Ms. Strepp grabbed my braid and yanked up on it hard enough to pull me off the ground. I pressed my lips together, trying not to say anything more. A crisp white handkerchief floated down to the floor.
“Clean. That. Up.” Ms. Strepp’s voice was shaking with fury.
I did, thinking that now I was the lucky one.
When her shoes were shiny again, she pulled up on my braid until I was standing. Muted whispers had begun among the prisoners. My head swam and I blinked several times, gritting my teeth. The guard pushed me forward with his club, and this time I kept my mouth shut until we stopped in front of a jail room. I gave a quick glance sideways and saw four colorful kids already in there. The guard unlocked the bars and shoved me inside, then slammed the gate closed and locked it.
“Bring your feet over here,” he commanded, and I shuffled forward. Reaching through the bars, he unlocked one ankle iron, then the other, and swiftly pulled the cuffs through the bars.
Ms. Strepp stepped closer and almost hissed at me. “You will follow the rules, you will fit in, you will do what is asked of you, and you will speak only when spoken to. Is this clear?”
I gave an unenthusiastic nod. With a sharp, satisfied grimace that I realized was her version of a smile, she and the guard marched back down the long hallway, her shoes clicking loudly against the floor.
I was in prison. I was an enemy of the system.
And I had no idea why.
9
CASSIE
BY THE TIME I’D SUSPECTED that Becca had been taken, it was 8:00. I’d immediately gone out again on the moped, and this time I went all around the cell on the ring road that follows the cell boundary, all twelve miles of it. No one I knew had ever gone across the Boundary—all we could see were thick, dark, dense woods. One road led into our cell, and the same road led out, but I’d never seen anyone come or go on it, either on foot or in a vehicle.
We’d been taught about the dangers beyond the boundary woods—there were many, many ways to die out there. Inside was better. Still, we’d heard stories of people who had tried to cross the Boundary—no one we knew, just people in the past. There were sensors, so the police and the Provost would know. And it would be bad.
At twelve miles an hour, it had taken me an hour to circle our cell. It was already a little past 9:00, and I still had to get home. But when I reached the boundary road leading out of our cell, I paused for a minute, peering into the darkness. I turned off the moped and looked on the ground, wondering if I would see my truck’s tire treads. They were distinctive because the front left tire had been patched, and the patch made a smooth spot in the middle of its treads.
I didn’t see them. But vehicles had obviously been here, and recently. I was still pondering this when I heard the 9:30 siren.
“Crap!” I jumped back on the moped and gunned it, which made me go slightly faster than a cow walking. The road leading in and out of the cell was in the northeast; I lived in the southwest. With any luck, I would get home with ten minutes to spare.
The moped’s weak headlight picked out the dusty roads I knew so well. I could probably close my eyes and still find my way home.
As it was, I had a problem. Stupidly, I hadn’t charged the moped during the day while I had to stay inside. With all the driving I’d done this morning, and then again tonight, its battery was pretty much drained. I was still a mile and a half from home when it went dead completely, the headlight flickering out and the small, quiet motor sputtering to a stop.
“Crap!” I said again. “Dammit!” I was usually more careful than this. Now I had a choice: abandon Ma’s moped here on the road and race for home, definitely getting there before curfew, or trying to push it all the way as fast as I could and risk missing curfew.
I hesitated for several moments on the dark, empty road, pulled by both choices. Then I grabbed the handlebars, kicked up the stand, and began wheeling it toward home.
I’m a strong girl. I had to be to keep on top of all the work since Pa—
I’m strong. But after only half a mile I was exhausted. My legs ached, it was hard to catch my breath, and I had to keep switching sides because of how the weight of the moped pulled my muscles.
I checked my watch. I had twelve minutes. I had another mile to go. If I left the moped by the side of the road and the police found it, it would be confiscated. People take care of what’s important to them. If I left it, it would mean it wasn’t important to me, that I didn’t really need it. And it would be taken.
If I still had the truck, we could get by without the moped. With no truck, the moped was the only thing that kept us from having to walk everywhere.
Also, the moped had been Ma’s.
“Dammit!” Hot tears made tracks through the dust on my face. “This is Becca’s fault!” Then I remembered that Becca might have been disappeared, and found I couldn’t blame her—I was too worried.
I tried to go faster.
I was just slogging through our gate when the curfew siren sounded. From our yard we could see four other houses; the closest was half a mile away. I saw their lights blink out.
Barely able to breathe, every muscle screaming, I shoved the moped under the carport, letting it fall, and then I scrambled into the house as fast as I could, hoping with all my heart that I hadn’t been seen in the yard a minute after the siren.
I climbed upstairs in the dark and fell across my bed in all my sweaty, dirty clothes. This was the first night that my sister hadn’t slept under this roof. The first night in my entire life that I was totally, completely alone. Tears came then, and I fell asleep while I was still crying.