Read Perfected (Entangled Teen) Online
Authors: Kate Jarvik Birch
Tags: #dystopian, #hunger games, #genetic engineering, #chemical garden, #delirium, #young adult romance, #divergent
Perfected (Entangled Teen) (23 page)
We threw open our doors and ran. Behind us the sound of sirens pierced through the rumble of the falls. My dress billowed out behind me as my feet smacked the pavement.
“Stop!” a voice bellowed behind me. “Stop or we’ll fire.”
“Keep running!” Penn shouted.
Light glinted off of the cars, so close to me on either side that I could reach out my hands and touch them. Inside the people looked up at me, startled. Their mouths moved in noiseless cadence before they turned around to stare at the police that trailed behind me.
In front of me a group of men in uniforms emerged from out of the shadows, running toward me with their weapons raised. I didn’t know if they were the people I was supposed to be running from, or running toward. I turned back to Penn for help, my hair fanning out behind me like the manes of those horses I’d seen with Ruby.
“Penn!” I yelled, frantically searching the sea of cars.
Why don’t I see him?
I slammed to a halt. Off to the side of the bridge an officer held Penn’s arms behind his back. Penn’s face was contorted in pain. He caught my eye for just a moment before the policeman elbowed him in the back, making him crumple forward onto his knees.
“Run, Ella!” he choked out.
The world spun back into focus. A policeman sprinted toward me. His face was red, his mouth opened as he yelled at the other officers running at me with their guns drawn.
I plowed into their arms. “Help me,” I gasped, hoping desperately that these were the people I could trust. “I need asylum. Help.”
“Stop her!” the policeman yelled. He skidded to a stop in front of me as I grabbed onto the officer’s shirts. “She’s crossing illegally. That girl is the property of John Kimball.”
I held tight to the tall man with reddish hair. “Don’t let him take me,” I begged. “I’m a pet. I was bred in Greenwich Kennels. I need asylum. Please.”
The man stared down at me, confused.
“Did you hear me?” the policeman yelled. “She’s owned by Congressman John Kimball. She was stolen late last night.”
“I wasn’t stolen,” I cried. “Please. Don’t let them take us.”
The red-haired man looked from me to Penn as if he was trying to deduce if what I said was true. His eyes narrowed. Finally he turned back to the policeman.
“I can’t let you take her,” he said, and in one quick movement he stepped in front of me as if to shield me with his body. “She’s on Canadian soil.”
The policeman’s face was a florid shade of red. On his forehead, a vein stretched taught underneath his skin. “It’s my job to return her.”
“Are you listening to yourself?” the officer said. He placed a hand protectively against my arm, pushing me even farther behind him. “This girl isn’t property.”
“Please,” I said. My voice was so small it was almost carried away into the great roar of the falls.
“You need to leave her alone,” the officer said. “And let the boy go. Unless those rich people own you, too?”
The policeman drew the back of his hand along his mouth, wiping away the spit that had formed at the corner of his lips. “Nobody owns me.”
“No?” the officer said. “First they buy the laws, and pretty soon they’ve bought your soul.”
The policeman’s eyes narrowed. “It’s my job to uphold the law, not to judge it.” He turned to the policeman holding Penn’s arms behind his back. “Put him in the car!”
“Penn!” I screamed.
I raced forward, but the red-haired man held me back.
“You can’t go,” he said softly, squeezing my arm. “I can’t protect you if you go back there.”
“But I can’t go without him!”
My knees buckled and I fell to the ground. The soft fabric of my gown ripped against the blacktop and the pavement bit into my knees, but I didn’t care.
Through the line of cars I could see Penn. A dark red gash above his eyebrow dripped blood down the side of his face, but his eyes were bright and fierce as he strained toward me. If I’d ever doubted that he loved me, it was clear now. I wasn’t just a pet to him. When he looked at me, he saw his future, too.
Our eyes locked and time slowed. Around us there was only light and the fine mist of water that sprayed off the falls. It seemed as if the sky had shattered, raining down tiny pieces of blue on top of our heads.
“I love you, Penn.” My mouth moved, but the words stayed trapped somewhere deep inside me.
And then time rushed forward. The policemen pulled him away from me. Down the bridge, the patrol car stood ready, its door swung wide open. With each step they took, Penn moved farther from the border, farther from the future we were supposed to have together.
I waited for them to take him away from me. Penn, my Penn, the boy I’d tried so hard not to fall in love with. What was freedom without him?
I thought that freedom and happiness would be indistinguishable, but now I didn’t know. Maybe freedom wasn’t a state of being. Maybe it was an act of courage. Maybe freedom was defiance and sacrifice and pain, something that couldn’t be won without giving up something else in return.
I don’t know how long I stood on the bridge. Next to me the officer with the red hair waited patiently with his hand resting lightly on my shoulder as the cars behind us began moving again.
I leaned against the metal railing and stared out over the rushing water that was almost the same color as the white puffs of the clouds overhead. They were all the same—a ceaseless flow of water to mist to clouds, which finally fell to the earth as water once again.
I clenched my fists, suddenly remembering the paper Penn had given to me. My hand shook as I opened my palm and unfolded the crumpled sheet, damp with sweat.
The paper was covered in letters and numbers, some I recognized, but some looked foreign in the elegant, loopy scrawl. But I didn’t need to know how to read to know what they meant. It was the paper that Penn’s mom had given him before we left, the one with the name and address of the people waiting here to help me.
I turned toward Canada. I didn’t know who I was now. Without Penn, without the congressman, without Ruby, without Miss Gellner…who was I?
Deep in my belly something stirred. I didn’t know what it was, maybe hope or courage—maybe just the knowledge that I’d be able to find the answer on my own.
I licked the moisture from my lips, testing the first bittersweet taste of freedom.
Acknowledgments
T
hank you to my awesome group of writing cheerleaders—ever ready with pompoms, words of encouragement, and smart criticism: Tyler and Tanya Jarvik, Cathy Birch, Emily Scalley, Ellen Fagg Weist, Elaine Vickers, and Dan Beecher.
Thank you to my agent, Kerry Sparks, for your honesty, hard work and support.
To all the people at Entangled: Sue Winegardner, Stacy Abrams, Liz Pelletier, Kelley York, and Heather Riccio, thank you for helping to make this book a reality.
To Heather Howland, the most amazing editor a girl could dream of having, thank you for sharing your brilliant mind with me. Your knack for finding the true shape of a story is inspiring. Thank you for patiently coaxing this one out of me. But most of all, thank you for being the number one fan of this book from day one.
Thank you to my mom, Elaine Jarvik, for humoring the pet lover in me since age two when I spotted my first pony at the carnival. Thank you for your enthusiasm for my never-ending projects, for letting me learn to create and imagine without fearing failure.
Most of all, thank you to my family. Thank you to Morgan, Noah, and Rebecca for laughing at me, for loving me, for supporting me, and for inspiring my crazy dreams. And thank you to my Bry Guy for lifting me up, for encouraging me, and—even though it’s not the most fun job—for being the practical one who knows that you can’t keep a mini horse in our backyard. Thank you for allowing me to be the one who keeps dreaming that everything is possible.
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