“If you keep going you’ll reach the ocean. On the other side of the red bridge there’s a camp. I’ve heard it called Califia. If you can get there, they’ll protect you.”
“And what about the City of Sand?” I asked as she felt along the wall. The conversation was ending, I could sense it, and questions flooded my mind. “What about the babies that are being born? Who’s going to take care of them? And the Graduates, will they ever get out?”
“The babies are taken to the city. The Graduates . . .” She kept her head down, feeling along the wall. “They are in the service of the King. They’ll get out if and when the King decides it is time, if and when enough children have been produced.”
Behind some branches was a hole so small it was barely noticeable. Teacher Florence inserted the key and in one turn the wall opened out, the doorway finally visible. Then she glanced backward, to the other side of the compound.
“It’s supposed to be an emergency fire exit,” she explained.
The forest spilled out before me, its hillsides lit only by the perfect, glowing moon. This was it. Where I came from, where I was going. My past, my future. I wanted to ask Teacher more—about this strange place called Califia, about the danger of the road—but just then the beam of the guard’s flashlight rounded the corner of the dormitory building.
Teacher Florence pushed me forward. “Go, now!” she urged. “Go!”
And as fast as the door opened, it closed behind me, leaving me alone in the cold, starless night.
Chapter Four
THE FIRST THING I SAW WHEN I OPENED MY EYES WAS the sky: a blue, boundless thing that was so much bigger than I had ever imagined. All twelve years I had been at School I had seen only the stretch between one side of the wall and the other. Now I stood underneath it, noticing the purple and yellow streaks that appeared in that massive umbrella, visible now in the early morning light.
Last night I had run as far and as fast as I could, too terrified to stop. I went under crumbling bridges and through steep ravines, until I saw that beautiful sign 80 lit up by the moon. It was then that I found rest in a ditch, my legs simply too tired to carry me any farther. The bottom of my pants was caked with dirt and my throat was dry.
I climbed up onto a hard, flat ridge and looked out on the morning. The hillside was covered with overgrown flower bushes, tall, terrifically green grass, and trees that sprouted up at unusual angles, winding in and out and around one another. I couldn’t help but laugh, remembering the pictures I had seen of the world before the plague. There were photos of neat, manicured lawns, and rows of houses on paved streets, their bushes trimmed into perfect squares. This looked nothing like that at all.
On the horizon, a deer bounded through an old gas station. Before the plague, oil had powered nearly everything. But without anyone to run the refineries, they had closed down. Now oil was used only by the King’s government, including a set allowance for each School. The deer stopped to feast on the grass that had sprung up between the rusted pumps. Dense flocks of birds changed directions in the sky, their wings iridescent in the bright morning light. I stomped on the ground, feeling the ledge beneath me, so hard and flat. The road was an inch thick with moss.
“Hello?” a voice asked. “Hello?”
I spun around, looking for the source, my fear returning at the sound of a man’s voice. I remembered the tales of the forest and the renegade gangs who camped out there, living in the trees. My eyes fell on a weathered shack a few yards off. It was covered in ivy, the door sealed shut. I crept toward it, trying to hide myself.
The voice spoke again. “Shut up!”
I froze. We weren’t allowed to speak those words at School. They were “inappropriate” and only known to us through books.
“Shut up!” The voice yelled again, from somewhere above me.
I turned my face skyward. There, a large red parrot perched on the roof of the shack, its head cocked to one side as he studied me.
“Ring, ring! Ring, ring! Who is this?” He pecked at something on the roof.
I had seen a parrot in a children’s book before, about a pirate who robbed people of treasure. Pip and I had read it in the archives, running our fingers over the water-stained illustrations.
Pip. Somewhere miles away, she was discovering my empty bed, the sheets crumpled and cold. New plans for graduation would be made in haste. She and Ruby were probably afraid that I had been kidnapped, unable to imagine I would ever leave of my own volition. Maybe Amelia, the all-too-eager salutatorian, would give my speech and lead them over the bridge. When would they realize the truth? When they set foot on the bare bank on the other side? When the doors flung open, exposing the cement room?
I reached for the bird, but it backed away. “What’s your name?” I asked. My voice startled me.