Page 204 of Everything Under the Sun

Words of dispute went around the room.

Ravinia smiled, and in her face I detected something indicative of delight.

“You are right,” Ravinia said, and it surprised me. “But who here”—she raised her voice and her hands again—“who here is in Paducah against their will? Who here has not been given the opportunity time and time again to leave this place and their oppressors?”

No one spoke out.

“They say nothing,” I accused, “because they’re afraid.”

“No. They are not afraid,” Ravinia said. “They are learning.” She clasped her hands on her backside again; she paced left, then right.

Kade, standing near her moved out of the way; he glowered at me.

Ravinia stopped and turned to me again. “Were you not given an opportunity to leave?”

She turned to Kade then.

“Did you give her an opportunity to leave?”

Kade nodded. “Yes,” he answered straightaway. “I left her alone for three hours in my room. I didn’t lock her in. She chose to stay.”

“You knew I wouldn’t leave,” I snapped. “You knew I’d be convinced to stay, told it was dangerous to walk out the door”—I glanced at Atticus lying on the floor—“And you knew I wouldn’t leave without him. So how is that an opportunity?”

Kade started to answer, but Ravinia cut in:

“Regardless of the circumstances,” she said, “it was still an opportunity. You were not chained up, or thrown in a dungeon—”

“But he was!” I barked, motioning at Atticus—I started to accuse them of locking him in a kennel, but I didn’t want to betray Drusilla, and hoped I didn’t accidentally just now. “In fact, we were abducted, taken against our will, forced from our home—we were brought here with our hands bound behind our backs! So, explain to me how your argument is valid!”

Ravinia’s index finger darted upward.

“You were brought here,” she began, “against your will because you cannot live out there, alone in this fucked up world. If either of you were strong enough—fists or mind—to get yourselves out of it, then you wouldn’t be here right now.”

“Ten against two,” I shot back, “like six against one”—I pointed at Atticus and then those who’d beat and stabbed him—“is not opportunity, or a chance—it is unjust!” I stepped even closer to Ravinia, enraged, my hands clenched into fists at my sides, the knife grinding against the bones in the right. “And who are you—any of you—to decide where and how others choose to live?”

“The world—the human race—cannot survive if those who are left are weak and cannot defend themselves from those who are strong,” said Ravinia.

“And who are you to decide who is weak, and who is strong!”

“We don’t decide,” Ravinia answered. “You decide—we simply help you figure it out. If you can, then you leave here—or stay if you choose—stronger than when you arrived. If you can’t figure it out then you stay here against your will, hope that others will take pity on you and protect you. Or you die, and leave the world to those who know how to survive in it.”

I thought her reasoning asinine; I threw my hands into the air with frustration. And outright rage—Atticus was bleeding, possibly to death, on the floor near my feet and I was standing here, arguing a point with a woman incapable of understanding it.

“You’re insane—all of you!”

“Maybe we are,” Ravinia said, “but it’s how things are done around here; it’s how we contribute not only to the survival of the human race, but to its rebuilding.”

“Killing people isn’t helping the survival of the human race,” I shot back. “It does the opposite. How can you put back together a world by killing off its people?”

“We’re not trying to put the world back together,” Maxima said, stepping out from the crowd. “We’re putting together a new one. Why would anyone want to go back to the world the way it was before?”

“Yes,” Ravinia put in. “We want to live in a strong world, where people are individuals—not conformists. A world where people refuse to be brainwashed by politicians and religious leaders who care only about power.”

“We will live in a world dominated by free-thinkers and individual power!”—Maxima raised his fist into the air, riling up the crowd—“And without having to wade through the shit of so many sheep!”

The crowd went wild, the shouting vociferous as it went around the gymnasium, rattling the metal bleachers, and sending tremors through the floor.

I backed away from Ravinia and Maxima to stand closer to Atticus again; over the riotous crowd I could hear my furious heartbeat hammering inside my ears; the hand that gripped the bloodied knife I could barely hold it up anymore.

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