back to walk with the stare of the PSF burning into her neck.
The steel-gray light from the overcast sky creeps into the cabin like a delicate fog. I blink my eyes against it, fighting the urge to hold up a hand to shield them as the PSF inspects first our uniforms and, next, the general state of the cabin.
Rather than say a word, the woman, blond hair twisted into a tight, low bun beneath her black cap, whistled and waved us forward, the way she would have called a dog to her side. It set my teeth on edge and spun my exhaustion into annoyance. There’s something about her smirk today I don’t like. Her eyes keep darting back and forth between whatever is standing out along the soggy trail and us.
I square my shoulders as Vanessa and I pass by her, a halfhearted attempt to brace myself for the freezing January air; the sting of it turns our skin pink and our breath white. I was wrong about it not being cold enough to snow; in a West Virginia winter, what’s rain one moment turns to icy sleet in the next, and then, just as you settle into that misery, suddenly there are large, fluffy snowflakes drifting down around you like feathers.
I’m so distracted by the effort it takes to not give in to the clench of my shoulders and arms, to concentrate on not showing them how badly my body wants to shiver, I don’t even see them until the lines have filed out behind me. Cabins are opened and emptied by number, a careful sequence that involves stopping, going, stopping again as everyone is led out onto their right trail, wherever it is they’re supposed to be going—wash houses, Mess Hall, or straight to work until lunch. It’s timed down to the second, and half of the time I think it only works because everyone’s too tired and cold to try to resist being dragged into the pattern. What’s the point, anyway?
But because every day is exactly the same, it should have been the first thing I noticed—the very first, given the bright red vests they’re wearing. The uniforms beneath them are dark, smoky gray—not the black of the PSFs. The pads of my fingers sting just looking at them—it’d been so hard to get the plastic needle through the thick fabric I’d pricked myself enough times to draw blood. Three months ago, we’d sewn buttons on them, as well as patches of numbers across the breast pockets. I’d thought nothing of it at the time. We’d dyed and stenciled any number of prison uniforms, so I’d just assumed…I just thought we’d never see them again.
Beside me, Vanessa manages to cut off her gasp but can’t get her body’s instinctive response under control. To our PSF’s satisfaction, she flinches and looks away quickly, like the sight of the Red alone could burn her.
I don’t need to look around me to know that at least half of our cabin has already figured out what’s happening. Those same girls have already moved on to drawing further conclusions that will take me another week to puzzle out. For all our differences, our Green minds really only function in two ways—my way, the storage locker, or their way—the ability to connect multiple dots of a situation or problem as easily and quickly as breathing. I get the impression we bore them every time we try to talk to them, like they always know what we’re about to say next. In a fraction of a second, they can look at Vanessa’s reaction, see how young the new people are, assess the color of the vest, recognize the uniforms we helped stitch together, and recognize now, in context, that the frustrating number patches were really Psi identification numbers. I can practically feel their minds churning behind me, whipping up a frenzied series of thoughts. Reds.
If I know them, those girls will be thinking ahead, their conclusions slanting toward the future. Why are they here? How will it affect me? When will they leave? But I’m trapped in the past. Do the other girls remember, the way I do, the faces under the caps they wear? They’re blank, so completely vacant that it looks like their features have been painted on their skin.
My stomach begins to turn over itself, the burning taste of sick rising in my throat like acid. How? How did they do this to these kids? I know the first face