We won’t be fed again until dinner, but I couldn’t bring myself to eat a bite of the soggy mashed potatoes or the vegetable stew. We’ve been eating the same tasteless crap for weeks, so it wasn’t like I was missing much. I just didn’t trust my stomach not to send it sailing right back up as soon as I managed to swallow it down.
Fear followed us into the Mess Hall, coating the silence, expanding until I thought it would eventually push the walls out of alignment. It multiplied faster than the weeds in the Garden. This is what makes it so hard—well, one of the many things that puts this place at the corner of bleak and misery. There’s never an explanation. Not for the way we’re supposed to behave, not for why they do the things they do. When they first began work on the Factory, Ruby said—
No. That wasn’t right. Ruby wasn’t here when they began turning the dark dirt over, burrowing down into earth. She hadn’t been the one to wager the guess that the camp controllers were finally going to take care of the problem of us—permanently. Put us where no one would ever be able to find us.
I braced my forehead against my hands, trying to rub away the throb of pain behind my temples. I blinked again, and the image of a little dark-haired girl was gone, replaced by a panicked kind of anger. It grated on my nerves. Sent my heart galloping for no reason at all.
I was thankful for it, though, because the anger was the only thing strong enough to distract me from watching Lucas. The Reds, the five we’d seen before, had entered the Mess Hall and had made steady passes up and down the rows of silent wooden tables and benches. I wondered if they’d sensed as clearly as the rest of us had, that they were still being watched, even as they’d been clearly elevated to watch us. The PSFs clustered in the corners of the large room, heads bending toward each other as they picked and tore apart the firestarters’ every stiff movement. Part of me wondered if they were more afraid of the Reds than we were.
Lucas passed by our table twice, once behind me, once in front of me. Each time I looked away before he could catch me watching him, taking in every inch of his appearance, searching for my friend in him. Trying to convince myself I wasn’t drowning myself in some kind of desperate delusion. It was like not realizing you were starving until a feast was laid out in front of you.
Older, taller, harder Lucas. Lucas with the dimple in his chin.
Red.
The word ran circles around my mind as we walked over to the Factory, a single word that somehow encompassed a whole dark cloud of thoughts. Red, Red, Red, Red.
I’d thought about it, you know, wondered if the two of them were still alive, if they were in a camp like mine. My first few weeks here, I’d daydream about seeing them from across the Mess Hall or Garden, get hit with the false high of warm recognition despite it all being in my head. I clung to the possibility of it, even as the years marched on. Lucas would be Green, like me. I just wouldn’t see him because they kept the boys and girls separate. Mia would be Blue, which would also explain why I hadn’t seen her. They didn’t let the colors mix unless we were in the Garden. I nursed that little hope for years, shielding it, keeping it close to me like a candle in a rainstorm.
And maybe some part of me remembered that story—Sir Sammy, fair knight, off to find and rescue Prince Lucas from the outcropping of rocks that doubled as a dungeon and fortress depending on the day. I’d sing, and he’d answer with a shout, I’d sing and he’d answer again, over and over until we were tired of the game or were called in for dinner. I always found him where I knew he’d be. It was the searching that was the important part.
Eventually, you grow up and you stop pretending. This place beats every last dream out of you. It clears your head of such stupid things. The truth was simple, not a glossy fairy tale. Lucas was a year older than me and three years older than his sister, Mia, but neither had been hit with IAAN