“Couldn’t you escape?” I ask the next morning at breakfast.
“People have tried,” Chase responds, “but no one has since they threatened to kill anyone they catch.” Skye and Olivia both stare at him, open mouthed.
“Kill them?” Skye repeats in shock. Chase nods gravely.
“But don’t they need workers?” I ask.
“The figure anyone who’s rebellious enough to try to escape wouldn’t make a very worthy worker,” Chase answers. “They made this rule a couple years back when a sixteen-year-old guy tried escaping and after they caught him, tried killing the officials here.” I’ve only been here for a day, but I can’t say I blame him.
I push open the door to the stuffy factory with Violet and Chase following behind me. In the midst of making a pair of shoes, I try to figure out what we’re supposed to do next. The idea of escaping seemed like a pretty good one, until I learned the risk. Even if we did manage to escape, where would we go? I was clueless as to where our village is. But we couldn’t just stay here either.
“How do you stand it?” I ask them. “Staying here with no freedom and being ordered around.”
“I don’t know,” Chase sighs, “I’m not sure I really can stand it.”
“I suppose we just got used to the constricted lifestyle,” Violet tells me. “I wish there was something I could do for Scarlet’s sake, but I don’t know what.”
“Scarlet’s sake?”
“Yeah…I guess I just feel sorry that she didn’t have as long of a good life before we came here as I did.” I think about my life before my parents were killed, but recently, that time has been hard to remember.
When I was younger, about six, we would all sit by the fireplace in the winter. My mother would knit and I would sit on my father’s lap and he’d tell me stories. My favorite story was a true one. For the first Thanksgiving my father and mother spent together, he wanted to snag a turkey for dinner. But after a whole day of hunting, he hadn't come across any turkeys, and by the time it was dark, he hadn't shot anything. The last thing he wanted to do was go home empty handed, but he couldn’t hunt in the dark. He sulked home, shrouded with guilt that he hadn’t caught any meat for dinner. My mother wasn’t angry or disappointed. She simply said that they weren’t hurt, hungry, or dying and they should be thankful for that. They didn’t have turkey every day and made it along fine, so why is Thanksgiving any different? They had each other, and that was all that mattered. That was one thing my parents always tried to teach me; to look at what you do have, rather than what you don’t.
At twelve, we report to the dining hall for lunch. Scarlet attempts starting conversation several times before realizing that none of us, including her, are really in the mood for talking today. For the next half hour, we all pick at the vegetable stew we were given.
“Who do you think could’ve done this?” I hear an official ask as we’re walking down the stairs to the basement after lunch. Shards of glass sit under an open window frame. The nearby walls were dotted with perfect, round bullet holes.
“I don’t know,” Headmistress Baumann sighs. “But we have to make sure no one attacks the building again. We can’t afford anyone getting hurt by whoever did this.” An official sweeps up the broken glass, and everyone clears out. I begin to continue down the stairs, and then catch the pain stricken expression wiped across Skye’s face. Marcus catches it too.
“No,” she whispers, squeezing her eyes shut. When she opens them again, a tear glides down her cheek. She looks at me pitifully. I know what fear is running through her mind. It’s not as though we didn’t see the men finding us a possibility, we just didn’t want to believe they would. But now, that was reality. It could’ve just as easily been some drunken man with a gun, but something in me just knew that it wasn’t.
“What are we supposed to do?” Skye asks in distress.
“There’s nothing we can really do but wait and see what happens next,” I answer and wrap my arms around her. The weight of her head rests on my shoulder.
While working, I still can’t think of a way to escape, but while the risk of getting caught escaping is big, the risk of staying here might be greater.
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