Through the walls, I think I hear a muffled shout. I tell myself it’s just my imagination.
I pull The Book of Shhh onto my lap and flip through the pages. Even though the psalms and prayers are still familiar, the words look strange and their meanings are indecipherable: It’s like returning somewhere you haven’t been since you were a child, and finding everything smaller and disappointing. It reminds me of the time Hana unearthed a dress she had worn every day in first grade. We were in her room, bored, messing around, and she and I laughed and laughed, and she kept repeating, I can’t believe I was ever that small.
My chest begins to ache. It seems impossibly, unbelievably long ago—when I could sit in a room with carpet, when we could spend days messing around, doing nothing in each other’s company. I didn’t realize then what a privilege that was: to be bored with your best friend; to have time to waste.
Halfway through The Book of Shhh a page has been dog-eared. I stop, and see several words in one paragraph have been emphatically underlined. The excerpt comes from Chapter 22: Social History.
When you consider how society may persist in ignorance, you must also consider how long it will persist in delusion; all stupidity is changed to inevitability, and all ills are made into values (choice turned to freedom, and love to happiness), so there is no possibility of escape.
Three words have been forcefully underscored: You. Must. Escape.
I flip forward another few chapters and find another dog-eared page where words have been circled, seemingly sloppily and at random. The full passage reads:
The tools of a healthy society are obedience, commitment, and agreement. Responsibility lies both with the government and with its citizens. Responsibility lies with you.
Someone—Tack? Raven?—has circled various words in the paragraph: The tools are with you.
Now I’m checking every page. Somehow, they knew this would happen; they knew I might be—or would be—taken. No wonder Tack insisted I bring The Book of Shhh; he left clues for me in it. A feeling of pure joy wells up inside of me. They didn’t forget about me, and they haven’t abandoned me. Until now, I haven’t realized how terrified I’ve been—without Tack and Raven, I have no one. Over the past year, they have become everything to me: friends, parents, siblings, mentors.
There is only one other page that has been marked up. A large star has been drawn next to Psalm 37.
Through wind, and tempest, storm, and rain;
The calm shall be buried inside of me;
A warm stone, heavy and dry;
The root, the source, a weapon against pain.
I read through the psalm several times as disappointment comes thudding back. I was hoping for some kind of encoded message, but no deeper meaning is immediately apparent. Maybe Tack only meant for me to stay calm. Or maybe the star was penned in earlier, and is unrelated; or maybe I’ve misunderstood and the markings are random, a fluke.
But no. Tack gave me the book because he knew I might need it. Tack and Raven are meticulous. They don’t do things randomly or without purpose. When you are living on a razor’s edge, there is no room at all for fumbling.
Through wind, and tempest, storm, and rain…
Rain.
Tack’s umbrella—the one he pushed into my hands, and insisted I bring, on a cloudless day.
My hands are shaking as I pull the umbrella onto my lap and begin to examine it more closely. Almost immediately, I spot a tiny fissure—imperceptible, had I not been looking for it—that runs the length of the handle. I slide my fingernail into the miniscule crack and try to pry the handle apart, but it won’t budge.
“Shit,” I say out loud, which makes me feel a little better. “Shit, shit, shit.” Each time I say it, I try to pull and twist the umbrella apart, but the wood handle stays cleanly intact, polished and pretty.
“Shit!” Something inside me snaps—it’s the frustration, the waiting, the heavy silence. I throw the umbrella, hard, against the wall. It hits with a crack. As it lands, the halves of the handle come neatly apart, and from between them a knife clatters to the ground. When I pull it from its leather sheath, I recognize it as one of Tack’s. It has a carved bone handle and a viciously sharp blade. I once saw Tack gut an entire deer with it, cleanly, from throat to tail. Now the blade is polished so brightly that I can see my reflection in it.
Suddenly there is noise from the hallway: clomping footsteps, and a heavy grating sound, too, as though something is being dragged toward the cell. I tense up, gripping the knife, still in a crouch—I could make a run for it when the door opens; I could lunge at the Scavengers, swipe, swipe, take out an eye or get in at least one cut, make a run for it—but before I have time to plan or choose, the door is swinging open and it’s Julian who comes toppling through, half-conscious, so bruised and bleeding I recognize him only by his shirt, and then the door slams shut again.