A Knife in the Dark | ✓

Seventeen

I didn't know how I got there or when I got there, but next thing I knew, I was standing among the crowds of girls my age, Clove on my left and Saylee on my right, as we always stood. Our arms were linked, hands tightly gripping the others, trying to hold ourselves together. Saylee's grip was slowly cutting of the circulation in my hand. I didn't care.

The images on the screen passed. The speech passed too, though I heard none of it. I hadn't realized that I was zoned out until I felt Clove's elbow digging into my side. Dalmatia was already halfway towards the bowl filled with the names of the girls, and I watched the slips of paper carefully. Bell and Leah's names were each in there once. That was nothing compared to us five--twenty for Saylee, twenty-five each for me and Clove, twenty-either for Jake, and fifty-six for Cato.

She reached in, fingers trailing over the slips on the top, and then dug in deep. She grabbed one, pulled it free, and held it up for us to see. She returned to the microphone, and it felt like time dragged on.

"Orania Uticensis!"

The name immediately connected to a face--a thirteen-year-old girl with dirt-smudged cheeks, the oldest of nine children, constantly going from her three jobs to school to the Training Center. We five often helped her out, because she came from a bad neighborhood and she and some other girls wanted to be strong enough to protect each other, their chosen sisters-in-arms, as well as their families.

Clove didn't even stop to think--her hand shot into the air with a loud cry of "I volunteer!".

Saylee and I avoided looking at each other, knowing the cameras were catching us as well. Clove untangled herself from me and started towards the stage. I always wondered what she felt in that moment as her well-practiced façade fell into place, a curtain coming down, a mask being pulled to cover the face. I wondered if she felt her vision tunneling, if she felt nauseous, or if she felt powerful, invincible.

I would never know. Clove took the steps easily, and stood with a blank look on her normally smiling face, and I felt nothing. She held her arms behind her back, tipped up her chin, and still I felt nothing. She announced her name proudly, like it was an honor to stand on that stage, and I felt nothing, nothing but her words as they echoed through my head.

Then Dalmatia was crossing the stage once more, going the other way, towards the boys. She reached in again and pulled a name, but it was abruptly cut off by a familiar voice's shout, volunteering to take the place of the poor soul that was about to be taken to their nearly-certain death.

Cato moved just as confidently as Clove. I met Jake's eyes over the crowds, and though his expression was blank, I could see in his eyes that he was just as dumbfounded as Saylee and I were. Saylee's grip on my fingers was tight enough to break them, or at least shift the bones and permanently disfigure my hand.

I was torn. Half of me felt nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing. I was like a limb gone numb--no feeling, none really, just a heavy weight and a feeling like static on a television. Other than that, there was only a stretching darkness that crept up slowly, seized hold of my limbs, threatened to swallow me whole with time.

The other half, with senses just as muted, felt everything. It felt like someone had reached into me and had ripped out my heart, my lungs, my stomach with their bare hands, now dripping with my blood. It felt like a blade had been taken and sliced me diagonally from hip to shoulder, like everything in me was about to fall out. My knees were weak. I wanted to fall to them, to scream, but I couldn't make a scene. I had to stay expressionless. I had to remain calm. I couldn't show anything, couldn't feel anything, couldn't act like two of the people I cared for the most were standing on that stage, that damned stage, the spot that meant at least one sure death.