Page 2 of Xantera
Malcolm frowns, his gaze flitting back to me. “Do you?”
Yes. Last night I fell asleep to the sounds of those howls dragging down my eyelids and dreamt of the Wall closing in around me, tightening like a cocoon until I couldn’t breathe.
“No,” I say. “I don’t dream either.”
“Oh.”
At that moment, the screen between the cabinets lights up with a ping. Static skates across the surface, breaking into a half-baked image of a sun rising over a grassy knoll. The familiar female voice that has instructed every moment of my whole life rings out from the loudspeaker above the screen with the usual, “Eligible citizens of Xantera, day shift starts now. Please proceed to your duty stations, and remember to…”
“Have a good day,” I finish with her.
Malcolm has already shoveled in the last of his breakfast and jumped up, readjusting the scarlet badge pinned to his shirt before throwing his school bag over his shoulder. He works at the Educational Institution, where he teaches twelve- to fifteen-year-olds about the history of Xantera, from when the Monster first overcame it to when the Guardians saved us five hundred years ago.
I don’t particularly envy him. To have to talk about that every day… well, that particular wedge of history is always the bloodiest.
And I know a lot about blood.
“Have a nice day,” Malcolm tells me.
“Have a…”
But the front door has already swung open and shut.
Alone now, I scoop my hair into a messy bun and tie it in a knot before checking the outline of my reflection in the fading screento readjust my own scarlet badge—a marker of my place in life right now. Every new couple wears one in public, an indication of the honeymoon stage. In three years, we’ll get new green badges to specify that we’re in the family-making stage. That we sleep together more than just on Sunday.
Not yet, though. Now, I open the middle cabinet drawer next to our screen and grab the tiny blue pill that keeps my womb empty. I’ve heard so many women in my age group complain about the medication, but me?
My mother must have dropped me on the head as an infant and failed to report it to the Guardians, because I only ever feel a surge of relief when I pop this pill into my mouth. Maybe it’s selfish of me to like the way my body feels as is, to dread those upcoming family-making years, but…
I shake my head. I shouldn’t be having these thoughts. And Idefinitelyshouldn’t be analyzing the shape of my body in the glossy darkness of the screen, wondering why Malcolm doesn’t seem as interested in me or my appearance as I secretly crave he would be.
In our schooling phase, we’re taught a Cardinal List of Rules that becomes engraved in our psyches, andDon’t think about yourselfis high up there. Number three, to be exact.
Turning away from the screen, I follow Malcolm’s footsteps out the door and into the narrow strip of space running between complexes that stare at each other like perfect mirror images. It’s always dark in these walkways, every ounce of sunlight blocked by the metal eaves looming overhead. I quicken my pace, eyes straight ahead.
“Good morning.”
I nod at one of my neighbors as she passes, and she echoes me with a soft “good morning” of her own. Soon, I’ve made it to the light spilling from the main walkway, where streams of people do the same to everyone they pass.
Out here in the open, the sun is making a watery appearance between thin films of clouds, and the air has a fresh, clean bite toit that makes me take a large inhale through my nose. A few birds twitter from their perches on the powerlines that run along the street, toward the Blood Moon Palace squatting on the high hill in the distance.
I let my gaze stray to that palace for a moment, its domed crown fluttering with twelve different flags. It can be seen from any vantage point within the city, like a beacon, a symbol, and an expression of all that is good here.
Still, all those ivory pillars remind me of the legs of a spider, as if the entire structure is hunched and waiting for whatever will crawl into its open mouth. But of course, all those balconies need support, and there are alotof balconies—space for the Chosen Ones to wave to their past friends and family during the Viewing on Sundays. Then, they’ll lean over their designated railings, gazes sweeping over the city they were once part of, but right now the balconies are empty. Lifeless.
“Good morning,” someone says, and I jerk my head back down to nod at them.
“Good morning.”
It’s the same every day: good morning, good morning, good morning.
Briefly, I wonder if anyone has ever had abadmorning.
I continue past the other buildings that make up the spokes of our society’s ever-turning wheel: the Sentries Station, the Recreation Center, the Production Factory, the Childcare Center, the Educational Institution, and countless others that I don’t bother to glance at.
As I near my own destination, however, that feeling of suffocation, of the Wall closing in around me… it eases ever so slightly.Thisis why I know the Guardians chose the right partner for me, why I had no business questioning my union with Malcolm this morning. The Guardians know exactly what everyone needs at every phase of life. I know so because they chose the perfectjobfor me.
Healing.
