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  We race up the stairs with reckless haste, keeping each other from falling with our hands’ death grip on the other’s. At the top of the stair, Delia leads us straight into the street. The automobiles there are at a full stop.

  Weaving, sliding, and jumping we pass through the congested street. The motorists honk angrily. I keep my eyes fixed on her shirt to guide me through the sea of grey and black.

  Emerging from the traffic jam, we dart into the first alley. The sound of sirens begins to echo in the claustrophobic space.

  “Keep moving, we need to keep moving.”

  Delia leads us through the confusing maze of alleys. Darting left and right,, we quickly lose sight of the street and rapidly increase the distance between us and the rising roar of sirens.

  My lungs burn from the effort. Outside of the gym there is little place to sprint, and I have never done it in my mask. My strained, carbonized breaths feed a growing feeling that I’m going to hyperventilate, but Delia’s unrelenting speed propels me forward and strengthens my resolve.

  Mercifully, a few yards ahead, Delia leads us into a small blind alley which is partly obscured by a dumpster. She releases my hand. Blood and sensation rush back into it. It throbs a little. I fight to catch my breath with short gulps. Delia presses her back to the wall and slides to the ground. From a small pouch on her waist she pulls out a gasmask and places it over her face.

  “Are you ok? Do we need to get you to a hospital?” I say panicked. I have never seen anyone outside without their mask. You’ll die. It’s that simple. Or at least it was until a few moments ago.

  “No, I’m ok. Plus I can’t be seen right now. I’m a dead giveaway in this green shirt.”

  Delia looks down at her green shirt steadily turning black in the falling ash.

  “What now?” I ask.

  “I need to wait until dark before I can get out of here. And you need to get home. Your parents are going to be worried.”

  “They don’t worry about me.” I say indignantly. My resentment toward their fight last night clearly shines through.

  “You know that’s not true. Plus with all the Peace Officers swarming around you definitely don’t want to be here.”

  “But I can’t go. Your mask, I mean you didn’t need a mask. You know things. Things I want to know. I need to know the truth.”

  Delia lifts her head locking her eyes with mine.

  “That’s a dangerous path kid. You think you want to know, you think you’re ready but you’re not. You should go home and forget everything you saw.”

  “Impossible,” I say.

  Delia’s head drops. “I know.” The sorrow in her voice sends a shiver down my spine.

  “If you want to learn more,” she continues, “ask yourself this. Why have you never seen someone die on the street? Where are the corpses of rats and birds? Once you’ve started to peel those layers back ask yourself, what’s hidden in the silver trucks?”

  I gulp hard. Fear radiates in my body. Silver trucks? What is she talking about? With every passing moment more of the world is revealed to me, yet I can’t shake the feeling that I understand it less and less.

  “Where do I even start? Can’t you tell me?”

  “I wish I could kid, but this is one journey you have to make by yourself.” She pauses for a moment. Taking in a deep breath she continues, “Blend in, cover your tracks and don’t make waves.”

  Her warning sinks home. Peace Officers don’t take kindly to abnormal behavior. It’s beat out of us at school to the point where it becomes unimaginable. I care not to think about what happens to the people who cut their own path.

  Delia pushes herself up from the filthy alley floor. The conversation dies. Only the movement of falling ash breaks up the stillness. Delia looks exhausted. Not from the sprint, but from being on the run. The woman who approached me in the club is gone. Her vibrancy has faded from her face and is now stoic with resolve. I imagine for a moment that I’m looking at my future self. The thought sinks into the pit of my stomach. Delia locks eyes with me. I see something there, familiar, yet I cannot express it. Like the look my mother gave me all those years ago, this too will haunt me. She turns away from me and begins taking long strides down the alley. I panic; she can’t leave yet! This has been too much too quickly, and I still have so many questions.

  “Where are you going?” More of my anxiety seeps into my words than I would like.

