Yellow is the color of ripening wheat
Yellow is the color of the hawkweed flowers in summer
Yellow is the color of corn (certain varieties—not Silver Queen)
Yellow is the color of this goddamn freaking goddamn son of a bitch goddamn freaking jumpsuit that they make me wear in goddamn freaking prison
The end.
They took my pa’s watch, which almost killed me. They took my clothes. They were my third-best jeans, the one T-shirt I had with no holes in it, and the soft plaid shirt with the shiny pearl snaps that I’d stolen from Careful Cassie last night. Looked like she wasn’t ever going to find out. Silver lining.
My loose yellow jumpsuit closed with a plastic zipper. There were no shoes of any kind. The one good thing was the Band-Aids they’d put on my wrists where the zip ties had gouged channels into my skin.
And, son of a bitch, this really was a freaking prison. Which meant we weren’t in our cell anymore. I knew every building, every house, every shed, every barn in our entire cell. Everyone did. None of those buildings had high concrete walls topped with cattle wire. None of them had windows with bars.
I was out of my cell for the first time in seventeen years. It was not an improvement. Which meant that the Provost was right again.
“Move!” A man in a gray uniform pointed his wooden billy club at me and motioned me through a barred gate. I walked through, shuffling because I still had ankle irons connected by a chain. The gate slammed shut behind us.
In addition to the huge, swelling bruises all over from being punched and kicked, my head hurt so much that I felt sick. When they’d moved me from the first room I was in to this big building, it had been dark outside. I hadn’t eaten all day and was hollow with hunger, dizzy with fatigue, and nauseated. So far, being out of my cell sucked.
“You will obey all the rules,” Ms. Strepp was saying, spitting out her words like gunfire. “You will try to fit in. You will do what is asked of you. You will speak only when spoken to. Is this clear?”
Pretty much a yes or no question, but my reply flew right out of my head as we moved down the hallway. There were small rooms on either side, like the ones we’d seen in history books about pre-system times. Jail rooms with people in them.
And all the people lining up to look at me, holding on to their bars, were kids.
7
KIDS. TEENAGERS, LIKE ME. WERE they all enemies of the system? I still didn’t understand what I had done to get myself thrown in prison. I mean, what thing in particular.
“Is this clear?” Ms. Strepp repeated more loudly, smacking me on the arm.
But I had stopped dead, because not only were the prisoners all kids, but they were… different from people in our cell. Some of them.
When I saw a slender girl with dark-brown skin and soft-looking, puffy brown hair I couldn’t help staring.
My skin is colored like vanilla ice cream. Ms. Strepp’s skin was chalky white, like cow bones left in the sun. The guard had a red face and neck, like a lot of men in our cell. Every single person that I’d ever seen was some shade of those basic three colors. My skin got tanner in the summer—most people’s did. But nobody in our cell had that smooth dark skin. Nobody had puffy brown hair like lamb’s wool.
The guard thunked me in the back with his club, and I kept shuffling forward.
“You will obey the rules,” Ms. Strepp said again. “You will try to fit in. You will do what is asked of you. You will—”
“Oh, my God!” I exclaimed, stopping again. A boy was holding on to his bars, watching me go by. He was different, too! His eyes were shaped like pumpkin seeds. His skin was golden, like corn silk at harvest. His hair was short and black.
&nb
sp; This time the billy club hit me hard against my hip bone. It really hurt and knocked me sideways so that I crashed against the bars. The kids inside took quick steps back, their eyes big.
When I regained my balance I shouted, “Goddamnit! Quit hitting me! What the hell is wrong with you?”
This pushed Ms. Strepp over the edge, and she whirled, punching me in the stomach as hard as she could. I doubled over, and then the worst happened: I puked all over her fancy, impractical shoes.
8
THIS WENT OVER LIKE A hay bale off a truck. The entire jail block froze in silence. I was thinking Ms. Strepp had lucked out, because I’d skipped breakfast this morning and hadn’t eaten anything since then. It wasn’t like after the pie-eating contest, which had been a rainbow of bad.
“Ow!”