Sorrel studies me, and for a second I think she’ll press the issue. Then Violet throws a shoe at her. “Come on! I’m not going to be late just because she can’t make it out of bed on time!”
Sorrel stands reluctantly.
“Go on,” Poppy says. “I’ll light a fire under Dahlia and we’ll meet you in the cafeteria.”
As soon as the door closes behind our identicals, Poppy turns on me. “Is it the boy?” she whispers, too low for the camera mounted in the corner to pick up. “Did you dream about him again?”
I haven’t told anyone else about Trigger 17. I can’t tell anyone else. Sorrel is legitimately concerned about me, but she tells Violet everything, and Violet likes to be liked. She’ll tell everyone.
“Yes.” I run water over my toothbrush and stare at myself in the mirror. I look the same, but something feels different. I can’t get him out of my head. “I don’t understand it,” I tell her as I squeeze toothpaste onto my brush. “I don’t know what made me talk to him. And I can’t figure out why every time I close my eyes, he’s there. Right behind my eyelids. Smiling.” There’s something about his smile. It gives me a strange, unsteady feeling deep in my stomach.
“It sounds weird.” Poppy grabs a pair of socks from my drawer and sticks the folded bundle into my left shoe. “We see boys all the time, and I’ve never dreamed about one. They’re no more interesting than our own identicals. Less so, really.”
“I know.” But Trigger is different from the boys in the year-sixteen hydroponic gardening class. “Poppy.” I turn to her with toothpaste foam in the corners of my mouth. “He’s…beautiful.” I can’t figure out how else to explain. “And he’s dangerous,” I whisper, just in case the camera in our bedroom can pick up audio from the bathroom.
Poppy’s reflection in the mirror goes still. “Why are you saying that like it’s an advantage?”
“I don’t know!”
She lowers her voice and frowns at me in the mirror. “He spoke to you, Dahlia.”
“I’m aware.” I run water into the sink to add audio camouflage.
“He put you at risk. He put us all at risk.”
“I know, and he terrifies me. But at the same time, thinking about him makes me feel like I’m at the end of a relay race. Like my whole body is alive and I can’t catch my breath.”
Poppy’s frown deepens. “Dahlia, I think you may be ill. That sounds like some kind of virus.”
“I’m not sick,” I whisper as I cross into the bedroom to pull on my shoes and socks. But something is definitely wrong. Or at least…different.
“Dahlia!” Poppy whispers fiercely as she sinks onto my bunk next to me. “You spoke to him!”
There’s no use denying it. She knows me too well.
“I couldn’t help it. The power was out, so the cameras were off and he was so fascinating! He doesn’t think about things the same way we do. We were like two people standing in opposite corners of the same room—we see all the same things but from totally different perspectives.” I want to know what else he sees. I want to know how he sees things. I want to know why his view is so different from mine.
I want to know everything.
“Okay, we can’t talk about this anymore,” Poppy says as I tie my other shoe. “Ever again. This is unsafe, Dahlia.”
“I’m sorry to have dragged you into it.”
She shrugs. “I’m in it anyway. We all are.” Because what one identical does affects all the others. “That’s why you can’t tell anyone else about this.”
“I know.” And the truth is that I don’t want to. This is my secret. It may be the only one I ever have.
Poppy and I greet our identicals in the cafeteria, and as I spear a clump of scrambled eggs with my fork I scan the crowd out of habit, looking for Dahlia 17. I find her easily; she always sits in the same place. Her roommates are the Violet, Sorrel, and Poppy from the year-seventeen class, but she seems to be closer to Iris and Rose. I wish I could hear what they’re talking about. They’re just months away from joining the workforce at year eighteen, and I’m dying to know what advanced hydroponic techniques I have yet to learn. What glimpses of life as an adult they’ve already seen.
I’ll know all that for myself soon, but patience has never been among my gifts. Poppy says my plants must feel the same way, which is why they mature so quickly. I don’t know if that’s true, but I can’t shake the feeling that, much like the plants they grow, my friends are in no hurry to see or experience anything new. They never seem to think about the future or what it might bring.
I can’t figure out why I feel so different, or why meeting Trigger 17 has highlighted all those differences. But I know much better than to ask.
For weeks I see Trigger 17’s face everywhere I turn, and I can’t decide whether this new frequency is real or imagined. I’ve probably seen his genome all my life but never had reason to notice. Now every time I see a formation of year-seventeen cadets, my gaze betrays me. I’m losing focus. During sports practice my soccer kicks go wild. I drop the relay baton. I lose count of the seedlings I’m supposed to be inventorying.
Then, on one warm early fall afternoon more than three weeks after we were rescued from the broken elevator, I step out of the secondary dormitory in line between Poppy and Sorrel and am stunned to see Trigger 17 marching in formation with a squad of twelve cadets.
His head turns slightly and he sees me.
My step falters and my chest feels tight. I know it’s him without checking for his name. I can see it in the way his gaze lingers. In the subtle upturn of his lips. In the red braid over his shoulder.
How have I never noticed that most cadets don’t wear the braid?
Each of his classmates wears a backpack heavy enough to press indentations into his shoulders. Their boots are muddy. Their uniforms are layered with dust and they look tired. They’ve obviously come from some kind of training mission outside the city.
Poppy follows my gaze before I realize I’m staring. “What’s wrong?” she asks.
“Nothing. I…Did you know they get to eat vegetables picked right out of the ground?”
“Who?” Sorrel whispers, glancing back at us over her shoulder.
“The Defense cadets. You know how they have to cook their own food when they’re out in the wild?” I ask, and my roommates nod. “They don’t carry food with them. They eat whatever they can find out there. Growing wild.”
“How do you know that?” Sorrel asks.
Poppy gives me a warning look, but I already know I’ve said too much. I shrug. “I heard it somewhere.”
“Better them than us,” Sorrel says, but I think she’s wrong. I know we grow food more efficiently than it could ever grow from the ground, and I know that our specially engineered strains are hardier and healthier than anything found in the wild. Still, I’d like to see how things used to be. How they still are outside the city.
“Isn’t that class a little small for Defense?” Violet whispers from behind Poppy.