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  But that was the problem. He hadn’t returned. Not really. That soldier at my doorstep had been a stranger.

  In the evening I was permitted to go to the common room with the other seventeens, and was alarmed to learn that Rosa was still not back from her punishment. I wondered if she had a concussion, then I thought of the empty girl we’d seen this morning and worried that Rosa had been injured worse.

  While I agonized over these thoughts, Rebecca recited with a sickening amount of enthusiasm the school rules for the new people. Then we prayed. At least, they prayed. I continued to ruminate anxiously.

  Before we were excused, the guard announced that there was one final issue to attend to. I cannot say exactly why, but I knew from the moment Ms. Brock set foot into the room that she meant to harm me.

  “Ladies,” she began slowly.

  “Good evening,” several of them chimed, Rebecca included. I said nothing.

  “There was another incident today. A breach in the rules. Those of you who have been with us some time will know how we handle these issues, yes?”

  I concentrated on sitting tall, with my chin lifted and my eyes fixed on the witch that moved soundlessly before me. Apparently starvation had not been enough; she meant to humiliate me publicly for the telephone incident. She could do whatever she wanted. I refused to show her I was afraid. Someone needed to stand up to the school-yard bully.

  The next thing I knew, Randolph was yanking me out of my chair. He dragged me over to a side table in the common room, testing my commitment to be brave.

  “But Ember is new, Ms. Brock!”

  Rebecca could not completely sugarcoat the defiance in her tone. Her face was streaked with red. I was shocked that she was defending me.

  “She is entitled to a probation period while she learns the rules. Ma’am,” she added as an afterthought.

  Another guard placed himself between us. The girls were staring from their SA, to me, to Brock in quick succession. No one spoke.

  Ms. Brock glared at my roommate for several seconds. I held my breath. I didn’t want Rebecca’s support, but I sensed it was better to keep my mouth shut.

  Finally Ms. Brock exhaled loudly through her nostrils.

  “You’ve worked quickly, Ms. Miller,” she said. Her harsh stare traveled to Rebecca. “Like a virus, infecting our brightest. But you see,” she announced to the rest of the room, “Ms. Miller has already attacked a soldier, and her actions today cannot go unpunished.” The other girls were watching, some in shock, several now in interest. It was sickening.

  “Here, Ms. Miller.”

  Ms. Brock motioned to the table, sidling around to the opposite side. Randolph stepped behind me and removed the baton from his belt. He had an absent, almost dead look in his eyes. My breath quickened.

  “Would you like to tell the other seventeens how you broke the rules today?”

  I locked my jaw as tightly as I could.

  “You have been asked to explain yourself, Ms. Miller.”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Brock,” I told her clearly. “You told me if I have nothing to say, better just to keep quiet.”

  I felt a wave of triumph speaking the words out loud and thought, with both pride and trepidation, that my mother would have approved. Several of the other girls gasped. I broke away for a moment to see Rebecca’s expression grow grim.

  Ms. Brock sighed. “It appears insubordination is a communicable disease amongst our new students.”

  “Speaking of, where is Rosa?” I asked.

  “That was not the question,” she said. “The question was if you would like to—”

  “The answer is no. I feel no need to explain myself,” I answered as assertively as I could. I was so mad my organs vibrated.

  Ms. Brock’s face pinched with fury, and her eyes lit with fire. She removed a long, slender stick from her belt that had waited beneath the folds of her skirt. It was thin like a chopstick, only twice the length, and flexible. The end of it swung back and forth as she waved it before my face.

  Who was this woman?

  “Hands on the table,” she commanded coldly.

  I took a step back and nearly tripped over Randolph. A chill swept through me. This wasn’t the Middle Ages. Human rights still existed, didn’t they?

  “You can’t hit me with that,” I found myself saying. “That’s illegal. There are laws against that sort of thing.”

  “My dear Ms. Miller,” Ms. Brock said, with patronizing warmth. “I am the law here.”

  My eyes shot to the door. Randolph read my intentions and raised his baton higher.

