my father’s brother. That’s the most information she’s ever spoken about my father. Ky is protective of us, and he’s kind. It makes me wonder whether my father was kind and whether he looked like Ky. Ky’s hair is darker than mine, almost black. His skin is dark next to my sun kissed complexion.
I essentially look nothing like Ky, yet as much as I want to not care about my father, these thoughts seep into my mind when I lie awake at night.
My failing unity keeps my mind occupied as well. I was given my partner’s name two years ago. The name of the man I’d spend the rest of my life with. Typed in bold letters across stark white government paper with no other accompanying information was a name: Micah Rixton. Everything was all so exciting and full of hope.
Until he went missing.
A rattling of glass shakes through my thoughts. My window abruptly pushes open against the old panes, startling me from my thoughts. Familiar strong arms and long legs push against me. Ayden climbs through finally. It’s after village curfew, and he’s out of breath from the three-block run from his house to the camp. The run he makes to stay the night in a work camp that most respectable people wouldn’t be caught dead in has been our tradition since we were kids.
Ayden’s parents are the ideal partnership. Both have great jobs, a big house, a brilliant son, and yet … they hate each other, making their son’s life miserable just by being together.
Some people are over qualified for partners and live their lives in the inner city, working for our government. Ayden’s one of them. After our eighteenth birthdays, he’ll be over qualified and forever alone. I’ll never see him again once he leaves.
When my mother gave birth to me—without a union and without a birthing permit—we were deposited here, in the camp. But the camp provides a life for us. A long, overworked life, but a life all the same. It’s a community of family, working together to complete the lack of real family we don’t have. Ayden has all but lived at the camp to be near me—and away from his parents—since we met when we were seven.
Ripper lifts his head from his spot at the bottom of the bed. The pup knows the tradition and doesn’t make a move, but the little dog does growl in annoyance when Ayden pushes him off the bed to lies down next to me.
His arms flex as he crosses them behind his head. The familiarity of our routine warms me, and I curl in a ball on my side to face him. We both fit in my tiny bed. He’s tall, maybe six feet, but lean. My petite five-foot-six frame fits perfectly next to him, and we relax like messy puzzle pieces laying side by linking side.
“So, how was your day, sweetheart?” he asks sarcastically.
I imagine it’s his idea of what a normal partnership would be like if his parents actually liked each other.
“It was,” I pause trying to find a word to describe the weirdness that was my day, “exciting, I guess.”
He turns on his side to face me. He looks interested, but hesitant. Like he’s reading between every shadow the moon casts onto my face. Ayden spends his days with his grandmother doing homework, so, needless to say, my days are always more exciting than his.
“More interesting than that pike trying to start a rebellion last week?”
I smirk at his reply as the image of Forty-four cracking the glass flashes through my mind. Everything is so easy between us, even when our actual lives are not. Ayden applied to fill the available partnership in my union after I received the notice of Micah’s disappearance.
Thinking of Ayden as my life partner created an odd feeling between us that didn’t exist before. He’s kinder to me, if that’s possible. Once he applied, he waited every morning to walk me to school. He became hesitant, as if he was thinking through every word he spoke to me, which made me more conscious of my words and actions toward him. An awkward normalcy fell over our lives. The idea of our union seemed to strengthen our friendship, and I couldn’t help but look forward to our future.
It lasted a month.
The state isn’t quick to look further into missing persons like Micah, but our county was quick to reject someone with no future trying to make a union with a