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It’ll be okay, I told myself as I walked back down the cold hallway, down the steps, to the girls and ht, as I lay awake in my bunk, that I realized I would only ever have one chance to run--and I hadn’t taken it

THREE

SAMANTHA--SAM--AND I were both assigned to Cabin 27, along with the rest of the girls from our bus that were classified as Green Fourteen in all, though by the next day, there were twenty more They capped the nu the next wooden structure along the cay and traned based on alphabetical order, which put Sa as the rest of the girls were nothing like her They spent the first night either stunned into silence or sobbing I didn’t have ti to do with us?" I whispered up to her We were at the far left end of the cabin, our bunk wedged in the corner The walls of the structure had been thrown together so quickly that they weren’t co draft and sometimes a snowflake whistled in from the silent outdoors

"I dunno," she said quietly A few beds over, one of the girls had finally dropped off into the oblivion of sleep, and her snores were helping to cover our conversation When a PSF had escorted us to our new residence, it had been with several warnings: no talking after lights-out, no leaving, no use of freak abilities--intentional or accidental It was the first time I had ever heard anyone refer to e could do as "freak abilities" instead of the polite alternative, "syure out a cure," Sam continued "That’s what et me What did your parents say?"

My hands hadn’t stopped shaking fro my eyes all I could see were the white coat’s blank ones staring right back intoin my head that uess, than the truth--or maybe because some small part of it felt like it was the actual truth "My parents are dead"

She sucked in a sharp breath between her teeth "I wish mine were, too"

"You don’t mean that!"

"They’re the ones that sent erous, how fast her voice was rising "Obviously they wanted to get rid of an, only to stop et rid of h it clearly wasn’t and it wasn’t ever going to be "We’ll stay here and stick together, and e get out, we can go wherever ant, and no one will stop us"

Myaloud was enough to make it true I wasn’t so sure about that, but the way Sam said it, the low burn beneath her words, made me reconsider It suddenly seemed possible that it could work out that way--that if I couldn’t go hoht in the end if I could just stick with her It was like wherever Sam went, a path opened up behind her; all I had to do was stay in her shadow, out of the PSFs’ line of sight, and avoid doing anything that would call attention to me

It worked that way for five years

Five years feels like a lifetime when one day bleeds into the next, and your world doesn’t stretch any farther than the gray electric fence surrounding two s and mud I was never happy at Thurmond, but it was bearable because Sam was there to make it that way She was there with the eye roll when Vanessa, one of our cabinarden shears to look more "stylish" ("For who?" Sam had muttered "Her reflection in the Washroom mirror?"); the silly cross-eyed face behind the back of the PSF lecturing her for speaking out of turn yet again; and the firinations started running too wild, or ruo

Sa out Drea led to disappointment, and disappointment to a kind of depressed funk that wasn’t easy to shake Better to stay in the gray than get eaten by the dark

Two years into life at Thurmond, the camp controllers started work on the Factory They had failed at rehabilitating the dangerous ones and hauled theht, but the so-called "improvements" didn’t stop there It dawned on them that the camp needed to be entirely "self-sufficient" Fro our own food to eat,our unifor theirs

The brick structure was all the way at the far west side of cale They had us dig out the foundation for the Factory, but the ca of it We watched it go up floor by floor, wondering what it was for, and what they would do to us there That was back when all sorts of ru around like dandelion fluff in the wind--so back forhere they were going to es, and Yellows, if and when they returned; and soet rid of us, once and for all

"We’ll be fine," Sahts out "No matter what--you hear me?"

But it wasn’t fine It wasn’t fine then, and it wasn’t fine now

There was no talking in the Factory, but there ays around it Actually, the only time ere allowed to speak to one another was in our cabin, before lights-out Everywhere else, it was all work, obedience, silence But you can’t go on for years together without developing a different kind of language, one that was all sly grins and quick glances Today, they had us polishing and relacing the PSFs’ boots and tightening their uniforle of a loose black shoelace and a look toward the girl standing across froht before--spoke volumes

The Factory wasn’t much of a factory A better name probably would have been the Warehouse, only because the building consisted of just one huge room, with a pathway suspended over the work floor The builders had enough thought to install four large s on the west and east walls, but because there was no heat in the winter or AC in the suht