Out There (28 page)

“That?” Cain sounded surprised. “But it's so close.” “That's what I'm saying.”

“But you can barely see it,” Derron exclaimed. “Why hide it?”

Then it hit me. “I think I know, can we climb down?” “Sure.”

The three of us made it back down to the bottom, me almost falling several times.

“Cain said that a woman by the name of Drake escaped and died out here. And I wondered why she couldn't just go back. But the thing is that the Bubble doesn't let people back through, it only lets them out.”

“But how do you get back in?”

“I have my ways… but the point is that I think they try to hide it and don't make it easy for people to get back through, but simple to get out, not because they want to keep people trapped inside, but because they don't want anyone that leaves to be able to speak of what they find.”

“Then why let them out in the first place?” Derron asked. “I don't know.”

“Maybe because they don't want curious people in the city at all,” Cain suggested, looking at me. “If you're the kind of person who wants to go outside, then you're most likely a threat to them, so you may as well stay outside.”

“So they lied about her death?” I was shocked.

“Probably.”

“So they tell everyone that she had a genetic disease, but really she left the city and they never tried to go and find her.”

“Guess not.”

“What kind of barbaric people are we?” I felt ashamed of my community.

“Don't think of it like that,” said Derron, trying to comfort me.

“How else should I think of it? How do I know they didn't do this to other people?” I turned to Cain. “What were the other men's names?”

“Rose, Andrews and Richardson, my neighbour.”

“Rose?”

“Yeah.”

“That's Katelyn's surname.”

“You know his wife?”

“His daughter, she was my friend that died.”

“Well, I'm sure she was a wonderful person, because I know her father was.”

One of the other names sounded familiar to me and I tried to remember where I'd heard it. “What were the two other names again?”

“Andrews and Richardson.”

“Where have I heard that before?” I thought out loud.

“Maybe you know their families. Andrews was Jared's father, he wasn't married actually and Richardson was…”

“I've got it!” I exclaimed.

“You do?” Derron asked.

“When I had that fight with my mother she called me Ava Richardson and when I asked her why she shrugged it off.”

“What's your mother's name?”

“Donna.”

Cain laughed. “I guess she must have changed her name.”

“Wait – what?”

He smiled at me. “Turns out we were neighbours once upon a time.”

“Are you saying that…?”

“Your father was a wonderful person, I loved him like my own.”

“My-my-my what?”

“Ava,” Derron said and put his hands on my shoulders, “I think your father was the man that organised our escape.”

“But that would mean that…” I could barely get out the words. “That my mother planned to join him.”

I suddenly felt so dizzy that I sank to the ground. I just stared at the fire.

“Are you OK?”

“She was against them leaving.”

“She told him to leave to protect him, she saved all our lives,” said Cain as he came and sat beside me.

“But she lied to me.”

“What do you mean?” said Derron and sat on the other side. “She loved him and she told me that he was nothing but evil. How dare she expect me to always tell
her
the truth!”

“Ava, let's go back to the hill,” said Derron as he took my hand and helped me stand.

“Thank you, Cain.”

“Anything for Harold's daughter,” replied Cain. He winked and walked back over to his hut.

Derron and I strolled up to the hill, hand in hand, and we both lay on the grass to watch the stars. It was a gorgeous night, practically perfect.

“I'm just so angry.” I broke the silence.

“With your mother?”

“With everyone! It's like they decided what we should think.”

“In a way.”

“And they just left the men to fend for themselves! It's like they didn't think that maybe they could have figured out a way to make it work. I mean not all of them were insane like the people that started the Wars.”

“True.”

“But never mind that, they still never told us any of that. What if I wanted to come up with my own opinion? No, can't do that. I have to think the same thing as everyone else. And my mother yells at
me
for thinking two-dimensionally!”

“You should be allowed to come up with your own opinion.”

“Right! It's like they just stripped away our freedom.”

“Kind of.”

“And what about my mother? How hypocritical is she?!
Men are bad, Ava,
but it turns out Mother is the reason six of them are still out there!”

“Thank you, Donna.”

“Of course, I'm super happy about that because otherwise I never would have met you, and I couldn't imagine life without you, Derron, but it's beside the point.”

“I couldn't imagine life without you either.”

“She just… ugh! She drives me crazy! And I'll never be able to shove it in her face that she's a lying, life-sucking maniac because I have to keep you a secret.”

“Well, I wouldn't say life-sucking…”

“And now I'm going to have to just pretend like everything's fine when really it's not! And another thing…”

“Another thing?”

“Katelyn's mother did the same thing! So maybe all of them sent their husbands and sons away! What if the entire city is pretending?! Then what?!”

