Shymers (5 page)

The larger girl snorts. “Your parents did a good job of keeping you in the dark about everything.” Her voice is surprisingly high and musical, reminding me of my old friend Taylor.

“What’
s
you
r
DOD?” Kai asks. There is a certain roughness to her. Her voice even has a low, scratchy tone to it that fits her personality. Her dark eyes stare me down, making me feel even more uncomfortable.

“I…I don’t know. It was never given to me.”

Most of them gasp loudly. A couple even whisper to each other.

Bree grins in amusement. “I think it’s kind of exciting that you don’t know exactly how long you have.”

The piece of metal in Kai’s eyebrow rises. “But your parents would have been given your DOD the day you were born.”

I shrug, still not having an answer for her. “If they knew, they never told me.”

Kai’s dark eyes still bore into me. “Where do you live now?”

“They took me to a
n
orphanag
e
.” I flinch when saying the word.

The memory of being taken away from our home and away from my mother is still fresh and painful, like an open wound. I shut my eyes for a moment, willing myself not to cry in front of these strangers.

We were taken to separate helicopters, our hands tied behind our backs. They wouldn’t even give us time to speak to each other. I had to be held down when I screamed and cried for her, demanding they tell me where they were taking us. I watched in horror as my mother disappeared into the skies without me.

After I was brought into Society, two soldiers drove me in a small car to the large brick building. There a woman showed me to a cot in an open room filled with girls who were already sleeping. The room was cold and smelled of unclean bodies and stale, standing water. Between the helicopter and car rides, my stomach was already shaking unsteadily, and the smell of the place made me worry I would lose what little I had to eat.

I wasn’t able to sleep in the few hours that remained until dawn broke through the windows. With the discovery of just how many girls were in the room with me, I was both delighted and terrified, trying to imagine why there would be so many without a family to take them in.

“What about your parents?” asks Kai.

“Kai!” Bree scolds with a wave of her hand. “She doesn’t have to tell u
s
everythin
g
.”

“It’s okay,” I tell her. At least I know there are questions that they actually do consider to be rude. “My father died a while ago. My mother was taken away when they discovered she was unregistered.”

Bree takes in a large gulp of air, her eyes wide. “You mean she wa
s
suspende
d
?”

“I don’t know what that means,” I say.

“I’ll give it to you straight,” Kai offers, leaning in.
“
Suspende
d
is a term I know far too well. I grew up fearing it. It’s where people are assigned to a tiny room with only three walls and a line of metal bars to hold them in. They are only allowed a few hours of daylight and given small portions of food throughout the day. Both my parents were locked away there.”

My throat is too tight to form any kind response.

Questions begin to assault my head, one after another. How could they lock someone as kind as my mother away in an awful place like that? How long will they keep her there? What will happen to me now? Will I ever see my mother again? Why did she tell me to run? Where am I supposed to go?

Harrison stands abruptly, his lunch tray clutched in hand. His handsome blue eyes wash over me. “They will force you to know your DOD now,” he says grimly. There is a look of total contempt behind his stare, causing a peculiar sensation to tingle down my spine like cold fingers.

I stare back. For whatever reason, he has a general dislike for me. I can feel the anger bursting from him. But I don’t understand. What did I do to upset him? Is it because I don’t know my DOD? Is it because my mother was locked away?

Even though he wears his hair long and tousled over his ears unlike the short cut of the Future boys, he seems to have all of the other perfected features of one. Yet if he were a Future, he wouldn’t be out here with us—Bree has made those boundaries quite clear.

Our shoulders nearly make contact as Harrison brushes past me. I turn long enough to watch him stride away. A hot blush creeps into my cheeks. I must have done something to upset him. With my heart hammering, I look back at Bree.

How do I tell her that Harrison is wrong? How do I tell my new friends that I am not like them—that I am like the strange blondes who were pointing and laughing at me? Just like them, I won’t know my DOD until after I turn eighteen. It was the last thing the soldiers told me before they left me at the orphanage.

I am what this strange and unrelenting Society calls
a
Futur
e
.

Harrison

4 – I’ve Been a Coward All My Life

My whole life I have known exactly how many days I have left on this earth. Everyone does. It’s normal to know how many sunsets you will witness, how many nights you will sleep, and how many meals you will consume—if you really want to take the time to add them all up.

I always knew my entire family would die on the exact same day.

Growing up knowing I would be the only one in the family to survive and not be a part of whatever accident or tragedy that would eventually claim their lives really messed me up. The most frightening thing about this DOD business is to kno
w
whe
n
it will happen without having any ide
a
ho
w
. The guilt of my predicted survival stuck with me, hanging on my shoulders and growing into something my mother called
a
deep depressio
n
. I was sent to a doctor who gave me a bottle of pills, and just like that, I was cured.

But I wasn’t. Not really. I knew if my behavior brought any more attention to my family, I could be putting us all in danger. So I had to pretend I was okay with their universal demise.

In the beginning of the mandatory DOD system, people would run away or lock themselves up somewhere to see if their death could be avoided. The government caught on to this way of thinking before long, and began to monitor habits and unusual behaviors. If a person showed any signs of rebellion, they would be placed in suspension. Around the same time, communicators were invented as another way for the government to track people and make sure they weren’t doing anything illegal.