  My mouth hung agape. Her beating. Or his.

  “Hands on the table,” Ms. Brock repeated. I looked at the other girls. Rebecca was the only one standing, and most of her was hidden behind a guard.

  “Girls…” I started, but I couldn’t remember their names.

  None of them moved.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I shouted. Randolph grabbed my wrists and slammed them down on the table. They burned and then went numb as I struggled. “Let go of me!”

  He did not. With his free hand he brought the baton right in front of my face, so that I nearly went cross-eyed staring at it, and then he smacked me once, right in the throat.

  I couldn’t breathe. It felt like my windpipe had been crushed and what was left was on fire. A choking reflex took over, but the more I gasped, the more I panicked. No oxygen was getting through. He’d broken my neck. He’d broken my neck and I was going to suffocate. Bright, white streaks cut across my vision.

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, take a deep breath,” chided Ms. Brock.

  I tried to scratch at my neck, but Randolph held my hands down. His face was getting blurry. Finally, finally, a tiny bit of air siphoned through. The tears streamed down my face. Another breath, then another. God, it hurt.

  I’d fallen to my knees, my tingling hands still pinned to the table. I tried to speak but no words came out. I gaped at the faces of the girls around the room, who refused to meet my eyes. Even Rebecca was now staring into her lap.

  No one was going to help me. They were all too scared. I was going to have to do what Ms. Brock said or I would be hurt much worse. My body felt as if it were filled with lead. Eyes on Randolph, I flattened my quaking hands on the table.

  And with that, Ms. Brock wheeled back and slammed the narrow rod across them while the other girls watched, paralyzed by fear. A silent scream broke through my constricted throat. Immediately red lines from the whip burst into welts over my knuckles.

  The look on Ms. Brock’s face was pure madness. Her eyes swelled until the irises were islands within a sea of white. A row of blunted teeth emerged beneath her retracted lips.

  I jerked my hands away, but Randolph raised his baton again. He was a machine. Cold. Dead. Completely inhuman.

  I snapped them back into place, swallowed a burning breath, and ground my teeth together.

  Again and again, Ms. Brock struck the backs of my hands. I pressed them so hard against the table my fingers turned white. I forgot my audience. The pain was excruciating. I buckled again to my knees. Long welts criss-crossed over one another, until finally one cracked and bled. There was blood in my mouth, too, from where I had bitten the inside of my cheek. It was warm and coppery and made me want to vomit. Tears poured from my eyes, but still I made no sound. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of hearing me crumble.

  I despised Ms. Brock with a level of hatred I had never known. I hated her more than I hated the MM and the Statutes. More than I hated him for taking my mother. More than I hated myself for not being strong enough to fight back. I directed every fiber of hatred toward this woman until the pain and the anger became one.

  Finally, she stopped, wiping away a line of sweat from her brow.

  “Dear me,” she said with a smile. “What a mess. Would you like a Band-Aid?”

  * * *

  HE’D left a flower on my pillow. A white daisy, with clean, matching petals and a lon
g green stem. The thought of him lifting the window, placing it delicately where I rested my head made something ache deep inside of me.

  My eyes were drawn to the windowsill, where he’d left another flower, this one smaller but no less perfect. It made me smile to picture him picking just the right ones. I pushed up the window and leaned out, half expecting him to be waiting, but he wasn’t.

  Another daisy lay evenly spaced between our houses, on the grass. Thrilled with the game, I climbed through the window then bent to add it to my growing bouquet. I glanced around and found another, a few yards down, near the back of the houses. It angled into his yard.

  Giggling, I followed the trail, one daisy at a time. My anticipation grew, envisioning how he’d take me in his arms when I found him, how he’d touch my face just before he kissed me.

  I climbed the deck and called his name as I pushed through his back door. The room was dark, and it took several seconds for my eyes to adjust.

  Something was wrong. I felt it, tingling at the base of my neck, warning me to go no farther.

  “Chase?”

  He was wearing a uniform. The blue jacket was pulled back to reveal his belt. My insides went hollow when I saw the gun and the empty slot where his baton should have been.

