By just shaking Cole’s
hand I’
ve started to like him.
Can
it be: another
friend?
Two in one day?
It’s
like a Christmas miracle.
“I’m Adele,” I say
, feeling quite gabby all of a sudden.
“I know,” he says
.
“
Tawni
told me.
She said you’re a badass.
”
I feel my face flush slightly.
“Oh.
Not really.
It was just some punk who’s all talk.
”
“She told me who it was.
He’s not all talk.
I’ve seen him bust some heads before.
You were lucky; you don’t want to mess with that dude.”
“I can take care of myself,” I say.
I hear a coldness creep into my tone.
I grit my teeth and try to relax.
Cole shrugs.
“
If you say so.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Whatcha in for
anyway
?”
he
asks
.
Geez, this guy cut
s
right to the chase.
But I tell
him anyway.
“Mass murder.
Got burned by the shallow graves—I knew I should have dug deeper.”
Cole’s face doesn’t flinch.
“Oh yeah?” he says
.
“
Me
,
too.
Weird coincidence, huh?”
M
y jaw
drops open
.
Cole grins.
“Gotcha!” he says
proudly.
I realize that, like me, he’s joking.
The way he delivers the line, combined with his soft handshake,
combined with the fact that I’
m actually speaking to real humans for the first time in a long time, makes me completely miss his sarcasm.
Me, the queen of sarcastic comments—self-declared—has been outsarcastified.
“Cole can be quite sarcastic,”
Tawni
explains
, one of her white eyebrows rising apologetically.
“You don’t say,” I repl
y
, grinning at Cole.
That’s
when I notice
the strength of his eyes.
When I say strength, I mean
strength
.
Most people talk about eye color when they talk about people’s eyes—I certai
nly do.
And yes, Cole’s eyes a
re a beautifully warm shade of milky chocolate brown.
But what I n
otice is what’
s behind his
eyes.
It’s like he’
s wearing steel-plated
contacts or something.
There’
s no trace of nervousness, or fear, or worry, or any of those other
feelings that I constantly have
;
the feelings that
le
a
d my eyes to look away, to flutter, to close.
Right away
I know Cole is someone you can
co
unt on in the most dangerous
situations.
“Nah, I’m
not sarcastic at all,” Cole says.
Again, I ca
n’t detect even the slightest trace
of sarcasm in his voice.
He’
s good, th
at’s for sure.
I’
ll have
to
listen closely whenever he speaks
.
Despite having
only just met these two people, barely spoken three se
ntences to either of them, I fi
nd myself opening up
.
“I’m the d
aughter of a traitor,” I blurt
out.
“
Well
, you’ve got us beat,”
Tawni
says
.
“I got caught trying to travel interdistrict without a
travel card, and Cole here stole a couple of loaves of brea
d to feed his starving family.
”
Cole says
, “It was six loaves of
bread, which, let me tell ya, are
hard to carry when you don’t have a bag and you’re in a hurry.
When we didn’t have anything to eat for three nights in a row, I came up with a plan.
I was so stressed that sweat was dripping off my forehead and into my eyes.
I could barely see when I smashed the bakery window.
My hands were cold and clammy, but somehow I managed to grab the six loaves.
Someone shouted at me, an Enforcer
,
I think, and I started running.
Right away one of the loaves slipped out of my fingers.
I grabbed for it, but that made another one slip
, then another.
Soon
I was juggli
ng the bread, batting it up in
the air over my head.
I did pretty well, too, keeping all six up in the air for like five seconds before one fell.
My luck didn’t get much better at that point.
I slipped on the loaf
, which, for your information, wa
s about as slippery as a banana peel, and went down hard.
They brought me here.”
I almost want to laugh.
Cole has a twinkle in his eyes, so I don’t think he’ll
mind.
But laughter
is still coming hard for me, so I just smile lightly.
“Truth,” I say, starting a game that has
the potential to last for a long time.
Cole grins.
“Correct,” he says
.
“As stupid a way as that was to end up in
the Pen, it’s all true.”
I’m
starting to get a better read on him, noticing subtle things li
ke the way his bottom lip pouts slightly when he’s being honest.
His eyes a
re always the same
,
though,
strong and confident, so I wo
n’t be able to use
them to read him, like you can
with most people.
“How long you in for?”
Tawni
asks
me.
I raise my eyebrows.
“How long?” I parrot
.
“Yeah, you know,”
Tawni
says
, “a year, two years, what?”
“Try forever,” I say
.
Cole stares at me.
