Outliers

Chapter 9: Little Did We Know

"Newport again?" Xavier asked, hidden by a wall from where I stood in the kitchen.

"Yeah," I said, opening the cupboards. My eyes drifted across the bright meal bar packages, dried fruit, and boxes of oatmeal staring back at me. "They seem to have a lot."

I reached up on my tiptoes and curled my fingers around a meal bar wrapped in maroon. It was cherry-and-fig flavoured, with the usual insect protein. When I closed the cupboard, the plastic doors squeaked shut. I pulled at the wrapper of my meal bar as I walked toward my friends.

I grabbed the white back of my chair and pulled the cool plastic seat backwards. I sat down, still struggling with the wrapper.

"What ability this time?" Ariana asked. "My bet's on night vision."

Though most people were too freaked to join, our warning group had grown to almost twenty. People who could see in the dark seemed the most common, but we hadn't seen one in almost a month. We still hadn't run into anybody with the same ability as me.

"No," I said. "She's like that little boy we saw a couple months ago. Breathes underwater." When I finally got the wrapper open and bit into the meal bar, the taste of cherry and figs exploded in my mouth. Cherry was my favourite flavour of everything, and I had been looking forward to that meal bar all day. I leaned back in my chair, chewing.

"Wanna go soon?" Xavier asked. "It's dark enough."

I bit into my meal bar again as he crumpled up his wrapper and set it on the table. He looked out the window. The sun was already down, and the sky had turned a deep navy dotted with white stars. I nodded.

"Yeah," I said, after swallowing the last of my meal bar. I crushed the wrapper in my hand and set it down on the table. "If we wait too much longer, she might be asleep."

Ariana had finished her meal bar a while ago, and her wrapper lay neatly folded in front of her. We composted our wrappers and headed out. The sidewalk was empty, but streetlights provided circles of yellow light every couple feet.

"I don't like all these people from Newport," I said, my voice lower than usual. We didn't want to draw any attention to ourselves. "They're all so stuck up."

Newport, better known as "Cop Street," was a rich pocket in Greenville. Some government people, including the Greenville Police Force, were forced to live in this area for their "highly paid" work. That didn't mean they lived like poor people though. Newport was a street full of large, beautiful houses that looked completely out of place, and almost all of the government employees in Greenville lived there. So we were extra careful on that street and made sure the people we warned weren't even thinking of turning us in.

"I know," Xavier said, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. "It's like they think everyone else is sub-human."

The government seemed to think that people like us, with abilities, were sub-human too. It was ironic that some of them had abilities of their own. Did they ever make exceptions for their own people? Or would even their most loyal members be carted away? It was like the historic days of prejudice and anti-diversity that Ati used to scare us with.

"Still though."Ariana gave a half-shrug. "Never know. I doubt every single one of them is like that." I wasn't so sure, but Ariana always tried to think the best of people.

Fifteen minutes later, we reached the street of big pearly-white houses. Each had bright-green lawns with neat trims, vibrant flower gardens, and walkways made of actual stone. We used to have a small lawn and agarden. The soil had been squishy and moist in my hands when my father and I planted new seeds. It was one of the few luxuries I still missed with an ache. What I wouldn't have given to be gardening with my dad right then.