Chosen Ones (8 page)

Chapter 11

“Don’t touch me!” I screamed.

When I came to I saw James’s hands coming toward me to help me up. I moved out of his reach, pushing myself with my feet against the floor to the edge of his bed. His jaw tensed as he stepped away from me. He took a deep breath before pulling a handkerchief from the pocket of his ridiculously formal jacket.

I was mortified. Not because I’d passed out, but because I had regressed into the natural, the girl who feared to be touched by a chosen one. As if somehow I could catch their soullessness by mere physical contact.

I had no idea if he had a soul. I was too busy fighting for mine.

I pulled my knees to my chest and let my head fall forward. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak out.” I swallowed, took the handkerchief he offered me, and pressed it against the back of my head.

“You look exhausted,” he remarked, sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall across from me. It was almost as if he wanted me to think we were equals.

“I’m fine. Really, I am. I hit my head while cleaning the banisters earlier today.” I’m sure he could tell I was lying.

Maybe he didn’t need a book to see a part of me.

The weight of his gaze suddenly felt suffocating. “Please. Tell me something to do. I need to perform a task,” I begged quietly.

“I have some clothes that need ironing.”

We didn’t speak as I worked. Sometimes I felt him looking at me. How strange that a body can feel what the eyes cannot see.

“I’m sorry about the mess. I’ve never been good at staying focused on one thing. I’ll start a project, and some question I have will get me going in another direction completely,” he quietly told me as I worked.

In less than half an hour I was done with the task. He mumbled a thank-you and turned back to his schoolwork on his desk. I made my way to the door. My hand barely grazed the knob before his voice halted me.

“You can’t go. It’s too soon.”

“I thought you wanted me to?”

“I don’t want you to leave. You seem so tired. Why don’t you just rest a bit?” He spoke softly.

I nodded and took a seat in the chair on the other side of the room. “What are you working on?” I asked, nervous to not be occupied with work of my own.

“A project for science class. We are studying the mating habits of rabbits. Completely dull and useless information. There’s no way I’ll be selected for any medical job,” he replied, pushing his book away from him.

“My sister died. We buried her yesterday.” I pressed my lips together. I didn’t know why I’d spoken up and certainly could not understand why I’d spoken about this thing.

“How old was she?” James asked after a long silence.

“Nineteen.”

He inhaled sharply. “You were sent here because of her?”

“She was a silly girl.”

“Silly to hope?”

“Yes.” I nodded. “Silly to hope where it is impossible.”

“There are rumors that certain cases have worked.”

“Rumors from a people desperate to believe that God hasn’t forsaken them for science,” I spat.

I couldn’t help it. I knew the anger had slipped out between my words, and I was terrified that my face betrayed it as well. Most of all I was horrified by the way my voice hissed when I said the word
science
.

He cleared his throat. I began to tap my foot furiously on the wooden floor. The dizziness was returning.

“Tess?”

“Hmm,” I quietly responded.

“Don’t you have any friends you can talk to? Not that I mind hearing about this. I just don’t really know what to say. I’m not…I’m not trained for this kind of thing. I will probably do more harm than good.”

I offered him a small smile. “You’re doing just fine. Besides, I don’t really have any friends, so I wouldn’t know the difference.”

He turned to face me, his eyes still holding the same intensity as before.

“Don’t they let you have friends at the compound?”

I frowned. “I choose not to.” It was one of the only choices I was allowed to make in my life, and I had made the wrong one. Maybe if I had someone to talk to, the pain would at least be bearable. I wouldn’t have to slam my head against a cement wall to keep from going mad. Maybe I would have been able to help the girl upstairs. At least I would have known what words of comfort sounded like.

His brow wrinkled. “Why would you choose that?”

Because I was scared. If let anyone in, they would see what I had become.

“I’m not exactly a people person,” I began.

My father once told me I saw the world differently than others. He said he meant it as a compliment, but I never forgot the tears in his eyes as he’d spoken the words. It was one of the last things we talked about before the council took him.