“Truth,” he says
.
“No, that can’t be right,”
Tawni
says
.
“Lie.
She’s messing with us.”
With tight lips I shake
my head.
“Not a lie.
They told me rebelliousness is passed through blood, genetically, like eye color or being able to snap your fingers.
They won’t ever let me out.
I mean, when I turn eighteen I’ll move out of this place and into an adult facility—probably the Max—but I’ll never have my freedom again.”
Leave it to me to put a damper on my first meal with my two new friends.
But they
did
ask
, and I
wasn’t about to lie.
I expect
them to shun me, to get up and leave, like
just being in my presence will
add years t
o their own sentences.
They do
n’t.
Cole says
, “That’s horse manure.
I’ll never go for that.”
He says it in such a way that I kno
w
he’
s dead serious, as if he’
s
already made up his mind to do someth
ing about it.
Not that he can.
If he tries anything, he will
just end up with his own life sentence.
“The
re’s nothing you can do,” I say
.
“There has to be
something
,”
Tawni
says
.
Th
e way she emphasizes
the word
something
, I know she i
sn’t talking about legal methods.
“No, there’s not,” I say
adamantly.
“You guys barely know me and you’ll just screw up your own chances.
When do you get out anyway?”
Cole looks
at
Tawni
and motions
with his head.
She answer
s
for
them both
.
“I’m out in six months and Cole’s out in a year.”
I nod
.
Even their sentences seem
exceptionally ha
r
sh considerin
g their crimes, but they sound a whole lot better than mine
.
In a year they’
ll
both be out of the Pen, able to make their own decisions again, even if under the inc
reasingly intolerant oppression
of the government.
I’m
glad when
Tawni
changes the subject.
It’s like she kno
w
s my heart will die again if I think
too much about the rest of my wasted life.
She sa
ys
, “Wasn’t it weird today how Tristan looked at you?”
My breath catches in my
lungs.
So she
did
notice. Maybe it
wasn’t
all in my head.
I look
at Cole.
“
Tawni
told me
about
that
,
too
,” he says
, “but I want to hear it from you.”
“I thought
it was all in my head,” I say
, feeling my face go slightly warm
again
.
One negative of having highly pale skin is that a blush stands out like a hairy wart on a nose.
“No—it wasn’t,”
Tawni
says
.
“It was like all the crowds and everything else just disappeared, and Adele and Tristan were the only people left.
I could almost see his laser eyes touching you, caressing you…”
“
Tawni
!” I shout
, ignoring a couple of strange glances from the other eaters.
“It wasn’t like that at all.
I didn’t feel any…
touching
.
”
I say the last word like it’s
something disgusting, like moldy
bread
, crinkling my nose and cu
rling my lip.
“But I did feel something for him
.”
“You see
?
I told you, Cole.
I almost felt like I was intruding on some private conversation they were having with their eyes.
It was kind of weird, but in a cool way.”
“
You felt something for him
, huh?
Still sounds
pretty sci-fi to me,” Cole says
.
“
To y
ou and me both,” I say
.
I look
down, emb
arrassed again.
This time it’s because I sense
what f
eels
like jealousy in Cole’
s tone
.
Chapter Two
Tristan
M
y heart is alive again.
Because I see
her
.
Right away I feel
like an idiot—because of my thoughts.
I’m thinking she sees
me
,
too, that she notices me, that she looks
at me with the same interest.
I
feel
something for
her
; I don’t know what
.
But it’s
all i
n my head—clearly.
So I feel like
an idiot.
Then what is it?
Something i
s di
fferent about the way she looks at me.
I’m
used to people
star
ing
at me, but they usually only do
so
in one of three ways.
First a
re the obsessive girl
s, the stalker types, who want
to marry me and have my babies and wait on me hand and foot for the rest of my life.
I think I saw one of their undergarments fly past my head during the parade—that w
ould’
ve been from one of the obsessives.
I tolerate
them, but unlike my brother, do
not enjoy their affections.
Next are the admirers.
They think I can do no wrong, and a
re generally
old, gray men who look
at me with a respect usually reserved for the dead.
Not that I’
ve
earned
it.
I haven
’t done anything; except be born.
Last a
re the
haters.
Simply put: they hate me.
Want me dead.
Stare
at me wit
h steely eyes, like they think if they stare at me long enough I’ll
spontaneously
combust.
They’re the ones who si
t at home with voodoo dolls of me and my dad
and my brother
, poking and prodding and twistin
g with needles.
Hoping we can feel what the dolls a
re feeling.