Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 84533 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 423(@200wpm)___ 338(@250wpm)___ 282(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84533 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 423(@200wpm)___ 338(@250wpm)___ 282(@300wpm)
Wanted quiet.
The caseworker, the only one who seemed to care—inexplicably—came out of the office and knelt in front of me. She went to place her hand on my arm, but when I growled, she pulled it back sharply. “Crow, can you tell me what happened? Or write it down? I know you’re able. You can communicate if you want to. If they did or said something to make you react the way you did, I need to know.”
They won’t leave me alone. No one will leave me alone. They ask a million questions and call me names. Say my family was crazy and everyone would be better off if Chosen had killed me too.
I locked the words inside me, dead-bolted my lips shut. No matter what I said, I would be wrong. I was broken to them, as Chosen said I would be.
But then, he’d also killed my mother, had tried to do the same to me.
I turned my head.
She sighed, and I felt like I was letting her down. I shouldn’t care. She wasn’t one of us, she wasn’t Enlightened, but still, I felt a heaviness in my chest.
She told me she was taking me to a special group home. She tried to make it sound like some kind of vacation, but I knew the truth. They were going to try to lock me up. Chosen had said that would happen. That they would lock us all up to keep us from being enlightened, and for sharing the truth with others.
I followed her but didn’t speak.
Got into the car quietly.
I hadn’t spoken a word since they’d taken me from the only home I had ever known, and I didn’t plan to start now. Not here. Maybe not ever again.
I just needed to be around my people. My family. Maybe they could make me understand why my father—why Chosen—had done it. He had to have a reason. Maybe I wasn’t Enlightened enough, wasn’t good enough. Maybe my mother hadn’t been either.
The traffic in the city was loud. Horns blared. Cars zoomed around each other. It made me dizzy. Made my head throb and my breathing come out too fast.
How did people live like this? It was too much. Too everything. It felt like my seams were coming undone, and at any moment, everything inside me would burst out.
We stopped at a red light, and she kept talking to me, on and on and on until I couldn’t take it anymore. My hands fumbled with the handle, but I managed to open the door, unclick the seat belt, and then I ran. A car swerved so it didn’t hit me.
More horns.
More noise.
My name.
I got lost in the crowd.
Home.
I just needed to find the mountain and get home.
It took me five days to get back to Tranquility. I slept on the streets and stole food to eat.
The second I was on the mountain again, I could breathe. I was free. It smelled like trees and fresh air and freedom. I did my best to trap it in my lungs, to hold on to it as tightly as I could.
I knew the way up the mountain like the back of my hand. Chosen had allowed me into town sometimes, but only with elders he trusted. He wanted me to learn about the people we were trying to stay away from, to see what life was like on the outside. He’d even taken me into the city so I could see all the people on the streets, the violence, the ugliness. He’d told me about all the horrible things that went on in the outside world, and I didn’t want any part of it. Everything I had seen proved him right, at least about that part.
I passed the houses lower on the mountain, the ones that weren’t part of The Enlightened. The closer I got to home, the less the weight in my chest bore down on me. The more alive my heart felt.
Mother was gone, Chosen would be too, but the rest of them would be there. They were still Enlightened and would help me understand why Chosen had done it. We could all still be a family.
I ran toward the small community we had built with our hands. The house I’d shared with Mother and Chosen, the building where the others lived…but no one was outside working. No one was tending the gardens, which had all died. Yellow tape covered the entrances, the windows were boarded up.
I didn’t call out for them. I ran into the community building first, but of course it was empty. The main room where everyone slept was lonely—smelling old and musty with layers of dust. Some people had taken their things, but others hadn’t. Some beds were made, others unmade, old food on a table…
I ran to our house next, heart breaking my ribs each time it thumped on them.