The Final Six (The Final Six #1) - Alexandra Monir Page 0,6
the way an actress might sound after reciting the same lines twenty times in a row. But I know better than to push it.
Principal Hamilton has remained quiet ever since the announcement, but now she joins the conversation, gesturing to the window. “There’s a crowd forming out there—it looks like the press. Is this why I was asked to call an assembly? Are we going public with the news about Naomi?”
No. Not yet. I shrink back against the couch, wishing I could blend into the upholstery and disappear. But at the principal’s words, Major Lewis and Dr. Anderson spring into action.
“Let’s get Naomi to the auditorium first before letting anyone in. The two of us will remain beside her throughout the press conference and—”
I break in, interrupting the major. “Why? Why do all these people have to know now?”
If there’s any hope of me dodging this draft, it certainly won’t happen with my name and face splashed across the media. The second I am revealed to the world as one of the Twenty-Four, I become theirs—theirs to experiment with, to make into a soldier, to send to another galaxy.
“We have no choice,” Dr. Anderson replies. “As a government agency, NASA is required to report all news to the public within twenty-four hours, and the fact that the draft is a wartime mandate means an even stricter standard of transparency. We were able to hold your name back just long enough to give you this advance notice.” She turns to the principal. “Do you know if the videoconference screens in the auditorium have been set up and connected to Houston yet?”
As Principal Hamilton darts behind her computer and begins clacking away at the keys, I’m tempted to shove everything off her desk, to send the computer crashing to the floor in my frustration. “Looks like we’re a go,” she says.
Terror bubbles in my chest. I look from the door to the window and back again, but there’s no chance of escape. Even if I did manage to outrun all the adults in this room and get away, it’s not like I could ever get my old life back—not as a draft dodger. I have no choice but to comply, and say good-bye . . . to everyone and everything I’ve ever known.
I rise to my feet, a prisoner resigned to walking the plank. “So what happens now?”
Major Lewis cracks a smile. “You’re about to become one of the twenty-four most famous teenagers on Earth.”
I wait behind the curtain of Burbank High School’s dust-covered stage, flanked by the security guard sworn to “never leave my side” until I’m safely transferred to Space Training Camp. The pounding in my chest and the sweat dampening my brow reminds me of the last time I stood here in the wings, before the drama club’s production of Fiddler on the Roof in my freshman year. I had only two solo lines (“Tradition, tradition!”) but I was more terrified than the leads. That was my first clue that I belong in the classroom, in the science lab, behind a telescope—but never, ever on a stage.
That was the last time most of us set foot in this auditorium. After another season of El Niño superstorms raged through LA, tearing the beach cities to shreds and forcing all surviving Angelenos to decamp to the Valley, the school pretty much dropped all extracurriculars. They had bigger things to worry about than drama club and sports—like our survival, and how to accommodate an influx of displaced students, known to us as the West Side Exiles.
I step forward, peering through a slit in the curtains. I can see my classmates and teachers filing into the rows of seats, while giant projection screens unfurl onto all four walls.
“I should warn you that I might throw up,” I mutter to the guard beside me. “Why do they have to make such a spectacle out of this announcement, anyway?”
I don’t expect an answer, but the guard, Thompson, speaks up. “I imagine it’s because the Europa Mission is the one source of distraction and excitement for the public right now. And the greater the public interest, the more bargaining power the space agencies have to lobby Congress for extra funds to send you safely up there.”
He gives me a wink that is meant to be reassuring but instead ties my stomach in knots. This is the problem with being a science nerd—I can’t share in the public’s hope for this mission. I know too much. I