Children of Eden
Page 25

“It doesn’t matter—anything! Just throw something on.” She’s completely distraught. My clothes are flying, tumbling, balled up as she hurls them into the bags. “Hurry! Get dressed!” She tosses me a belted tunic in rich saffron-orange and a pair of shimmering gold pants from Ash’s school uniform.
Slowly, I pull on the pants and turn my back to strip off my nightshirt. The tunic top is made of the supple material that is supposed to mimic the softest doeskin. I haven’t worn it before. Mom picked it up only a week ago, and it still has the price tag on it. It cost an exorbitant fee.
I stand there, shirt poised to slip over my head, an idea almost clicking . . . but not quite.
“Hurry!” Mom barks again, and I realize she’s terrified. Whatever I was almost thinking is lost. I belt the tunic and turn, kneeling down beside her as she throws away my entire life.
“Mom, stop a second and tell me what’s happening.” I try to sound calm, soothing, but her naked fear is contagious. She takes a deep breath, then another, looking like she’s considering how much I should be allowed to know. “Tell me everything,” I insist.
“Our friend in the Center just tipped me off that they know about a second child. He didn’t have many details, so I don’t have any idea how they could possibly know, but now we’re all in terrible danger.”
Oh, great Earth! I’ve been so selfish! All this time I was only thinking of myself, of taking my life into my own hands and freeing myself from my captivity, of exploring the world, of making a friend for the first time in my life. I took pains not to be caught, but I was thinking only of me not being caught. It was a risk I was willing to take—for myself—and I trusted first in my own abilities, then in Lark, to keep me safe.
I never really thought about what it would do to my family if anyone found out about me. It was in the back of my mind, but only as a logical thread, not as a real conscious fear.
Now, looking into my mother’s frantic eyes, I realize what I might have done. To her, to Ash, to my father.
But how could they know about me? If a scanner or bot had detected me, I would have been swarmed with Greenshirts right away. They wouldn’t have given me a chance to go home. If I had been spotted and marked, I would have known. The reaction would have been immediate, and brutal.
Unless someone had turned me in. Someone who I’d shared my secret with. Someone I trusted.
I shake my head. No, not Lark. It can’t have been Lark. She would never do that. I think of the passion in her eyes when she talks about the problems of Eden, the inequality, the injustice. I remember the way she looks at me, soft and curious.
I won’t let myself think that, I decide. But I’d be a fool not to.
Right now, though, I need to calm Mom down and figure out more clearly exactly what is going on. “Do we really have to leave now?” I ask, my hand reassuringly on her arm. “Are they coming right this second?”
She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “No. Maybe. He just said that there’s a report of a second child who has been spotted in this circle.” She claps her fingers over my caressing hand. “You’ve been careful, haven’t you? I know you sometimes go to the top of the wall and peek out.”
I bow my head, ashamed. Oh Mom, I long to say, I’ve done so much more than that.
“I’ve thought about telling you not to do it,” Mom continues. “But I know how hard it’s been for you all these years. I didn’t want to begrudge you that little bit of freedom and exploration. It’s so inadequate compared to what you deserve.”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I . . . I don’t think anyone spotted me.” Just a Greenshirt, and Lark, and maybe even other people, too. Oh, how could I have been so stupid, so selfish?
“I don’t think it was anything you did. It might not even be you. There are other second children in Eden. He didn’t think they’d zeroed in, but he knows that they’re tracking a second child in our circle. It’s only a matter of time before they figure it all out. When they come, every trace of you has to be gone. You have to be gone.”
I nod, understanding. It’s a shock, and I know that wherever I go I’ll have to lay low for a while, but when the hunt dies down, when they don’t find me, I’ll be able to see my family again. See Lark again. (Unless she . . . No, I can’t go down that road.)
“I’m sorry this is all so abrupt. I thought we’d have more time. There are things . . . But I’ll save that for later. I’m taking you to get your implants now, and then you’re going directly to your new foster home. Oh, there’s so much I have to tell you!” She throws her arms around me and for a second I feel like a little kid again, small and utterly safe in her embrace.
“It’s okay,” I reassure her. “I know it might be a while, but when I come back, you can . . .”
Her look stops me, chilled. “Rowan, you can never come back.”
I feel as if I’m dangling from the top of a wall high as a mountain, clinging by a single hold that’s starting to slip. I grasp at anything. “You mean, not until it’s safe?”
“Oh my love, never. You can never come home. You can never see any of us again.”
My hand slips and I tumble into the abyss.
She tells me how long they’ve been working to arrange this foster family for me, a chance at a completely new life where I can be real, accepted, walk the streets of Eden as a free individual. I listen numbly as she explains how I can have a new family, which baffled me before. I thought someone would take me in for love, for commitment to a cause, for belief that all people deserve to live. But no, it turns out someone is just doing it for the money.
Just like the way my family hid me—the extra, living child—some families with an eye to profit hide the fact that their one legitimate child dies. Instead of reporting it to the Center, they do whatever possible to make it look like the child is still thriving. Maybe they say she moved to another circle to help her grandmother. Maybe she supposedly developed an illness and rarely leaves the house. They hold the spot of the missing child, and all the while work with black marketers to find some second child to replace the dead one. Of course the family is paid an exorbitant fee for taking the child. It’s enough to set up someone in a whole new circle, if they’re clever enough to hide the source of their windfall.