Between rounds of volleyball, soccer, and relay races, I stare at the cadets across the common lawn, but over that distance I can’t tell which of the black-clad bodies and dark-eyed gazes belongs to Trigger 17. Yet for the first time I notice the difference between our recreation and his.
Workforce’s athletic activities consist exclusively of team sports. Yet while the cadets cheer for one another and shout advice as their classmates grapple, their activities invariably pit one cadet against another. Their races aren’t relays. They play tennis one-on-one. They compete for the most accurate target shooting. Their efforts—both their successes and failures—stand on their own.
I’m not sure their way is better than ours, but I’m not sure it’s worse either. I think it’s just different. And I’m amazed that I’ve never noticed that before.
After my leg of the sprint relay, I look up to find that the cadets’ exercise has ended and the last of the year fifteens are filing back toward their academy. Their year-seventeen mentors are nowhere to be seen.
I can’t set aside my disappointment even when Violet smacks me on the shoulder with the baton she has just carried across the finish line, earning our team the relay championship. Our victory cupcakes taste bittersweet, even though chocolate is my favorite flavor. I hardly hear our athletic instructor’s speech lauding our teamwork and dedication to the group effort rather than individual glory.
When Belay 35 asks for a volunteer to return the sporting equipment to the utility shed behind our academy, I raise my hand. I need a few minutes to myself to process the knowledge that Trigger 17 isn’t gone. Not yet, anyway. So I put the baton tape in my pocket, throw the mesh bag full of balls over my left shoulder, and tuck the bundle of relay batons under my right arm. Then I head for the back of the building in spite of my instructor’s surprise that I haven’t chosen an identical to help me.
In the utility shed, I place the volleyballs and soccer balls on their designated racks and toss the empty mesh bag into a basket full of others just like it. I’m counting the relay batons to make sure they’ve all been recovered when the door at my back closes.
I gasp and whirl around. The batons clatter to the ground, and one of them hits my foot. I can’t make out anything in the darkness, and I can’t remember where the light switch is.
“Dahlia. It’s me.”
I don’t recognize Trigger 17 by his voice. I recognize him by the warmth in the way he says my name. By the casual nature of his declaration, as if we can simply pick up where we left off. As if the entire world isn’t just beyond that closed door, waiting for proof that we are both flawed. That we shouldn’t even exist.
“I thought you were gone with the rest of your division,” I say into the darkness. “What are you still doing here?”
“Gone with…? Oh, the graduates?” His silhouette shrugs against the greater darkness. “Those were infantry cadets. Around three thousand of them total. There are about a thousand of us left, and we’re all specialists. Linguists. Explosives experts. Special Forces.”
“Why did the infantry graduate early?”
“Who knows? I guess Lakeview needed some more grunts.”
“But they didn’t finish training, did they?”
“We’re not quite finished.” His shadow lays one hand over its heart, a movement I can hardly make out in the dark. “But it doesn’t take a lot of training to catch a bullet.”
“Why would the city need more infantry if we’re not at war? We’re not, are we?”
Trigger’s shadow shrugs. “Not that I know of. I’ve been in the wild for nearly a month, and the only thing I know right now is that I want to see you.”
He steps forward, and I lose my breath.
“What are you doing?” I can’t tell if my pulse is racing from the scare he’s just given me, from the fact that he hasn’t graduated and left me, or from the knowledge that we’re alone in the dark. Or because now I might get to touch him again. Is it early enough in the day for his face to be smooth?
Does he want me to touch him?
It doesn’t matter. As happy as I am to see him, we can’t be here. Even if Special Forces cadets are afforded some measure of freedom while they’re not in class, I’m not. My instructor will be expecting me.
“I brought you something.” There’s a new note in his voice—an eager excitement. He sounds like I feel when it’s time to clean out the water bed and plant something brand-new. “I saw you come in here alone, and I thought this would be my best chance to give it to you. This shed could be our new stairwell.”
I swallow the lump in my throat and remind myself to breathe. That last sentence made no sense, yet I understand it perfectly.
He steps closer, and I can see him better now that my eyes have adjusted to the low light. He’s holding something small and vaguely oblong between his left index finger and thumb, and I wonder if his genome is left-handed. Then I notice that what he’s holding has a familiar silhouette.
I squint in the darkness. “Is that…?”
“It’s a peanut. I pulled the plant out of the ground yesterday afternoon, about halfway between Lakeview and Riverbend, and I saved this one for you.” He drops the peanut in my cupped palm, and I lift it to my face for a better look. It smells like the earth. There are still tiny clumps of dirt clinging to the shell.
Somehow, like the carrot, this wild peanut seems…hardy. It must be, to have survived out there on its own with no one feeding or watering it, or monitoring its health, the efficiency of its growth, or the state of its environment.
“Should I eat it?”
He laughs. “That’s typically what one does with a peanut.”
“But once I eat it, it will be gone.”
“And as with the carrot, there will be others, Dahlia. I know where to look.”
But he shouldn’t have a chance to bring me another peanut, because we’re not supposed to be alone together. We’re not supposed to be talking. I can’t think of a rule specifically forbidding bringing wild produce into the city, but I’m pretty sure he would get in trouble for it if anyone knew.
Yet somehow I believe him. There will be other peanuts.
So I crack the shell in one hand and pull the top half off. Lying in the cradle of the bottom half are three round kernels, which he would probably call nuts. They are perfectly formed and covered in a thin reddish skin. Though it was grown without fertilizer, constant attention, or proper spacing, I see no obvious flaws in this wild peanut.
I dump the kernels into my palm, then toss all three into my mouth.
Trigger 17 watches me while I chew, and to my surprise I can actually taste a difference between this wild peanut and the ones we’re served as high-protein snacks. Maybe it’s a different variety. Or maybe different growth methods yield different tastes. Either way I am fascinated. I want to see where this peanut grew. I want to see how it grew.
I want to know if peanuts that grow all on their own, with no one micromanaging their environment, can possibly be as strong as peanuts grown side by side in a bed of thousands under ideal circumstances.