  “Ember, run!” I jumped at my mother’s voice. She was kneeling on the far side of the room, her fingers spread over the coffee table. Ms. Brock was there, her whip raised high.

  I looked down in horror to see the blood running freely over Mom’s knuckles.

  I dropped the daisies and tried to get to her, but Chase blocked my way. His eyes were cold and empty, his body only a shell of the boy I’d known. With a baton in one hand he backed me into the corner, crushing my flowers into the carpet beneath his boots.

  “Don’t fight me, Ember.”

  * * *

  I BURST from the nightmare, sweating, even without the blankets. Moisture beaded on my forehead, my neck, and dampened my hair. My throat was hot and thick and bruised to the touch. My hands throbbed furiously, as if my skin were on fire.

  The vision continued to poison my mind. Ms. Brock in the house next door, beating my mother’s hands. Chase blocking me in the corner. Don’t fight me, Ember.

  I tried to focus on the real memory: My Chase had been waiting inside, ready with a smile and his open arms. But after everything he’d done, even the memory seemed false.

  Slowly, the world became familiar. I was still at the reformatory. Still in my dorm room.

  I heard something click, then rattle. It was coming from Rebecca’s side of the room. From the window.

  Someone’s breaking in! My muscles coiled, ready to bolt out the door.

  “Rebecca!” I croaked, forcing a painful swallow. My sock-clad feet were already on the floor. The skirt that had bunched at my hips untwisted around my legs.

  She didn’t move. I listened, but there was no sound.

  No sound at all, actually. Not even Rebecca breathing.

  I forced myself to steady. It was probably a gust of wind against the glass. A tree branch or dead leaves or something. It wasn’t an intruder. No one was coming to get me. Not even if I wanted them to.

  “Rebecca?” I asked, this time just above a whisper. She didn’t stir.

  I slid off the bed and padded toward the window, still watching the glass.

  I said her name again. She lay absolutely still.

  I put my hand on the mattress. The moon shone through the window and lit the bandages on my bloated knuckles a pale blue. My fingertips stretched farther, feeling the blanket.

  And the pillow beneath it.

  “What the hell?” I said out loud. My eyes shot up, through the glass, into the woods, where a figure in white crossed the tree line. My jaw hit the floor.

  Rebecca was running, the fraud. She’d stopped me earlier from the same, while she’d been planning this all along. There was no time to focus on that, though. Rebecca had found some way to escape, something more planned than Rosa’s impulsive flight, and I’d be damned if she was going to leave me behind.

  I stuffed my feet into my shoes and threw the jacket on my chair across my back. I wasn’t tired or hungry. The thrill of anticipation collided with the absolute terror of being caught. Defiance surged.

  I didn’t think twice about stepping onto Rebecca’s bed in my dirty shoes; I would have relished more in the action if I had. I propped the window open. It made the same click and rattle that I had heard earlier, when I had thought someone was breaking in, not breaking out.

  From our room on the bottom floor it was almost too easy to slide out the little frame and swing my legs to the ground. So easy, in fact, I wondered why everyone hadn’t tried. Sudden doubt gave me pause—there had to be a reason the whole school hadn’t disappeared after curfew—but if Brock’s prized little Sister was out here, she had to know what she was doing.

  I forced a slow, pained breath and continued. My skirt rode up around my hips, and the cold night bit into the skin at the tops of my thighs, but as soon as my feet hit the ground I was running.

  The night was bright enough that I could partially see the way. I sprinted across a narrow lane and into the woods where I had seen Rebecca disappear. The hum of a power generator masked the crunch of dead leaves under my footsteps, both a blessing and a curse. No one could hear me, but I couldn’t hear them, either.

  Though I worried about getting caught, my feet continued on. Rebecca had been here three years. She knew this system, this facility. She wouldn’t be attempting an escape unless she was positive it was a sure thing.