“I had one friend though. Henry. I mean, I wasn’t always a social pariah,” I managed. I didn’t want James to think I was incapable of human connection. For some reason, I needed him to know I hadn’t always been like this.

“What happened? You don’t have to tell me, of course.” But I could see the anticipation on his face. He wanted the knowledge I could give him. James’s fascination with music and books, and maybe even with me, suddenly made sense. He couldn’t judge because like me, though for very different reasons, he was also somewhere outside the meaning of humanity.

I swallowed and continued. “When we came to the compound there was a lot of disorder. Back then people still questioned. They still cared. Henry’s father, well, he died when Henry was young. In the war. So when Henry came to the compound it was just him and his sisters and his mom. I remember seeing him around, but we didn’t really speak. I had my sister…”

I pressed the handkerchief harder, more forcefully against my scalp.

Old habits died hard.

“My sister told me that his mother and sisters couldn’t take it anymore. They didn’t see the point of the compound. They disagreed with some of the new practices put into place by the council, mainly the ones about our system of punishment.”

“The slash marks,” James offered. His fingers tapped nervously against the wood floor. I wondered where his tension stemmed from. Was it a burning desire to hear the rest of the story, or fear of what it would reveal?

I nodded. “Yes. So they left. They took Henry with them.”

“But it’s not safe to leave. There are Easterners and Isolationists out there. Some of those Isolationists are desperate. Men who have been away from civilization too long. The stories they have told us…”

“You don’t need to convince me. I know. I learned from Henry.” I felt the pain stirring inside of me, but it was not mine, not directly. It was the pain of my one-time friend. The pain I had willingly taken on. “The council found them, his mother and sisters, dead only three weeks later. The things that were done to them.” I shivered and my mind momentarily wandered again to the girl upstairs. Was there any place in this world that was safe?

“Henry survived? How?”

“I don’t know. He’s never talked about it. When he was brought back to the compound, so many people hounded him with questions, like he hadn’t been through enough. They wanted to take whatever he had left of himself, too.” Something I now understood all too well.

“But you didn’t ask him.”

“No. It wasn’t my place.”

“And that’s how you became friends?”

I nodded. “One day I just sat next to him at breakfast. I’m not sure why. We didn’t talk. It went on like that for days—I would sit next to him, we wouldn’t talk. One day he asked me if he could have my leftover pancakes. And that was that.”

I couldn’t help but smile at the memory and was surprised that James was smiling, too.

“What changed?” he asked.

“Things always get more difficult for our kind as we get older, especially between males and females.”

His smile faded.

“When you’re young you don’t know. And nobody talks about it. The adults just sit there and leave you to figure everything out on your own. I never understood the danger that surrounded our friendship, never suspected it carried with it a threat. How could I? How could I ever fathom that one day he would stop seeing me as Tess, his best friend first, and a girl second—to a woman first, and then as his friend? I never realized the way time worked. It was always against us.”

I had never said these things out loud.

“He knew it long before I did,” I whispered, more to myself than to James.

A powerful sigh shook my body and I dug my nails into my knees. “Henry started to distance himself. At first, I felt betrayed. I didn’t know what was happening. Only recently did I understand. When he left me—”

“He was saving you,” James spoke up. My eyes pounced on his.

“In his own way, yes. It never would have come to that. That’s not how I thought of him. He wasn’t that type of soul mate.”

“Soul mate? I’m afraid I have never heard the term,” James admitted.

I laughed harshly. “It’s silly. Something my sister used to talk about all the time.”

“Tell me. Please.” I could hear how his voice wavered between issuing an order and asking for a favor. How it must feel to constantly be stuck between having complete authority over someone and wanting them to willingly give in of their own accord. None of this was easy for him, either.

“It means someone you are destined to be with, to love forever. I never really agreed with that definition of it though.”

“What is your definition?” James asked.