  “I don’t know kid. Now go on, get home. And remember, tread carefully.”

  I stand frozen as I watch her turn the corner and disappear. Minutes ago I didn’t know her world existed and now it’s slipping away from me. I think of crying out to her but decide against it. But the gnawing remains. If I let her get away now I may never find the answers I seek. Forcing my muscles to move, I run after her as fast as the slippery cobblestones will allow.

  The alley forks and diverges. I pick paths on impulse, then double back when they turn up empty. My lungs rasping, mouth tasting of copper and ash, I slow down to a walk. Tears well in my eyes. I found what I was looking for, I found her, and I let her slip away. Sliding down the wall behind me, the adrenaline fades away and my heart slows. Heavy tears stream down my face, pooling in the inner seal around my eyes, obscuring my view. Slowly I put all the emotions this encounter has unleashed back into place and I rise from the cold, stone alley.

  I wind my way back to the main street. Instantly, I slip into the crowd and disappear. As I walk I know that I’ll never see Delia again and that my life will never be the same. Contradicting emotions, both sadness and joy, fill my heart.

  Chapter Five

  I wander the streets for nearly an hour before I stumble across anything I recognize. With the sun now set, the roads are tricky to navigate in the sickly yellow glow of the street lights. In the large gaps between light posts, the darkness is as thick and suffocating as the falling ash.

  I keep moving with the thinning crowd until I make it back to familiar surroundings. Across the street from me stands the impending visage of my apartment complex. Stopping to look at it, I realize for the first time its enormity. Shooting higher into the sky than the buildings around it, it looms over everything in sight.

  Everything feels different. The world seems darker, the ash thicker. My mask feels heavy and uncomfortable on my face. The sounds of wet ash sloshing under the wheels of passing cars and the dull hum of the sickly yellow lamps fill me with dread.

  It’s as if my eyes have been opened for the first time, only instead of seeing the world illuminated, it is engulfed in total darkness. I am blind.

  I pass through the airlock and enter the lobby. A small fleet of mechanical sweepers finish their dash across the floor, leaving it polished and clean in their wake. They disappear into hidden panels along the wall.

  The concierge glances up at me then returns to his magazine. I know he recognizes me, but I don’t feel welcome here.

  The elevator whirs its comforting sounds. And I exhale completely for the first time in hours. Emptying my lungs of the day, I refill it with filtered, lemon tinged air and instantly begin to feel better. Today has been a whirlwind, and I am floating in the unknown, but I have new knowledge to ground me. The masks. How can the air be poisonous if Delia didn’t die? This mystery is certainly bigger than that, but it’s a place to start. If I can answer that I can move on to the bigger questions and maybe one day I’ll no longer be in the dark.

  Ding. The elevator doors open and I step out into the hallway. Pacing down the hall, I suddenly remember how late it is. Is Mother worried? Has she even noticed? She always tells me to be free, so she shouldn’t have a problem with how late I stay out. Unconcerned, I open the door.

  Immediately I know I’m wrong. Mother sits on the edge of the couch rocking back and forth. Her hands, clasped tight, are red from the force she’s holding them shut with. Seeing me, she jumps u
p and runs down the hall toward me.

  “Evelyn? Darling, I was so worried.”

  She wraps her arms around me. Her embrace is uncommon but not unwelcome. I hug her back. She pushes herself back to look me in the face, our masks eye-port to eye-port.

  “Never do that again! Do you know how much anguish you caused me? I phoned the school, Peace Officers. I’ve been here worried sick.”

  “You called Peace Officers?”

  A knot closes up my throat. If I hadn’t followed Delia out of there, we’d be having this conversation at a detention center and the tone would be drastically different. I swallow hard.

  “I’m sorry, Mother. I didn’t mean to worry you. I walked home from school, that’s all.”

  She embraces me tightly again.

  “You could have gotten yourself killed, Evelyn. I don’t want you doing that again.”

