would wear, so I dismiss it as substandard.

  Her hair is long with a careless wave, the ends tumbling unevenly. The fashion at Oaks is for razor-cut hair with defined blunt lines. My blond hair is cut in asymmetrical stair steps. This girl’s looks wild by comparison, like a meadow compared to a manicured landscape. Her mother probably cuts it for her.

  Her face is . . .

  I can’t look at her face. That roaring sound threatens to return.

  I shake my head hard to clear it. Maybe I’m getting a cold, and my head and ears are congested. Colds are rare in Eden. We’ve been vaccinated against almost everything, but the simple cold keeps mutating beyond our power to completely block it. Yes, that must be why I feel so strange. A cold.

  I slip back into my Egg. Whoever this girl is, she clearly doesn’t matter.

  I let the virtual meadow fill my senses, waiting for class to resume. The professor is fluttering uncertainly. He wasn’t expecting a new student. There’s not a spare Egg.

  “You can share for now,” he says. “Pearl, will you . . .”

  “No,” she says loudly and clearly.

  The professor makes a garbl
ed sound of confusion. Only Pearl would be brazen enough to flatly refuse. I stifle a chuckle. I almost feel sorry for the professor. Not the new girl, though. Everything about her screams that she clearly doesn’t belong here at Oaks.

  “Yarrow,” the professor asks a little helplessly. “Would you be so kind as to share your Egg with . . . what was your name again?”

  “Lark,” says a low, warm voice. I feel suddenly dizzy. So dizzy that I don’t manage more than a croak, which the professor apparently takes for assent. I’m definitely coming down with something.

  I don’t even look as the girl slides in beside me. I move over as far as I can, but we’re still almost touching. I can feel the warmth of her body along my thigh.

  “Hi,” she murmurs. Her breath tickles my hair. Bikking annoying! I stare straight ahead.

  I can feel her looking at me. I’d like to tell her off, but I’ll get in trouble if I interrupt class. I’m lucky enough to have escaped discipline last night. I can feel prickles of sweat start at the back of my neck, under my arms.

  “My name is Lark,” she whispers, and suddenly I can’t take it anymore. My stomach heaves. If I don’t leave now, I’m going to be embarrassingly sick.

  “Move!” I cry, and before she can shift I shove her out so she sprawls on the floor, the zigzag hem of her skirt flying up over her knees. I don’t care, I don’t look back. I just have to get away. As I race out of the classroom, I hear Pearl say, “Well done.” She thinks I’m putting on a show, telling the world that I won’t be forced to sit next to some newly rich nobody. Humiliating this Lark girl. Pearl is proud of me. I feel a little warm glow beneath the feverish prickles, but I can’t enjoy it. I race to my room, and as soon as I get there I’m violently sick.