Secrets Are For Keeping

Chapter Twenty-Five

Nobody had expected me to come back. Nobody had thought I'd return.

But I did. That night I got dressed in my normal clothes, got out of the hospital bed with help from a nurse and then followed an inspector into their black van which took me immediately back to the school. My eyes drank in everything I saw out the window, so unused to seeing it after being stuck in a school for three full days.

Then I was at the school. My feet took me out of the car and up the stairs to the front doors.

Nobody was in the immediate front hallway except for a couple random inspectors. I was led down a couple hallways until I reached the cafeteria, where everyone seemed to be having lunch.

Right before the inspector allowed me to be let off on my own, he said, "You are not required to go to your 5:15 inspection today." I nodded in recognition of his words then walked into the cafeteria, still wearing the same outfit I'd worn on the first day of inspections.

I felt like every table I walked past more and more people seemed to stop eating and quiet down. I kept my face forward and ignored the turning heads as I made my way to the table that I usually sat at with Zander and Pepper. As I neared it, I realized Kain was also sitting there and wondered if he had decided to officially join our little group of three that had been created in the past couple days.

I sat down, ignoring the bewildered looks given to me by both Zander and Pepper. Kain just looked slightly anxious, but it was such an imperceptible change from how he usually looked it was hard to tell. That's one thing I'd come to realize about him: he didn't often show any drastic emotions on his face.

"Oh mygod," Pepper exclaimed and then her arms were around me, squeezing me tightly to her. "You're not dead."

I winced at her hug, which reminded me all too well of all the hands grabbing onto me immediately after me getting shot.

Zander just continued to stare in shock and Kain was now looking at me with an expression that I couldn't decipher.

"How...how are you not dead?" Pepper whispered, still holding onto me like I might've not been real.

"I...what do you mean dead? That...that doesn't make sense..."

Pepper stared at me, looking even more shocked by my words than my actual presence.

Kain quickly returned to staring at his plate, not actually eating anything, as Zander muttered a curse word under his breath.

"You......haven't heard........."

"Things have changed," Kain interjected, his voice somewhat strangled like he didn't want to say it. He dropped his fork down beside his plate and looked troubled.

Pepper closed her mouth which had opened to say something. She let go of me slowly, and then started staring down at her food, much like Kain was doing.

There was a silence where I realized they weren't going to elaborate.

"What do you mean by changed?"

Kain shook his head slowly, not being able to respond with words. I felt anxiety rearing up in my stomach as I realized that while I'd been unconscious something had happened. And that something might've lead to how intensely Olivia had reacted at the idea of me going back. Maybe I should've listened to her.

It was Zander who finally answered my question.

"They changed the way the inspection works...they made it stricter...," he explained. "And...and people started to disappear...that's what Pepper meant when she said she thought you died. Really what she meant was that we don't know what's happening to them. They're just...gone."

I stared at Zander in shock.

And then I realized.

They were taking away the people that had failed the inspection.

They were handcuffing them and taking them away just like the girl I'd seen with the inspector in the alcove a couple days before.

"Who?" I asked, my voice too weak to speak loud.

"A lot...a lot of people right after the simulation disappeared. We thought...," Zander continued.

"You'd gone too," Pepper finished for him.

I leaned back in the cafeteria chair, not able to compute what they were saying. They were taking people. People were disappearing. They'd thought I was one of them.

"And...," Pepper seemed to want to add something, but I could tell she didn't know how to say it. She finally began searching through her pockets for something and I realized she wasn't going to say it at all. That's when I knew exactly why she would be trying to tell me something without Kain or Zander knowing.

There was only one secret that me and Pepper shared. And that was the laptop.

I reached out and lightly touched her elbow. She turned her eyes towards me, and I could see it in her face, in the way she looked so afraid for me.

My name was now on the warning category. She'd gone back to check and my name had been there.

"Yellow," she whispered, soft enough for only me to hear. Even though I'd already guessed that this was what she'd been trying to tell me, her confirmation of my suspicion made it all the more real.

I was at risk of being taken away just like Kain, and just like many other people who had already been taken.

And nobody knew what had happened to them.