  Her grip tightens, and all the warmth of the hug is gone.

  “You can’t let them get you, Evelyn… you can’t.”

  Her fingers dig painfully into my back.

  Releasing me, she steps back. “I’m going to bed.” Her voice, drained of all emotion, is barely audible.

  I stand in the silence and watch her disappear into her room. Her vacillating tone confuses me. It’s as though she’s conflicted. She wants me to live and be free, but she also deeply fears the air, the subversives, everything. This struggle leaves her conflicted on how to interact with me and leaves my feelings toward her twisted up in knots.

  She’s just as blind as I am. She doesn’t know, so she can only fear. I empathize with her, but the pain in my back from her fingers makes it difficult.

  Father still isn’t home. Not wishing to wait for him, I head off to get ready for bed.

  All night I dream of the club. The bright colors, the heat, the smell, the life, and the look in Delia’s eyes.

  Morning comes quickly. Mother enters my room. Still in her mask, still silent. I obediently replace my filter. As soon as I do she slinks back off to her room. Getting up and dressed, I push her from my mind.

  Why we wear our masks is all I can think about on the way to school.

  The loud crackle of the classroom’s speakers coming to life pulls me out of my head. Looking at Speer fiddle with the command module, it’s clear that something isn’t working. The speakers begin playing the audio of our next documentary, Great Occupations in the Great Society, but the projector remains off.

  “Damnable thing!”

  Speer slams a fist into the command module. The narration stops. We all remain silent, but I’m sure I’m not the only one with a smirk on my face.

  “Stand by, students.”

  Speer turns and leaves the room, without waiting for our response. He doesn’t have to. He knows that we are incapable of anything but obedience, and sadly enough he’s right. Sitting in the silence of the room I can’t help but think of the club.

  It was cramped, loud, chaotic, and intimidating, but it was also alluring, sensational, and alive. The contrast between then and now is so strong that I begin to doubt if yesterday’s events were real or just a figment of my imagination. That place seems so otherworldly in the cold grey stillness of the classroom.

  Speer returns to the room followed by two gangly men in brown overalls and simple rubber masks.

  “The projector finally crapped out, huh? We’ll get it up and running again, but it’ll take us a while.” Says one of the eerily similar technicians. The other nods his head in agreement.

  “I thought that might be the case. All right, students, listen up. The projector is in need of repair so we will work around this by going to the computer room for some unstructured lab time.”

  The other students fidget with excitement, but I don’t. I too am excited, but for completely different reasons. I have a plan.

  “Settle down. Don’t make me regret this. Stand up! Proceed to the computer lab single file.”

  Chapter Six

  At Speer’s command, we rise from our desks and file out into the hall, making our way down to the computer labs. We shuffle our way there under the monitors’ withering stares.

  Entering the room, I make my way as quickly as I can toward the computer farthest from the instructor’s desk. Speer always looks and I don’t want him looking. He enters last. Taking his place behind the instructor’s desk, he kicks his feet up and leans back.

  “You have an hour of unstructured computer time. I suggest you use it wisely.”

  Picking up his newest copy of Drumbeat, he begins to read. The other students quickly log into their terminals and begin watching videos and instant messaging each other.

  Normally the computers are highly restricted. When we have access to them we use them for specific lesson plans, and Speer is always watching. But today is different.

  This unexpected turn of events fills me with excitement. Using the computers I can search for answers; I can start uncovering the truth.

  The three girls sitting next to me pull markers from their pockets and with great zeal begin scribbling on each other’s masks with shapes and colors of every variety. The desire to decorate my mask never crossed my mind. Sure I’ve seen it done a few times over the years at school, and at the rare sleep-over, but it never made my mask feel like mine.

  Decorating your mask does nothing to alleviate its discomfort or confinement. I may have done it when I was a little girl, but now it feels wrong to personalize something that erases your identity. If it brings them some measure of happiness who am I to stop them, but no one is going to look at a dozen kaleidoscopic patterns and think, “Oh, that’s so and so.” They’ll just see another young girl who has become complacent in her prison.

