Dense forest surrounds us as we escape our world. Thick trees create a cool, musty atmosphere – with the scent of rain lingering in the air. Beautiful vines of August Bust grow against these trees. Ashlia drags herself through the wet grass. When she finds a patch she likes she sits. Since we left she's been in a constant state of deep thought. I ask her what's wrong, but she refuses to answer. "Jason." I suppose I will get my answer now.
"Yes?" I respond, concerned. I sit next to her, gazing out at the darkness of the woods.
"I never meant to fall in love with you. It sort of just happened, you know," this is the first time she has said she is in love with me. I feel a strange happiness make its way through my body and I can't help but smile.
"I was always meant to love you. I just always knew it was wrong. If we lived in a different world – a world where it was okay for me to love you, and you to love me, we would be happier."Ashlia cuts off my monologue.
"I can't Jason," she whispers
"Ashlia –"
"No, Jason. I can't!" She screams. She screams as loud as she can. Her voice, full of fury, tears running down her soft face. An urge to reach out and simply touch her takes over me, but she slaps my hand away. "This is not right Jason – you, me, us. "
"Listen!" Shocked, she stops speaking. "I love you Ashlia. If I didn't see you for eleven years and casually bumped into you on some random day at a supermarket, and you had three kids with Tracee - I would still feel the same way. I will always feel the same –"
"Jason, stop! I'm done – I'm done," I can hear her voice repeat as she abandons me in the forest. I want to tell her a bunch of things, but no matter what I say, or how I say it, it's already been done. The words were penned by some random man three hundred years ago. It makes me want to go back and tell that man to shut up for a second and let me speak because I am in love with Ashlia Rossi.
"I love you," I whisper to the trees that seem so confiding without Ashlia's brightness, but my words will never compare to those of a hundred years past.
YOU ARE READING
Straight in a Crooked World (Teen Fiction/Dystopian)
Teen FictionThe city of Solae was the last to be purified. The goal of the Confederacy, the ruling order of the scattered cities that form their territory, is to create a purified world. We are not sure what goes on inside the walls of the Conversion Jail, or w...
