My thoughts racing, I turn on the faucet and rinse the carrot. It’s long and thin, with a cordlike fibrous length trailing from the tip. I dry the vegetable on a hand towel and lift it for a taste. My mouth waters. But I can’t bite into it.
If I eat the carrot, it will be gone; but I want to keep it. I need to keep this secret, for proof that I’m not dreaming the whole thing. I want to be able to touch this wild vegetable when no one is looking and know that Trigger risked everything to give it to me.
This contraband carrot is evidence that he’s still thinking about me, just like I’m still thinking about him.
I kneel to pick up the shirt where it has fallen on the floor, and sticking out from the material I notice the torn edge of a small piece of wrinkled paper. It looks like some kind of brown wrapping. The narrow, scrawling handwriting on it reads 18th-floor landing. 6:35 p.m.
My stomach flips. I’m not allowed to use the stairwell except in an emergency. I’m not allowed to talk to students from other bureaus unless we’re working on a joint project. And I’m certainly not allowed to lie to my instructors about where I’m going and what I’m doing.
The very idea of breaking all three of those rules to meet with a boy who should not fascinate me like he does is both terrifying and exhilarating. And completely unthinkable.
But six-thirty-five is in the middle of dinner. I could conceivably excuse myself to use the restroom, then sneak onto the landing. There are no cameras in the stairwell.
But if I get caught…
I don’t even want to imagine what will happen if Trigger 17 and I are discovered. If Management finds out about the deviant thoughts and feelings I now spend every waking moment trying to hide. If they find out about what can only be a massive flaw in my genome. Both of our genomes, evidently.
I can’t meet Trigger. I cannot put my sisters in danger of being recalled.
I shouldn’t keep the carrot. It’s a dangerous memento. Yet I can’t bring myself to part with it. If I eat it—the only safe way to dispose of it—I will lose the tangible certainty that this moment actually happened.
Instead I wrap the note around the carrot and fold them both back into my shirt. Then I rinse all the dirt from the sink and flush the toilet so that anyone listening from the camera feed will think I had a legitimate reason to be in the restroom.
In the bedroom, I tuck the shirt-wrapped carrot and note into the back of my drawer and take out a clean top. I hastily pull on both my shirt and shoes, then I head out across the lawn again on my way back to the Workforce Academy.
There is a carrot in my drawer.
It’s all I can think about.
Voices rise from all around me in the eighteenth-floor cafeteria, and no one seems to mind that the food line is moving extraordinarily slowly. The landscape gardening girls are dragging their feet on purpose. Or am I imagining that?
As I shuffle forward behind Poppy, Sorrel, and Violet, surrounded by our own identicals as well as students from the year-fifteen and year-seventeen classes, my gaze keeps wandering toward the glass wall at the end of the cafeteria. Through it I can see the offices where the eighteenth-floor conservator and her staff of supervisors work when they’re not inspecting dorm rooms, scheduling field days, inventorying supplies, sending sick residents to the Medical Center, and generally maintaining a clean and efficient dorm environment.
At the end of that same hall is the stairwell, two doors down from my room. If I were to excuse myself to go to the restroom, I’d only have to walk a few extra feet to go into the stairwell instead. There’s a good chance no one would notice.
But what if someone does?
Olive 16 pokes my shoulder, and I turn to see that the line has moved forward without me. Poppy holds her wrist beneath the scanner. There is a whisper of moving parts, then the steel door slides up, revealing her tray.
Her dinner is just like mine. It’s just like Olive’s, and Violet’s, and Sorrel’s. We are all the same, and since our physical exertion level is very similar to that of most of the other trade labor unions, our nutritional needs are all virtually identical.
Poppy moves down the line to accept her carton of skim milk and bottle of water while I slide my wrist beneath the scanner in front of the meal dispenser. My tray comes out just like hers did, and as I move forward in line I turn for another glimpse of the stairwell door.
Instead I see a year-seventeen cadet standing in the hallway with a red braid over his shoulder and a tablet under one arm. He’s obviously waiting to see my floor’s conservator, but he’s staring through the cafeteria window at me.
Our gazes lock, and though his expression doesn’t change—not even a flicker of a smile—his eyes seem to light up. He’s found me almost instantly, even though I am surrounded by my identicals and he’s too far away to read the names embroidered on our clothing.
How does he know that I’m me?
“Seriously, Dahlia, I’d like to eat sometime this century,” Olive says, and I tear my gaze away from Trigger’s as if he is a hot coal I’ve just touched with my bare hand.
I shuffle forward again and accept my bottle of water and carton of milk; then I’m through the line. I dare another glance at him as I make my way to the stainless steel table where my roommates are already seated, but he’s gone into the conservator’s office. Or maybe he’s already in the stairwell waiting for me.
The clock over the door reads 6:25.
I can’t meet Trigger. I’d be sealing the fate of five thousand girls—of Poppy and Sorrel and Violet—if I get caught. But I scarf down my dinner anyway, just in case I decide to go, because I’m expected to eat everything on my tray before I leave the cafeteria.
As I chew, I scan the cafeteria for Dahlia 17. She sits several tables away, facing me, and as I watch, she brushes a shoulder-length blond curl back from her freckled face.
Would her genome be so tempted to break the rules? So captivated by a boy with a pleasing aesthetic and a deep voice?
“Dahlia, you look like a horse at a trough.” Violet cuts into my thoughts and I look up to see all three of my roommates watching as I shovel one forkful after another into my mouth.
“Sorry,” I say around a mouthful of black beans. “I’m starving.”
I try to eat more slowly, pretending I’m paying attention as Sorrel complains about the quality of her vines and Iris leans in to give her some truly generic advice. But all I really see is the clock over the door. The digital numbers seem stuck at 6:31. Has time actually stopped?
Finally, the conservator’s office door opens and I freeze when Trigger 17 emerges. He glances into the cafeteria briefly, but I can’t tell whether he’s found me before he turns and marches with a cadet’s formal bearing and confidence toward the stairwell.