  They might be, but I am not.

  Despite how I feel about their choice of activities it has given me the opportunity I need. Every student must log in with their own individualized user ID and password. Once they’ve done so, every action they take is copied off of their terminal and sent to the school’s central database where Inspector Aldridge picks through every line to ensure we aren’t looking at restricted materials.

  In my eighth year, I searched “what makes the Great Society so great?” That little act would have landed me two weeks detention if I hadn’t been able to convince the Authoritarian and Inspector Aldridge that I had not meant for my search to be sarcastic and that I actually wanted to compare my own list of what makes the Great Society great with what the computer said. When the Authoritarian commanded me to recite what makes the Great Society humanity’s crown jewel, I felt genuine terror. Each word of praise I spoke fell from trembling lips.

  I haven’t used computers to satisfy my curiosity since. And I fear, that if I am caught today, I won’t be able to force praise through my lips and escape from punishment. And at my age I know I wouldn’t get off easily with only detention. But I have a plan to dodge suspicion, and I think it’ll work.

  Of the three girls, the one sitting next to me is Victoriana. Her unmistakable bright yellow hair flows past her shoulders and to the middle of her back. Normally the thought of getting someone else in trouble by using their login wouldn’t cross my mind, but with Victoriana I feel no guilt.

  I know how she treats me, and I’ve seen the way she manipulates others, spreads lies and starts rumors. I’m not jealous of her or her popularity. Not in the least. I simply care nothing for her. She coerces and deceives to get what she wants. She is a living embodiment of what I feel is wrong with our society. Besides, her parents are powerful people. Being high-level bureaucrats, I’m sure they could convince people to look the other way in the case of one transgression.

  Plus, Victoriana is an easy target. She is the only girl to have ever gone to Neptus Memorial. With her initials “VZ” that meant her username was “VZ1”. Knowing her username wouldn’t be enough, but a few weeks back I watched her type in he
r password, ‘vicky123’. She’s made this almost too easy. I know it’s risky, and Victoriana might get in serious trouble, but this is my best shot. I have to take it.

  In the corner of my eye I watch her draw detailed patterns onto the mask of whoever is sitting next to her. Taking a deep breath, I begin.

  My fingers dance through the projected light from the terminal. I’m in. There is no telling how long they can keep themselves preoccupied with decorating their masks before they decide to use their computers, so I work as fast as I can. My fingers darting like lightning, I type in the question Delia left me with, “If the air we breathe is toxic, killing people all the time, why aren’t the streets littered with bodies? What’s hidden in the silver trucks?” The search is instantaneous.

  The Public Works and Infrastructure informational page opens, scrolls down the page, and then focuses on a headline. “GSPWI workers toil around the clock to keep your streets clear of refuse, debris, and obstacles. We keep the city beautiful so you don’t have to.” Fantastic, more lies. More propaganda. What did I expect? I doubt the truth is that easy: to type in my burning question and have it instantly gratified with a clear and rational answer. Having wasted my one and only opportunity, I log out.

  Heart racing, I lean back in my chair, staring. The ceiling cracks and discolored spots of the concrete scowl back at me with unflinching coolness. Nothing is that easy. I had one shot with that, one shot to find something out, and I threw it away. At least now I know for sure the computers are not to be trusted, and whatever the truth is, they really don’t want people to stumble across it. I should have known; nothing is that easy to find, especially when the entire state apparatus is invested in keeping it hidden.

  Victoriana finishes drawing a thick golden line completing the zigzag pattern on the girl’s mask. As soon as the pen lifts from the rubber, the excitement of decorating the mask fades and she abruptly turns toward her computer terminal and logs in with fast, practiced fingers. Pages of fashion sites, media, and instant messaging clutter up every pixel of her screen.