This is why I knew I had to somehow be at peace with my family’s short-lived future. There was no other choice.

Most of the friends I made growing up were Shymers who had been abandoned by their parents. One time I helped a friend who was ill return to his orphanage. Within minutes, I knew it was somewhere I never wanted to go again—not even for one night. There was an overall sadness that hung in the air, and the building was falling apart, feeling unsafe. The boys and girls were separated into large rooms to sleep on lumpy mattresses that smelled unclean. Yet I kept the horror of the visit to myself, knowing one day I would be forced to live in one after my parents were gone.

My parents were considered fairly wealthy by Society’s standards, even though they lived in the Shymer territory. They were frowned on for keeping their three Shymer children rather than sending them to live in an orphanage as expected.

My mother was a very quiet woman who hardly ever smiled. She was slender to the point that she appeared frail, and she always looked tired. Her long, straw-colored hair stuck out in loose strands alongside her face. Although she never actually came out and told me she didn’t agree with the ways of Society, I could sense there was something more behind her sullenness. At times I would catch her looking at me with what I took for a glimmer of hope, but her eyes would shift away when she discovered me watching.

Not long before my family died, I came upon my mother and the woman from next door in our kitchen. From the way their voices were hushed, I knew the conversation was forbidden and hid behind the pantry door to listen in.

The large neighbor woman, who I always disliked because of her sour attitude toward me and my siblings, asked my mother why they continued having children after the first two were born Shymers. I was anxious to hear my mother’s honest answer without any of us standing in the room. It was something I had always wondered myself.

“Why wouldn’t you at least take them all to the orphanage?” the woman had asked, her deep voice sounding more like that of a man’s. “You could have been living among the wealthy all this time in the Future territory.”

“I love my children,” was my mother’s simple response. “I don’t care what they are.”

After that day I felt closer to my mother on a whole new level. Although she would only tell me that she loved me on rare occasions, I remembered her heart-felt response to the neighbor woman’s question. I was filled with pride knowing my mother wanted to raise us, despite what was expected of her by the rest of Society.

My father, on the other hand, was unafraid to raise his booming voice to express his dislike for the government and the DOD system. His anger was passed down from his father. Grandpa Red—a nickname given because of his shocking red hair as a child—died of old age when I was eleven. I remember his deep, rolling laugh and the way he had me sit on his knee when he told his stories of the old world. He was a hulking man, like my father, but their physical similarities ended there. While my father had dark hair and a broad face, Grandpa Red’s hair had turned completely white and his face was long and frail looking. But Grandpa Red and my father had the exact same dislike for the ways of Society.

Hidden behind the furnace in our basement was a handwritten book that his grandfather had started. Filled with secrets and knowledge of the old days, the book told stories of my great-grandfather’s life and the downfall of the government. The two of us would spend hours in the basement, poring over the large book and reliving stories of my great-grandparents during a time when life was much simpler.

In the old world, people were able to find the answer to anything with just the touch of a button on their electronic devices with something called th
e
interne
t
. When there was talk of the rebellion starting, the government decided people were given far too much knowledge and declared the Internet to be illegal. It was their way of holding the power to control exactly what information people had available to them.

My grandfather suspected many of the people who died in the riots were actually killed instead of suspended so they wouldn’t pass information on to the next generations. Even though it was illegal to speak of such things in Society, my grandfather managed to pass on as much as he could to my parents with the book and through the stories he told.

From the book and my father’s stories, what I know about the fall of the old world is this: there was a time when rich people were in control of our country. They continued to grow even wealthier to the point that it became absurd. Meanwhile, the poor barely got enough money from the government to scrape by during the job shortage, while the middle class struggled to provide for their families and never got ahead. The government spent more money than it had, eventually driving the country to bankruptcy.

All of this changed with the election of President Skogsberg, a man determined to change everything. He knew of an underground society in which people had the ability to predict the future. The president forced them to work for the government and declared money to be invalid. The DOD system was born to give everyone a “fair” chance at success. Suddenly, everyone was equal.

In reality, it was a way for the government to use what little resources they had on people who would actually survive to benefit Society.

It wasn’t long before a new division of class formed. Those with a future were considered more valuable to Society, and those of us “short timers” (or “Shymers” as we came to be known) became less desirable and less important in Society. This new system made many people angry, and a rebellion was formed. The man who started the revolution was assassinated in his own home, and many of his followers after that were either killed or were suspended for the remainder of their lives.

All the men in my family were secret believers of what the Rebels were trying to accomplish in bringing down the government, but none of them fought for the cause. They were too fearful for their lives and what the government would do to their families.

“Openly going against the ways of Society is foolish,” my father warned more times than I could count. “It’s too dangerous to be involved in that lifestyle.”

The close relationship I had with my father was an exception. My little brother Simon and I hardly ever spoke in the ten years he was alive. Yet the two of us looked so similar that some of the other Shymers called him “Baby Harry.” Simon hated that nickname, and hated me for it. He was a shadow to my mother, always doing as he was told and keeping his distance from the rest of our family.