“I believe a soul has many different aspects, different levels to it. And there are people who can fill a part of you, make it stronger. The part of my soul that longed to be carefree, the part that didn’t know fear or disappointment, that was the part of my soul Henry belonged to. He took it with him. But at least I know it was for the right reason.”

I was stunned by the honesty of my words and hopeful that I could still believe in them.

“I can’t figure you out.”

I glanced up at James. He had a way of utterly confusing me, dragging me out of my own world, and I craved to know how he viewed it. Did he find me as interesting as I found him? As different from the others around us?

He cleared his throat. “I know how I am supposed to feel. About your kind. God knows they’ve given me enough reasons to think that way. But everything I hear, everything they tell us about the naturals, it…it just doesn’t…it doesn’t explain
you
.”

I wasn’t sure if I felt insulted or a sense of pride from his words. But I felt
something
.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, you don’t exactly fit my definition of a chosen one, either,” I offered with a slight smile. How strange to smile after such a morning.

James’s face clouded over. He pushed his hand through his dark brown, almost black hair. “I don’t think I fit anyone’s definition of a chosen one.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”

Did he want to fulfill the council’s expectations? Or was he merely feeling the pain of being an outcast? A pain I was beginning to realize existed not when one failed to fit the mold created for him, but when one didn’t even know how to define that mold.

“Don’t worry about it,” he replied. I watched as his eyes traveled back to his desk, glancing at, seeking comfort from, the book.

“What about you? You must have loads of friends.”

“If you’re referring to Frank, we’re not exactly friends. He just turned to me because I am the only one foolish enough to care.”

“Is he all right? Is he sick?”

“Tess, there are things I can’t talk about. Things I don’t want to talk about. This is one of them.”

I nodded.

James stood up and stretched. I wondered if it was unnatural for him to sit still so long with no other purpose than to simply have a conversation. I took him in, allowing my eyes to travel across the boy who stood before me. I could see the hint of muscles under the tight tweed coat that covered his arms. My mouth went dry.

I did enjoy looking at him.

Especially that scar.

He moved with a slowness that seemed foreign to him, hesitating as he stood in front of me, reading something on my face, wordlessly asking me for permission to be this close. I knew if I looked down, he would move away.

I didn’t want him to.

He took a seat in front of me, and my knees almost touched his. He glanced at his hands for a long while. Then, with a sigh that spoke of uncertainty, he turned back to me.

“I think maybe we can be friends.”

His words caught me off guard. It sounded more like a question than a firm declaration. I picked at the fabric of my skirt, unable to look up at him. Did he really, truly, want to know who I was?

“Why?” I asked quietly.

Was it just to satisfy some bizarre fascination, some need to know the girl who didn’t have a place with her own people? Or did he actually like the small, almost undetectable glimpse of me I had allowed him to see?

“I… Would it work if I said I didn’t know? Would you settle for me saying that it’s just something I want? Even if I know it is wrong to ask for it.”

“Yes,” I breathed.

He hesitated before continuing. “I won’t… If you’re worried about… I swear it wouldn’t be like that.”

I looked away, no doubt blushing. I hadn’t exactly thought something of that nature was a possibility. In fact, if I were honest, it was part of what attracted me to him. I knew I could never do anything of that sort with someone like him. And he wouldn’t want to with me. Or would he?

I did find him attractive.

No. I sought friendship, nothing more. It wasn’t safe to become close to someone back at the compound—friendship there would be too oppressive. I couldn’t hide from it. I would only be spending nine months at Templeton. If this fell apart, I never had to see this boy again. But I would be stuck at the compound for the rest of my life.

Besides, there was nothing natural about a relationship between one of my kind and one of his. The thought of it was wrong, and yet…

“You are right. Perhaps we can be…friends.”

A note of mischief flitted in his eyes. In a quick series of movements he had opened a trunk and returned holding out two dark, tattered, worn books. I instinctively sat up straight and held out my hand. In it he placed one,
Jane Eyre.