WINNER OF THE @WATTPADSERIES 'SERIES-OSLY GOOD READ' COMPETITION!!!
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NO HUMAN CONTACT. EVER.
In order to survive , this was the rule Pip had to follow. Why? Because human contact was a death sentence. Completely fatal.
So why did the distan...
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I BEGAN TO feel cold. Ill almost, and it wasn't from the medicine.
"The stuff you're giving me - is that to make me healthy?" I asked him. Suddenly, I felt a wave of anxiety flood through my chest. "Am I sick?"
"It's not like that. The medicine they're giving you here is different for everyone - they're..." He paused. "They're testing you. You're experimental subjects to them. Thelonious is receiving a supply of medicine which prevents the disease, which is what we're giving to you. What they're not giving to you here."
"What? Then why are people sending their families here if they're just experimenting on us? Charleston, there are kids in this place!"
He sighed. Somehow I knew that what he was about to tell me, I couldn't say to anyone else. By this, I knew that he trusted me, too. "No one knows about it. I don't even think half the people that work here know. We're trying to figure out what it is they're using people for, but we can't figure it out yet... We think that they created disease."
Some sort of hope in me vanished. I wasn't sure what it was for, but I felt it leave, and I felt its absence. Something was telling me that it was for humanity: for the lack of it left in the world.
Fear spoke out of me. "But I am immune, right?"
He didn't answer me. I wasn't even sure that he had heard me until he dropped his head. "Charleston?"
Still silence. "Charleston, say something." I pushed.
My voice barely a whisper. "Say anything."
"We don't know."
I couldn't move. Not until he spoke again, told me something more.
"We don't know. There are different stages of the disease, even different levels of immunity. But right now, you're healthy, and we are going to make sure that you stay that way."
I wasn't immune? Was I? How would we know if I was?
"Pip, don't be scared, alright?"
I wanted to listen to him. I held so much trust in him, but this - my immunity, my potential lack of immunity, it wasn't a choice he made. It wasn't a choice anyone made except God. I couldn't get mad at Charleston for not being able to tell me my fate.
What I could do was take my life into my fate into my own hands. Take my future, take my life.
I was alive with something: either fear of faith; I had a hard time distinguishing between the two. Whichever one, it led me to ask the most boldest question yet. The one that had shaken my heart for the months that I had been here.
"Why can't we touch?"
He didn't expect it from me. I didn't even expect from myself.
I stood up; he was right in front of me. I moved closer.
"Before coming here, they told me that if I touched anyone, it would kill me. Why?"
His eyes met mine. In that moment, there was an overwhelming feeling of intimacy between us. It was like I knew all of him, all of him.
He answered me. Nothing between us. "Because they want to make you less human."
It made sense; not completely, but more than it ever had done. If that really was what they were trying to achieve, then they were succeeding. Sometimes, before Charleston, I had wondered if I was real.
"And if we touch..."
We were so close that I swear I could feel the warmth of his breath against my skin. Skin. His skin. His golden, tan skin. Stretched on for miles. I was exhausted of not living.
