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Oh no

I slip my hand inside my sleeve and feel a tiny scrap of paper there, one that’s too small to be a poem I don’t dare take it out on the air train in front of so many eyes, but I think I knohat’s happened

Back in the Borough, when the rest of my family took the tablet and I didn’t, they all seemed like I do now Confused, but not completely at sea They kneho they were and understood

The air train slides to a stop The girl and her fah the doors This isn’t er

The air in Central feels moist and cold It’s not quite dark yet, but I see a hook ofsky Breathing deeply, I walk down to the botto the others pass I pull out the slip of paper fro my hands and their movements in the shadows under the stairs the best I can

The paper says remember

I’ve taken the red tablet And it worked

I’m not immune

Some part of me, some hope and belief in what I am, dissolves and disappears

"No," I whisper

This can’t be true I am immune I have to be

Deep down, I believed in ht I would be like Ky, like Xander and Indie After all, I have conquered the other two tablets I walked through the blue tablet in the Carving, even though it was supposed to stop reen

The sorting part ofYou are not immune Now you know

If I’otten? Lost forever?

My ue overto see if there’s any trace of tablet left Calm down Think of what I remember

Mythe sorting center But as I there so late? I shift and feel so besides the poe it Why?

Because Ky is coht I re heart and feel the whisper of paper underneath

And I remember that I have poems to trade and that I carry them next to my skin

I kno these papers caot here I remember it perfectly

A few days after e of the white barrier circling the stillzone For a ; that the barrier was one of the canyon walls and that the s that lined the aparts all the way up were the caves in the Outer Provinces; crevices in the stone of the canyon where people could hide, live, paint

But, I realized as I walked, the outside surfaces of the apartments are so slick and same that even Indie couldn’t find a hold on the walls

The lawns of the greenspaces were covered in snow The air felt like it did back in Oria in winter, thick and cold The fountain in theon a pedestal A Sisyphus fountain, I thought, and I told , by the tiht about Eli This is his city, where he came from I wonder if he feels about it the way I do about Oria; that, in spite of all that has happened, it’s still hoo toward theto find the far

I wondered if the barricade was up when he lived here

And I missed him almost as much as I missed Bram

The branches above ers unleaved and bare I reached up and snapped one down

I listened For so For some sound of life in that quiet circle But there were no sounds, really, beyond the ones that can’t be stilled--like wind in trees