  The deeper I dove into the woods, the darker it became, even under the starlight. I wondered where we were going. To a broken fence maybe. The long shadows blended with the night sky, leaving only highlights of bare branches and textured tree trunks. I walked with my hands in front of me, feeling my way forward. I was getting anxious, fearing I’d lost her. The generator was getting louder.

  Finally, I heard voices. One male, the other so bubbly it couldn’t be anyone but Rebecca. I stopped dead in my tracks and ducked, hiding behind the broken tree trunk. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. As stealthily as possible, I scooted closer.

  “I can’t believe Randolph smacked her,” I heard Rebecca say.

  “Yeah. He liked it, too, the sick bastard.” The voice was familiar.

  “Sean … what did you all do to her?”

  “Brock said take her to the shack. Come on, you knew that was coming.”

  My muscles hardened. They weren’t talking about me; they were talking about Rosa.

  In my mind’s eye I saw the unmarked brick building beside the clinic. Was that the “shack”? Brock had said to take Rosa to “lower campus”; maybe that was what she’d meant. My memory conjured the metallic screech I’d heard when I’d found the clinic’s phone. Had that been Rosa’s scream?

  My head was spinning. I still couldn’t place the other voice.

  Rebecca was quiet for a moment. “I guess I did.”

  “What, you feel sorry for her? Aw, don’t be sad, Becca. Hey, I bet I can cheer you up.”

  They were quiet, and I was gripped by the fear that they were moving on without me. In a panic, I lifted my head to see over the log.

  My mouth fell open.

  Rebecca Lansing was sitting on the generator, wearing a big blue canvas coat. Her bare legs were wrapped around a guard’s hips—the soldier with the sandy hair. The nearly handsome guard who had approved of her line this morning. He had one hand shoved through her messed blond hair, the other on her bare thigh. Their lips were smashed against each other with a frenzied passion.

  Part of me knew this was a dream. There was no possible way in the history of the human race that prude, holy Rebecca, my roommate, my Student Assistant, was getting it on with a soldier. On school grounds. In the middle of the night.

  Anger scored through me. Rosa was in the shack being punished while Rebecca was screwing some guy on the generator. My hands balled int
o fists. My jaw clenched. And if reason hadn’t completely abandoned me earlier, it did then.

  Before I knew it, I was standing.

  “What was—”

  I wasn’t surprised to be blinded by the flashlight. It caught me right in the face, blacking out the people behind it. I threw up a hand to guard my eyes and marched forward blindly around the log, over the branches and debris.

  “Who is that?” I heard Rebecca say. And then, “Oh, my God.”

  The guard cursed. Sean, she had called him. He detached himself from Rebecca and lunged forward toward me. I almost wanted him to reach me. All I saw when I looked at him was his stony face as he’d dragged Rosa away.

  “Stop it!” Rebecca hopped down off the generator and jumped in front of him. “Ember, what are you doing here?” I hated that perky little voice.

  “You liar!” I growled.

  “What? How long have you been here?”

  “Long enough, Becca.” My words, though raspy, flew out like water from a busted pipe.

  “It’s not what it looks like.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “I thought you said she was asleep!” Banks nearly shouted.

  “Shut up, Sean!” she snapped. When he didn’t answer, she grabbed my sleeve and tried to jerk me toward the facility. “Come on, we’re going back.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I’m done listening to you.”

  “You have to come. The next guard will be coming through in a few minutes. You get caught, you’re done for. Get it?”

  “Just me? I don’t think so,” I said, in a voice that sounded like mine but far bolder. Everything about me seemed disconnected. My skin was ice cold, but the blood running beneath was hot. My organs all felt like separate fragmented pieces. It took great effort to breathe the frigid air. I did not feel like myself at all.

  “You think they care that Sean and I are out here?” she said, waving her arms in frustration. “You think they haven’t done the same thing? They watch each other’s backs, okay? They’ll punish you for telling on him.”

  “Maybe they will,” I agreed, and felt my resentment kick up another notch. “And maybe the guards don’t care, but I’m sure Ms. Brock would love to hear how her shining star is sneaking around with one of the soldiers.”