“Ava…”

“What?! Oh sorry, I didn't mean to snap.”

“It's OK.”

“Have I been ranting?”

“A bit.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It's OK. Come here,” he said gently as he wrapped his arms around me and held me close to him. “Everything's going to be OK.”

“You sure about that?” I asked into his shoulder. “Positive.”

“Derron, thank goodness I have you. You always know what to say.”

“Call it a gift.”

I laughed and then leant back so I was facing the sky again. “What do you think about all this?”

He let out a deep breath and said, “Well, I disagree with you slightly.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah, I completely understand why you're angry, but if you think about it, they just did it to protect you.”

“No, they did it to control us.”

“Not in their eyes. Sure they kicked us out, they didn't have to do that but they did, and you know why?”

I shook my head.

“Because they wanted to keep you safe. You said they created the city so that the human race would stay alive. Well, to me that sounds like trying to protect it.”

“But their methods…”

“Were all out of love. I know some things were wrong, but imagine if all the girls your age thought the way you did – they would be furious. Then what?”

“I don't know.”

“Then the system that those women worked so hard to create would break down and they wouldn't be able to maintain that fabulous lifestyle you all have.”

“It's far from fabulous.”

“Not really, anything you want is simply handed to you; you don't have to pray that you'll have food the next morning, or that fire won't strike and burn down your home as you sleep.”

“Well, you can do whatever you want with your time and believe what you want and think what you want. No one tells you how to behave.”

“You think I could just say anything I wanted to the others and they would be like ‘Oh, sure Derron, that's cool'? Sometimes we all have different ideas on how to do things. It's not always easy.”

“That doesn't justify my mother lying to me, that's our number one value in Emiscyra – honesty.”

“Your mother was just doing her job, Ava. I'm sure she didn't create the rules. She was just doing what she had to in order to keep you all safe.”

“I guess…” I sat up and ran my hands through my hair.

He sat up too and put his arm around my shoulders. “Feeling any better now?”

“Sort of, but I can't stop thinking about this surgery I have to get.”

“What's a surgery?”

“It's like an operation where they open you up and fix things, or in this case possibly ruin things.”

“Ruin?”

I turned to face him. “You need men to have children and we don't have any, so they came up with a different way for us to have them through this surgery thing. I'm not really sure how it works, but it does, and then you have a baby.”

“So, you have to have one even if you don't want it?”

“Well, of course I want it, everyone does. It's having someone who you are responsible for shaping into an individual human being. Plus it's an honour.”

“Then why are you worried about it?”

I sighed, “Because that's how my friend Katelyn died. She had the surgery and four months later she was gone. They said her body wasn't right for it, but then I overheard this call that my mother made and she was talking about there being a bug and not having enough time to fix it.”

“So you think it will kill you?”

I let out a deep exhale. “Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of.”

He sat there in silence, absorbing what I just said then asked, “Is it for sure?”

“No, they tell me it will work but…”

“You don't believe them?”

“Not in the slightest.”

Derron lay there, silently processing. I was impressed by how calmly he was handling the news. He was the one person that was always strong and always true, the one person I could hold on to when I was not.

“But my mother is the Leader of the Council, so as her daughter, it would be a scandal if I refused to do it.”

“So, then you have no choice.”

“You think I should just go along with it?”

He rolled over to face me. “I think you need to stand by your mother as your city's Leader. That doesn't mean I want you to do it.”

“Even if it works, I still have to stay there for nine months while I'm pregnant, and then I probably won't have very many opportunities to leave when I have a child to look after.”

“So you're saying that…”

“We might not see each other for a while.”

“How long is a while?”

“Maybe a couple of years.”

“A couple of years!” he sat up.

“That's what I'm saying.” I sat up with him. “I just can't figure a way out of it, I can talk to my mother but… who knows what she'll say.”

“No, you need to do this, so don't change everything just for me.”

“But you're more important to me than any of this, can't you see that? Maybe I could run away, I don't think Cain would mind if I lived with you all and I could learn to hunt and make fires and…”

“Ava,” he interrupted me and took my hands in his, “we both know that's not an option.”

“But…”

He bent down and kissed me. “We'll find a way to see each other.”

“What if we don't?”

“We will, I promise.”

I wrapped my arms around him. “I hope you're right.”

“Let me walk you back to the Old Village.”

And the two of us walked all the way there, as slowly as we could manage. In the past few days I had felt closer to Derron than before, yet suddenly I was forced to give him up and pretend he never existed. I wanted so badly to just run away and go anywhere else that would allow me to be with him. As we walked hand in hand, I wanted him to be the one sitting in the waiting room with me, like I was with Katelyn.