All The Lies We Told Ourselves

13 - Plans

Rue

*****

March 26th, Tuesday

"So, how was your date?" I asked, sitting next to Reid in the front row of the crowded room. The meeting was about to start. "Did you remember to talk to her this time?"

"You're one to speak. Last time a girl came up to you I thought you got lockjaw or something."

"Alright, I get it." I said, raising my hands in resignation. "I take it you wooed Amity with your incredible charisma."

"Not exactly," He chuckled. "But it was nice, anyway. We went down to that abandoned mall to the east of the wall."

"How was it? I've been thinking of going down there to loot stuff."

"Almost empty." He said. "Although, I did find this." Reid pulled out a cap from his pocket. The brown color had faded into a beige. On the front of it, it said, in dark blue curvy letters, 'women want me, fish fear me'. The words were completed by an embroidered Atlantic cod. It made me laugh out loud, to the point where a couple people turned to look at us. "You know, I saw that and thought it practically had your name on it with how accurate it was." Reid laughed.

"Well, it's half true. I am good at fishing."

"Oh, admit it. You're a total chick magnet, Rue." Reid nudged me on the shoulder. His sarcasm was more funny than it was insulting.

I had never dated anyone, not officially. I always found it an impassable barrier to even talk to a stranger in that sense. With the intent of something romantic. Small talk was a plague to me. The shallow yada yada of the 'how's the weather' and the 'what a lovely day'. I never understood why it wasn't acceptable to just ask someone the things you wanted to know.

There had been someone. Well, there had been Mei. We had joined the faction at the same time four years ago, right before the summer. We were fourteen then and maybe it was the fact that we were polar opposites that stuck us together like glue for that summer. Where I was introverted, she spoke to everyone like it came so naturally to her. I liked watching her haggle the salespeople at the market square. They never got offended by her outrageously low offers because of how kind she was about all of it. We went everywhere together and in the autumn, after the anniversary meeting, she had kissed me like it was nothing.

At fourteen we were old enough to consider ourselves capable of everything and young enough to think we were invincible. Not long before my fifteenth birthday, I found out she had fallen from the seventh floor of that abandoned office building on fourth street, by accident. They had been messing around at one of the broken windows. On my fifteenth, everything felt temporary.

***

Fern appeared at the front of the room and it quickly became quiet. She eyed the room sternly, stopping every once in a while to stare at someone. When she came to me, Fern nodded and put on a small smile. She had done that lately and I didn't know why. It wasn't like her, smiling.

"So, as I'm sure we all know, faction number seven has been intersecting the supply chains more than usual recently, especially when it comes to the medicine shipments. And about a week ago, they ran into a batch that we were unfamiliar with. We ran it through testing but couldn't figure out what it was."

Fern sighed, as if what she was about to say was not going to be easy.

"So we had intelligence find it on the database at the research center and they revealed that it is a cognition-altering substance, a new project by the Hargeaves."

Weren't most drugs like that anyway? Cognition altering. I remember reading about it in one of my parents' books when I was younger. They affected the frontal cortex, a person's memory and ability for decision-making. The crowd shuffled and whispered to each other. Most, myself included, didn't seem to know what it meant.