The Testing (The Testing 1)

“When you realized the bracelets contained microphones, you were worried that Testing officials recorded our conversations before we reached The Testing Center. I didn’t think they would bother since they had cameras watching us, but maybe they did. Dr. Barnes could have heard you mention spotting the cameras or you telling me about your father’s dreams.”

The idea that Dr. Barnes might know about my father’s flashes of Testing memory makes me shiver. But while that would give Dr. Barnes cause to strike out at my family, I can’t imagine why my pre-Testing conversation with Tomas would draw his attention now. Surely, if that discussion was recorded, Dr. Barnes and the other Testing officials would have listened to it before finalizing their decisions about who would attend the University.

If Dr. Barnes were concerned about those things, he would be targeting Tomas, too. But Tomas hasn’t been assigned nine classes, and he has not had a sense of being watched more closely than anyone else. Which means something else has prompted Dr. Barnes’s interest. Something Tomas doesn’t remember or refuses to say. I will have to figure out Dr. Barnes’s motivation on my own.

Now there is only one last thing to ask.

I look into Tomas’s handsome face. His gray eyes are filled with worry, guilt, and love for me. I yearn to touch him, but keep my hands firmly at my sides. I open my mouth to speak the words that have the potential to shatter everything between us.

But I can’t do it.

I would rather live with speculation and uncertainty than lose the one piece of my life that connects me to my home and family. The alternative is too painful to think about. If that brands me a coward, so be it. I do not want to face being here at the University alone.

Tomas takes my hand, and I let him web his fingers through mine and pull me back to the ground. I lean my head on his shoulder and try to ignore the hollow ache I feel. We talk of inconsequential things—the size of the rooms at our residences, our guides, the attitudes of the first-year Tosu City students.

“The ones in my house didn’t have any interest in talking to those of us from the colonies until after the Induction. May

be that was part of the reason for those tests. To make us realize that, no matter where we grew up, we all have the same problems to solve. We’re not that different,” Tomas says.

I wonder if he’s right. Are the Tosu City students more likely to think of us as equals now?

Tomas pulls me close. I lay my head against his heart. Its beat is steady and strong. Quietly, he says, “I meant to tell you that I kept my Testing memories, but I didn’t know how. You were so happy when The Testing was over. So much like the girl I graduated with back home. I wanted to give you time to just be happy. I promised myself I’d tell you after your birthday, but I could never find the right moment. The subject would change, or you’d smile and kiss me and I’d put it off. I kept telling myself that I’d do it tomorrow.”

He’s not wrong about the subject changing. I knew Tomas had something to tell me, and I didn’t want to learn what it was. I was a coward. Terrified that whatever secrets Tomas harbored would shatter my fragile hope that the stories on the Transit Communicator weren’t real. I didn’t want to face the truth, so I ran from it then. Now I have to face my fears.

“What happened to Zandri?” The words are barely a whisper.

Tomas stiffens beside me. The hand that was stroking my hair stills. He knows the answer, but says nothing. Part of me wants to pretend he didn’t hear the question. Everything inside me screams to walk away now before I lose everything. But I don’t, because I don’t want to be like Damone. Because Zandri deserves better. Because if Tomas was behind her death, then I have already lost everything. I just don’t know it. Pretending otherwise is a lie. I have had enough of lies.

I turn my head to face Tomas, and my words are stronger this time. “During the last test, what happened to Zandri?”

Tomas’s eyes shift away from mine. “I don’t know.”

Something inside me shuts down, and I pull away from him. “That’s not true. You had her bracelet in your bag.”

Silence. This time I refuse to be the one who breaks it. Tomas finally does. “What do you remember?”

Nothing. Just my whispered, sometimes unintelligible words asking Dr. Barnes about Zandri’s fate. His laughing response that I should already know. Finding the bracelet among my possessions. Not knowing what it meant. Only that I had found it in Tomas’s bag while trying to keep him alive after Will’s final betrayal. In the darkness, I assumed the bracelet was from another Testing candidate who was killed during the test, but I was mistaken. Tomas met Zandri on the unrevitalized plains of the fourth test, and he never told me.

But my secrets aren’t the ones in question now, so I say, “It doesn’t matter what I recall. I want to know what happened. You saw Zandri. I know you did because you took her identification bracelet off her bag and put it in your own. Why? What happened to her? What did you do?”

Tomas clenches and unclenches his hands, and suddenly I am not here. I am standing on the cracked earth. Back in the Testing area. My left arm aches under white bandages. My skin itches and is coated with sweat and dirt. Tomas stands in front of me, looking travel stained and tense as his hands clench at his side. Next to his hands, hanging from a sheath strapped to his pants, is a knife. A knife streaked with blood. There are hundreds of ways the blood could have gotten on Tomas’s blade, but only one that explains his silence now.

“You killed Zandri.”

“It was a mistake.”

“A mistake?” Part of me has desperately held out hope that Tomas was not responsible. That’s the part that begins to scream. “How do you kill someone by mistake? Zandri was our friend.” More Tomas’s friend than mine. She flirted with him. She might have even been in love with him. And he ended her life.

I can’t stay here. I’m on my feet and bolting for the exit, but Tomas is fast and gets there before me. Not just fast. Years of working side by side with his father on the farm have made him strong. I kick and push, but no matter how I fight, I can’t move him out of the path of the door.

“You have to listen to me.” Tomas clamps his hands on my shoulders, and I jerk back. I can’t bear to have him touch me. I want to lean into the warmth and security he has always provided, but I won’t let myself. Not anymore. The safety I feel with him is a lie.

Tomas removes his hands and runs one through his dark, wavy hair. “You have to listen. I never intended to hurt Zandri. You left to find water. Will and I fought. I was so angry. Mad that I was injured. Angry that you wouldn’t leave Will behind and that you stormed off and left me there with him. And I was furious that we were out in the middle of nowhere because Dr. Barnes and his people wanted to see who would kill in order to succeed. Will walked off carrying the canteen with the last of our water. He probably thought taking it would keep me from leaving, but I didn’t care. I picked my bicycle off the ground and climbed on, thinking I’d come find you. That’s when I saw her.”

Blood pounds through my ears. My stomach heaves. I don’t want to hear about the death of the blond artist who was always so beautiful and confident. But I wrap my arms around myself as though they will provide a barrier against the chill seeping through my body, and I wait for the rest.

“At first I didn’t recognize her. Her arms and face were stained with dirt. It wasn’t until the sunlight caught the gold in her hair that I realized who was staggering down the road toward me.”